Rome

CHAPTER 13

Cora

I was running late. I had already called the guys at the shop to let them know they would have to open the doors without me. I was scrambling to pull on a pair of cute, glittery flats and tame hair that was all spiked up and out of control from Rome’s hands. He had risen with the sun and gone running with Ayden. I don’t know how he did it, because after his startling declaration, a drab dinner, and about five minutes of TV, he had decided that was enough and took me back to bed for the rest of the night. I was sore, totally worked over, and scared out of my ever-loving mind.

He had taken Ayden up on an offer of a ride so that he didn’t have to wake me up. Well, that’s what he said, but I was pretty sure he would rather ride a mule to and from places than ride in the Cooper. It was just one of the things about him I was pretty sure I loved right back. I just couldn’t tell him that.

Love had broken me once. It gave me unrealistic expectations and had changed me on a raw and fundamental level. What I felt for Jimmy didn’t hold a candle to the emotions, the wealth of feeling, Rome Archer evoked in me. The big, gruff soldier had worked his way into places I didn’t even know existed. I was filled right up to the top with him and I was really afraid if I told him how I felt, all those emotions would overflow and neither one of us would know how to clean up the mess. I didn’t want to be without him, but I wasn’t ready to hand my heart over to him carte blanche either.

Having a man like Rome use the L-word was a heady thing. All the great things that made him who he was, his strengths, his loyalty, his care, his unwavering conviction that I was who he wanted for the rest of forever … it would be so easy to just give myself over to him completely. I was so scared about what would happen if it didn’t work out that I just couldn’t do it. I could only hope the big guy would be patient with me while I tried to unravel it all in my head. There was a lot going on up there—the baby, moving in together, him taking over the bar, and being totally sex drunk on him and his ridiculous body. A girl needed a minute to catch her breath; only I didn’t get one.

Just as I was running out the door my phone rang and I couldn’t ignore it because it was my dad. I stopped and took a seat on the front step of the house. I kicked my legs out in front of me and steeled myself for the typical interrogation I got when I hadn’t talked to him in over a month.

“Hey, Daddy.”

“You staying out of trouble, sunshine?” My dad was a gruff, take-no-crap man, but I never doubted for a single second his undying devotion to me.

I looked at my boobs, which were way bigger than they had been a month ago, and at the round swell of a belly that I had never, ever had before.

“Not exactly.” I wasn’t quite sure how to break the news to him. When I had fallen apart after Jimmy, my dad had done his best to put me back together, but there were just some things a girl’s dad couldn’t fix for her and a broken heart was one of them.

I heard him sigh. “So you saw that the wedding is off?”

I was clicking the toes of my sparkly shoes together and patting my tummy and only listening to him with half an ear.

“What wedding, Daddy?”

“Cora, are you even paying the slightest attention to me?”

“Yeah, I just have a lot on my mind. Things have been crazy here. You should come visit.”

He laughed and it sounded like rusty pans banging together.

“There’s no air there, baby girl.”

He wasn’t wrong. So I smiled and trapped the phone between my cheek and my shoulder.

“I met a guy, Dad.”

“Oh, Cora.”

I laughed at him. “No, Dad, you’ll like him.”

“I doubt it.” He huffed and puffed like any good dad who never wanted to admit his daughter ever had sex did.

“He’s different. Not like Jimmy at all. He was in the army.”

“You’re dating a soldier?” He sounded so incredulous I debated being seriously offended.

“I’m dating an ex-soldier, but more than that, I’m dating a really good man. He’s special, Daddy.”

“That’s all I ever wanted for you. And with Jimmy calling the wedding off to that girl, I’m happy you have someone so you aren’t tempted to contact that piece of shit. Let that dog lie exactly where you left him.”

I almost dropped the phone. I had been so busy with Rome, so caught up with the baby and trying to figure out what I was going to do next, that I hadn’t given Jimmy or the wedding a single thought, let alone spent a single second Internet-stalking him.

“What?”

I heard my dad sigh and swear under his breath.

“Apparently the little chickie he was stepping out on you with took a page out of his book. He caught her stepping out on him with one of the other artists at the shop. He tracked your aunt down looking for you. I told her to tell him it’s been too long, too much water under the bridge. Next time I’ll let him know you’ve moved on to someone else.”

