12. Roman
TWELVE
Roman
I’m so glad you’re here. I was worried about you.
I don’t know why those words broke me open last night. I don’t know why the thing that slipped through the crack was my name. But I do know there’s no going back.
I don’t want to go back.
I want to stay here with Lucas. I want to rest. I’m so fucking tired. I could barely get up off the floor last night after he helped me clean up. I barely made it to the bed. I haven’t stirred since.
Our tray of food has been sitting inside the gate for a while, but I won’t let Lucas up. I need him here with me.
Then I hear his stomach growl. I sigh and start to maneuver myself up. Lucas takes full advantage and wriggles away from me.
“I’ll get it,” he says, popping out of the bed. I snatch at him because I don’t like him being naked and exposed, but he gets away and goes hustling across the cell to pick up the tray.
“Oh my god!” he exclaims as he comes hurrying back. “A book!”
I had already spotted the ragged paperback when O’Neil brought the tray. When I gestured to O’Neil last night before I had to put my focus entirely on the fight, I wasn’t sure whether he understood me. Apparently he did. He gave me what I asked for.
Maybe that’s part of the reason I didn’t want to collect the tray earlier. I wasn’t ready for Lucas’s attention to shift.
But I can’t stay annoyed when he’s so happy. A smile tries to form on my face. It feels weird.
Sitting up, I hold open the blanket. Lucas sets the tray on the floor and dives in with me. He half crawls into my lap to get warm. I like that, so I pull him in to sit between my legs with his back to me. I’m sore from getting hit in the ribs a lot last night, but it’s worth it to have him close. I like how his body feels against mine. I like how he smells.
He grabs the book off the tray. It’s The Shining . Fucking horror, great. I take it from him and put it aside.
“Hey!” he protests.
“Food,” I say quietly against the top of his head.
He stills slightly, clearly surprised, but it’s only for a second. He leans back against me, touches my knee, and says, “Okay.”
A let out the breath that’s gotten stuck in my lungs. I relax.
Part of me knows that this is very bad. The more I speak with him, the more I let myself be comfortable with him, the more impossible it makes it for me to go back. But another part of me knows it’s already too late. Because if I lost him? I would die. I would make it happen, one way or another.
The other problem is that I still have to be what I’ve been for so long. In the ring. With the guards. Everywhere except in this carved away space with Lucas.
I have to think, too, about the future. It hasn’t existed for me for a long time. Animals don’t think about the future, not like humans.
I gave up hope of escape a long time ago. I had to. It was an invitation to despair every time that hope was disappointed. I saw men crumble because of it. You can’t live for the future in a hopeless place. You can only live for the fight.
That’s what I’ve learned to do. That acceptance in me became so deep that even when I was purchased by Oscar Crowley and brought back to the States, nothing stirred in me.
Not until Lucas.
The problem is, he can’t be here. This isn’t okay. I have to figure out how to get him— us —out of here. I have to make a plan.
It scares the shit out of me because I’m doing exactly what I’ve so long forbidden myself to do: hope.
The only way I can handle that fear is with a promise to myself that if anything happens to Lucas, I will not crumble. I will erupt. I will take as many people out with me as I possibly can.
It’s a cruel irony that the moment I actually begin to enjoy the present, I can’t settle in it. And it’s not just the future that’s tugging at me. The past is too. It has been ever since I spoke my name.
I thought that name was buried too deep to return to me, but the instant I accepted it again, everything attached to that name has been trying to come back with it.
What I was before the prison.
Who I was.
Roman Constantine.
Number three in the Constantine crime family, after my uncle and my brother.
My early life is both the reason I ended up in the arena in the first place and the reason I survived it. Ordinary people don’t get drugged in Boston and wake up in a remote, illegal prison in Eastern Europe where the inmates fight to the death in a sort of gladiatorial arena. Or if they do, they certainly don’t live very long.
I lived because I wasn’t an ordinary person to begin with. I was already brutal.
So it’s strange to have become more and more and more brutal … only to be sitting here with this sweet fucking boy handing me a bowl of scrambled eggs.
