Page 23 of Roses for Rosie

I wake in the morning to the most luxurious sensation. Sometime during the night I must have lost my battle with the sand man. With it, I lost my grip on the tiny strip of mattress real estate I allowed my conscious self. I’m fully in the middle of the bed now and Adam is right next to me.

My head is nestled in the hollow of his shoulder. His soft exhale caresses the top of my head. His arm is wrapped around me, holding me tightly. Our legs are tangled together with his foot resting on my calf. My hand is under his shirt, resting on his flat stomach.

I can’t be in this position when he wakes up. With the speed of a sloth, I begin to peel my hand from his stomach. The movement is infinitesimal, but he still senses it and sighs, pulling me even closer. I stiffen and try to hold myself apart, but we are plastered together, sucked down toward the middle of the old mattress. I’m fighting gravity in addition to Adam’s grasp.

Maybe if I can free a leg and hook it over my side of the bed, I can lever myself out of here. I move the leg his foot is not resting on one millimeter at a time. Slowly, slowly. Just a little further now.

I’m free! Well, one leg is free. The rest of me is another story. But progress is progress.

I drape my leg over the edge of the bed and reach with my toes for something to grab onto.

A little further and yes, I have my foot under the mattress. This is the kinkiest game of Twister I’ve ever played. Right hand on rock hard abs, left foot on muscled calf.

I ease myself away from Adam, not daring to breathe in case I wake him up. I am hovering over him balanced on my free foot and a hand wedged under his shoulder when he stirs again. I freeze until his hand finds its way to the back of my head and pulls me down toward him.

His lips meet mine in a sleepy kiss. Suddenly the desire I had to escape is replaced by the overwhelming urge to stay and to kiss this man all day. I close my eyes and kiss him back.

Yesterday’s kiss in the storeroom was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. The chances of getting caught there were hard to ignore and the consequences of my indiscretion hung over my head like a black cloud.

Today’s kiss feels different. The threat of potential ruin seems far away, back in town with the rest of my life. Here in this hotel room I feel like another woman.

I feel like a woman who spends the night with man and wakes up with her hand caressing his bare skin. A woman who doesn’t live in fear. A woman who makes decisions based on what she wants, not based on what will make her father least likely to explode at her.

I feel freer, more empowered. It feels completely natural to let my hand wander further up Adam’s chest. It feels right to let my other arm snake around his back and pull him closer. Opening myself up to him and exploring this moment feels better than anything I’ve done in years.

“Rosie,” Adam mumbles, his eyes coming open, consciousness interrupting our kiss.

“Shhh,” I respond, kissing him into silence. I don’t want to talk. Talking would mean opening the door to reality. The last thing I want to think about right now is the rest of my life. All I want to think about now is this kiss, how Adam’s body feels next to mine.

He doesn’t fight me on the lack of conversation. Instead he shifts himself above me, coming up onto his elbow and gazes down into my face. I haven’t brushed my hair, make up is a distant memory, and I’m sure my breath would put a dragon’s to shame, but Adam is looking at me like I’m the cherry on top of his ice cream sundae and he wants nothing more than to devour me.

Chapter 12

Adam

Waking up snuggled next to Rosie with her hand under my shirt and my legs tangled with hers was not my plan, but I’m certainly not complaining. Last night with her father was awful, for both of us. Seeing him rough Rosie up brought so many memories of my own father flooding back I felt like I was drowning in them. The anger, the fear, the pain, the uncertainty, and the loss all came rushing back.

I didn’t even think before I jumped between him and Rosie. I just acted, and I’m glad I did. She doesn’t deserve to be treated that way any more than my mom and I did. Nobody deserves to be treated that way. Those of us who are strong enough and brave enough to intervene must. It’s a moral imperative.

My books don’t contain many lessons about how to be a good person. That type of content generally doesn’t fly off the shelves. Many of my fans take that and the pictures those smut rags publish of me and any woman I come within fifteen feet of and paint me as a cad, a womanizer, a player.

That’s where they get me wrong though. There is so much more to a person than the outer shell the media wants to portray. But real life doesn’t sell magazines. There is so much more to me than what the fans want to see. They don’t want me to be a real person with feelings and problems of my own. They want to hold me up on a pedestal next to one of the characters in my books and fantasize about me.

Most of the time I’m okay with that. It makes people happy. It sells books. It has made me an obscenely rich man in a very short period of time. But on nights like last night, I see the cracks in the façade widen. I see the real me, the one behind the glossy photos, peeking out.

Sometimes that makes me feel vulnerable and exposed. With Rosie, though, it feels good. It feels real and authentic. Telling her about my father and that terrible last night at home was healing, freeing. I barely know her, but I want to bare my soul to her, to tell her all my secrets and to learn all of hers. She is intoxicating.

I scramble through my memories of last night, trying to remember how we ended up in bed next to each other. The knitters, the broken bed, Rosie perched on the last inch of mattress she could find, as far away from me as she could get all come back to me.

Things sure have changed in the past eight hours, I muse. I fell asleep with four feet of bed all to myself and I woke up kissing her. Did she come over here on purpose?

I should ask her. We should talk about this before we go further. I need to know where she stands before I kiss her again and there is no going back. I’m on the edge of control already, another kiss and I might not be able to stop.

“Rosie,” I say.

“Shhh,” she replies and kisses me again.

Can I take that as consent? I’m not sure. Raising myself up onto my elbow, I stare down at her, trying to read her intention through the expression on her face. She looks dreamy, but not like she’s still half-asleep. Her eyes are staring back into mine, wide open and begging. She doesn’t want to talk, but she clearly wants to do other things, things which are way more fun than talking.

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