I had moved on. Jimmy was very much a part of my past, but that didn’t stop my heart from thudding hard and heavy in my chest and my ears from ringing. I must have made a noise of distress because my dad demanded to know if I was okay.

I had to rapidly shake my head to get my thoughts ordered back together.

“I’m fine, Dad. That was just a blast from the past I wasn’t expecting.”

“But it doesn’t matter because you’ve moved on, right?”

“Right.” Only I didn’t sound nearly as confident about it as I wished I did. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Dad, I’m pregnant, so air or no air, you need to come to Denver when this baby gets here.” He was my only family and I needed him here for the birth.

Echoing silence met my declaration. I knew he wasn’t going to give me a long-distance high five, but the absolute quiet wasn’t expected either.

“Daddy?”

He cleared his throat and sounded even rougher than usual when he decided to speak. “You happy about it, sunshine?”

“I was surprised and I freaked out, but I’m happy about it. Like I said, he’s a good man, Dad. He isn’t going to let either of us down. He tells me that he’s all in and I believe him.”

“That’s a lot of faith you’re handing over to him after what you’ve been through, Cora.” My dad, always the über-pragmatic sailor. I wish I could tell him I hadn’t really handed anything over yet because I was too scared to let go. He would tell me to stop being such a sissy and just give it up.

“I know. But I do trust him.”

“Well, I’m proud of you. I might not tell you enough, but the way you rebuilt your life, it was something else. I know I never knew how to handle all that girly shit with kid gloves, but you make me wish I had been a better dad, and I know you’ll be a terrific mom.”

I choked up a little and climbed to my feet. “No one is perfect, Admiral Ass Hat. I turned out okay and you did what you could. I should’ve been a boy.”

He snorted at me. “Be glad you aren’t, because then I would have to kick your ass every time you call me that. When is that baby due? I need to buy a plane ticket.”

I told him around the end of March and he swore he would be there. He asked me a million questions about Rome and about how I was feeling, and I didn’t realize that I was crying silent tears until I got off the phone with him. My dad and I had a complicated relationship, but I loved him and I forgot how much I missed him until times like this. Family was important, that’s why I was going to make sure this baby had as much of it as I could. I rubbed my palms over my face and raced to the shop.

When I barreled in the door the guys were already busy with their clients, but Nash was the first one to look up and frown at me.

“You and Rome at it again?”

I made a face at him and threw my stuff on the desk and sat down.

“No. I’m pregnant and emotional. I’m going to cry and it isn’t always going to be Rome’s fault, so chill out.”

He grunted at me and went back to his client while I fired up the computer. I told myself I wasn’t going to look, that I shouldn’t look, but sure enough, the first thing I did was log onto Facebook and pull up Jimmy’s page. Of course all the pictures of him and the tattoo tramp were gone and his status had switched from engaged to single. I couldn’t get my head around how that made me feel. Not happy, not sad, not vindicated … I just felt weird and I didn’t like it. I was going to flip back over the appointment page and start weeding through the private messages on the page we used for the shop when one caught my eye. It had my name on it and it had been sent a couple days ago.

I felt my body still as I clicked it open and saw Jimmy’s smiling face in the sender space. I needed to erase it, needed to get away from the computer. It had been too long for him to try and reach out to me, too much damage had been done, but despite all of that, I was compelled to read it.

Cora: I know it’s been years and I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I want you to know that I understand now how badly I hurt you. It’s hard to ignore when the exact same thing happened to me. Everyone in the shop knew Ashley and Drake were hooking up behind my back while she had my ring on her finger and no one said a word. I just wanted to try and make it right. You were a great girlfriend and I should have treated you so much better. Your aunt said you moved to Denver and I figured you would have hooked up with Phil. The shop looks nice. If you are open to it, give me a call. I would really like to make amends. I’ve missed you.

He left an e-mail address and a phone number, but I hit delete and just stared at the monitor. Well, wasn’t that all kinds of a mind fuck?

“Now what? You look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

I spun the chair around and met Nash’s curious gaze.

