23. Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-three
Roman
Mary tried to murder my toes when I walked into Shira’s house after the luncheon, but now that I’d been here for an hour, she’d settled herself in my lap, allowing me to pet her. Her purring was the only thing keeping me calm as I waited for Shira to come home.
I’d texted her I was here so when she walked in, she wasn’t terrified to find me in her living room. I’d done her enough harm already.
“Hi.” She dropped her keys and purse on her entry table and kicked off her shoes. There was nothing different about her. No change. It was a wonder to me. Then again, she’d been carrying the heaviness of her past all her life. I was the one who’d changed. “Mary looks comfy and not like she hates you at all.”
At the sound of Shira’s voice, Mary lifted her head, mewed at her, then settled back into her nap. Shira sat beside us, stroking the top of her cat’s head.
“We’re beginning to understand each other,” I replied tightly. I was trying for normal, easy, but it wasn’t happening. The barbed knot in my gut was clawing at me, too fucking violent to ignore.
Her lips curved. “You mean you’re beginning to like her?”
“Maybe.”
Eyes flicking to mine, she gave me a tired smile. “I’m going to change and wash my face. I’ll be right back.”
“Sure.”
She was gone a minute or two when I decided I was done waiting. Mary didn’t like me very much when she lost her napping spot on my lap, but that was nothing new for us. She swished her tail at me before settling in the corner of the couch, a strip of late afternoon sun shining on her.
I expected Shira to have gotten dressed in the loungewear she always wore at home by the time I made it upstairs, but when I entered her room, she padded out of her walk-in closet wearing only a snow-white bra and matching panties.
I’d come here after the luncheon to talk. To offer her another apology for how I’d treated her. To hug her if she let me. To ask questions I wasn’t sure she’d answer.
Once I laid eyes on her like that, those intentions fled.
“Shira,” I bit out harshly, falling onto the end of the bed. “Come here.”
Her lips parted as she inhaled sharply. Her head lowered, but she came, stopping between my spread knees. I dropped my forehead to her chest and curled my arms around her, groaning against her skin. She was so warm, whole, unharmed.
“Shira, Goldie… Jesus .” I rolled my forehead on her soft breasts, holding her tighter, mouthing her through her bra, breathing in her scent, trying to settle the vicious torment churning in my gut.
Her fingers threaded through my hair, stroking tentatively. It only set me more on edge. Her bra became wet the more my mouth roamed and sucked. I didn’t know what I was doing. All I knew was I needed her to be close, to make her feel good and cared for.
“Rome,” she whispered. “What—”
“Let me make you come.” I slid my hands down her back to cup her ass. “I need to make you come, Shira.”
“I—you need it?”
“God, baby, you don’t understand how badly I need it.” Gathering the waistband of her panties in my fists, I looked up at her. “I’m going to take these off unless you stop me.”
Her fingers tightened in my hair, and her breath hitched, but she didn’t object or try to take my hands away. I gave her a few seconds—it was all I had in me—then I tugged her panties down to her knees and had her bare ass in my hands and my mouth all over her.
“Shira,” I gritted out as I fell to my knees, kissing down her body. Every place my lips touched, I swiped my hand over, checking her for marks or scars, ensuring she wasn’t injured. The need didn’t make sense, but it was visceral.
Taking her by the hips, I spun her around, dropping her to sit on the end of the bed. My palm cupping her nape, I spread her legs, sliding my other hand up her inner thigh to find her core already wet and silky. I remembered this. One look at her that night, and I’d needed my mouth on her. It was different now. She wasn’t just a sensual body; she was someone I now cared for. Erotic to amorous, but my desire was the same, fiery in my gut, molten in my veins.
The pads of my fingers met her clit, and her breathing wavered, soft and sighing. I rubbed her and held her, kissing her neck and chest, sucking her puckered nipples through her damp bra. Her mouth was near my ear, and the sounds of her pleasure were velvet over the barbs lodged in my gut.
“Shira,” I whispered. “Let me hear you.”
Her fingers clenched my hair, but she remained quiet as ever, only panting faster and faster.
“This. Do you need this?” Twisting my hand, I slid a finger inside her—not deep, not hard—and curled it near her entrance, pressing up.
“Oh,” she cried. “Oh, Wim, please.”
I yanked her against me, giving her more of what made those sounds and words come from her. In return, she rewarded me with moans and sighs. My name, the one she’d first known me by, was a whisper into the air, a ghost of a thing, but I caught it, held it—held her while she shook. Her thighs quivered. Her inner walls fluttered. I opened my mouth over her throat to feel it when she came.
