Читать книгу Modern Romance June 2016 Books 5-8 - Мишель Смарт, Tara Pammi - Страница 17

CHAPTER NINE

‘YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES,’ Roman said, without answering her question. ‘We go up to your suite so that you can pack, or I take you to my home now and send someone to collect your things.’

‘I have told you, I don’t want to go to your home. I need to rehearse. I need—’

‘This isn’t a debate,’ he told her. ‘You are coming back with me.’

‘You can’t make me,’ Anya said. ‘I’ll have security remove you!’

‘Why would they remove a guest from the hotel?’

‘You’ve checked in here?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘And, really, Anya, do you think they could remove me?’

He looked to the entrance and Anya’s gaze followed and, sure enough, the two security guards, dealing with the press, would be no match for Roman.

‘I’ll put you over my shoulder now,’ he warned.

He would.

‘Or,’ Roman said, as he took her bag from her and opened it, taking out the hotel card and checking her room number, ‘we can go up now and get your things.’

‘I’m not...’Anya started, but he had already taken her by the elbow and marched her towards the elevator.

‘How?’ she asked again as Roman pressed a button that would take them to her floor. ‘I told Reception that no information was to be given out.’

‘I didn’t call Reception.’

‘Did you have me followed?’ she asked, her voice rising.

‘You’re too dramatic,’ he said as the doors opened and they stepped out onto her floor.

She always had been.

Until the day he had left, she had been upfront with her emotions and had expressed them. She had been closed off for years but he had flicked the switch and turned her back to the woman she had been when he’d last been in her life.

‘I want to know how you found me.’

‘Your boyfriend put a picture up on social media of the view from his hotel room. I know the skyline,’ Roman said, and then she heard the edge to his voice as he asked a question. ‘Are you sharing a room with him? Is that why you don’t want me here?’

She was not ready for this, Anya thought. She was not ready to reveal the depth of her love—that there had been no one since him, that there could never be anyone other than him. Neither was she ready to hear about his wife, and suddenly the instinct to run that had hit her in the foyer kicked in now.

She turned and ran back towards the lifts.

Roman did as he’d promised.

He caught up easily, picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.

‘Put me down.’

He did not do as asked and she beat at his back.

‘I thought that you liked to be lifted...’ Roman said as he strode back down the corridor, and then he thought of Mika holding her. ‘Does he do this...?’

He ran a hand up between her legs.

She smiled unseen at the jealous edge to Roman’s voice as they arrived at the door to her suite.

‘He does,’ Anya said, ‘only with far more skilled hands.’ She felt the grip of his fingers tighten high on her thigh and then his hand moved and he fingered her damp knickers, where she was hot and swollen for him.

‘Liar,’ he said, for there were no more skilled hands than his where Anya was concerned.

He removed his hand and swiped the card, pushed open the door and strode through. He dropped her onto the bed and she lay staring up at him.

She was breathless.

So too was he.

Not from exertion. He had hiked through rugged terrain with far more weight than Anya on his back.

He stared down at her and there was a dangerous edge to the air. She felt he might take her now, might get on the bed and simply have her.

And she fought the desire for just that.

Then suddenly he turned and walked away.

He went into the bathroom and stood for a moment holding the sink, looking at the marble bench where he saw just her toothbrush, her things. Relief washed over him when he saw that she did not share her suite with Mika.

He understood Anya better now, how she could not bear to discuss Celeste, for Roman knew he had serious work ahead of him. Jealousy and possession churned the bile in his stomach and he took a long drink of water.

Anya worked with Mika, she trained with Mika and would perform with him. Roman knew that if he and Anya were to have any chance at being together then he would have to learn how to deal with that.

In the midst of reclaiming them, he had to acknowledge and accept her past, her present, and for that reason he stood for a moment to regroup.

Anya lay there. She couldn’t see him, she just lay there trying to work out what to do next.

Roman came out and offered a solution.

‘We need to get to know each other again,’ he said.

She was scared to see his home, scared to get more involved in his life—after all he had left her so easily last time. Their love had burned just as intensely then and yet he had walked away.

And he had married her!

‘I know you already, Roman,’ Anya said. She did. She knew his heart for it had connected with hers many years ago. She knew the might of the pain he could cause, had caused, and still did. ‘I can’t forgive you.’

‘I’m not asking for you to forgive me,’ Roman said. ‘But we need some time together to at least—’

‘No.’

‘There will be no discussion about Celeste until you are ready.’

Anya closed her eyes even at the sound of his wife’s name.

‘We will just spend some time together, catching up, little by little...’

‘Why?’

‘Because we are back in each other’s lives.’ It was why he had stayed away for so long.

‘I need to focus on my dance,’ Anya said. It wasn’t going well. Since Roman had come back she had been rehearsing less and eating more. ‘I have to rehearse and train every day.’

‘Of course you can rehearse and train. I’m not kidnapping you.’

She looked into coal-black eyes as he spoke.

‘I want you to come back to my home and I know that you want to be there too.’

‘I don’t want to share a bed with you.’

‘Of course you do.’ Roman said it as fact. It was. ‘But if you want to play coy then you can stay in one of the guest rooms.’

‘Guest rooms?’

Who was this man? Anya thought. Maybe she didn’t know him after all. ‘I don’t think—’

‘Don’t think,’ he interrupted, and he went to the wardrobe and took out her cases.

She lay and watched as he made a call to someone and spoke in French then he calmly packed up her things.

Calmly, because it felt right.

Roman was taking her home.