Page 155 of Dark Romeo

“My parents hated Pappy when they met him. He was dirt poor. He was a welfare kid with an absentee father who grew up on the wrong side of Verona.” Nora’s eyes turned misty and unfocused as if she were remembering. “But I loved that son of a bitch. He loved me. I didn’t care what anyone said about him; I knew he was a good man. He loved me, supported me, protected me until the day he died. I still love him.”

“I never knew.”

Nora narrowed her eyes at me. “I know you, girlie. You ain’t stupid. If you see something in Roman, that means that he’s fit to spend time with. He’s a good man too. No matter what anybody says.”

I let out a bitter laugh. Would she still say the same thing if she knew he had killed to protect me? “What I think of him doesn’t matter. It will never work between us.”

“If the love is strong enough, it will survive anything.”

“Except that he doesn’t love me.”

“Bullshit.”

“He ended it, Nora,” I cried with a frustrated smack of my palm against my thigh. The physical pain helped to distract me from the one in my heart. “He ended it. Why would he do that if he loved me?”

“Because he’s scared.”

“I’m not that scary,” I muttered.

“He’s not scared of you.” Nora let out a sigh. “The most terrifying thing any of us can do is to fall in love. Why do you think they call it ‘falling’ in love? The greater the love, the harder we will fight against it.”

Roman and I had been pushing and pulling against our feelings, against each other this whole time. Had he been falling in love too? Was this why it was all so…terrifying?

That was ridiculous. We’d been fighting against each other because we weren’t meant to be together. This thought was a knife that sliced the raw wound open again.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, tasting bitterness on my tongue. I wiped under my eyes, angry at my tears. “He’s gone.”

“He’ll be back.”

I shook my head, my heart weighed down with the knowledge that even though I would never give up on him, he had given up on us. “No, he won’t.”

ROMAN

____________

A soft, warm hand slipped across my stomach as I slept.

Julianna.

My heart let out a thud. My bright angel had come back to me.

I let out a small groan as the hand slipped lower. A weight shifted over me, soft thighs slid on either side of my thighs. My cock stirred. Jules…don’t stop.

Something nagged at the back of my mind. She…felt wrong. There were too many angles. She wasn’t soft enough. She smelled wrong; the sharpness of too much spicy perfume hit my nose.

I sat up, instantly becoming alert. I grabbed her wrists, pulling her hands off me. She let out a soft, excited cry. The familiar voice sent a coil of annoyance through me. I collected both wrists into one hand and reached out to turn on the designer bedside lamp of my Tyrell-owned apartment. Apparently, a free-for-all apartment. The golden glow fell across a face I’d be happy never to see again.

Fucking Rosaline.

I knew I should have stayed at my mother’s place instead of coming back here. She was straddling my lap wearing a black leather teddy that barely covered her fake breasts in a series of straps that strung up onto a studded choker. Her hair was pulled into two pigtails and her heavily made-up face was pulled into a look of triumph.

My loving fiancée, I thought with a sneer. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Rosaline gave me a look of fake innocence, batting her false eyelashes at me. “Can’t a wife surprise her husband in bed?”

“You’re not my wife,” I growled.

“Yet.” A lascivious look flashed in her dark, sinful eyes. She ground herself onto me, trying to get a rise out of me. Literally. That was never going to happen.

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