“What?”
“I like feeling you wet with me. Knowing I’m dripping out of you.”
Heat floods my cheeks.
“No, ma’am. Stay right where you are,” he says. “Let me feel it.”
“You’re filthy,” I whisper, pressing my forehead against his.
“Only with you,” he murmurs, his hands sliding up my back. “I could die right here with a smile on my face.”
I snort. “Pretty sure I’d be the prime suspect in your mysterious death.”
“Worth it.”
I reach for the throw blanket, tugging it halfway over us, then pause and raise an eyebrow. “Did you seriously just whistle theRockytheme song?”
His face doesn’t move, but his eyes sparkle. “Nope.”
“Rowan.”
“Maybe.”
I roll my eyes, but my cheeks are aching from smiling. “You’re absurd.”
“And yet, you were screaming my name not ten minutes ago.”
“Touché.”
He stretches like a cat, arms overhead, shameless. “God, I missed this.”
I snuggle in closer. “Sex?”
“No.” He pauses. “Well—yes. But mostly this. Us. Laughing. Teasing. You.”
I grin into his chest, my fingers idly tracing the faint line of a scar near his ribs under his shirt—the one he got trying to impress me with a backflip in tenth grade gym class. It’s faded now, but I know every inch of him like a favorite book.
“Yeah,” I sigh. “I missed this, too.”
His arm tightens around me, anchoring us in the cocoon of low light and lazy post-bliss warmth.
“Violet?”
“Mm?”
He tilts his head, just enough to press a kiss to the crown of mine. “Don’t ever stop calling me on my shit.”
I laugh. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
forty-two
. . .
Violet
Rowan insisted on taking care of me in the shower again…in more ways than one.
I don’t know who I thought I was fooling when I said we needed space. We’ve wasted so much time over so many years, I really don’t want to give any of it up anymore.
