by Dee Garcia
“I do.” I nodded.
“Do you really though? I’m not fucking around, Lux. I don’t share,” he growled.
“I don’t want you to share.”
Everything stopped. The entire fucking world came to a screeching halt as we bore into one another with his decree hanging thick in the air.
Fifteen seconds.
Thirty.
Forty-five.
No words were exchanged.
After an excruciating minute, his palms, warm and reverent started up my thighs. “This right here is an exception, kitty kat, a one-time free pass. The next time I take you, it’ll be in my bed with you spread out for me, naked, writhing, nails clawing down my back. Understand?”
That image…
God help me the day it came to be.
He was going to ruin me.
“Yes…” I was practically shivering in anticipation.
Rome dropped his gaze to the apex of my thighs, his tongue flashing out along his bottom lip. “Slide those little shorts to the side for me.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.
This was it.
We’d shared a couple of moments that led us to the point of no return.
But this time, this, right here, was the real deal.
There was no coming back from this.
Bracing myself for what would be my ultimate demise, I obliged to his request, pulling the soft fabrics of my shorts and panties aside.
The rest of me remained hidden beneath my clothing, but holy fuck, I had never felt more exposed.
So bare.
And yet, the possessive, adoring look in his eyes set me on fire.
It was everything I’d never had, and everything I’d always wanted.
Lips parted, his nostrils flared as he dipped his thumb between my lips and dragged it up to my clit. “Fuuuck… It’s prettier than I imagined.”
“Rome, please,” I whimpered impatiently.
He could look later, up close and in detail if he wanted to. But right then, I needed him inside me. Needed him filling me until I didn’t know where I started and he ended.
“Spread it for me, baby,” he rasped crudely, pulling himself free from his shorts, stroking it slowly.
Long, thick, hard—my pussy clenched at the mere sight of it.
I was salivating like a bitch in heat, spreading myself wantonly between two fingers.
I’d never felt like this before…
Rome hissed, his eyes darkening. “Goddamn, you’re perfect.” He slid his length along my heat, flooding me, drawing my essence all over him.
It. Was. Torture.
Exquisite-fucking-torture.
“Come here,” he gritted out, yanking me flush against him. “I wanna see you. Look at me while I take you.”
Stares entwined, he pushed into me without warning, filling me inch, by inch, by delicious inch—until I was gasping for air, fully seated on his length.
Throwing my head back, I clamped my eyes shut. “Ohhh my God…”
Rome hummed, as if agreeing to my plea. Gripping my hips, his fingers dug into my skin as he rolled into me skillfully. “So. Fucking. Tight.”—thrust—“So warm.”—thrust—“So wet.”—thrust—“You’re perfect, fucking perfect, Lux.”
His words…
The way he fucked me…
I was high on it all, creeping up on the precipice of ecstasy, ready to fall over the edge into sweet oblivion at any moment.
“Oh, God, please… More…” I begged, riding him with equal fervor.
“It’s Rome, baby—get it right. Remember it. Engrain it in your mind. It’s the only name you’ll be moaning from now on.”
“Rome, please.” I begged again, chasing that decadent feeling building deep within my core.
Pushing me back the tiniest bit, he shifted the angle just slightly, enough to thumb my clit, sending lightning bolts of pleasure coursing through me.
“Fuuuck, right there.” My eyes rolled, legs quivering. “Don’t stop.”
“You gonna come for me?” he questioned roughly.
I nodded, panting, rolling against him frantically. “So close.”
“I know, you’re fucking milking me already.”
I was, too, pulsing and throbbing, pulling him in deeper. My body had never been so greedy.
“So. Damn. Close,” I warned him, moaning excitedly when his hand slipped around my throat.
Squeezing.
Robbing me of my air supply.
As those tingly little stars began flooding the corners of my eyes, he yanked me toward him once more. “Eyes on me when you come, Lux. Give me that orgasm, all of it.”
I lasted all of a minute more, erupting from the air of determination playing on his features as he fucked me rabid.
My body locked up tight, pussy clenching and gushing all over him. “I’m coming, I’m fucking coming!”
He groaned appreciatively, slamming me in place as he chased his own release. “So. Fucking. Beautiful,” the words came grunted through thrusts that left me breathless, limp, reeling.
Owned.
♫ Twisted - MISSIO ♫
Mine.
She was mine.
The circumstances in which we arrived here were less than ideal, an unexpected bomb, really, but in the end, I got what I wanted.
I was on cloud-fucking-nine, feeling so damned victorious I didn’t know what the hell to do with myself. I wanted to bury myself inside Lux over and over again, to erase the memories of her past, of any man who’d used her and abused her before me.
Her story was heart-wrenching. Gutting. It lacerated the blackened stone in my chest and set it ablaze with wild rage. I was entirely serious when I told her I’d end her father one day, too. He deserved every bit of it and then some. An eternity in hell wouldn’t be enough in my eyes.
No.
He deserved much worse; a slow and painful death.
What he’d done to his daughter was… I couldn’t even think about it.
Couldn’t think about how his years of relentless abuse literally led her right into Vic’s arms.
