Rome: A Marked Men Novel (24 page)

about how amazing and impressed I was with the man he had become. I never let him know I might have

been his hero, but he was mine. The regret that I squandered the last minutes I had with him was a bitter

pill that I never managed to swallow. Add in the fact that I knew something was going on with him,

something I needed to make him talk to me about, and a chunk of my heart, a part of my soul, went into

the ground with him.

I went back to the desert without talking to my parents, without being able to look Rule in the eye

because it hurt too bad to see Remy’s eyes looking back at me. Every night for the next year, no matter

what mission I was on, no matter what barracks I was in, no matter what part of the sandbox they sent me

to, I went to bed at night thinking about everything I would do over again if I could. I had seen a lot of

death in my line of work; it always sucked and it was always hard to forget, but nothing woke me up in the

middle of the night with tears running down my face like the memory of those last wasted seconds with my

brother.

There was a weight on me. Not the typical heavy, sucking weight of sorrow that I woke up with when

that particular memory blindsided me, but a soft, warm weight that was whispering my name over and over

again. I struggled up from the blackness and found Cora in my lap. She was literally straddling me, her

hands on either side of my face. She was saying my name over and over again, whispering it against the

scar on my forehead and against the twin tracks of moisture I could feel leaking out of each eye.

My baser instinct was to shove her off of me and get out of there. It was to bury the shame and sadness

deep down inside and cover it with a layer of vodka so thick I couldn’t ever feel it again, but I knew if I did

that she wouldn’t give me another shot, so I just stared at her and let her brush kisses all over my face until

my heart rate slowed back down and I could breathe normally again. I put my hands on her waist and

counted backward from twenty until I was absolutely sure I wasn’t going to bolt on her again.

“Want to talk about it?”

No, I sure as hell did not, but I had promised to let her in, so I would make an effort, and if it meant

keeping her on top of me, stroking her fingers along my scalp, I would struggle through it even if it felt like

it was killing me.

“Remy. I was thinking, maybe sort of dreaming, about Remy.”

If the thought of a man’s dead younger brother wasn’t allowed to move him to burning-hot, sorrowful

tears in his sleep, then nothing was. I wanted to be embarrassed, didn’t want Cora to see how fractured and

torn on the inside I really was, but she just watched me and didn’t say a word. The bluish green of her

turquoise-colored eye was full of compassion and kindness; the melty chocolate of the brown one was

much sharper, waiting to see what I was going to do now that I was naked and raw in front of her.

“The last time I saw him I was annoyed. My folks were on my nerves, Rule was acting obnoxious,

Shaw was being weird, and something was going on with Remy that he wouldn’t talk about. Now I know it

was his secret and Shaw was all bent out of shape over Rule, but at the time all I wanted was to get back to

work. I told him to take care of Rule, not that I loved him, or that I missed him, or that I was so proud to be

his brother. I just told him to keep Rule out of trouble.”

I had to swallow back the flood of memory in order to keep talking to her. She just kept her eyes steady

on mine. She didn’t interject, didn’t tell me it would all be fine, she just watched me and let her fingertips

run along my shorn hair.

“When I came back for the funeral everything had turned to shit. Rule decided that the best way to deal

with the loss was to be even more of an asshole than he was already. Shaw turned into this conciliatory,

peacemaking machine, and my parents immediately went into blame mode. It was Rule’s fault for calling

for a ride, it was my fault for not being home to keep an eye on him, and it was Shaw’s fault for letting him

go. They put him in the ground and every single one of us went with him.”

I had to blink and strain to keep my eyes on her. My fingers flexed involuntarily as I tried to decide if I

wanted to pull her closer or push her away.

“I went back to the desert and watched more kids die, gave more of myself to the sand and the enemy,

and then when I came home last time, things went from bad to worse. Mom had turned into this grief-filled

monster who wanted to eat Rule alive. Shaw was head over heels in love with him and he was oblivious

and it was killing her. And then there was Remy. Gone but always there between all of us and his goddamn

secret that everyone seemed to know but me and Rule. I was so mad at him. Mad at him for lying, mad at

him for using Shaw, mad at him for being gone, but mostly I was so furious with myself for letting him go

that last time without saying something that mattered. Maybe if I had been different, acted differently, he

would have been comfortable enough to tell me about his life. It’s all I can think about.”

We sat there in silence for a long time, just looking at each other. She kept stroking my head and it was

interesting to watch her thoughts play out in those odd-colored eyes. Remorse for me flashed in one, while

disapproval and something else flashed in the other. She didn’t like me beating myself up over something

that couldn’t be undone, but it was clear she wasn’t going to condemn me for it either.

“You don’t honestly believe that either of those boys ever doubted how much you love them, how

much you sacrificed for them? Do you?”

I shook my head slowly in the negative. “No.”

“Good. Because no matter what you said to him, the words didn’t matter. He knew. Rule knows. You

could have told Remy all those things, and he still would have gotten in that car that night. Losing him that

way would still have you hurting and your family in disarray. You know he knew you loved him. That’s all

that matters, Rome. If he wanted you and Rule to know, he would have told you. That’s all there is to it.

That’s not your fault, it’s not your parents’, and it sure as hell isn’t Shaw’s. At some point you have to just

let it rest.”

“I don’t know how to do that.” It was the truth.

“Is there anything that you think would put it in perspective for you? Make it easier to move past this?”

I liked that instead of just letting me be all defeatist and lost about it, she wanted to actively help me figure

out a solution to the problem.

“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