Roman nodded. “I need to get back to the trial. Please talk to the boys for me. They’ll need to hear it from one of us if possible. I’m going straight home when this is over, but I suspect I’ll need to deal with my father before the day is through.”
Marcus hesitated. He wanted to say more but it wasn’t possible, so he sighed heavily and signed off.
Ash stopped him before they were seated. “Roman, I saw what happened just now. I’d like to speak with you later. In private, if I may.”
“Of course. I’ll be at home this evening.”
He heard nothing. Only saw lips moving as he sat there thinking about Abbie. About how he’d had to let her go just then when all he’d wanted to do was protect her.
And she’d slipped through his fingers like smoke. One moment he’d had her, the next it was impossible to keep her.
Chapter 27
Abbie trudged to her door after having wandered the capital for most of the day. Night had long since fallen, and the cold had fully come to settle into the bones of the city.
She’d avoided her family. Her father had commed her several times and she knew that would be a big bucket of shit to deal with, but she didn’t want to just then. Her mother would be concerned, as would her siblings. Logan had commed but Abbie hadn’t looked at any of the messages, just knew they were there. She should have felt comforted by them.
But she felt nothing. Just a desolate emptiness inside she knew would only worsen as her days passed. Would she even be able to say her last good-bye to Roman, or was it over totally? Would those horrifying moments in the hallway be their last? She’d never run her fingers down his spine as they were ready to tip into sleep. He’d never kiss her awake again.
Once inside, she didn’t bother to turn the lights on as she headed into the bedroom and through to the bath on autopilot. Now that she’d entered her place, the reality of the cold and how chilled she truly was had become apparent. Her teeth chattered as she started her shower.
She stepped in, feeling as if her life had moved into slow motion, and she watched herself from another place, until the water hit and she gasped in a breath, allowing herself to feel it all.
She didn’t hear the tap at her door as she sank to her knees, weeping as the water swallowed the sound of her grief.
Roman avoided vid crews, official requests for statement and comments about Abbie, and was grateful for the security detail who surrounded him as he rushed from the building into the waiting conveyance.
Home was a riot of noise and people. A crowd with cameras had gathered outside the gates, but fortunately the guards kept them all back.
Deimos and Corrin waited for him in the entry.
“Oh Dai, are you all right? How is Ms. Haws?” Deimos asked as he hugged his father.
“No, I’m not all right, and I don’t know how Abbie is. I was in that blasted trial all day, listening to Perry Walker try and explain away his treason as if it were of no consequence at all that nearly four hundred citizens were murdered by this complicity. I wanted to shoot him in the head.”
“Right after grandfather Kerrigan, I expect,” Corrin said. “He’s commed here several times today. Not happy with the house arrest you’ve placed him under.”
“My people are working to find a way to hold him there for as long as I can. He can molder and die in that manse, for all I care. Boys, he devastated Abbie today and for no other reason than because she defended your mother’s old governess. I can’t abide that. And he’s caused a great deal of upheaval at a time when I have more than enough to try to manage with these trials.”
“Come on through. Mercy made a meal and Ash Walker is here, waiting in the family room with Brandt Pela,” Corrin said.
Roman heaved a sigh, straightened his clothing and headed into the family room to greet his guests.
Ash stood when he entered, as did Brandt. Roman waved them to sit. “Please, here I’m just Roman, all right?”
He sat and Mercy materialized, left food and drinks, disappearing again just as quickly.
“Roman, do you love this Haws woman?” Ash asked.
Roman scrubbed his face with his palms. “I really am not up to this right now. Yes, I had a relationship with her. She’s a good woman. But I don’t want to discuss it or make excuses for it.”
“Some time ago, more than ten standard years now, I loved a woman. An unranked woman. I’m a second son so, like you, I wasn’t able to marry where I liked. I had to marry politically and the woman I loved left rather than become my mistress. Do you remember this?” Ash asked.
