Romeo’s physique was...well...art. Like Michelangelo’s David, he was a study in sturdy bones, tough sinew, and meticulously defined muscle. In a word, yummy. In two words, holy crap! And in three words? Homina, homina, homina.
Not that Mia put much stock in looks. The most beautiful woman she’d ever known, her mother, was as vain and as selfish and as mean as they came. And Dr. Tamburro, her medieval history professor who had a severely disfiguring form of Muenke syndrome, was the nicest, gentlest, most generous person she’d ever met.
It was cliché, but she truly did believe that it was what was on the inside that counted. But there, too, Romeo outshined her.
You see, he was so much more than his movie star face and Olympian’s body. He was also steady and considerate and capable. The man her mind landed on when she was looking for a little peace. And despite her heart’s tendency to double-time it whenever he turned those melting chocolate eyes of his in her direction, she felt safer around him than she did around anyone.
Safe from everything.
Even the hurtful stuff that lived inside her.
And what had she done with this paragon of male perfection, you ask? Well, she’d slept with him.
Again.
Not the euphemistic slept with him unfortunately, but the literal slept with him. As in, they were still wearing their clothes from the night before. As in, she hadn’t washed her face or brushed her teeth, so her mascara was clumpy and her tongue felt like it was wearing a sweater. As in, he’d nodded off before she’d finished reading one chapter of In Darkness and Dreams and she hadn’t had the heart to wake him.
Okay, so that wasn’t exactly true. It was more like she hadn’t wanted to wake him.
When he was lying beside her, she was able to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. Something that had alluded her since the day after her twenty-first birthday when she’d walked into her parents’ condo in Chicago to find her father’s face haggard and her mother crumpled into a wailing ball on the end of the sofa. When she’d been forced to realize she’d finally failed her younger brother completely, and that his blood was on her hands.
Yes. Before “sleeping with” Romeo, she’d thought a night without nightmares was a thing of her past. Which meant when she’d heard his soft snore while she’d been reading about the vampire Lazarus Luxido, her first instinct hadn’t been to jostle him awake and encourage him to head to his own hotel room. Oh, no. Her first instinct had been to shoot an imaginary fist in the air, switch off the lamp, and snuggle onto her side with her back to him.
She’d been careful to keep a platonic distance between them, because he’d made it perfectly clear all he wanted from her was friendship. Except, just as she’d done the last time he’d conked out while she was reading, at some point during the hours between dark and dawn she’d rolled toward him.
Rolled onto him.
Her head was now pillowed on his chest. Her arm was thrown across his midsection. And she had one leg stretched over his hips.
Propriety told her she should move. The longing to luxuriate just a little longer kept her in place.
Keeping her eyes shut, she clocked the various sensations bombarding her senses. The steady thud of his big, healthy heart beneath her ear. The manly smell of his skin that reminded her of warm cedar and oiled leather. The feel of his erection pulsing insistently against her thigh.
For a moment, she allowed herself to pretend his unconscious reaction was meant for her. Allowed herself to fantasize about what it would be like to be wanted by him. To be worthy of him. To taste those wide, knowing lips. To feel those large, callused hands skating over her naked flesh. To see him rising above her, all dark goatee and white smile.
But pretend was all it was. A fantasy was all it would ever be.
“You’re nothing I need, and I’m not anything you should want.”
The words he’d spoken that rainy afternoon not so very long ago echoed through her head. And her lungs clenched tight because she was instantly reminded of the thought that had started her down this path the moment she woke up.
This is becoming a habit. The bad kind and—
Her thoughts screeched to a halt when his steady breaths turned shallow and the lovely, large pectoral muscle beneath her cheek tensed.
He was awake. Not the slow, sleepy sort of awake either. The awake sort of awake. The fully cognizant, zero mental cobwebs sort of awake.
And here I am clinging to him like maritime accretions cling to ancient underwater artifacts.
Aghast at her own audacity, she faked a long stretch and a big, dramatic yawn while rolling off him.
Nothing to see here. I haven’t spent the last five minutes basking in your unconscious body. I, too, am just now waking up.
After blinking open her eyes, she found him on his side, watching her. A line had formed between his eyebrows. Something that looked like wariness glimmered in his eyes.
Oh, for the love of— Not again.
She didn’t think she could live through a repeat of what happened the last time they’d shared a bed, when he’d worried she might misconstrue his intentions toward her and had felt obliged to tell her in no uncertain terms that he had absolutely zero interest in her that way.
Deciding a little humor was her best bet at dodging another of his humiliating Come-to-Jesus talks, she winked saucily. “Was that good for you?”
As she’d hoped, the tension drained from his big shoulders. “Mmm.” He nodded, playing along. “Spectacular. You?”
“Best I’ve had since the last time we did it.”
He chuckled and propped his head in his hand. When his eyes traveled over her face, she resisted the urge to check if she had creases on her cheek left by the material of his T-shirt. Instead, she forced herself to hold his gaze.
Easier said than done.
It was a heady thing to be this close to him. Headier still to be the sole focus of his dark, penetrating stare as the morning light streamed in through a break in the hotel curtains and highlighted the broad, tanned expanse of his brow, the wicked arch of his jet-black eyebrows, and the shadows his dimples created in his cheeks.
Those diabolical dimples that make him look sort of boyish when I know for a fact there isn’t a single boyish thing about him.
Spiro “Romeo” Delgado was all man.
Her thigh still burned where a particularly manly part of him had touched her.
“I blame it on your voice.” His tone was low and raspy from sleep.
“Blame what?” She felt her brow wrinkle.