Rome (Marked Men, #3)(25)

I wasn’t sure what had me stirring awake—if it was the sun coming in the blinds, if it was the feeling of being covered by an electric blanket in the middle of summer, or if it was the impossible-to-ignore fact that I wasn’t in my frilly pink bed alone. I squinted against the morning light coming in the room, but all I could see for days and days was blue. A blue that no words could describe, a blue that was so hot and bright I felt like it could burn me alive from the inside out. I opened my mouth to ask Rome if he was feeling all right, to tell him to get the hell off of me, but nothing came out. We just stared at each other and the lack of clothing between us suddenly became a noticeable thing. I could feel his heart thundering against my own where our chests were pressed together, could feel his sides rise and fall as he sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, could feel the hardness of an erection that needed its own zip code press against the softness between my legs, not protected at all by my tiny sleep shorts. This was a compromising situation to be in any way you looked at it, and considering we were practically strangers, my normally nimble tongue was having a hard time finding its defenses.

His hand that was holding on to my butt gave the cheek a squeeze and I thought he was going to lever himself up and off of me, but he didn’t. He used the other hand to hold his considerable bulk up off of me for the first time in hours and his free hand lifted and I went frozen still as he used it to oh so gently trace the curve of my bottom lip where my mouth was still hanging open like a dimwit. Hands that big, that rough, shouldn’t be capable of being so reverent, so delicate. It made me gasp.

I should say something. He should say something. Neither of us did, though, and when those pretty, sad eyes moved closer to mine, when that mouth surrounded by a sexy shadow of scruff dropped to cover mine, all I could do was lie there and take it like it was inevitable. I had been kissed plenty in my lifetime—by good boys and bad boys, by boys I liked and boys I didn’t, by boys I spent just a minute with and boys I had spent years with, but no one had ever kissed me like this. Something happened when that firm mouth settled over mine. My brain short-circuited, my common sense and basic rationality took a hike, and all I was left with was a bundle of raging hormones and a desire so sharp and pointed it almost hurt when it started to pulse under my skin.

I was surrounded by him, engulfed by him. He was just everywhere and it was overwhelming. I knew I should tell him to stop, that this wasn’t right. I didn’t do this kind of thing and I had a feeling he was still cut open and bleeding from whatever had sent him over the edge last night, but the words just wouldn’t come and it wasn’t like I could have used them if they did. His mouth was hard on mine, his tongue invading every corner, every hidden place I had in my mouth. Neither one of us had very much hair to hold on to, so I had to settle for grabbing on to his ears to keep him in place. I should be pushing him away, not pulling him closer, but there was no way that was going to happen, not with all that brawn pushing against me and those eyes making me drown in them.

I kissed him back, because really that was all I could do. I slid my tongue against his, let my teeth find the soft inner side of his lip, wrapped an arm around his neck, and we devoured each other. There was no other way to describe it. We writhed together, the rough denim of his jeans rubbing against my bare legs, his hands holding me in a grip that I couldn’t break free from if I wanted to. We kissed, we sucked, we bit, and somewhere along the line it went from some kind of spontaneous combustion to a slow burn that had me wrapping a leg around his lean waist and not protesting when impatient hands started pulling at the T-shirt I went to bed in.

This was too fast, it was too wrong. He was not the kind of guy I had been holding out for. He was as far from my idea of perfect as could be, but there was no arguing that he fit the bill for building me up to something tingling and achy in no time flat. I gasped a little when the fabric cleared my head. I hadn’t been naked with a guy in a really long time, and getting naked with this guy was all kinds of intimidating. Where he was all smooth skin and perfectly cut muscles, I was all swirly colors inked on skin that had a tendency to tan but was also dusted in freckles. Besides my left arm, I had a riot of lilies inked along my rib cage on the left side. They were bright, full of every color under the sun, and the stamen on each of them was decorated with a transdermal piercing. I had four or five little rhinestones that twinkled and winked from the center of each flower. It was something I was sure this serious and intense soldier had never seen before, but it didn’t slow him down. He tossed my shirt over his shoulder and touched the tip of his index finger to one, which made me shiver. We still hadn’t exchanged a single word and things were quickly moving out of hand. I was running out of room to make a graceful escape.

I put a hand on the center of his chest, spread my fingers wide, and tried to marshal my wayward and heady thoughts. I needed a minute to catch my breath, a second to remember we were not two people who had things in common, who would not normally exist in each other’s world. He didn’t give it to me. He was rubbing his thumb between the little jewels dotting my side. He didn’t seem weirded out by it or unnerved by it or all the ink that was now on display, in fact not once had he pulled that hypnotic blue gaze away from my own. He put his huge hand over mine so that it forced my palm flat against his skin. I didn’t like to be bossed around by anyone, at any time, but something was happening to me, to us, and I just couldn’t seem to stop it. He dragged my hand over his breastbone, across that corrugated and taut plane of his stomach, over his belly button, and down that light happy trail, stopping when he reached the stiff material of his fly, the heat and hardness of his skin behind it burning instantly through the fabric into my fingers. He didn’t press me any further. He removed his hand and lifted it to brush his thumb over my cheek. He was giving me an out if I wanted it; somehow without one syllable this guy said more to me than any other guy I could ever remember going to bed with.