“I do. Gods, of course. Sera, Brandt’s wife and your mistress now, right? You three are in a permanent triad, yes? I met her the other day. She’s lovely and now I understand why you’re here.” He sighed. “Yes. I love Abigail Haws but like you ten years ago, I can’t marry where I like, especially not now, with all this chaos brewing. And like Sera, there is simply no way Abbie would be my declared mistress, even if I wanted that, which I don’t. All I can do at this point is break things off and move on.”
“Roman, you’ve given House Lyons two sons. You don’t have to do anything right now. You can have a lover who is unranked and perhaps in a year or two, you can revisit the issue. Things will smooth out after the trials and the unranked realize we will give them justice,” Brandt said.
“I can’t do that to her. She’s active in the MRD, this movement to create an advisory council for unranked to be adjunct to the Council here in Ravena. She’s a barrister. She will be open to enough scrutiny as it is. What can I offer her? A life where she can never be part of official events? She can’t visit here as my lover. I shouldn’t have ever started with her but I couldn’t resist.”
“Roman, listen to me when I tell you, letting go of someone you love will kill something inside you both.” Ash spoke from the heart, and Roman heard the pain of the memory in his voice.
“Excuse me, Mr. Lyons, but your father is here and demanding you see him immediately.” Mercy looked unimpressed by Roman’s father’s bluster but he also knew he couldn’t avoid this confrontation forever.
“I’m sorry, I’m sure you realize why I need to deal with this.” Roman stood, Ash and Brandt doing so as well, each shaking his hand.
“Comm me if we can help in any way.” Ash waved, sadness on his face, as they left.
His father’s step-click gait sounded as he used his walking stick and before long, Noah Lyons entered the room and heaved himself into a chair, glowering in Roman’s direction as he did.
“What the blasted seven hells are you playing at, Roman? Saul Kerrigan is an oozing boil of a man, but you’ve given him a weapon to use against House Lyons and I don’t like it. Do you have no sense of just how precarious things are right now? You couldn’t just fuck a Ranked woman? I’ve seen her, this Haws woman, on the screen. All day today, as a matter of fact. No doubt to her appeal. She’s smart, too. Tough. I had my people check her out, I know what Bentan Kerrigan did to her but now so does half the ’Verse. Can’t be easy for a woman to have to relive such a horrible event.”
Roman heaved a breath. Noah might be insufferable on many issues but he was right. Abbie would suffer all because Roman couldn’t resist her.
“I know you, Roman. You’re not a womanizer like your brother. If you had something with this woman, she must be peerless. I’m not hurling stones at her character or even her background. But facts are facts, and she is not Ranked. You are not only Ranked but you are House Lyons. You cannot have her. You must give her up tonight and not look back. Do not act with shame; it would only hurt her and make you look like a cad in the offing. We’ve got enough Family looking bad right now. So deal with it. Make your good-byes but keep to them.”
Roman nodded. “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. And we’ve begun discussions with House Holmes and House Khym for a suitable wife match for you. You can meet her. I know you’d want to court her and like her and all the things men of my generation
couldn’t have cared less about. But you’ve been single long enough, and an alliance with another strong House would be beneficial, especially right now.” Noah pushed himself to stand and Roman followed his father to the front door.
“Resolve, Roman. You’ve always had it. Don’t lose it now.”
Resolve. Wonderful. That’s what it was to break the woman he loved? Resolve?
Since he was now going to break off things with Abbie, Roman didn’t bother hiding as he entered her building. It was very late so it was fairly deserted, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had been hiding behind a bin ready to film him.
The lobby was quiet, so he only had his thoughts to keep him company as he took the lift up to her door.
He tapped, and then again to no avail. Worried about her sleeping too deep again, and perhaps a bit that she was avoiding him, he let himself inside. The place was dark but he heard the water running and headed toward her bathroom.
