Page 5

5

Salem

Present Day

My wanting to stay with Rome was one thing, but the fact that I’d been stalked was something that was going to give me nightmares. The day in Pepper’s bar flashed in my mind. This place, Rome, Pepper, the other women—it had been distracting. I hadn’t sat around and thought about the why and how I had ended up here. But this information made it all real again. Shaking me and reminding me that I had been in danger. More than I’d even realized.

And I still was.

Would Rome want me if I’d not been forced upon him, right down the hallway, unable to get away from him? Would he have sought me out otherwise? How long would it be before I became an unwanted burden?

“The way you’re scowling, Angel Face, makes me think you don’t want to stay here with me,” he said.

I lifted my eyes back to meet his. He could not be more wrong.

“It’s not that. I…I don’t want to be something that gets in your way. You’ll resent me if I’m this responsibility you didn’t ask for.”

He raised his eyebrows as he looked at me, like he couldn’t believe I’d just said that. “You’re not serious.”

I was very serious. “Yes, I am.”

He blew out a breath and then let out a deep chuckle. “I thought I’d been pretty clear about wanting to have you here with me. I didn’t put you in my bed for a fuck. I put you there to stay. Sure, I didn’t think that would be the outcome the first night. You’d just passed out drunk. But when I got in bed and you curled up against me”—he paused and ran the pad of his thumb over my lower lip—“I was home. Contentment—hell, baby, pure fucking joy coursed through me. I’d not felt that in eighteen years. You will never be a responsibility. You’re well beyond that. You’re a requirement. One I need to survive. I won’t lose you a second time.”

I wanted to trust that. It was time to let go of the past. He wasn’t a boy who had just lost his mother. He was a man who had lived life and knew what he wanted now.

“Salem.” His voice was a husky whisper.

“Yes?”

“The first night you slept in here, you were drunk, but when you cuddled against me, right before you dozed off to sleep, you told me you loved me.”

Oh God. Why had I drunk so much?

“I did?” My words were almost too soft to hear.

He nodded. “But I need to know if sober you feels the same way.”

Whew. Okay. Had I ever not loved him? God, was I ready to bare my soul that way?

His eyes traveled over my face as his thumb gently caressed my cheek. He still took my breath away. My heart still went crazy when he was around. The pleasure that came from the sound of his voice had never been matched.

“Yes,” I admitted.

But I didn’t say anything else. Loving him all these years was for me to hold close. Saying it felt like a betrayal to Eamon. One he didn’t deserve.

The smile that spread across his face was slow and sexy. His eyes held a glint of pleasure. “That’s close. But I want the words. Sober you needs to say them.”

I tilted my head and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why do I have to say them first?” I asked.

He licked his lips and smirked. “I’ve said them already.”

Straightening, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Was I passed out drunk?”

He dropped his hand from my face, stepped back, and pulled his shirt over his head, letting it fall to the floor. If he was trying to distract me, then the sight of his chest was a real good move. He pointed at the tattoo over his heart—my sketch, one that had meant something to both of us.

“I told you that I felt my soul again when I was inside you. That no one ever touched my heart or meant anything but you. I have your drawing over my heart for a reason, Salem. I have loved you since I was nineteen years old, and not once in all these years have I considered changing this tattoo. Having it made into anything else. Because I have a piece of you on me. With me. You owned me then, and you own me now.”

Warmth spread through me like the summer sun after a New England winter.

“That’s not the same as saying the actual words,” I pointed out, not letting him know how he had melted me with what he had said.

“People fall in and out of love all the time. The hold you have on me is indestructible. Years, life, have proven that,” he said, then grabbed my chin and leaned down closer to me. “But if hearing those words is important to you…I love you.”

Tears pricked my eyes, and I hadn’t meant to get emotional. Not wanting him to see it, I smiled and took a deep breath. “I love you.”

“It was my turn to say it first anyway,” he teased, reminding me of the day I had blurted out those three words to him.

I’d been only sixteen years old. He was going on a third date with a girl, and I was so jealous. The fear that he was falling in love with her had consumed my thoughts. So, I snuck into his room while he was getting ready, and when he walked into the room with a towel around his waist and droplets of water on his naked chest, there had been no holding back what I was feeling.

