Page 12 of Still Burning

Present Day

My wanting to stay with Rome was one thing, but the fact that I’d been stalked was something that was going to give me nightmares. The day in Pepper’s bar flashed in my mind. This place, Rome, Pepper, the other women—it had been distracting. I hadn’t sat around and thought about the why and how I had ended up here. But this information made it all real again. Shaking me and reminding me that I had been in danger. More than I’d even realized.

And I still was.

Would Rome want me if I’d not been forced upon him, right down the hallway, unable to get away from him? Would he have sought me out otherwise? How long would it be before I became an unwanted burden?

“The way you’re scowling, Angel Face, makes me think you don’t want to stay here with me,” he said.

I lifted my eyes back to meet his. He could not be more wrong.

“It’s not that. I…I don’t want to be something that gets in your way. You’ll resent me if I’m this responsibility you didn’t ask for.”

He raised his eyebrows as he looked at me, like he couldn’t believe I’d just said that. “You’re not serious.”

I was very serious. “Yes, I am.”

He blew out a breath and then let out a deep chuckle. “I thought I’d been pretty clear about wanting to have you here with me. I didn’t put you in my bed for a fuck. I put you there to stay. Sure, I didn’t think that would be the outcome the first night. You’d just passed out drunk. But when I got in bed and you curled up against me”—he paused and ran the pad of his thumb over my lower lip—“I was home. Contentment—hell, baby, pure fucking joy coursed through me. I’d not felt that in eighteen years. You will never be a responsibility. You’re well beyond that. You’re a requirement. One I need to survive. I won’t lose you a second time.”

I wanted to trust that. It was time to let go of the past. He wasn’t a boy who had just lost his mother. He was a man who had lived life and knew what he wanted now.

“Salem.” His voice was a husky whisper.

“Yes?”

“The first night you slept in here, you were drunk, but when you cuddled against me, right before you dozed off to sleep, you told me you loved me.”

Oh God. Why had I drunk so much?

“I did?” My words were almost too soft to hear.

He nodded. “But I need to know if sober you feels the same way.”

Whew. Okay. Had I ever not loved him? God, was I ready to bare my soul that way?

His eyes traveled over my face as his thumb gently caressed my cheek. He still took my breath away. My heart still went crazy when he was around. The pleasure that came from the sound of his voice had never been matched.

“Yes,” I admitted.

But I didn’t say anything else. Loving him all these years was for me to hold close. Saying it felt like a betrayal to Eamon. One he didn’t deserve.

The smile that spread across his face was slow and sexy. His eyes held a glint of pleasure. “That’s close. But I want the words. Sober you needs to say them.”

I tilted my head and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why do I have to say them first?” I asked.

He licked his lips and smirked. “I’ve said them already.”

Straightening, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Was I passed out drunk?”

He dropped his hand from my face, stepped back, and pulled his shirt over his head, letting it fall to the floor. If he was trying to distract me, then the sight of his chest was a real good move. He pointed at the tattoo over his heart—my sketch, one that had meant something to both of us.

“I told you that I felt my soul again when I was inside you. That no one ever touched my heart or meant anything but you. I have your drawing over my heart for a reason, Salem. I have loved you since I was nineteen years old, and not once in all these years have I considered changing this tattoo. Having it made into anything else. Because I have a piece of you on me. With me. You owned me then, and you own me now.”

Warmth spread through me like the summer sun after a New England winter.

“That’s not the same as saying the actual words,” I pointed out, not letting him know how he had melted me with what he had said.

“People fall in and out of love all the time. The hold you have on me is indestructible. Years, life, have proven that,” he said, then grabbed my chin and leaned down closer to me. “But if hearing those words is important to you…I love you.”

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