Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues (30 page)

Flattening his palms, laying them hot over her bare shoulder blades, he pulled her down to him.
Come here
, he coaxed with his hands and his mouth.
Come here, come here, I need you
.

Ashley sipped at his lips, nudging his broad nose with hers, rubbing her chin over his roughened cheek but keeping it light because, horny or not, she needed to encourage Roman to talk.

In the interest of talking, she tried to pull away, but he deepened the kiss, which was sneaky of him. When he got his free hand underneath the stretchy bottom of her halter top and started working his way north, she began to think that, yeah, maybe they could shelve conversation for later.

That was when he said, “I got angry. I was so mad, I thought I would throw up. I almost did.” He kissed a path down to her throat. The sneaky hand closed over her breast. “Then I almost cried,” he said, and his hand felt so good.
She
felt so good, because Roman Díaz was telling her about his feelings in a growling-low sex voice made for pillow talk. And it was turning her on even more than his thumb dragging back and forth over her nipple.

“Then I was cheerful for no reason,” he said. “I had the shakes most of the drive home. It wasn’t until I saw your pillow on my bed that I started feeling like I was okay.” He turned his head to look at the garish pink blob. “That
is
your pillow, right?”

“Right.”

He gripped her hips and tugged her down onto his erection. “You put your pillow on my bed.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d like it.”

“I like it.”

She couldn’t doubt it—not when he looked at her like he wanted to take her and own her and keep her forever. Possibly locked up in a tower. “There’s some other stuff,” she said. “Scattered around.”

“Like what?”

Mardi Gras beads hanging from the showerhead. The Oscar Mayer wiener on the cedar shelf in his closet. She’d combed through the boxes in the Airstream again, as well as a garbage bag full of personal items that Noah had rescued from the office and her own nearly empty Sunnyvale bedroom.

“Like that.” She pointed to the weathered gray board on the wall above the bed. Its surface had been painted with the kind of script where the letters began and ended in oversized dots.

Home is not a place
.

Beside the words, the artist had painted what was meant to be a dumpling-shaped girl with freckles wearing a bonnet and bloomers. Probably.

Roman lifted up on his elbows so he could look. “Where did you get that?”

“I found it in one of the boxes. I don’t know if I just didn’t see it before, or if I saw it and didn’t really
see
it, but this morning there it was. I don’t remember it. I don’t know if it was even Grandma’s or if it somehow got mixed up with her stuff. I just felt like …”

“Like you wanted to put it up on the wall above my bed.”

“You hate it.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s … Susan had it up at the hospice care place.”

“You saw it when you visited?”

“Yeah.”

Awkward.

Since North Carolina, she’d wanted to ask him a dozen different times, but it was
such
an awkward subject.
Hey, hon, can you put another log on the campfire? And oh, also maybe tell me what it was like to visit my dying grandmother
.

Roman brushed his fingers over her collarbone, bringing her attention back to him. “You want to hear.”

Ashley nodded, wordless and grateful.

He settled beneath her again, resting his hands on her thighs. “I went there thinking I would stay half an hour. I had this idea we might need to talk about you, because the nurse had told me Susan didn’t have a lot of time left. I thought if I showed up to see her she might … I don’t know. Make some big confession or bequest, or offer an explanation. But Susan was kind of out of it on pain medicine, and I didn’t know her well enough. I sat there a few minutes trying to decide if I should touch her hand, say something … I spent more time questioning the staff than seeing her. I made sure everything was paid for and that she wasn’t in any pain, and then I left.”

He looked so sad and disappointed in himself, Ashley said, “It’s okay.”

“It’s really not. I chickened out.”

“There wasn’t anything you could do.”

The knowledge sank into her with weight, dropping to a depth it hadn’t previously reached. There wasn’t anything he could have done.

There wouldn’t have been anything Ashley could do.

Roman touched her cheek. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“It makes me sad,” she said. “I’m sad she died, that it happened at all, that it happened without me being part of it. But it was what she wanted. She died the way she wanted. It didn’t have anything to do with me. I think I’m getting used to that.” Ashley glanced at the wall hanging. “Although I probably wouldn’t have put that over the bed if I knew where it came from.”

