Rome: A Marked Men Novel

by Jay Crownover

I groaned and sank down on the couch next to him.

  “He was at a bar and the bartender called the shop looking for Rule. I decided to intervene since they just started working toward a cease-fire, only I had no idea what kind of drunk he was gonna be.”

  “What kind of drunk is that?”

  “Complicated. I’m just gonna let him get straight and then send him on his way. He looks like he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in days; hopefully the booze will knock him out for a few and then he can go home.”

  “You’re a really good girl, Cora.”

  “I have my moments. What were you doing on the computer when we came in?”

  Those eyes the color of aged bourbon glinted at me. Asa was lucky he was such an easy guy to like, because I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, or even as far as Rome could throw him.

  “Nothing. Just checking up on some things.”

  “Things that ended you up in the hospital? Ayden will murder you.”

  He laughed. “No. I’m not the sharpest tool out in the shed, but I do eventually learn the hard lessons.”

  “Why do I think that might not really be the case?”

  “Because you are surprisingly smart for someone that looks like a living, breathing cartoon character.”

  I got the feeling he wasn’t going to give me anything else, so I got up and made us some grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner and brought us over a couple of beers. I liked hanging out with Asa, but he seemed a little sketchy tonight, and by the time midnight rolled around with no sound or motion from Rome, I was getting tired and bored of dealing with difficult men. Asa mentioned he was going to go watch TV in his room, because if he was up when Ayden got home, she was going to harass him about whatever it was she was on his case about this week. She tended to be a bit of a terror when Jet was out of town for more than a few days at a time, and her older sibling bore the brunt of it. I knew she didn’t want to live alone since Jet spent so much time on the road, but dealing with the intense dynamic between the siblings was often like watching a reality TV show without the relief of commercial interruption.

  I figured it wouldn’t hurt anything to let Rome keep my bed for the night while I crashed on the couch. I was small and the couch was huge, so it wasn’t like it would be a major inconvenience. I did, however, need to sneak into my bathroom and grab a quick shower to wash the workday off.

  Asa and I said good night and I tiptoed into the darkened room. At some point in his fitful stage of blacking out, Rome had managed to not only move to the center of the bed, but also kick off his boots and strip off his T-shirt. Even though I knew it was wrong, I had to just stand there and stare at all that skin on display, spread out over my pink bed set. It was so odd. He was all hard muscle and male perfection amid a totally girly and ultrafeminine backdrop. It would take a guy like Rome Archer to make all my girly stuff look tough.

  He had one long arm flung out to the side and the other curled up behind his head. The lines delineating muscles and tendons used to hard and strenuous work made my mouth water. I felt like a voyeur. I shouldn’t be blatantly checking him out while he was passed out and unaware, but I also couldn’t muster the strength to look away. I had never seen a real-life, living breathing male that had that vee that cut between their hips and pointed downward, where a trail of dark hair disappeared into his jeans. The only men that really had that in life were underwear models, dudes on romance novel covers, and maybe professional athletes. But oh no, Rome Archer had it, as well as abs that put a six-pack to shame and endless amounts of lightly tanned skin that stretched over a canvas that looked like it was carved from stone. He was a massive example of all that was beautiful and male. He was built like a god, and I didn’t want to acknowledge it but I had never, ever seen anything look better in my bed.

  He also had way more pale white scar tissue dotting that landscape of total hotness than I wanted to know about. Even with the only light filtering in from the hallway, I could see the huge scar on his shoulder where his arm was bent up under his head. It was puckered and was wider than my hand; it looked like it still hurt. He had an ugly red welt all along the opposite side on his ribs that was about ten inches long and looked like it was healing. There was a nasty white line that zigged and zagged under his belly button and disappeared into the top of his jeans and that was only what I could see on his very impressive front side.

  I was used to being around men and women who marked their body to define their individuality, to claim their skin as their own. Seeing those scars, those marks that he most definitely had never asked for, I had to wonder how he felt about being permanently marked up against his will. His skin also reflected his life, the choice he made to go off and become a warrior, a man who fought for the freedom of others, and now he would carry those reminders for the rest of his life. It was body modification on an entirely different level than tattooing, with a different purpose.

