Page 17 of Roma Queen
I give him a doubtful look. “Yeah, well.Somethings really can’t be repaired.”
“I assume you’re talking about my mother?”
I nod. “A team of therapists and all the Valium in the world couldn’t fix her.”
“We don’t have to worry about Shelta any more. At least, not for tonight, anyway.” Pasha slides his hand underneath the hem of my sweater; his fingers make contact with the skin above my hip, and I shiver involuntarily. He’s not cold. Far from it. His touch scorches me, blisteringly hot, eliciting a reaction from me that seems to make him very happy indeed. He leans down, breathing deeply into my hair, nuzzling his face into the crook of my neck, and my eyes roll back into my head.
God, that feels…
…that…
…feels…
“Fuck. I love the way you melt when I touch you, Firefly,” Pasha whispers into my hair. “Feels like you have an electrical current running over your skin. I can’t get enough of it. I can’t keep my hands to myself. I’m like a fucking teenaged boy. My dick has been hard as fuck forhours.”
Oh…shit.
I close my eyes. My thoughts are spiraling. I should wrestle them into submission, so I can regain control over the situation and myself, butdamn. Every time I try to calm my racing mind, my racing heart gallops away from me, and I’m being torn in two different directions at once.
“Have…” I swallow. “Have you ever slept with anyone in here before?”
Pasha’s lips meet the skin of my neck and reality slips a little further out of reach. “In here? I’m sure Archie has. But, no. I have not.”
My arms rise of their own accord, and my hands find their way up his broad, strong, muscled back. Beneath his t-shirt, his body feels fucking amazing. I wind my fingers into his hair, tugging gently on the strands until I feel him smile against my neck, just above my collar bone. “Would it bother you if I had?” he asks. “You feeling a little possessive right now, Zara?”
“Maybe. Just a little,” I admit. Fuck, I sound so out of breath, like I’ve been running flat out for the past twenty minutes. Shameful. Actually, scratch that. More likeembarrassing. A little attention from a hot guy, and I lose the most innate, essential, skill I have? One I was born with, that requires no actual thought or awareness to carry out? I am officially a lost fucking cause. “Sorry,” I murmur. “Don’t worry, I’m not crazy. I know youhaveslept with people before. I’m not jealous.”
“You’re not?” he hums. A wet heat teases at my skin, and I realize that he’s licking my neck, sucking the skin into his mouth, kissing and laving at me. My knees buckle, threatening to stop working. I reach back, searching for some support, something to steady myself against. Pasha winds an arm around my waist, jerking me toward him, crushing me to his chest, though.
“I’mjealous,” he grinds out. “Every time I think about you with other guys, I want to track them down, find out where they live, and pay them a visit with a pair of fucking bolt cutters. If I could go back in time, I’d find you and make you mine before you could give yourself to anyone else. I wish more than anything that I was the only guy you’d ever been with.” His hand, the one that’s still beneath my sweater, rises slowly, until my skin is covered in goose bumps, and the pad of this index finger and his thumb are brushing the underwire of my bra. His teeth graze my neck, and my startled gasp of surprise fills thevardo.
Pasha’s eyes are feverishly bright when he pulls back and looks at me. “I wish I’d never fucked anyone else, too. I fucking hate that I’m imperfect for you.”
“You’re far from imperfect,” I whisper. How the hell can he look at himself in the mirror and think of himself that way? It makes no sense. His mouth, lips still a little swollen from the attention he was just paying to me, lifts on the left-hand-side into an approximation of a smile. “Yeah. I’m hot. Women seem to like that I have abs for days. But I didn’t mean that. It just…it would have been better if I hadn’t fucked anyone before I fucked you.”
My head’s still flooded with endorphins from his mouth on my neck, but I scrounge up a cocky smirk for him. “Didn’t have you pegged as a hopeless romantic, Pasha. Most guys would be happy to have slept with as many women as they could before meeting a real, long term prospect.”
Pasha’s fingers dig a little deeper into my skin. “Who said anything about you being a long-term prospect?”
Oh. Oh fucking, shitting hell. My heart plummets through my body and explodes in a bloody mess at my feet. How? How have I misread this so badly? He doesn’t think I’m long term material. I didn’t even second guess the words as they left my mouth; they just seemed obvious. I’d begun to finally warm up, what with his body flush with mine and the wood burner blasting out waves of heat, but a nasty, penetrating cold begins to creep into my chest again as I try to gently push him away. “What was all that in front of your family, then? The whole, I’m hers and she is mine, bit? You were just saying that to make sure no one tries to stab me to death while we’re asleep?”
Fuck. I hate that there’s amusement in his eyes right now. I despise the fact that he seems entertained as he locks his arms around me, refusing to let me wriggle free from him. “Stop. Stop, stop, stop. Jesus, Zara, just quit squirming will you. You’re freaking out for no reason. You are not a prospect to me. You’re not a fucking possibility. That’s all I was trying to say. You’re a definitive. An absolute. And, no, I’veneverbeen a hopeless romantic, but somehow you’ve come along and turned me into one. Fuck! Stop staring at me like that. It’s already hard enough putting this shit into words. I’m no fucking good at it.”
He is far better than he knows.
I’ve placed so much stock in this wild, unlikely improbable connection between Pasha and me that the moment it looked like I might have acted rashly, tying myself to him so insanely quickly, I realized just how devastated I’ll be if I am wrong about this. I will be end-of-the-motherfucking-world level devastated, and that is a worrying prospect.
With a handful of simple words, Pasha has wiped away my fear and embarrassment, but a hint of panic remains now. Him being with an outsider is probably going to be hard for him, even with Cleo’s blessing. There could come a time when the attraction he feels for me dims, and the hassle of maneuvering through clan politics where I am concerned becomes annoying and not worth it for him anymore.
Pasha reaches up and rubs his index finger between my eyebrows. His face is so serious. “Stop. Whatever you’re doing in there right now, just…stop. It’s not going to help.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The fuck I don’t. You’re turning over possible scenarios that have no weight or bearing to our situation. I can tell.” He’s so damn confident all the fucking time. Completely and utterly sure of his place in the world. When he opens his mouth and speaks, there is no doubt or hesitancy in the things that he says.
“How can you be so sure? How the hell can you tell me that you’re not going to get sick of all this infighting once the shine has worn off and I’m not so new and intriguing anymore?”
Cupping my face in his hands, he gently presses his forehead against mine. “Do I feelnewto you, Firefly?” he asks. His voice is as quiet as falling snow.
