He pulls until I stumble, walking me backward until the bed hits the backs of my knees. One push, and I’m on my back with him standing over me.
He opens my thighs, exposing my tender skin to the cool air of his cabin, and he goes back to touching me, his eyes never leaving mine. His touch follows a rhythm, unrelentingly edging, exacting. He wastes no motion. Each gasp I give him he files away and uses again, building me up with merciless accuracy.
“Rowan,” I pant, throwing my head back, squeezing my thigh muscles to keep from exploding.
“Say my name louder,” he growls. “I want to hear how bad you want me.”
“Rowan!” I cry out this time, and his name breaks him open. His exhale is a rough, guttural sound, like a prayer he’s not used to saying out loud. His chest rumbles with a pleased sound, almost a laugh, but rougher.
He grabs my ankles and pulls me to the side of the bed, lifting my feet onto his shoulders, and my breath stutters in my chest.The control I thought I had slips from me completely as I feel a heartbeat between my legs, coursing up to my stomach.
“Are you ready to take me, Willow? Will we see if I’m worth it?” he asks, one of his hands sliding up my leg to hold my ankle, the other brushing circles on my sensitive and swollen clit.
I nod dumbly, like I can’t speak, because I’m not sure that I can. He nods back, mocking but good-natured, and murmurs, “Good” before pushing into me, slow but steady, filling me inch by inch with an impressive length and a girth that stretches me. It burns, but it’s so good, and I can’t hold back the broken moan that spills out of me.
His gaze pins me as surely as the hand slipping from my clit to hold my stomach. He pushes all the way in, groaning low when I clench around him. “Fuck,” he curses softly, like it’s a prayer. “Tight little thing, aren’t you? Made for me.”
He starts to move, steady and deep, every thrust measured. Not rough, not frantic—controlled. He keeps me just where he wants me, sliding out so slowly that I start to wriggle and cry out, and then jackhammering against my G-spot until tears leak from my eyes onto the sheets.
“That’s it,” he says, voice low and commanding. The hand on my stomach and the hand on my ankle slide up my curves and he’s holding my shoulders, pressing himself deeper into me, as if he’s sourcing those tears. “Take it. You feel that? That’s mine now.”
My hands scramble—clutching the sheets, his fingers. It’s too much, too deep, tooalive,and he’s watching me so intently that he sees when my eyes glaze over as an orgasm starts to crawl up my spine.
He folds forward to capture my wrists and pin them above my head with one hand, and my pulse kicks so hard I swear he feels it. “Helpless looks good on you,” he says, hips pressing deeper, harder. “Don’t fight it. Just let me wreck you.”
I’m already unraveling, his rhythm too precise, too perfect. My body climbs before I can control it, wave after wave building under his control. “I’m—” I choke out, my whole body tensing as he pushes my own feet to my ears so he can fuck me as deep as possible.
“Go on,” he growls, slamming deeper, his patience turning to power in an instant. “Come for me. Let me feel it.”
And I do—falling apart under him, my cry swallowed by his mouth as he claims it with another kiss. The wave crashes, shatters, and he holds me through it, his arm locked around my waist, his body keeping me grounded as I quake against him.
He follows right after, burying himself deep, his rhythm breaking for the first time as he groans into my throat, rough and guttural. He curses again, softer, like it’s only meant for me.
When it’s over, he doesn’t roll away. He stays above me, still inside me, still holding my wrists like he’s not ready to let me go. His dark eyes are steady, searching, as if memorizing the way I look right now.
“So, Willow,” he breathes with a coy irony in that bouncing Irish cadence. Underneath him, I feel too seen, and I start to squirm, but he doesn’t let go. He kisses all the way up my neck to my forehead and asks, “What’s your deal?”
4
ROWAN
Present Day
I wake before the alarm.Before the ship’s speakers hum with their disembarkation announcements, before the crew starts bustling down the halls. My body’s trained for half sleep, the kind you catch in the corner of your eyes, your bag looped around your ankle, your arms crossed over your chest. Years of furtive naps in libraries did that. So did years in foster care, guarding my things from jealous foster siblings.
The ceiling in Willow’s room is the same pale beige it is in mine, and I have to guess that it’s the same in Sean’s and Declan’s too, but it feels different now, like it’s got eyes on me. Watching. Judging.
On the other bed, Sean is sprawled on his stomach, arm dangling off the mattress like he hasn’t a bother in the world. Declan’s curled up against the wall, his breath steady. They look like themselves. Normal. I don’t feel normal. Not after last night.
Willow isn’t in the room. I roll over to sit on the edge of the bed and put my elbows on my knees, setting my face into my hands. Ipress the heels of my hands against the images rotating through my mind—her widening green eyes when I slammed my cock into her, the blush of her skin under my touch. And Sean’s. And Declan’s. The arching of her body, the whispered names…
I rub harder at my face, like I can scrub the memories out of me. I’m not used to sharing. Not women, not intimacy. A drink, sure. A story, fair play. But not a woman. I’ve never even flirted with a woman who liked a friend of mine. There was one time in high school when a friend of mine liked a girl I liked, and I took myself out of the running immediately.
Although the images are stuck in my mind, it isn’t that it felt wrong exactly. Strange, maybe. Certainly different. Like getting drunk with a friend for the first time or telling them about your traumas. Not like a battle for attention or even to win her orgasm. Not a battle in any way that I might have thought. I wasn’t resentful when Declan pulled her tighter or when Sean pressed closer to her. There was space, somehow, for all of us—the three of us and her.
I’d never felt something like that before with my friends, or ever—a shared goal and space between men. Competition yet alignment. Medical school had something like it—waiting to find out where our residency would be while drinking sweaty beers in Sean and Declan’s Dublin apartment that I sometimes visited. Residency at John Hopkins, fellowship, even working together. Then being recruited by MUSC together—all of that wasn’t dissimilar.
But we were responsible for ourselves. And I liked it like that. All that time in foster care gave me an appreciation for my own space and my own things. It’s why I never lived in the apartment with Sean and Declan, why I ate my lunch alone and didn’t jointhe others for beer after a long day. I like my individuality, like being able to retreat into my thoughts alone.
