Rome

CHAPTER 10

Rome

Taking it slow sucked. Don’t get me wrong, I was pretty sure I was falling in love with Cora. I had spent the last two weeks trying to drink her out of my head and feeling like a royal asshole for ditching her without a word. It was another pussy move in a list that seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds. I was embarrassed by the fact I couldn’t pull it together, ashamed she had seen me so broken and open. I had known going in that she was leery about all the dips and valleys in my personality, but having her bear witness to my own personal hell was just too much for my ego and already battered pride to take, so I ran. It was cowardly and it was weak, but I didn’t think I could handle her looking at me like I was someone to pity, someone that needed to be fixed. So I buried my head in a bottle of vodka and tried to drink it all away. My reasons for avoiding her didn’t hold any more water than my reasons for avoiding my folks, a fact that I couldn’t ignore or drink away.

It became apparent the very next day that not talking to her, not being able to touch her, to hold her, hurt way worse than my pride did. She was under my skin, buried far enough down that I realized if I had to get help in order to be someone she could be with, then that was my only option and it was time to stop running and just do it. I was so glad she was willing to give me another shot. I needed her, and now with the baby, messed up or not, I was pretty sure she needed me, too. I was willing to do whatever it took to make this thing between us work, even if that meant all the sexual attraction and potent heat that had drawn us together initially had to be banked. There was nothing quite like being put in the friend zone by your pregnant girlfriend.

I spent the entire month of September keeping my hands in my pockets and my dick in my pants. I went with Cora to the doctor, which was exciting and terrifying at the same time. We went to dinner, hung out like a normal couple that was just starting to date, and I even entertained the idea of making peace with my folks like I had tentatively done with Shaw, because I knew it would make her happy and I was sick of running scared. I was tired of trying to guess what others’ expectations of me were and had to get my head around the idea that my expectations of myself were enough. The idea of bridging that gap did make her happy, which made me happy, even if the idea was like torture for me. I just didn’t know what to say to them in order to get the conversation started.

It was fine, the slower pace. I liked spending time with her, we got along great, and when we didn’t, the way those two-toned eyes flashed and sparked a million different colors made me have visions of makeup sex that were triple-X-rated. It wasn’t like I was only with her to hook up, but I would be a big fat liar if I didn’t admit that I missed it, missed her and all that colorful skin. Sex with Cora was unlike sex I had ever had before, and not just because she was pierced down there and had all those colorful jewels embedded in her skin. Despite her refrain that she was holding out for some unobtainable vision of perfect, she just got me, like really got me even though I was as far from perfect as a guy could get.

I didn’t know how she could stand the lack of sex either. Her hormones were all over the place lately. She was more mouthy and a little snarkier than usual, but there was something in her eyes. I would catch her looking at me out of the corner of her eye, like she was feeling the same repressed desire as I was. Like we were sitting on the brink of something major, something bigger than everything we had experienced before, but it was like she was scared of the drop-off. She let me kiss her, let me cuddle her up on the couch while we watched movies, she was openly affectionate, holding my hand, wrapping her arms around me, and letting me know she was there. She was always the one who pulled away, who cut the contact short and stayed on the right side of sexually unfulfilled. I could see the regret, the frustration on her pretty face, but I wasn’t willing to push my luck, so I didn’t question it or try and push it with her. She was willing to take me as is. I was willing to take her and any obstacles she put in my way as par for the course. Sometimes I thought she looked at me like she was downright terrified, not of me, but of something I was making her think or feel.

I was making up for lost time at the bar as well as trying to get my relationship with Brite and the regulars back on track. Brite was back, mostly I think to make sure I didn’t drink him out of bar and profit the way I had at the end of the previous month. I think he was worried I was going to spiral out of control again. To prove to him that I had no intention of ruining my life, of letting Cora raise that baby alone without me, I was working extra hard and had all the improvements he asked for nearly done. I had even found a few of my own to add to the upgrades. The place looked like a nearly new bar; it was spotless, polished, and not a surface wasn’t touched up and brand-new. There was an influx of new blood coming in the door and business had picked up enough that Brite asked Asa to stay on as the permanent evening bartender. My personal thought on that was that he liked the view. There wasn’t a night the bar wasn’t surrounded by pretty young things all clamoring for the blond country boy’s attention. Asa was just that good.

