Blindsided (Roman Holiday 3)

Roman turned on both taps at the sink, found the plug, and began filling the basin with warm water. He squirted in soap. He visualized his travel kit—a neat red-and-black nylon bag he’d purchased online because it had exactly the right number of pockets.

One held a plastic vial filled with earplugs the color of flesh, another a set of earbuds in a small disc-shaped case, ready to be plugged into his phone.

Two separate solutions to his problem.

Too bad he’d forgotten the travel kit in the bathroom of the hotel back in Homestead.

Ashley had showered before bed, and he’d been forced to share the guest bathroom with her shampoo smell. To wash his face with borrowed soap, and to skip brushing his teeth because he couldn’t bear the thought of using anyone else’s toothbrush or—Ashley’s repulsive solution—his finger.

And now he had to listen to this, and he had to push the image of Ashley’s ass out of his head because if he didn’t, he found himself thinking about what it would look like framed between his palms. He found himself fixing on slick, glistening heat, slapping skin, moaning Ashley, and he couldn’t.

He couldn’t.

He wouldn’t.

But he did. God, he did, over and over again until his stomach hurt and he thought he might be the single most vile person on the face of the earth.

He had more willpower than this.

With a flick of his hand, he pushed the faucet handle all the way to the left and stuck his hands under the water. Warm to hot to too hot, too much, and he watched the pale flesh at the base of his thumb and along his wrists redden in a flare of pain.

He was loyal to Carmen, with her sweet face and her buttoned blouses and her endearing blunt ruthlessness.

He was loyal to his own dignity, his principles, his self-control, and he had no interest in Ashley, but he knew what she’d be like. She’d be lewd. She’d be loud—outrageously loud—and he would hate it.

He would hate every second of it, just like he hated being trapped in this house, this swamp, with these awful people.

Mitzi stopped announcing her impending orgasm and started moaning, a sound beyond words that shamed him to hear. Shamed him to respond to that sound, to be pulling his hand from the water and pushing it, wet, against his disobedient cock through his cotton pajamas and his briefs. Willing this need to subside.

But the action gave him only thick, burning pleasure and bottomless guilt, played out to the sound of Kirk groaning Fuck, fuck, babe in the next room.

Roman couldn’t take it. With one hand, he untied his pajamas, shoved them and his briefs down and out of the way, took hot flesh in his searing hand for three slow strokes that made his eyes roll back into his head, made him go faster, a blurred fist and the other one wet, burning, the pain only making the pleasure ache better.

He shouldn’t be doing this, so exposed, or at all. Not in the kitchen, because someone could come out. Someone might see, might know, and he had to go fast. Get it done before she caught him at it.

A door in his mind swung open, unlocked only when his cock was in his hand and his control was gone, vanished.

Behind it, his roommate at Princeton hunched on the couch with his girlfriend’s head between his legs, bobbing and glistening, his slack mouth wet and open.

Carmen, fifteen, dressed for the beach and completely off-limits—the bounce of her tits and the mystery of her pussy and the forbidden smell between her legs.

Roman’s first time, at a party, on a pile of coats with a girl they called a skank whose face reminded him of Samantha, and who let him fuck her without a condom even though it had been stupid, stupid—

Scenes from a dozen porn movies, paragraphs stolen from books, anger, power, slavery, abuse, captivity, all of it bad, so bad, but none of it sparked and his hand hurt, he ached, he thought for a second this might not even work—and then another door opened inside his head, and there was Ashley.

Ashley’s white ass tipped up, his cock deep inside her, her spine a runway for his fingers to travel to the back of her neck and hold her down, keep her put.

Ashley with her wrists chained behind her back and no T-shirt, just that blue bikini and mulch stuck to her legs, her burned cheek flaming pink and his cock halfway down her throat.

Ashley and her armpits, her armpit hai

r, her wrists pinioned above her head on the bed and her mouth, smiling, her breasts flattening against his chest as he kissed her and he fucked her and she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in, into this heat hot wet guilt, unable to believe he’d even done it. This terrible thing. This betrayal.

Unable to believe it, unable to stop, unable to regret it or prevent his hand from stroking, stroking, weakening his knees and sending tremors through his arm braced on the countertop, forcing his wet mouth open in a soundless shout that hurt deep in his chest.

The house fell quiet, the silence like a death.

You’re sick.