Page 148 of Blood Stone

Roman didn’t seem to mind, either. He picked up her hand and stroked the back of it. Then he smiled. “And now I’ve lost my tongue again.Christos.” He looked at her. “I’ve never said it before, Kate. I want to. It’s right there.”

“Never? Not once? Not even to Garrett?”

“Well, once, maybe.” He gave a laugh.

“That’sall?”

Garrett’s arm tightened around her waist.

“How many times does it need saying?” Roman muttered.

“Everyone needs to hear that you love them. Always. Often. And you’re Greek, Roman. You don’t even have the excuse of growing up in a repressed culture like the stuffy British!”

“Kate…” Garrett said in a warning tone.

Roman was watching her. Listening. He was hearing her, even if he wasn’t reacting.

“You can’t tell me that Byzantine society was so formalized you got all that hugging and kissing the Greeks do trained right out of you?” Kate demanded.

Garrett shook her. “Stop,” he demanded.

She turned her head to look over her shoulder at him. “What?”

Garrett gave a tiny grimace. “I was just trying to stop you from making it worse.”

“Worse, how?”

“Roman was enslaved in fourteen fifty-three, when the Turks took Constantinople. He was sixteen and the rest of his family were executed.”

Kate whipped around to look at Roman. He was rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. But all she could think about was their lunch date, the day she had met Garrett, when she had spoken of buying Roman with hundred dollar bills and his gruff, angry response:No one buys or sells me.Of course they didn’t. Not anymore. He’d had his fill of it.

Guilt and sorrow touched her. “How do you put up with us humans stumbling all over your past the way we do?” she asked Roman. “How do you stand staying hidden, your long, long lives?”

Roman shrugged. “For a while, I couldn’t stand it. That rabbit hole, remember? I was all ready to take a long dive down that hole and not come back out again.”

“And if Nial gets his way, we won’t be hidden for much longer,” Garrett added.

“That’s why you’re all here. In L.A.?”

“Not just a pretty face,” Garrett murmured, sounding proud.

Kate studied Roman. “Will you mind very much? Having everyone know?”

He stroked her jaw with his finger. “Not now.” And he kissed her.

She caught her breath, for the kiss was much more powerful, with Garrett still pressed up against her bare shoulder. She felt him shift against her as Roman’s kiss lingered. His arm moved and his hand found her knee through the slit in her dress.

She moaned into Roman’s mouth as her body leapt with heat and wanting. It was no simple lust. This was far more complicated and much more powerful, with both of them there.

Then Garrett’s lips slid over the nape of her neck and she knew she was in heaven.

Roman released her.

“Don’t stop,” she begged, her voice hoarse.

“If I don’t we’ll end up on the front page ofVarietyor in jail,” Roman told her.

“Or both,” Garrett murmured, his lips brushing against her neck. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”

“My place,” Kate said.

“Everyone knows your address,” Garrett pointed out. “Including the entire Hollywood press corp.”

“My place,” Roman said. “Garrett only has a hotel and that’s too easy to penetrate. I have security.”

“I’ll have the car pull around,” Kate said, reaching for her phone.