It was a gentle vibration on my tongue. Silky juices on my fingers. Shaking muscles beneath my palm. Shira came apart quietly, beautifully, but it wasn’t enough.
Taking her in my arms, I shifted us up the bed. She let me move her, bring her over my face, and she squeezed her eyes closed. Instinctually, I knew this wasn’t an easy position for her, but once I had her there, I couldn’t let her go.
Giving her no time to spiral into self-consciousness, I took her thighs in my hands, pulled her down to my mouth, and fastened my lips over her hot, swollen flesh. The taste of her…dear god, the taste of her. It was better than I remembered, and I remembered it being the sweetest thing I’d ever had.
She fell forward, holding the top of her padded headboard. Her head was turned to the side, not watching me as I pleasured her, allowing me to look up at her and take everything in. Pink, parted lips, furrowed brow, almost pained. Breasts spilling over the top of her bra. The gentle swell of her abdomen and newly added roundness of her hips. All of her was intoxicating. If she had let me, I would have continued looking at her and looking at her.
But this wasn’t for me. My focus was on making her feel good. Wringing pleasure from her with my tongue while I caressed her hips and ass with my hands. Keeping her firmly planted on my mouth. Letting her know without words she was exactly where I wanted her.
When she came again, some of the screaming in my head tempered, but I was no less determined to keep giving to her. I went slower, dragging my tongue along her sensitive folds. She’d soaked my lips and chin, but I wanted more—for her sake and mine.
I shifted her again, positioning us so we were lying face to face. Shira curled into me, her head buried under my chin as I held her and plunged two fingers in and out of her. Her hips moved with me, rolling waves of sensuality.
“Wim,” she sighed, her lips brushing my shoulder, making me wish I was undressed so I could feel her skin on mine.
“Let me give you this. One more, Goldie.”
I kissed her face and hair as I held her and fucked her with my fingers. She was safe here, tucked in my arms. She was cared for, my lips all over her. She was never going to be hurt again in my presence.
Hot breath on my throat, fingertips digging into my arm, Shira gave me what I asked for, her inner walls clutching my fingers deep inside her. I kissed her face and rubbed my nose along her temple and hair until she calmed then slowly slipped my hand free.
Shira pulled her face away first, then her hand left my arm. With a heavy sigh, she rolled to her other side but stayed close, her body in the cove of mine. I gave her that. Though it wasn’t my first choice, if she needed that little bit of space, she could have it.
We lay like that for a while, silent as Shira’s breathing returned to normal. Goosebumps pricked her skin, and I reached down to the bottom of the bed, grabbed the chenille blanket she had artfully arranged there, and pulled it over her shoulders.
Her fingers curled around the edges, and she twisted her neck to give me her profile. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” I grazed my finger over hers. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She chewed on her bottom lip for a beat before rushing out, “I wish you hadn’t heard that.”
“Kit’s speech? Why not?”
“I don’t like you feeling sorry for me.”
“That’s not how I’m feeling.”
“Then what are you doing in my bed, Roman?”
Pushing up on my elbow, I looked down at her. “If I’d heard that about a stranger, I’d have been upset. Hearing it about you…I’m devastated for the little girl who’d learned to be quiet. It kills me to think of what you must’ve gone through. But that’s not why I’m here with you now.”
“Then why?”
“I don’t know if it can be put into words. I thought I was waiting here to talk to you, to apologize all over again for being so unforgivably shitty, maybe give you a hug…then I saw you looking so damn pretty and vulnerable, and all I wanted to do was give you something good.” I smoothed her hair away from her face and lingered with a lock of it between my fingers. Like silk. “Are you okay with what just happened?”
Her nod was slight. Her mouth stayed silent. And I just had to trust she meant it and I hadn’t screwed up in a massive way yet again.
“I’ll give you that any time you need it, Shira. Will you ask me for it?”
She sucked in a breath, her shoulders bunching around her ears. Then she sighed. “Probably not.”
“You won’t ask?”
She shook her head, and I puzzled over what she meant, but only for a second. My shy Goldie didn’t like to ask for what she wanted. She needed it to be freely given.
“Because you’re too nervous?”
I finally got a nod.
“Would you want me to do that again?”
Another nod.
I kissed her head. “Then I will. And, Shira, your cunt is the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted, so expect me to freely use it with my tongue.” I gave her a squeeze and another kiss. “Get dressed. I’m going to go see to Mary and make you something to eat. Then we can talk.”
“There were things she left out.” Shira scooped up a nacho and popped it in her mouth.
We were on her couch, a basketball game on the TV. Mary had pranced away when she realized I wasn’t leaving, so it was just the two of us, plates in our laps, talking about the auction. Shira was the one who’d brought up Kit’s speech.
