Teaching Roman by Gennifer Albin

wanted me to take a chance with Roman. That much was clear, but she had no clue how complicated that would be for both of us. We made sense in Mexico, so, of course, she saw us that way. But we both had lives back in Olympic Falls.
    Roman dropped my hand, drawing my attention back to this moment. I only had one more evening with him. I shouldn’t waste it. He waded in a few feet and called. “Trust me?”
    My mouth twisted into a smile. The swimming lessons he’d promised me had been few and far between, but maybe it was the relative calm of the ocean tonight. Or maybe it was that I wasn’t the same girl who’d flown to Mexico less than a week ago.
    Or maybe it was that he was here with me.
    Tugging the knot tied at the side of my wrap dress, I let it fall open. I couldn’t see Roman’s eyes clearly in the dark, but I did know he was suddenly very still. I made a show of it, shrugging the dress over my shoulders and finally letting it flutter to the sand. Thanks to the unexpectedly hedonistic side of myself I’d discovered during my time here, I was braless. Hooking my thumbs in the band of my panties, I called out, “Does this answer your question?”
    “Come on in. The water is warm.” I heard the smile in his voice.
    “I thought we were going for a swim.” I wiggled my panties lower but didn’t take them off.
    Roman’s shirt was over his head in a flash, revealing his perfectly lickable slab of abs. He strode toward me and grabbed me around the waist. “Your turn.”
    “I feel like you got more bang for your buck.” I raised my eyebrows suggestively as I pressed myself against him. My body responded immediately, my skin blazing to life at his touch. But underneath the smoldering intensity of his embrace, a delicious ache spread through my chest. My breath hitched as a familiar rawness built in my throat. Roman’s finger tipped my chin up so that our eyes met. We didn’t say anything. We didn’t have to. The same happy confusion shone in his dark eyes.
    But we didn’t speak because we both felt the moments between us slipping away. We’d said a week, but that was before—before the irresistible connection I felt to him had shifted, evolving into something I wasn’t prepared for.
    Something I’d never felt before.
    Suddenly all the questions I’d had vanished along with all the reasons why I didn’t need him in my life. At that moment he was the very air in my lungs. He was the beat of my heart. With his finger still pressed to my chin, Roman leaned down, slanting his lips to meet mine in a gentle kiss. The breeze brushed past us and the tide washed over our feet and Roman Markson was kissing me for the first time.
    It wasn’t my first kiss. It wasn’t our first kiss.
    But it was the first kiss that ever mattered.
    I’d gone a thousand miles away from my life to finally discover home in the arms of someone I had to leave tomorrow.
    But this—what was happening between us—was so much more. This wasn’t a fling. Roman wouldn’t become a wistful story I told about that one time in Mexico . I was going to see him on campus. But this wasn’t like other guys I’d slept with. I couldn’t imagine averting my eyes out of embarrassment or sharing a casual greeting. The thought of leaving him behind—leaving us behind—seemed impossible.
    Roman broke away and peered into my eyes searchingly. “I don’t want you to go.”
    I opened my mouth to speak but I couldn’t find the words. I didn’t have a choice, and we both knew it. I took a deep breath and shook my head. “Let’s not talk about it now.”
    Part of me wanted to discuss it. I couldn’t help wishing that we could find a way. We could stay here forever, abandon our lives in Washington, make love on the beach, grow old together. A smile crept onto my lips at the idea, but it was as fleeting as the fantasy.
    “Jessica, no one has ever fit into my life like you. I’ve spent this week feeling as if I’d found the piece of myself that