15. Roman
Roman
When Tate chooses, of his own volition, to walk into the house streaked with obvious cum, I know he is some sort of creature sent to Earth to give me pleasure.
I watch with a deep, burning pride in my chest as he strides through the front door with long, pink-red slashes down his chest.
Hickeys on his neck.
The ghosts of rope bindings on his wrists.
The cum is just the cherry on top.
It’s magnificent.
And I feel my heart following after him, like he’s the center of the whole fucking world.
The long hall that leads down from the entryway is dim, and as we walk forward past the archway to the front room, Weston and Sevan are in there, kicking back on the sofa by the fireplace.
Weston glances over, and from where he’s sitting, I have no idea if he can see everything on Tate’s skin.
“Yo. How was the festival? Home early? We’re going to head over in a little while.”
“Best night of my life,” Tate calls toward them, continuing down the hallway.
“Damn,” Weston says. “Guess Sev and I need to go check it out, huh?”
I give him a little salute and continue down the hall to where Tate is starting to walk up the stairs. I glimpse Rayne in the kitchen, but other than that, we don’t meet any other guys along the walk up to the shower.
Once we’re upstairs in the shower, under the hot spray of the water, I wash and massage his skin. I take care to stroke attentively around his hole, pushing on him where I know he must be very sore.
And then he washes me, too.
My first instinct is to stop him.
He’s touching me in a way I’ve never let previous partners do.
Not that you are my partner.
You are…
I don’t know the right word in English for it. Damn my brain.
Sex, for me, was always finished after it was done. I took great pleasure in making my partners come, as many times as they needed, but close intimacy afterward always felt suffocating afterward.
Tate is seeing all of me, on his own terms.
Not my terms.
His fingertips slide over my back, over the longest, thickest scar I have.
“Can I ask you…” he murmurs, as he touches it. “Nevermind.”
“The scar is from my father,” I tell him simply.
Something no one else knew, other than my mother, and Maks.
My heart pounds as Tate pushes his warm palm on my spine, leaning over to kiss along the area.
“I’m sorry, Roman.”
“It was a long time ago. I needed to be reprimanded. It was the only time I refused to do a task for my father, when I was fourteen.”
“You’ve never refused, other than once?”
“He wanted me to give a cyanide-laced chocolate bar to my friend at school. My father didn’t like the way my friend’s parents did business. He killed them, a few weeks later. But I never gave my friend the poison.”
“Jesus,” Tate says.
I rest my forehead against the cold tile of the shower as Tate strokes his hands over my back, massaging me now.
And suddenly, I feel something break open inside me.
He doesn’t even ask me to, but…
I start to talk.
“It was the first thing that led to my mother being killed,” I admit.
“She didn’t die until many, many years later.
But when my father slaughtered that boy’s parents, the Malettis knew it was my father’s doing.
They were close with the parents. It started a war, and I was still too young to understand why my father was even concerned about the Maletti family.
We were Petrovs. We were stronger than them, and our Bratva so much older and more powerful than this Italian mafia. ”
“Did anything more happen with your friend?”
I push my forehead harder onto the tile, feeling the spray of the shower run down my back between Tate’s strokes.
“He tried to kill me, eventually. Three separate times. Maletti money pays very well, and they were willing to give him millions.”
“Holy fuck.”
“Eventually Maks had to eliminate him, and I… I don’t know. I couldn’t do it. He had been my friend, before I knew his connections.”
“Right.”
Tate’s hand slides up and down my back, and I feel his lips come down on my shoulder in a kiss.
“When they captured my mother I blamed only myself. I was supposed to be with her that night. I was going to be there an hour earlier, to meet her at the park. We were going to feed the birds, and I… I was late. I was late, and so she was already in the back of their fucking truck…”
“Roman, you don’t have to talk about it if it’s too much,” he murmurs.
“She was in the back of their big fucking stolen Mack truck. It was meant to haul butchered meat. Behind her, there were frozen stacks of lamb, and beef and that’s where they killed her, right in front of my face.
The moment I saw her, she was gone. They just wanted me to see her.
To get there, know that she was in danger, then take her life away right when they knew I would witness it.
I stumbled out of the fucking truck and fell to my knees, heaving, fuck, I thought all of my insides would come out, and they drove away, Tate.
I couldn’t stop them. I didn’t stop any of it. I thought it was my fault for so long—”
My words break off as he pulls my body close against his and holds me.
