Page 18 of Roma Queen
I open my mouth, words on my tongue:of course you do. How can you not? There’s still so much I need to figure out about you.But…none of those statements disturb the silence that has engulfed thevardo. Hesitantly, I steel myself and tell him the truth. “No. You don’t. You feel like a constant. You’re a song I’ve always known. I can hum you, the sound and the tone and the melody of you filling every single fiber of my being. I can’t seem to remember the lyrics of you, but every second I spend with you, I’m seeming to figure out where they fit.”
Pasha’s eyes are ablaze. He strokes his thumbs over my cheekbones as he leans forward and carefully, with great intention, places his lips against mine. At first, the kiss is slow and searing. It burns its way down to my soul, branding itself there. My lungs are void of oxygen, and I can’t seem to recall how to rectify the situation. My mind swims with him, the smell of him, the feel of his body against my body, his hip pressing into my side, his leg in between my legs, the weight of him settled against me, satisfying, and frightening, andsafe.
When he parts my lips, his thumb teasing the edge of my bottom lip as he increases the pressure between our mouths, I forget my own damned name. His tongue slips past my teeth, probing and exploring, and I answer, tasting him, discovering him the way he is discovering me, and all the world falls silent.
This kiss is an armed robbery. Like a thief, Pasha takes everything from me as he grinds himself against me, pinning me to the wall of thevardo. My breath: gone. My hearing: gone. All cognitive abilities: gone. My vision: gone. My hearing: gone.
He ransacks my senses as he kisses me. He leaves me with nothing but my ability to feel, and holyfuckhas my body come alive. On my deathbed, when all of the challenges, the triumphs, the trials, the tribulations, and the victories of my life are laid out bare before me, when the most important moments revisit me, showing me the pivotal moments when everything changed and I found myself traveling into the unknown, down a new, unplanned path, I know thatthismoment,this kiss, will be one of the most coveted highlights of my humble existence.
SECOND
Routine makes anything bearable. That’s what the man says.
There is no routine for the boy, though. Inside the room, there is only the endless anticipation of pain, and the pain itself. And the boy has begun to realize that the waiting is often the worst part. Now, the boy finds himself hoping for the door to open. Because at least when the man comes, the boy is not alone anymore. At least the pain the man delivers brings with it some sort of physical contact. A dirty, wrong kind of contact, the boy is old enough to know that much, but being alone, and cold, and hungry in the dark when the man is gone has begun to terrify him more than the man’s grunting attentions.
It’s been a long time since he left the room. It’s been a long time since he bathed. The boy doesn’t know if the cracked, flaky debris he picks off his body is blood, or dirt, or the greasy, musk-smelling wetness that the man leaves on his skin.
It hurts to squat over the bucket and go to the bathroom. The man only used to touch, to grab, to pinch, and smack and kick, but now he pushes, too. Pushes things where they’re not supposed to go. This excites the man far more than all of the other things put together. The pain feels bigger than the boy, and bigger than the room. Bigger than the boy’s memory of the sky, even. The pain becomes him while the man is pushing against him. Once it’s all over, it seems like the man is taking the pain he inflicted on the boy back inside himself, and it hurts more than he can tolerate. Often, the man crouches in the corner, naked, and cries, just like the boy does.
The boy made the mistake of trying to comfort the man once.
The man broke three of his fingers.
Nine
PASHA
I’ve never giventhe idea much thought, because I’ve always known deep down that I’d never be king, but now that Ihaveto take on the role, if only on paper, then the possibility that I’ll need a queen has become very real, and so fucking weird.
This is all for show. It’s an act, posturing for Lazlo’s sake, but Jesus this one hits me in the feels. Once Sarah’s safe and the motherfucker who took her is either dead or locked behind bars, there really won’t be any need to follow through with this outlandish plan. But…for one moment…I let myself imagine it: Shelta gone. No more fighting. No more backstabbing. No more bullshit with Patrin. A different kind of a life for all of us. Maybe no more fair. Or far less traveling, at least. And Zara, somewhere in this blurry, warped, undeveloped picture, by my side, glorious and fucking amazing, and somehow my wife.
