FIFTEEN
Rome led Stina through the dim hallways toward their rooms. It was hard to imagine that only days before, Townie occupied the room across the hall instead of the woman at his side.
He brushed his thumb across her slender fingers as he walked her to his bedroom. They paused, staring at each other. When he drew her inside and closed the door, she didn’t argue.
He stood in the dark and looked down at her, this woman who had slanted his life sideways without warning.
She belonged here.
Not in protective custody—but here. With him.
The sight of her rocked him. Everything he knew about himself and gave up wanting years ago when he signed his life over to Blackout…was standing in this room right now looking at him like she had no idea what she was doing to him.
He backed her against the door and kissed her.
The simple press of his lips to hers went from zero to wild in the space of a breath.
He braced his hand on the door beside her head and kissed her the way he’d been thinking about kissing her all through dinner, poker and the long walk down the corridor, deep and thorough, delving his tongue into her mouth and claiming her soft little moans for his own.
They broke apart, breathing hard. He dropped his forehead to hers, studying the gold and green tumult in her eyes.
“You make me feel things,” he rasped out, low.
Her expression rippled with an emotion she didn’t manage to contain. It looked like want and fear in equal measure.
“Don’t.” Her voice came out quiet. “Don’t fall for me, Rome. I know about the rules. Blackout. What you gave up when you signed on.”
He drew back enough to study her closer.
“A lot of things are changing around here.” He watched her face. “Blackout is going in new directions outside of the parameters set for us.”
“I don’t understand how—”
“It means we fight for our country, but we refuse to be bound by rules made by men who’ve never bled for it.”
“Rome.”
He pushed on, holding her stare. “Monk has Jolie here. That opens doors to more possibilities than you think, Stina.”
She didn’t look away, but a flicker of caution in her eyes gave way to what looked like hope.
His heart leaped with it too and before she could talk herself out of the dream world he was building around them, he pressed his mouth to her throat.
She made a sound that ripped him apart and remade him in the small intake of air that followed.
He kissed down her throat, across her collarbone, already reaching for the hem of her top. He pulled it up and off in one motion and dropped it behind him, not giving a damn where it landed.
The only thing he needed was Stina—naked, underneath him, on top of him, hell, pinned against this door.
Moving down her body, he closed his mouth around her nipple through the fabric of her bra. When he bit down gently, her chest heaved on a gasp and she thrust her fingers into his hair. He worked his way to her other nipple, nipping and sucking as he found the clasp at her back.
The hooks gave, and he pulled the straps down her arms and let it drop too.
Then he took his time.
Cupping her breasts, he studied her for an aching heartbeat. The dim light caught her curves, her chest rising and falling too fast. Her eyes were fixed on his face with an expression that made his heart tumble end over end into a bottomless reality of what this could become.
He lowered his head and took one nipple between his lips and suckled lightly in a slow, deliberate swirl of his tongue while tracing circles around the other. She arched her back off the door, bowing into his touch.
As he switched to her other nipple, he groaned at how easily it puckered for him. She issued a rasp and she tightened her hands in his hair, tugging with insistence.
He smiled around her flesh and took more time to unravel her. Kissing the curve of her breast first, he tuned into the noises she made. He dragged his teeth light across her ribs and her stomach caved inward on a sharp inhale.
“Rome.” His name came out as a plea.
With his lips paused on her skin, he looked up at her. Her hair spread across the door behind her, her lips parted and her eyes dark. Want glimmered in the depths.
He worked his way back up, taking his time. When he closed his mouth around her nipple, he stripped her pants down her curvy hips. After he untied her boots, he helped her step out of the rest of her clothing, leaving her gloriously naked in front of him.
He shot to his feet and claimed her mouth at the same moment he delved his hand between her thighs. She was soaking wet for him, her clit swollen with want.
Gasping, she dragged her fingers over his shoulders to anchor in his back as he coaxed her folds apart to slide two fingers inside her.
“Rome!”
She rocked into his hand, her moans turning him as hard as steel. She tensed around his fingers each time he plunged them inside her and shuddered as he withdrew.
She moved her hands to his hair, then shoulders, then fisted them on the door behind her, but he didn’t let up until she was coming apart on his fingers and he muffled her cry with his kiss.
“That’s it, baby. You’re so fucking beautiful.”
She shook in his arms until he felt her knees sag.
Slipping one hand under her ass, he lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck.
With their mouths fused in a never-ending kiss, he carried her to the bed and laid her down.
For years, he’d been telling himself he made the sacrifice for his country, that he was only built for the next command, the next op, the brotherhood. He’d made peace with not having more and stopped grieving it so long ago he couldn’t remember the last time it hurt.
