ROMA KING: Book 1 in the Roma Royals Duet

by Hart, Callie

  “Sucks to be a woman in your family, then.” Instead of pouring the tequila into the remainder of my apple juice this time, I pick up the shot glass and tip the golden liquid inside into my mouth, wincing at the sharp taste and the burn as the alcohol slides down my throat.

  When I look down, searching for the lime and the salt the waitress dropped off earlier, I can’t find it.

  “Here, Firefly.”

  Oh, sweet Jesus. Both the salt and the lime are in Pasha’s possession. I hold my hand out for them, but he doesn’t hand them over. He rubs the wedge of lime on the back of his hand, and then up-ends the salt shaker, pouring the white granules so that they stick to his skin. Then he holds his hand out to me. “Lick.”

  Liquid napalm ignites inside my veins. I could throw myself into a pool of frigid, icy water, and it wouldn’t be enough to extinguish the burn. Slowly, I shake my head, and Pasha blows out a long breath down his nose. “Afraid, Firefly?”

  “No. Just smart. You probably have all sorts of bacteria on your hands.”

  “I just told you. We’re very clean people. Now lick.”

  I used to get into so much trouble in high school for railing against the teachers and the principal. A problem with authority—that’s what everyone always said during my parent/teacher conferences. I have never liked being told what to do. My initial reaction to Pasha’s command is to tell him to go and royally fuck himself, him being the king and all. But then I see the challenge there in his eyes, the gauntlet that he’s throwing down, and I see what he’s doing. He is the hunter, and I am the rabbit. And I won’t keep on running anymore. I won’t be the person he expects me to be.

  I take hold of his wrist, and I stop thinking. Quickly, I lick the back of his hand, collecting the salt on my tongue, and then I let him go. His merciless grin seems to light up the entire booth, the man a light source all of his own. “Happy now?” I ask.

  “Ecstatic.” His eyes are mocking me. He lifts his hand to his own mouth, and he licks where I have licked, taking the time to savor the action. The sight of his tongue sweeping over his own skin is…

  God.

  A deep, pained groan works free from him, and my toes curl inside my shoes. “I was right. You do taste like honey.”

  I’ve never felt this kind of heat before. It snakes and coils through me like smoke, filling a tight space, and I finally understand what desire is. I see now that my past experiences with men have shown me nothing but the idea of desire, the faintest suggestion of what it might be like to want another human being, and this…this is what I have been waiting for my entire life.

  His tongue on my skin. His mouth on my mouth. His hands, rough and calloused and demanding, caressing me, the way that his eyes are caressing me right now.

  “If this is never going to happen, then why bother with this,” I breathe.

  “With what?”

  “The flirtation. Making me lick your goddamn hand. All of it.”

  He looks down at his whiskey. “Well. There’s another reason why I’m not supposed to involve myself with you specifically, firefly. You aren’t just some woman in a bar.”

  “What am I, then?”

  “You’re something else entirely.” He hesitates—the very first time I’ve seen him look anything less than one hundred percent confident and cocksure. “You know what you are, don’t you? What you are…to me, specifically.”

  I am deafened by the roaring sound in my ears. The way he’s looking at me… It’s terrifying and thrilling at the same time. I can’t meet his gaze. I can’t even sit still in my seat. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Pasha.”

  A small, salacious smile lifts his mouth at either corner. “I like how you say my name. It sounds so much better in person.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means that I remember now. I remember a lot of things. I’ve heard you whisper my name into my ear a thousand times before. Just like you’ve heard me call you Firefly. But it’s different in real life, isn’t it? There’s something…final to it.”

  He’s mad. He’s lost his fucking mind. Or I have? I don’t know what’s happening right now, but I don’t like it. It feels like reality is slipping away, and I’m losing all control over myself. My heart is beating so fast, I can’t even differentiate between the beats. “Please stop. You’re making me uncomfortable,” I whisper.

  Pasha grins. “I highly doubt that. But I apologize all the same.”