I still didn’t know what I was going to do when I was done with the Bar, but I was making a conscious effort not to lose sleep over it. I was losing sleep over enough other things. My future had enough twists and turns in it that beating myself up over not having all the answers was just exhausting and I didn’t have the energy to do it anymore.

It was also a day-to-day struggle to deal with the nightmares and the weird slips in my mind that drew me back to the desert and all that blood and death in a more healthy and positive way than drinking myself stupid. An occasional vodka tonic was one thing; trying to kill my liver was another. When I woke up now, I went running or took the Harley out for a long ride until I came back into myself. It took longer but it worked just as well, and talking to Brite’s friend was making me realize that it was just like everything else in life: I had to work at it, had to practice getting better. He also made me see that if I let the people that loved me help, it would make the process go faster. Just like Shaw told me, everyone was just going to have to learn to love me in a new way and I had to be all right with that. It was okay to ask them for help, that didn’t make me weak, and I should be appreciating still being around to listen to them, not feeling guilty about it.

One night Cora and I were sprawled out on the couch at my place. Nash was out with Rowdy and my girl was all cute and curled up in a ball resting against my side. She had picked some dumb girly movie to watch after dinner and it was all I could do to keep my eyes open, it was so boring. I liked the way she fit next to me, she was so small and so deceptively delicate, and she brought all the protective instincts I had to the surface, which was funny because she was more than capable of protecting herself. It was hard for me to recall what my boring black-and-white world looked like before she stormed into it and bled color into every nook and cranny. I just wanted to take care of her, be with her.

“You hate this, don’t you?” She was rubbing her thumb along the back of my hand and across my knuckles. I could feel her stop and worry over the raised scars and marks that dotted my skin.

“Naw, it’s fine.”

She laughed next to me. “You’re about to fall asleep.”

I was, but I figured she didn’t need to worry about it. My attention kept drifting in and out. She wanted to see the girl in the movie get her happily-ever-after, and I figured I could hold out for that long. Besides, crashing out on the couch next to her was the closest I’d gotten to sleeping with her in the last month. I shifted so I could curl my arm around her and pull her closer to my side. I dropped a kiss on the top of her soft hair and told my overly anxious lower half to chill out. She had one arm wrapped around my waist and her other hand resting on my thigh. It was all very innocent, but telling my denied libido that was another story. Taking a little catnap might be the only way I made it through the rest of this date night without getting myself in trouble.

Between one breath and the next, I was zoned out somewhere between being all the way asleep and awake. I couldn’t concentrate on the stupid movie and my mind just took a detour down a path I wished it hadn’t. Everything sort of just faded away and I was back to a day I relived over and over, it was a waking nightmare and I couldn’t stop the avalanche of memories as they free-falled on top of each other. I would have given everything I possessed to make it stop, to keep that particular day locked in a box where it couldn’t get to me anymore.

I had only been back from Pakistan for a few months, the twins were barely in their twenties, and I got word I was headed to Iraq. My folks were freaking out, everyone wanted me to leave the army after this deployment was over, but I was excited to go. Rule and Remy had moved out, Shaw was almost ready to graduate, and being at home alone with my folks was boring. There was only so much of “Rule is terrible, Remy is perfect, you’re a fool and could be doing something more important with your life” I could take.

I liked being in the army. I moved up the ranks fast. I was good with the other soldiers and had a natural talent for taking the lead. When I was home I was just the oldest brother of the twins. It was all always about the twins. Not that I didn’t love my brothers. Hell, I went to war to make sure they had a safe and secure world to live in, but it got old just being the guy whose job it was to keep Rule in check and to let Remy’s light shine. In the army I was Sergeant Archer. I was the one calling the shots. I was the one running missions and I had an entire platoon of men and women to keep safe, not just two boys who were opposite sides of the same troublemaking coin.

