Roman: Book 1 (5 page)

“You got it, hun.”

I shake my head looking down at the peeling Formica on the table and watch from my peripheral as Heather picks up my drink, takes a sip then spits an ice cube back into the glass. I look up at her as if she has lost her ever-loving mind. “Did you just spit in my drink?” I growl.

Her? She laughs. Like what I’ve said is completely preposterous, like I didn’t just watch her do it with my own eyes. “I like to think of it as transferring, maybe making a deposit immediately after withdrawal. Spitting is such a strong and unfavorable descriptive term.” She sets my drink down and I grasp her wrist tightly causing her to drop it and the contents to slosh over the edge.

Darla sets a beer in front of Heather and coughs before looking at her in question.

“Darla, don’t think for a second I don’t have this situation under control, he may be a foot and a half taller than me and have a buck more in weight, but I’ve got this sweetie. Run a long, mmmkay?” Heather’s eyes never leave mine as she speaks, even though my grip becomes as tight as a vice. As I feel her bones grating against each other under my fingertips, she smiles serenely and her calmness remains.

After the waitress leaves I watch as Heather’s right eyebrow rise with every statement I speak, “I do not know you. I do not like you. I do not know what it is you want from me, but I will tell you what I want! I want to know why you have suddenly appeared in my life and why you are suddenly always around.
NOW TELL ME WHY, GODDAMN YOU
!”

I jerk her arm forward until we are both leaning over the table nose to nose, “You want to fuck the big bad wolf? Huh? Is that what you want?” Her head shakes slightly as she swallows. Before she can open her mouth to speak I brush my lips over hers, “You have no idea how many innocent little red riding hoods have thrown themselves at my feet, begging for my affection, my oppression, my brutal benevolence, placing their own lives within my hands hoping to find an angel behind this devil’s mask.”

Her hand is yanked from mine and instantly I’m lost in her sinful dark eyes, her tiny hands fist the shirt covering my shoulders, and using the material as leverage she smashes her nose harder against mine, our foreheads butt against each others, “I’d have to be blind, deaf, or dumb not to know that, Roman, the problem is, I’m not the one hoping to find an angel behind that mask. Angels are a dime a damn dozen. What I want is the demons who live within because...they mirror my own.” She releases her hold on me and leans back into the booth, grabs her mug of beer and drains half its contents.

I have trouble piecing my thoughts together as I feel myself falling for the blond temptress sitting before me.

I’m completely breathless, and almost speechless, but I somehow manage to get the words out, “I’ll ask you once more, and once more only Heather, what do you want?”

Shit! What do I want?

Well, like I said that’s a loaded question!

I want Roman William Payne, that’s what I want.

I want him to tell me, “
NO! I did not hurt or kill those girls and I wasn’t the cause of anyone’s suicide!”

Have you ever been at a place, or found yourself in a serious moment where your mind, or the little conscious voices
are
adamantly screaming in revolt at what your stupid love sick, butterfly filled, Cinderella-happily-ever-after believing heart is telling you? But the rose colored glasses instantly appear when your eyes land on the one,
YOUR
one and only, that your gut, hell even the marrow in your bones joins forces with the imbecile beating within your chest? Leaving you a hot mess questioning everything you know. Hell, I’m twenty-five years old. I have gone without intensity and passion of this magnitude since my first love…Since my first and last heartbreak in high school.

I’m not supposed to feel this way again and for damn sure was not supposed to feel this way about Roman Payne.

My voice wavers when I’m finally able to speak, “I want you, Roman. I want you to quit fighting me; let me in, let me show you how happy I can make you, but all you’ve ever done is…Run.”

I glance at him searching for any effect my words have made and I am met with nothing but a blank expression. My heart constricts as my eyes well with tears and in a wobbly voice I ask, “You don’t…You don’t give a damn do you?” Yes, okay dammit, I admit at the end, tears spill over my eyelashes and stream down my face as my voice whisper-screame
s
which cause my words to become slightly indiscernible.

Roman clears his throat and sips his drink before setting it down and taking both of my hands in his. When I look up and our eyes meet he quietly speaks, “Sweetheart, I only fucking care because I haven’t pin-pointed what there is about you other women lack. You fail to understand if I chose to make you mine I would not let you go. If I became bored, you would be so far beyond ruined there would be nothing left of you to let go.”

His finger tips harshly grip my chin before finishing, “I’ll do nothing but hurt you. You only think your demons mirror mine, what you don’t understand, the concept you’re unable to grasp is…my demons derive from the largest evil of all, the demons you think you want to see is not only demons veiled by an angelic mask. What I’m saying, Heather, is even Lucifer was once a beautiful angel.” Roman stands and tosses a hundred dollar bill on the table. “Stop trying to find good in me, I promise you, Ms. Mackenzie, what you’re looking for does not and never has existed in me.”

He leans over and brushes his lips against my temple before saying, “Goodbye, Mac.”

