His eyes narrow in suspicion. “I do.”
I want to touch his stubble as well, the thing that appears every evening to bother him, but I’m not that bold so I content myself with playing with his soft, soft hair.
“People say that she’s your baby.”
His hands go to my waist. “She is.”
I suck in a breath at how easily he can span my slender torso. “I want you to give me a ride.”
He digs his thumbs in the soft flesh of my stomach. “Ride to where?”
I don’t even have to think about the answer, and good thing too, because all my thoughts are gone except the one.
He’s touching me so possessively, like how a sculptor touches their creation maybe, with authority, with a sense of ownership. “Back to those woods where the party was that night.”
He studies my face for a few seconds. “You want me to take you back to the woods.”
“Yes.”
“Alone? At night.”
I nod, biting my lip.
“What do you think your four older, overprotective brothers would say about that? About me breaking the pact.”
Oh right.
The stupid pact.
“I won’t say anything to them. Ever,” I promise, so easily falling into his trap.
“You won’t.”
“No. And my curfew isn’t until eleven.”
That brings a smirk on his face and makes him grip me tighter, like he’s never letting me get away now. “Curfew.”
I grip him tighter too because I’m not running away either.
I don’t know when it happened, but I’ve become reckless now.
A girl who wears provocative dresses for a villain and asks him to take her out to the woods at night.
“Uh-huh.” I nod. “You can bring me back here before that and no one will ever know.”
“Are you asking me to keep another secret, Fae?” he rasps, looking all wild and wicked. “Because you know my price, don’t you?”
“Yes. And I’ll give it to you.”
“You will, huh.”
“Yeah, I’ll dance for you. For as long as you want.”
Because I’m his Fae, the dancing fairy and he’s my Roman, the wild mustang.
I imagine telling my brothers about him.
About Roman.
I daydream about all the things I’ll tell them. I’ll start with how amazing he is with Tempest. This is something my brothers will definitely relate to, him being an older, overprotective brother like them.
I’ll tell them that last month when Tempest got really sick and she made one call to Reed, he abandoned his classes and his practice for the day and drove up to New York City. He argued with the teachers, with the headmaster even, and got her out of the dorm within the hour. He brought her back home and for days, he took care of her.
I saw that myself.
That week, every day after school, I went to visit her and he’d be there, reminding her about meds, feeding her soup, hovering with a big frown and a grumpy face when she’d disobey.
I’ll tell my brothers that it reminds me of how they take care of me when I get sick.
Then I’ll tell them that like them, he buys me Peanut Butter Blossoms.
One day we were driving by Buttery Blossoms — he gives me a ride in his Mustang almost every time I go to their house to visit Tempest on weekends; at first, I thought she’d be mad at me for ditching her but she encourages it, me spending time with her brother — and I pointed it out through the window and told him all about it.
“So the special thing about them is that the crumb is peanut butter and the frosting is chocolate. When usually people have a chocolate crumb and peanut butter frosting. See? Special, right? But I can’t eat too many. Ballet and all that. And the other day my partner told me that I was getting too heavy for him to lift. Can you believe that?” I chewed on my lips. “Maybe I should go on my juice fast this weekend. I can easily –”
I stopped talking when the car suddenly came to a halt and in a flash, he climbed out of it. I climbed out after him and watched him stride over to Buttery Blossoms.
A minute later, he came out holding a familiar pink box.
“Your partner is a pussy,” he growled, thrusting it into my hands. “And juice fasts are fucking stupid.”
And like an idiot, I hugged that box to my chest, blinked up at him and whispered, “You know, you shouldn’t really curse this much, Roman.”
His jaw clenched at that and his eyes grew all hot for a second before ordering, “Just get in the car.”
And I did.
Yeah, I’ll tell them about that.
All my brothers would love it because they think my juice fasts are stupid too.
And maybe if I tell them all this, they won’t hate him so much.
Maybe Ledger won’t fight with him.
Like he does one day at practice.