Page 43 of Saved By the Billionaire

“Then what are you worried about?”

“Addiction isn’t the same as affection.”

“And you think you’ll get addicted to me?”

His response was just the flicker of a muscle at the base of his jaw. She moved her hand from his chest to his angular jawline and pressed her fingers to the pulse point. “I think I already might be.”

Her eyes flared wide. “This is getting complicated.”

Roman’s jaw clenched tighter. “Is it?”

But she heard it in his voice; the understanding. The agreement. This was more than he’d bargained for as well.

“I don’t generally allow things to become complicated.”

“Are you telling me or yourself?”

“Both.” It was more of an admission than she’d expected. His eyes almost seemed to be pleading with hers when they met a moment later. “In one week, you’ll leave, and that’s it. For both of us. No matter what.”

And before she could agree, before she could say anything, he swooped his head down and mashed his lips to hers in a kiss that was as desperate as it was soul-searing. Stars seemed to dance behind her eyelids, her blood was running too fast through her veins, threatening some kind of cellular collapse and her hands clung to the lapel of his suit jacket, crumpling the expensive fabric in a way neither of them noticed.

“Roman,” she exhaled his name, and with her lips separated, his tongue pushed deeper into the recesses of her mouth, brushing her teeth, dueling with her tongue and the stars in her eyes went supernova, so she was whimpering and holding his jacket tighter, harder, her hands desperate to tether to some kind of reality. But reality was nowhere to be had; he lifted her easily, as he’d been doing since that very first night, only now, instead of cradling her against his chest, he wrapped her legs around his waist and in doing so, her towel dropped away, falling to the ground, so she was naked against him and it didn’t even occur to her to feel self-conscious.

But Roman noticed. Roman’s growl from deep in his throat was like a curse, flooding and pulsing in the room, twisting deep in her belly so she echoed it back to him, a groan from low in her belly as he moved to the edge of the bed then turned, sitting down so she was on his lap, straddling him, feeling his hardness through the fabric of his pants, moving her hips in an ancient, time-worn dance of need.

“You’re so fucking perfect, Kate,” he said, but almost as though it were a problem. “You’ve haunted my dreams, and yet they didn’t come close to this.”

Her response was to grind lower against him, and his hands tangled in her hair, holding her head right where he needed her to plunder her mouth deeply, intensely, before dropping away, leaving her bereft. But before she could guess his intentions, his lips trapped one of her nipples, sucking it in hard, rolling his tongue over the engorged surface, flicking it, then biting his teeth down with just enough pressure to make her cry out and tilt her head back in wild abandon.

“Please,” she heard herself cry out. “Please, Roman, I want you. I need you, now.”

He dragged his mouth to her other breast and tormented it in all the same ways, his fingers lifting to the first and twisting her nipple so her whole body was a cascade of feelings and impulses, of awareness and desperate, hungry yearning.

“I am aching to fuck you,” he said, and the harshness of that was somehow perfect and reassuring. There was no promise of emotion, of intimacy, it was the spoken equivalent of what she always sought: uncomplicated sex.

“Then what’s stopping you?” she asked, grinding her hips lower.

He moved, tilting her easily backwards onto the mattress so she half-laughed, half-squawked in surprise. “Meetings.”

She pushed up onto her elbows, one brow raised. “Aren’t you Roman-I-Can-Do-What-I-Want-Hayes?”

His lips lifted in a half-smile of concession.

She pushed up higher, one hand fisting in his shirt. “And don’t you own the company?”

He grunted his agreement.

“So why don’t you…invest…in this?” It didn’t occur to her until after she’d made the invitation that she was putting herself so far out there. That she was asking him for more than he might give; that she was inviting rejection. Because it didn’t occur to her that he would reject her. They’d gone too far. Besides, he wanted her as much as she did him. She’d felt the evidence of that a moment ago, had shamelessly pushed herself down on his rock hard arousal, as though his pants would somehow magically disappear and he’d take her like that.

“Believe me, there’s nothing I want more.”

Her breath caught in her throat and her eyes flew to his. The need to protect herself rattled to life, a muscle she hadn’t thought she’d need in this moment suddenly flexing. She dropped her hand away from his shirt immediately, as though she’d been burned.

“I have to go,” he said, no hint of apology in the words. If anything, they were like steel.

That self-protective muscle flexed once more. “Oh, sure, no problem.”

But then his finger was on her chin, tilting her face so she either had to face him head on or squeeze her eyes shut. Closing her eyes would tell him too much about her vulnerabilities so she faked a courage she didn’t feel and held his gaze, even when the probing of his eyes was making parts of her wither and twist.