Page 7 of Roma Queen
A simple, easy touch.
Exploratory.
Curious.
It has my heart slamming in my chest.
Women normally touch me like they’re grabbing at something before anyone else can get to it. Hungry. Demanding. Desperate. Don’t get me wrong; sometimes that can be hot, to be wanted like that. To be able to turn someone on to the point of madness. But this is so, so different. Right now, I’m not an object of carnal desire. Not a hard-won prize, or a target to be pursued.
I’m a puzzle box. An intricate painting. A wonder and a mystery.
Zara’s the first person to study me this closely. To try and see anything beyond the tattoos, or my eyes, or the fact that my body was put together in a pleasing fucking way. She’s the first person to ever touch me as if I’m something to be admired rather than used…and it’s pretty fucking terrifying.
I’m barely breathing as she traces around the back of my collar, where she gently strokes the pads of her fingers against the hair at the nape of my neck, humming in a pleased way under her breath. “I love the way that feels,” she says. “Your hair, here, where it’s shaved at the back of your head. Soft, but prickly when you rub it the wrong way.”
Every quick witted or arrogant response to that statement flees my mind. Sure, there are plenty of things I could say to her to make her blush right now, or to embarrass her, or make her feel stupid for speaking her mind. It’s what I would have done to nearly anyone else who told me that they were fascinated by such a random part of my body. I don’t do that with Zara, though. I don’t want to. I want to hear what fascinates her.
I know I’m a good-looking guy. I see the way women look at me all the time, and to be perfectly frank, I have taken great pleasure in ridiculing them for being so fucking shallow. Right now, though, with Zara’s light-as-a-feather touch caressing the back of my neck, I feel like dropping to my knees and thanking my lucky fucking stars that she likes me, that she’s attracted to me, that the hair on the back of my neck feels fucking good to her, because that means I get to keep her.
I have no idea what’s fucking happening to me. I’m not sure I fucking like it, either, but this feels so familiar to me. As if we’ve already been doing this—touching, kissing, caressing, worshipping each other—for half our lifetimes, and we’re supposed to continue doing it for as long as we both draw breath.
I can’t say anything. Even if I had the words to tell her how good it feels to have her touching me the way she is, my throat has closed up and I can barely fucking breathe.
So, I just drive.
Eventually, Zara straightens in her seat, stretching, and my skin is left tingling from the memory of her touch. For a while, neither of us says anything, and it’s okay. Comfortable and easy. In the end, I cave though. I just want to hear the sound of her voice. “What about you, Firefly? How did you end up back there, in Spokane, taking 911 calls and drinking apple juice in a bar with a group of people nearly twice your age?”
She sighs, pulling at a thread on the seam of her jeans. “Well, it’s complicated,” she says slowly. “But I suppose it’s because I used to like setting things on fire when I was a kid.”
Hah. Not what I was expecting, but I’ll bite. “Don’t all kids like setting things on fire?”
She shrugs. “Probably. But I used to like setting fire to churches. Nice ones, with fancy stained-glass windows and spires. And I was still doing it when I was fifteen, when most other people have grown out of their set-the-world-on-fire-and-watch-it-burn phase.”
“Firefly was a firebug. How ironic.” I can picture it, too: a young version of Zara striking a match, the flame wavering, lighting up her face, casting shadows as she tosses it onto a stack of gasoline-soaked hymn books. I can almost hear thewhoompfof the fire catching, devouring the paper and everything else in its path. “Just churches?” I ask.
“Yes,” she confirms.
“Not a fan of god, then?”
Her tight-lipped smile tells a story all of its own. “Didn’t you know red heads are the spawn of the devil?”
“Ihadheard you were all evil.”
This makes her smile real. “What about you Roma? What religion do you subscribe to?”
“None. All of them. Depends on where we are in the world. Historically, we fall in line with whatever’s popular with the locals.”
“Very pragmatic. So, what? The Rivins are…” She cocks her head to one side. “Catholic?”
“My grandparents, yes. My mother, when it suits her. Me, not at all.”
She nods, assimilating this information. Her eyes become distant as she stares straight ahead, out of the windshield. “I was born in New York. When I was sixteen, my extremely religious father decided it would be a good idea to spend a week together during spring break. I hadn’t burned down anything in a while by that point, so he took me into this beautiful church. It was old. A couple of hundred years, probably. It was so peaceful. Serene. He left me sitting in one of the pews while he went to light a candle for my uncle. He was dying at the time.” She adds this piece of information as if it’s an afterthought. “I sat there for a very, very long time, and I absorbed the silence. Sucked it in. Let it sink into my bones. I must have been there, sitting in that pew, alone, for at least an hour. As time ticked on, I got antsy. Bored. All my friends had gone to the Hamptons. I was livid that I’d had to stay back and hang with my dad. And then, out of nowhere, the silence splintered apart, and there was this terrible, awful sound. Screaming. Terrified, high-pitched, blood curdling. I can still hear it now if I close my eyes.” She shivers, plainly hearing the sound right now.
“A door opened at the back of the church, and this…mancame out. He didn’t run. Just walked, like he had somewhere to be. His face was totally blank. And every part of him was soaked in blood. I remember recoiling away from him as he walked past the pew where I was sitting. He didn’t look down at me. Didn’t even acknowledge that I was there. He had to have seen me, though. Seconds after he’d walked out of the church, a priest burst out of the confession booth. I remember thinking he looked like an actor, not a priest. Too young. Too handsome. Too strong. He bolted into the back, through the doorway the other guy had come out of, and all hell broke loose. Screaming. Shouting. Crying.
“This blonde woman came flying out of the back and grabbed hold of my father, who’d finally come running because of all the noise. She was crying, sobbing, snot running down her face, the works. She begged him to call an ambulance. When the paramedics showed up, a crowd had gathered inside the vestibule of the church. The medics went into the back. When they came out, they were carrying this woman on a stretcher. A nun. She’d been stabbed so many times, I couldn’t count the wounds in her chest, her stomach and down her legs. And in between her legs…” Zara shudders. The memory of this event must be pretty fucking traumatic for her to dredge up from the past. It sounds fucking horrifying enough second hand.
“She’d been assaulted,” she continues. “While I’d been sitting there, soaking up the silence, resenting my father for dragging me into the church, salty that I wasn’t getting to spend the break with my friends, the man who had so casually walked past me, covered in blood, had been raping and stabbing that woman in that back room.”