Mom insisted on a family dinner on my last night. I didn’t want to do it. Rule was always an ass to everyone, and something was going on between Remy and Shaw. They had an odd relationship anyway. They hardly ever touched, they acted more like girlfriends than a couple, and no matter how much they said they were just best friends, there was something more going on there, I just knew it. I also couldn’t figure out why when she thought no one was looking, Shaw was making goo-goo eyes at the wrong twin. It all seemed complicated and trivial compared to what I had been dealing with day in and day out, so I was not looking forward to it.

Dinner was as expected. Rule showed up with blue hair spiked up in every direction and sporting a black eye. Remy was distracted and evasive, while Shaw seemed sullen and out of sorts. I did what I always did and tried to play the middleman. I asked about Rule’s apprenticeship at the tattoo shop, I talked to Remy about his new job, and grilled Shaw about getting ready to start her freshman year at college. My folks let me be the intermediary, like they always did, while dropping not so subtle hints about how much I was missed around the homestead. It was irritating and annoying, but I powered through knowing I would be halfway around the world the same time tomorrow. We struggled through dinner and then Remy made excuses for him and Shaw to go. Something was happening there but neither of them seemed like they were in any hurry to share. The four of us walked outside after saying good night to my parents and stood in the driveway. Rule gave me a hug and then punched me in the gut.

“Be safe. I’ll miss your grouchy ass. Check your e-mail more this time when you’re gone.”

I ruffled his stupid hair and punched him back. “Try and stay out of jail while I’m gone.”

He snorted. “What’s the fun in that?”

Shaw rolled her eyes and hugged me.

“I love you. Please come home in one piece. I’ll send you a million care packages.”

Rule drawled, “Send him porn.” Which made her glare at him and started them off on a childish round of bickering.

Remy shook my hand and pounded me on the back. When he pulled back I swear I saw something move across those pale eyes. I wanted to sit on him and make him talk to me, but there wasn’t any time.

“Be safe. Take care of yourself, Rome. This family couldn’t function without you.”

I laughed it off because he was the golden son. He was the one we all wanted to be like. I inclined my head toward where Rule and Shaw were standing and arguing still.

“I’ll take care of me, you take care of them. Try and keep your idiot other half out of trouble.”

He just smiled somewhat sadly. “Which one?”

“Both of them.”

We all hugged again and I went back inside. The next morning I was back on my way to a different desert and all of it was just mindless chatter that I forgot all about. I hit the ground running, went into mission-critical mode and under total blackout as soon as I landed. I was doing reconnaissance with a spec ops team for nearly two weeks before I had any kind of contact with the base.

They had been trying to reach me out in the field for three days before they managed to find someone that could relay a critical message from home.

Remy was dead.

There was an accident. He crashed his car on the interstate and hadn’t made it. I was being granted only a few days’ leave to get home for the funeral and then was expected back in proper fighting condition.

I felt like someone had stuck a serrated knife right through the center of my chest.

Remy was the good one, the best of the three of us. He was kind, he was loving, he was careful, and there was no way he was the one of us that was going to die before his time. Rule was going to get shot by an angry boyfriend or piss off the wrong meat head at a bar. I was going to step on a land mine or get taken out by enemy fire. There was no way it was Remy’s time.

I flew back in a daze. I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. I was numb. I think that was how I missed my mom going from being just distant and snappy to Rule into totally arctic freeze-out mode. We were all sinking into a well of grief and despair for our own reasons and there was no way any of us could offer the others a hand out.

All I could think was that I hadn’t even told him how much I loved him before I left. I had ordered him to take care of Rule, always told him to watch out for his more difficult brother, but never said anything about how amazing and impressed I was with the man he had become. I never let him know I might have been his hero, but he was mine. The regret that I squandered the last minutes I had with him was a bitter pill that I never managed to swallow. Add in the fact that I knew something was going on with him, something I needed to make him talk to me about, and a chunk of my heart, a part of my soul, went into the ground with him.

