14

The Velvet Lounge was just within the boundary of The Break. Blackout shutters on the windows ensured the place looked absolutely dead from the street.

When we walked through the door, it was like walking through a portal into a movie. The carpets were lush and the walls were covered in a deep, purple velvet material. Soft music filtered through speakers and the people—mostly couples intimately seated at half-moon velvet booths—conversed in muted tones. If sophisticated elegance had a name, it would be The Velvet Lounge. We weren't in The Smoke anymore.

The ma?tre d', a woman dressed in a slinky, sequined gown, met us and Roman handed over his plastic credit card for her to swipe, even though we hadn't even ordered anything yet.

I glanced around in awe as she led us to a velvet booth. All the booths were cleverly angled to give a certain amount of privacy and still face a wood-slatted floor section. It quickly became clear that I was totally underdressed. Roman was okay. The men seemed to be more casual, but the women favored evening gowns or shiny, sexy tops. I was still wearing the jeans I'd put on this morning. At least I'd exchanged my hoodie for a long-sleeved, soft top and my coat.

When the ma?tre d' took my coat from me, I quickly slid into the booth self-consciously. It was stupid. There were far more pressing problems in this world, but I was still relieved to hide my denim-clad legs beneath table.

Because of the seating arrangement, Roman and I were sitting side-by-side rather than across a table from each other.

Once he had given our drink order and we were alone, I pulled a face at him. "You could have told me how fancy this place is."

Roman shifted, planting an elbow on the table and turning toward me. His gaze lingered on me before he replied in a husky voice that sent a warm shiver over my skin, "You look beautiful."

Heat prickled my cheeks. The way he said it, the way he was looking at me, it didn't matter whether I looked beautiful or like a bedraggled rag. I felt beautiful.

I was suddenly, instantly aware of just how sinfully beautiful he was, too. I mean, it was always there, an awareness humming beneath the surface, but every now and then, like this very moment, it took me by storm and became impossible to ignore.

The ambience here didn't help, either. It was designed for lingering, heated looks and sexy thoughts.

Which begged a question I probably didn't want to know the answer to. But since when had that ever stopped me?

"This place is very…" intimate "…cozy," I said. "Have you been here before?"

And with whom?

He considered his answer, considered me, and he grasped what I was actually asking. My subtly wasn't nearly as stealth as I'd thought.

"I like the mood here," he said. "It's a good place to depress. I usually come here alone, and people leave me alone here."

"You've never brought anyone here?" I had to ask. Because apparently I was a glutton for punishment.

Roman shook his head so slightly, I almost missed it.

"Not even Amelia?"

"Amelia?" His brow lifted.

"You loved her very much."

"I love her very much."

The correction stung far more than it should have. It wasn't anything I hadn't already suspected. Amelia was one of the many thorns in our marriage, the reason Roman did not want to want me. She was gone, but never gone—as Roman had just confirmed.

I pulled back, putting some desperately needed distance between us.

"Georga." He reached in the buffer I'd carved for myself, his palm cupping my jaw, his thumb grazing just below my bottom lip, and I didn't pull away.

I should have. I was feeling too much right now, always too much when it came to Roman, to be drawn into a cat and mouse game.

But I didn't pull away.

I didn't want to. And this was the reckless side of my personality that Roman always had so much to say about. I didn't want to protect myself. Not from him. Not from this world. Not from the truth.

A server arrived with the bottle of wine Roman had ordered, breaking the tension-filled pause between us. He was young, too young to be dressed in a three-piece black suit with a bowtie, too young to be working a job.

Roman tasted a sip and, at his nod, the server filled our glasses.

"Are you ready to order?"

I opened my mouth to ask for a menu.

Roman beat me to it. "Yes, thank you."

The server was the menu, rattling out, "We have a seafood special today. Calamari, prawns and white fish. As well as the green and BBQ platters."

I was impressed. Proper seafood, from the sea rather than the lake, was only very occasionally available and mostly unaffordable.

Roman glanced at me. "Any preference?"

I shook my head, and he ordered a mixed seafood and green platter to share.

Once we were alone again, I said, "There's a Seafood Baron, isn't there?"

A dry chuckle escaped him. "He calls himself a Sea Lord, but essentially, yes."

