9. Roman
Roman
The greatest difference between me and everyone else in my family is simple.
We all have killed people.
Some of us love it, some see it as plain duty.
But I am the only one who has never wanted to take another human life.
It gives me no pleasure. The only times I have killed, it has been in pure self-defense, or because I was forced.
When I was fourteen, I came close to dying, when the tip of a Maletti grunt’s blade connected with the space in my rib cage just above my heart, and if I hadn’t plunged my own knife into his throat I would have been dead three seconds later.
His blood spilled out from his neck slowly.
I held firm. I didn’t twist the knife.
And most importantly, I didn’t have a single moment when I was afraid.
Father was so proud.
Mother’s eyes went misty when I told her, but she smiled at me, as always.
It’s not normal to feel no fear when a man dies above you, choking, drops of his blood falling in warm, wet little thwacks on your chest.
But I thought the only thing I’ve ever thought, when a person dies.
It didn’t have to be this way.
I do feel fear, incandescent and white-hot in my chest, the first night that Tate spends in my room.
I wake up with a start and the first thing that shoots through my mind is the comforting memory of Tate’s voice, low and pleading, when he begged me hours earlier to kiss him.
It rips through my mind, reality rushing back in like a bucket of water to the face.
I pull in rapid, shallow breaths.
I was having ugly dreams.
My eyes snap to the glowing blue numbers of the clock on my desk. 3:40 in the morning.
My spine presses into the blankets I laid out on the floor. I gave Tate my whole queen-sized bed.
But when I sit up, the sheets are rumpled.
And the bed is empty.
“Blyat,” I whisper in the dark, standing immediately as blood rushes through me.
The window is still open wide, letting in the cool air as I left it before we slept. My heart races after the sudden awakening, and already I’d been dreaming of threats, as I often do.
I pick up my phone and there are no messages.
I turn and push through the door out into the hallway, but he isn’t there, or in his room, or in the bathroom.
I pace down the floorboards in the hall, lit only by one small nightlight near the end by the staircase. And when I reach it, my pulse finally relaxes.
I catch a glimpse of his blond hair at the middle of the staircase, walking back up toward me.
“Shit,” Tate whispers when I see him, sneaking quietly up the stairs with a giant glass of ice water in his hand. “I was afraid you’d wake up.”
“Scared me,” I tell him.
My sleepiness rushes back in as the adrenaline fades.
Suddenly I feel sluggish, almost like I’m still being pulled back to slumber harder now, my bloodstream flooding with relief.
Tate paces quietly up the rest of the stairs.
He’s wearing a clean white tank top and blue shorts, and my body gravitates toward him as he gets near.
The memory of his words from earlier land in my mind for the hundredth time: let me kiss you. Fuck him for asking me that. For making it play on some fixated, compulsive loop in my mind now ever since.
He stands in front of me, taking a long sip of water and swallowing.
“I passed out the moment I lay down in your bed,” he says. “Sorry. I know you wanted to discuss more things.”
“No, no,” I tell him softly. “You needed sleep.”
“Did you crash, too? I meant it when I said you can come up to the bed, if the floor’s uncomfortable.”
“I didn’t sleep for a while. Was looking at the fucking rock. Searched for that symbol online, and can’t find anything to match. It seems like random lines and circles… I can’t understand the fucking thing.”
“Roman, we can figure it out later. You need sleep, too.”
I don’t tell him the rock isn’t the main reason I was up.
Or that I don’t sleep well half the nights of my life to begin with.
After I researched that fucking symbol, I spent even longer on top of the blankets on the ground, making myself come again because I couldn’t get the thought of his mouth out of my head. Because of him.
If he’d woken up from his deep, peaceful sleep, he would have looked down to see me, cock in hand on the floor, getting off because my mind wouldn’t shut up if I didn’t.
And then I did it again.
Ninety minutes later.
Because of him.
My cock was spent and done and ready for sleep but instead, my hand wandered beneath my shorts again and ten minutes later I was gripping harder and back in the obsessive mental loop, needing to fuck myself out of this intoxicating haze Tate puts me in.
After that time, I finally dozed to sleep.
Then I dreamed of someone kidnapping him, right from under my nose. In the dream I was murderous. Clawing at the attacker like I was possessed by some fucking demon, and when I got to him, I was going to tear him to shreds with my bare hands.
Bad.
Very bad.
If protecting you is my job… then why is it starting to feel like a drug?
