23. Leah
LEAH
Two weeks ago, on Delia’s couch, I was looking for the exit.
Rowan put his hand in mine and pulled me back from it.
Not literally, but it might as well have been, the same way he did at the gala when he threaded his fingers through mine.
Except this time, the way he pulled me back was by pulling himself in too.
He’s stopped acting like the brother on the outside looking in. He still doesn’t put his feelings into words the way Declan and Emmett do. But Rowan doesn’t need words. What he does says enough.
I thought the biggest thing he’d ever do was hand me that deed, but he says he has a surprise for me that I’ll love.
“It’s a new building we’re developing,” he says on the drive over.
The three of them have been working on this project for a while, and apparently, it’s come a long way even in the two weeks since Walsh confronted me.
Rowan’s shoulder is nearly healed. Madeline is close to the end of her pregnancy. Walsh is in custody.
With no threats hanging over us, everyone has slipped back into something like normal, and I’ve been so buried in my own work that I haven’t thought about Kian or the act Rowan and I are still supposedly putting on. Part of that is because it stopped feeling like an act a long time ago.
The new mixed-use building isn’t open yet, but it’s close. Finishing touches. Marble floors, soft lighting, warm without being showy.
“It’s really nice,” I say as we walk in.
“It’s coming along.” He takes my hand. “Come on. There’s something I want to show you.”
He leads me down a hallway to a door in the far corner, and I stop and stare at the nameplate beside it.
The Fox’s Den.
I look at him. I don’t know what this is, but I know what it means.
“It’s a children’s library,” he says, and pushes the door open.
The floor is a plush, mossy green. The walls are painted with trees, deep woods on every side, and in one corner a light hangs low like the moon and glows like one too.
Beneath it, there’s a reading nook with fox-shaped pillows and beanbags sized for small people.
The bookshelves curve around it so the whole thing feels like a den, a safe, tucked-away place where a child can sit and read while the grown-ups browse.
I bend down and pick up one of the fox pillows and hold it against my chest. My eyes fill. “You did this? Because of what I told you?”
“Yes.” He reaches out and wipes a tear off my cheek with his thumb. “I built a library around your book, Leah. And there’s something else. I hope it doesn’t upset you.”
“What is it?” I can’t think of anything he could do that would upset me. The only thing that’s getting hard to take is that I still haven’t had him.
“I know someone at a publishing house. I called him. I didn’t tell him anything that should come from you, just enough about the project to get his attention. He’s waiting to hear from you.”
“You’re serious?”
“Are you angry?”
“Angry?” I drop the pillow and throw my arms around his neck. “You’re building my dreams while I watch. Thank you.”
I kiss him. When I pull back, he holds onto me for a second before he trusts his voice.
“Good.” He smiles, the dimple showing. “I’ve been designing this since you told me about the book. The building was already mine. This room was supposed to be a second gym. I told the contractor to stop the day after that dinner.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Then let me say something.” His voice slows. “Leaving to protect us was wrong. The hours you were gone, it felt like my whole life was coming apart. Don’t do that again, Leah. Promise me you’ll stay. You belong with us.”
He hesitates and searches my face.
“Because I love you. And I don’t know how to live without you anymore.”
My heart slams against my ribs. The only answer I have is the truth.
“I’ve been waiting for that.” My hands slide around his back and pull him in. “I’ve been waiting for you to let me all the way in. I love you too, Rowan. You. The man standing in front of me. The one who sees the parts of me nobody else does.”
Something changes in his eyes, and this time he doesn’t call it back.
He kisses me slowly, both hands in my hair, taking his time.
“Leah,” he says against my mouth. “I want to take you home.”
There’s no mistaking what he means. The heat between us in this little den full of books is too much to hold anymore.
“Then take me home.”
We barely survive the drive. We stumble into the Koi Tower elevator with our hands all over each other, and the ride to the top floor is the longest of my life.
Inside his penthouse, we make it to the bedroom by a trail of clothes, his jacket by the door, my sweater in the hall, everything else somewhere between there and the foot of his bed.
Then he stops.
He stands at the edge of the bed, naked, and just looks at me. Not the way Emmett looks, like he’s about to say something wicked, or the way Declan looks, like he’s already decided what happens next. Rowan looks at me the way he looked at the drawings on his wall. Like he’s memorizing.
Sex with Emmett and Declan is intense and fun and full of discovery, and I love every second of it. But this is different. This is a man who has wanted me for months and wouldn’t let himself have me, standing close enough to touch, and finally letting himself.
I reach out first. I run my fingertips along his collarbone, over the fresh pink scar on his shoulder, down the hard center line of his chest. He doesn’t move.
He barely breathes. When my hand slides down the trail of hair below his navel and closes around him, thick and hot and already straining, his whole body shudders.
He still doesn’t say anything.
He kisses me instead, and it’s nothing like the elevator.
There’s no holding back in it. He walks me backward until my knees hit the mattress, and then he lays me down and follows me, his weight settling over me, and his hands go everywhere.
My face. My throat. The undersides of my breasts, the curve of my waist, the backs of my knees.
His mouth follows his hands. He kisses along my jaw and down my neck, pausing where my pulse is jumping.
He takes one nipple between his lips and sucks slowly until I’m arching off the bed, then moves to the other and does it again.
His hand slides down between my thighs and finds me wet and ready for him.
He lets out a breath, and then kisses his way down my stomach, and then his shoulders are between my legs, and his mouth is on me.
He’s quiet even here. No words, no dirty commentary, just his tongue moving over me in slow, patient strokes, and his hands holding my thighs open, and his eyes, when I look down, on my face. He’s watching me. He wants to see what he does to me.
I can’t hold his gaze. My head falls back. He learns me fast, what makes me gasp, what makes my hips lift, and then he does it again, and again.
His mouth closes over my clit, and when he feels the tension building in my core, he adds a finger, pumping in and out.
I come with a cry that echoes off his bedroom walls, my thighs clamping around his head, my whole body pulling tight and then breaking open in wave after wave while he holds me down and doesn’t stop until I’m pushing weakly at his hair, begging him without words.
He comes back up my body slowly, and when his face is over mine, his mouth is wet, and his eyes are dark.
He kisses me, and I taste myself on him, and I wrap my legs around his waist and pull.
Unlike Emmett, who talks me into a frenzy, or Declan, who tells me I’m his until I believe it, Rowan says almost nothing.
It makes everything louder. Every breath. Every catch in his throat. It’s taken him the longest to let himself have this, and now that he has, it’s clear nothing on earth is going to interrupt him.
His hair has fallen across his forehead, and his blue eyes look out from under it, fixed on mine.
I tilt my hips up, and he’s already there, the head of him pressing against me.
“You don’t have to be so careful with me,” I whisper. He’s halfway inside me, and I can barely form words. “I’m yours now. Take me.”
He doesn’t need any further encouragement. He pushes the rest of the way in.
“Fuck,” he breathes.