17. Roman
SEVENTEEN
Roman
When I first wake up, I have no idea where the hell I am. In a bed. In a room. A big room. Even with the moonlight flooding in through the sliding glass doors, I don’t recognize it at first. Then, when I do, I feel weirdly disconnected from it. This room, my room, is not part of my reality. I feel like I’m in a dream. I feel, too, like something is very wrong. Like something is missing.
I sit up abruptly. Where the fuck is Lucas?
I throw the covers aside and get out of the bed. I’m naked, but that’s not a fact that deeply registers. I’m often naked.
There’s a man sleeping on the couch. I stalk over to him.
He yelps when I grab him and haul him up by his shirt. I growl in his face, “ Lucas .”
“You mean—”
I throw him down onto the couch and go storming across the room. I yank open the door. There’s a guard outside it.
Automatically, I clock him as a threat. He turns toward me and starts to say something, but I grab him by the throat and body slam him to the ground before he can finish.
I go stalking down the hallway to a staircase. There’s a hum in the back of my mind because, on a certain level, I know where I am and why I’m here. The thing is, it doesn’t fucking matter.
I get down to the black and white checkered foyer. When I hear voices, I angle toward them. I walk into the sitting room. There’s another guard, a tough-looking woman, inside the door. My eyes cut straight past her to Vitali—who has his hands planted on the arms of a chair, trapping Lucas there.
Vitali straightens. His eyes widen. “Roman. Jesus.”
I feel my lip curl back as I growl. As I stalk toward Vitali, his expression grows wary.
“Roman—”
I shove him so hard that he flies a good ten feet and crashes into an end table. A lamp smashes to the floor.
From the corner of my eye, I see him get up. At the edge of my awareness, I hear him and the female guard shouting. But Lucas is throwing himself into my arms, and that’s the only thing that fucking matters.
Lucas wraps his arms and legs around me as I carry him across the room. Vitali calls my name, but I ignore him. I carry Lucas through the foyer and up the stairs. I carry him down the hallway.
The man who was in my room is talking to the male guard that I body slammed. I growl at both of them. The man who was in my room jumps back, colliding with the guard.
Neither of them interferes with me as I carry Lucas into the bedroom. I shut and lock the door then take him to the bed, where I sit down on the edge and hold him against me. He’s shaking. I might be too.
I hear more voices outside the door. I hear myself growl. They better not try to come in.
They don’t.
They leave.
I want to ask Lucas if he’s okay, but I can’t. I’m too locked up. I just keep my face buried against him. He’s doing the same. For a second, nothing exists but the tiny space we make together.
Fuck, it scared me to wake up without him.
Never, ever again.
He recovers before I do. He starts stroking the back of my head and my neck. He starts to relax. After a while, I’m able to time my breathing with his.
I calm down.
“I want to shower,” he says quietly.
I nod against him, but it takes me a minute to get up. Lucas doesn’t rush me. When I’m ready, we rise from the bed. I want to carry him again, but he puts his feet on the ground. We walk to the bathroom.
It’s surreal to me to turn on the light of this unfamiliar-familiar space. It’s surreal to be in this house instead of my cell. I almost can’t deal with it. There’s too much shit everywhere. There’s too much fucking space.
“Hey,” Lucas says softly, touching my hand. It brings me back to the present. To him.
Seeing him in the light for the first time, I notice the bruise on his face. I lay my hand on his cheek and sweep my thumb over it, trying to ask with my eyes what happened. I’m having trouble with words again. I don’t know why.
“It’s okay,” Lucas says.
It’s not, but I leave it alone for now. I take hold of the hem of his sweatshirt. He lifts his arms. When I pull it off him, he shudders.
“I never want to see that thing again.”
When I put it in the trash, he lets out a small chuckle. I pet his hair.
He bends to remove his shoes and socks then shuck off his pants. He hands everything to me. “These too.”
They don’t all fit in the tiny trashcan, but I stuff them in as best I can.
“Of course,” he says, “I now won’t have any clothes.”
He’s smiling, which I find a little surprising given everything that’s happened, but I think maybe it’s nerves or lingering adrenaline, maybe simple relief. Whatever the cause, I can’t help but smile back a little and pet his hair again. I want to tell him that I’ll get him new clothes, but that opens up a whole messy can of questions with the main one being, What comes next?
It makes my heart skip, so I shove it away. I want him to stay naked and in bed with me. I don’t want anything else to come next.
As I cross the bathroom to turn the shower on, I glimpse my movement reflected in the mirror, but I look away. I’m not ready to see myself.
When the water’s hot, Lucas and I step into the huge marble shower. The luxury looks absurd to me, but Lucas seems excited about the soaps and shampoos in the little alcove.
For the first time, I get to relax while showering with him. I get to touch him. We can take our time—because we’re free.
The idea feels so impossible that it overwhelms me suddenly. Dizzy, I thump down onto the seat. I have to close my eyes.
Lucas kneels in front of me. He puts his head on my leg. I pet his hair while the water rains down on us. When I tug at him, he gets up and turns to settle on the seat between my legs with his back to me.
I grab the body wash and washcloth and start scrubbing his body. I enjoy washing him, but I’m looking for injuries too. I can’t stop thinking about what Briggs said after Lucas and I ate the drugged food.
