Modern Romance June 2016 Books 5-8. Tara Pammi
her hands on his shoulders he welcomed and then the roaming of them over his buttocks drew him further in.
They rolled to their sides to face each other and kiss deeply and then watch for a moment.
He thrust harder and watched as he did so. Her blood was on him and he would never hurt her again.
‘Roman...’ There was an urgent plea in her husky voice.
Anya had come to the thought of him many times, but never like this, for it was moving through her slowly. She felt as if she were dying a delicious death as she lost contact with all her senses, apart from the one that was him.
He turned her again, she was on her back again and he was heavy on top of her and it felt sublime.
Then she came hard; sweet and hot, it just flooded her body and gathered at her centre. And it beckoned him to fill her. Which he did. His rapid thrusts were deliciously jarring, and then the rush of him inside her was heaven. Anya’s orgasm dragged back and then in like the ocean and swept them together to a place neither had ever been.
They lay still.
It was dark yet their bodies felt light and the heater had now warmed the room.
‘I don’t want to go home,’ she said as she lay in bliss.
‘You have to.’
‘I want to be with you,’ she said, and she turned to him. ‘I love you.’
He stared back at her and then rose from the mattress. ‘Come on, you need to get home.’
He dressed her in warm clothes and then walked her through the snow back to her world.
A world she didn’t want to be in without him.
* * *
Even the memory of them made Anya hungry.
She sat in a restaurant in Paris and usually she would toy with a quail-egg salad and pick out the croutons.
Tonight she ate quail.
But not even a generous supper could dim the hunger, for it was Roman she craved.
She turned on her phone at the end of the meal.
He had not called her again and that made her frown for she had expected more persistence.
More thrill from his chase.
The troupe wandered back towards the hotel. There were posters up, advertising the ballet, and there was a buzz that the famed dance company had now arrived in Paris. There were a couple of media journalists outside so Mika slipped an arm around her.
‘Can you do me a favour?’ Anya asked him.
‘I can.’ Mika frowned in surprise. It was most unlike Anya to ask for anything.
‘Would you look after my phone tonight and not give it back to me, even if I beg you to?’
‘Can I ask why?’
She never told anyone what was going on in her life but Anya could not stand to be alone in her head any more with this.
She needed friends.
‘Because the love of my life now has my number, and I have his and I am scared that I shall be too weak not to use it when I need him tonight.’
And Mika, who had a formidable reputation with woman but had secretly loved Anya for years, had his heart broken right there and then.
‘Of course,’ he said, and took her phone.
They walked in through the sumptuous foyer, and Mika dropped his arm and abruptly went to walk off.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked. She had hoped for conversation, to share her pain with another soul who might help her to understand.
‘To the bar.’
As opposed to the barre.
And then she felt it. Just as she had when she had stolen the chocolate cups—as she stood there she knew that she was being watched.
She turned and there Roman was, sitting in the sumptuous foyer, his legs outstretched, utterly relaxed and clearly waiting for her to arrive. He had that glint of triumph in his eyes as he stood.
She felt the sudden impulse to run, to get away from him, yet her body disobeyed that command, which meant that she just stood there, loaded with adrenaline, as he calmly walked towards her.
‘How?’ Anya could manage but one word.
How had he found her?
‘YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES,’ Roman said, without answering her question. ‘We go up to your suite so that you can pack, or I take you to my home now and send someone to collect your things.’
‘I have told you, I don’t want to go to your home. I need to rehearse. I need—’
‘This isn’t a debate,’ he told her. ‘You are coming back with me.’
‘You can’t make me,’ Anya said. ‘I’ll have security remove you!’
‘Why would they remove a guest from the hotel?’
‘You’ve checked in here?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘And, really, Anya, do you think they could remove me?’
He looked to the entrance and Anya’s gaze followed and, sure enough, the two security guards, dealing with the press, would be no match for Roman.
‘I’ll put you over my shoulder now,’ he warned.
He would.
‘Or,’ Roman said, as he took her bag from her and opened it, taking out the hotel card and checking her room number, ‘we can go up now and get your things.’
‘I’m not...’Anya started, but he had already taken her by the elbow and marched her towards the elevator.
‘How?’ she asked again as Roman pressed a button that would take them to her floor. ‘I told Reception that no information was to be given out.’
‘I didn’t call Reception.’
‘Did you have me followed?’ she asked, her voice rising.
‘You’re too dramatic,’ he said as the doors opened and they stepped out onto her floor.
She always had been.
Until the day he had left, she had been upfront with her emotions and had expressed them. She had been closed off for years but he had flicked the switch and turned her back to the woman she had been when he’d last been in her life.
‘I want to know how you found me.’
‘Your boyfriend put a picture up on social media of the view from his hotel room. I know the skyline,’ Roman said, and then she heard the edge to his voice as he asked a question. ‘Are you sharing a room with him? Is that why you don’t want me here?’
She was not ready for this, Anya thought. She was not ready to reveal the depth of her love—that there had been no one since him, that there could never be anyone other than him. Neither was she ready to hear about his wife, and suddenly the instinct to run that had hit her in the foyer kicked in now.
She turned and ran back towards the lifts.
Roman did as he’d promised.
He caught up easily, picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.
‘Put me down.’
He did not do as asked and she beat at his back.
‘I thought that you liked to be lifted...’ Roman said as he strode back down the corridor, and then he thought of Mika holding her. ‘Does