Page 44 of Saved By the Billionaire

“We aren’t going to rush this.”

Her heart thundered.

He moved closer, this time, lifting his knees to the edge of the bed and straddling her. When he kissed her, his head pushed her backwards into the mattress, and his body weight gently eased down on Kate, so she was lost once again on a sea of need, forgetting to protect herself, forgetting to act nonchalant in the face of the desire that was ravaging her system, protective reflexes be damned.

“Who said anything about rushing?” she murmured, one leg lifting to wrap around his waist.

His eyes swept closed for a moment, his lashes thick and dark against the tan of his skin. “You’re impossible.”

“I thought I was perfect?”

“Perfectly impossible.” He pressed a kiss against her again. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

She blinked up at him and his eyes were now not only open but piercing hers with their intensity.

“I mean it. Stay here, exactly like this, Kate, and I’ll reward you when I come home.”

She should have laughed it off, pretended his heated command didn’t affect her but the truth was, his words were their own form of torment. “How long will you be?”

“I don’t know,” he said, something shifting behind his eyes that she didn’t understand. “But believe me, thinking of you like this is going to get me through the next few hours.” He pressed a kiss to her lips then straightened. “Stay.”

“Yessir,” she murmured, with a flicker of her eyes that indicated sarcasm rather than heat. As he walked across the room, Kate’s hand moved to her breast, circling one of the nipples he’d so effortlessly tormented.

He stopped walking and turned, stared at her, cursed again and she held her breath, wondering if he might change his mind, wondering if he might come back to bed after all. But with another swallowed curse from deep in his body, he turned on his heel and left, closing the door heavily in his wake.

Sometimes he wondered if they were sadistic to torture themselves like this, and yet he knew they’d never stop. Every year, on the anniversary of Grace’s death, they came to the cemetery together, Tia and Roman, each with their own weight of responsibility, their own burdens. There was grief, for both of them, but time had dulled that, had changed the ways in which they missed Grace. It was a constant presence, but it was also woven into his being now, a part of his life. He no longer picked up his phone expecting to see her face, calling him. He no longer went to text her when something good happened. He no longer carried the worry he had for the last year of her life, knowing that her career had taken her into associations she should avoid, a niggling, constant sense of concern that she downplayed and insisted was unfounded. What he wouldn’t do to go back and change the past, to insist she check into rehab and let them decide how ‘balanced’ her habits were. But he hadn’t, and while his grief had eased, his guilt was as strong as it would ever be, because he knew he could have saved her, if he’d done things differently. If he’d been less focused on his career, less obsessed with building himself into the goliath he was today, less singular in his outlook.

He'd thought he was looking after her, as though a phone call every few days was enough. She’d slipped through his fingers, though, drugs taking her from him before he could realise just how bad it really was.

Tia leaned against his side, and he put an arm around her shoulders on autopilot, her soft, floral fragrance tickling his nose. She shivered against the cold—Fall had the city in its grip now; it was easy to see that winter would be here soon. Every year was like this; icy winds at Grace’s grave, with its view of the city. That had been the least he could do—offer her a resting place worthy of her. Small compensation, though.

“Such a goddamn waste,” Tia muttered, lifting a trembling finger and wiping at her cheeks. She glanced up at Roman, her beautiful face with those soulful dark eyes showing a torment Tia rarely revealed. “Do you ever blame me, Roh?”

It was the first time she’d ever asked him that and the question caught him completely by surprise. “Blame you?”

“I was her best friend.”

“She pushed you away,” Roman reminded Tia. “She pushed everyone away.”

“But you didn’t let her,” Tia whispered, eyes flicking back to the gravestone. “You stayed in her life.”

He expelled a grunt of disbelief. “Hey, if that was true, she’d still be here.”

“You tried. I got pissed.”

“She cut you out of her life, Tee. She had her music friends, her producer and his team, she’d moved on.”

A tear slid down Tia’s cheek. “You don’t move on from what we had. We were sisters.” She dropped her head forward onto his chest. “Can I tell you something?”

He stroked her back, his heart breaking for the burden that Tia had been carrying all this time, just as heavy, apparently, as his. “Anything.”

“Sometimes, I get so mad, I think I actually hate her.” She sobbed. “I hate her for doing that to herself, for abandoning me, you, everything we could have been. I hate her for leaving us.”

Roman blinked his eyes shut against a fierce wind. “I do too,” he admitted, gruffly.

Tia sobbed again. “Can we go get shit-faced?”

Out of nowhere, Roman thought of what he really wanted to be doing right now, to cope with this moment. Who he really wanted to be with. And the guilt was a strong stab in his side, a horrible, horrible recrimination for letting desire for Kate cloud his duties to Tia. “Sounds like a plan,” he said, reaching for his phone and shooting a text to Garrett.