  I gave my head a quick shake and told myself to stop being a creeper. He clearly needed the sleep since he didn’t so much as twitch an eyelash as I got out an oversized T-shirt and a pair of shorts to sleep in. I wasn’t exactly stealthy as I banged around in the bathroom and got ready for bed. It was early for a Saturday night but no one was out and Ayden didn’t like to party while Jet was gone, so it was just going to be me and cable until I zonked out. I was back in my room, trying to unplug my phone charger from the nightstand next to Rome’s head. I wasn’t worried about bothering him since he seemed like he was out like a light—that is, until I suddenly had a massive hand curled around my bicep.

  “Hey!” The startled word didn’t get any force behind it as I was yanked down and my back met the mattress with a thud. I let out a startled shriek as the arm he had dangling over the edge of the bed curled around me and pulled me half under him as he rolled over. He weighed a freaking ton and no amount of pushing at his broad shoulders seemed to have an effect on him. His dark head buried itself in the curve of my neck, his ridiculously long eyelashes were still pressed closed and brushed against my skin. His breath was coming in a steady stream as his chest rose and fell with no sign of alertness or wakefulness, even as I wiggled and squirmed to get free of his iron hold.

  “Rome?” I tapped him on the side of the head lightly and felt him frown against my neck. “Hey, big guy, I need to get up.”

  I tried to shake him once more and he muttered something under his breath and settled more fully on top of me. One of his denim-clad legs slid between mine and the thick arm he had wrapped around me locked even more in place and that wide palm settled fully across the curve of my backside. He turned his head and rubbed his cheek against the side of my temple and sighed. It made me stop struggling for a second and I looked up so I could peer questioningly at him because the sound was just so defeated. It hurt me to hear it.

  He felt like his motor was running at a thousand degrees and he had to weigh over double what I did, but he was holding on to me like I was a lifeline. Like I was a living breathing teddy bear, and whatever it was that was keeping him up at night, holding me would make it stay away. I huffed out a breath and tried to decide what the best course of action was. In hindsight I should have just given the bartender Rule’s number and let him be caught up in this mess, but as usual I had to meddle. No good deed went unpunished.

  There was no way I was getting free unless I kneed him in the junk or punched him in the face to wake him up, and that just seemed a little too extreme. I felt bad for the guy. He was obviously struggling, and clearly a bad day didn’t begin to cover what he was trying to drink away. I figured it wouldn’t kill me to just lie still until he rolled over or loosened his hold. Plus it had the added benefit of letting me enjoy all that hardness that battle-ready body pressed against mine. I doubted that I would ever have an opportunity like it again. The landscape of my sexual experience was pretty barren over the last few years. There had been a guy here or there, but not one that I had wanted to hang out with for more than a minute and none
could ever compare to the sheer physical perfection of the guy I was trapped under right now.

  I sighed in resignation and tried to wiggle a little in order to get some more breathing room. Rome just tightened his hold even more and settled more fully into me. I relented and wrapped one arm around his shoulders; they were so wide, so broad, I could barely reach the other side. I put the other hand on his ribs, right above that healing wound. I kept my eyes on the ceiling and not the clock, figuring he would get uncomfortable, realize he wasn’t alone anymore, and roll over at any second. Only at some point I heard the front door open and Ayden’s heels on the floor in the hallway, which meant it was well past two in the morning and my human blanket hadn’t moved a muscle. I had been pinned to the bed for over two hours, and it didn’t look like I was getting free before dawn.

  Finally I was too tired to just stare at the side of his sleeping face or wonder at all the little nicks and tiny marks that dotted his skin. This close to him the scar above his eyebrow was really wicked-looking. It hooked from the arch up into his hairline and spidered off to web across his temple. It looked like he was a very lucky man to still have a functioning eyeball on that side of his handsome face. There was history there, a life lived hard and dangerously mapped out across his skin for the entire world to see and judge. It made Rome an even more difficult man for me to try and figure out, and frankly I was exhausted by all of it. My last thought before I gave up the fight of trying to wait him out was that not once in all the years Jimmy and I had shared a bed had he ever held me this close, like he never wanted me to go.