  He’s so confounding. Confusing. “Just stop fucking with me. I want to know what you’re going to do about your mother.”

  “I’m gonna tell her to go fuck herself,” he says, his eyes glinting in the blue light. “She’s made some pretty unreasonable demands on me. Forbidden me from pursuing you. And I was this close, firefly. This close to giving her what she wanted. But, sitting here across from you, feeling what I feel, drowning in it, starved and insane because of it, I’ve just realized something. She is asking for too fucking much. She’s been lying to me since the day I was born, right alongside the people I thought I could trust to be honest with me. I have a fucking aunt. I’ve been living in the same city as her for the past three fucking years. I’ve been angry with Shelta for a very long time, but now I’m fucking furious. I’m not going to give her what she wants. I fucking refuse. I’m hungry, Firefly. My body has been craving something for a while now, and I’ve been denying it. I can’t do it anymore. I won’t deny myself you.”

  Oh...my god. This is all too much. I need another tequila. I need the waitress to bring the entire bottle over here, and I need her to pour it directly into my mouth. How? How can he say things like this? I can’t decipher my own tangled emotions right now, but I can’t seem to make myself get up and walk away. “The choice isn’t just yours. You don’t just get to fuck me because you want to,” I say.

  “True,” he shoots back. “But you want to fuck me, too, don’t you, Zara. You want me more than you’ve ever wanted anything.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “It’s frightening. You hold yourself on such a tight leash. No alcohol. No drugs. No adventures. No fun. You haven’t had a boyfriend in years.”

  I’m about to correct him, but he’s right. I haven’t had a boyfriend since I left college. “Why would I find myself a boyfriend? Life’s much easier when you don’t have to consider anyone else.”

  “You haven’t needed a boyfriend, because you’ve been waiting. And now you’re shitting yourself because you’re so scared of what will happen if you make yourself vulnerable. You’re too scared of what will happen if you actually give yourself what you want for once.”

  “I wouldn’t be sharing myself if I slept with you. I’d be performing a physical act.”

  Pasha tuts under his breath. “See. There you go, lying again.”

  “I’m not lying. It’s the truth.”

  “Prove it, then. If you truly believe that, stand up and come sit next to me.”

  “I don’t need to prove anything to you.”

  “Prove it to yourself.”

  Such a stupid taunt. And that’s what he’s doing: taunting me. With those eyes, and his perfect mouth, and the way the muscles in his arms keep drawing my gaze to them, as if they’re fucking magnetized. Fuck him. I get up and move. The bastard barely shifts along the bench to make room for me. My shoulder presses up against him, and for a brief second our skin is touching, arm against arm, and my brain shorts out, unable to form a single thought.

  “I’ve been dreaming about you,” he says. “And you have been dreaming about me.”

  I’m rooted to the bench. I can’t move. I can’t speak. How? How the fuck does he know I’ve been dreaming? And how does he know that I’ve been dreaming about him? This is all so confusing. And…he’s been dreaming about me, too? Impossible. I don’t believe in a higher power. I don’t believe in outside forces, puppeteering me through my life. I don’t believe in fate. There are so many things I don’t believe in, but…

&
nbsp; How can I not believe in this?

  Too scared to even comprehend what any of this means, I take the only action I consider safe. I lie. “I don’t dream,” I whisper.

  He says nothing, which is a small mercy, though there’s something disturbing in his eyes. Something that makes my body jitter with far too much adrenalin. I lean over and grab what remains of my tequila spiked apple juice, and when I lean back, there’s something solid wedged behind me—Pasha’s arm. He slides it down, winding it around my waist, his hand cupping my side, and then there are his fingers, gently digging into my flesh, somehow already underneath the hem of my shirt.

  I try to scoot away from him, but he tuts under his breath, slowly shaking his head from left to right. “Why are you afraid of me, Firefly? Did I hurt you in a past life?”

  “There’s no such thing as past lives.” There’s a tremulous, traitorous hitch to my voice.

