Her tender smile remaining, Imani put a kiss to Hill’s mouth, another to his forehead and stood. It didn’t look like she’d need to change into sleepy clothes that afternoon, she thought. With an approving nod, she smoothed both hands across the seat of black bell bottom jeans she wore with a matching T-shirt. Satisfied that her duties there were done, for the time being, she left the room on long, graceful strides.
Imani kept the boys’ door open a crack and was on her way to the nursery across the hall when she spotted her husband there leaning against the wall. “This is a surprise,” a happy smile made her dark, lovely face that much more radiant.
Instead of pushing from the wall, Roman only extended a hand to his wife.
Imani wasted no time accepting. She put a kiss to the back of Roman’s hand and squeezed it in both of hers. “I was just going to check on Smoak,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it, I already did,” Roman told her.
“Well then,” Imani smoothed her hands up and over his gray pin-striped shirt. She took a special interest in his sleeves which were rolled to display powerful forearms.
“Looks like I’ve suddenly come into some free time,” she shared in a voice as soft as the strokes she applied to the shirt sleeves. “Can you think of any way I could put it to good use?”
“Several ways,” a faint smile emerged, sending the hint of the indentation along Roman’s cheek that sharpened his already fierce features. “I’m afraid we’ll have to settle for talking right now, though.”
“Talking is good,” Imani sighed, her playful manner still evident. “Goes nicely with so many other things,” with that, she linked her arms around her husband’s neck. Her fingers delved into the dense onyx forest of his hair. Curling into the waves, she tugged his head down.
“Imani,” her name was a murmur on the sculpted perfection that was his mouth, but he was given no chance to verbalize anything more. She took possession and he lost all track of anything else he might have said. He savored the unhurried strokes and rotations of her tongue. The kiss personified sweetness, fortified by devotion and was laced with the lusty desire that flavored their sex life.
Roman had never proclaimed he was a fortune teller, but he was absolutely certain that he would never get enough of the woman in his arms. He gave his wife a few more seconds as the aggressor before he claimed the role. In one lithe move, he took Imani off her feet and put her back to the wall. With a fluid beauty, her thighs hugged his hips when her legs locked at his waist. Their kiss deepened, heightening in intensity until she began to tug at the hem of her T-shirt.
He broke the kiss and with a tortured sigh, set his forehead to her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” she kissed his ear and spoke with breathless assurance, “we won’t wake the boys.”
Roman shook his head where it rested. “That’s not it, Imani.”
Her expression changed then, pooling her almond-shaped ebony gaze. She re-evaluated her husband’s embrace then, equating it with desperation as opposed to desire.
“Roman?” She inched back as best she could until she’d managed to cup his jaw. “Roman, what is it?”
“Something’s happened, Serenita.”
“No,” she shuddered.
Serenita-Italian for serenity. When she’d understood what it meant, she’d found it both a sweet and endearing pet name. Sadly, his reasons for calling her that were usually because she had pulled him from a horrific mood. Oftentimes, those moods were brought on by some scandalous occurrence at work inside the challenging dynamics of his family.
Now, the name had simply become synonymous with bad news. Imani was determined to one day convince the love of her life to stop using it.
“Why don’t I draw you a bath? I could join you?” She nudged his nose with hers and felt encouraged by the smile he gave.
The gesture once again brought life to the splice that flashed in place of a dimple along the corner of his mouth. The feature was just another among many that made him more striking than he should’ve been allowed to be.
Encouraged by the smile, Imani tugged the collar of his shirt. “We could even have lunch in bed. We’d have a while before the boys wake...”
“We need to talk, Imani.”
She was the one sharing a tortured sigh then. Wearily, she rested her head back on the wall. “Who put you in a bad mood, this time?”
“It’s not like that, Sere. Not...exactly.”
Another hint of alertness flashed in Imani’s dark eyes. She pulled her head from the wall. “Where were you today?”
A muscle began to flex along his jaw. “Pitch and I, we got a call- we um...we got the call.”
“No,” Imani squeezed her eyes shut. “No, please-”
“I’m sorry, baby-”
“Where?” Imani heard her voice quake over the word and pressed her lips together in hopes of stifling the reaction. “Is-is she okay? I-I’ll call Candy and we’ll go-”
“No, Love, she-” Roman shook his head. “That won’t help her now.”
Imani began to shake, her hope-filled eyes now tear-filled and spilling water onto her cheeks.
Roman kept her close, his heart aching for the woman he loved more than life. Attempting to soothe her in a mix of words that fused English and Italian, he carried her downstairs while she cried in his arms like a child.
~~~
“What happened?” Imani shivered. She showed no sign of being able to soothe the reaction despite the blanket and Roman’s fierce embrace as he rocked her on their den sofa. Her fingers curled in and out of his shirt as though she required continual reassurance that he was there.
“Why?” Her voice was small, lost in a sob. “Why would someone do this? Sh-she was an angel. Most of the time that word is just an endearment, but she really was.”
“She was, Sere, she was,” Roman kept his mouth at Imani’s temple.
“Are they sure? Sure it was her?”
“They are,” Roman knew it was all he could say. He would never share the particulars of the gruesome experience he and Pitch had just endured. They had agreed to never share the details of what was done to Giselle.
