“I see you too, so I do,” he tells me, turning his painting around for me to see a portrait of me—my skin in a melancholy blue, outlined in indigo, my hair gold. I look like myself as the ocean. Mouth dropped open, I look into Rowan’s dark brown eyes and see nothing but longing there. “I will never betray you. That isn’t me. I’m loyal to the end, and you’ve got me. I see it now, what it means to make your own family with someone.”
He stands up, and I look up at him from my seat, seeing the hunger and longing brimming through those teddy-brown eyes. His fingers slide along the table as he makes his way to me, and I feel the pounding in my heart and between my legs.
Unconsciously, I turn my body to face him, and he slides into the space between my legs, taking my face into his hands. “I know you still have choices to make, but for now, know that you don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’m scared is all,” I admit. The words settle between us with the weight of honesty. “Not of you. Of…how big all of this feels. The babies. The choice. The way I look at you and feel seen, and that makes it harder to pretend I’m not terrified.”
His thumb strokes my knuckles, slow. “I can do scared. I got a lot of practice with that.”
The room holds steady around us. The cicadas wear down the silence outside like a file. I feel the pulse in my wrist against his palm—steady, then faster.
“Will you kiss me?” My voice is quiet. It still shocks me, how simple it is to ask, how brave it can feel.
The softest grin unfolds. “Aye,” he says. “I will.”
He leans in like you approach something sacred—no snatching, no rush, the kind of patience that makes you ache. His breath warms my upper lip. My eyes close because they have to. When his mouth meets mine, it isn’t fireworks. It’s the slow ignition of a pilot light, the thing that means the whole house can be warm. He kisses me once, fully, and then again, lighter, as if he’s tasting yes.
I make a sound I don’t mean to make, and it changes him. If the first kiss was prayer, the second was promise, then the third is hunger showing its face. He angles closer, one hand rising to cradle the back of my head, the other still banded with mine. I pull him, and he comes willingly, knee knocking into the couch, laugh muffled against my mouth like we’re already sharing the same breath.
“Come here,” I whisper, and the need tucked under those two words surprises me with its teeth.
He shifts, kneeling on the rug between my legs, hoodie pulling at the throat, eyes darker than the room. I slide my fingers beneath the hem and find the warm cotton of a T-shirt, the warm skin beneath that. He sucks in a breath when my nails graze the dip above his hip, like an admission.
“Tell me if anything is too much,” he says, the doctor in him surfacing in the best possible way. “Or not enough.”
“Same to you,” I answer jokingly, but he doesn’t laugh. He nods. His mouth comes back to mine, and we lose the last polite edges. I cup his face and feel the hard line of his jaw soften under mypalms. We kiss like we’ve been dying to and were too noble or too afraid to admit it. When he finally pulls back for air, his forehead rests on mine. We breathe together for a moment like we’re syncing a rhythm. “We’re going to wake up Cheyenne,” I whisper when he lets out a groan.
“Should I go?” he asks, his voice heady.
“No. Take me to bed.”
“That’s all I needed you to say.” He obeys, standing and holding out a hand. We do the small choreography of the hallway in silence, stepping over the one board that shrieks, moving past the guest room door like criminals in a heist film. In my room, I let the hush fold around us. He closes the door with a careful push and pushes me up against it, his mouth at mine again, his hands tracing my body.
He pins me with his hips and pulls back to take his shirt off. I help him hungrily, sighing at the sight of him. At the pale skin underneath and the tiny scar near his ribs that I don’t know the origin of.
He peels my sleep shirt off, slowly, giving me a beat at every inch in case I change my mind. The air kisses my skin. When I’m bare to him, he looks greedily at me. His breath catches, jaw flexes, and all that restraint starts to split at the seams. “Tell me what you want from me, Willow. You drive me crazy. You have since the first day on the cruise.”
I laugh softly against his hair, but it turns into a gasp when he finds that spot just below my ear. His teeth graze skin. “Rowan,” I breathe, half warning, half plea.
“Aye,” he answers, tone darkly amused. “That’s the sound I wanted.”
He presses me harder into the door, hips rolling against mine slowly and deliberately. The friction steals every coherent thought from my head. My words come out broken between breaths, muttered into the air as he holds my head back. “I want you to touch me the way only you do.” My nails dig lightly into his shoulders.
He makes a sound that’s half growl, half sigh, the kind of sound that could start an engine, and he pulls my sleep pants down and turns me around quickly, one of his hands protective around my belly as he does. “Only I touch you like this, huh?” I whimper, and he turns my face to him and whispers, “But I bet you let them try.”
His pupils are blown so far out his eyes are black. All those pointed edges of his face are even more obvious in the soft lighting of my bedroom.
A sound comes out of me that I’m not expecting, and he clamps his hand over my mouth. “Is this what you want?” he asks, staring me in my eyes as his fingers move between my legs and spread me open by my lips, exposing my soaking wet pussy to the air.
Whimpering, I shake my head, and he lets out a chuckle. “You want me to stop?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Then say what you want.”
“I want you inside me.”
That’s all he needs. His mouth is on mine again, hungrier now, tasting me like he’s been waiting too long. The brush of stubble along my jaw burns in a good way. His fingers are inside me,the bottom of his hand knocking against me from how deep and hard he finger-fucks me.
