Teaching Roman (12 page)

Didn’t I?

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I
wasn’t sure how I ended up standing in the hall of the communications building the next day. I’d been on my way to the union to grab lunch. Staring at the gleaming tile floors, it hit me. Roman was here in this building. The thought left me feeling torn between happiness and fear. Happiness that I might actually run into him. Fear that I would run into him. Happiness that he was so close. Fear that I’d crossed the line into stalker territory.

If I walked down the hall and turned left, I would be standing in front of his office.

I didn’t do that.

Mostly to prove to myself that I wasn’t a stalker.

Also because I was chicken shit.

“Jess?” A familiar voice asked behind me, raising goose bumps on my skin.

I turned slowly to face him, but when I did, my breath caught in my throat. I’d expected I’d find a clean-shaven, sweater vest clad Roman, but he was anything but. His sharp jawline sported a five o-clock shadow that I could almost feel scratching against my thighs. His hair was wild, falling over his dark eyes. He had on a black button-down shirt that was tailored to skim his muscular upper body and a pair of jeans that hung off his hips in a suggestive way. At least it was suggestive to me—but who was I kidding, everything about him was suggestive to me.

“Hi,” I breathed, unable to come up with anything interesting or profound—or coherent.

“Every day I spot a blonde in the hall, I hold my breath, hoping it’s you,” he confessed. “It never is.”

The confession emboldened me, shooting fire through my veins. “I hope you don’t call my name out every time. That could be embarrassing.”

“I never do,” he said. “I always know deep down that it’s not.”

“And today?” So much hinged on his answer. I could feel it. The tension between us was palpable in the air.

“Today I knew,” he answered simply. He waved me along to his office and I followed him, ignoring the tiny voice in my head that said it was a bad idea.

“How have you been?” I asked, feeling suddenly awkward as he shut the office door behind us. This man had seen me naked, but right now I felt like a giddy teenager trying to talk to a boy for the first time. I ordered myself to stop. I was a grown woman on her way to med school in the next two years—if I didn’t die from embarrassment in the next five minutes. Something that felt like a real possibility.

“Busy,” he admitted, running his fingers through his dark locks.

The simple gesture sent a jolt of desire burning through me. For a split second I imagined pulling him in for a kiss and tangling my hands through his hair.

I forced myself to say something—to say anything. “Students are a handful?”

“Always, but actually I’ve been busy wrapping up my dissertation. I defend it near the end of the semester.”

“That’s awesome. You’ll be a professor then.” This brought a genuine smile to my lips, and he returned it with one that lit up his whole face—and broke my heart.

“I’ll have to start to look for jobs.”

“You won’t stay here?” I asked too quickly.

“Probably not. That’s the problem with becoming a professor. You have to go where the jobs are.” The happiness that had warmed his face a moment before had vanished.

“Oh.” It was all I could manage to say as a lump formed in my throat. I’d spent the last two months avoiding him at all cost, but I’d known he was here. There had been something comforting about that fact. The idea that he would be gone in a few months, moving on with his life, had stolen my ability to speak. I felt hollow as though a breath could blow me over.

It was then that I realized I had never really accepted that Roman was gone from my life forever. If I had, this revelation wouldn’t be killing me now.

“Jess.” There was a question on his lips as he said my name, and the longing I’d been holding at bay shattered.

I nodded once, giving him the answer he was waiting for. The answer that would change everything between us again. His hand slid around my waist with slow purpose as my entire body ached for contact with him. I missed him. I needed him. Now. We’d said we wouldn’t do this, but that was before.

Before we’d fallen in love.

Before we’d tried to live without each other.

Roman drew me to him and my eyes closed, savoring the delicious agony of the moment before his lips closed over mine. His mouth moved softly, parting my lips and then stroking his tongue across my own. And in his kiss I felt the pain of our separation, the desperate need, the undeniable love.

“I don’t want to stay away from you any longer,” he whispered against my lips.

“Don’t.” I ran a finger down the scruff on his jaw. “I need to feel you.”

“We shouldn’t,” he breathed, and a vice grip twisted my heart when he released me and took a step back. “Not here.”

