Rome (Marked Men #3)(69)

“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**k 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 br**sts. My ni**les 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 ni**les 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.

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.