7. Roman #2
I bite my lower lip, then slowly let it go. “Teacher’s pet.”
He sighs, giving me a hopeless look. “You watched me while I was in my classes? Of course you did.”
“Not all of them. But enough.”
“How the fuck did you do that? Hacking the school cameras?”
I give him a playful look. “Why do you think everything has to involve hacking? I took Econ last year. The professor loves me. I asked her if I could listen in, so I took a seat in the back row and just watched.”
“You were in that classroom with me?”
I nod. “Just one lecture, a couple of weeks ago. And you’re very, very good at being a teacher’s pet. Raising your hand, starting discussions, even helping the boy next to you who didn’t understand the lecture...”
He shrugs. “I like classes. So fucking what? That doesn’t prove I’m smart.”
I look him up and down.
“No, maybe not,” I murmur. “But using a translator on your phone does.”
Tate’s eyes snap up to look at me.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
“Adorable, how you tried to hide it.”
“You knew I was listening to what you and Maks said?”
“I would have said a lot more, if I didn’t notice you being a nosy mouse.”
He leans over and buries his face in his hands.
It’s too much.
I already felt deep satisfaction when I caught sight of the basic translator he was using, and making him squirm like this now is even better. He has no clue how irresistible it is when he’s embarrassed, and in reality I thought it was clever.
“Hey, you have access to bad shit, right?” Tate says in a muffled voice from under his hands. “Can I have some illegal fucking tranquilizers or something? I need to be knocked the fuck out for, oh, the next forty-eight hours or so.”
I reach out and run my palm along his back, up and down along his spine. “Relax. It’s okay that you want my cock. Very flattering, actually.”
“Remember when you only said five-word sentences?” he says, finally dropping his hands to turn and look at me. “Do that again, please. And quit talking about your cock, because I can’t take it. How do you know everything I think?”
“You make it obvious.”
I let the weight of my hand sink into the tense muscles of his back a little harder. He still looks like he wants to melt into the ground, but as I knead my fingers into the tight spots around his shoulder blades, he finally starts to relax again.
He glances over at me, looking down at my chest, then across the rest of my exposed skin.
“Feels good,” he eventually murmurs.
“You have knots all through your back. You should let me really work on you, sometime. You need to release the fascia all through here.” I run my fingers along his trapezius, up to the nape of his neck.
He hums. “Are you going to go to physical therapy school after college? You’d make a fucking killing being a massage therapist… holy shit, that feels so good—”
“No more school for me after college,” I tell him.
“No?”
“I will work inside my family.”
He exhales. “Oh. Right.”
It’s interesting how quickly he forgets who I really am. I’ll never tell him the finer details of what the Petrov family name truly carries, but I give him a few more things to chew on so that he doesn’t get sad again.
“My father has been raising me to be his successor forever,” I explain. “There is no other option for me. For many fathers, there is the American dream. For my father, there is only his dream.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
I shake my head. “Why would that matter?”
“I think it does. Do you want to be… whatever your father is?”
The most powerful man in the most powerful Bratva operating in the entire country?
I don’t like the way I feel when Tate asks me that.
Seeing my future as a dark tunnel, stretching out in front of me, infinitely.
“I always do what is necessary,” I tell him softly. I push hard on his shoulder, then drop my hand, inhaling and sitting up straight. “Next rule. Don’t go out past dark without me there.”
He leans back and his eyes meet my gaze again. “Very funny.”
“Not a joke.”
“Roman, for fuck’s sake.”
“Swear at me more. It won’t change the rule.”
He’s pissed off at me again, but that won’t make me budge.
“I can’t go out to get a midnight snack without you tailing me?” he protests.
“Safety is more important.”
He puffs out a bitter laugh. “Well I’m going out tonight, so I guess you’re going to have to deal with it.”
“Where are you going?”
He cocks his head to one side. “A guy in my French class invited me to a party. Guess you weren’t sitting in on that one without my knowledge.”
I shake my head and grab the fire poker again, jamming it into the wood. “You don’t need to go to a party.”
“Trust me, I do.”
“Why?”
He tilts his head back, looking up at the sky before he looks back at me. “Because I need to get fucked, Roman, and this guy is gay, and he’s definitely interested in me. Not really my type, but he’ll do the job in a pinch.”
I frown at him. “No. You will not be hooking up with random people.”