I dragged my glass closer, my fingers twining around the stem as I thought about the server. And the children I'd seen on the streets today. "That server was like, thirteen or fourteen? Shouldn't he still be at school?"

"There's no formal education here," Roman said.

"But Jenna is a teacher."

"Where?"

"The community center."

"Ah, the community center offers reading and writing, and some basic math," he explained. "But it's optional and most parents don't make their kids attend. There are adult classes for people who show promise as a factory foreman or some other positions that require elementary education, but that's it."

"So there are no formally educated people here, like scientists and doctors?" I said in disbelief. "But they do IVF treatments here, right?"

"The Protectorate recruits their qualified staff from Capra."

"Scientists and doctors are exiled?" I'd never heard of anything like that.

"They volunteer." Roman hesitated, then added, "There are incentives here for men who haven't found wives in Capra."

I processed that. Then it hit me, what was so wrong with some of the scenes I'd witnessed today. The ratios were all wrong.

"There are more women here." I played that thought through to the end. "I mean, the ratio of women to men, it's not as unbalanced as in Capra."

"It's not," he confirmed. "The imbalance comes from natural selection. I don't know all the scientific details, but the IVF treatments here use sperm sorting to pre-select the gender. They can determine the baby's gender at the point of fertilization."

"They can actually do that?"

"Apparently."

"Then why wouldn't they do it in Capra?"

"The end goal of Capra is to fix nature," he reminded me. "They try to keep everything as natural as possible there."

There were so many other questions on the tip of my tongue about the world at large, but for once I was more interested in my little world.

Amelia.

Every time her name came up, we got distracted. As if the universe was sending me a warning. What you don't know can't hurt you. Like everything else, that popular saying was a big, fat lie. Amelia stood between me and Roman, whether I knew about her or not.

"Tell me about Amelia." That came out too direct, too prickly. I sucked on a breath and smoothed my tone. "You were about to, in the apartment."

Roman sipped on his wine. He wasn't looking at me, and he didn't start talking.

"It's okay," I relented, and then immediately changed my mind. It wasn't okay. "You may think it's none of my business, and maybe you're right, but it doesn't feel that way to me. You're in love with another woman, and that puts her right here into this marriage between you and me."

That got his attention.

"It's not like that." He frowned at me. "It's not what you think."

"You literally just told me that you're still in love with her."

"Not in love," he growled. "I love her…I don't know. It was so long ago. I was a boy. I didn't know the difference, and I don't know how to judge it from here. I haven't seen her since I was fifteen years old. But she was my world. My family. My only friend."

His voice darkened, but this time I recognized that darkness as angry pain.

"She was everything to you," I murmured, lifting my glass to my lips and sipping.

"I vowed to always be there for her, to keep her safe in this fucked up world, and I couldn't."

Tears stung my eyes. I tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing adequate.

"We grew up together," Roman said after a brief pause. He dragged a hand through his hair and held it there, looking at me, but I got the feeling he wasn't really seeing me. "I don't remember how old I was when Amelia came to the orphanage, but it was young. She was always there. That's how I remember her."

I thought he knew Amelia from The Smoke. "You were at WOE together?"

"Not WOE."

"You told me that's where you grew up." The Widows and Orphans Establishment in Capra.

"I told you I was an orphan," he said.

I'd assumed the rest, and he hadn't corrected me.

"The Protectorate runs the Gardens Children Home here in The Smoke," he went on. "I wasn't born in Capra."

"Oh." And since we were on the subject and I had a burning desire to know as much about Roman as he'd tell, I asked gently, "What happened to your parents?"

He looked at me with surprise, as if he'd never been asked that before.

"I'm sorry, if you don't—"

"It's okay," he cut in. "It doesn't matter. I never knew anything about my parents. Neither did Amelia. That's not uncommon here in The Smoke."

Again, one answer birthed a hundred questions.

I let it go.

"Where is Amelia now, then?"

"She was sold."

My last sip of wine went down the wrong pipe. I spluttered, my eyes widening on him.

"That happens here." His features hardened to brittle granite. One false prick, and he would shatter. "I didn't know that back then, not until Amelia just disappeared one day. But I learned fast."

"Sold to who?" I asked. "And why?"

"One or other baron." Bitterness laced his voice, dulled with something that could be acceptance, but sounded more like determination or commitment, or resolve. To do what? "She'd just turned twelve, and twelve year old girls are a high commodity."

