by Hart, Callie
Pasha’s grip tightens around my wrists as he thrusts harder. “Fuck, your pussy feels so fucking good. Wrap your legs around me. Fucking tighter.”
He commands me, and I obey.
His body is directly rubbing on my clit now, and I’m fucking done for. He moves against me, and my eyes roll back in my head. “Oh, shit. Shit, Pasha…” I run out of words. I run out of breath. I’ve also run out of time. As I tumble head first over the precipice of my climax, Pasha, picks me up and lifts me. The room really does tilt now, but I barely notice. I’m so lost, spiraling, falling, and all I can do is hold on as he crushes me to him.
I’m locked within the steel bands of his arms, his hand cradling the back of my head as I come. It’s only a second later that he curses, the muscles in his shoulders and his chest straining as he comes himself. He roars as he releases, and for one moment, it feels like we’re floating, suspended by our own sheer force of will, and nothing can touch us.
Pasha’s grip loosens, and breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling quickly, he rests his forehead against mine and swallows. Somehow, he managed to pick me up and has sat back on his heels. I’m upright in his lap, my legs still wrapped around his waist, my breasts smashed up against his chest, my arms wrapped around his neck, and…
Fuck.
He is perfect. And I feel so fucking safe in his arms.
“You’re not allowed to run now, Zara,” he says. “You don’t need to. I’ve got you, okay? I’ve fucking got you.”
I don’t know if he means literally or metaphorically, but I don’t care. He can have me either way, or both. I’m not planning on running from him. Not now. Not ever.
He kisses me, and our hearts calm—I can feel his pulse slowing as he brushes his hands over my hair, so gently, softly, petting me as if I’m suddenly a breakable, fragile thing and he wasn’t just rough as hell when he fucked the living shit out of me fifteen seconds ago.
“You’re a miracle,” he whispers into my hair. “You’re my fucking miracle. Mine.”
“I’m sure Roma kings are granted miracles all the time,” I answer, trying not to smile.
“Less often than you’d think.” He dips his head and licks at the swell of my breast, humming under his breath as he sucks my nipple into his mouth and gently rolls it between his teeth. He’s being playful, but I’m so sensitive now that the heat of his mouth and the threat of his teeth send me into sensory overload. I laugh, wriggling, trying to get free, but he doesn’t seem to be too keen on the idea of releasing me.
“No, no, no. You’re staying here, naked and covered in sweat, for the rest of time,” he informs me. “If you’re lucky, I might let you go for a bathroom break every once in a while.”
Smiling, I bite my bottom lip. “I could use one now. Unless you want your own come all over your legs.”
“I don’t give a shit. We can both be covered in my come. I want to paint every inch of your body wi—” A loud, shrill sound interrupts him, and Pasha stops short. He casts a look over his shoulder, searching for the offending article that’s making the noise, but he doesn’t find it. “Where the fuck’s that coming from? Did you leave your cell phone in the kitchen?”
The high I’ve been riding crashes and burns, disappearing in a puff of smoke, replaced by an oily, black kind of dread that coils itself around my insides.
Exhaling down my nose, setting my jaw, I slowly shake my head. “That is not my cell phone,” I say, grinding my teeth. “The payphone outside is ringing.”
23
PASHA
DEBT
I hurry to get dressed, but Zara moves slowly, taking her time putting on her bra, and then her jeans and her shirt. She leaves her ruined panties on the floor, where I discarded them earlier.“Don’t worry. It won’t stop ringing before we get to it,” she says. Her voice is thick with anger, and I can see the unrest in her eyes. When she told me about the payphone and the missing little boy earlier, I didn’t think much of it. But now I can see the worry on her. It’s palpable, and I don’t fucking like it.
Outside on the street, Zara goes ahead of me, hand reaching to pick up the phone, but I put my hand on her arm, shaking my head. “Let me.”
She doesn’t say anything, but I catch the flicker of relief in her eyes. The phone must have been ringing for six or seven solid minutes by now; I pick up the handset, holding it up to my ear, and I take a deep breath, then answer with one word. “Speak.”