“Yes, I will.”
“Not when they could be trying to kill you, Tate.”
He stands up quickly, shaking the bench chair beneath us. “Pretty sure the random nice junior in my French class isn’t one of my goddamn stalkers. Not sure you’d understand as a straight guy, but it’s been too long, and I need cock.”
I speak to him firmly. “You will not do this.”
“What the fuck am I supposed to do? Stop having sex? That’s really not going to work out for me.”
“Not telling you to stop having sex. But not tonight.”
A possessive forcefulness rises up in me as I say it.
He reaches for the branch he was holding earlier and swiftly snaps it into two pieces. He throws the broken branch into the fire and it ignites, disappearing into the flames.
“Just chain me to a fucking cage already. It’ll be easier for you, Roman.”
He steps off toward the house and I stand up slowly. “Tate.”
“Fuck off.”
I get up and go with him to the top floor of the house.
He already has his own things, because he brought over his suitcases earlier.
But I give him spare clothes from our last Onyx Society fundraiser, as well as towels, toiletries, and clean sheets.
I show him the room next door to mine, which is open for this semester, and he looks at it like it's a jail cell even though it’s one of the nicest rooms in this house.
“You’re going to be okay,” I tell him.
He nods, but he won’t look at me. “I’m fine. Forget about what I said. I’m just… tired.”
My room shares a wall with his, and I hear him turn on music in the room next door a few minutes later. The low bass is soothing, coming through the wall, and for a while it grounds me and drowns my thoughts.
But the thing about Onyx House is that I’ve lived here for years, now.
I know every sound these floorboards make.
And when I hear the telltale crack of the loose wood right outside the door of that room, twenty minutes later, and the subsequent sound of someone walking down the stairs, I know Tate’s not going to sleep at all.
I zero in on the sound instantly.
I open my door and step over toward the room beside mine, and I push open the cracked door.
The room is empty.
Tate fucking snuck out.
And something snaps inside me.
When I get downstairs, Hunter and Rayne are in the front room.
“Did the blondin just fucking walk out the front door?” I ask, too rushed and distracted to realize they don’t know what that means. “Tate. Did you see him?”
“Hm?” Hunter asks. “No. It’s just been us here.”
“Is everything okay?” Rayne asks, frowning at me.
“I’m handling it.”
If Tate didn’t go out the front door, he had to have used the backyard. I take off into a jog through the house and push out into the back.
I glance around in the dark. The fire pit is just embers now.
I look over toward the side of the house, noticing the gap in the roses. I take off in that direction. He used that area to try to bolt the first night he got here, and I know he would do it again.
Adrenaline hits when I see a figure in the dark, illuminated only by the moon.
Got you.
Tate is there, at the side of the house, moving fast and making his way toward Red Row. He glances back and I know he sees me.
But he’s fast, too.
I break into a steady run, my muscles activating. I know this house, and the side of the yard, better than Tate does, and that's my only advantage.
He doesn’t know about the small brick row that lines the white roses near the front.
His foot catches on one and he goes down in the grass, his hands coming down in front of him to break his fall.
I seize the opportunity.
I close the gap between us fast, and I drape myself over his body from behind, gripping one of his hands in the grass.
“Trying to get out?” I utter behind his ear. “You think I wouldn’t know?”
“I knew you’d find out. I just didn’t give a fuck, Roman.”
“Thought I wouldn’t catch you?”
“I’m faster than you.”
I push his clenched fist hard into the grass. “Doesn’t matter. I’m bigger.”
He growls beneath me, struggling endlessly, trying to pull out of my grasp.
But he won’t win.
In this position I have the advantage. He’s still facing downward and my chest is heavy over his back, with my groin shoving against his ass.
“Stop struggling or I’ll push your pretty face into the dirt, Landrey.”
“Then do it.”
My heart slams against my ribcage.
This is what my body is supposed to do. What I was made for.
I don’t want Tate to feel like he’s a bird in a fucking cage, but he’s crazy if he thinks I’ll let him sneak out under my watch.
He shifts under me and I feel the bulk of his ass push up against me. He’s so warm, and the heft of his glutes feels even better than any woman’s ass I’ve ever felt there.
My cock throbs against him.
Fuck.
Each beat of my heart thuds in my chest as blood rushes lower in my body, my cock thickening as Tate struggles beneath me, then finally stops thrashing.