I tried to wrap my head around the obvious point I was missing, and couldn't. Why would twelve year old girls be so valuable to the Outerlanders? Because there were so few women out there? The ratio of men to women was 7-3. That may not be true in The Smoke, but I'd seen far more men than women across the bridge at Sector Five.

But buying girls? And why not wait for them to grow up first?

"That's horrific," I exclaimed. "I'm so sorry. That's the last time you saw Amelia?"

His jaw worked. "I didn't know at first what had happened. She just went missing. But I went looking, and I found an underground human trafficking ring. I found the bastard who took Amelia and I killed him."

"You what?" I exclaimed.

"He deserved it."

"That may be so, but you were only fifteen, Roman." I'd heard something about his past. Tainted past, Rose has called it. I guess this was it, and it was sadder than anything I could imagine. "That's a terrible burden to carry."

"The only burden I carry is regret that I didn't kill him before he took Amelia," Roman said, his voice as stone cold as his eyes. That dark pain from earlier was gone. Any vulnerability was gone. "If James hadn't stopped me, I would have gone after every one of those bastards."

"Who is James?"

"James Gordon is the senior warden sponsoring me. He brought me into Capra and he's nominated me as his successor when he retires next month."

Our food arrived, and Roman went quiet as the server set out the platter and asked if we needed anything. I assured him we were fine and he left.

Roman drained his glass of wine and refilled it.

I put a hand up when he looked at me. "I'm a slow drinker, thanks."

"The man I killed was a Grabough, nephew to the big man," he went on. "They were out for blood, and I was happy to give and take it. James knocked some sense into my fifteen year old brain. Getting myself killed wouldn't help Amelia, or any of the girls who came after. I had to be smart about it."

He spooned asparagus stalks and fish onto his plate and nudged the platter closer to me. "There was a lot of heat on me at the time. The Graboughs wanted vengeance. The Protectorate wasn't happy that a warden-trainee had gone after vigilante justice on their turf, although they weren't prepared to go in themselves and stop the trafficking ring."

I picked at a piece of calamari with my fork and dipped it into a bowl of sauce. "What about the wardens?"

"Most of them are of the opinion that what happens in The Smoke, stays in The Smoke," he said. "They weren't impressed with me, either. James sent me into the wild to cool my heels and wait out the heat."

My jaw went slack. "Are you serious?"

Roman shrugged. "I went looking for Amelia."

"You didn't find her."

"It's a big world out there." He popped a forkful of food into his mouth and chewed. "Anyway, that's why I wanted to talk to you. When I returned, James and I put a plan together."

The puzzle that was Roman slotted into place. "Getting you promoted into a senior position."

"That's the first step in getting the Eastern Coalition to grant authority to the wardens in The Smoke," he said. "The Protectorate can keep Gardens, but I want everything else."

"That's a huge task."

"The Families have ruled too long without any accountability. I intend to put an end to their atrocities on my watch, but only High Wardens get a seat around that table."

So much about him and his ambitions made sense now. "That's why you're gathering evidence against the council members."

"My methods are not ethical, I get that, but I will do this by any means, in Amelia's name. So whatever you intend to do or say with regards to that evidence, please think of the next girl that can perhaps be saved."

"I never planned to do anything," I assured him. "I will never breathe a word of it to anyone. That's a promise."

He looked at me a long minute, then gave a slow nod of appreciation and acknowledgment.

We ate mostly in silence for the rest of the meal, listening to the soft music. I understood why Roman liked to come here, why he'd need to depress. There was so much ugliness in this world. Pain around every corner.

My gaze kept sliding to him, again and again. He'd shown me his vulnerabilities tonight, sliced himself wide open and let me in, and I was in trouble. I could feel my heart swelling, the cracks un-cracking, the million shattered pieces un-shattering and sweeping back inside.

He caught one of my looks and it seemed to settle into his features, melting away the glass-cut edges. "If you keep looking at me like that, I'm going to have to kiss you."

He was teasing. It was there in the lilting drawl and the warmth creasing into the corners of his smiling eyes. But there was gravity there was well, anchoring the playful tease to a promise.

"You wouldn't dare." My pulse fluttered as I sent him a cheeky grin. "We're in public."