What. The. Actual. Fuck. Is. Wrong. With. Me?
I take a match inside my head, strike it and I hold the flame to that mental picture, making myself watch as it burns until it’s vanished. It’s not wise to let such stupid ideas fester and take hold. They’re dangerous. They’re impossible. They’ll only lead to madness and heartbreak.
Zara can’t know that such ridiculous things are taking place in my head as I root out some bedding, a stack of blankets and a hot water bottle from the wooden chest I helped Archie to build when I was just a kid. She laughs when I pull back the thick brocaded curtain to the rear of thevardo, revealing the raised double bed beyond.
“I was beginning to wonder where we were gonna sleep,” she says, rubbing her eyes. She’s tired. I’m tired, too, but there’s something I need to do before I let her pass out, and it can’t fucking wait. My bedmaking skills leave much to be desired as I throw everything onto the mattress as quickly as I can. Zara helps fit the sheet and tuck it in properly, and is halfway through sliding a pillow into a pillow case when I rip both items from her hands, hurling them over my shoulder, and I push her back onto the bed.
“Pasha! Oh my god!” She squeals—very un-Zara-like—as she hits the swelter of blankets. “What the hell are you doing?”
I growl, the vibration rumbling at the back of my throat as I stand over her. Her hair has come loose from its tie, and her long auburn waves flow like silk over her shoulders and onto the sheets—a stark contrast of red against the white cotton. Her tits strain against the thin sweater she’s wearing, and all I can fucking think about it ripping the damn thing off her body and palming her flesh. Fucking feasting on it. “What do you think I’m doing, Firefly?”
The question didnotneed posing. It’s clear what I plan on doing, and it’s equally as clear what I want from her. I let her take me in, though, allow her scrutiny to pass over me, as I slowly unfasten my belt and pull it from the loops of my jeans. Her eyes round out, her lips parting ever so slightly as she studies the length of black leather in my hands. “You’re not using that on me,” she says.
“Oh? I’m not?”
“Absolutely not! Not here, with so many people around. They’ll hear.”
I take another step toward the bed. “Whatdo you think they’ll hear?”
“I don’t know. Screaming?” She laughs, doing a bad job of pretending that the idea of such a thing’s funny to her, but I’m sensitive to the faint changes in the tone of her voice. Right now, she’s on edge and trying to hide it.
Poor, deluded Firefly. She can’t hide anything from me, just as I can’t hide a fucking thing from her. I place the belt down on the edge of the bed as I take hold of my shirt and pull it up over my head. The last time I took my shirt off in front of a woman, she’d ooh’d and ahh’d over my tattoos, tried to run her hands all over me, to touch the ink, but I hadn’t let her. She had no fucking right to touch them. Had no idea what they meant and didn’t fucking care, either. All she cared about was the dangerous edge the black symbols and intricate line work lent to me. I’d slapped her hand so fucking hard when she started pawing at me; she’d tried to claw my fucking eyes out when I picked her up and carried her out of the loft, dumping her on the other side of the front door before slamming it closed.
Zara cautiously eyes the ink on my skin as I proceed to kick my boots and socks off and strip out of my jeans. I know she’ssocurious about my tattoos, but she doesn’t say anything, though. Doesn’t react as I remove my underwear and discard my boxers on the floorboards at my bare feet. Her eyes, a blue-green color most of the time, have darkened, bordering on brown, smoldering like hot coals as she blatantly scans me from head to toe without an ounce of shame.
Her eyes settle on my erect cock, wavering there, shuttering a little, and I can’t help but fuck with her a little. I take hold of it, squeezing it, enjoying the feeling of the pressure as I run my hand along the hard length.