It took everything in me not to react when she’d said his name. I laid there quietly, fuming after what she’d shared with me, willing myself to sit through what remained.
But I had to cut her off there.
I couldn’t bear to hear if he’d hurt her as well.
Couldn’t bear to think that, eventually, I’d have to tell her the truth.
I say eventually because there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to come clean then. I’d just gotten her, had just won her over.
It had to wait, even if it weighed me down in the process.
“I’m getting in,” Lux announced the following evening.
Poolside with drinks in hand, the night was crystal clear, a little cool, too, which was odd for Miami.
I set my tumbler on the small patio table between our loungers and steepled my fingers. “I’ll join you, on one condition.”
“And what’s that?” She seemed genuinely intrigued, sliding her legs off the side of her seat.
“We go in naked.” I waggled my eyebrows.
Lux smirked knowingly.
We’d been at it three different times today already.
I couldn’t get enough of her.
“I’ll agree if…” she held a finger up.
“If what?”
“If you tell me about you.”
Her proposition threw me for a loop, rising faint alarm bells in the back my mind. “What all does that entail?”
“It’s your turn,” she clarified, confirming my worst suspicions.
What she wanted me to tell her wasn’t just painful, it involved Vic, too….
I sighed, resigned almost, and shook my head. “It’s a pathetic story. I could really do without retelling it.”
“I don’t think you’ve got much of a choice. You made me dish out my past even though you knew I didn’t want to.”
“I didn’t mak
e you. I asked you to.”
“And I complied, despite cringing the entire way through. C’mon, Rome—you know I’m not going to judge you. It’s only fair,” she pointed out, using the exact words I’d thrown at her just last night.
Was fair point if I’m being honest. I’d seen the way it physically hurt her to rehash the shit she went through, yet she found the strength to tell me, all because I’d asked.
Would it be so bloody difficult for me to do the same?
“Please?” The softness of her voice pulled me away from my anxiety-driven thoughts.
On another amenable sigh, I leaned onto my knees and raked a hand through my hair. “I have a love-hate relationship with the letter L.”
One of her sleek brows arched curiously. “What?”
“I sound crazy, I know—but the people who made Roman King the man he is today, the man you see in front of you, their names all started with the letter L. They were either taken from me, or fucked me over.”
“Who are they?”
“Leigh-ann, Leo, and Liza,” I counted each on a finger. “Leigh-ann was my mum. Leo was my best friend. And Liza,” I paused, gauging her reaction, “Liza was my ex.”
At the mention of a past lover, Lux sat up a little straighter, crossing one leg over the other. “I’m listening.”
“My mum was a single mum. Young, boyfriend left her and the kids type of story. She turned to the pole, and while she did make money, we still struggled. Her addiction basically ate a lot of her paychecks, leaving just the bare minimum to scrape by.”
“What was her vice?” she asked.
“Coke,” I answered in disgust. “I won’t touch that shit because of her.”
“It’s bad news,” Lux agreed, prompting me to nod thoughtfully.
“Well, between that and the long hours she worked at the club, I was left responsible for my little sister at least ninety percent of the time.”
“Did she have an L—”
“No,” I chuckled. “Her name was Sio. Siobhan.”
Lux smiled as she mulled it over for a moment. “Roman and Siobhan. I think they mesh well.”
“I like to think so, too.” A small smile tore across my face as well. “Anyway, Sio and I obviously spent a lot of time together. Mum helped when she could, but for the most part, it was just her and I. I was a good kid back then.”
“What happened?” Lux hedged, leaning all her weight onto one hand.
“Mum started getting beat on at the club. Every week she had new bruises, and for the more prominent they were, the less her boss let her work. Said it was bad for business. By this point, I was about fifteen or so, and I wanted to help—that’s how poorly we were doing. So I started looking for jobs after school, all quick cash, and eventually, I found Leo and his family.”
I’d met Vic around that time as well… But I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t bring myself to admit it then.
To come clean and confess.
It was too. Fucking. Soon.
Swallowing down that monster sense of guilt gnawing at my conscience, I continued. “The Milani’s were mafia, drug-trafficking was their trade. They gave me work, I started selling, running the streets to protect their territories—”
Lux lifted a hand, bidding me to pause. “Where did this all happen?”
“What do you mean?”
“What city?” she clarified.
“Oh, right. London.”
Reaching for her drink on the table, she took a generous sip, her lips quirking around the rim. “So close yet so far away that whole time…”
“Liverpool, right?” I hedged.
“No, that was Suki. Leeds, here.”
“And we all ended up Miami.” I smirked. The world was so damn small. “Anyway, while I was wreaking havoc on the streets with Leo, Sio was staying at the Milani’s main warehouse. Some days, she’d go home after school with a friend, but usually, she wanted to tag along with me. Leo had twin sisters who were only a year younger than Sio, so she had fun with them. They did homework, played out on the dock, and I got to make money. It was a win/win for me.”
“Did your mum know about all of it?”
“No, and I never gave her the money personally in fear she’d spend it. She had an envelope in one of the kitchen drawers—I used to slip some in there every few days.”
