“Natalia, I’m fine,” he says and kisses a line from inner thigh to my hipbone.
I peel my eyelids open and find his ocean blue irises. Eventhough Rowan might have sent me into a blissful death, I’m still aching with emptiness.
“I’m not. Come here,” I breathe and urge him above me with my hands in his hair, tangling my fingers in the strands. “Please.”
Rowan crawls over me, settling in the cradle of my legs, and my other arm winds around his warm muscular body. “Natalia.”
“Please.” I quiet him by pulling his lips down to mine. I lift my hips and smooth a hand down his body until I have it splayed against his lower back and press down, hard. “I need you.”
“Sweetheart,” he breathes, his voice low and soft against my lips. “I always need you.”
“I need you to need me right now,” I croak quietly.
“I do.” His hand, reverent as ever, smooths up and down my leg—starting wide at my hip, fingers spreading across my scarred thigh, and wrapping around my calf as he brings my leg around his waist. “You have no idea.”
“Yeah?” I nudge his lips with my own. “Show me.”
Rowan nips at my bottom lip. “Condom, sweetheart.”
I shake my head and keep moving my lips across his, my hands in his hair holding him close.
“Nata—”
“I’ve gotten tested,” I moan, rolling my hips against his cock, his tip nudging at my clit. “And I’m on the shot.”
“Sweetheart—” Rowan rasps.
“Rowan…Don’t,” I murmur. “Not right now. Just do this for me. Please.”
“Sweetheart,” he says softer than before.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to do this, really,” I rasp,hoping he doesn’t agreejust because. Then it hits me—what will I do on the day that Rowan doesn’t want me anymore but I still want him? “You never have to do?—”
“I do, Natalia,” Rowan assures me with a brush of his lips over my cheekbones. “I want everything with you. I want to give you everything.”
“Then give me everything, Rowan,” I say. “Give me all of you.”
“We’re talking about this after,” he whispers on my lips and I reach down between us to wrap my hand around his cock, dragging his head over my arousal.
I shake my head and line him up with my entrance. “No, we won’t.”
“Yes—” I lift my hips and he slips inside me, only an inch. He groans against my clavicle, his teeth crazing over the bone. “Fuck—We will.”
“Rowan,” I breathe and he looks down at me with the shade of concern in the blue of his eyes. “I’m asking you for one thing. This is what we do, isn’t it? Sex? So just have sex with me.”
“Sex isn’t what you need right now,” he rasps.
He might be right, but instead, I say, “Please.”
To answer my request, Rowan thrusts into me until I’m so full I see stars glittering around us. We’re the only two people in the universe—our bodies coming together like a stellar collision.
He takes a moment, and so do I. I take a breath and revel in the feeling of how full I am with him. Like this, and in this stupid organ in my chest. He has the power to bring the sore, tired heart beneath the cage of bones back to life.
Some days I hate him for it. Some days I’m scared of how much I don’t hate it at all.
Rowan’s head drops into the crook of my neck and my nails gently scratch his head. I can’t seem to get him close enough. Softly, in my ear, he whispers, “Natalia.”
Rowan holds himself up on his forearms, and stares down at me with a softness in his eyes that reminds me of a calm beach day spent admiring the ocean. He pulls out slowly, and pushes back in even slower, our mouths both open and lips touching. “Holy shit, Nat.”