“You’re allowed to go downstairs,” I tell Tate as we tread softly back down the hall to my room. “Obviously. But will you please take one of my knives with you?”
“You think I’m under threat here in Onyx House? Really?”
“Likely not. But you should be prepared at all times.”
He hums. “Okay. I’ll take a knife.”
“Thank you, beauty.”
The term of endearment slips from my mouth so easily. My skin heats a moment later in a delayed response, when I realize how it must have sounded.
In Russian, I used to say it sometimes, in an unserious way. Always to women, and even to some women who weren’t all that beautiful, but I liked them just as much.
It was more about someone’s heart than their looks for me, always.
I’m too sleepy to be speaking with Tate while I’m like this.
I’ve come too much.
Thought of him too much.
Everything is such a blur, and I need it to sharpen.
Back in my room, he gets in my bed without saying much else to me. He’s apparently docile after he comes, and I expected him to cause trouble, but right now he is the angelic version of Tate, not the unruly animal.
I lay back down on the floor, and my spine relaxes over the gentle pressure of the blankets below.
“Roman,” his low voice comes through the air many minutes later, once I was actually starting to drift off.
“Yes? I’m here,” I say quickly, my voice heavy with sleep.
“Shit. Were you asleep?”
“Mmm. Talk, sweet.”
No.
Don’t call him that, or beauty, or any fucking thing like that.
Sleepy is so much worse than drunk.
“I just wanted to tell you that I decided I’m not scared when I’m with you,” Tate says. “Well, I'm not really scared ever, which might make me dumb, but I definitely was earlier when I was in the car with you and Maks.”
“Sorry. I am… not a good man.”
“But I’m not scared to be with you anymore.”
I grumble, sliding over on my pillow until I feel a cooler part, desiring sleep more strongly than ever.
“Is that the power of my cock?” I mumble. “Take ten inches, then I’m not so scary?”
His laugh is deep and genuine. It’s contagious, making me smile softly in the dark.
“Fuck off,” he murmurs. “Cocky motherfucker.”
“Yes. That is me.”
“Good night. And full disclosure, if I have a nightmare, I’m coming down there to cuddle you, even if you choke me out for it.”
I’m too tired to give anything but a grumble in response.
If I had the energy, I would get up and lean over the bed to choke him right now for joking about it.
And you would love that, wouldn’t you?
My hand at your throat, while you overwhelm my mind.
We don’t talk much the following day.
Classes are getting toward their first big round of exams, and we fall into a rhythm for the next week.
I walk Tate to his classes in the morning, and I go to mine. I join him on his runs around campus and his lunch at the dining hall. And he comes back to Onyx House with me late in the afternoon.
He sleeps on my bed… and I sleep on the floor.
The most surprising thing is that his good behavior continues, so much that I almost feel like I’m suddenly protecting a different person.
He’s not talking my head off anymore.
Tate’s too quiet now.
Even shy, sometimes.
Neither of us mention what happened the night in the yard.
But I stare down at my dick, every day in the shower, and I picture what it looked like disappearing past his lips.
I grasp hard and stroke myself firmly, thinking of nothing other than his willing mouth.
I swear I could have bound each of his limbs, have him choking on my cock, have my goddamn hand over his throat and he would still try to give me attitude somehow…
but the minute I give him even a little of what he wants, he worships me like a god.
It’s maddening.
And when I was that close to his lips, I lost control.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath as I tug on my cock, coming hard yet again under the hot spray of the shower a full week later.
I’ve thought about it every day.
It feels like a sickness, like I’ve come down with something that has no possible cure.
The moment I come, I’m thinking about the mysterious symbol again.
I’ve gone over it with Maks this week, and done as much research as I can, but as far as I can tell the thing was gibberish. An empty threat, just like Tate thinks it is.
When I get back to my room, I’m alone in the space, which feels like a novelty these days.
I reach for the drawer at the bottom of my desk after throwing on clothes.
A drawer I haven’t been going for as much, lately.
When I pull out my black leather journal, I almost feel like a bad son, because I haven’t written to her in so long. I sit down at the edge of my mattress and reach to grab a pen from the desk.
I keep this notebook only for one purpose. When I think about my mother, I write to her, in Russian. None of my Onyx Society brothers would be able to read the language. Even if they took the effort to translate it, all they’d find would be simple memories.
Letters to a person who is dead.
I clutch the pen in my hand, and I write without thinking too long about it:
Mom—