24. Romeo
Chapter 24
Romeo
A urora’s asleep, the curves of her body visible beneath the sheet when I walk into our room. Our room . The thought sends a possessive urge through my body. She’s mine and even though I know I shouldn’t have let her get this close, I do care about her.
I’m tempted to wake her and lose myself in her body, seeking out a release so I can rest. Having her so close, knowing how good it feels to have her heat wrapped around me, and not being able to have her has been my own personal hell. Every day I’m taunted by the memory of the taste of us on my tongue.
Cristo, our cum is my new favorite flavor.
Needing a moment to get my body under control, I move toward the window seat I’ve found her in every day this week; absorbed in the pages, the pad resting on her lap as her pencil glides across the paper.
I come to a stop in front of the window, her pad calling at me from its place on the cushion. Lifting the corner of the cover, I check on her sleeping form. It feels like an invasion of privacy and although I’d tell her I have every right to look at whatever it is that she’s drawing, there’s still a weight settling on my chest when I peel back the cover.
A detailed sketch of the view from the window at sunset stares back at me. My brows lift as I take in every minute detail. The drawing could rival the ones Massimo has hanging on his walls that cost five figures. Light strokes of oranges and pinks depict the skyline, and in the distance, green firs dot the scenery. A portion of the west wing of the house is visible along with the gravel driveway and the disused fountain, except water erupts from the cherubs dotted around it.
I fall into the armchair beside the table, picking up the pad, and flipping the page, enthralled by what I find. Portraits of a woman with features similar to Aurora stares back at me. It’s so lifelike that it could easily be mistaken for a photograph. There’s a familiarity to her as I study every aspect of her face. The gray-scale images show her with an array of emotions, from happy to sullen and then to resigned.
Turning the page, my body tenses and I shift in my seat. The colors are the same as the previous page, but there’s an obvious undercurrent of darkness to this one. These aren’t drawn with love or even fondness. The hurried strokes from the pencil speak of a fear that jumps out at me from the faceless man that covers the page. Some drawings show him with a hood up, others show him with it down, and the unfinished features of his face visible.
One in particular draws my attention and has my nostrils flaring. He’s holding a gun, pointing it at the observer. A water smudge is next to the drawing, and my chest tightens as I picture her crying as she sketches him out.
Who is he, and what has he done to hurt her?
“Rome.” Her voice is soft and filled with sleep, breaking through the haze of anger and concern. It’s the second time she’s called me that, and I have to admit, I like the way it sounds on her tongue.
Like a child that’s been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, the corner of my mouth lifts in some semblance of a sad smile when I look at her. Concern laces her words when she asks, “Is everything okay?”
She sits up in bed, the covers dropping to pool around her waist. My chest blooms, an urgent desire to claim her taking up root in the pit of my stomach. She has a wardrobe full of clothes, and yet, she’s wearing my T-shirt to sleep. With her hair mussed, she rubs her eyes before pushing back the covers and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Her steps are tentative as she walks toward me.
My eyes drop down to the pad in my hands, continuing to study her work like she might snatch it away and restrict me from seeing this side of her. I expect her to do just that when she reaches me, but instead, she kneels between my legs. Her familiar scent wraps around me in a comforting cloud.
Moonlight shines through the gap in the curtains, illuminating the soft features of her face. One hand rests on my thigh, moving back and forth until I cover it with mine and slowly soothe my thumb over her smooth skin.
“Who is this?” There’s an edge to my tone. It demands answers and doesn’t hide the fact that whoever it is will be dead by morning as soon as I have his name.
Aurora shrugs, dragging her eyes away from the page to meet mine. “I don’t know. He’s appeared in two of my nightmares. In the last one he said ‘if only you’d have listened’ and then pulled the trigger and I woke up. I don’t know what he meant but I’ve not had the dream since we’ve…” She pauses, looking around the room. “Since we’ve been sleeping in the same bed, I’ve not had that dream again. I try to draw him, to see if I can figure out who he is and what he might have meant.”
“And you haven’t?”
“No. I close my eyes, force my mind to bring him up, and then all I see is his outline and what’s on that page.”
Aurora flicks the pages back to the portraits of the woman. “I know who this is. This is my mom.” Her fingers glide over the paper, careful not to smudge the drawings. “Back home, I have pictures of her hanging in every room and I really miss seeing her face, so I’ve drawn her. She died when I was sixteen. I didn’t know how until two years later. It was the day after my eighteenth birthday. She disappeared, and I went to live with my aunt and uncle in Long Island because my dad wasn’t in the picture anymore.
“But he turned up out of the blue, asking me to come and stay with him. He said it wasn’t safe for me because he was in the mafia. I told him I’d have been safer if he’d done us both a favor and stayed away.” Her eyes go glassy and she swallows, looking away. My thumb rubs small comforting circles on the back of her hand until she continues, “I told him that I never wanted to see him again, and he walked away. Just like that, he accepted my decision and I haven’t seen him since.”
