Jay Crownover - Rome

“Not really. Answers would help. Asking Remy what he was thinking would help, but since none of that is possible, I’ll just have to figure it out on my own.”

Her eyes flashed at me, and I saw a shadow of something cross from one colored eye to the other. I wanted to ask her about it, but she climbed up off of me and I got distracted fighting the urge to snatch her back. I wanted to kiss her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. I wanted to put her in bed and never let her out. I wanted to breathe her in and let her spread all that color and brightness that poured out of her all over the cold and barren that was spread around inside of me, but I was still minding my manners, so I lumbered to my feet prepared to walk her out to her silly little car and settle for a chaste peck on the lips.

I didn’t necessarily feel any better after talking to her about it, but I also didn’t feel any worse. I didn’t feel the need to guzzle down a bottle of Belvedere and I was pretty sure I could make it through the rest of the night without having to outrun the nightmares. I almost ran her over when she stopped in front of me and turned around. I had to wrap my arms around her small frame to keep her from toppling over onto the floor. She laughed a little against the center of my chest and grabbed the fabric of my T-shirt in her hands and started to pull me back toward my room.

Not that I wanted to rock this particular boat, but I also didn’t want to get into something she was going to be all worked up about later either.

“Uh … What are you doing, Half-Pint?”

Those blond eyebrows danced up on her forehead as she continued to walk backward, towing me with her. Her eyes were lively and shiny, a small smile was playing across that mouth I wished I had dreams about instead of the nightmares I was having, and she was looking at me in a way that didn’t just make my dick hard, but made something in my chest wind up and release like a spring.

“You have bad dreams. I don’t want you to. So I’m going to give you something better to take to bed.”

Oh, thank you, Jesus. I kicked the door closed behind us and let her pull my shirt off over my head. She was too short to reach all the way, so I had to bend down for her to get it up and over my shoulders.

“I thought we were slowing things down?” Stupid sense of morality.

She cocked an eyebrow at me and bent her head down so that she could get her hands on my belt buckle.

“Do you like me any less since we stopped having sex?”

I snorted and just watched as she pulled the leather through the belt loops with a single yank.

“No. Why?”

She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. I was trying to follow her train of thought but my eyes crossed because she got those little hands under the edge of my fly and brushed against an erection that felt like it was trying to escape from my pants all on its own. I was missing something here. She was almost as vulnerable as I was, only I didn’t have a firm grasp on her reasons.

“I dunno. I thought maybe it was all chemistry and sexual attraction, and once that went on hiatus, things with us would be clearer, make more sense.”

“We don’t make sense?”

She had my zipper down and was working my jeans over my hips and my ass. I wasn’t going to be able to keep talking to her coherently for much longer, but I had a feeling I really needed to understand the things she wasn’t saying to me.

“We do, but things with us just seem to move at warp speed.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“Is that bad?”

Those two-toned eyes flicked up at me and she slicked her tongue over her bottom lip. Holy hell, I was going to come just by looking at her.

“No. It can be scary and overwhelming, but I don’t care anymore because I want you. I missed this part of being with you, plus I’m pregnant and horny and want to jump you all the time. Restraint has never been one of my strong suits.”

I sucked in a breath as she got my pants down around my knees and then dropped to her own.

“Why didn’t you say something sooner, then?”

“Because we’re trying to do something right, trying to do something that lasts, and when you take your shirt off I can’t think straight.”

That made me laugh, but then the damp heat of her mouth closed around the head of my cock and I couldn’t breathe anymore. She was so pretty, so exotic, with all her colorful skin, and good God, did she know how to bring a man to his knees with just a flick of her tongue and the barest hint of the edge of her teeth. I wanted to grab the top of her head and shove my dick all the way in to the back of her throat, but not only wouldn’t it fit, I doubted she would appreciate the gesture since she was trying to distract me from all the bad shit going on in my messed-up head. So instead I weaved the fingers of one hand through her short hair and let the other one clasp her on the back of the neck.

“Cora …” All I could get out was her name as one of her hands slid between my legs and the other wrapped around the base of my straining dick. It felt so good; she flooded all my senses. The way she looked on her knees in front of me, the way she hummed her pleasure when I bucked involuntarily against her mouth, the way her mouth was so hot, so wet, as it slid up and down over skin that felt like it was going to burst at the seams. It had been too long, she was too potent, I wasn’t going to last for very long, especially not if she kept playing with my tight and achy balls the way she was. I knew her goal was to distract me, work me over so that I was spent and tired and could go to sleep and stay down for the rest of the night, but if she was going to open the door, I was going all the way through.

I let her suck, let her roll her tongue along the straining head just to the point where I was about to lose it all in that pretty mouth. Luckily I was a guy who had a gold star in discipline: I pulled her off right before she finished setting me over the edge. She made a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat that had my dick screaming at me in protest, but her eyes were shining and laughing at me. She gave the hand that was still wrapped around the base a tight squeeze and grinned at me.

“Oh, old friend, how I missed you.”

I was trying unsuccessfully to get her shorts down her legs and her stretchy top over her head because she didn’t seem to be in any hurry to let go of my throbbing erection.

“You talking to me or my dick?”

She giggled, the sound so carefree and full of joy that it knocked something loose inside of me. I could feel that ball of tension, that coil of despair that I held so tightly inside of me break free from whatever it was clinging to. I put my hands on either side of her face and tilted it toward me so I could attack her smiling mouth. I overwhelmed her enough that she finally had to let go of her hold on my cock and reach up to grab on to my wrists so I didn’t knock her over backward. She tasted sweet. She tasted like redemption. She tasted like the future I didn’t need to figure out anymore.

When she rubbed her tongue back against mine, when she rose up onto the tips of her toes to wind her arms around my neck, I simply fell backward on the bed and took her down with me. It made both of us laugh. I couldn’t remember the last thing in the entire world I had found humor in, let alone while I was in the middle of trying to get laid. That she could do that to me, do it for me, made it clear to me that I wasn’t going to be able to let her go. Ever. She wiggled on top of me so that I was supine under her and she was braced on top of me with her hands on the center of my chest. She still had too many clothes on but seemed far more interested in getting me all the way naked and taking her sweet time about it.