“It’s so ugly.” Roman shifted so she was draped across his chest, her head tucked into the space beneath his shoulder. His arms came around her, tight and comforting. “I like it.”

“You do?”

“I like that you put it up on the wall in our bedroom.”

“I did because of what it says. I don’t want you to feel like I’m invading your home or anything, but I thought maybe it would remind us of our trip. I could always take it down, though, if it doesn’t work for you.”

“Ashley.”

“What?”

“Have I not been clear? I want you to invade my home.”

“You really do?”

“Yeah. And anyway,
you’re
my home. Because home is not a place.”

She checked his face, and sure enough, there was Roman’s crinkle-smile—stealth dimple and all—and she understood that he was
never
going to stop teasing her about this. “Don’t pick on my wall hanging.”

“It’s such a great wall hanging, I should have six. One in every room. One for the Escalade, too. Although I have to say, I don’t get why it has mushrooms on it.”

“That’s a little girl.”

He twisted his head to look. “Nope. Mushrooms.”

“She’s wearing a bonnet. She has
eyes
.”

“Mushrooms with eyes. Maybe they live in the woods, because they don’t have a home. Maybe it’s got
secret meaning
.”

“Don’t pick on me. I’m having an emotionally fragile dead-grandmother moment.”

“You’ve been having an emotionally fragile dead-grandmother moment since we met.” He dropped a kiss on top of her head. “I mean it anyway. You’re my home. I’m hoping you’ll spread your stuff all over the condo and put ugly inspirational signs up on my walls so I’ll feel less scared shitless that you might leave.”

“I’m not going to leave.”

Roman didn’t act as though he’d heard. He rolled to face her, resting one hand at the dip of her waist and slinging a leg over hers. “I want you to stick your toothbrush next to mine so they can make out in the bathroom. Put your dirty clothes in the basket mingled with my dress shirts, and they’ll have babies.”

“Babies?”

“Yeah.” He kissed her neck. “Remind me sometime that I want to talk about babies.”

“You’re making me nervous.”

Roman reached past her into the nightstand drawer where he kept the condoms. Ashley took advantage of the opportunity to unfasten his pants and get her hands on his ass, because despite what she’d said, she wasn’t all that nervous.

She was supposed to be. They’d only known each other two weeks.

On the other hand, it had been a hell of a two weeks—a lifetime compressed into experience so intense, she felt she knew Roman better than she’d ever known anyone.

“Don’t think about it yet,” he said. “We’re still negotiating how long you’re going to stay. Once I talk you into forever, we’ll get to the babies.”

“You’re—”

He covered her mouth with his palm. “Awesome. You love me. Right?”

Ashley nodded until he took his hand away. “I do. You are.”

“I’ll be even more awesome in about thirty seconds, after we get naked.” Roman dropped the condom on her pillow, and then there was a lot of awkward bending and some huffing as they worked their pants off, and also the part where he said, “Ow!” because she accidentally elbowed him in the throat.

When he came back over her, he was wearing an unbuttoned dress shirt and one sock. Ashley still had on her halter top, untied and rucked up over her stomach.

Roman kissed her neck. Then he kissed her cheek. Then he kissed her lips and fixed her with the same expression of command he’d worn the first time she saw him—the expression that said,
I get whatever I want, so don’t bother fighting me on this
. “Stay here at least until we get the resort built.”

“Okay.”

He kissed her breasts. Pinned her down with the look again. “Stay until we buy a house together. Or build a house. Or rescue some cracked-foundation heap and gut it and renovate it even though that costs more than it would to build a new one, except you like it better because you can pretend it’s old. Or we’ll live in the fucking Airstream. I’ll buy three Airstreams and daisy-chain them together so we can occupy eight hundred square feet of vintage land yacht.”

“I’d be okay with a house.”

He kissed his way down her stomach, pausing to yank her top over her hips and down her legs.

Ashley watched him, soaking up the echoes of the words she’d just said.

She’d be okay with a house.