“We lived in my mom’s car. Then my dad reported it stolen and had it impounded. That night was the only night we had to sleep outside. Well, I slept. My mother didn’t even blink. We talked about it later—when I got older. She hadn’t been afraid for herself. She’d stopped being afraid for herself after my dad had snapped her arm like a twig. She’d been petrified for me. After that, she got us into a shelter. It wasn’t nice—there were waiting lists for the nice places—but we were together.”
She ate another nacho, and I didn’t even twitch. “I had to be quiet there too. I spent a lot of years being quiet. My mom always told me, ‘When Daddy turns into a hurricane, you tiptoe, quiet as a mouse, to your closet. The storm will be over before you know it.’” She took a long pull from her water bottle. “Sometimes I wonder who I would be if I’d had a different start. Would I live out loud like Bea? Be a confident and free biker girl like Clara? I’ll never know.”
“I think you’d be who you are when you’re with people who make you feel comfortable.” I squeezed her knee. “You’d feel like that all the time and let everyone see how funny and thoughtful you are.”
“Sweet of you, Rome.”
“Just telling the truth.” I rubbed my palm up and down her leg. “Where’s your dad?”
She lifted a shoulder. “We lived in Cheyenne. I would bet he’s still there. My beautiful mother died young, but the world is the way it is, so I’m sure my monstrous father will live to a hundred and two.”
“I could probably arrange it so that doesn’t happen.”
Shira grinned, and it would have knocked me down if I hadn’t already been sitting. “Again, sweet of you, but I need you around for Beanie—no murdering.”
I looked for signs of distress but found nothing. She ate her nachos and talked about murder as if she hadn’t just divulged the horrors she’d gone through—things I could never understand.
“You amaze me, Shira.”
She blinked, her nose crinkling. “I do?”
“You do. Look where you are, how far you’ve come.”
She gestured to her surroundings. “All this is from Frank’s money.”
“I don’t mean where you live or what you have. I mean you . I spent a lot of years pissed off at my mother for dipping out when she got bored with having kids. Spent even longer doing everything I could to get my dad to pay attention to something besides his work. Playing rugby, excelling in college…nothing I did turned his head. After he died, I kept going, blinded by it.”
I scoffed at the understatement of the year.
“Well, you know how blind I was. What I’m saying is you haven’t used your trauma as an excuse. You’re shy, yeah. Quiet, hell yes. Those are the results—not an excuse. You’re still good, you care a hell of a lot, and you can laugh. You’re telling me about sleeping on the street in one breath and laughing with your whole chest in another. So, yes, you’re amazing. I know from experience how easy it is to let it beat you. You didn’t.”
“I’m not the saint you’re making me out to be, Roman. I’ve worked on myself, but I’m almost thirty, and this is the first time I’ve genuinely felt like I’m living for myself. You screwed up, but I have too. Plenty.”
My brow dropped. “What do you mean this is the first time you’re living for yourself?”
“I think it’s obvious. I married a powerful man at a very young age. As a girl who had nothing and no one, do you think I voiced my opinions if they opposed his?”
I did not like the sound of this. “Shira, did he—?”
She held her hand up. “Frank was wonderful in a lot of ways, but I knew why he married me. He didn’t want to be challenged. I don’t know if he would have divorced me if I’d gone against him, and I was never in a position to test that, so I lived for him. It’s been a year and a half since he passed, and I spent most of that time attempting to run his company because it was what he wanted. Then you came along and set me free. Even if that wasn’t your intention, it’s what you did.” She rested her hand on her bump and offered me one of her serene smiles. “I like where I’m headed now.”
“Think I’m just going to follow you then.”
Her laugh was a welcome balm. “All right. I won’t call the cops if I see you lurking back there.”
I grinned, thoroughly taken by her lightness. “See? Amazing.”
“I don’t know about that.” Another nacho headed to her mouth. The hum of satisfaction she made as she ate it was even more of a balm. “What kind of food comes with the rugby box?”
“We’re changing the subject?”
“Hopefully.”
I swiped cheese from the corner of her mouth then sucked it off my thumb. “The food is incredible. There’s wings, pasta—wait. Why are you asking? Did you win the auction?”
She nodded, beaming at me. “Will you go with me?”
“Hell yes. I’d love to share some rugby with you.”
She leaned into me, her shoulder against my arm. Turning, I kissed the top of her head and rubbed my nose against her silky strands.
There was nothing I could do to rewrite Shira’s past, but I would do all I could to make sure the days ahead were as easy and peaceful as she deserved.