She hovered over his cock, her arms wrapped around his neck, waiting to slide down.
Romano looked up at her. “You’re killing me.”
“Smalls.”
“What?”
“You forgot ‘Smalls.’”
“Who’s Smalls?”
She laughed and shook her head. His sex brain was cute. She palmed his cheek. “My mate.”
When he opened his mouth to respond, she slid down on his cock and kissed him instead of letting him answer. They groaned together as Romano stretched and filled her. Much like when she’d taken him in her mouth, she had to work her body down his turgid length. The man was big and, as cliché as it sounded, nearly too much for her to take.
But she worked her hips, rolling to take him easier. His hot mouth on hers helped, his tongue dueling with hers. With each pump of her hips, Romano pulled her down. By the time she was seated fully on him, his arms were around her back, clenching her against him. They moved as one, push and pull, up and down, wave after wave.
Kalinda’s core clenched, pleasure spiraling deep inside her, ratcheting higher and higher. She cried out, losing her motion, but he took over. He jerked his hips up toward her, fast and hard. Each pound slapped loudly. Every glide deep inside her was hot and poignant. Deep and profound. She held on to him because she couldn’t do anything else.
She ripped her mouth from his, trying to take back some control, to be able to move him where she wanted. It was supposed to be about him, and he’d taken over.
“Romano,” she moaned, “let me.”
“Love you.”
“What?”
“You forgot ‘love you’ at the end of that.”
“But—”
“It’s okay. I’ll love enough for both of us.”
Shocked silent, Kalinda let Romano take over. Romano lifted them from the bed and rolled them over until she was under him. His strokes were sure and hard, fast and furious, sending too much pleasure streaming over her to even think of the revelations of the evening. She let him send them both over the edge, over and over, through the night.
The bastard was playing with her. He had to be.
For three days since the “he may have said he loved me, but maybe not” incident, Romano stayed busy. Oh, not so busy he didn’t share breakfast, lunch, and dinner with Kalinda when he wasn’t on patrol or on a job for Dominic. Silva stayed with them in the guestroom so she could be there to continue to train Kalinda while they waited to hear back from the National Council.
The days were busy, and the nights were hard and hot, but Romano never broached the subject of love again. Instead, he acted like he’d never said it. Of course, that only made her wonder more about it.
Not that she was in love. They hadn’t been around each other long enough to feel that way—seriously!—but she still wanted to know if he’d said it. That was important, right? At least she’d thought it would be. But things were normal, oddly anticlimactic in the way things went. Zoey was flittering around being waited on by hand and foot. Giuliana was coming and going with her store and running it when she wasn’t on site.
Kalinda’s Katering, well, Silva seemed to have that running pretty well. What orders Kalinda had to fill, she cooked in Romano’s kitchen and had full range of some of his soldiers to ship them for her.
Okay, so she could get totally used to having men running around with her precious baked goods, trying to be so careful it was nearly comical. And she wasn’t sure if her threats or Romano’s death glare made them do it. Whichever, it worked, and she was still happy to be doing something.
Still … had Romano said he loved her?
Ugh! This was starting to get ridiculous. Entirely ridiculous. Kalinda shook her head, hands deep in dough. All he had to do was freaking say it again if that’s what he felt. How hard was that? Kalinda had opened the door for things to be different between them that night that started in the bathroom. They talked more, shared time just talking for hours, played and laughed. Hell, he even had her making jokes out loud.
He was not going to turn her whole damn life around and act like he hadn’t.
I mean, I’m not in love with him, right?
She couldn’t be. Okay, maybe a little. No, not even a bit. And that wasn’t the point. He’d said something pretty damn important and then hadn’t said it since.
Ugh. She couldn’t really understand herself right now, and that pissed her off some more. It shouldn’t be that hard to say what he felt and stand by it. He did it with everything else. Maybe he was waiting on her. Well, he could wait for a cold day in … Sigh. She was just talking herself into circles, and nothing was helping. He just needed to come out and freaking say it so she could go about her day.
