CHAPTER 20 FAE
FAE
“Ro… Roman,” I stutter, my mouth opening and closing like I can’t quite catch up with what I’m seeing.
He moves before I can think, stalking forward and kicking the door shut behind him with a force that rattles through the room.
Roman barely spares a glance for the man still twitching on the floor as the rage rolls off him in thick, suffocating waves.
It is as if the air has turned electric and I’m stood right in the middle of his storm.
“What are you doing here? How did you find me?” The words come out fast as I take tentative steps back into the room.
“Well, imagine my surprise when I come home and find my wife sneaking out like a fucking burglar in a dress that screams job,” he spits out. Each one of his words comes out sharp and deliberate, like he’s been holding them in place before they snap.
I barely hear anything after one word.
Wife.
It hits me harder than the sight of him standing there. Harder than the body on the floor. Harder than the blood drying on my skin. For a second, everything inside me just… stops. Wife.
My brain latches onto it and refuses to move past it, like if I stare at it long enough it will change into something safer.
Something smaller. But it doesn’t. It stays there, feeling heavy and impossible, as it drags every thought down with it.
Wife means being chosen. It means belonging.
It means permanence. It means him saying mine in a way that feels terrifyingly real.
No one has ever looked at me and spoken about keeping me like it is the most natural thing in the world.
No one has ever made something so dangerous sound so close to hope.
“Wife?” I frown as I process. We are just standing still, staring at each other.
“Not the fucking point,” he barks, taking another step towards me. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”
I frown even harder as my body automatically retreats.
I’m not sure if it’s years of being abused or just the pure power coming off him, but my back hits the wall again and the impact knocks the air from my lungs.
A hiss slips past my teeth as a sharp pain suddenly shoots up my spine.
Fire blooms across my shoulders as I try to grit my teeth and starve off the tears that want to fall.
His eyes darken at the noise and his head swivels so quickly I worry he’ll give himself whiplash.
I can see his teeth grinding in his jaw as he slowly looks back at me.
It feels like the air just got a hundred degrees colder as his nostrils flare.
“Turn around,” he grits out.
I hesitate, not because I mean to, but because my body is slow to catch up with everything that’s just happened.
One minute I was controlling Daniel, the next I wasn’t, and now I’m stood here covered in his blood, with Roman looking at me like an avenging angel.
I can already see he’s one second away from snapping.
“Turn the fuck around, Fae. I am holding on to my sanity by a fucking broken bit of thread here.”
I exhale slowly and turn. My body feels like it’s dragging behind the command, as if it doesn’t quite belong to me yet.
My legs feel unsteady as I face the wall and I flatten my palms against it, bracing without thinking.
I can barely hear anything over my own pulse and the sound of the radio playing, but I feel his presence closing in behind me before he even touches me.
Heat rolls off him as he steps closer and goose pimples scatter across my neck at the feeling of his breath against my skin.
I have to swallow a real moan this time and the realisation that I finally know the difference between good goose pimples and bad settles heavily in my chest as my fingers press harder into the wall.
I will never be able to survive being a Swallow again.
He’s tainted it for life. Those illusions of living a fantasy every time I was forced to sleep with someone have been ripped out from under me now that I know how truly different it feels.
The room feels too small, like there’s nowhere left to breathe as I hear the click of metal and my stomach drops.
“Roman—”
The cold brush of a blade skims over my skin and I gasp as my dress gives way. The sound is sharp and violent, and cool air hits skin that still feels wrong, still doesn’t feel like mine.
“Motherfucker,” he snarls, one hand pressing softly into my spine to keep me still.
I flinch, and a whimper slips out of me before I can stop it. His touch isn’t gentle, but it isn’t careless either.
“What did he do?” he growls, actually growls. It sounds low and dangerous, like he already knows the answer and just wants to hear me say it.
“I… he pushed me when he came in and lost control,” I mumble, quieter than I intend, as the words leave me.
A flash of embarrassment hits me, like saying them out loud makes the failure of my mission more obvious.
