Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 79781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
His teeth close down around my lip this time, instead.
I groan into his mouth and it pushes me over the edge as I stroke my cock harder, losing any scrap of control I was still clinging onto.
His teeth stay clamped over my lip and he pulls it back with much more ferocity than I gave to him. My cock pulses in my fist, and I don’t even know where I’m coming, it’s so sudden.
Everywhere, as far as I can tell.
I shoot hard, tensing up and then going slack, my chest pushing against his clenched fist. Roman’s teeth linger on my lip as I come, and the moment I catch my breath, he releases his bite.
I need more.
I just came, and I already want more.
I want his teeth all over me. If he ever gave me his tongue…
So fucked.
So, so deeply fucked.
He finally lets go of the balled up fabric of the front of my shirt. But he doesn’t yank away from me quickly like I expect him to.
Slowly, he moves backward. When he leans back I see streaks all across his stomach and one that landed at the center of his chest, painting white over one of his tattoos.
My lip still throbs with the echo of his teeth.
I barely register the feeling of him untying the braided belt from my ankles. I’m free to move again, but I stay in the same place, sucking air into my lungs.
He stands up and looks away toward the house, the faraway glow of light from a window highlighting his face.
He’s perfect.
Awful.
And fucking perfect, too.
“Come on,” he tells me, stretching out his neck. “Get up. We’re going upstairs.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re sleeping in my room. I’m making it a rule.”
I exhale, shaking my head. “Biggest fucking ego on planet Earth.”
He just gives me a calm, almost serene look. “I need you to promise you’ll follow my rules.”
“Why? Is it going to make you hard again?”
He glares at me. “Say it.”
“I’ll follow your rules, Roman.”
He bends lower and presses a soft kiss to the side of my head. “I know you will.”
When he turns, I look at his back.
I can see two symmetrical dimples in the planes of muscle above his waistband, and the strong ridges that lead lower toward his ass.
He has a giant Onyx Society tattoo, a stylized depiction of a stone and flame spanning his entire upper back, going from one shoulder blade to the other. The shadows are drawn thick, with some parts being shrouded in full black, but there’s also a thicker, fleshy slash diagonally through the center of it where the ink bends and warps.
Holy hell.
It’s a scar.
A deeper, more prominent scar than any of the ones on his hands.
He was hurt badly at some point, and the wound cut right through the center of the tattoo.
Who on Earth could ever hurt you like that?
Roman is dangerous… but he’s so tender, too. I feel it when he opens up to me, in beautiful, intense moments, before he drops back behind his walls.
It doesn’t make any sense.
But I find myself wishing I could get up and run my fingers along that scar, to erase it and whatever pain it caused.
9
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.