Rome (Marked Men, #3)(69)

I put on a T-shirt and some panties and was out by the time my still-wet head hit the pillow. I vaguely heard my guy come in well after midnight and heard him rustling around in the bathroom, but I was too out of it to rouse. Even when he pulled me up and settled me back on top of him with a hard kiss on my sleepy mouth, all I could muster was a pat on his chest before getting sucked back into dreamland. I felt his arms curl around me, and for the first time since that call from my dad, I felt like I had settled back into my reality. This was now, my then was not something that was going to mess with this. I refused to let it.

I was jolted awake sometime near dawn. I had to blink to try to adjust my eyes to the hazy light coming in through the blinds, but before I could even adjust to it, Rome had rolled me over and was looming over me with a scary look on his face. His eyes were wild, his mouth was tense, and the vein that ran along his neck was throbbing in a rapid beat that I could see even in the low light.

“Rome?” I asked it as a question because this was the same way he looked the last time he disappeared into the night. I didn’t want to spook him, but I wasn’t sure he was even seeing me right now. His hands were harder than normal and shaking just a little when they pulled my shirt up over my head and he didn’t even bother to slide my underwear off; they just disintegrated under the twist and pull of impatient fingers. He jerked his head up and the light blazing out of those blue eyes was tortured and foreign, but there was enough of my guy still caught in there that I told myself just to calm down and ride out the storm. I knew to the bottom of my soul he would never purposely hurt me. He just needed to get away from whatever was hounding him and this was the only way he could do it without taking off on me again. I had asked for honesty and this was as raw and honest as I could get from him.

He positioned me where he wanted me and then his head and shoulders disappeared between my legs. I was still half asleep and nowhere near ready for this kind of assault, so I just threaded my fingers through his hair, which was now long enough to curl and loop around my fingers, and held on. I arched up against his thrusting tongue and tightened my thighs around his head.

“Rome …” This time it was a gasp not a question. He wasn’t much of a talker during sex at the best of times and I had had the silent, totally intense sex with him in the past. But this was something on an entirely different level. He was typically a very generous and thorough lover. He went out of his way to make sure I was satisfied and ready to take anything he wanted to throw at me. That wasn’t the case this morning. He clearly had a goal in mind and it was to get me off as quickly and as violently as possibly. A goal he was quickly reaching with his oral attack. I couldn’t really complain about it since it felt so good and I knew he needed it for some reason, but if he thought he was just going to f*ck me senseless and then not talk to me about it, he had another thing coming.

I couldn’t hold out long, not with his tongue and his teeth doing all kinds of really wonderful things down there, but before the first spasm of my climax started, he jerked up, rolled me over onto my front, and pulled me up so that I was in front of him on my hands and knees. His broad palm stroked over the curve of my ass and he whispered my name.

“Cora …”

I felt him ready himself behind me, and even though I was all mellow and malleable from the pleasure and intensity he had just forced on me, there was no denying I felt a little like I was splitting in half when he pushed all the way into me from behind. I swore a little under my breath, not because it hurt but because it was just a sudden, overwhelming flood of sensation. He was always so careful with me, aware of the difference in our size, but this morning it was like some different part of him had been unleashed. This wasn’t one of my favorite positions in bed, but with him like this, I thought maybe I could learn to love it. He was just all over me.

I felt him along my back. His hands were between us and curved around my breasts. My nipples were already extra-sensitive due to the pregnancy, but with him tugging on them and rolling them between his thumb and index finger, I was pretty sure I could come just from that alone. I groaned and peeked over my shoulder at him. He was a sight I would never forget.

He was all straining muscles, sweat-slicked skin, contracting abs, flaming blue eyes … he was a picture of pure male intensity and there was no way I would complain about being the focus of all of it. I liked how he was all hard lines and planes where I was all soft and round, now more so than ever before. I also liked the way his hands looked against the parts of my skin that were stained with color. It was a beautiful contrast, one he seemed fascinated by as well. It would also be hard to erase the image of him driving, thrusting, pounding into me like he was chasing down his release or else he was going to suffer some kind of unexplainable loss. That was a whole lot of Rome Archer to take in; lucky for me I was up to the task. Even if my head wasn’t a hundred percent sure I could take all he was forcing on me at one time, my body was more than up to the challenge. My inner muscles were squeezing him in time to his thrusts, my nipples were puckering and begging for his touch, and there was no denying the flood of moisture where we were joined that was easing his way. I tilted my head back to the side and braced for the inevitable explosion and collapse; only that wasn’t what I got. Once he ruthlessly shoved me back into mindless oblivion, he seemed to come back from whatever brink he was on. I was practically in tears, worn out from pleasure and the wealth of sensation he’d foisted on me, but he flipped me back over on my back, kissed me hard on the mouth, and sank back into me.