He pushes off his car to stand, his back straight but his head leaning down toward my face. My lips part and his nose grazes mine. His breath whispers across my lips. His cologne and soap is an intoxicating mixture that makes me weak—always so clean and masculine. And his face, usually clean shaven aside from the occasional short blond stubble I enjoy too much sometimes. And his hair, oh god his hair. Shorter on the sides, a bit longer on top and always styled so effortlessly perfect. I don’t hate him, I hate how perfect he is. Especially when he’s standing next to me.
I’m a mess. I’m insecure. I feel dark and chaotic and I’m not good. Next to him, I may as well be nothing. Next toeveryone, I may as well be nothing.
“You don’t hate me, Natalia,” he whispers against my lips, his hands curling around my waist. “You hate the way I make you feel. It scares you.”
Damn him.“Rowan?—”
“Kiss me,” he whispers—a question, a plea, a demand.
My heart suffers, going back and forth between fight or flight. Leave or kiss. Take him, steal him, breathe him in, let him have me. Or run, save him, leave him, and give him the gift of something better than me.
But on some occasions, I’m incredibly selfish.
I lift onto my toes, wrap my arms around his neck, and I let myself sink into him. He groans as soon as I push my tongue through his lips, demanding everything he can give me.
I really should have revised the terms and conditions for this agreement because just kissing him is enough to make me rethink my entire life.
Like maybe I can fall in love and have that epic story I always see in movies. Maybe I can understand what people mean when they say love changed them or healed them. Maybe I’ll even find that there is a future I want to be a part of after all. Maybe there are kids and dogs. Maybe I adopt them, save them, and protect them from whatever terrible nightmares the system has to offer them.
Maybe I’ll know what it means to hope for something and believe that those good things can come to me.
Maybe one day I’ll realize that this was the universe giving Rowan Asher to me on a silver platter and backhanding the side of my head to tell me,Look, you idiot, it’s this one. This one is yours. This is the one. It’s him and you know it.
Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. I only know that I want himnow.And like the way the universe picks your person perfectly, he knows me perfectly. He reads my mind.
He spins us around until I’m pressed against the car, surrounded by him, and his thigh is between mine. “Shit, Natalia,” he groans against my lips.
It’s only then I realize I’ve quite literally started grinding against his thigh, and when he retreats, removing my source of pleasure, my pussyaches. I’ve never wanted anyone as badly as I wanted him.
His skilled fingers undo my jeans while he kisses me breathless, and then his fingers find the soaked skin between my legs. We groan in unison, and I realize I have never, or will never, be so in tune with anyone else.
“God, I love making you come,” he says against my neck, pushing his fingers inside of me. “I love watching you come, feeling you come. Fuck, Natalia, I’d do anything to taste you right now.”
“I—O-Okay,” I breathe, arching and grinding against his hand, finding the perfect ministration for his heel to rub my clit with each thrust of his fingers. “I…”
“Ride my fingers, sweetheart,” he purrs in my ear.
A whimper slips out of me as my pussy clenches around his perfect fingers but I pull myself together and manage to say, “I’d rather ride your cock.”
Rowan nearly unleashes himself right then with a growl in my ear and a harder thrust of his fingers. “Backseat,” he grits out. “Now.”
He nearly tears off the back door and plops me right in, sliding between my legs and slamming the door behind him. His gaze is animalistic. Primal. Catastrophic. I lie back against the opposite door to let him come to me, but instead, his armcomes around me and he makes me dizzy as he spins us around.
He’s sitting back against the seat, holding my hips against his and the moan that slips out of me is louder than usual. His is raspier—huskier and sexier and it makes me pulse around profound emptiness.
I yank off his shirt and my sweater is off my body in a blink. My pants are gone, his are at his knees, and my bra is barely off, simply dangling at my elbows, as I wrap my hand around his cock. I stroke the beautiful, hard length of him, and lift my hips. The shudder that comes with the anticipation makes me think I’m having a premature orgasm, pleasuring zinging through me as the head of his cock bumps against my clit.
Rationality hits me then. “Shit. Condom?” I breathe.
Rowan nods, and in mere seconds he’s covered himself with the latex and I’m lowering myself onto him, filling myself, inch by inch, His eyes never leave mine and I can’t find it in me to look away first. My mouth falls open with a sound that’s a mix between a mewl and a moan, and his falls open with the sexiest, deepest moan I’ve ever heard from a man.
“Rowan,” I gasp when I practically feel him in my ribs. His impatient, tantalizing hands touch every part of my skin they can, reaching up to cup my breasts and toy with my nipples. Reaching back to grab handfuls of my ass and drag his fingers where we meet and up my slit, circling my sensitive bud and making me shudder. “Fuck. Rowan. I…”
I swallow and let my body take over. I let my body lead the way, steal the show, and take what it wants from him.
“Rowan,” I moan. “T-Talk to me. I need…oh my god.” Rowan slams up into me hard, just as I come down from a bounce. “Shit.”
His teeth scrape across my nipple and my back arches. “What do you want to hear, sweetheart?” His hands grab my ass, moving me harder and faster—rougher. “That you ride my cock like it’s yours. That you look so fucking sexy like this, with me buried inside of you.”