Four walls—and inside of them, the life she and Roman would make together.

She could do it, with him. She was already doing it.

It was the most ordinary sort of miracle—that she had become, in just a few weeks, a woman who could claim this man and mean it. That there was a way in which she didn’t even feel changed. As though she’d never truly been the Ashley Bowman who didn’t stick.

She’d just taken a while to find the life she was meant to stick to.

“Stay forever,” he said.

“Mmm-hmm.”

Head down, he kissed her lower.

Lower still.

“Stay,” he said, although by now he was pretty much addressing her labia.

“I’m staying.”

“Good.”

What he did to her next—it was so much better than good. It was magic. The kind of magic made of clever tongues and wicked banter, pressing fingers and lifting hips, rising tides of joy and one man.

One devoted, loving, beautiful man, who wanted to give her everything.

One man whom she could safely take everything from, because she fully intended to love him with her whole heart for the rest of her life.

Roman used his fingers and tongue to take her up and up and up some more until she was gasping and moaning and clamping her thighs around his face. He seemed to like that, which was good, because her thighs gave her no alternative.

After she came down, Ashley pressed her cheek against the shiny softness of her pillow. She sifted her fingers through his hair, cherishing the heavy weight of his head in the hollow of her hip.

He kissed her there. “Be my home, Ash. I’ll buy you a ring with a cruelty-free diamond, and we’ll get married on the beach.”

“Can we have a drum circle after?”

“Yes. But no Flossie.”

She pretended to need to consider the offer, just to tease him, but his arm started to tense where it lay across her thighs, and she relented. “Okay. But only if you come up here.”

He crawled on top of her. “That’s it? Okay?”

“Yep.” She opened her legs and wrapped herself around him. “Come a little closer. I want to show you something. You’re going to need the condom.”

She showed him a few things. He liked them.

They stayed in bed all afternoon, talking and laughing, loving and belonging.

It was magic.

Three years later

“That’s sick,” Roman said. “Sick and wrong.”

Ashley smiled and poked him in the side. “You’re jealous.”

“I could never be jealous of someone with whatever condition it is that makes it possible for him to—holy
fuck
.”

Samantha tsked from the spot where she squatted ten feet away, holding up one end of the very low limbo bar that Noah was inching his way under. “Language, Uncle Roman.”

“The kids are all down by the beach.”

Ashley did a quick scan of the crowd and found he was right. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen any of the kids since they’d last run by in a pack—Noah’s son leading the way, trailed by both of Jamie and Carly’s, the oldest three of Sam’s four, and the resort babysitter Ashley had paid to keep them out of the grown-ups’ hair.

Probably for the best they weren’t around. There was something indecent about watching Noah contort himself into that position.

Ashley moved closer to Roman and put her arm around his waist, bumping their hips. “It’s a good turnout, huh?”

“You always get a good turnout.”

“It’s because I beg and make extravagant promises.”

“How much of our money are you being extravagant with this time?”

“Oh, the promises don’t cost anything. I told your sister that Heberto would make her a real mojito, and I told Heberto he would get to hold Samantha’s baby. Nana came because I
promised her Stanley and Esther were bringing Michael and that I would make sure she got to monopolize him.”

“Nana and Michael are a thing?”

“They hook up every time they’re both here. You didn’t know that?”

“I’m actively trying to erase the knowledge from my brain even as we speak.”

“Ageist.”

“Dude, they’re like
family
. Our family is having sex.”

“If you don’t stop calling me dude, I’m going to lick your face right here, where everyone can see.”

“If you lick my face, you’ll have to deal with the consequences.”

“Are they sexy consequences?”

Roman turned to face her, dropping one hand to squeeze her ass. “Dude. It’s like you don’t know me at all.”

Ashley kissed him. “I like sexy consequences, but not in front of family. And not with men who call me dude.”

“It’s Samantha’s fault. Every time she comes to visit, I revert to my high school vocabulary.”

“I’m aware.”

Roman smiled and groped her some more. Ashley allowed it because today was their anniversary. Groping was practically a requirement.