“Have you ever had your heart broken, Nashville?”

He growled at me, which made his client laugh.

“Don’t ever call me that again.” He never used his full name and got touchy whenever someone else did. “And yeah, my heart was broken by the girl every boy loves first. My mom. The second she picked that dipshit over me, she broke my heart.”

“What did she have to say about Phil? Did she agree to talk to him?”

“She was all weird about it. She said Phil is a grown man, and if he doesn’t want to talk about whatever is going on, I should be mature enough to respect it. I still can’t run him down and it’s all starting to piss me off.”

Phil had been scarce around the shop lately, and when I did catch him on the phone, he still sounded terrible. I didn’t like it at all, and the fact that he was still dodging Nash just didn’t bode well.

“I just had a bit of my past bite me in the ass but it’s fine. Nothing to get all twisted up over.”

“You sure?”

That was the question I was struggling with myself, but luckily I had a girl coming in to get the same piercing I had done and I needed to get ready, so I moved to the piercing room to set up and made sure all the instruments were ready to go. I needed to keep busy or the past was going to drag me under, and that was the absolute last thing I wanted or needed.

Rome knew something was off. I met him at the bar because he had to stay later than normal because of a band or something. He fed me and poked and prodded at me, which I tried to evade because I just wasn’t sure what to tell him. He had nothing to worry about. I didn’t want anything to do with Jimmy. He was history and his apology was beyond a lifetime too late, but a part of me couldn’t deny that I was curious about what he thought he could say to me after all this time to make any kind of difference. I was avoiding handing my heart over to Rome, because I was still scarred from the damage Jimmy had done when he drop-kicked it back to me and I wondered if there were any words that existed that could make that fear obsolete.

Dinner was a little bit tense but he let it slide because he was awesome like that even though I could feel those eyes trying to vet me. I was mad he didn’t tell me what happened to the truck and that Asa spilled the beans. I was worried that someone seemed to have it out for him or the bar and that he didn’t seem to be taking the threat very seriously. He said something about Brite having an in with the Sons of Sorrow and that didn’t make me feel any better about the situation, but since I was twitchy and off anyway, I just let it go.

I was mentally exhausted when I got home. I chatted with Ayden for a minute since she was in the living room with her homework spread out all around her. I told her that I was probably moving out and getting a place with Rome before the end of summer, so she and Jet would have the place to themselves. She was happy for me but bummed because Jet was on the road so much. I think really she missed Asa and just didn’t know how to mend that bridge. That was something the gorgeous siblings were just going to have to figure out on their own because I was simply spread too thin at the moment.

I took a shower and crawled into bed. It was weird to be alone, but Rome said he would be home as soon as he could. I slept more on him than on the mattress, which led to my hands being in some very interesting and naughty places in the morning since he typically slept naked. He was just so warm and so solid, he made me feel like anything bad in the world would have to go through him if it wanted to get to me.

I put on a T-shirt and some panties and was out by the time my still-wet head hit the pillow. I vaguely heard my guy come in well after midnight and heard him rustling around in the bathroom, but I was too out of it to rouse. Even when he pulled me up and settled me back on top of him with a hard kiss on my sleepy mouth, all I could muster was a pat on his chest before getting sucked back into dreamland. I felt his arms curl around me, and for the first time since that call from my dad, I felt like I had settled back into my reality. This was now, my then was not something that was going to mess with this. I refused to let it.

I was jolted awake sometime near dawn. I had to blink to try to adjust my eyes to the hazy light coming in through the blinds, but before I could even adjust to it, Rome had rolled me over and was looming over me with a scary look on his face. His eyes were wild, his mouth was tense, and the vein that ran along his neck was throbbing in a rapid beat that I could see even in the low light.

“Rome?” I asked it as a question because this was the same way he looked the last time he disappeared into the night. I didn’t want to spook him, but I wasn’t sure he was even seeing me right now. His hands were harder than normal and shaking just a little when they pulled my shirt up over my head and he didn’t even bother to slide my underwear off; they just disintegrated under the twist and pull of impatient fingers. He jerked his head up and the light blazing out of those blue eyes was tortured and foreign, but there was enough of my guy still caught in there that I told myself just to calm down and ride out the storm. I knew to the bottom of my soul he would never purposely hurt me. He just needed to get away from whatever was hounding him and this was the only way he could do it without taking off on me again. I had asked for honesty and this was as raw and honest as I could get from him.