I’m met with silence.
I don’t speak, either. If this guy wants to play games, then he’s shit out of luck; I’m not going to oblige the motherfucker.
Zara holds herself, arm wrapped around her stomach, her thumbnail between her teeth as she watches my face, her eyebrows drawn together in a singular line.
I hear breathing—heavy, dirty, unsettling breathing sounds, that make me clench my jaw. Still, I say nothing. If this guy wants to play ball, he’s gonna have to come play on my court. And be prepared for me to kick the shit out of him. Seconds pass, and then a minute. My nerves are cast iron. I won’t budge.
One more minute.
Another.
Zara shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “Ask him if he still has Corey,” she whispers. I shake my head. This is a power play. If I say a single damn word, then that’s one point to him.
I’m expecting the silence to stretch out even further, but then he speaks. “Put her on the line.”
A raging inferno erupts in my chest. “If you want to speak to someone, it’s gonna have to be me. You get a kick out of scaring women?”
“I don’t care about her,” the voice says. The sound of the words is warped and crackling, too low to be real. Whoever is on the other end of the line, they’re using a voice distorter. “And no. I do not care about scaring women. Put her on the phone.”
I set my jaw.
And then I hang up the phone.
“Fuck, Pasha! What are you doing?” Zara rushes to my side, grabbing hold of the phone. She lifts the handset, her face crumpling when she’s inevitably met with nothing but the dial tone. I take the handset from her and put it back in its cradle.
“He’s going to call back.”
Zara’s hair is still mussed from our adventures on her living room sofa; her eyes aren’t clouded and hazy anymore, though. They’re filled with anxiety. “You don’t know that. You can’t know that.” She tries to step around me, to get at the phone again, but I take her by the shoulders.
“He’s going to call back,” I repeat.
“If they called here again, then something must have gone wrong. The Petrov’s must have fucked up their deal to get Corey back. I should have answered it. Oh, god.” She bends at the waist, resting her hands against her knees as she sucks in an endless breath. “This is bad. This is really bad. I can feel it. Pasha, what the fuck are we going to do?”
“We’re going to stand here, and we’re going to wait for him to call back.”
“How can you be so sure?” No sooner has she said the words than the phone starts to ring again. She stands straight, covering her mouth with her hands. “I should get it,” she says, but again I pick up the handset before she has a chance.
“We can walk away,” I growl. “We can hang up and go back inside. Or you can say whatever it is you want to say.”
“I wasn’t supposed to talk to you until next time,” the voice says. “But…if you want to escalate matters, then I suppose I can give you what you want.”
“What do you think you’re going to get out of this?” I demand. “You’re terrifying a little boy. To what end?”
“The boy is dead.”
I pause. Fuck. I can’t react. If I react, Zara’s going to lose her shit. She’ll grab the phone, start screaming, and there won’t be a way to figure out if he’s lying. “Explain.”
“There will be another, and another after that. I won’t stop until the debt has been paid.”
I take a second to process. “Her debt?”
&
nbsp; “Hers and yours.”
“Tell me what that means.”
“It means the boy is gone. The woman will be gone soon, too. Her friend. Your mother’s sister.”
“She wrote a note. She’s safe.”
A low, wet rasping sound fills my ear. Takes me a second to realize that it’s laughter. “She wrote what I told her to write. Now, your impatience has pushed up her execution. I won’t be sorry to see her go.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I pinch the bridge of my nose, screwing my eyes shut. “What do you want?”
“I want you to do what you were supposed to do years ago. I want you to fulfill your obligations. Take responsibility for your actions. I want you to wear the crown.”
An iron fist clenches in the base of my throat. “How do you know about that? How do you know about me?”
“Oh, I’ve always known you, Pasha Rivin. Just as I’ve always known her. I’ve pulled countless strings in order to finally see you side by side. You’ve no idea the lengths I’ve gone to.”
“Then explain. Tell me.”
“Because, blood of my blood, that would be far too easy. I think I’ll let you figure this one out on your own.”
“What is he saying?” Zara asks.
