Roman Holiday - By Ashleyn Poston Page 0,4

hem and my skin. My mind goes numb. Who needs filet mignon and wine? He turns me around and presses his lips against mine.

"Yeah, it's hot," he murmurs into my mouth, and eases me backwards onto the bed. "You'll be hot at the beach. Wish I could see you in your bathing suit."

I laugh nervously. I hate bathing suits. Almost as much as I hate Roman Holiday. "You sure you can't come to the beach with me? If we behave the step-idiot might let us share a room together..." I tease.

He sighs against my cheek. "Baby, you know I can't. We're not...you know."

"But we could be," I almost-argue, but it only sounds like a suggestion. I can never argue with Cas. It's not that I'm afraid to, it's just...

Well, I don't want him to non-dating dump me.

He rolls off me and snags the takeout from the nightstand. I sit up as he hands me a pair of chopsticks. He asks, "Aren't we good? Like we are?"

No, I want to say, because this isn't real. I bite into an eggroll to prevent myself from answering.

"Besides," he continues with a mouthful of lo mien, "I have to house-sit. Dad’s paranoid about someone stealing his pool table.” He points his chopsticks downstairs. The pool table is mahogany, but it might as well be made of elephant tusks for how much it cost.

I fish around in the lo mien for a crunchy red onion. “But isn’t that why you have a security guard on-call?”

“He's shit. I know how you feel baby, I really do. I want to go...but I have things here and...stuff." He runs his large, warm hands down my thigh as James Bond jumps out of an exploding airplane and tumbles mercilessly through the clouds. “But tonight? Would you be happy with tonight?”

“Of course." I try to laugh off the anxiety that is beginning to bloom again. The Chinese food feels like stones in my stomach. I abandon my chopsticks in the box. "Tonight will be perfect."

“Perfect,” he echoes, clicking off the TV, and sets our takeout on the nightstand again. His hand traces the line in my jaw and gently brings my face to his. He smells like fresh laundry, crisp and clean. He has the best hygiene of any guy I know. Immaculate hair, plucked eyebrows, a caramel tan that accents every curve of his thick well-defined muscles. He kisses my neck, and runs his fingers through my fuchsia hair. I normally have it pulled up into a ponytail, but he loves my long hair wild and unruly.

In the real world, far away from this bedroom, I am anything but unruly.

I swallow the lump in my throat as his lips migrate up my neck to my cheeks. The sensation makes me shiver because he's so gentle, and his lips are so warm. He kisses my ear, my eyelids, my forehead, and finally my lips.

There’s a radio somewhere else in the house buzzing to the faint tune of Roman Holiday's "Crush on You."

I close my eyes, and sigh into his mouth, surrendering into him. He wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me on top of him, and my legs instinctively clamp around his midsection. He tastes like Po Chen’s egg rolls and Coke Zero. My heart is thrumming a million miles a minute.

Be confident. Be cool. Be okay with this.

He claps his hands twice and the room crashes into darkness. His hair glows like gold in the faint light of the electric candles on his headboard. His parents don’t allow real candles in the house, so he buys electric ones. He has a whole drawer full of them. The mood has to be perfect, the set compelling. What’s a good story without a good backdrop? In his room, everything is strategic. Everything is placed to his advantage—the TV remote, the clapper, the tissues, and the picture of a half-naked starlet on the ceiling. Perfectly placed and perfectly lit, as if we are the centerpieces in an extravagant music video.

Roman Holiday is so loud now, wailing "I want to crush, crush, crush on you. Crush on you like back in high school. I want to crush with you, let me crush with you."

The irony almost kills the mood.

He traces his fingers so slowly and carefully up my body, my thighs and knobby knees, like a sculptor accenting the curvature of a statue. My heart rattles in my ribcage like a miniature earthquake, and soon I don't hear Roman Holiday at