  “Maybe not,” he concedes. His warm breath skates over my skin, and a shudder sets my nerve endings jangling. “But it seems like the only plausible explanation for your fear. Tell me what I’ve done.”

  He’s not mocking me now. He’s confused. Concerned even. I grip the edge of the bench underneath the table, trying to steady myself.

  “I’m not afraid of you. I’m afraid of this,” I whisper. “The feeling that I’ve been here before. That I know what’s going to happen when you kiss me, and I won’t be able to stop it.”

  The pressure beneath Pasha’s hand eases. He begins moving his fingers in feather-light circles over my side, and my skin breaks out in goose bumps. He’s touching me. Touching me. And not in a way that’s designed to comfort me because I’m sad, or scared. He’s touching me in a way that suggests so many things, so many heated moments, panted words and stolen kisses.

  “I have to go home, Pasha.” I’m pleading with him to let me go at this point. I need to hurry back to my comfort zone, because right now I am so far from it that I don’t even recognize my surroundings. The place I find myself now is unknown to me, strange and alien, and I don’t know how to operate here.

  “I won’t stop you,” he says. His face is only a few inches from mine now. The eyes I’ve resentfully admired since they appeared out of the darkness inside Madame Shelta’s tent are even more unique from this distance. Glowing, bright, a tapestry of aqua, turquoise, silver and jade, they’re perhaps the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

  His dark hair, usually swept to one side, so wavy and thick, tumbles into his face now, but he leaves it precisely where it is. My senses are brimming over with him, overloading on everything Pasha. He smells like fresh wood shavings again. The slightest tang of smoke, mixed with something citrusy and bright. I love the natural scent of his body. More than freshly brewed coffee. More than freshly baked bread. More than the smell of the ocean or cut grass.

  “I’m asking you, though…don’t go. Be brave, Zara. Let’s see what there is to see. Together,” he pleads.

  “You said it yourself. Your mother will lose her mind if she—”

  “By the time I’m finished with her, Shelta’s just going to be grateful that I’m speaking to her. She won’t have a single thing to say about this if she knows what’s good for her. And besides, I don’t call my mom to share the good news every time I share a bed with a girl.”

  I clamp my lips shut, determined not to release even a hint of nervous laughter. “You really think I’m going to let you into my bed?”

  Slowly, he reaches up and strokes his fingers down the side of my face with his free hand. The touch is soft, the very tips of his fingers faintly making contact, and I go utterly still. God, with his face so close to mine… With the warmth of his body radiating into my bones… With his leg pressing up against mine…

  How am I supposed to defend myself against such an assault? How am I supposed to remain unaffected by the sight, and the sound, and the smell of him? It’s just not fucking possible. His fingers lightly brush over my mouth, and a shiver rockets through me as he uses the pad of his thumb to part my lips.

  “I don’t care where you let me,” he whispers, his voice thick, and ragged—so rough, I can almost feel the coarse edge of it against the hyper sensitive skin of my neck. “Your bed. Your living room. Up against your front fucking door. Down an alleyway on the way back to your apartment. It doesn’t matter to me,” he growls. “So long as you let me make you come.”

  He moves so quickly, I have zero seconds to respond. Both his hands find themselves in my hair, fingers tangling together amongst the rogue strands that he pulls down from my pony tail. His mouth crashes down on mine, lips demanding and fierce, and I let out a surprised whimper. Pasha groans at the sound, and his thumbs begin caressing my face as he parts my lips, slipping his tongue into my mouth.

  Holy shit.

  Holy fucking shit.

  I don’t—

  I can’t—

  My thoughts shatter as he probes my mouth, the sweet taste of him cut with a sharp hint of whiskey, and my body goes weak. I have no idea what the fuck’s going on right now. The bar, the other patrons, the music…it all fades into blackness as Pasha Rivin kisses me.

  When he shifts, rotating his body, wrapping his arm around my waist again, pulling me closer to him, crushing our chests together, I finally kiss him back.

  I don’t mean to.