I feel like I just gave Tate every shred of my soul.
It’s not a story I tell anyone.
It’s not a box I ever want to touch.
“It was never your fault,” he murmurs against me, tucking his head against my chest. “None of it. Ever.”
“The Bratva is a disease. All of the criminal families are. We take care of criminals, yes, but we bring new ones into the world every day. I want it gone. I never wanted any of this. She died for nothing, Tate. She died for nothing.”
Tate just holds me, for minutes and minutes, and this time he’s the one protecting me… from myself. I can’t handle these feelings alone. It’s why I pretend they aren’t there.
But he deserves to know me.
My ugliest feelings.
And he still isn’t running away.
“You are a good person, Roman,” he says against me. “You might never believe it, but I will. Always.”
I meant it when I told Tate that he is a miracle. Making me want things I never wanted, so badly, and making me forget that my life feels like a prison made of gold.
It doesn’t feel like I’m trapped when I’m with him. It feels like what I’m doing actually is my own choice, my own desire, for the first time in my life. And I don’t know what to do with that feeling, either.
The envelope on my pillow is the first thing I see when we walk into my room.
It’s probably only been an hour since we first got into the house, but it feels like I was in the shower with Tate for an eternity.
I don’t feel good, but I feel better.
Better.
Like I remembered who I am for the first time in years.
In my room, there is an envelope, bright white against the navy blue sheets, standing out even in the low light of the bedside table lamp.
“Someone sent you a love letter,” Tate jokes, picking up the small envelope and turning it over in his hand. I pause when I see three letters scrawled on the other side of it.
TDL.
“What’s TDL?”
“Oh,” Tate says, frowning. “I mean, it could be Tate Dylan Landrey, my initials? Nevermind. Someone sent me a love letter, I guess.”
I finish pulling off my damp shirt and I toss it aside, glancing back at Tate.
I frown as I look at the envelope in his hands.
“Who is aware you’ve been sleeping in my bed?” I ask. “How did this get here?”
“Maybe it’s from one of the guys?”
He tears open the edge and pulls out the contents.
“Jesus,” I say, grimacing down at a very explicit picture of a man’s hard cock. Alongside it is a note, scrawled in an ugly handwriting style:
Think I haven’t already found you, Tate?
Dead wrong.
You’re mine soon.
And fear cracks through my heart in an instant.
This isn’t just a text message.
Someone had to physically put this here, in my room.
“Nope. Fuck this,” I mutter.
I move to the side and immediately throw open a drawer on his desk.
I reach toward the back of the drawer, where I lift out a piece of wood that reveals a black safe with a number pad on the front of it.
Tate is watching.
He sees my safe, and might even see the code.
But I don’t care right now.
This has to end.
I push in the code and my safe opens up, revealing the small stash I have here. Half a dozen guns, multiple knives, my mother’s jewelry that was previously stolen from the Malettis. More things I never fucking wanted Tate to see.
My heart lurches in my chest when I turn around and see the look on Tate’s face.
He’s afraid. He reaches for one of my bed posts and leans against it, staggering in place.
I know that he doesn’t like weapons, and he just saw that he’s been sleeping right next to many of them.
“What the fuck, Roman?” he whispers. “What are you doing?”
I examine my Makarov pistol. “Preparing.”
“What is that?”
“It was a birthday gift Maks gave me a long time ago.”
I pocket the handgun and then reach for a short knife, sheathing it and sliding it into my front pocket.
I reach for my long metal Olight and hand it back to Tate, and his eyes go wide as he closes his fingers around it.
“I can’t hold a fucking weapon,” he says, letting it fall to the bed.
“It’s a flashlight, Tate. Pick it up.”
“Jesus. Okay. God, what the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m searching every inch of this property, and I need you to stay close to me,” I tell him, turning to him again and handing him a TDI knife this time. “And yes. You are going to hold a weapon.”
He looks like he’s going to puke.
“Okay. Okay… right,” he says.
Murderous impulse races through me in a way I haven’t felt in over a year.
“No one can speak to you like this. No one can fucking do this to you.”
“I’m sorry,” Tate whispers.
I drop the phone on my mattress and pull him close against my body, pressing a kiss to the top of his clean, wet hair. I tilt his head back, cradling my hand at the nape of his neck, and I kiss his lips, channeling all of my rage into claiming him.