I can’t answer her right now. I need to get more information out of this freak before he hangs up. I have a worrying, disgusting suspicion tying itself into knots at the back of my mind, and I’m almost too afraid to voice it. I have to, though. There’s no other option here. “Shelta?”
The same wet, rattling laughter echoes down the phone. “That’s charming, Pasha. Your own mother? You think she’d have the balls to do something like this, just to get her own way? That’s shameful.”
“Who are you, then? What debt do we owe you? And why the fuck do you want me to wear the crown?”
“Too many questions, Pasha. Far too many questions. You can have the answer to one. Choose wisely.”
My body is vibrating with rage. If only I could reach down the phone line and grab this fucker by the neck, I’d tear his head clean from his fucking body and I’d piss down his motherfucking throat. He’s offered me the answer to only one question, but each are interconnected, related. Which do I choose? It quickly becomes obvious—the one answer that will probably unravel everything, shedding light on the entire situation. I try to stay calm as I force myself to ask again: “Who the fuck are you, asshole?”
The monster on the other end of the line chuckles darkly. “If Zara Llewelyn is your dream girl, Pasha, then I am probably your worst nightmare. These days I’m known by the name Marius… but once upon a time, I went by the name of Lazlo.”
24
THANK YOU FOR READING!
Thank you so much for taking the time to read Roma King! I hope with all my heart that you enjoyed it.
Part two in the Roma Royals Series, ROMA QUEEN, will hopefully be out at the end of January/first week of February, when Pasha and Zara’s story will continue.
In the meantime, if Roma King is the first of my books that you have read, I have plenty of other bad boy alphas for you to meet! Please read on if you would like to check out the first chapter of Dirty, which is FREE to read on Kindle Unlimited…
Face of an angel. Body of a god. And a mouth so dirty he could make the devil blush…
ONE
LIBERTY FIELDS
SERA
“Ma’am, I don’t give a fuck what your GPS is telling you to do. The road’s closed. We have power lines down all over the goddamn place and water up to our necks. Now turn around go back the way you came before I have your car towed.”
The man wearing the high visibility vest, leaning in through the window of my rental, looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. His name was Officer Grunstadt, and he’d eaten curry for dinner; I knew this because he’d been blasting me with his spicy breath while I’d been arguing with him about the state of the road up ahead for the last ten minutes. The twitch in his left eye was a recent display of his frustration. The rain had fogged up his glasses, and large, fat water droplets coursed down his face as he, once again, pointed back in the direction I’d just come from. “Liberty Fields is only thirty miles away. There are two motels there and a bed and breakfast, though I think the bed and breakfast was already fully booked the last I heard. You can figure out what you want to do tomorrow, once the storm’s died down.”
“I can’t go back to Liberty Fields. I have to get to Fairhope, Alabama, in two days, or I’m going to miss my sister’s wedding.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, sweetheart. Catch a flight.”
“Every flight out of Rawlins and Laramie is canceled until further notice. I need to keep driving, officer. You have to understand, I—”
“I do understand, miss. I understand perfectly well. You’re a pretty young millennial with a bad case of ‘I always get my way.’ You’re not used to being told no, and you want me to break the rules. Unfortunately, I have a twenty-one year old daughter, and I’m used to all this…” He reaches out his hand, gesturing at my face, “…nonsense,” he finishes.
Asshole. Rude, small town punk asshole. “Firstly, sir, please do not gesticulate in my general direction like I’m a piece of trash you found at the side of the road. Secondly, I am not a millennial. I’m twenty-eight years old. I’m a successful business owner. The reason why I’m successful is because I’ve worked my ass off, not because I’ve pouted, sulked, or convinced anyone to break rules for me. I know the storm’s bad, but the winds are calming down, and Waze does say the road is open and clear just another mile up ahead. You have no idea what stresses I’m dealing with, or the consequences I’ll have to face if I don’t make it to this wedding on time. So just let me through the damn blockade.”