  I wasn’t sure what had me stirring awake—if it was the sun coming in the blinds, if it was the feeling of being covered by an electric blanket in the middle of summer, or if it was the impossible-to-ignore fact that I wasn’t in my frilly pink bed alone. I squinted against the morning light coming in the room, but all I could see for days and days was blue. A blue that no words could describe, a blue that was so hot and bright I felt like it could burn me alive from the inside out. I opened my mouth to ask Rome if he was feeling all right, to tell him to get the hell off of me, but nothing came out. We just stared at each other and the lack of clothing between us suddenly became a noticeable thing. I could feel his heart thundering against my own where our chests were pressed together, could feel his sides rise and fall as he sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, could feel the hardness of an erection that needed its own zip code press against the softness between my legs, not protected at all by my tiny sleep shorts. This was a compromising situation to be in any way you looked at it, and considering we were practically strangers, my normally nimble tongue was having a hard time finding its defenses.

  His hand that was holding on to my butt gave the cheek a squeeze and I thought he was going to lever himself up and off of me, but he didn’t. He used the other hand to hold his considerable bulk up off of me for the first time in hours and his free hand lifted and I went frozen still as he used it to oh so gently trace the curve of my bottom lip where my mouth was still hanging open like a dimwit. Hands that big, that rough, shouldn’t be capable of being so reverent, so delicate. It made me gasp.

  I should say something. He should say something. Neither of us did, though, and when those pretty, sad eyes moved closer to mine, when that mouth surrounded by a sexy shadow of scruff dropped to cover mine, all I could do was lie there and take it like it was inevitable. I had been kissed plenty in my lifetime—by good boys and bad boys, by boys I liked and boys I didn’t, by boys I spent just a minute with and boys I had spent years with, but no one had ever kissed me like this. Something happened when that firm mouth settled over mine. My brain short-circuited, my common sense and basic rationality took a hike, and all I was left with was a bundle of raging hormones and a desire so sharp and pointed it almost hurt when it started to pulse under my skin.

  I was surrounded by him, engulfed by him. He was just everywhere and it was overwhelming. I knew I should tell him to stop, that this wasn’t right. I didn’t do this kind of thing and I had a feeling he was still cut open and bleeding from whatever had sent him over the edge last night, but the words just wouldn’t come and it wasn’t like I could have used them if they did. His mouth was hard on mine, his tongue invading every corner, every hidden place I had in my mouth. Neither one of us had very much hair to hold on to, so I had to settle for grabbing on to his ears to keep him in place. I should be pushing him away, not pulling him closer, but there was no way that was going to happen, not with all that brawn pushing against me and those eyes making me drown in them.

  I kissed him back, because really that was all I could do. I slid my tongue against his, let my teeth find the soft inner side of his lip, wrapped an arm around his neck, and we devoured each other. There was no other way to describe it. We writhed together, the rough denim of his jeans rubbing against my bare legs, his hands holding me in a grip that I couldn’t break free from if I wanted to. We kissed, we sucked, we bit, and somewhere along the line it went from some kind of spontaneous combustion to a slow burn that had me wrapping a leg around his lean waist and not protesting when impatient hands started pulling at the T-shirt I went to bed in.

  This was too fast, it was too wrong. He was not the kind of guy I had been holding out for. He was as far from my idea of perfect as could be, but there was no arguing that he fit the bill for building me up to something tingling and achy in no time flat. I gasped a little when the fabric cleared my head. I hadn’t been naked with a guy in a really long time, and getting naked with this guy was all kinds of intimidating. Where he was all smooth skin and perfectly cut muscles, I was all swirly colors inked on skin that had a tendency to tan but was also dusted in freckles. Besides my left arm, I had a riot of lilies inked along my rib cage on the left side. They were bright, full of every color under the sun, and the stamen on each of them was decorated with a transdermal piercing. I had four or five little rhinestones that twinkled and winked from the center of each flower. It was something I was sure this serious and intense soldier had never seen before, but it didn’t slow him down. He tossed my shirt over his shoulder and touched the tip of his index finger to one, which made me shiver. We still hadn’t exchanged a single word and things were quickly moving out of hand. I was running out of room to make a graceful escape.

