Page 61 of Roma King
He looks up at me, and my head swims. He’s so fucking hot, I can’t even bear to meet his eyes. “I thought we were done pretending. Don’t start up again now. You like a little pain, don’t you?” I watch, mesmerized as he wets his lips, and then he uses the tip of his tongue to flick the tight bud of my nipple that’s now standing to attention beneath my shirt.
“I don’t…I don’t even know,” I admit. “No one’s everbittenme before.”
He accompanies his pleased smile with a rumble of approval. “Lucky me. I get to be the first. I’m gonna bite you, Firefly. I’m gonna spank you. I’m gonna make you gasp out loud. You’re probably going to call me every name under the sun, but it won’t be so bad. Your nipples might end up a little red. Your lips might be a little swollen. Your ass cheeks…” He smirks—a scandalous, treacherous looking twist of his mouth. “Your ass cheeks might end up a little…tender. You’re going to feel stretched and sore. Muscles you never knew you had are gonna ache and burn, Firefly, but I promise you this: I will never,everhurt your heart. I’ll wrap it up in cotton wool if you’ll let me. Entrust it to me, and it’ll be my honor to defend it. I’ll make it sing in your chest. And if it ever stops singing for me, if I ever stop making it beat a little too fast, a little too wildly, I promise I’ll give it back unscathed. You have my word.”
His eyes are lit up from the inside somehow, glowing with sincerity, and the very last of my hesitancy, the last shreds of my uncertainty and doubt evaporates, leaving nerves and anticipation behind in their stead. I’ve been terrified of him ever since I met him. I was terrified of himbeforeI met him, which feels so strange to admit. How could that possibly have been the case? The night I went to the fair, searching for Corey, was the very first time I ever laid eyes on him, but that doesn’t feel true to me. In the most inexplicable way, it feels as though I’ve known him far, far longer than that. He was right, back in the bar. I’ve been waiting for him to arrive, preparing for the hurricane of turmoil and chaos he will bring with him, and I’ve been biding my time, battening down the hatches, hoping the storm will blow right over me. And now, of all the stupid, remarkably dumb things I could be doing, it seems that I’m removing the boards from the windows, throwing the doors on my life wide open, and I’m inviting the storm inside, asking for it to claim me.
“I trust you,” I whisper. I shouldn’t. I’ve always been smarter than this, and Pasha is neither a smart nor asafebet. But the way he’s looking at me right now, open and earnest, pleading almost…I believe every word he just said to me, and I find that every scrap of my faith is gone, because I’ve already turned it over to him, whatever the outcome may be. I’m willing to risk everything to roll the dice on him. I’m choosing to believe that he won’t destroy me in his quest to care for me.
God, so much has changed in the span of a few crazy hours.
Pasha exhales, and it sounds like he’s been holding his breath for a lifetime, waiting to hear those words. “I’ll earn it,” he says, his voice gruff. “I’ll earn that trust. And I’ll earn everything else, too. I’ll be the man you deserve. I’ll give you more than happiness. I’ll give you all of your dreams, because you’re giving me mine. Right here. Right now. I feel the weight of it settling in my bones. Shelta was right to be worried about you. You’re claiming me.”
His mouth is demanding as he brings it down on mine. How many times has this happened already in my dreams? How many nights has he come to me while I’ve slept, his body worshipping mine, his hands conducting a symphony of pleasure within me as he brought me to climax? I’ve lost track, but the cobwebs of my hazy memory are gone now. Blasted into nothingness. I could never remember his face when I woke. I could never remember the hushed, reverent words he whispered into my ear as he cradled me in his arms, like I was the most precious thing to have ever existed in his world. Now, I can remember every single occasion. Every single kiss. Every single second his bare skin met mine and burned against me. It was him, all along. They were beautiful dreams, those restless, lust-filled nights more glorious than anything else I’d ever experienced before, but this? This is so much more. This is definitive. This is the end.
As Pasha’s hands slide up underneath my shirt, underneath my bra, finding my bare breasts, I’m rocked to my very core. I’m his now, and he is mine. I won’t give him up. I won’t take the safe way out. I’m going to demand just as much from him as he demands from me and then some. At the back of my mind, I am fully aware that this is crazy. I barely know him. I’ve spent so little time with this man, in the flesh. But, like a wraith, the shadow of him has enveloped me every day for so long that I feel like I know him inside and out. For every monumental event that has ever occurred in my life, it’s as if he has always been there, standing in his rightful place, at my side.