It’s a long drive to Boston. Maybe I’ll get my turn.
I wrap my arms around Lucas and whisper, “Did he … Briggs …” I can’t finish the question, but Lucas understands it anyway. He’s good at that.
“No,” he says as he grabs onto my arms to hold me to him, carefully avoiding the now-sodden bandage covering a fresh wound that I only vaguely recall sustaining. “He just hit me.”
I growl against the back of his neck, hating that, wishing I could stomp Briggs’ face all over again.
Lucas looks over his shoulder at me. “I’m okay. Now anyway, now that we’re together. Are you?”
I’ve lost the knack of lying, so I don’t answer.
I make him stand up to rinse off. I shampoo his hair and rinse it as well. As soon as I’m done, he soaps up the washcloth.
He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes ask me for permission. I brush wet hair from his forehead to tell him yes. He smiles a little and begins. He’s cautious because I don’t always react well, but I’m okay. I like that he wants to touch me.
I like touching him too, and I do it constantly as he washes my body. My fingers explore his throat and chest as he gently scrubs at mine. As he reaches my groin, he slides the washcloth along the side of my thickening cock. He stops himself.
His eyes flick up to mine. “Roman—”
I put my hand on his and ask him to keep going. The cloth sweeps between my legs, grazing my balls. The arousal that spills hotly into my cock feels so much better than everything else I’ve been feeling. I close my eyes and try to focus on it. When Lucas sets his mouth to one of my nipples and starts sucking, I throw my head back and groan, arching into him.
Fuck, that feels good.
My cock goes from semi hard to fully erect. His stiffens until it’s nudging up against my balls. He switches to my other nipple, suckling at it until the last of my thoughts vanish and all I can do is feel.
I reach past Lucas to grab a bottle from the alcove. He knows what I need, maybe needs it too, and starts to turn even as I slick my fingers and cock. He bends and rests his hands against the shower wall above the seat to offer me his ass. I massage his hole. He opens for me, lets me push inside to stretch and stroke him.
I replace my fingers with my cockhead.
“Fuck,” he gasps as I push into his body. “Yes— fuck .”
When my pelvis is flush against his ass, my cock deep inside him, I just stay there for a second and let the waves of arousal wash through me. I let myself feel how right it is. I let myself feel, deeply, that we’re here, together. Safe.
I start fucking him slowly so I can watch how his arousal intensifies, how he needs more and more. His hands drift down until they rest on the shower seat. He bends until my cock is hitting his prostate on every thrust.
My wet body smacks noisily against his. My heavy balls slap his taint. The combination of sound and sensation is so fucking erotic that I give myself to it entirely. I let it obliterate everything else.
Lucas is pushing back against me. His moans get louder.
I grit my teeth, trying not to come, but when he shouts and his ass seizes on my cock, I lose it. My hips snap forward as my balls pull up hard and I ejaculate inside him. I jerk forward again and again through the waves of it, filling him with my cum.
I pitch forward and catch myself against the wall with an outstretched hand. Lucas is recovering under me, riding the bliss, but he stirs when he realizes that I might not be okay.
“Roman?” He reaches behind himself, finds my hand and squeezes it.
I grunt and pull out. He immediately twists out from under me. “Sit,” he says after washing the cum off the seat.
I do it, turning and letting my ass thump down. I close my eyes as the world swirls around me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Lucas kneels in front of me, pelted from behind by the water. His eyes are worried.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “We shouldn’t have done that right after … fuck, I’m sorry.”
It upsets me that he feels guilty. I initiated it. It’s what I wanted and needed. I just feel a little shitty now, that’s all. I lean forward. I don’t know what I intend to do, but Lucas intercepts me and … hugs me.
“I’m gonna finish cleaning you up and get you to bed,” he says and kisses my neck.
I huff at him. I don’t really know how to react. I feel kind of weird when he says things like that, in that tone. Like … I don’t know. Like he cares about me. I mean, part of me knows that he does, but another part of me just doesn’t know what to do with something like that.
He gets me to sit back. He retrieves the washcloth and soaps it again. He scrubs my legs and feet. He pours more soap onto his hand and starts gently cleaning my groin.
It’s too much for me. It’s too fucking sweet. I take over, standing up to finish while he sees to his own final washup. The water’s going cold, so we finish rinsing and turn it off.
Stepping out, I grab two towels from the shelf. We dry off, then I hunt in the cabinet for a fresh bandage. My older wounds are healed, the stitches removed during one of our shower sessions.
I cover the new wound with a fresh bandage, then we head back into the bedroom. It’s getting light, so I close the curtains before getting into bed with Lucas.
The bed is so fucking big that when I pull Lucas against me, there’s a huge empty space on the other side. I worry that he’ll try to draw away, but he doesn’t.
“I wish you’d talk to me,” Lucas whispers.
I take a deep breath, hating how my heart skips. I don’t know why I’ve reverted to silence. Except for saying his name to the man who was in this room when I woke and half asking Lucas one question, I haven’t spoken at all.
I want to, but I’m so fucking overwhelmed.
“It’s all right,” Lucas says. “Just sleep, okay? I’m just glad you’re here.”
I curl my arm more firmly around him. He snuggles in closer.