"This public can handle a kiss." He winged a brow at me. "It's not like I'll be undressing you."

He's not being serious, I told myself. Roman doesn't flirt. And yet, wasn't that exactly what we were doing?

"The last time you kissed me, you ran." That wasn't a low shot. It was my version of commitment to the flutter in my pulse and this new thing between us, whatever it was. "You didn't want to want me. That was never because of Amelia, was it?"

He had a lot of emotions where Amelia was concerned, but I hadn't picked up a long-lost love vibe. He wasn't pining over a woman he could never have.

Roman pushed his plate aside and turned to me, squaring one knee on the booth between us. "What happens with you and me has never had anything to do with Amelia."

"Then what was that about?" I had to know. We could be as playful and flirty as all hells, but this would never be just a game. "Your ego? You couldn't ever want me because you hadn't wanted me as a wife in the first place?"

He didn't take offence. "It's much worse than that."

"Now I'm intrigued."

"You won't be happy with the answer."

"Try me."

His mouth flattened. The sigh he dragged through his teeth suggested I seriously wouldn't like the answer. "You weren't real."

I didn't know what to do with that. So I said nothing, I just looked at him.

Whatever he saw in my eyes quickly made him say, "What I mean is, you were a citizen of Capra, sheltered from the real world and innocently living your perfect little life in your little make-believe world, and I didn't want to get dragged into that. You think the walls are a prison. I think the walls are a cotton-padded buffer to reality."

Wow. My throat scratched. "Do you still feel that way?"

He reached for my hand, the one not frozen in a grip around my fork, and lifted it onto the table in his. "Of course not."

I chewed on the corner of my lip, searching his eyes, and I believed him. "What changed?"

"You became real." His fingers twined through mine in a firm grasp, as if he were afraid I'd leak away from him. "You showed me that Capra—that what that life had done to you, was just as messed up as the world beyond the walls, it's just a different kind of messed up."

"You needed me to be imperfect."

"It took me a while to get there," he said softly, his thumb tracing light circles on my skin, "but I just needed you to be you."

He leaned in, his gaze sinking into me, and I felt hopelessly trapped. I wasn't starting to fall for Roman all over again. I was falling in love with him, and I was falling hard. I could resist the pull of him. I'd done it before. I could probably come up with a thousand reasons to push him away and protect my heart.

Maybe it was the wine.

Maybe it was this damn Velvet Lounge.

And maybe it was just Roman.

My gaze dipped to his mouth, and the longing that stirred in me was so vast, I didn't know how to cross it without slipping into the quicksand.

I slipped, lifting my eyes to his with un-shuttered want, and he took the invitation. His lips brushed over mine, a kiss as gentle as a butterfly's wings, stroking my senses and skittering warmth through me. He curled a hand around the nape of my neck and the kiss turned possessive, his lips warm and firm, demanding more, and then his tongue parted my lips and slid in, stroking and exploring and joining us in way that I'd never joined with any other person.

Everything around me fell away.

There was just the taste and feel of him, and the flame sparking between us, and the absolute knowing that if I'd died before this moment, I would never have truly lived.

His mouth shaped mine, his kisses hard and demanding, soft and feathered, stealing my breath and the marrow in my bones.

He fisted a hand in my hair, his grip silken iron, his jaw brushing over my cheek as he slowly dragged his mouth off mine.

I groaned. I wasn't ready for this to end.

His breath was warm—and a little ragged—against my skin, and then he pulled back. "If we don't stop now, there's going to be some undressing in public."

My blood heated, but it wasn't embarrassment. I didn't even glance around to see if we'd drawn attention. I was slowly catching fire at the thought of taking this back to the apartment and seeing where it ended.

"I may be open to that." I heard that and my cheeks flamed, this time from embarrassment. I winced. "I mean, not in public."

He chuckled, a low, husky chuckle. His eyes glinted silver, but there was no hardness or coldness in the look he settled into me. "If I didn't have to get back to Capra tonight, I'd take you up on that."

I sighed. Heavily. "Or you don't go back, and we skip Julian's dinner party."

"And what happens if he comes to the cabin instead and you're not there?"

Disappointment flooded me, and not just because he was leaving me all hot and bothered. For a few blissful minutes, the outside world had ceased to exist. But it hadn't really gone anywhere.