18. Lucas
EIGHTEEN
Lucas
Roman is a very light sleeper, so I very rarely get to lie against him while he’s actually asleep. But that’s what I’m getting right now, and I love it. I know it’s probably because he’s so exhausted, but I hope it’s also because he feels safe.
There’s a lot I should be thinking about and trying to figure out, but I’m not ready to give up this moment. I’m snuggled into his armpit. Is it weird that I like the smell of him so much? I press my nose against him and breathe.
His hand flexes against my back, telling me he’s starting to wake up. As his breathing deepens and he begins to stir, I lick his armpit. It startles him at first. I know I should be more careful. Sometimes he reacts badly to touchthat he’s not expecting, but I can’t help it. It’s instinct, and being with Roman has taught me to trust my instincts.
He murmurs as I do it again. I keep at it, reveling in the taste of him, then I work my way across his chest and to his throat, half crawling over him. His throat is rough with stubble. I scrape my teeth against it. He sucks in a breath and rolls over top of me, pinning me under him. His hard, heavy cock rests against mine.
“Good morning,” I say. “Or afternoon. I don’t know.” I can’t tell from the light edging around the curtains.
Roman lowers his face to my neck and starts licking me in turn. Then he starts sucking. My eyelids flutter and close as he marks me. I love that he does this.
He works his way downward. By the time he’s marking my groin, my cock is throbbing. Leaking.
He takes it into his mouth.
“Ahh!” My hips jack upward. My eyes roll to the back of my head. He takes hold of my balls, tugging and rolling them until I can’t think. His other hand roams over my body.
I hang on for maybe a minute or so, trying to make it last, but he’s stimulating me everywhere. It’s too much.
“I’m gonna—ah, fuck!” I try to warn him. “Roman, I’m gonna— hnnn! ” I shout as I come in his mouth. He sucks me down, milking me of every drop.
As the high fades, I tug at him, desperate and needy. He crawls up me and takes me in his arms, letting me bury my face in the crook of his neck.
He’s still hard, unrelieved, but he settles against me like there’s no hurry. Sometimes he’s rough, and I love that, but he can be so patient too.
Maybe that came with his years of imprisonment.
Four years, Vitali said. He had thought Roman was dead. So what happened?
I want to ask. I want to know. But I don’t want to shatter the peace that we have right now.
“No one’s ever done that for me,” I murmur against him.
He draws back, propping himself on his elbows over me. “Really?” he asks.
Fuck, it’s nice to hear him talking. The way he went silent again last night scared me.
“Really,” I say. We’ve talked a little about sex, about the past— my past, not his—but I’ve never gone into detail. It embarrasses me that I knew so little about my own sexuality.
He kisses my neck. “You liked it?”
I run my hand over his buzzed head. “Mm-hm. Are you going to fuck me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“No lube.”
“We made do last night.”
“We need better. Today, I’ll …” He trails off as outside reality intrudes. “Fuck,” he exhales in a heavy tone that carries the weight of uncertainty and the burden of decisions to be made. He hangs his head and lets it rest against me.
Not yet, I want to say. That’s why I don’t ask all the questions I have. I’m not ready for the answers.
Other people want answers, however. Roman’s head snaps up at the sound of movement coming down the hallway, then there are voices outside the door. Roman growls softly.
“Roman,” someone calls through the door. Vitali, I think. “I need to talk to you.” To his credit, when there’s no answer from Roman, Vitali doesn’t try the handle. He does add, however, “I’ll give you one hour.”
His tone isn’t exactly threatening, but it is uncompromising. He’ll be back.
As the footsteps retreat, Roman’s attention remains on the door. I touch his face, wanting to bring him back to me. His eyes meet mine. The dimness means I can’t really see him, but I can feel his attention.
It’s too late to recapture the peace, so I ask, “Are we safe here?”
“Yes.” The answer is immediate. That’s something, but …
“Your family,” I begin. “It’s, um …”
“Yes.”
I could leave it at that, but it almost seems louder unspoken, so I say, “Mafia.”
“Sort of. We’re not Italian.”
“Really? You look Italian. And your name is Roman . Your brother’s name sounds Italian too.”
“We’re half Italian. My … mother.”
Because he’s lying over top of me, I can feel that his heartrate is speeding up. I can feel, too, that he’s losing his arousal.
Part of me thinks that I shouldn’t push, but I want to know. The peace is broken anyway. The outside world has already intruded. Besides, being in this house, I think that I should know.
When did I become so bold?
“Tell me,” I say. “Please, Roman.”
He draws in a heavy breath. He pulls back from me to sit up. He sits cross legged beside me. His hands are in his lap, so I don’t reach for them, but I edge closer so that my arm is touching his knee. I want to turn on a lamp so I can see his face, but something tells me that he might say more in the dimness.
“The Constantine family is Greek. Mafia only in the general sense of the word.”
“Constantine?”
“My … last name.”
“Huh.”
It’s so strange that in some ways I know Roman so well. In other ways, not at all.
“Your parents,” I prompt vaguely. I’m not sure what I want to know. Just something, I guess. Anything.
What I get is, “Dead.”
The word is so final that it briefly stalls me, but I think past it to his tone. For all his silence, Roman doesn’t hide things. So I voice my guess. “You were young.”
“Somewhat. I guess. Fifteen. Vitali was seventeen.”