“Goodbye, Mac? And where exactly did you become privy to that name, Mr. Payne?”

His salacious grin makes my skin tingle before his husky voice causes my eyes to shutter closed and my thighs to clench, “Oh, baby, never think for one second that I’m not doing my homework while you are doing yours.”

My hackles rise and my eyes fly open, “What does that mean?” I ask before narrowing my eyes on his.

Grin unmoved he replies, “I asked what you wanted, you said me.” He crowds my personal space again before speaking, “Why? I know, or make note of every person that enters my life, be them acquaintances, new friends, potential fuck buddies, or watchers from the side lines. You have always been a sideline watcher. I want to know why and what it is you want. You say me, but I believe what you want is my sins, and those Mac, will never be revealed. As far as you’re concerned, I’m a goddamn saint.”

I stand quickly and push myself, shoving my breasts against his hard chest and slide my right knee between his thighs, rubbing it against his growing erection, “I don’t care about your sainthood, I don’t care if you really are the devil himself, I want both, Roman, I want it all. Wherever you think I stand, you’re mistaken. I’m nothing more than the woman you see standing before you.  I apologize for my inconvenient or awkward entrance into your life. However, what I want will always remain the same. I fucking want you, all of you. Period.”

Before I can comprehend what’s happening, I’m spun away and facing towards our booth, after he has me shoved back into our little cubby hole I’m left to sit…Watching his back as he retreats, storming from the shady bar. I feel any progress made slip away as he slips out the door. I do not want him.

Okay, I do not want to want him.

You know you’re being served a cold, frigid day in hell from karma when you
’
r
e
where I am.

Roman William Payne may be the devil. And the sick twisted truth is for the first time, I realize just how much power Roman has and how easily he could shatter me. The problem is I can’t back out now and divert from the path I’ve been set on for more than two years. There’s no way around the collision course my heart is currently headed straight for.

Roman will break me.

He will let me down.

He will make me hurt.

He may make me bleed.

Yet there isn’t a damn thing I can fucking do to stop it. I have come too far and this must be finished.

Sitting in my Maserati under the dark shadows I created by tossing a rock and busting a few street lights, I watch as Heather steps into the humid light, the soft embers glow as she lights a cigarette, looking over to where my car was parked earlier tonight.

After blowing out a lung full of smoke she sits on the dirty concrete stairs and alternates between wiping tears with one hand and bringing her cigarette to her mouth with the other.

I didn’t even know she smoked. It is easily the most disgusting habit a person could have, and the mere thought of her engaging in such behavior fuels my rage to the next level of fury.

Suddenly she’s off the stairs flicking half of her cigarette to the ground and walking towards her car, digging through purse without even watching where she’s going.

She doesn’t notice the three men until they’ve flanked her on all sides, the tallest of the three standing behind her with a knife at her throat while he uses his free hand to wrench her head at an odd angle. The remaining two go for her purse but she refuses to release it, muttering something too low for me to make out the words.

I have my hunting knife out of the console and find myself out of my car stalking from the shadows.

Before I’ve even thought about my actions, the tip of my blade pierces the skin covering the spine of the knife wielder standing behind Heather.

Something flashes in my peripheral and as I growl the words, “Put the knife down and step away from the girl.” It dawns on me Heather never needed my help. She was surprised but she was also always in control.

Her purse hits the ground as two black nine millimeters, one in each hand aim between the eyes of both men standing in front of her.

“Pick up my purse and dust it off, then hand it to my knight in rusty armor behind me. Move slow.”

My brain is going ninety to nothing.

Why does Heather Mackenzie have not one but two nine millimeter glocks in her purse?

It seems I’ve been asking the wrong questions where Ms. Mackenzie is concerned.

“Good boy, now Mr. Knife-at-my-throat, step around and in front me.” Her words snap through the moonless night and he jerks into motion leaving me standing there like an idiot who brought a knife to a gunfight.

“The way I see it, this can end one of two ways. I’ll leave it up to you boys. One, I can call the cops and piss away even more of my time this evening or you three can turn around and get the hell out of dodge. So how do you want to spend the rest of the night, fellas?”

In unison all three back away slowly then quickly turn and run from the parking lot. Heather shoves both guns into her bag and swings it over her shoulder as she turns smiling to look up at me.

I’m frozen in place, my breath is locked in my chest, my eyes scan over every curve and line of Heather’s face as if I’m seeing her for the first time.

“I thought you’d left. Never would have pegged you for the man that hides in the dark, unnoticed, to make sure I get to my car safely. You would think with your bravado, you would prefer boasting.”

Her face is an inch away from mine when she stops her taunting.

My innate reflex has one hand wrapping around her neck and the other cuffing her wrists behind her back as I shove her against the brick building, and rub my thigh between her parted legs. With my eyes still scanning her face I ask her in a dark tone, “What have I told you about assumptions, Heather?”