Rome: A Marked Men Novel (12 page)

where our chests were pressed together, could feel his sides rise and fall as he sucked in a breath and let it

out slowly, could feel the hardness of an erection that needed its own zip code press against the softness

between my legs, not protected at all by my tiny sleep shorts. This was a compromising situation to be in

any way you looked at it, and considering we were practically strangers, my normally nimble tongue was

having a hard time finding its defenses.

His hand that was holding on to my butt gave the cheek a squeeze and I thought he was going to lever

himself up and off of me, but he didn’t. He used the other hand to hold his considerable bulk up off of me

for the first time in hours and his free hand lifted and I went frozen still as he used it to oh so gently trace

the curve of my bottom lip where my mouth was still hanging open like a dimwit. Hands that big, that

rough, shouldn’t be capable of being so reverent, so delicate. It made me gasp.

I should say something. He should say something. Neither of us did, though, and when those pretty, sad

eyes moved closer to mine, when that mouth surrounded by a sexy shadow of scruff dropped to cover

mine, all I could do was lie there and take it like it was inevitable. I had been kissed plenty in my lifetime—

by good boys and bad boys, by boys I liked and boys I didn’t, by boys I spent just a minute with and boys I

had spent years with, but no one had ever kissed me like this. Something happened when that firm mouth

settled over mine. My brain short-circuited, my common sense and basic rationality took a hike, and all I

was left with was a bundle of raging hormones and a desire so sharp and pointed it almost hurt when it

started to pulse under my skin.

I was surrounded by him, engulfed by him. He was just everywhere and it was overwhelming. I knew I

should tell him to stop, that this wasn’t right. I didn’t do this kind of thing and I had a feeling he was still

cut open and bleeding from whatever had sent him over the edge last night, but the words just wouldn’t

come and it wasn’t like I could have used them if they did. His mouth was hard on mine, his tongue

invading every corner, every hidden place I had in my mouth. Neither one of us had very much hair to hold

on to, so I had to settle for grabbing on to his ears to keep him in place. I should be pushing him away, not

pulling him closer, but there was no way that was going to happen, not with all that brawn pushing against

me and those eyes making me drown in them.

I kissed him back, because really that was all I could do. I slid my tongue against his, let my teeth find

the soft inner side of his lip, wrapped an arm around his neck, and we devoured each other. There was no

other way to describe it. We writhed together, the rough denim of his jeans rubbing against my bare legs,

his hands holding me in a grip that I couldn’t break free from if I wanted to. We kissed, we sucked, we bit,

and somewhere along the line it went from some kind of spontaneous combustion to a slow burn that had

me wrapping a leg around his lean waist and not protesting when impatient hands started pulling at the T-

shirt I went to bed in.

This was too fast, it was too wrong. He was not the kind of guy I had been holding out for. He was as

far from my idea of perfect as could be, but there was no arguing that he fit the bill for building me up to

something tingling and achy in no time flat. I gasped a little when the fabric cleared my head. I hadn’t been

naked with a guy in a really long time, and getting naked with this guy was all kinds of intimidating. Where

he was all smooth skin and perfectly cut muscles, I was all swirly colors inked on skin that had a tendency

to tan but was also dusted in freckles. Besides my left arm, I had a riot of lilies inked along my rib cage on

the left side. They were bright, full of every color under the sun, and the stamen on each of them was

decorated with a transdermal piercing. I had four or five little rhinestones that twinkled and winked from

the center of each flower. It was something I was sure this serious and intense soldier had never seen

before, but it didn’t slow him down. He tossed my shirt over his shoulder and touched the tip of his index

finger to one, which made me shiver. We still hadn’t exchanged a single word and things were quickly

moving out of hand. I was running out of room to make a graceful escape.

I put a hand on the center of his chest, spread my fingers wide, and tried to marshal my wayward and

heady thoughts. I needed a minute to catch my breath, a second to remember we were not two people who

had things in common, who would not normally exist in each other’s world. He didn’t give it to me. He was

rubbing his thumb between the little jewels dotting my side. He didn’t seem weirded out by it or unnerved

by it or all the ink that was now on display, in fact not once had he pulled that hypnotic blue gaze away

from my own. He put his huge hand over mine so that it forced my palm flat against his skin. I didn’t like

to be bossed around by anyone, at any time, but something was happening to me, to us, and I just couldn’t

seem to stop it. He dragged my hand over his breastbone, across that corrugated and taut plane of his

stomach, over his belly button, and down that light happy trail, stopping when he reached the stiff material

of his fly, the heat and hardness of his skin behind it burning instantly through the fabric into my fingers.

He didn’t press me any further. He removed his hand and lifted it to brush his thumb over my cheek. He

was giving me an out if I wanted it; somehow without one syllable this guy said more to me than any other

guy I could ever remember going to bed with.

It was right there hovering on the periphery—sanity, logic, rationality; all the things I needed to grab on

to in order to stop this. They were hazy and foggy, but they were there and Rome was giving me a chance

to grab on to them if that was what I wanted to do, and all at once I realized the refrain about him being a

good guy at heart had to be true. He wasn’t pushing, he wasn’t trying to take advantage even though he was

so much bigger than me and could obviously force his hand if so inclined. He was making it my call and I

was about to surprise us both because I couldn’t resist the allure of all that rock-hard skin throbbing under

my fingertips. I wanted to see it, wanted to touch it, wanted to see if it was as big and hard as the rest of

him. I hooked just the tips of my fingers in the top of his jeans and popped the button out of the hole.