Roman exhales heavily behind me as if he’s trying to hold something down that is desperate to surface.
His hand lifts to my neck and he gently moves my hair to one side.
It tickles as it brushes over my shoulder, making me shiver in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.
There is a pause, just long enough that I feel the weight of his silence and then I feel him move.
The change in height is what makes me turn my head slightly, my brows pulling together as I try to understand what he’s doing.
Roman drops down to his knees behind me, his gaze fixed on my back in a way that feels exposing.
I can see in his eyes him cataloguing every bruise and mark that I can’t see.
“I should have killed him,” he murmurs and I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face.
“He’s already dead.”
“Not enough,” he cuts his gaze to Daniel and frowns before looking back at me.
My breath catches as he leans forward. The first press of his lips is soft enough that it almost doesn’t register, just a warm brush against my skin that still feels too sensitive and too aware.
He doesn’t rush it or take, but instead gently claims. He moves slowly, kissing along the line of my shoulder and down my back as his careful fingertips trace soothing patterns over the marks his mouth hasn’t reached yet.
“Silly girl,” he whispers against my skin. “You’re going to give me a heart attack, you know.”
He leans back in, pressing butterfly kisses everywhere my skin is exposed, completely ignoring the blood drying on me.
The sensation feels like cooling gel on a hot summer’s day, and my body tingles with need at the soft, reverent touches.
Heat curls low in my stomach, and I turn to face the wall again to try and starve off the feeling.
Breathing in deep, I press my thighs together without meaning to, the movement small but almost instinctive as I try to reduce my need for him to consume me.
I feel his hands grab my hips tighter and I curse myself for turning this sexual.
I’m not sexual. Or I wasn’t until him. Now every look and touch awakens something deep inside me.
He nips the flesh of my hips and I bite my lip as his tongue gently caresses the sting away. Flicking my head back over my shoulder, I look down to see his dark brown eyes staring back at me. They burn with lust; I whimper at the sight. Roman shifts onto his haunches and licks his juicy lips.
“Are you needy, little one?” he asks as his voice settles over me like velvet and the way he says little one makes my breath catch in my throat.
I don’t even try to hide the way my body reacts this time, the way everything in me seems to lean toward him without permission, like I’ve already made a choice I haven’t caught up to yet.
I don’t answer him.
My fingers press harder into the wall as I see him move closer again, his hands sliding from my hips to my waist like he’s giving me time to pull away if I want to.
I don’t.
‘Bad Intentions by Niykee Heaton’ starts playing on the radio as Roman’s touch shifts. He stands up, flattening one of his large hands against my stomach as the other traces back up my spine. The contrast between the heat of his body and the cool air, makes me whimper and my pussy clenches.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmurs softly against my shoulder, his lips barely brushing my skin as he says it.
Tears sting my eyes as he gives me a choice I’ve only ever had with him. I shake my head as his lips brush just under my ear.
“I don’t want you to,” I whisper, the admission quiet but steady.
His forehead presses briefly against my neck like he’s grounding himself before his hands tighten slightly and then he turns me.
It’s not quick or forceful, just enough that I’m facing him with my hands finding his shirt without thinking.
My head tilts up to meet his gaze, and I hold my breath as his hand lifts to my face.
His thumb brushes along my cheek; I lean into it as my eyes fall shut, something in my chest loosening in a way that feels dangerously close to relief.
“You’re safe,” he says quietly and I don’t know if he means here, with him, or something bigger than that.
His lips find mine, slower this time, but it’s nothing like the way anyone else has ever touched me.
There’s no urgency to it, no force, just a steady pull that I feel all the way through me as I respond without thinking, my body softening against his like it finally understands what it’s supposed to do.
My hands drop to his waist, as my fingers brush over the firm line of his hips and I push his trousers down.
The fabric drags slowly against his skin and the second they fall away there’s a shift in the air that makes my breath catch.
Heavy heat rolls off him and presses into me before he even touches me again.
Roman’s hands find me just as fast as our kiss turns heated.
