He leaned away just as our lips were about to meet. “Not this time. You need to figure this out, Katie. We can’t kiss in the dark and then you have motivations with him in the light.”
“Oh, really? It’s not like you’re about to tell the family we’re exclusive. So why not?”
“Because remember—the man who kissed you last isn’t the man who can fuck you into oblivion, am I right?”
I licked my lips, thinking about our time in the bar. I didn’t answer him one way or the other.
“We’re two very different men,” he said.
“You’re kidding me, right?” I said in frustration. I wanted Rome’s lips on mine. Didn’t he want to taste me the way I wanted to taste him? Hadn’t he missed my lips as much as I’d missed his?
“Did you know he told me to choose if I wanted you in that boutique, Katalina? Me. Not you.” His hot breath moistened my mouth as he let go of the breath he was holding. He shut his eyes as if the pain of what he was about to say was too much. “Shouldn’t Bastian know by now it’s not my choice, but yours? Me or him, right?”
Then he gave me what I wanted. He took my mouth in his and seared his heart there. I wanted to melt into him, get lost in him forever as his tongue roamed my mouth like he owned it.
“Choose me, Katalina,” he whispered. “Let me consume you. Pick our destruction, not his safe haven.”
“Pick you, how? How, Rome? All you want is the family’s safety. You won’t change that. So what? We hide in the shadows forever?”
“Shadows are better than the light sometimes,” he responded, but he was already backing away and nodding like he knew he couldn’t have me. Like, all of a sudden, he didn’t really want me.
“I don’t want just little corners of darkness. I want it all. I want your darkness and your light if there’s anything left. And if not, I want the monster in you because it’s the only thing that saved me so long ago. If I can’t have that, I’ll take a dream with Bastian.”
He winced before he spun and left me.
I stood there so long the light turned off in the cellar. The darkness swallowed me up as my heart thumped, pulsing rage through my veins at being left behind again by the only person I wanted.
20
Katie
“So, you have to go with Bastian alone?” Brey asked me again, like I was the worst friend in the world a couple days later on the night of the gala.
“It’s best just this one time. We’re running late, anyway.”
“It’s been more than just one time now, and Jax and I can wait. We have the babysitter all night.”
I winced at the reminder that my high school best friend, the one I’d somehow managed to keep by my side all these years, had a child. She had a family. A good one. A solid one.
One I would not put in any type of danger.
“We’re probably going to run really late, if you know what I mean.” I paced around the counter in Bastian’s penthouse with my beaded black dress all zipped up, heels clicking on the tile while Bastian chuckled softly as he read a newspaper.
“No, I don’t know what you mean,” she deadpanned, totally and completely knowing what I meant. She was pissed, but my friend had the manners of an etiquette coach. I knew pushing anyone’s boundaries was hard for her. “Why don’t you enlighten me, Katie? Because I have it on good authority that Bastian isn’t really all you’re saying he is. You forget I work for Stonewood Enterprises and that company runs the city along with Bastian.”
“Can you hold, please?” When she started to say no, I cut her off. “You’ll hold.”
“Does she know, Bastian?” I fumed from across the room. The man had a dumb smile on his face, like he did every time he knew something I didn’t. He’d come home numerous times with intel that he wanted me to drag out of him, like a kid hanging onto a secret with slippery fingers and a big mouth.
“Know what?” he said, his eyes crinkling with a silent laugh he was holding in.
The fucker.
I stalked over and snatched the newspaper from his hands. “Who reads newspapers anymore anyway?” I seethed, balling it up and throwing it on the floor. “Are you all talking about this dumb show we have to put on tonight without telling me about it?”
“Only her husband knows. Probably his brothers. Now that I think about it, most likely their wives. Yeah, I’m guessing Brey knows.”
“What happened to no one talking about the family?”