I gasp. Almost.
How dare he?
How freaking dare he?
I shift on my stupid heels again.
“You’d know, wouldn’t you?” I raise my eyebrows. “Because you sounded like you were jealous when you thought that the world was looking at my juicy, tight ass, Roman.”
It’s his turn to blink.
Not that it makes him look intimidated by me or something like that.
In fact, I’m the one who loses all the air in her lungs because I’ve been dying, dying, to call him that. And to say it like that, blurting it out, makes me stumble on my heels.
He’s just taken aback, I think.
Not by what I said, but what he says next, almost to himself, as if he’s surprised by it. “I was.”
“You were?”
He looks into my wide, shocked eyes. “Yeah. And I don’t like that.”
“Being jealous?”
“Yes.”
His frown is so… adorable. It’s such a tame word for a guy like him who’s made of all sharp and dangerous edges.
But that’s what I feel right now.
That he’s so vulnerable and adorable in this moment with his honesty and so I have to be honest too. “M-me neither.”
He opens and closes his fists as if he can’t decide what he wants to do with his fingers. He can’t decide what he wants to do in a situation like this and I can’t wait to see what he does do.
Then with a sharp breath that pushes out his massive chest, he becomes himself.
He becomes dark in his intentions and dangerous in his beauty.
He looks me up and down in his villainous way before taking a couple of steps closer to me and I go a couple of steps back.
“So how about I make you another promise?” he offers like the devil he is.
“What promise?” I ask, looking up at him.
But not for long because right in front of my eyes, he does something incredible.
He does something that I never even imagined he would do.
Right in front of my eyes, Reed Roman Jackson slowly comes down on his knees.
The sight of it is so shocking that my hand sticks out on its own and grabs hold of his shoulder. His hoodie.
“I don’t know… what you’re doing,” I whisper, looking into his eyes, which are on level with mine.
Because he’s so, so tall.
His answer is to smile lopsidedly and grab my ankle.
Before I can even utter a word, he’s taken off my shoe and given me my breaths back. When he goes for the other one and brings me back down to earth, taking off the added four inches of my height, I want to hug him.
I don’t even care that now he reaches the top of my head easily.
I don’t even care that the stark difference in our sizes makes me look all helpless in front of him.
“Tell me about your promise,” I whisper, putting my other hand on his shoulder as well and clutching his soft hoodie.
His gaze turns liquid. “You take off that dress and braid your hair.”
“And?”
His fingers still circle my ankle, squeezing. “And you dance only for me.”
“What would I get in return?”
“And in return, I won’t ask any other girls to dance for me.” Another squeeze of my ankle and I bite my lip. “Only you.”
Only me.
He just said that.
And maybe it’s not exactly what a girl hopes to hear from a guy. It’s not a declaration or anything. Just a little promise. And for now, it seems like enough. It seems enough to make me smile and wiggle my free toes on the ground in happiness.
It seems enough that I step closer to him and my bare feet graze his bent knees. “On one condition.”
“What?”
I dare to touch the ends of his dark hair; they’re as soft and silky as his hoodie. “I hear you love your Mustang.”
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 satisfy 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.