That was when he heard the sobbing and it nearly drove him to his knees. He pushed the door open to find her on the floor of her shower in a ball, her hair covering her body like a dark, wet cloak. But the sound of her grief caught at him, driving home just exactly what his future held. And it didn’t hold her, the thing he wanted so very much.
“Abbie, honey, please, let me help you out,” he said softly.
She looked up, her eyes red and swollen. “Why are you here?”
He turned off the water and wrapped her in towels, trying not to look at her body, the body he loved so much. Briskly, he rubbed up and down her arms and then over her hair.
Her hands shot out from beneath the towels as she huffed indignantly. “I can dry myself. Are you all right?”
“Me? To answer your first question, I’m here because I had to see you, to—”
“Say good-bye,” she said simply.
Roman heaved a breath and followed her into her bedroom, which still smelled of the two of them.
“I don’t want to. You must know that.” He was desperate for her to understand.
She turned, letting the towel fall away. He was unsure if the trembling was from the cold or nerves. “I understand. I know. We both knew it had to end. I’m just sorry it hurt you in the process.” Moonlight shrouded her skin as she bent to grab a sleep shirt but he reached to her. Something bound within him unfurled when she moved quickly to slide into his arms.
“I don’t want you to have to understand. I don’t want this. I want to be with you and I want this thing between us and I hate the way things are.”
“Stop moaning about what you cannot change. Stop it and stop wasting time. You’re here and you won’t be again so make it last. Burn yourself into my being because that’s all I’ll have of you after you walk out the door.” Her hands slid beneath the hem of his shirt, against his bare back, her nails digging in to pull him closer.
He closed his eyes and fell into her. For the last time. His mouth hovered, just above the skin where neck met shoulder and he breathed, tasting her, smelling her, taking her essence inside him.
He groaned as he licked her skin, salty-sweet, and she arched. Desperation beat at him but he tamped it down, wanting to savor every last breath he had with her.
“I’m naked but you’re not. I don’t like that state of affairs.”
“Mmm. But I like you naked very much.” He took her breasts in his hands and then rolled and pulled the nipples until her pretty lips parted and she took quick, gasping breaths.
His mouth replaced his fingers, his tongue drawing under and around the nipple, first one and then the other. Her fingers dug through his hair, holding him to her as he took his fill of her skin, of the soft, needy sounds she made.
He lapped at her, loving the way her nipples hardened, elongated at his attentions. The air in the room had warmed with the air from her bathroom and her scent hung heavy—the scent of her flowery shampoo and of the heady honey between her legs. Her trembling from the chill had transformed to trembling in her knees and thighs. The good kind of trembling.
Once he’d gotten his fill he dropped to his knees and inhaled, pressing his face into that downy triangle at the vee of her thighs. She took a step back but he banded her thighs with an arm, holding her in place.
She was all he saw, all he smelled and breathed, and when he slid his tongue in between her labia, all he tasted. All her balance rested on him and he allowed her to rock back, landing on the bed, legs akimbo and nicely spread.
“I’m going to eat that sweet cunt.” He was on her barely moments after he’d said it, licking from her pretty asshole to her clit. He would drown in her, revel in every delicious drop of her body as he ate.
She writhed beneath him, her hands grabbing at the blankets, and when he pulled his face away she cried out, her body arching up toward him.
“Hold yourself open, hold your legs open for me.”
She obeyed quickly, her fingers digging into her calves as she held her legs up and spread for him.
Roman loved how she tasted, how the soft, swollen furls of her cunt felt against his lips and tongue. She let go and gave him every last bit of herself. Even then, as things were ending, she held nothing back, taking her pleasure in return.
His thumb slid back and forth against the pucker of her rear passage. She was so wet, the way was eased by her lube. He pressed just slightly inside as he pressed his tongue into her gate and she groaned, low and feral.
If they had more time he could have breached her there. But there wasn’t enough time. He closed his eyes against the wash of pain at the realization that tomorrow wouldn’t hold Abbie, waiting for him to take her, to make love to her, to fuck her and ravish her and give her his all.