I went back to the desert without talking to my parents, without being able to look Rule in the eye because it hurt too bad to see Remy’s eyes looking back at me. Every night for the next year, no matter what mission I was on, no matter what barracks I was in, no matter what part of the sandbox they sent me to, I went to bed at night thinking about everything I would do over again if I could. I had seen a lot of death in my line of work; it always sucked and it was always hard to forget, but nothing woke me up in the middle of the night with tears running down my face like the memory of those last wasted seconds with my brother.

There was a weight on me. Not the typical heavy, sucking weight of sorrow that I woke up with when that particular memory blindsided me, but a soft, warm weight that was whispering my name over and over again. I struggled up from the blackness and found Cora in my lap. She was literally straddling me, her hands on either side of my face. She was saying my name over and over again, whispering it against the scar on my forehead and against the twin tracks of moisture I could feel leaking out of each eye.

My baser instinct was to shove her off of me and get out of there. It was to bury the shame and sadness deep down inside and cover it with a layer of vodka so thick I couldn’t ever feel it again, but I knew if I did that she wouldn’t give me another shot, so I just stared at her and let her brush kisses all over my face until my heart rate slowed back down and I could breathe normally again. I put my hands on her waist and counted backward from twenty until I was absolutely sure I wasn’t going to bolt on her again.

“Want to talk about it?”

No, I sure as hell did not, but I had promised to let her in, so I would make an effort, and if it meant keeping her on top of me, stroking her fingers along my scalp, I would struggle through it even if it felt like it was killing me.

“Remy. I was thinking, maybe sort of dreaming, about Remy.”

If the thought of a man’s dead younger brother wasn’t allowed to move him to burning-hot, sorrowful tears in his sleep, then nothing was. I wanted to be embarrassed, didn’t want Cora to see how fractured and torn on the inside I really was, but she just watched me and didn’t say a word. The bluish green of her turquoise-colored eye was full of compassion and kindness; the melty chocolate of the brown one was much sharper, waiting to see what I was going to do now that I was naked and raw in front of her.

“The last time I saw him I was annoyed. My folks were on my nerves, Rule was acting obnoxious, Shaw was being weird, and something was going on with Remy that he wouldn’t talk about. Now I know it was his secret and Shaw was all bent out of shape over Rule, but at the time all I wanted was to get back to work. I told him to take care of Rule, not that I loved him, or that I missed him, or that I was so proud to be his brother. I just told him to keep Rule out of trouble.”

I had to swallow back the flood of memory in order to keep talking to her. She just kept her eyes steady on mine. She didn’t interject, didn’t tell me it would all be fine, she just watched me and let her fingertips run along my shorn hair.

“When I came back for the funeral everything had turned to shit. Rule decided that the best way to deal with the loss was to be even more of an asshole than he was already. Shaw turned into this conciliatory, peacemaking machine, and my parents immediately went into blame mode. It was Rule’s fault for calling for a ride, it was my fault for not being home to keep an eye on him, and it was Shaw’s fault for letting him go. They put him in the ground and every single one of us went with him.”

I had to blink and strain to keep my eyes on her. My fingers flexed involuntarily as I tried to decide if I wanted to pull her closer or push her away.

“I went back to the desert and watched more kids die, gave more of myself to the sand and the enemy, and then when I came home last time, things went from bad to worse. Mom had turned into this grief-filled monster who wanted to eat Rule alive. Shaw was head over heels in love with him and he was oblivious and it was killing her. And then there was Remy. Gone but always there between all of us and his goddamn secret that everyone seemed to know but me and Rule. I was so mad at him. Mad at him for lying, mad at him for using Shaw, mad at him for being gone, but mostly I was so furious with myself for letting him go that last time without saying something that mattered. Maybe if I had been different, acted differently, he would have been comfortable enough to tell me about his life. It’s all I can think about.”

We sat there in silence for a long time, just looking at each other. She kept stroking my head and it was interesting to watch her thoughts play out in those odd-colored eyes. Remorse for me flashed in one, while disapproval and something else flashed in the other. She didn’t like me beating myself up over something that couldn’t be undone, but it was clear she wasn’t going to condemn me for it either.

