She looked toward the ceiling like she was trying to avoid the inevitable. When her eyes locked with mine again, her legs wound around my hips and locked on to me too. We’d only done this dance a few times before. We weren’t meant to react to one another, and yet when we got close enough, we ignited and exploded.
“This doesn’t mean a thing,” she whispered and then bit her bottom lip as she looked at mine. “I do what needs to be done for the family, always. This attraction between you and me is just an indulgence, a dumb one at that.”
I hummed low as I slid one hand up her smooth thigh. We were pushing each other, and I felt us getting close to something we usually didn’t.
Tonight, we’d pushed our history too far. She’d brought a man in who’d reminded me of her vulnerability. She’d baited me like she did so well, even when she didn’t know she was doing it.
I was taking the bait this time, even though I knew she was too frustrating, too volatile, and too chaotic to combine with my own wreckage. Us together, we were mayhem and ruination and mass destruction.
We both knew it, and still my hand slid higher and higher.
“You want to do this?” I rolled the question out like a boulder, knowing it would crush our sexual desires. This was Katalina, the girl I’d stared at the night she’d been inducted into the family, the girl who’d stared blankly ahead and didn’t bat an eyelash as I’d taken the supposed love of her life in front of her.
We were both dead inside.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Her voice shook as she said it.
“Because you aren’t in control of this.”
She smiled, but her lips quivered. “Of course I am.”
“No, Katalina. We keep hooking up, we’re bound to go off, and you can’t control a nuclear bomb.”
“Just watch me.” She grabbed my shirt, and I admit she controlled the kiss. She dove into my mouth like it was hers to ravage. Leveraging her ass on the table, she dug her heels hard into my back, and her hands were on my pants zipper so fast, I barely kept up.
When I slid my hand to her panty line, I found nothing there. “Damn, not much of a barrier from the world. I should have known.”
“I like to feel it, Rome. Every place I’m in, every situation I put myself in, I have the little knowledge that I could slide this skirt up and be taken by someone. Every bomb that goes off, I get to feel the explosion, and being that close to the edge makes me feel alive.”
“There’s something wrong with you,” I grumbled, but my fingers slid into her, and she was so wet and tight, I knew I wouldn’t back away, even if the whole world was wrong with her. Then she fisted my cock, and I bit down on my cheek to distract myself from coming before we even got started.
“Don’t act like I’m the only one with problems. You’ve been eyeing me up since the first night you saw me.”
I slammed a hand down on the table to shift some control back to me. “Don’t talk about that night.”
She rocked into my other hand and dropped her head back to expose her neck as she rode my fingers. She closed her eyes, trying to find her high. “Then, fuck me silent, Rome. I need someone to take me.”
I heard the plea under her command, the hitch in her voice. Katalina was broken, shattered, left in jagged little pieces all over the floor. She wanted someone to make her feel something, to make life worth living, but I wasn’t that person. I wasn’t sure there was a person out there who could make her feel a thing. I was damn near positive they didn’t exist, because I knew they didn’t exist for me.
“You’re not going to feel anything, Katalina.”
Her slate eyes shot open, the storm in them dim and painful and raw. “No. I won’t. You won’t either. That’s the beauty of what we’re about to do.”
She spread her legs wider, and I slammed into her. She wrapped her arms and legs around me as I pumped into her faster and faster. Clawing at my back and biting my neck, she didn’t fuck nicely. She left her mark all over me, probably like she did to all her victims. And we were her victims. Katalina was poised as bait but never ended up just that.
I left my mark on her by sucking too hard on her neck, devouring her mouth when I should have pulled back, and gripping her hard enough to bruise.
Our touches were painful.
Just the way we liked them.
9
Katie
Ishouldn’t have slept with him. I should have walked away and never indulged the pull I had toward him.
Rome said I wouldn’t feel anything, and I normally never did.