“I might have said it a little too soon back then,” I replied.

He shook his head. “No. But I think it would be better if you went and got naked and wet, then came out here in a towel—or you can leave that off—and let me tell you. Seems only fair.”

A giggle bubbled out of me, and he tugged me close, grinning.

“That girl cried when I broke the date and probably never recovered from it. Her tears were on you.”

My brows drew together. “You went on that date. I was the one who cried that night.”

His hand slid up my back. “I let you think I went. I had to do something to keep you from coming into my room and tempting me. I was doing all I could to keep my hands off you. I went out with some friends and then was home before ten,” he admitted. Then pressed a kiss to the side of my mouth. “I didn’t know I’d made you cry.” His words were a whisper on my skin as he continued to kiss other places on my face. My cheekbone, beside my ear, the tip of my nose.

My heart was fluttering in my chest like I was still that girl.

“I cried myself to sleep.”

He stopped kissing me briefly, then went back to leaving a trail until his mouth touched mine. “I’m sorry. For every tear you cried because of me.”

I didn’t get a chance to respond to that before he sank his hands into my hair, then bent down and took my mouth. As sweet as his words had been, this kiss wasn’t that. There was nothing sweet about it. Rome’s pierced tongue flicked over mine, and a satisfied growl vibrated from his chest. Kissing was something I hadn’t enjoyed, and Eamon would tease me about my lack of affection while he was overly so.

I understood now that I’d simply been ruined by Rome’s kiss.

“Not sure how much time I have,” he said as his lips left mine to kiss a trail to my neck. His hands grabbed my butt and pulled me tightly against him. “Liam said we’re having church after Micah gets back. The club needs updating on things.”

His erection pressed against my stomach as he groaned and licked the pulse point in my neck. “It’ll have to be quick, but let me inside you.”

Forming words when his touch was taking my breath away seemed impossible. I simply nodded. I needed that connection with him again, the way it made everything else fade away. It was only us, and the past no longer mattered—just the now.

My feet lifted off the floor as Rome’s hands gripped my waist. He picked me up and then began walking toward the bed. I’d made it up and tidied his room this morning, not wanting Nixie or one of the other girls to come in here and do it. Perhaps that was petty, but I hated thinking of them touching his things.

He sat me down on the edge of the mattress, then knelt in front of me and began to slide off the sandals that Pepper had given me since all I had here were the heels I’d worn at the bar and I didn’t even know where those had disappeared to. When he was done, he gently caressed my calves and ran his hands slowly up my legs and beneath the hem of the sundress that Goldie had provided me. Our eyes met as he lifted his head from the valley between my thighs.

“If I could, I’d lock us in here for days.” His voice was husky, and I shivered. “But right now, I only have minutes. Stand up.”

I did as he’d asked, and he had to grab my thighs to steady me. My legs were shaky, and I let out a breathy laugh as a smug smile spread across his face. Rome reached beneath my dress, took the edges of my panties, and pulled them down until I could step out of them. He held them to his nose, smelling them as he stood up. The gleam in his eye as he did so was making this standing-up thing even harder. My knees were weak.

Balling up the panties in his fist, he tossed them over to the chair in the corner before starting to unzip his pants. “Turn around, Angel Face,” he told me. “If I have to look at your face while I sink inside you, then I’ll ignore my orders and stay buried in your cunt for hours.”

I sucked in a short breath, and my eyes dropped to his jeans as he shoved them down. My tongue came out and wet my dry lips while I watched him release his thick, hard erection. The swollen head was almost purple, and the piercing excited me. I remembered what it could do.

Eager to have him stretch me and feel his body close to mine, I turned around and placed my hands on the bed. His touch was gentle as he ran his rough palms over my bottom and squeezed it before his fingers clamped down on my hips, and he jerked me back against his hard length.

“Fuck, that’s a pretty ass,” he praised, then pressed the round tip of his cock against my entrance, barely rocking against it in a teasing way. But that lasted for only a moment before he thrust into me, making my knees buckle as a roar of satisfaction tore from his chest.

My hands fisted in the quilt, and I whimpered from the pleasure, mixed with pain. He was bigger in length and width than Eamon had been, and my body was still adjusting to his size. But as he began to hold on to me and sink himself into me in fast, almost-frantic pumps, my body responded. The metal balls on the end of his penis rubbed that spot that I’d always believed was a myth.