Lux’s features cinched dubiously. “She never noticed the money?”
I hitched a shoulder. “That she brought to my attention, no, but again, coke destroyed her. She was oblivious. Bills were paid, though, there was food on the table. Things were pretty damn decent for a while there… And then I met Liza.” A regretful scoff shout out of my mouth of its own accord. “Originally from Wales, she ended up in London after becoming an orphan overnight. She ran circles around her foster family, which I never understood, considering they gave her the world. The girl literally had everything handed to her, but she had a wicked penchant for trouble. We met at school, starting hanging out together. She got to know Leo, too. Few months in, we started dating, and within a couple weeks, she started coming out with me, feeding her desires. I fell for her, hard. I thought she had, too. We were making moves, handling bigger projects for the Milani’s, making more money. I gave her—and them—five years of my life. Until that one day…”
Lux shifted slightly in her seat, car-piling the words on my tongue.
I tried analyzing her expression, but the mask was firmly in place. “You sure you wanna hear the rest of this?”
“From start to finish,” she assured me, reaching behind herself to untie her bikini top. The black triangles keeping her decent gave away, falling to the brickwork beneath our feet.
Lips parted, I took her in ever so slowly, dragging my gaze from her perfect little tits up to her hooded eyes.
“Some motivation.” She shrugged coyly.
“I need you closer than that to get the full effect.” I grinned, holding out a hand to her.
She came more than willingly, straddling me, her inked arms falling gently around my neck. “There, I’m closer. Go on. Until that one day what…”
My stomach sank just thinking about it. “I walked in on her and Leo”—and Vic—“in the office.”
Her stare widened. “Were they…?”
“Yup. I went fucking ballistic; destroyed the entire office, beat Leo an inch from his life. But my biggest mistake was threatening to expose his family.”
And that was the gods-honest truth.
It was both my biggest mistake, and my biggest regret.
Had I controlled my temper, my rage, I could have spared myself a lifetime of excruciating and irreversible pain.
But twenty-year-old Rome didn’t know how to reign himself in.
“The worst is coming, isn’t it?” Lux’s voice was incredibly soft, her grip tightening around my neck. “I can feel it.”
“Yeah.” I nodded, burying my face in the slope of her neck. “Short version of the story? I came home one night to both mum and Sio, dead.”
Gasping, she stilled in my arms. “Leo?”
I nodded again. “He raped Sio, slit her throat, tossed her in the bathtub like a rag doll when he was done with her. She bled out in the water. And mum…he tied her to her bed, spread eagle. Abused her and slit her throat, too. I’d never seen so much blood in my life, not even on the streets.”
Lux took a hold of my face then, gripping it with urgency as she pierced me with her stare. “Tell me you fucking slaughtered him?” She was entirely serious.
“Years later,” I proclaimed. “Almost five.”
“Why’d you wait so long?”
“I wanted him to think he’d gotten me. That he was safe… Then when he least expected it…”
That sinister smile of hers, the one I hadn’t seen in a while, stretched her lips before she leaned in the tiniest bit and hit me with a chaste kiss. “You’re an evil genius.”
Scoffing in amusement, I pecked her back. “You say that like it�
�s a good thing.”
But I should’ve known she, of all people, would think it was.
“There’s honor in revenge sometimes, baby,” she murmured, rising onto her feet.
Then she hooked two fingers at the sides of her bikini bottom and leisurely slid them down her legs, until they fell the rest of the way.
“Take your clothes off, Rome.” It wasn’t a request. “That’s enough for tonight.”
“For the rest of the weekend,” I corrected, regardless of the fact we hadn’t even touched on Liza’s revenge. “And next weekend, I’m taking you out, so don’t think we’re continuing story time then either.”
Case closed.
♫ Acquainted - The Weeknd ♫
When Saturday finally rolled around, Suki, Ramsey, and I spent the entire day prepping.
Unfortunately.
They’d dragged me along against my will.
I’d planned on wearing one of my little black dresses and calling it a day, but Ramsey and her hopeless romantic self wouldn’t hear anything of it. She was insistent on manicure’s and pedicure’s, on getting my hair done, a new outfit, new shoes.
Everything.
I wanted to kill her, and I’d expected Suki to side with me on the matter, but she didn’t.
The little bitch betrayed me.
She wasn’t fully on Ramsey’s side of the fence either, but kept reiterating that Ramsey had a point and that it “would be fun.”
Her words, not mine.
Not even half hour into the shopping trip, I was seriously regretting my decision to allow them turning me into their personal life-size barbie for the day. I tried explaining, almost relentlessly, that tonight wasn’t a big deal, but of course, neither one agreed.
“He’s putting time in, Lux.” Suki claimed at one point. “This isn’t a joke to him. That man is playing for keeps—permanent keeps—and you’re the million dollar prize. He’s falling in love with you.”
I’d rolled my eyes so damn hard I’m surprised they didn’t explode from their sockets. But that was all a defense mechanism, because deep down, I knew she was right.
So much had changed between Roman and I in the last several weeks, especially that getting to know you thing I’d been terrified of. At this point, we were way past that.