“Fuck, Natalia.”
“Hmmm.” I bite into my lip and tease my nipple as I watch him stroke his cock, milking his pleasure as it spills warmth across my skin.
A moment of heavy breathing passes before I fully process that it’s over. I put my hands at his waist, my fingers pressing into his skin and my legs still slightly shaking around him.
It’s strange to have this comfort. It’s like something new you have to get used to—like added weight you need to learn how to walk around with. But it’s one that straightens your spine and feels like protection. Until you lose it.
My breathing shudders against his lips with his forehead pressed against mine.
“Are you okay?” Rowan asks.
He has no idea, does he?
“I’m okay now,”I want to say.“Because of you.”
I nod anyway, though, because now is not the time to profess or confess. And even if it were, I don’t know how to do it. I resent myself for not knowing how to give myself to him fully.
I want to pour myself into him, confess my darkest thoughts and secrets, and let him hold me together while I do. If there is anyone I’d give myself to, it would be him. It’s him. And it terrifies me beyond measure.
How?I scream the question to myself at least twelve times a day.How?
How do people do it? How do they let someone in that far?
The last time I did, he told me my mental illness wasn’t an excuse for my behavior. He told me it wasn’t real—I used it for attention. I just needed to get my shit together.
He didn’t know what it was like. And Rowan may not know what it’s like to its full extent personally, but he still gets it. He still stays and he keeps his patience.
I can’t even think about his patience without feeling like absolute shit. The guilt eats at me every day when I ask myself,Why am I like this?
I don’t know how to get out of it. I want to scratch at my skin to see if I can find away out of the claustrophobic box I’m living in. But I’m trapped. Stuck. I sleep to get out of it but sleep isn’t enough to relieve all of it. I don’t know a way out.
“Natalia,” he whispers, and I swear it’s the promise of a lifetime. It’s him telling me he’s got me in seven simple letters that just so happen to spell out my name.
What was that?I ask myself.What did we just do?
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?” Rowan asks again. “Did I…I was too ro?—”
“No,” I say, “you were perfect. You’re always perfect.”
The corner of his mouth ticks up and his ocean eyes soften to a calm, low tide. “Shower.” He brushes his lips over my temple before he starts lifting himself off me. “I’ll order pizza.”
“Rowan—”
He pulls on his briefs and I sit up, watching as he moves around my bedroom like he lives here, like it’s his own. He knows where to find my pajamas so he opens the second drawer on the left side and pulls out a flimsy pair of sleep shorts with black and white vertical stripes, but he finds his discarded undershirt instead of one of my own shirts.
Rowan sets them down beside me, and reaches to kiss my head again. “Shower,” he says again. “I’ll wait for you in the living room.”
“I…”
Rowan goes into the bathroom, taking the clothes with him, and turns on the water. I remain frozen with the blanket covering my naked body and tears still wet on my face. He promptly returns, his muscles on his abdomen tensing and bicep flexing as he pushes his hair back. Then he reaches me and I’m so unsure of what to do when his arms snake around me, one beneath my knees and the other around my back.
I’m lifted off the bed, my naked body curling against his chest, and being brought into the bathroom. Carefully, he sets me down on my feet and hands me one of my claw hair clips. I gently gather my long curls and clip them, the length hanging out like a ponytail. Rowan begins to back away, giving me privacy. I slide open the frosted glass and before I step in, I look over my shoulder. “Wait,” I mutter.
Rowan turns, his hand on the door handle.
“Stay?”
