24. Rowan
ROWAN
I slide in and out of her, and every time I push back in, she tightens around me. Her legs are wrapped around my waist, and her arms are wrapped around my back.
I have never in my life fit anywhere the way I fit inside Leah. I tilt my hips forward so that my shaft rubs her clit on every stroke, and it doesn’t take long until she trembles beneath me.
“Rowan, slow down.” Her voice is feverish. “You’re going to make me come.”
But that’s the goal. I don’t slow down. I want to make her come. I want to give her more pleasure than anyone ever has.
“Rowan,” she moans.
It’s too late for her to ask again. She lets go, shaking under me, her pussy seizing tight around my cock as it takes her, her nails digging into the backs of my shoulders. I keep pushing deep, steady, until her breath evens out, and she’s ready for more.
She’s flushed and satisfied, with a small pout on her lips. “Tell me we’re not finished.”
“We’re not finished.” I bend and kiss the pout away. “Say my name again, Leah.”
“Rowan.” I start moving in her again, and her eyes go knowing. “You want to hear it because you want to be sure it’s you I love.”
I don’t answer, but she knows.
I keep going, slow and deep, and I can feel her getting close again.
So am I.
“Rowan, I love you.”
My name. Only mine. Called out by a woman who loves me for who I am.
“Leah, I love you, too.”
I stop.
Not pull out. Just stop, buried deep, and hold her hips still when she tries to move.
“Rowan?”
“Come here.”
I sit back against the headboard and bring her with me, still inside her, until she’s straddling my lap with her knees on either side of my hips and her hands on my shoulders and her face level with mine. The window is behind her. The city lights come in around her edges.
“I’ve drawn you,” I say, “a hundred times. From memory.”
Her breath catches.
“I never got to look at you like this.”
So I look. I don’t move, and I don’t let her move, and I look at her the way I’ve wanted to since the gala. Her hair, coming down. The flush spreading from her chest up her throat. The freckles across her nose and shoulders. Her mouth, open a little, waiting for me to do something.
I lift my hand. One fingertip, slow, along her hairline.
Down the side of her face. Across her lower lip, which trembles.
Down her throat to the notch at the base of it, then out along her collarbone to the point of her shoulder.
She’s sitting on my cock, and I’m not moving, but she’s shaking anyway.
“Rowan.” It’s almost a whisper. “Please.”
“Keep your eyes open.”
I rock up into her once. Just once. She lets out a soft whimper. I do it again.
“Eyes on me, Leah.”
“They are.”
She moves. Slowly. She lifts and lowers herself on me with her hands braced on my shoulders and her eyes locked on mine, and it is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve spent my life looking at beautiful things.
I keep my hands on her, touching the small of her back, the curve of her hip, the underside of her breast, following the lines of her like I’m tracing them onto paper.
Every time she rises, I feel the drag of her. Every time she sinks, I feel her open. Neither of us hurries.
“Don’t close your eyes,” I say when she starts to. “I want to watch you. I want to see it.”
Her rhythm breaks. Her breath comes ragged. Her thighs begin to shake against my hips. She’s close, and she’s fighting to keep her eyes open, and she’s winning.
“There,” I say. “Let me see.”
She comes looking at me.
Her whole body seizes around me, her mouth falling open and her eyes fixed on mine the entire time.
She doesn’t look away. Even as it takes her, even as she loses the rhythm entirely and just grinds down on me and shakes, she doesn’t look away.
I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen anyone look at me like that.
It takes me with her.
I come with my eyes open too. I hold her hips down on me and let go, and I watch her face the entire time it moves through me, and the last thing I see before I press my forehead to hers is her looking back.
We stay like that. Her on my lap, both of us breathing, foreheads together, her arms around my neck.
Sweat runs down my temple. She wipes it away with her thumb.
“That,” she says finally, still breathless, “was not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Not anything this perfect.” She kisses me. “You’re so different from your brothers.”
I’m not jealous of Declan and Emmett.
I wasn’t before, and I won’t be the next time she goes up to one of their doors. I don’t need to be the only one who has her. I only ever needed to be sure that when she looks at me, she sees me.
And she just came with her eyes open on my face. That’s proof enough for a lifetime.
“Okay.” She lets out a soft laugh against my mouth. “Now I think we rest. Hold me, Rowan.”
I lift her off me and lay us both down, and pull her onto my chest until her cheek is over my heart, and reach for the blanket.
For a while, neither of us speaks.
“Rowan?”
“Yes?”
“I think I’ve loved you since you held my hand at that gala.” She says it quietly. “I didn’t know it then. But I felt it.”
Until recently, I wouldn’t have believed her. I’d have wondered whether I was standing in for the man with my face who used her and threw her to the wolves. I don’t wonder now. Because of her, I’ve stopped worrying that other people see Kian when they look at me.
I tighten my arm around her and kiss the side of her face.
“I knew it then too. And I’ll never be afraid to say it again.”
I let out a long breath. It feels like setting down something I’ve been carrying since I was a kid. Then I close my eyes and sleep deeper than I have in years.