“Kind of—it was the other way around.” He presses his thumb to my hole, massaging the rim as he continues the rhythm of the toy.
“And you loved it.”
I nod again. “Yes.”
“Good,” is all he says, his tone definitive as he pushes his thumb into my ass to the sound of my gasp.
He loosens my tight ring of muscle, relaxes me into the sensation until I’m pushing back on him in a silent request for more. And then his thumb is gone, replaced with the lubed head of his cock as he glides it over the tight hole, pressing it against me until it slips past the resistance. He pauses as I breathe through the foreign sensation of fullness and then picks up slow and shallow thrusts, each one delving a little deeper against the vibration of the toy.
“Now that we’ve established that everything I told you is a fucking promise,” he grits out as he intensifies the rhythm of his thrusts, “we should probably clear up your other question.”
I’m shaking, sweating, lost to some mindless dimension where all I know is the feeling of intense pleasure twined with a hint of discomfort, but one I welcome because it only adds to the euphoric haze that consumes me. Rowan has picked up an unbroken cadence of deep thrusts and I don’t think I can even remember my own name, let alone something I said a few minutes ago. “Question…was…？”
I hear the smirk in his huffed laugh. Jesus fucking Christ. I’m incapable of stringing together a simple sentence and this man is fucking me relentlessly while probably able to recite the entire year-by-year history of the Napoleonic Wars.
Rowan leans closer, slows his thrusts, covers my back with the heat of his body. One of his hands finds my breast and he rolls my nipple between his fingers as he blows a thin stream of cool air across my neck to make me shiver. “About the tattoo, Sloane,” he says, his voice saccharine. “You asked me why I got it.”
I whimper as a deep thrust pushes me closer to an intense orgasm that’s nearly within reach. “Right…uhh…”
“Any guesses?”
My forehead presses to my arm as I let out a strangled cry. “…like me…？”
“Because I ‘like you’…？” Rowan cackles an incredulous laugh. “Like. You. Seriously…？ Christ, Sloane. You are fucking brilliant but also the most willfully oblivious person I have ever met. Do you really think I just like you when I framed a drawing you left for me on a scrap of paper you tore from a notebook? The one I hung it in the kitchen so I can look at it every day and think of you? Do you think I just like you when I tattoo it on my skin? I play this fucking game every year and tear my heart out watching you walk away, only to do it all over again, and I like you? You think I just like you when I fuck you like this?”
The pace quickens. Rowan’s hot palm caresses my breast. He pistons into me. I cry out his name and he fucks me harder.
“I would kill for you, and I have. I would do it again, every damn day. I’d turn myself inside out for you. I would die for you. I don’t just like you, Sloane, and you fucking know it.”
Vicious thrusts throw me over the edge. Stars shatter across my vision. A sound I’ve never before made spills across my lips as the orgasm breaks me apart.
I don’t unravel. I detonate.
Rowan’s arm folds around my waist and he holds me close as he comes, my name dulled by my heart as it thunders in my ears.
His breath is still ragged, his chest shuddering when I turn off the toy and he whispers against my neck, “I don’t just ‘like you’， understand?”
I nod.
Rowan’s fingers trace my jaw, soft and slow, a touch I lean into when his palm stops to rest against my cheek. “And you don’t just ‘like me’ either, do you.”
It’s not a question. It’s not even a demand. It’s a need to be freed from a place where he thinks he’s been alone.
The key slides into the lock as Lark’s words echo in my mind above the riot of heartbeats.
Put some of that bravery to use for yourself for a change.
All the what ifs, I set them aside. All except one.
“No,” I whisper. “I more than like you, Rowan. I think about you all the time. I miss you every day. You appeared one moment and nothing has been the same since. And that scares me. A lot.”
Rowan presses a kiss to my shoulder as his thumb glides across my cheek. “I know.”
“You’re braver than me.”
“No, Sloane,” he says with a low chuckle as he pulls away. “I’m just more reckless, with less sense of self-preservation. I’m scared too.”