“Stay, Rome,” I repeated, this time calling out his name, not looking back at him. “This is between me and Bastian.”
“There should never be anything between you and another man.”
I shook my head, Bastian’s dark eyes holding mine, swallowing me up in a dark maze of power.
He pressed his fingers into my stomach one by one, like he was playing a slow song on the piano. “There will always be something between a king and a queen, Rome,” Bastian murmured.
This close, where I could smell his aftershave, where I could feel his skin on mine, where I could grab his throat if I wanted to, I trusted him. I trusted everything about the man because I witnessed him grow into it.
“Mario would be proud of us, no?” I asked.
“He’d be proud of you. I don’t know about me.” He shook his head and his breath blew out onto my lips.
I leaned even farther forward and slid my hand to the Glock in the back of his waistband. “This one’s loaded, I presume?”
“Always is.” Bastian nodded as I turned it over in my hand.
“You trust me?” I whispered, letting the question fall from my lips.
He didn’t even glance at the gun. He kept playing that song, whatever it was, on my stomach. The silence of it, the fact that I was the only one who knew he played it for my daughter or for me, it did something to me.
“I’ll always trust you, Katalina. We all trust you. Even if we shouldn’t.”
“You’ve thought of killing me, though?” I asked because he must have. I didn’t become the enemy without him thinking about how easy it would be to end my life.
“I was built to consider ending everyone’s life.”
“You ended your father’s,” I pointed out. “With the nod of a head, you let it happen.”
“He’d wronged us. Wronged you.”
“What if I do the same?”
He shook his head and his hands stopped the song. He slid both to my hips, and instead of pulling me forward, he shoved me back and glanced at Rome. “You won’t because you’re in love with him, tied to him, carrying his baby. You won’t because you’re family. Our blood does run through you now. My blood is your blood.”
“Is blood all that matters?” I curled my legs away from him, tucked them under myself, and stood up again. I walked that table like a catwalk; I measured each step, took my time. “Alliances cannot be just blood anymore. That’s not what binds us all. If it’s just blood, if it’s just lineage you care about, you better shoot me now. One of you better take my life. I’m up here, offering myself for that very reason.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, woman?” Rome finally raged. He’d held it in too long and the voice that burst from him was vicious. “I’m going to kill you myself.”
My hand went to my hip and then I sat down on the table, crossing my legs and looking at my nails just to add more fuel to his fire. “Are you now? “
“Get your ass over here.” The fire in his eyes burned wicked, dark, like all the light had been extinguished and it was ready to burn out everyone else’s light too.
I smiled at the devil that had taken over him. Rome protected what was his. He didn’t like it if I threatened his property, even if the property was me. “Monster, you know I don’t listen—”
He stood abruptly and lunged across the table. His massive height and strong arms didn’t give me much of a chance. His arm was around my waist and he yanked me across the mahogany. I slid right into his lap, where he rearranged me and spread his hand over my belly.
“I don’t give a fuck if you don’t listen.” He stared at me like I was deranged. “Everyone, get out. I need to teach my insane girlfriend a lesson.”
Jett chuckled and Dante outright laughed, but everyone moved to leave the room.
As they exited, I narrowed my eyes at the man I knew I loved. “Girlfriend?”
“What the hell else do you call this? You’re mine,” he bellowed.
“What if I don’t want to be alone with you?”
“Too damn bad. You think I want to be alone with you after the stunt you just pulled?” He hissed out the words and they were filled with anger.
“I have to make sure,” I explained. I scrambled around so that I could look directly in his eyes while straddling him.
“You don’t make sure with your life, Katalina.” He punctuated the words like my life was truly precious. “Bastian is—”
“Bastian is an ally first and always.” I dragged a finger across his jaw, followed the strong line of it, and pondered if he’d ever had it broken. “No man wants to go up against me and you, Rome. Especially Bastian. He’s seen all you’ve done and he’s a team player by nature.”
“He can do whatever the fuck he wants, woman. He doesn’t have to play nice with others if he doesn’t want to.”
“But he does. He always will. He thinks the world is a better place that way.”