“That’s young,” I tell him, finding it odd that he seems unsure. Losing both parents at fifteen? Of course that’s young. It’s awful. I point out, “I was older than either you or Vitali when my mother died.”
“Yes, but—” Roman cuts himself off sharply. He climbs from the bed and goes stalking to the curtains over the sliding glass doors. He throws them open. Distantly, beyond him, I glimpse trees and sky, but mostly I focus on his nude form. Something I said upset him, but I don’t know what.
We’ve talked about this once before. I told him how my mother overdosed when I was eighteen, how Frank kicked me out, how I spent the end of my senior year on my wrestling coach’s couch. I eventually left because my coach had his own family. I was in the way. He didn’t say that, but I could tell. So I just left one night without a word. I never saw him again.
When I told Roman about that, he got up then too. He started hitting the punching bag. He wouldn’t tell me why he was upset then either. At that time, I think he couldn’t. He had just barely started talking to me then.
Slowly, I get out of the bed. Slowly, I approach.
He looks over his shoulder at me. He says, “Come here.”
I’m slow about it because I feel like I’m in trouble somehow, but I do what he says. When I’m close, he pulls me in, my back to his front. He has me facing out, looking at more green and blue than I’ve seen in weeks. Months. Maybe years. But I barely see it. I’m too focused on Roman behind me. He’s angry.
But not, I realize, with me.
Arms around me, he drops his face against the top of my head. I feel his warm exhalation.
He says, “I’m going to kill him.”
“Who?” I ask, startled.
“Your stepfather. For what he did. For all the things he did. And didn’t do.”
My throat tightens. My eyes sting.
Maybe his words should horrify me, but all they really make me feel is seen. Like my life matters.
“You’re mine,” he tells me. “You belong to me, and that means I’ll kill anyone who harms you or tries to take you from me. The only reason I let you kill Briggs instead of doing it myself was because you needed it.”
It’s the most I’ve ever heard him say at once and while part of me warms at his possessiveness, another part of me is chilled to remember what I did last night. I haven’t really thought about it. My mind keeps skipping around it.
It’s not that I regret it or think it was wrong. It’s just that I didn’t know I was capable of something like that. I don’t know how that piece of me fits with the rest.
I was so angry. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that before. It was like it came out of nowhere. I didn’t even know I was that angry. On Roman’s behalf. On my own as well. And though I’m calm now, I think that on some level, I’m still that angry.
I certainly know that Roman is—and he has every fucking right to be. But I love that he can be calm as well.
Roman sighs. “I should get dressed. Find Vitali. I don’t want him trying to come in here.”
“You two don’t get along?”
“We used to. I mean, we always fought, but we were close. But now … I don’t know. I didn’t like what he was doing last night.”
“Asking me questions?”
“Whatever he was doing.”
“He was asking me questions,” I emphasize. I feel compelled to acknowledge, “I mean, you can’t really blame him. He said you’d been missing for four years. He thought you were dead.”
I’m trying to prompt him for an explanation, but what I get instead is, “But you were scared.”
I feel my face heat. “Well, yeah, he’s kinda scary. I used to be scared of you too, you know.”
“You should still be scared of me.” He nips my neck. “And that’s different.”
I snort.
He grunts like he’s annoyed that I don’t believe him. Then he pulls away and walks to a closed door. He opens it to reveal a walk-in closet. That’s what I glimpse around him. He’s stopped in the doorway.
“Roman?”
He jolts a little and walks inside, flipping on the light. Frowning, I go to join him.
“Holy shit,” I exclaim, immediately distracted by the huge collection. There’s a whole section of suits. There are a lot of shoes and other accessories.
“You have a lot of clothes.”
The words slip out because I am so shocked. The clothes, with all the money and style they represent, seem to belong to a completely different person than the one I know.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? That’s why he’s breathing so hard right now. Because these clothes do belong to a different person. The man whose scarred back I’m looking at, who’s been brutalized to the point he stopped speaking entirely, is not the same man who wore these clothes four years ago.
I go to stand beside him. When he looks at me, when I have his attention, I take his hand. I tug. He comes with me out of the closet.
“Let me pick something,” I tell him. When he doesn’t respond, I say, “Roman.”
His eyes jump to me.
“Okay?”
He gives a slight nod, so I go back into the closet. I try not to get caught up in the quantity and the money, but it’s so bizarre to me. I guess it’s bizarre to him too, now.
On the shelves I find sweatpants and t-shirts. I grab a white shirt and a pair of gray sweats.
When I emerge with them, Roman is gone. The bathroom door is closed and the light on behind it. I set the clothes on the bed and make a circuit of the room.
His room.
The style is pretty modern with its black leather couch and massive, minimalist bed. Except for the highly curated closet, the space isn’t very personal. There’s a TV, but no books or personal belongings in sight. Even my own shitty little apartment has more personal items. Books. Action figures. My medals from wrestling.
When Roman emerges from the bathroom, his energy is different. His eyes are different. He’s intense. Focused.
He walks to the bed and picks up the sweats without comment. When he puts them on, I notice how low they ride on his hips, suggesting he was heavier four years ago. He must have been huge, because he’s still really big. Just lean.
Fighting lean.
As he tugs on the t-shirt, he says, “I’ll find clothes for you.”
“Can I borrow something in the meantime?”
“Of course. Anything. Just don’t leave the room.”
“Don’t leave the room?” I echo, taken aback.
He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t even look at me. He just turns and walks to the door and leaves, shutting me in alone.