My chest tightens at the look of devastation on her beautiful face. I lean forward, unsure of how to comfort her. A sad smile tugs at the corners of her mouth, and she drops her eyes to her knees. “My father told me she committed suicide.” Swiping angrily at a lone tear that tumbles down her cheek, she straightens her spine, running her finger over the sketches. “She kissed me good night, walked out the front door, and apparently, threw herself off the Manhattan Bridge. What makes it worse is her body was never found, so I never got to say goodbye properly.”
I cup her cheek, my thumb swiping away the tears. “You don’t believe him?”
Shaking her head, her watery green eyes meet mine, and she whispers, “No.”
A weight settles on my chest as we sit in silence. I want to tell her that I’ll find him and get the truth for her, but that’s not how this works. My job is to look out for la mia famiglia and I need to remember that, because the more time I spend with Aurora, the harder it’s getting to do.
She sighs heavily and despite knowing that I should put a stop to this conversation and find another room to sleep in, I still find myself asking, “What was she like?”
Aurora’s face lights up and it’s nothing short of spectacular. “Amazing. The best mom a girl could ask for. I felt nothing but love from her, and she protected me with a fierceness that gave me my own strength.” The light in her eyes dims, and she looks down at the pad still in my lap. “She made me the woman I am today, and the day she died, I guess a part of me did too. You want to know why I’m so accepting of death?”
I nod, because it’s the one thing about her that I haven’t been able to figure out, although now I have an idea.
The corner of her mouth lifts. “Of course you do. The police came knocking on our door at three am that day, but long before they did, I knew she was gone. I was supposed to be asleep, but I woke up around midnight and I couldn’t find her anywhere. For an hour and a half, I was calling her cell nonstop until I realized she was gone and that’s when all the light left me. There’s no color anymore and I’ve just been existing ever since. I can’t find joy in anything because the world is just black and gray.”
I want to ask her if she hopes to join her mother in whatever afterlife might exist, but I can’t force the words past my lips. Instead, I listen to her tell me about the woman who raised her, the strength of their relationship clear in every story she recounts.
Aurora chuckles, lifting her gaze to the curtain-covered window. “Oh, and there was this one time I was being bullied and came home from school with a torn shirt and bruised pride. She asked me what had happened, but I didn’t want to tell her. I thought the girls who had done it would do something worse if they got in trouble with the teachers.
“The very next day, my mom marched me down to school, stormed into the principal's office, and threw my shirt at him, demanding to know what he was going to do about it. She hadn’t listened to a word I said on the way, and because it happened on the way home, the school had no idea about what she was talking about.”
“I bet you were a firecracker.” An image of her pouncing on me the other day pops into my mind. “Actually, you kind of still are. I’m surprised I don’t have the bruises to prove it.” My voice is husky and amused.
Aurora huffs out a laugh, looking at me from her position on the floor. “That’s because you’re twice my size and threw me around like I weighed nothing.”
She sucks in a breath and my tongue darts out, wetting my lower lip at the reminder of what came after her attack. I’ve been far too lenient with her, but anytime I’m around her, I find myself wanting to experience pleasure rather than cause her pain.
Lifting the pad from my lap, Aurora puts it on the table next to us before standing. “It’s late. We should get some sleep.”
She turns toward the bed, but I grab her hand and tug her toward me, until she falls into my lap, landing with a gasp. I grit my teeth as she wriggles, trying to right herself, her ass grinding over my hardening cock.
My fingers dig into the flesh of her thighs, and she stills, her chest rising and falling. Neither of us says a word when I reposition her to straddle my lap. As if I’m watching another man touch her, my eyes follow my right hand as I smooth it down the center of her chest and over to her hip. It’s hard not to miss the heat emanating from her pussy or the way her nipples pebble through the fabric.
Delicate fingers dig into the arms of the chair as she hovers above me. Every time we’ve come together, her consent has been there, bubbling beneath the surface. My eyes search hers, seeking it out again.
Only when I find it do I forcibly pull her hips forward, pushing her down onto my confined cock as I thrust up. Her mouth opens a fraction, and a moan spills from her lips. There’s a beat where everything is still and the last echoes of her moan drift off, leaving behind a charged silence. Her hips roll, sparking to life an urgency within me. Pulling her T-shirt over her head, I throw it on the floor beside the chair. She sits back in nothing but barely there panties and a heat in her eyes that’s calling to me.
Sirena .
My fingers dig into her bare thighs. My words are gruff and demanding. “Undress me.”
Aurora lifts the hem of my shirt, pulling it up my torso at a torturous pace. I lean forward so she can drag the material over my head and throw it to the floor next to hers.
Reaching out, I cup her breast in my hand, massaging the flesh. Her head tips back and she pushes herself further into my palm. I twist the right bud of her perfect dusky pink nipple to the point of pain and growl, “If you want more, you need to finish what you started, bellissima .”