There’s an impatient feeling in the way he consumes me and I feel a sharp sting as my thong is ripped from my body.
The sound makes me gasp as cool air rushes over me where warmth had been trapped second before.
Every nerve feels exposed and hypersensitive and the faint brush of air makes my toes curl against the floor.
His hands slide under my thighs and lifts me up, the sudden movement pulling another breath from my lungs as my body reacts before my mind can catch up.
My legs wrap around him instinctively and it sends a sharp, electric tingle racing up my spine.
I feel his cock pressing at the centre of my cunt and I whimper into his frantic kisses as he growls into my mouth.
“You’re fucking dripping,” he groans as he breaches my entrance and I keen at the feeling.
He’s so big it burns. I don’t think I can ever get used to his size. Leaning back, he breaks the kiss and uses one of his hands to hold me up and the other to grab my throat as he looks down at where we’re connected.
“You’ve got to let me in, Tink. I know you can take more than that.” I try to nod, but the firm hold on my throat stops me.
“Look at us,” he demands, letting go of my throat from the front before moving to the back of my head and pushing my neck down so I can see his cock about two inches inside me.
It makes me clench at the size and he throws his head back and moans to the ceiling.
The sight of him losing himself makes me feral as tingles spread across my whole body.
He looks back down at where he’s in me before pulling his hips back and punching the remaining way through.
His size causes me to lose my breath as I feel the tip of his cock hit my cervix.
The pain is explosive. It radiates around my body like electricity as I clutch at his shoulders to steady myself.
“Fuck!” he barks before pulling out and drilling back in. “That’s it, little one, take it.”
“Jesus, Ro,” I cry out, the sensations getting better and better as I feel my pussy clutching at him.
Everything else fades.
The room.
The blood.
The body on the floor.
All I can feel is him. The way his hands hold me like I matter.
The way he pounds in and out of my cunt.
The way nothing in this feels like something I have to survive.
My breath breaks as I press closer and I let myself fall into it, into him, into something that feels so different it almost scares me.
A sound tears out of me before I can stop it, my body tightening and trembling as everything starts to slip out of my control.
The pressure builds low and sharp, coiling tighter with every movement.
His hand moves over me, rough and deliberate, and when his fingers find my clit, it sends a jolt straight through me, my back arching as the sensation spikes hard enough to steal the breath from my lungs.
My body reacts before I can think, every nerve pulling tighter, more sensitive, the friction and pressure turning overwhelming in the best and worst way.
His voice is in my ear, low and constant, and even when I try to focus on anything else, it threads through me, keeping me exactly where he wants me. The pressure sharpens again and when his fingers press against me one last time, it tips me over completely.
“Cum for me, Tink, cover my cock.”
“FUCK!” I cry out.
My body gives in all at once. The release hits hard and sudden, tearing through me in waves that make my legs shake and my grip tighten around him.
My breath stutters, my chest heaves as everything pulses and contracts, the sensation rolling through me again and again until I can’t do anything but hold on and let it take me under.
“Yes,” he hisses in my ear, “good,” thrust, “fucking,” thrust, “girl,” he growls through gritted teeth as I feel him explode inside me, painting my cunt with his own mark.
My whole body feels too sensitive, too alive, every point of contact burning as I come down slowly, the aftershocks still flickering through me.
I cling to him as the intensity fades, my head dropping forward as I try to catch my breath.
My body feels heavy and loose all at once, every muscle spent, every nerve still humming.
I can still feel him inside me, the fullness grounding me as I come back into myself piece by piece.
The air feels cooler against my skin now and I shiver slightly as my body still reacts in small, involuntary movements as the last of it fades out.
He pulls out, but not before catching his cum and shoving it back inside me.
I roll my eyes. I’m on contraception, but ever since I told him to wear a condom, he’s been determined to keep his cum in me.
I don’t have the heart to break his little role play.
“Never do a job on your own again,” he whispers before biting my earlobe. I throw my head back on a laugh before we both turn at the same time to the dead man on the floor.
“Better get clean up in here.”