A whimper left my lips, and the moment it did, he swept his fingers beneath the fabric and dipped them inside.
Gathering my wetness, he worked his way between my folds. Then suddenly, he pulled back.
“Pull your panties down,” he ordered as he worked on freeing himself from his jeans. I pulled them down to the middle of my thighs, but before I could get them any lower, he was grabbing my hips and positioning himself at my entrance. I didn’t have any time to brace myself. One minute, I was empty, and the next, he was filling me: hard, fast, to the point of stretching uncomfortably.
I gasped in response to his roughness, but he didn’t pause like he usually would. He wasn’t letting me adjust to having him inside me. He was zero to one-hundred in a second flat. He wasn’t touching me, he wasn’t savoring, he wasn’t kissing; he was fucking. He was using my body to get a release out of his. I kept asking myselfwhy did I want this?
I didn’t like what was happening between us, but I was thankful that he showed me a part of himself that he kept hidden. It gave me an even clearer look into his past, into his pain. I felt everything he’d been going through since losing her, and I hated it for him. It made me want to take care of him, be what he needed, love him, and show him how good our livescould be if he would only let it. The physical pain faded, but the emotional pain was stronger than everything else.
Regardless, I slowly loosened around him, and just when I started to find pleasure from having him inside me, the moment ended. He jerked, grunted, and pulled away. I looked at him from over my shoulder, finding him tucking everything away. His eyes met mine, and a glint of guilt shone back at me before he turned his back and finished buttoning up.
I fixed my panties and smoothed down my dress. When I turned to him, he was staring off at the ocean. I touched his shoulder, and he turned to face me, mouth downturned.
“Are you okay?” I asked, concerned.
He scoffed and lifted his brow. “You’re asking if I’m okay?”
I swallowed over the lump in my throat and nodded.
A quiet laugh fell from his lips as he shook his head. “I should be asking you if you’re alright.”
“I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“How could you possibly be worried about me?”
I bit my lower lip as I thought about how I could explain it to him. “You gave me everything, Roman. And I felt it. I felt all the anger and pain that you’ve been living with for all this time.” I reached out and took his hand in mine. “You don’t have to live that way anymore.” I placed my free hand on his jaw as I looked into his eyes, hoping that he could see everything I wasn’t telling him. I prayed that he could feel my love, that he’d accept it, and return it. The thing was, I could already feel him falling in love with me, but he was too afraid to feel it himself. I wondered if he’d ever let himself feel it.
He leaned down and caught my mouth with his own, kissing me softly and slowly. I felt so many emotions in that kiss that my eyes filled with tears. One rolled down my cheek and landed on his hand that was cupping my jaw. He broke our kiss, wipedthe wetness from my cheek, and said, “Come on. Let’s get to our room so I can show you how you deserve to be treated.”
I smiled and nodded, and the two of us walked back toward the entrance, hand in hand.
I walked into our room first, while he lingered to lock the door. I didn’t get to go far, though. I was still within arm’s length when he reached out and grabbed my wrist. I turned to face him, and when I did, he stepped forward. The two of us met with a hard, fast kiss. This was the Roman I’d grown to know and love.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he picked me up against him, carried me through the bedroom, and into the attached bathroom. His mouth moved from my lips to my jaw and neck. He kissed, licked, and nibbled as his hands stripped away my dress.
Inch by inch, he brought my body alive, and second after second, I wanted him more than I ever thought possible. It didn’t take long after we’d both lost our clothes for him to pick me up and carry me into the shower, where he pressed my back to the cold, tile wall. Reaching between us, he took himself in hand and rubbed his length along my slit, spreading my arousal and coating himself until our bodies glided against one another’s with ease. Fisting my hair, he jerked my head back until my throat was fully exposed to him. He bit the curve of my neck as he thrusted into me, causing a loud moan to escape my mouth and echo around the bathroom like a porno playing over a loudspeaker. That sound did something to him, though, because I felt him twitch inside of me as a growl ripped from his lips.
THIRTY-FOUR
ROMAN
After my wife passed away, I thought I’d never love again.
For the longest time, I couldn’t even think about being with another woman. The world keeps spinning, though. Time keeps moving on, whether you like it or not. It didn’t matter if I wanted to carry on without her. I didn’t have a choice. She was gone, and I had a child to raise. I was forced to keep living, to keep moving forward. Eventually, the pain was numbed with liquor and anger, and my body was letting me know that I was still alive.
That’s when I started fucking random women to take care of the bodily need I found myself with. Even then, I felt beyond guilty. When it came to Sasha, the guilt had slowly begun to fade, and in its absence, something else took hold. I refused to acknowledge it, though. I thought if I ignored it, it didn’t exist. And if it didn’t exist, then it couldn’t go bad.
The problem was that I could see it in her eyes when she looked at me. I could feel it in her touch. Looking into her green irises made my heart hammer away as the butterflies formed in my stomach. I knew the feeling well enough to know that it meant nothing but disaster.
After our shower, I carried her to bed, where I held her against me as she fell asleep, as nothing else in the world mattered. I couldn’t sleep as easily, though. I stayed awake, staring at the ceiling of our dark hotel room, trying to figure out how I could make things work. The more I thought about it, the more guilty I felt, and the angrier I grew. I think I passed out from sheer exhaustion in the early morning hours, but it wasn’t restful sleep. I tossed and turned, waking often and having nightmares all night long.
I relived the day my world stopped spinning, waking in a cold sweat. After going back to sleep, I dreamed about the first night I ever had Sasha in my bed, but as that faded away, something else came into view. It looked like a grain of salt in the blackness. I wasn’t moving, but the white speck was growing larger and larger. As it grew larger and closer, it grew brighter until a warm white light surrounded me.
I covered my eyes as my ears started to ring, louder and louder. I could feel the pain of my eyes being burned from my skull, and the ringing in my ears was so loud and earsplitting that my ears began to bleed. At least, it felt like blood was dripping from them. I was sure I was having a brain aneurysm, I didn’t know I had, that was about to burst. But then, it was all gone with the softest of popping sounds. The light was normal, as if I were standing in any ordinary room of my house. My ears were no longer ringing, and I briefly wondered if I was dead.
I opened my eyes and found myself standing in my bedroom. Everything was in its place, and nothing was out of the ordinary, except for the fact that my wife was standing before me, wearing a sheer white nightgown that I always loved on her.
She didn’t look the way she did the last time I saw her—she wasn’t pregnant. Her blonde hair was hanging around her face in loose waves, and there wasn’t a speck of makeup on her face. Her blue eyes were brighter than I remembered. They cut rightthrough me, making even the heart in my chest freeze as my mouth fell open.