He positioned me where he wanted me and then his head and shoulders disappeared between my legs. I was still half asleep and nowhere near ready for this kind of assault, so I just threaded my fingers through his hair, which was now long enough to curl and loop around my fingers, and held on. I arched up against his thrusting tongue and tightened my thighs around his head.

“Rome …” This time it was a gasp not a question. He wasn’t much of a talker during sex at the best of times and I had had the silent, totally intense sex with him in the past. But this was something on an entirely different level. He was typically a very generous and thorough lover. He went out of his way to make sure I was satisfied and ready to take anything he wanted to throw at me. That wasn’t the case this morning. He clearly had a goal in mind and it was to get me off as quickly and as violently as possibly. A goal he was quickly reaching with his oral attack. I couldn’t really complain about it since it felt so good and I knew he needed it for some reason, but if he thought he was just going to fuck me senseless and then not talk to me about it, he had another thing coming.

I couldn’t hold out long, not with his tongue and his teeth doing all kinds of really wonderful things down there, but before the first spasm of my climax started, he jerked up, rolled me over onto my front, and pulled me up so that I was in front of him on my hands and knees. His broad palm stroked over the curve of my ass and he whispered my name.

“Cora …”

I felt him ready himself behind me, and even though I was all mellow and malleable from the pleasure and intensity he had just forced on me, there was no denying I felt a little like I was splitting in half when he pushed all the way into me from behind. I swore a little under my breath, not because it hurt but because it was just a sudden, overwhelming flood of sensation. He was always so careful with me, aware of the difference in our size, but this morning it was like some different part of him had been unleashed. This wasn’t one of my favorite positions in bed, but with him like this, I thought maybe I could learn to love it. He was just all over me.

I felt him along my back. His hands were between us and curved around my breasts. My nipples were already extra-sensitive due to the pregnancy, but with him tugging on them and rolling them between his thumb and index finger, I was pretty sure I could come just from that alone. I groaned and peeked over my shoulder at him. He was a sight I would never forget.

He was all straining muscles, sweat-slicked skin, contracting abs, flaming blue eyes … he was a picture of pure male intensity and there was no way I would complain about being the focus of all of it. I liked how he was all hard lines and planes where I was all soft and round, now more so than ever before. I also liked the way his hands looked against the parts of my skin that were stained with color. It was a beautiful contrast, one he seemed fascinated by as well. It would also be hard to erase the image of him driving, thrusting, pounding into me like he was chasing down his release or else he was going to suffer some kind of unexplainable loss. That was a whole lot of Rome Archer to take in; lucky for me I was up to the task. Even if my head wasn’t a hundred percent sure I could take all he was forcing on me at one time, my body was more than up to the challenge. My inner muscles were squeezing him in time to his thrusts, my nipples were puckering and begging for his touch, and there was no denying the flood of moisture where we were joined that was easing his way. I tilted my head back to the side and braced for the inevitable explosion and collapse; only that wasn’t what I got. Once he ruthlessly shoved me back into mindless oblivion, he seemed to come back from whatever brink he was on. I was practically in tears, worn out from pleasure and the wealth of sensation he’d foisted on me, but he flipped me back over on my back, kissed me hard on the mouth, and sank back into me.

He was slow, the drag and pull of that erection a rough torture on over-sensitized skin. He kissed my eyelids, the corners of my mouth, the edge of my collarbone. He whispered my name over and over again, and when he finally shuddered and growled his release into my throat, I felt like there had never been a time in my life where I knew what it meant to be so fully and completely needed by another person. I just wrapped my arms around his thick neck and let him cuddle into me while he caught his breath and settled back down.