Her head tips forward, heady and half-closed eyes meeting mine. Fuck . When she looks at me like that, having her do what I demand doesn’t seem so important. My chest rises and falls in a chaotic rhythm. It’s like my body is fighting with my mind, but they both want the same thing, just in different ways. For her to surrender .
In the end, it’s my body that wins, pulling me under the waves of arousal until I can think of nothing else but burying myself in her and coming undone. She must feel some semblance of what I do because we crash together, our lips meeting in a rushed and hungry manner. Wrapping an arm around her waist, I lift her enough to undo my slacks and free my rock-hard cock.
Our mouths are still fused and I’m vaguely aware of Aurora pulling her panties to the side before I sink inside of heaven . Buried to the hilt, I move away from her mouth a fraction and suck in a much needed lungful of air.
Aurora rests her forehead on mine, her hair falling forward in a curtain, hiding us from reality. The only sound in the room is that of our heavy breathing in the small space between our mouths.
God, I’m fucked, and this needs to stop .
Wide eyes meet mine before she breaks out of the trance we both seem to be under, her hands resting on my shoulders before she moves. She starts with a tentative, gentle rocking of her hips before she gains confidence and seeks out her release. Our moans mix in the air, a cocktail of lust and arousal only heightening my senses.
“Romeo,” Aurora calls out, her head thrown back as she massages her breasts.
My grip tightens on her hips, digging into the soft flesh as I grind out, “No. Don’t call me that.”
Her eyes meet mine, confusion clouding them before my demand is understood. Cupping my face, she leans into me, bringing her mouth to within an inch of mine. “Rome,” she breathes before capturing my lips.
Cazzo !
She's intoxicating. This is nowhere near what this is supposed to be. She shouldn’t even be in this room, let alone naked, and with my cock buried so deep inside of her, I’m not sure where she starts and I end.
With every moan and whimper, she's pulling me deeper and deeper under the current, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get out. So I do what I do best. I take back control, moving her hard and fast along the length of my cock. My balls tighten with each stroke and the sound of our skin slapping together echoes around the room.
Breathlessly, she cries out, “Rome, I'm so close.”
Me too.
Through gritted teeth, I demand, “Fucking come. Come for me, Aurora.”
Resting her hands on my knees, she leans back, thrusting her chest up, and I tweak her nipples as she bounces on my cock. My eyes drop to the space between her legs, mesmerized by the sight of me stretching her pussy, my length glistening with her juices every time she moves. Wrapping my hand around the lacy material of her panties, I pull until it snaps and falls away, landing on my thigh.
Aurora gasps but doesn’t slow down, not until she physically can’t keep going and her body tenses around me. The spasms start small, rippling around my cock until her walls strangle it, setting off my orgasm.
I wrap my arms around her body, pulling her into my chest to stop her from falling, before I bury my face into her collarbone and grunt. My teeth graze over the soft skin as my hips keep jerking until our combined release seeps from her pussy and over my cock.
Greedily, I lift her and force her up my body. Aurora gasps, her fingers clutching onto my shoulders when a string of cum falls from her pussy and drops onto my bare chest.
“Rome,” she calls, concern etched into her tone.
I can’t speak, the need to clean her up all-consuming. When she’s positioned above me, with her hands pressed to the wall behind me and my fingers digging into the flesh of her hips as her knees rest on my shoulders, I tip my head back. Our cum slides out of her dripping pussy and into my open and waiting mouth. The first hit is like a drug I’ve been craving for decades.
It’s not enough . Growling, I tighten my grip on her thighs and force her onto my face until her scent is all I can smell. My tongue laps her up, the taste of our cum intoxicating. The fingers of one hand claw at my hair while the other presses onto the wall behind us. She tries to get away from the ministrations of my tongue, but I don’t let up. I can’t.
My name is ripped from her lips on breathy moans that increase in volume the longer her orgasm builds and when she tips over the edge, her fingers painfully pull on the strands of my hair. Aurora rocks her hips with a ferocity that has my chest puffing out.
I want more of this .
More of her moans, more of her orgasms, and more of her .
Her body goes limp, and I press a hand to her chest to keep her upright. It’s only when I’m certain that she’s cleaned up that I help her climb down.
Nestled in my arms, she offers me a soft smile and chuckles. “I’m just going to need a second before I can move.”
Licking my lips, I fight back the grin that threatens to slip free. “Put your arms around my neck.”
She does as I ask, wrapping her legs around my waist when I stand from the chair. With her head resting on my shoulder, I carry her to the bed. It feels like the most natural thing to do. She’s a distraction I can’t afford and one I don’t know I can stay away from. Not when she’s everywhere I turn.
I set her down on the mattress and take a step back, needing to put some space between us. “Get some sleep.”
Too much is resting on my shoulders for me to succumb to her temptations.
This has to be the last time.