Rome (Marked Men, #3)(70)

He was slow, the drag and pull of that erection a rough torture on over-sensitized skin. He kissed my eyelids, the corners of my mouth, the edge of my collarbone. He whispered my name over and over again, and when he finally shuddered and growled his release into my throat, I felt like there had never been a time in my life where I knew what it meant to be so fully and completely needed by another person. I just wrapped my arms around his thick neck and let him cuddle into me while he caught his breath and settled back down.

I thought I was going to have to poke and prod at him in order to get him to divulge what had set him off, but after five long minutes of silence where all we did was hold on to each other, he finally started to lay it all out for me. The accident. How he thought he was going to die. How he lived every day with the guilt of being the only one to survive. How he was mad that the accident was one of the main causes of not only his physical limitations but had been the precursor to a lot of the mental ones as well. It sounded like he put a lot of the blame on the accident for ending his military career. It was sad. My heart broke for him a hundred times, but when he was done telling me about it, he turned his face to mine and kissed me so sweetly on the cheek I thought I might cry.

He went to pull out of me, to roll over, but I wouldn’t let him. I locked my arms and legs around him and held him in place. If he was going to bare his soul to me, not because he wanted to but because I asked him to let me in, I had to do the same. He deserved nothing less. If he was going to give me his all, I had to stop being scared and be willing to do the same. Baby steps.

I licked the shell of his ear and whispered, “I got an e-mail from my ex today. It totally threw me off my game. That’s why I was acting so weird earlier tonight.”

That big body went stiff all over mine, and he pushed himself up so that he was scowling down at me. We were still joined intimately together, so I thought it should be impossible for him to be annoyed with me, but I was wrong. His eyes narrowed and flared with something that wasn’t very pretty, and the scar that decorated his forehead started to throb an angry tempo.

“The guy you were engaged to?”

I ran my hands up and down his ribs like I was trying to soothe a wild animal and gave a little nod. “Yeah. Apparently the girl he was engaged to turned the tables on him and did the exact same thing to him that he did to me. I guess he was just looking for someone to commiserate with.”

“Why are you just telling me this now?” I didn’t like the note of accusation in his tone, so I dug the edge of my fingernails into his flesh.

“Because I deleted it. I don’t care about him or anything he has to say to me. It was a long time ago, and at one point in time all I wanted was for him to apologize and realize how badly he hurt me. Now I don’t need it. Now I have you.”

I narrowed my eyes right back at him.

“Plus you didn’t tell me about the truck or the fact that you have some pissed-off biker all over your ass looking for retribution because you didn’t want me to worry about it. It’s the same thing, big guy.”

“No, Cora, it sure the hell is not.” He rolled us over so that I was sitting upright on him. He crossed his arms behind his head and continued to glower up at me. This was the weirdest position I had ever been in while having an argument in my life. I was annoyed at him, but apparently all my lady parts were tired of being full of all that delightful flesh and not doing anything productive with it. I could feel my inner walls start to ripple along his cock. And of course Rome being the superhero that he was had no problem turning around and getting hard again.

“I wasn’t in love with that little biker punk. I didn’t agree to marry him. He didn’t break my heart into a million pieces, making it hard for me to see what is right in front of me. This guy isn’t just your ex, Cora. He changed your life.”

I frowned at him because I didn’t like that he could read between the lines that easily.

“I see you, Rome.” I grabbed one of his hands and put it on my belly. “It’s kind of impossible not to. And when it comes to life-changing, you win. Hands down.”

He took his other hand from behind his head and put it on the other side of the gentle swell so that the little bump was framed in his palms.

“I know you see me, Cora. But do you just see me as this kid’s dad? Do you just see me as a guy with a shit ton of problems slowly trying to figure it out? Do you see me as someone that is just okay for now because you know how much I care for you and that baby and something better might come along? Or do you see me as yours, as someone you are going to be with for the long haul? Because if you are just riding this out until your Mr. Perfect comes along, I got news for you … he’s going to have a hell of a fight on his hands getting through me.”

I just stared at him because I couldn’t think of anything to say. All I wanted was for a guy to be one hundred percent in it with me, and here this amazing man was demanding the same thing from me. Like I said, Rome won in the game of life-changing every time.

“I see all of it, Rome, and whatever it ends up looking like is already perfect. This”—I put my hand over his heart and made sure he could feel me squeeze him from the inside—“is as perfect as it gets. You’re my guy, no one else does to me or for me what you do, and that’s all there is to it. I didn’t know what perfect meant until you.”

I couldn’t tell him I loved him yet. I still wasn’t ready to take that leap, but I sure could show him and hope he understood the message I was trying to say with my body. I saw Rome Archer as clearly I saw my own face in the mirror. He was just simply the best of all the imperfect things I could ever have asked for. I could only hope that he wouldn’t get sick of waiting for me to put my fear to rest and tell him exactly how I felt.