Officer Grunstadt gave me a tight-lipped smile and pointed through my car, out the passenger window, to the other side of the road, where an overweight guy in a yellow plastic rain jacket was eating a sodden Subway foot-long. “See Jo over there? Jo gets four hundred dollars from the state to tow cars. That’s why he comes and stands out here on nights like tonight, come hell or high water. If I wave Jo over here, it’s gon’ cost ya an extra two-fifty on top of that four hundred to get your car outta his lot, and that’s after the twenty-four hour holding time is up. So, Miss…?”
“Lafferty,” I said, sighing heavily.
“So, Miss Lafferty. Is sitting here, arguing with me worth six hundred and fifty dollars to you? Or would you rather just turn back, get dry, get a good night’s sleep, and hope the fallen power lines have been dealt with by the time you wake up?”
God, this guy was a real piece of work. I forged a smile, digging my fingernails into the rental’s steering wheel, begging myself not to say anything that would get me into trouble. It had happened before. “You’re right, Officer Grunstadt. A night in a shitty motel does sound perfect right now. Thanks so much for your assistance.”
The road back to Liberty Fields was narrow and winding, turning back on itself a hundred times before I even saw another car. The whole world seemed deserted. I’d tried to convince Grunstadt the wind was dying down a little, but the truth was it buffeted and rocked the car like crazy as I drove through the hammering rain; I had to focus to keep the thing from careening off the road and into the dark line of trees that bordered either side of the single-lane highway.
“Should never have left Seattle,” I grumbled to myself. “Should have just stayed home and watched Shark Tank, for fuck’s sake. Wyoming is the worst.”
My sister and I had always wanted to road trip across country. Sixsmith, my father, had forbidden us from doing it, which made sense. Sixsmith hadn’t wanted us driving off, because he’d known full well we’d never have come back. He would have had no one to torture and manipulate. He’d have had no one to cook his meals and clean his house. He’d have had no one to beat on when he came home drunk and bored.
So I’d waited. I’d waited until Amy was eighteen, a legal adult, before I’d packed up
our bags, stole Sixsmith’s red Chevrolet Beretta, and got us both the fuck out of Montmorenci, South Carolina, for good. We’d worked in bars and as temps in offices, scraping enough money together to go to community college. Amy had studied languages, and I’d studied business management. Once we’d completed our degrees, unbelievably, Amy had moved out to South Carolina with her boyfriend, Ben, and I’d relocated to Seattle with dreams of creating my own consulting firm. It hadn’t been easy. There’d been many months when I couldn’t make rent, and many months when I’d thought about giving it all up, becoming a waitress, and living from pay check to pay check. I’d thought about that a lot, but I’d stayed the course. My persistence had finally paid off six years ago, when I’d landed a huge corporate account with a private lender. After that, I’d had more clients than I knew what to do with. I’d had to take on three new members of staff just to cover the workload.
My H.R. department—namely a perma-harrassed woman in her late forties called Sandra—had insisted I take time off to drive to Amy’s wedding. If only I could wrap my hands around Sandra’s neck right now, I’d throttle her. It would have taken six hours to fly to Alabama. Maybe a couple of hours in a car on top of that to reach Fairhope. But now, here I was, after three days on the road, stuck in the middle of the biggest flash flooding the state of Wyoming had ever witnessed, instead of being tucked up, comfortable and warm in a fancy hotel.
Goddamnit.
As I pulled up outside the Liberty Fields Guest House and Artisan Art Gallery, I mourned the fact that the place certainly did not appear to be a fancy hotel. Fat lot of good my Hilton Rewards points were going to do me out here. The guesthouse looked like a derelict, abandoned farmhouse, perched on the side of the highway embankment as I pulled into the packed parking lot. My teeth rattled together as I traveled over a series of giant potholes, invisible in the near perfect darkness, and I swore colorfully under my breath. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be dealing with any of this. It didn’t seem to matter what I wanted, though. The car rocked from side to side as I slid my arms into my thick winter jacket, preparing myself to face the weather. Through the windshield, the trees on the other side of the parking lot were bowed, their branches waving like outstretched arms, reaching for help. God, it looked fucking miserable out there.