I shook my head, and unfastened my jeans. “I have spent the last eight weeks going through the motions, so I wouldn’t feel anything. Seeing you proved to me that I don’t want to live like that.”

I slid my jeans off and tugged my sweater over my head, ignoring the tremble of my hands. I wasn’t scared of getting caught. I was only scared that he’d make me wait longer. I continued to strip until I stood naked before him. He didn’t try to stop me, and when I stepped forward and began to unbutton his shirt, his eyes closed. Running my hands over his chest, my touch lingered over his heart. When his eyes opened, they blazed with a hunger that sent a shiver of anticipating running through my body.

Then he scooped me off my feet, cupping my ass as I wrapped my legs around his waist. His lips were on mine, on my jaw, my neck, nipping at my ear. I was lost to his touch, unraveling around him, as we kissed recklessly. I found his pants and fumbled with the button. Roman’s fingers shoved mine aside and he undid them with one swift motion. I pushed them past his hips with my heels and he slid into me, drawing a gasp from my lips. I clung to him, bracing myself as he thrust inside me. He whispered poetry in my ear. I didn’t understand the words, but their meaning unfurled in my soul.

I pulled away and met his eyes as we continued to move together in a tireless pace. “I love you.”

Roman groaned at the words and for a moment I thought he had finished, but a second later, he had turned me around and spread me across his desk, shoving aside papers and sending books crashing to the ground. His momentum never faltered, but he slowed, pushing inside me with languid strokes. “You wouldn’t let me say that before.”

“I know,” I moaned. “I thought...”

“You think too much,
mi bella
.” He thrust into me harder as if to drive the point home.

Leaning over me, he trailed his lips up my neck and over my lips, gripping my hips as he circled against me. “I love you, Jessica Stone. I always will.”

The declaration washed over me, my limbs tightening and releasing in a wave of pleasure. Roman’s hands slid under my shoulders, bracketing me to him. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

I understood his warning. It was why I’d stayed away for as long as I had, but for the first time, I saw our relationship clearly. I’d been trying to avoid the truth. Now that I’d faced it, I knew what really mattered to me. “I don’t want easy. I want you.”

He didn’t warn me again.

But a half-hour later as I gathered my panties off his desk, my eyes fell on an essay next to them on the ground. I recognized the name—a girl in one of my science classes. Roman was an instructor. I was a student. There was a reason I’d been avoiding him since Puerto Vallerta. Being together was a risk, and gambling on love could cause us both to lose everything we’d worked for the last few years. Roman scooped the paper off the floor as I stood up and scrambled to get dressed.

“I’m s-s-sorry,” I stammered as I tugged my sweater back on. “This was a mistake. We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Jess—” he began, hurt shining in his brown eyes, but I held up a hand to stop him.

“Don’t,” I pled. “Don’t make it harder.”

I backed up until my fingers closed over the door knob. Roman didn’t say anything when I opened it. Instead he bent over his desk, muscles tensing across his chest and arms, and watched me run away.

Again.

“Y
ou haven’t gone out with us in a month,” Jills exclaimed, planting her hands on her hips as she glared at me from the doorway to my room. “Either join a convent or get dressed!”

Normally Jillian could talk me into going to Garrett’s with her big, doe eyes and the promise of shenanigans. But I wasn’t feeling up to it. I hadn’t felt up to it since I’d gone and broken my heart all over again in Roman’s office.

“Look, he’s not going to be there,” Jills assured me.

I stared at her, wondering how she’d guessed who I was thinking of. I hadn’t told her or Cassie about my little faux pas behind closed doors in the communications building.

“What?” I asked.

“Brett’s not going to be there,” she said. “He never goes in there. You clearly got Garrett’s in the break-up.”

Of course, that’s who she had meant. Why would I be worried about running into Roman at a bar? He seemed to walk a very straight line between his professional duties and his social life in Olympic Falls–with one exception.

“Honestly, I don’t really feel like staring at your face attached to Liam’s all night. Don’t be offended. I love both your faces. I just could do with a little more separation.” The two had been nearly inseparable since Christmas, glued to each other like the end of the world was coming.