“You don’t honestly believe that either of those boys ever doubted how much you love them, how much you sacrificed for them? Do you?”

I shook my head slowly in the negative. “No.”

“Good. Because no matter what you said to him, the words didn’t matter. He knew. Rule knows. You could have told Remy all those things, and he still would have gotten in that car that night. Losing him that way would still have you hurting and your family in disarray. You know he knew you loved him. That’s all that matters, Rome. If he wanted you and Rule to know, he would have told you. That’s all there is to it. That’s not your fault, it’s not your parents’, and it sure as hell isn’t Shaw’s. At some point you have to just let it rest.”

“I don’t know how to do that.” It was the truth.

“Is there anything that you think would put it in perspective for you? Make it easier to move past this?” I liked that instead of just letting me be all defeatist and lost about it, she wanted to actively help me figure out a solution to the problem.

“Not really. Answers would help. Asking Remy what he was thinking would help, but since none of that is possible, I’ll just have to figure it out on my own.”

Her eyes flashed at me, and I saw a shadow of something cross from one colored eye to the other. I wanted to ask her about it, but she climbed up off of me and I got distracted fighting the urge to snatch her back. I wanted to kiss her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. I wanted to put her in bed and never let her out. I wanted to breathe her in and let her spread all that color and brightness that poured out of her all over the cold and barren that was spread around inside of me, but I was still minding my manners, so I lumbered to my feet prepared to walk her out to her silly little car and settle for a chaste peck on the lips.

I didn’t necessarily feel any better after talking to her about it, but I also didn’t feel any worse. I didn’t feel the need to guzzle down a bottle of Belvedere and I was pretty sure I could make it through the rest of the night without having to outrun the nightmares. I almost ran her over when she stopped in front of me and turned around. I had to wrap my arms around her small frame to keep her from toppling over onto the floor. She laughed a little against the center of my chest and grabbed the fabric of my T-shirt in her hands and started to pull me back toward my room.

Not that I wanted to rock this particular boat, but I also didn’t want to get into something she was going to be all worked up about later either.

“Uh … What are you doing, Half-Pint?”

Those blond eyebrows danced up on her forehead as she continued to walk backward, towing me with her. Her eyes were lively and shiny, a small smile was playing across that mouth I wished I had dreams about instead of the nightmares I was having, and she was looking at me in a way that didn’t just make my dick hard, but made something in my chest wind up and release like a spring.

“You have bad dreams. I don’t want you to. So I’m going to give you something better to take to bed.”

Oh, thank you, Jesus. I kicked the door closed behind us and let her pull my shirt off over my head. She was too short to reach all the way, so I had to bend down for her to get it up and over my shoulders.

“I thought we were slowing things down?” Stupid sense of morality.

She cocked an eyebrow at me and bent her head down so that she could get her hands on my belt buckle.

“Do you like me any less since we stopped having sex?”

I snorted and just watched as she pulled the leather through the belt loops with a single yank.

“No. Why?”

She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. I was trying to follow her train of thought but my eyes crossed because she got those little hands under the edge of my fly and brushed against an erection that felt like it was trying to escape from my pants all on its own. I was missing something here. She was almost as vulnerable as I was, only I didn’t have a firm grasp on her reasons.

“I dunno. I thought maybe it was all chemistry and sexual attraction, and once that went on hiatus, things with us would be clearer, make more sense.”

“We don’t make sense?”

She had my zipper down and was working my jeans over my hips and my ass. I wasn’t going to be able to keep talking to her coherently for much longer, but I had a feeling I really needed to understand the things she wasn’t saying to me.

“We do, but things with us just seem to move at warp speed.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“Is that bad?”

Those two-toned eyes flicked up at me and she slicked her tongue over her bottom lip. Holy hell, I was going to come just by looking at her.

“No. It can be scary and overwhelming, but I don’t care anymore because I want you. I missed this part of being with you, plus I’m pregnant and horny and want to jump you all the time. Restraint has never been one of my strong suits.”

I sucked in a breath as she got my pants down around my knees and then dropped to her own.

“Why didn’t you say something sooner, then?”

