Page 3 of Roma Queen
Fuck my life.
Once this is all over, I’m going to destroy that pay phone.
I’m going to rip it clean from the ground, and I’m going to dump the fucking thing into the deepest, fastest flowing part of the Spokane River.
I’m going to make sure that pay phone never fucking rings again.
Two
ZARA
“You’regonna need to pack a bag.” Pasha’s boiling over with frustration as he makes a beeline for the Mustang that’s parked on the street outside a dingy twenty-four-hour convenience store. My heart’s still thumping from having to run up the stairs after him just now, and it doesn’t look like he’s planning on slowing down; I jog a couple of steps, trying to keep up with him. “We can’t leave town, Pasha. Lazlo…fuck. This guy’s got Sarah holed-up in the city somewhere. We need to stay and find her.”
Smoke billows on the cold night air as Pasha replies. “He said the only way to save her was to accept the crown. He’s probably been watching the clan if he knows I haven’t accepted the role yet. He knows we’re gonna have to leave to go find them if we’re gonna be able to give him what he wants.” He unlocks the passenger side door and opens it for me. Standing in front of him, the car door pinned between our chests, I look up at him, trying to mimic his even composure.
I can’t suppress the questions that burn in my mind, though. They spew out of me, frantic, one after the other. “What if he just wants us out of the way? What if he wants us out of town so he can kill Sarah and get the hell out of Spokane himself? Why would he even want you to be their king, to be in a position of power, if he hates you so much?”
Pasha’s mouth tightens into a line as he lifts his hand to my cheek and strokes his fingers along the line of my cheekbone. His dark hair is curling at the ends, tumbling into his face. The smell of him envelops me, reassuring and strong, and I find myself wanting to wrap my entire being up in him, to sink myself into him and lose myself forever. There would be no worries over Sarah. Corey wouldn’t be dead. It wouldn’t matter that I was suspended from work, because my job wouldn’t matter anymore. Onlyhewould matter. The dark-haired prince of the Roma.
“Lazlo never had a tight grip on reality. I can guarantee you that he has some end goal here. He’s probably fixated on that goal, and that goal alone. He’s playing a game. He’s laid out the rules. From this point forward, we have to follow them or pay the price. But he has to follow those rules, too.”
Pasha knows Lazlo. Spent years of his life living at close quarters with the man. This gives us a distinct advantage, especially if it means Pasha can predict how the bastard will act or behave. He’s confident that this is the right course of action—I can see it in his eyes. But…what if he’s wrong? I push down on my ever-rising panic, slamming a lid on it, but I can feel it violently bubbling away beneath that lid, threatening to boil over. “Maybe I should stay here. If something happens—”
Pasha’s already shaking his head, though. “Sorry. Not an option. I told you I was going to protect you back in your apartment, and I meant it. I won’t be able to do that if I’m two and a half hours away. If Lazloisfucking with us, the very last thing I’m gonna do is leave you alone here in the city. You have to come with me.”
Heat rises up my neck, staining my cheeks red. He did not just shut me down like that. Noway. “I’m not your property now. You can’t force me to obey you. You might be about to become their king, but I have no interest in you being mine.”
A line of red chases across Pasha’s cheeks, too. His eyes flash, the muscles in his jaw popping as he lowers his hand and grips hold of the top of the car door. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to. I’ll rephrase. It would fucking kill me to leave you here, knowing you could be in danger. I really need you to come with me, Zara. I need you where I can see you, so I won’t lose my fucking mind. Can you please trust me? Can youpleasecome with me?” His words are hard. Clipped. Tight. He doesn’t like saying them—it’s clear he’s never really had toasksomeone for something before—but he means them. His frustration is openly warring with his need for me to be safe.
Can you please trust me?
He made this huge, monumental request not three seconds ago, but his eyes are still asking it. I exhale, hoping that I’m making the right decision; the consequences if I make thewrongdecision are dire indeed. “All right. All right. I’ll go with you. But there’s more than one person you need to protect me from, Pasha. Lazlo’s targeting the both of us for some reason, but don’t forget…there’s someone else who’s taken a serious disliking to me, too.”
Relief smooths out Pasha’s troubled expression. His brows bank together, forming a hard line. “Don’t you worry about my mother, Firefly. If she so much as looks at you sideways, I’ll unleash the kind of hell that’ll have her running for goddamn cover before she can eventhinkyour name again.”
* * *
The temperature dropsas we drive north. An hour outside of the city, Pasha pulls off into the parking lot of a huge retail outlet—Norm’s Outdoors, Washington’s Premier Fishing and Hunting Warehouse!—and he disappears inside. I wait for a little over fifteen minutes, wondering what the hell he’s doing, before he emerges through the automatic doors, carrying a large bag. He slings it into the trunk and then gets back into the Mustang. He doesn’t say a word. Just leans across the car, places his curled index finger beneath my chin and gently tips my head back.
When he kisses me, my head swims. His lips ignite a fire inside me the moment they make contact with my own, and the world, if only for a second, seems to quiet. The worry that’s been digging its claws into my back loosens its hold for a moment, and everything is still. This kiss is different to the scorching exchanges we shared back in my apartment. This is slow and deep, and sinks down into my soul, fusing us together.
I’ve always thought feelings were hard and fast, definite things. I’ve experienced my emotions as if they are primary colors—red for anger; blue for calm; green for excitement. My moral compass has always seen things in very defined terms, too. White for good. Black for wrong. Turns out, the range of human emotion is very much like a rainbow. There are so many different variants and blends of each feeling that sometimes they all bleed together, creating a swirling mess of color, and it’s so damned difficult to pick one shade from any of the others.
The emotions that have attached themselves to Pasha in my mind are so fucking confusing, all spilling over into one another, complicating what ought to be so easy to sift through. This is more than a simple attraction. This is more than a desire to satisfy a hunger inside my body. He is a physical need that flows in my blood. He is a burning ache that thrums in my chest. He is a warning, and a plea, and a gunshot in the dark, and I have only one way of responding to him: desperately, fiercely, and with every part of my soul.
He’s breathing quickly as he pulls away from me, framing my face in his hands. “Fuck, Zara. You turn everything upside down,” he whispers.
I close my eyes. “At least you still know which way is up. I don’t have a clue anymore.”
His huff of laughter barely makes a sound, but it makes me smile. When I open my eyes again, he’s leaned back and he’s studying my face with a burning intensity. My first thought is to turn away from him, to make a joke, to end the moment where it feels like he’s rifling through a box of my deepest, darkest secrets. I hold myself in place, though, forcing myself to remain still as he continues his assessment.
“You looked at me like this when you came out of Shelta’s tent,” I say softly. “It scared the shit out of me.”
“Does it scare you now?”
I see the curiosity in his eyes. There’s something so unusual about him. Sometimes, it’s as though today is his first day on the planet, and he’s seeing everything and everyone for the very first time. His eyes don’t skim over objects and people in the same way other people’s eyes do. When he looks at something, it’s as if he’s really seeing it, cataloguing its shape and appearance, trying to understand its form and existence. And when he looks at me…it’s as though the tide of some great ocean has inexplicably paused, andIam staring back into this vast, unknowable, awesome force of nature, and it’s about to sweep me away any second.
“Yes,” I whisper. “It terrifies me.”