My logical brain rails against the thought that Pasha and I are meant to be. The very idea that two people’s lives could be intertwined, conjoined by some outside universal force has me squirming inside my own skin, calling bullshit, but this is inexplicable. This is something that cannot and will not be easily explained away by science, or by hormones, or by the simple fact that I haven’t been laid in a really long time and Pasha has a devastatingly handsome face.
This is more.
This issomuch more.
I’m more afraid of this, ofhim, than anything else in the world. Admitting the connection I feel to him feels like I’m confessing my deepest, darkest secret. My most heinous sin. But now that he’s here, in front of me, I can’t turn away from it. Like a plant, turning its leaves toward light, willing every part of itself to face the sun and grow, I can’t deny the attraction that pulls me to Pasha. I hate him for the loss of my own control, but…there’s peace in this, too.
All my life, I’ve been trying to wrestle the world around me into submission. I’ve needed to be in complete control of even the smallest aspect of my life. The energy needed to succeed at such a monumental task has been so draining that I’ve always felt like I’ve been clinging to the ledge of a tall building by my bleeding fingertips, only seconds away from falling.
And then: Pasha.
I have no control here. None. Whatever happens between us is beyond my own influence. And instead of being crippled by the horror of this spiraling, freefalling, crazed madness, I suddenly feel…free.
Pasha hasn’t taken my control from me. He hasn’t snatched it from me, leaving me to try and figure out how to survive such an uncertain situation. He’s lost his control, too. He’s as helpless against this pull as I am, and knowing that we’rebothso vulnerable to it, to one another, doesn’t feel like a compromise. We’re a team, facing something strange and a little frightening together. Pasha is simply braver than I can ever be.
My blood is a river of fire, raging through my body. I can barely breathe as I rip my mouth away from his. “Damn it,” I pant. “If this is what you want. My heart—”
“This is what Ineed.” He makes a strangled sound deep in his throat. His deep, resonating voice is thick with emotion as he winds my hair around his hand and closes it into a fist. “Myheart is yours,” he whispers. “Take it. Keep it. Burn it. It doesn’t matter what you do with it. It’s no good to me anymore. Not if it doesn’t belong to you.”
This is a lot to take in. There’s a raging furnace in my chest, and every other second it blasts me with rolling wave after rolling wave of emotion. “I don’t know how to do this,” I whisper.
He doesn’t ask me what I mean. He knows I don’t mean sex. His eyes are burning, twin jade flames, as he lightly presses his lips to my mouth. “I don’t know, either. But we’ll figure it out, Firefly.”
He kisses me again, and the tinder of my soul catches light and roars into life. His tongue explores me, tasting me, and I find myself doing the same thing to him. With my fingers wound tightly into his hair, I guide his head back as I press my mouth to his, and Pasha groans. I pause for a second, looking down at him, his head held in my hands, and the room feels like it’s pitching.
He’s so fucking strong. He’s at least double my body weight, if not more. The muscles in his shoulders, his arms and his chest are fucking unbelievable. His raw strength, and his commanding presence have taken my breath away from day one, but right now…he is at my mercy. He’ssurrenderinghimself to me. I can see it in his eyes.
His expression is so serious. The thick, dark, delicate lashes that rim his eyes; the slight dip to his otherwise straight nose; his full, sensuous lips, that feel so fucking amazing on mine: everything about him is perfection. He stares into me, his gaze requesting courage from me, and I almost buckle.
Almost.
But I don’t.
He’s a goddamn miracle. I cradle his face in my hands, and it feels as though something is solidifying in me. I have no name for it. Have no way of identifying it. But whatever you want to call it, I accept it. If some external forceisto blame for bringing this man to me, then Iamglad of it. I might not understand it, but I am so, so glad of it.
“Take it off. All of it. I want you naked,” Pasha says. His voice is a dichotomy of sound—raw and rough, yet gentle and smooth as silk. My body hums with nerves as I first remove my shirt, and then my bra. I’m still straddling him, so my bare breasts are at his eye level. Pasha doesn’t raise his hands to me again. He doesn’t move a muscle. I can feel the weight of his gaze on my skin, though, and I shiver against it. He looks me over, assessing me, a ravenous hunger in his eyes, and I almost whimper at his fierce expression.
When he turns his attention back to my face, my hands twitch at my sides, wanting to snatch up my shirt so I can cover myself. Pasha rests his head against the back of the couch, his eyes shuttering. “I can’t touch you. I can’t even look at you,” he whispers. “I’m a fucking wolf. I need chaining. If I so much as breathe you in right now, I’m going to fucking devour you until there’s nothing fucking left.”
My voice is so quiet. So soft. “What if I want to be devoured?”