His forehead fell to mine and he sighed. I felt his muscles relaxing and I dragged my hands up to his shoulders. “I want to fucking kill you for offering yourself up. You don’t belong to you anymore. You belong to me.”
He gripped my ass and ground my body into his dick. I felt the strain through our clothing.
“Jesus, Rome,” I whispered. “We’re not doing anything here.”
“We aren’t?” He smiled, but it was lazy, relaxed suddenly, like he had all the power in the room, in the world. “Why is your pussy so close to the cock that fucks it into submission, then?”
I started to inch away, but his fingers lodged in my ass cheeks. His head dipped down so he could drag his tongue across my collarbone. I moaned immediately, my nerves on high alert.
“She moans like a fucking whore but says no like a tease.” The devil was in his eyes.
Mad.
Rome was livid, furious. He wanted to teach me a lesson. My core clenched because I knew it wasn’t right, but I belonged in the wrong corners of our darkness. I thrived in them. I knew we should stop with the freaking leaders of the damn world outside of those doors.
But I was in a sex club.
His sex club.
I wanted to push him. The queen and her monster. We would war over and over again before we found any semblance of balance.
“Maybe I like being the whore and the tease. You let Bastian touch me and I let him too. Maybe you’re okay with another man on me as long as it’s not him hurting me, huh?”
He growled into my neck and every hair on the back of it stood up. “I don’t know whether to call you a bitch or a mastermind for that comment, Cleo. You and I both know I’m not going to stop now. You deserve punishment.”
With an abrupt, rough shove he got me on the table again. His hands immediately snaked up my skirt.
“Rome, everyone’s outside those doors.”
“You going to be shy about us now? You were just on the table about ready to fuck another man.”
“Fuck?” I laughed at his ridiculous assessment, but it caught in my throat when he swept my underwear to the side. I heard one of the Stonewoods say something on the other side of the large doors and then glasses clinking like they were all having a drink without us. If one of them stepped back in here…we couldn’t. “Rome, we should wait—”
My protest died a quick death as he slid two fingers into me and rolled a thumb over that ball of nerve endings he knew how to work just right.
This was my punishment?
This was how he’d put me in my place? I arched back on the table and moaned way louder than I should have. I slapped a hand over my mouth.
“That doesn’t sound like an argument, Kate-Bait. It sounds like an invitation,” he murmured as he stood but kept his fingers on my pussy. His shadow engulfed me as he leaned over to whisper in my ear, “Tell me to stop.”
I bit down on the inside of my cheek to try to keep from screaming as his other hand inched up to my breast where he worked to get under my bra and pinch my nipple.
“Fuck, Rome.” A hum from deep down in my gut escaped. I couldn’t tell him to stop, couldn’t even get the word out. It got lodged in my throat. “You’re too possessive. You’re—”
“I’m the one making you wet. I’m the one who has you on your back, legs spread on this table.”
“Please…” I moaned, not sure what I was begging for at this point, just sure I wanted more of it. More of him. His fingers worked on me faster and faster while his other hand went to my throat.
“Begging already? For the man who’s too possessive of you?”
“Maybe I’m just begging for any man,” I shot back.
“Goddamn you and that mouth,” he murmured. He pushed himself away abruptly and I gasped at the loss of his fingers in me. I lifted my head up off the table to see him pulling out his length, long, rigid and ready for me.
His hand shot to my neck, and he slammed me back down on the table, then pounded into me. There wasn’t any gentle touch, no proclamations of me being a queen or beautiful.
Rome was lost in his fury.
I got lost in it with him.
He pounded into me like he wanted to leave scars where he was marking his territory.
I met him thrust for thrust, clawing at his back, biting at his ear, ravaging his mouth, and wrapping my legs around his waist.
Obscenities flew from his mouth, and I learned on the table there that day, Rome was a madman for me and for that baby.
He wasn’t capable of caging the rage and the jealousy in him either.
More than that, though, I learned I was a fiend for it. I hit a high so far into space that I came in contact with stars, probably touched the sun, and the burn of it felt good as hell.