  I put a hand on the center of his chest, spread my fingers wide, and tried to marshal my wayward and heady thoughts. I needed a minute to catch my breath, a second to remember we were not two people who had things in common, who would not normally exist in each other’s world. He didn’t give it to me. He was rubbing his thumb between the little jewels dotting my side. He didn’t seem weirded out by it or unnerved by it or all the ink that was now on display, in fact not once had he pulled that hypnotic blue gaze away from my own. He put his huge hand over mine so that it forced my palm flat against his skin. I didn’t like to be bossed around by anyone, at any time, but something was happening to me, to us, and I just couldn’t seem to stop it. He dragged my hand over his breastbone, across that corrugated and taut plane of his stomach, over his belly button, and down that light happy trail, stopping when he reached the stiff material of his fly, the heat and hardness of his skin behind it burning instantly through the fabric into my fingers. He didn’t press me any further. He removed his hand and lifted it to brush his thumb over my cheek. He was giving me an out if I wanted it; somehow without one syllable this guy said more to me than any other guy I could ever remember going to bed with.

  It was right there hovering on the periphery—sanity, logic, rationality; all the things I needed to grab on to in order to stop this. They were hazy and foggy, but they were there and Rome was giving me a chance to grab on to them if that was what I wanted to do, and all at once I realized the refrain about him being a good guy at heart had to be true. He wasn’t pushing, he wasn’t trying to take advantage even though he was so much bigger than me and could obviously force his hand if so inclined. He was making it my call and I was about to
surprise us both because I couldn’t resist the allure of all that rock-hard skin throbbing under my fingertips. I wanted to see it, wanted to touch it, wanted to see if it was as big and hard as the rest of him. I hooked just the tips of my fingers in the top of his jeans and popped the button out of the hole.

  He hissed a breath out between clenched teeth and dropped his head so that he could get his mouth around the tip of one of my breasts. It was so startling, the suction, and the moisture, the rough scrape of his morning beard across my skin, that I arched up and threw my head back. I wasn’t overly endowed, my breasts were like the rest of me, on the small side and delicate, but they were supersensitive. When he ran his tongue over the quivering peak, when he scraped the pebbled flesh with the sharp edge of his teeth, I was done. There was no more thought to try and act right, no more worry that I didn’t even know him that well, I just wanted and needed and he was going to give it to me. End of story.

  I shoved both of my hands between us, got his zipper down without wounding him, and started pulling the denim off over his hips. No underwear, that was always hot, and he wasn’t shy because he levered up and shoved the pants the rest of the way off. They fell on the floor next to my discarded shirt, and while he crawled back up over me I took a second to check out the goods and felt my eyes widen in alarm. I wasn’t a prude, I knew dudes’ business came in all shapes and sizes, I was intimately familiar with the good, bad, and the ugly. It was a hazard of my profession, but Rome was packing something that I wasn’t sure anatomy and biology were going to let happen. Needless to say, he was huge, everywhere, and I was small, everywhere. I was thinking I needed to rethink this entire thing and start acting like the smart, responsible person I was, but he got his hands on my shorts and my panties and I was naked and splayed under him before the protest and panic could find footing. There was no way we were going to fit, even if I was so turned on I felt like everywhere our skin touched we were going to end up welded together. I could feel desire and liquid want pooling between my legs, saw that he felt it, too, when his eyes flashed cobalt sparks in every direction. I didn’t care how sexy he was, how unholy hot and bothered he had me, there was no way that weapon of mass destruction was going to work its way inside my body.