  This is the last thing I should be doing right now. This is, in fact, one of the most stupid things I’ve ever done, but there is also something inevitable about this. Something that just feels so right. As if, no matter how many different paths I might have chosen over the course of my life, how many different decisions I might have made, I would still have somehow found myself here, sitting in this bar with the king of the Roma, moaning like a breathless school girl as he claims me with his mouth, laying ruin to me with his hands. I have surrendered myself to him.

  Because that’s what this is, after all.

  A surrendering.

  This was my final stand, sitting across from him in this bar, trying to deny that anything was ever going to happen between us. I lean in. To him. To the kiss. To the moment where I recognize that nothing will ever be the same again. I just…let myself go. I know that the weight of all the worry and the stress I’ve been feeling over the past few weeks isn’t gone for good, but for this moment, it melts away, Pasha’s touch giving me a reprieve from the madness as his kiss deepens even further.

  My hands have a mind of their own. Before I know it, my fingers are twining his hair around them, the way he tangled his own fingers in my hair a few seconds ago, and I’m closing my hands into fists, pulling…

  Pasha’s already labored breathing quickens, and a low, deep rumble of a groan vibrates through his chest and straight into mine as he bites down on my bottom lip and tugs hard. The kiss ends abruptly as he rips his mouth away, panting, and he leans his forehead against mine.

  “You kiss like you’re already fucking me, Firefly. Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?”

  “No. I have no idea what I’m doing at all.” My hands rest on the back of his neck, and his skin feels like it’s on fire, like he’s feverish and burning up. Soon the fire inside him is going to pass through our bodies and it’s going to eat me alive, too, I just know it.

  “Stand up. Get your things. We’re leaving.”

  It all becomes very real, all of a sudden. What is about to happen. The hunger in Pasha’s beautiful green eyes will not flicker out until it’s been fed, and I want to fucking feed it. I need to feed his hunger in order to satiate my own. But…he…fuck. The sheer size of him. His very presence. The way he makes me feel when he spears me through with that intense gaze of his, like he’s doing so much more than seeing me. Like he’s seeing into me, and through me, and he understands every working part of me. Like he always has, and he always will.

  It’s fucking terrifying.

  I’m not sure if I’m ready for him to sweep into my life and take it over just yet. Because I know myself, and
weirdly I think I know him, and this is it. This is real, whatever that might mean for us, and there will be no backing out. There will only be life before Pasha, and the rest of my life with Pasha.

  Again…fucking terrifying stuff.

  He brushes a strand of my hair out of my face and tucks it behind my ear, humming under his breath. “Are you done?” he demands.

  “Done?”

  “Weighing your options. Pretending to yourself that you don’t already know what comes next. Telling yourself that this is your moment to walk away and force me out of your life forever.”

  “We’ve only just met.”

  The ghost of a smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. “Zara,” he whispers. “You really think that’s true? You really think there hasn’t been a past life where we’ve loved each other before? You think we haven’t loved each other in all our past lives?”

  I swallow thickly. How can his words sound so unbelievable and far-fetched, and yet so true at the same damn time? “There you go again, talking about reincarnation,” I murmur.

  My attempt at easing the electric tension between us fails miserably when Pasha bumps the end of my nose with his, and says, “Again. It’s the only explanation I can think of for any of this. It must be true. Get up, Zara. It’s time to go.”

  My legs feel like Jell-O as I rise to my feet. I pray furiously that they’ll hold and keep me upright as I collect my jacket and my purse from the other bench, but I can feel them threatening to buckle as Pasha puts his empty whiskey glass down on a crisp hundred-dollar bill, places his hand in the small of my back, and he guides me out of the bar.

  My heart skips, trips, stutters and backflips as the door closes behind us, and the cold winter night punches me right in the gut. I’m breathless and dizzy as Pasha pulls me into his side and throws his arm around me. I fit right into his side, my head cradled by his shoulder, and none of it is surprising; I feel like my body was built to correspond to his.