Rome (Marked Men, #3)(26)

It was right there hovering on the periphery—sanity, logic, rationality; all the things I needed to grab on to in order to stop this. They were hazy and foggy, but they were there and Rome was giving me a chance to grab on to them if that was what I wanted to do, and all at once I realized the refrain about him being a good guy at heart had to be true. He wasn’t pushing, he wasn’t trying to take advantage even though he was so much bigger than me and could obviously force his hand if so inclined. He was making it my call and I was about to surprise us both because I couldn’t resist the allure of all that rock-hard skin throbbing under my fingertips. I wanted to see it, wanted to touch it, wanted to see if it was as big and hard as the rest of him. I hooked just the tips of my fingers in the top of his jeans and popped the button out of the hole.

He hissed a breath out between clenched teeth and dropped his head so that he could get his mouth around the tip of one of my breasts. It was so startling, the suction, and the moisture, the rough scrape of his morning beard across my skin, that I arched up and threw my head back. I wasn’t overly endowed, my breasts were like the rest of me, on the small side and delicate, but they were supersensitive. When he ran his tongue over the quivering peak, when he scraped the pebbled flesh with the sharp edge of his teeth, I was done. There was no more thought to try and act right, no more worry that I didn’t even know him that well, I just wanted and needed and he was going to give it to me. End of story.

I shoved both of my hands between us, got his zipper down without wounding him, and started pulling the denim off over his hips. No underwear, that was always hot, and he wasn’t shy because he levered up and shoved the pants the rest of the way off. They fell on the floor next to my discarded shirt, and while he crawled back up over me I took a second to check out the goods and felt my eyes widen in alarm. I wasn’t a prude, I knew dudes’ business came in all shapes and sizes, I was intimately familiar with the good, bad, and the ugly. It was a hazard of my profession, but Rome was packing something that I wasn’t sure anatomy and biology were going to let happen. Needless to say, he was huge, everywhere, and I was small, everywhere. I was thinking I needed to rethink this entire thing and start acting like the smart, responsible person I was, but he got his hands on my shorts and my panties and I was naked and splayed under him before the protest and panic could find footing. There was no way we were going to fit, even if I was so turned on I felt like everywhere our skin touched we were going to end up welded together. I could feel desire and liquid want pooling between my legs, saw that he felt it, too, when his eyes flashed cobalt sparks in every direction. I didn’t care how sexy he was, how unholy hot and bothered he had me, there was no way that weapon of mass destruction was going to work its way inside my body.

My apprehension must have been displayed on my face, because the eyebrow under the scar danced up and he finally stopped touching me, stopped dropping sucking little kisses along my collarbone, and stopped running featherlight fingertips over the flowers decorating my side. He stared down at me and I was fascinated by a drop of sweat that started at his temple and crested over his cheek, wound its way down his neck, and tracked over a pec muscle that looked like it belonged on a marble statue. I wasn’t familiar with this kind of restraint, this kind of will, so I just traced the track that little drop of moisture had trailed and stopped at his nipple.

“That’s never going to fit.”

The words were strangled, like I hadn’t had anything to drink in a hundred years or more. We were so close, this was so raw and open I didn’t know what to do with him, or with me. My words were meant to be funny, to slow things down, but I sounded scared, even to my own ears, and I knew it wasn’t just because he was far more than any man I had ever been with, or maybe it was.

That single dark eyebrow danced even higher and that little half grin that undid me the other day flashed across his face. I guess he decided that my words were a challenge and not a warning because the next thing I knew, all his attention switched to that already damp and needy place between my legs. He pressed my legs open with one of his thighs, pulled my hips up, and delved his fingers into folds that were achy and electrified by his touch. He was about to find another surprise that guys only got to see, got to touch, when I took my clothes off, and I felt it the instant his questing fingers made contact with the small little hoop hidden down there.

Once he touched it, he stilled, just a fraction. I had had the hood piercing for as long as I could remember. Initially I got it because I thought it was edgy and cool; now that I was older I kept it because I had had enough sex with enough guys that needed a damn bull’s-eye to get to the good stuff. Rome wasn’t one of those, he also wasn’t scared or put off by it. He gave the ring a little tug that had my eyes rolling back into my head and made me pant out his name. Seeing the results, he played with the slippery metal while playing with the rest of me, creating a tidal wave of sensation that was going to make me break at any second. He touched, me, stroked me, rubbed his thumb steadily and unrelenting over the hoop and the tight little bud underneath it. He worked me over like it had never been done before, and just as I was grinding into him, pressing my heels into the mattress of the bed, splitting in half and seeing stars, he removed those skilled fingers, shifted me under him, and pushed all that turgid, straining flesh inside of me. I wasn’t ready for it, but he slid in up to the hilt and filled me up to the point I thought I was going to suffocate on all I was feeling, all I could see was blazing out of his bright eyes.