Page 61 of Forbidden Daddy
The moonlight painted everything silver as Roman’s hands found the hem of my nightgown, his touch reverent rather than demanding. This wasn’t the desperate claiming from his office or the urgent need against his armory wall. This was something deeper, more fragile—two people who’d been broken by betrayal, reaching for something that felt like healing.
When he lifted the silk over my head, his eyes drank in every inch of revealed skin like he was memorizing me. I reached for his belt, my fingers steady despite the way my heart hammered against my ribs. He caught my wrist, bringing my palm to rest over his heart.
"Feel that?" he whispered, his voice rough with emotion. "That’s what you do to me."
The steady thunder beneath my palm made my chest tight with feelings I wasn’t brave enough to name. This man, who commanded empires, who inspired fear in grown men, was laying himself bare for me.
"All for me," I said, leaning in to brush my lips across his. "Say it, Roman."
"Yes," he breathed, his hands tangling in my hair. "It’s yours."
I nudged him backward onto the bed, then reached for his belt again. This time, he didn’t stop me. Every brush of my fingers against bare skin seemed to ratchet his desire higher until he was trembling with the restraint of keeping his hands at his sides.
When I freed his length, it sprang upward, thick and pulsing. I drank in the sight of him exposed like this—back arched, chest heaving, vulnerability naked and obvious on his face. It was humbling. It was addictive.
I climbed over him, caging his body beneath mine, watching as the pulse in his throat jumped when I deliberately brushed against his length.
His eyes blazed blue fire, and when I put a hand on his chest, he pressed into it like he needed my touch to keep breathing.
"I missed this," I whispered, trailing a finger down his scar, cataloguing every reaction. "The way you let me have control. As if giving it to me is a relief for you."
He swallowed hard. "You’re the only person who ever got this side of me, Cassie."
The admission made me feel impossibly tender toward him. As much as this man believed that love made him weak, he had a limitless capacity for it. He just didn’t know how to express it without fear of betrayal.
I leaned down, brushing my lips against his. At the first contact, he shuddered, his hands moving to my hips. This was aboutmaking love, slow and deeper, every motion threaded with emotion.
"Stay with me," I said, not caring that the words sounded like a plea. "Stay right here, baby."
He held my eyes as his hands trembled slightly on my waist. It wasn’t fear, or at least not the fear he felt walking into his dangerous world every day. It was an entirely new type of fear. The kind that came from seeing his walls shattered and having no defense left.
There was something vulnerable in the look. Something open and raw and terrifying to someone more used to seeing violence than vulnerability.
But as I slid down onto him, pulling him closer and deeper than we’d been before, everything faded but the two of us.
The feeling of Roman beneath me, above me, and finally inside me again made my breath catch in my throat.
I’d told him I wasn’t afraid of his world, and that was true.
What I hadn’t realized until that moment was just how afraid I was of losing him.
Roman’s hands anchored me as we fell into a rhythm. My fingers traced the scar beneath his ribs, a permanent reminder of someone who’d once tried to take him from me before I’d been willing to fully admit to myself just how much I wanted him. Needed him, loved him.
Love.
The word echoed through my mind as we rocked together. No matter how much time I took to consider it, I could neverunderstand the strength and trust and fear and sheer volume of emotion in that little four-letter word.
I rode him, reveling in the way he fit me perfectly. Every roll of my hips slid him deeper, filling every part of me until I wondered if I was also somehow filling him up.
He cradled my face, his eyes telling me without words that I was doing exactly what he needed. That, even with the secrets and the lies and the fear, we were still finding a way to mend the rift between us.
The realization only made the pleasure building in my core grow tighter.
And when he began whispering my name in the same rhythm that we moved together, I knew we were both reaching the breaking point.
"Come with me, princess," he murmured. His hands on my thighs, neck, and hips were a gentle counterpoint to the tension strumming through us. "Be right here with me."
I gasped out his name as pleasure crashed through me, cresting and breaking like waves against a shore. Roman clenched his jaw, his eyes showing all the emotion his words couldn’t seem to manage. A moment later, I felt him let go inside me. Felt his body and soul open fully to me in a way I hadn’t even known was possible.