Unfortunately for them, it was.

“You know he leaves for Scotland in June.” Jillian did a good job of hiding the hurt in her voice, but I knew her better than that.

I sighed and closed my study guide. “I’m sorry. I’m being a stone cold bitch these days. Blame it on the stress.”

“And the broken heart,” Jillian added softly. She’d had her heart broken enough times to be an expert on the subject.

“And...that.”

“Does it feel better to admit it?” she asked.

“I guess.” I shrugged, unprepared to concede that a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I hadn’t been entirely truthful with her, but it felt good to admit that I was hurting.

“I promise there will be little to no sucking face tonight.” She dropped onto my bed and laid her head across my lap, barring access to my book. “The fates have cursed me.”

“What, Liam’s afraid of your period?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. That surprised me—nothing seemed to faze him when it came to Jillian.

“A girl has to have her lines,” she said, and I laughed at that. “Don’t laugh! It’s true. I have boundaries.”

I shook my head. “No, you don’t.”

“Take that back,” she demanded, reaching up to pinch my stomach. “I am a lady!”

“More like a Madame,” I corrected her. She pinched harder and I yelped in between laughs.

“See what you’re missing in life?” She bounced off the bed. “We’re leaving at nine. No buts about it!”

Apparently Jillian hadn’t lost her touch, although I didn’t exactly remember agreeing. Two seconds later, she popped her head in again. “Stop overanalyzing it. You’re coming out tonight,” she informed me. “Oh, and do you have any tampons?”

“Maybe. I’m probably out. Check in the bathroom in my basket.”

“Thank you!” She disappeared again, then called out. “Full box!”

“You’re welcome,” I yelled back. Flipping open the study guide, I started another practice test. If I had two hours before I had to walk out the door, I could finish one and throw on something other than the threadbare t-shirt and jeans I was wearing. Five questions in, my blood froze, which isn’t technically possible. I know I’m studying to be a doctor. But it sure felt like ice was creeping through my veins.

Usually I kept a calendar, but in the last few months, seeing the days tick by had become depressing. I’d switched to a notebook of deadlines and to-do lists. But even without a calendar, I knew what a full box of tampons I didn’t remember buying meant. It had just taken a simple question in my study guide to remind me.

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W
e were not going out. Possibly ever again. Or, at least, I wasn’t. My head swam as I tried to process exactly what was happening. I’d been careless. I knew that much. But that didn’t make standing in the aisle of the drug store reading pregnancy test boxes feel any more real.

“I just don’t understand how this happened,” Jillian said next to me. She had four different boxes in her hands and she threw them all into the hand basket.

“I don’t think we need that many,” I said flatly.

“Do you want proof? Or do you want
proof
?”

Never mind that I’d never taken one of these before, I was smart enough to know that any one of them would provide me with a definitive answer, so I threw three boxes back on the shelf. I wasn’t going to spend all night peeing on sticks. “This will be fine.”

“So, you haven’t had your period since Mexico?” Jills didn’t bother hiding the astonishment in her voice, and I cringed.

“Not exactly,” I hedged. There was no point keeping this from her now, but that didn’t make me want to come clean.

Jillian stopped in front of me and crossed her arms, blocking me from leaving the aisle.

I sighed and braced myself for a tongue lashing. “I ran into Roman a few weeks ago. Things happened.”

“
Things
happened?” Her voice pitched up an octave. “How the hell could you have gotten pregnant?”

“Well, when two people love each other very much, sometimes the man puts his penis inside—”

“Spare me the sex ed.” She rolled her eyes in typical Jillian fashion. “You didn’t realize you were late?”

Obviously I hadn’t realized that. Between classes and stress and endless, mind-numbing activities, I barely knew what day it was. My life had become like clockwork, which is why I should have noticed. Maybe I’d forgotten simply because I’d spent the last month trying to forget my vagina even existed since I’d forced an early retirement on it. “I didn’t.”

“Omigod, you’re going to be one of those women who goes to the bathroom and a baby falls out!”