“Because we’re trying to do something right, trying to do something that lasts, and when you take your shirt off I can’t think straight.”

That made me laugh, but then the damp heat of her mouth closed around the head of my cock and I couldn’t breathe anymore. She was so pretty, so exotic, with all her colorful skin, and good God, did she know how to bring a man to his knees with just a flick of her tongue and the barest hint of the edge of her teeth. I wanted to grab the top of her head and shove my dick all the way in to the back of her throat, but not only wouldn’t it fit, I doubted she would appreciate the gesture since she was trying to distract me from all the bad shit going on in my messed-up head. So instead I weaved the fingers of one hand through her short hair and let the other one clasp her on the back of the neck.

“Cora …” All I could get out was her name as one of her hands slid between my legs and the other wrapped around the base of my straining dick. It felt so good; she flooded all my senses. The way she looked on her knees in front of me, the way she hummed her pleasure when I bucked involuntarily against her mouth, the way her mouth was so hot, so wet, as it slid up and down over skin that felt like it was going to burst at the seams. It had been too long, she was too potent, I wasn’t going to last for very long, especially not if she kept playing with my tight and achy balls the way she was. I knew her goal was to distract me, work me over so that I was spent and tired and could go to sleep and stay down for the rest of the night, but if she was going to open the door, I was going all the way through.

I let her suck, let her roll her tongue along the straining head just to the point where I was about to lose it all in that pretty mouth. Luckily I was a guy who had a gold star in discipline: I pulled her off right before she finished setting me over the edge. She made a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat that had my dick screaming at me in protest, but her eyes were shining and laughing at me. She gave the hand that was still wrapped around the base a tight squeeze and grinned at me.

“Oh, old friend, how I missed you.”

I was trying unsuccessfully to get her shorts down her legs and her stretchy top over her head because she didn’t seem to be in any hurry to let go of my throbbing erection.

“You talking to me or my dick?”

She giggled, the sound so carefree and full of joy that it knocked something loose inside of me. I could feel that ball of tension, that coil of despair that I held so tightly inside of me break free from whatever it was clinging to. I put my hands on either side of her face and tilted it toward me so I could attack her smiling mouth. I overwhelmed her enough that she finally had to let go of her hold on my cock and reach up to grab on to my wrists so I didn’t knock her over backward. She tasted sweet. She tasted like redemption. She tasted like the future I didn’t need to figure out anymore.

When she rubbed her tongue back against mine, when she rose up onto the tips of her toes to wind her arms around my neck, I simply fell backward on the bed and took her down with me. It made both of us laugh. I couldn’t remember the last thing in the entire world I had found humor in, let alone while I was in the middle of trying to get laid. That she could do that to me, do it for me, made it clear to me that I wasn’t going to be able to let her go. Ever. She wiggled on top of me so that I was supine under her and she was braced on top of me with her hands on the center of my chest. She still had too many clothes on but seemed far more interested in getting me all the way naked and taking her sweet time about it.

She hopped to her feet and got my boots off and my jeans the rest of the way off, then stood over me looking down at me with a fiery gleam in those different-colored eyes.

“You sure are pretty.”

I didn’t know about that. My dick was sticking straight up in the air, the veins in my neck were pulsating, and I’m sure I looked pretty frenzied. It had been too long to be without her, but if she liked what she saw, ravaged scars and all, I wasn’t going to complain.

“I think I should tell you that.” She gave a delicate little snort and pulled her shirt off over her head. I felt my eyes widen, because I had been naked enough with her to know those boobs were not normally that size. She took her sweet time wiggling out of her shorts and lacy, pink panties; by the time she was done, I was contemplating pouncing on her and just throwing her on the floor and going to town. I didn’t get the chance because she climbed back on top of me, only this time she was all pretty tattooed skin and warm and willing flesh. I got my hand around the tattoo high on her thigh as she settled on top of me and reattached her palm to my erection.

I ran my other hand up over her ribs, stopping to rub each of those little jewels like they would bring me good luck. I pressed my thumb under the swell of one breast and lifted my eyebrow up.

