Page 12 of Dark Romeo

My chest felt funny again. I stared at my phone. Perhaps, it wouldn’t hurt to meet him for a few minutes. Five. Ten at most. Just to let him know in person that us spending time together was a bad idea. I had a career to focus on. It seemed so rude to reject him over a text message.

A shiver ran down my spine at the thought of seeing Roman again. These strange feelings… the odd way my body reacted… I shouldn’t go.

Screw it. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do.

I dropped my phone on the table as I half-strode, half-ran into my bedroom to get ready.

ROMAN

____________

Three text messages and still no response from Julianna.

I frowned at my silent phone that I was threatening to break by gripping onto it too hard. The connection we had at the graveyard was unmistakable. Sparks, fireworks and all that clichéd bullshit. It had caught me off guard. I hadn’t been as smooth as I usually was. I knew she’d felt it too by the way her breath hitched and her nipples hardened through her cotton dress. How could she feel it too and not come to meet me? Didn’t she feel this pull?

I fantasized about storming over to her apartment, breaking open her door and carrying her out of there over my damn shoulder. My cock stirred. On second thought, maybe I’d carry her to her bedroom. We were going to end up there anyway. At least that was the plan. I already had her address.

Most people didn’t realize that their phones were like GPS trackers. All I needed was her phone number and my connections at the phone company. Sometimes it helped to be a Tyrell.

I was standing with a group of people that I knew from high school in a roped off VIP section of Club Luxe. I haven’t seen these guys in almost eight years. I barely noticed them, forcing small talk and fielding uninspired questions about Europe. I was being a rude prick but I couldn’t seem to snap myself out of it. Usually, I was so good at this small talk shit.

Ten Twenty-three p.m. and she hadn’t fucking shown up.

I had pegged her to show up. On time. Women usually did. So why the fuck hadn’t she? Why the hell did I give so much of a shit?

I glared around the club, my eyes seeking her out, scanning each curve and honey shade of long hair for her. There was something about her…

Something…different.

It was like every single cell and fiber of her had been calibrated to strike at every single one of mine, making them all vibrate awake all at once. Fuck, every time I thought about how soft the skin on her neck looked or how silky her hair might feel I got hard.

And she was making me act…different.

I wasn’t even interested in the scantily clad girls pawing at my shirt, rubbing their breasts against my arm, tugging at my collar. I swatted them aside like they were flies. They weren’t her. I wanted her. I wanted her like I’d never wanted a woman before.

I would have her.

I drank down the rest of my scotch and slammed down my glass onto a side table. I stabbed out another text message to her and hit send.

Me: I’m coming to get you.

JULIANNA

____________

I was going to hunt down the asshole who invented high heels and kill him. Yes, it was definitely a him. Because no woman in her right mind would have created such torture instruments and called them fashion. I’d beat him senseless with these platform soles, then stab him to death with the spiky heels of his own demonic creations.

Death by Manolos.

I wondered if that would be considered good or bad publicity?

I had made the mistake of walking to Club Luxe. It was only a twenty-minute walk from where I lived, but I wasn’t used to walking in these things. My feet were already killing me.

I didn’t know what had been going through my mind when I chose this outfit. The dress was a slim-fitting black bandage dress with lace detailing that fell to mid-thigh. Nora had bought me this dress and these shoes a few years ago in the hopes that I might actually have a hot date to wear them on. Out of everything I owned I thought it would be the most appropriate thing to wear to a club, seeing as they had a dress code. It had nothing to do with how Roman might react when he saw me again.

I stepped into the main room of Club Luxe and froze. It was set inside a refurbished old warehouse, the colored lights ricocheting off the exposed pipes along the open ceiling. The ultra-modern décor was all chrome and black lines. The music, a funky house beat with husky vocals in French, thumped through my body like a second heartbeat. Bodies wriggled like a blurry sexual mass on a small dance floor. There were booths and tables along the edges, beautiful people draped across the couches with cocktail glasses in hand, people who looked like they were comfortable here, people having fun.

I didn’t belong here. What a dumb idea to come. Someone bumped me from behind and made a rude noise. I realized I was standing there like an idiot in the entranceway.

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