But he looked at Stina in his bed and understood, with the stark clarity of a man who’d finally stopped lying to himself, that he was no longer willing to make the sacrifice.
* * * * *
Stina had wanted men before. She knew what attraction felt like and how chemistry could cloud her brain and make that moment more important than anything else.
This time, even though Rome had her body revving with desire, her body was no longer calling the shots.
It was a spot much higher in her chest.
She battled the tightness in her throat that had everything to do with falling for this man.
She’d been falling since their first argument. She’d tried to convince herself that what she felt was the intensity of the situation.
She was done lying to herself.
She cared for him. More than cared. But the word for what she felt was far too small for what was happening in her chest right now.
Gently, he laid her down, and her heart squeezed.
She was in so much trouble. How was she ever going to leave when this ended? When the threat was over and she returned to her life, how would she go on without him?
He braced his body over her, his stare locked on hers. She parted her thighs, angling her body to receive him. Letting out a groan, he lined up his condom-covered cock with her entrance, and in one hard shove, filled her.
At the same moment, he slammed his mouth over hers, taking her cry.
Her entire body arched up to meet him, and he stilled over her, buried deep. Every inch of him filled her—stretched her. And she couldn’t even find air.
He pressed his forehead to hers, not moving, just letting everything build between them. In that moment, the stillness was worse than anything else because it meant Rome felt it too.
Then he moved.
A long, deep thrust left them both shuddering, and on his withdrawal, they shared a moan. He pushed back in with a patience that bordered on cruel when her body wanted more, more, more.
He braced his arms around her, his body surrounding her, and watched her face with an intensity that left her breathless. Because he watched her like she was the only thing in the world.
“Rome. Oh god, Rome.” She moaned again, rocking into his next thrust and his next. Every move sent electric sparks to her core. She dug her fingers into his shoulders and held on.
He latched on to her hip, pulling her up into him with each jerk of his hips. “You feel so damn good. I can’t get enough.”
His jaw was locked, the tendon in the crease bulging with the effort of holding back.
She had to feel every inch of him and let her hands roam, memorizing all the velvety steel of his body. Then she arched upward and kissed him.
His deep rumble of response vibrated through her chest. Her nipples ached. Her pussy gripped at his length as he withdrew once more.
As she explored his body, she skimmed over raised scars and a flatter circular area on his side.
She paused over it, tracing the circle and terrified of what had put that mark there.
His eyes burned into hers. “Bullet,” he answered as if knowing the question before she ever asked.
Fingers convulsing over the scar, she buried her face against his neck. He was in danger every single day. He faced things she couldn’t even imagine.
“I hate that I let myself care about a man who can go and get himself killed.” Her outburst made him freeze with his cock deep inside her.
He captured her stare. “I don’t know if I should be touched that you care or offended that you think I’m bad enough at what I do I’ll get myself killed.”
She thumped a hand on his shoulder. “You’re so cocky.”
“Confident. Now that I know you care…I’m confident on both counts.”
Emotions warred inside her. She searched his eyes for a beat and a throaty laugh burst out of her.
“We can’t even have sex without an argu—ahh!” Her words ended in a sharp cry as he withdrew and plunged inside her again.
The dark need built to a loud storm, a tight, coiling pressure that started low and spread outward—and she couldn’t control the sounds she made if she tried.
She cried out as the first wave of ecstasy struck, and Rome was right behind, curling around her with a growl that pierced her heart.
Her breaths came in wrecked rasps, and she realized he was whispering her name over and over in her ear as he came down from his high.
She turned her face into his neck and tried to remember how breathing worked.
He made a sound low in his throat and slipped his hands beneath her, cradling her so close that there was no separation from where her body began and his body ended.
She pressed her mouth to his and kissed him, with a deliberation that had nothing to do with the physical and everything to do with the rest.
I’m falling for him.
The thought moved through her like a key turning in a lock she hadn’t known was there. Not a panicked thought, or an unwelcome one. Just the truth.
I’m falling in love with him.
He gave a final shudder against her and she held him through it. Then he dropped his weight lightly against her and let her feel his heartbeat slowing against her ribs.
Neither of them spoke.
She stared at the ceiling over his shoulder as her mind tried to work out the logistics of a relationship with him but couldn’t come up with any way to make this work, not the way Jolie and Archer did.
But the thought of leaving Rome sent a crack of pain to her chest.
If she wanted him in her life, she had to figure out how to survive. This time it wasn’t the streets of Chicago or hard times.
Because she’d already stopped being able to imagine her life without him.