A quaking deep in my core slowly started unraveling. Tingles of delight shot out, and I cried out his name, sounding desperate.

“That’s it, baby.” His voice was thick and heated, only driving me further toward the peak. “Say my name. That’s my cock inside your sweet pussy. Me making you feel good.”

As if I needed a reminder. I’d had to fight the memory of him for years when I had sex. Now that it was Rome pulsing inside me, his voice bringing me to climax, there was no guilt attached. A freedom came with that, which I’d needed for so long.

The world burst into bright colors as euphoria exploded inside me. Each nerve in my body was lit with sparks of pleasure. I heard my voice as I shook from the experience, but it was muffled by Rome’s loud shout.

“FUUUCK!”

The warmth of his release inside me made me moan as I fell to my elbows and let my forehead drop to the mattress. I wanted it. All of him. I shouldn’t let him keep coming inside me, but I was unable to stop it now. I needed it. And he’d said that I was the only one he’d ever released in or fucked bare. That I was the only one he’d ever wanted to come inside.

“Goddamn, your cunt gets tight when it milks my dick,” he groaned.

My high was fading, and I felt the dampness between my thighs and realized I’d done it again. That squirting thing. I hadn’t last night, and I’d been relieved. I had no control over when it happened. It just did. And when it did, the orgasms were always more intense.

Rome ran his hands up my back, and I sighed happily.

“Come take a shower with me.” His voice was hoarse.

I turned my head to look back at him. “Do you have time?” I was still insecure about the shower. I’d be completely naked, standing up in front of him.

He nodded, then wrapped my hair around his hand and tugged at me to stand up while grinning. “You just stuck your naked ass out and let me fuck you from behind. Don’t go getting shy on me now, Angel Face.”

I allowed him to pull me up and back until I was pressed against his chest.

He hummed in my ear and cupped my breasts in his hands. “I want to lather you up and see you in nothing but soap bubbles.”

A small laugh escaped me. “Why?”

“I just do.”

I laid my head back against his chest. “I’m nervous,” I admitted.

“About…the shower?” he asked, sounding confused. “I won’t get soap in your eyes, I swear.”

Smiling, I shook my head. “That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it.”

He dropped his hands to my waist and turned me around to face him. Grabbing my chin, he forced me to meet his gaze. The pale green was almost overcome by his pupils. “If this is body bullshit again, I swear I’m going to put you over my goddamn knee and spank your ass until it’s glowing red.”

And that shouldn’t turn me on. But somehow, it did.

“You, uh”—I licked my lips—“might want to try a different threat.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why? You like the idea of a spanking, Angel Face?”

I hesitated, then nodded my head, saying nothing.

His eyes flared. “Bad girls get spanked. You planning on being bad?”

I wasn’t sure what constituted as bad. “I don’t want to get in a shower with you.”

He smirked. “Yeah, well, we are gonna get over that shit right now,” he said before grabbing my sundress and pulling it up so quickly that I didn’t have time to realize what he was doing until it was over my head. I tried to grab at it, squealing from the fact I was bared to him as he jerked it over my head and threw it across the room.

Wide-eyed, I stared at him as his gaze slowly took in my naked body. I’d turn and run for the bathroom and lock myself inside of it if it wasn’t for the view he’d have of my butt while I was running off.

When his eyes finally made it back to my face, I wasn’t breathing. I had been holding my breath, trying to tell myself this would be okay. He wouldn’t care that I wasn’t stripper perfect.

“We will have to wait on the soaping you up. I’m gonna need to fuck you in the shower,” he said darkly as he began to stroke his cock.

Dropping my gaze, I saw he was erect again.

“Yeah, that’s right. Look at it. This is what the sight of your naked body does to me. Now, no more insecure shit.”

My eyes flew back up to meet his.

He nodded his head toward the bathroom. “You go first. I want the ass view.”

He meant it. My thirty-seven-year-old body wasn’t a turn-off for him. It was the opposite. Relief had me smiling as I did as he’d asked and gave him the view he wanted. Feeling more confident, I gave him a little sway of my hips on the way to the shower.

The deep, pleased rumble sound that he made had me grinning from ear to ear.