“Nice.” I continued my journey upward until I was circling a pebbled nipple.

She made a face and bit down on her lower lip. She was just unendingly cute; I wanted to eat her all up. If she didn’t make a move soon, I was going to do it.

“One side benefit of unprotected sex.”

The humor was dry and she wasn’t interested in cracking jokes anymore when I suddenly rolled her tiny frame under me. I could look into those mismatched eyes until the end of time, especially when they were foggy with desire and heavy-lidded with the knowledge that I was about to return the favor. I kissed her hard, licked my way across her collarbone, took a second to pay homage to her breasts, twirled my tongue around the jewels embedded in her side, and made my way to all that colorful ink that circled the top of her thigh.

I pushed her bent legs apart as I traced the design where it decorated the inner curve of her thigh closest to my destination. I felt her shudder in anticipation, saw her stomach quiver and tip, and grinned against the soft skin I was pulling between my teeth when the very tips of her fingernails pricked impatiently into my scalp.

“Rome …” Her voice was low and breathy, reminding me that she had had to wait on this just as long as I had. It made me even harder, if that was possible, to know that she would never hesitate to ask me for what she wanted.

I licked a trail along the crease in her leg that led to her damp cleft. The little wink of silver buried inside all that pretty pink flesh was an allure I wasn’t able to ignore. I sucked the entire ring and the sensitive flesh it was decorating into my mouth. The action made her entire body bow up off the bed, and her hands got even more desperate along my head and shoulders. She was a tangy mix of metal and aroused female, and nothing in life had ever tasted sweeter. I twirled that little hoop around and around and abandoned it just when I felt her get to the crest of what I was building in her. I heard her swear at me, laughed a little against the grasping folds as I buried my tongue inside her, which had her alternating between cursing me and telling me I was the best she ever had.

I left her wet, greedy channel and switched my attention back to her hard, begging clit. I kissed her all over, sucked on it, bit down on it hard enough to let her know I meant business, and by the time I got my hand involved and used my fingers in unison with my mouth to finally let her come, she was making noises that were a cross between moans of surrender and sobs of relief. She came like she did everything else, full of color and light and blindingly honest in letting me know that what I did to her not only worked, but was incomparable. A man could get used to having a woman make him feel that way.

It took a few minutes for her to recover, so I pulled her over me and rolled us so that she was covering me like a warm, satisfied, human blanket. When she finally roused herself she wasted no time and sat herself down on me and sank all the way to the hilt. She was wet and slick and all the good things I had been missing by being a big jackass and a man scared of his own reality. Only a moron ran away from a girl like this, and while I was a lot of things, stupid wasn’t one of them.

We both sucked in a surprised breath at the same time. Her eyes drifted closed and mine popped wide. She just felt so good, and when she started to move on me, my poor brain shut down. She moved one of her hands so that it was by my head and bent down to put her mouth over mine. That position opened her up just enough that I could get my fingers on the damn ring of hers while she moved herself up and down in a rhythm that had both of us swearing and straining against each other. The drag of her pointed nipples across my chest, the soft suction of her body, the featherlight press of those sassy lips against my own and it wasn’t long before I had to roll her over and pound into her.

She squealed a little at the action and I tried to tell myself to take it easy on her, but she was just as wild, just as greedy as I was, and it only took a grasp of needy and convulsing muscles to pull me over the edge. I said her name, heard her whisper mine against my ear, and I very well may have blacked out for a second as pleasure and the finality of what this woman meant to me slammed through my body with a shudder. I didn’t mean to collapse on her, but I did. I buried my face in her neck and gathered her close to my chest before mustering the energy to roll over.

She snuggled into my chest and tucked her head underneath my chin. I rubbed a hand up and down her spine and kissed her on top of her head. I could stay like this with her forever.

“Sweet dreams, Rome.”

When I closed my eyes all I saw was her and the colors and shades of rightness she brought with her into my dull world. I fell asleep with her all around me, her soft breath on my skin, and all the best parts of her changing all that emotional shrapnel lodged inside of me. I slept like a goddamn baby.