Abbie knew there’d be bruises where her fingers dug into her legs to hold her body open for him. Knew it because she poured her emotions into that grasp. It was that or cry again and she couldn’t. Didn’t want to mar their last moments with tears and regrets.
He felt so good, so right there as he delivered the devastating pleasure only he could, touched her the way no one else ever had. Surely, boldly, and with total love and adoration. His mouth on her was worship and she’d never felt so beautiful as she did that moment.
Her orgasm built slow, despite the urgency within her. Every moment was just so, nothing too much, nothing too little. He filled her slowly from toes to the top of her head and when she ran over, when orgasm grabbed her, it was right. She knew it was there, knew it would happen even as tears pricked her eyelashes and she ruthlessly shoved them away.
She let it run its course, let it fill her and then drain away until she opened her eyes to see his face just above hers, eyes alight with love and sadness just before he kissed her.
Her taste simmered on his lips like soft words and they slid back into her system, changed by having been on him, in him. Like she had.
One-handed, she shoved his sweater off, pausing in the kiss only long enough to yank it over his head. She shoved him onto his back and scrambled atop him to kiss his neck. To sip from him just beneath his ear and to feel him buck as she knew he would. Knew he liked it, knew no one else would affect him the way she did.
She sucked the fleshy lobe of his ear into her mouth, nibbled a bit before moving to kiss along his jaw, pausing at his chin to nip it and head to his lips again. Abbie lost herself in those lips for long minutes until his hands cupped her ass and she remembered she had other things to kiss as well.
She found the warm, spicy hollow of his throat, the angle of his collarbone and the flat, solid muscle of his chest on her way to his nipple. She swirled her tongue around it before sliding her teeth against it.
He squeezed her ass cheeks in time and she knew he wanted more. So she gave it to him, kissing down his belly, down that sweet, beguiling trail of pale hair that led to the waist of his pants, quickly opened, allowing her to shove his pants off his legs, ridding him of his shoes and socks first.
When she got back on the bed she looked him up and d
own, so princely there. She closed her eyes for a time, just committing him to memory.
“Abbie, don’t. Just . . . just love me right now.” His voice was strained, nearly cracking at one point, and she shook her head, dragging the back of her hand across her eyes to rid herself of the tears.
She bent over him again, this time after she’d retrieved some lube from her bedside drawer. He sent her a curious look but she shrugged and placed it within reach just before she grabbed his cock and slid her mouth down, taking him in as far as she could. Once, twice and three times.
She let his taste make a home within her as she built him up, slowly and surely. Abbie dribbled the lube down his balls, sliding her fingers through it, massaging his sac until he gusted a deep, aroused growl.
And then she slid a questing finger down, past his perineum and over his ass. He tensed at first, until she slid her finger back and forth, the lube heating, adding sensation as she fired up those nerves she knew had never been fired before.
He relaxed, widening his legs as she probed a bit more, sucking him, keeping him aroused while she slowly pressed her finger into his ass. She kept it slow, slow enough to let him adjust and to keep him trusting she’d be gentle.
The lube slicked the way and his cock hardened impossibly more with each inexorable bit she moved within him. Until she brushed against that hard, smooth bundle she’d told him about and he made a sound, involuntary, deeply turned on. His cock throbbed against her tongue, hard, so very hard. His breath came out in short puffs.
“Gods, that’s—” He swallowed hard. She stroked it softly while she continued to suck his cock until he groaned and muttered, nearly savagely. “Fuck, I’m coming. It’s too good.”
He flooded her with his taste and she took it all, not wanting to let go of any part of him.
She kissed his belly once he’d sort of calmed, excusing herself to clean up and try to get herself back under control.
When she returned, he’d closed the window coverings and turned the lamp on. A yellow glow cast his body into muscular hills and valleys. Roman Lyons was ridiculously beautiful.