He hissed a breath out between clenched teeth and dropped his head so that he could get his mouth

around the tip of one of my breasts. It was so startling, the suction, and the moisture, the rough scrape of

his morning beard across my skin, that I arched up and threw my head back. I wasn’t overly endowed, my

breasts were like the rest of me, on the small side and delicate, but they were supersensitive. When he ran

his tongue over the quivering peak, when he scraped the pebbled flesh with the sharp edge of his teeth, I

was done. There was no more thought to try and act right, no more worry that I didn’t even know him that

well, I just wanted and needed and he was going to give it to me. End of story.

I shoved both of my hands between us, got his zipper down without wounding him, and started pulling

the denim off over his hips. No underwear, that was always hot, and he wasn’t shy because he levered up

and shoved the pants the rest of the way off. They fell on the floor next to my discarded shirt, and while he

crawled back up over me I took a second to check out the goods and felt my eyes widen in alarm. I wasn’t

a prude, I knew dudes’ business came in all shapes and sizes, I was intimately familiar with the good, bad,

and the ugly. It was a hazard of my profession, but Rome was packing something that I wasn’t sure

anatomy and biology were going to let happen. Needless to say, he was huge, everywhere, and I was small,

everywhere. I was thinking I needed to rethink this entire thing and start acting like the smart, responsible

person I was, but he got his hands on my shorts and my panties and I was naked and splayed under him

before the protest and panic could find footing. There was no way we were going to fit, even if I was so

turned on I felt like everywhere our skin touched we were going to end up welded together. I could feel

desire and liquid want pooling between my legs, saw that he felt it, too, when his eyes flashed cobalt sparks

in every direction. I didn’t care how sexy he was, how unholy hot and bothered he had me, there was no

way that weapon of mass destruction was going to work its way inside my body.

My apprehension must have been displayed on my face, because the eyebrow under the scar danced up

and he finally stopped touching me, stopped dropping sucking little kisses along my collarbone, and

stopped running featherlight fingertips over the flowers decorating my side. He stared down at me and I

was fascinated by a drop of sweat that started at his temple and crested over his cheek, wound its way down

his neck, and tracked over a pec muscle that looked like it belonged on a marble statue. I wasn’t familiar

with this kind of restraint, this kind of will, so I just traced the track that little drop of moisture had trailed

and stopped at his nipple.

“That’s never going to fit.”

The words were strangled, like I hadn’t had anything to drink in a hundred years or more. We were so

close, this was so raw and open I didn’t know what to do with him, or with me. My words were meant to

be funny, to slow things down, but I sounded scared, even to my own ears, and I knew it wasn’t just

because he was far more than any man I had ever been with, or maybe it was.

That single dark eyebrow danced even higher and that little half grin that undid me the other day flashed

across his face. I guess he decided that my words were a challenge and not a warning because the next thing

I knew, all his attention switched to that already damp and needy place between my legs. He pressed my

legs open with one of his thighs, pulled my hips up, and delved his fingers into folds that were achy and

electrified by his touch. He was about to find another surprise that guys only got to see, got to touch, when I

took my clothes off, and I felt it the instant his questing fingers made contact with the small little hoop

hidden down there.

Once he touched it, he stilled, just a fraction. I had had the hood piercing for as long as I could

remember. Initially I got it because I thought it was edgy and cool; now that I was older I kept it because I

had had enough sex with enough guys that needed a damn bull’s-eye to get to the good stuff. Rome wasn’t

one of those, he also wasn’t scared or put off by it. He gave the ring a little tug that had my eyes rolling

back into my head and made me pant out his name. Seeing the results, he played with the slippery metal

while playing with the rest of me, creating a tidal wave of sensation that was going to make me break at any

second. He touched, me, stroked me, rubbed his thumb steadily and unrelenting over the hoop and the tight

little bud underneath it. He worked me over like it had never been done before, and just as I was grinding

into him, pressing my heels into the mattress of the bed, splitting in half and seeing stars, he removed those

skilled fingers, shifted me under him, and pushed all that turgid, straining flesh inside of me. I wasn’t ready

for it, but he slid in up to the hilt and filled me up to the point I thought I was going to suffocate on all I

was feeling, all I could see was blazing out of his bright eyes.

He stayed still for a second, waiting to see if I was going to push him away, tell him it was too much. At

any other time I would have appreciated his restraint; right now I wanted to choke him. I felt impaled,

pinned, stuck, and I hated that I loved it. This was an aspect to sex I had never experienced before, it added

an element that took things to a different level.

“Okay?”

It was the only word he had spoken since this all began and really it was more just a breath of sound. I

knew if I told him no, that it hurt, that it was too much, he would stop, let me out from under him, and

walk away without question, so it was that instinctual understanding that had me giving him the barest of

nods and sliding my hands up around his neck. I wanted to see him finish, wanted to know what happened

to those spectacular eyes when he went over the edge. I was all in anyway, there was no point in reining it

in now.

He moved slowly at first, I think there was a legitimate fear there that he could indeed do some serious

damage with that weapon of his, but he had done an excellent job of priming me, of getting me ready for

him, so soon I was writhing restlessly under him and urging him to move faster, go harder, to just let go. He

was good at reading the cues, he watched my face, eyes locked on mine, and before I knew it both legs