I eat some of the cold eggs before handing the bowl back to him. There’s beef too and a protein shake, plus some fruit. At least we’re getting more food now. I think they realized that if they don’t give us enough, I’ll short myself to feed Lucas. They don’t want that. They like me lean but big. I have to be strong to fight.
When we finish the food, Lucas reaches for the book. I sigh.
“What?” he asks.
Normally, I would reply with a grunt and by rolling away, showing him that I’m not interested in the book. But I find I’m more interested in learning about him than in communicating my own feelings. For that, I need words.
It upsets me that I’m struggling with speaking. I was so fucking sure that my silence was a choice and nothing more. But if that were true, my heart wouldn’t be pounding right now. My throat wouldn’t be tight.
I force my way through it.
“You … like horror?” I ask him.
He stills as he did before, surprised to hear me speak. But he’s happy, I can tell. He’s so fucking happy. He snuggles against me and answers with relish.
“I love it. King is one of my favorites. Do you not like horror?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Scary.”
He barks a surprised laugh. Then he twists to the side so he can look up at me. “Are you serious? Oh my god, you are.”
He absolutely howls with laughter.
I clamp my hand over his mouth. I don’t want the guards coming out. He’s now mostly crosswise in my lap, laughing against my hand.
I scowl at him. I’m somehow both very annoyed and delighted that he’s laughing at me. I still don’t know what’s so funny.
When he quiets down, I take my hand away from his mouth. He pats my arm.
“You’re a little bit precious, you know.”
I narrow my eyes. Now he’s being a brat. It’s not the best idea when he’s lying across my lap with his bare stomach entirely vulnerable to me. I tickle him.
He shrieks and thrashes. He twists toward me to put his stomach against mine so I can’t access it, but that just presents me with his ass. I give it a light smack that has it jiggling delightfully. He jumps.
“Hey!”
As I soothe the spot with my hand, he quiets. I keep massaging his ass. He relaxes more. My hands start to roam over both firm globes then down his legs and up again. He lifts for me, tilts his pelvis, opens.
I trace the crack of his ass and brush his puckered hole. Reaching between his legs, I explore his taint and balls. He lifts more for me so I can reach his cock. He’s only slightly thickened at this point, so I take a light hold of his cock and balls and start rubbing his back with my other hand.
His cock begins to swell in my hand. His breathing deepens. His head turns to the side on the bed. I slide my hand that’s rubbing his back up to his neck and head. I stroke his hair. His eyes drift closed and he makes a sound of contented pleasure.
It’s a strange, wonderful experience to handle his body like this. The gentleness feels incredibly intimate.
The way his cock lengthens and stiffens in my hand turns me on so much that my own cock hardens under his arched body until its prodding his hip.
“Oh god,” he breathes, still relaxed but starting to rock slightly. I pet his hair again. His eyelashes flutter. He has really pretty eyelashes.
“Come here,” I tell him. I don’t want to be rough with him right now, directing him with my hands, so it’s really fucking nice to be able to just speak.
He draws himself up.
As he straddles me in a kneeling position, I put my arms around him. He puts his around me and buries his face against my neck. He starts to rock into me, rubbing his cock against mine.
It’s so damn tender and sexual and beautiful. It feels so fucking good. It won’t make me come, but I don’t need to come. I just need … him.
He starts whining softly at my throat. He starts trembling and grinding harder.
“I’m … oh my god,” he gasps, shuddering against me as his arousal intensifies. “ Fuuuck , I’m gonna … oh my god, I’m gonna come.”
I rumble wordlessly, holding him more firmly against me, banding one arm around his hips to encourage him.
The light scrape of his teeth at my throat almost triggers me to pin him down and rut him, but I like this too much. I want to feel every tremor of his body, every puff of his breath, every dig of his fingernails. I want his orgasm—and he gives it to me.
He cries out against my throat as his cock kicks against mine and releases hot cum between our bodies. He moans and shudders through the pulses of it. My head is light, almost floating as I let his shudders go through me while he chases the last of it.
I pet him and hold him as he starts to relax against me. My cock is hard and aching, but I hold myself still. I don’t want to rush him.