I thought I was going to have to poke and prod at him in order to get him to divulge what had set him off, but after five long minutes of silence where all we did was hold on to each other, he finally started to lay it all out for me. The accident. How he thought he was going to die. How he lived every day with the guilt of being the only one to survive. How he was mad that the accident was one of the main causes of not only his physical limitations but had been the precursor to a lot of the mental ones as well. It sounded like he put a lot of the blame on the accident for ending his military career. It was sad. My heart broke for him a hundred times, but when he was done telling me about it, he turned his face to mine and kissed me so sweetly on the cheek I thought I might cry.

He went to pull out of me, to roll over, but I wouldn’t let him. I locked my arms and legs around him and held him in place. If he was going to bare his soul to me, not because he wanted to but because I asked him to let me in, I had to do the same. He deserved nothing less. If he was going to give me his all, I had to stop being scared and be willing to do the same. Baby steps.

I licked the shell of his ear and whispered, “I got an e-mail from my ex today. It totally threw me off my game. That’s why I was acting so weird earlier tonight.”

That big body went stiff all over mine, and he pushed himself up so that he was scowling down at me. We were still joined intimately together, so I thought it should be impossible for him to be annoyed with me, but I was wrong. His eyes narrowed and flared with something that wasn’t very pretty, and the scar that decorated his forehead started to throb an angry tempo.

“The guy you were engaged to?”

I ran my hands up and down his ribs like I was trying to soothe a wild animal and gave a little nod. “Yeah. Apparently the girl he was engaged to turned the tables on him and did the exact same thing to him that he did to me. I guess he was just looking for someone to commiserate with.”

“Why are you just telling me this now?” I didn’t like the note of accusation in his tone, so I dug the edge of my fingernails into his flesh.

“Because I deleted it. I don’t care about him or anything he has to say to me. It was a long time ago, and at one point in time all I wanted was for him to apologize and realize how badly he hurt me. Now I don’t need it. Now I have you.”

I narrowed my eyes right back at him.

“Plus you didn’t tell me about the truck or the fact that you have some pissed-off biker all over your ass looking for retribution because you didn’t want me to worry about it. It’s the same thing, big guy.”

“No, Cora, it sure the hell is not.” He rolled us over so that I was sitting upright on him. He crossed his arms behind his head and continued to glower up at me. This was the weirdest position I had ever been in while having an argument in my life. I was annoyed at him, but apparently all my lady parts were tired of being full of all that delightful flesh and not doing anything productive with it. I could feel my inner walls start to ripple along his cock. And of course Rome being the superhero that he was had no problem turning around and getting hard again.

“I wasn’t in love with that little biker punk. I didn’t agree to marry him. He didn’t break my heart into a million pieces, making it hard for me to see what is right in front of me. This guy isn’t just your ex, Cora. He changed your life.”

I frowned at him because I didn’t like that he could read between the lines that easily.

“I see you, Rome.” I grabbed one of his hands and put it on my belly. “It’s kind of impossible not to. And when it comes to life-changing, you win. Hands down.”

He took his other hand from behind his head and put it on the other side of the gentle swell so that the little bump was framed in his palms.

“I know you see me, Cora. But do you just see me as this kid’s dad? Do you just see me as a guy with a shit ton of problems slowly trying to figure it out? Do you see me as someone that is just okay for now because you know how much I care for you and that baby and something better might come along? Or do you see me as yours, as someone you are going to be with for the long haul? Because if you are just riding this out until your Mr. Perfect comes along, I got news for you … he’s going to have a hell of a fight on his hands getting through me.”

I just stared at him because I couldn’t think of anything to say. All I wanted was for a guy to be one hundred percent in it with me, and here this amazing man was demanding the same thing from me. Like I said, Rome won in the game of life-changing every time.

“I see all of it, Rome, and whatever it ends up looking like is already perfect. This”—I put my hand over his heart and made sure he could feel me squeeze him from the inside—“is as perfect as it gets. You’re my guy, no one else does to me or for me what you do, and that’s all there is to it. I didn’t know what perfect meant until you.”

I couldn’t tell him I loved him yet. I still wasn’t ready to take that leap, but I sure could show him and hope he understood the message I was trying to say with my body. I saw Rome Archer as clearly I saw my own face in the mirror. He was just simply the best of all the imperfect things I could ever have asked for. I could only hope that he wouldn’t get sick of waiting for me to put my fear to rest and tell him exactly how I felt.