Then he starts kissing me.
He did this last night too. Just like then, it sends conflicting signals through my body. Someone being at my throat is a threat. It’s teeth too close to where I’m vulnerable.
But it isn’t someone at my throat. It’s Lucas, and it’s his lips I feel. They kiss lightly at the hollow of my throat, then they move upward.
It has my eyes closing. It has me tilting my head back. I wouldn’t do that for anyone but him. He starts kissing the underside of my jaw. He’s half crawling up me now. His hands are on my shoulders.
I tilt my head down. It forces him to draw back. His blue eyes are dark. His lips are parted. I lean forward. When I press my lips to his, I feel his sudden intake of breath. I’ve never kissed him before.
As I explore his lips with mine, he receives it softly. He lets me take my time, opening to it as I press further.
I want more.
Arms around him, I maneuver him onto the bed. I lay him down and settle over him. I deepen the kiss, sweeping my tongue into his mouth. I eat up his little sounds of pleasure. My hips start to rock.
I break the kiss to work at his throat. I nibble and suck at him, pleasuring him as he did me—but marking him too. He moans as I draw at him, freshening the hickeys that have faded from his neck.
I work my way down. I nibble and suck and tease him. I lap up the cum he released for me. I revel in the way he arches and murmurs and hardens again. I suck hickeys into his skin along his hip, around his cock.
When I turn him over, he flops onto his front and lifts his ass for me. He thinks I’m going to fuck him, but I’m not. I know he’s sore from last night.
I gather the traces of his cum from my own stomach and slick my cock. I position it between his legs, lean over him, and start to thrust along his taint. My cock strokes him, thrusting against his balls and along the underside of his cock.
“Oh, fuck,” he murmurs. “Oh my god .”
I shift positions, working along the cleft of his ass for a while then between his legs again, letting us both feel everything. After a while, I draw back and reach between his legs. I take hold of his cock and pull it toward me.
He doesn’t know what I want him to do, so I have to tell him.
“Lie flat,” I say.
I enjoy his little whines as he complies—and I fucking love the sight of his cock lying hard against the bed between his legs. I fit my own aching, weeping cock between his ass cheeks and thrust downward. He writhes so much as I start pounding his cock with mine that I have to pin him down.
He thrashes and cries out as he comes. I hold my tip against him to feel the hot spurt of his cock, the way it pulses and throbs. I grunt and grit my teeth as I start ejaculating. I didn’t think I would come from that, but, fuck, it feels good. I come all over his cock, releasing in throbbing waves until I’m gasping and shuddering against him.
We float in the bliss for a while, then I draw away and start cleaning up. The blankets need washed, but I don’t want them wet right now, so I do my best to arrange them with the mess out of the way. When Lucas tries to get up to help, I hold up a hand to signal him to lie still and let me do it.
“You’re in pain,” he says as he watches me.
I’m surprised he can tell. I don’t know if I like that he can tell. “It’s okay,” I assure him, focusing on the arrangement of the blankets.
“It’s really not,” he replies.
I look at him, startled. He’s lying on his stomach with his head turned my way. He’s frowning.
I don’t know what to say, so I hand him the book. I crawl over him and lie behind him. I pull him onto his side to settle him against me.
“Read,” I say.
He sighs like he doesn’t want to let go of the subject, but there’s no point in discussing it.
I nip the back of his neck. “Read.”
Another sigh. He opens the book to chapter one and starts to read, “Jack Torrance thought—”
I reach over him and smash the book down. “Silently.”
He tugs the book out from under my hand and opens it again. He pats my arm. “I’ll protect you,” he promises and starts reading out loud again.
I growl and bite the back of his neck. He shivers. His voice quavers, but he just keeps reading.
I let my hand slide down his belly to his cock. I take threatening hold of it—and he’s still undeterred.
I’m so stunned by his defiance that I just lie there. Until I realize that I love the sound of him reading. Until I realize that this is really fucking nice.
I keep hold of his cock, but the threat fades. I just like the feel of it in my hand. I think he likes it too because he adjusts his hips to settle more fully into my hold.
I sigh and relax and let him horrify me.