Chapter 37 Let’s Be Greedy #2
His hand moves lower, a single finger tracing the path between my breasts, down over my stomach, my skin quivering in its wake.
His palm moves slowly upward from my waist, tracing my rib cage, and then higher, gentle and unhurried, until his hand covers my breast and his mouth finds the side of my throat.
I feel my body respond before my mind has caught up, and when his thumb grazes my nipple, I inhale sharply.
Rowan guides me back against the bed and follows, settling over me. I part my legs and pull him closer. I have never wanted anything the way I want this.
“I have wanted you for so long. And I believed for so long that I didn’t deserve you.” His fingers convey the message fast, before he kisses me softly. But the emotion in his eyes is anything but soft.
“You deserve everything,” I whisper.
I wrap my arms around him and pull us chest to chest, hip to hip. I revel in the smoothness of his skin, the strength beneath it, the wide expanse of his back where his tattoos lie beneath my fingertips. When I reach the waistband of his track pants, still damp from the rain, I look up at him.
“These need to come off. I refuse to be responsible for you getting sick.”
He takes them off, along with his boxers, and then reaches for the waistband of my pajamas. I lift my hips and he peels my clothes away until we are both naked, with nothing between us at all.
He looms over me, and I am surrounded entirely by his warmth and his quiet strength. Rowan moves over every part of me like he has no intention of rushing. His hands, his mouth, his attention, cover me, making me feel simultaneously cherished and claimed.
Every place he touches feels newly discovered. Like my own skin has been waiting, specifically, to be known by him.
Leaning on his elbows, his lips brush my forehead, the side of my face, my cheeks, and then hover over my mouth. He touches his lips to mine, barely, before pulling back, so I can see his hands.
“I don’t think I can live without you, Purple. I love you too much.”
My heart, which has always felt too much, loved too openly, hoped too stubbornly, swells until I’m not sure I can contain it.
His kisses are slow. His licks make me breathless.
Our bodies fit together like I always believed they would—perfectly, like things fit when they’re meant to. We are soulmates, after all.
I close my eyes and pull him closer, wrapping my arms and my thighs around him. I don’t want this moment to ever end. This moment, when I have finally found the person I have been searching for my entire life.
“Rowan,” I whisper.
He groans low in his throat when his cock presses against me. The sound he lets go is almost pained, as if the last thread of his restraint is fraying at the edges. His hand moves between us, languidly, skimming over my stomach and down between my thighs.
When his fingers trace my sex, I shiver.
He lifts his head to look at my face. Whatever he finds there gives him his answer, as his mouth finds mine hungrily, and his fingers begin to move against my folds, gentle and exploratory at first.
My heart beats wildly, and I’m hyperaware of every bit of my surroundings—the scent of his sandalwood cologne and the rain on his skin, the warmth of his breath, his fingers as they caress my sex, avoiding my clit.
I shift, trying to bring his hand where I want it the most. When his fingers finally make contact with my clit, I quiver.
“Rowan.” My body trembles as he draws a few lazy circles against my sex. My back arches off the bed, my thighs brushing against his. We both groan at the same time.
Rowan’s hand picks up speed and my eyes close. I am bent like a crossbow on the bed, and then his mouth, wet and warm, is on my breast.
He’s sucking, nipping, and teasing my nipple, going from one breast to another, covering the path with his wet tongue.
For a second I forget I’m in his parents’ home. It’s only when Rowan places his lips on mine that I realize he has too. But beneath his mouth and hands, even after the reminder, I barely manage to hold back the sounds he’s pulling out of me.
When his finger enters me, I go completely still, and he pauses immediately.
“Okay?” he asks in words.
“More than okay,” I manage. “Don’t stop.”
And he doesn’t.
Rowan’s finger moves in and out of me at a pace that is entirely his own—sometimes slow, sometimes faster—reading me with absolute attention. When I finally come apart around him, he seals his mouth over mine and takes every sound I make into himself.
“Wow,” I whisper when we finally pull apart and I’m back to the present after the high. I look from the ceiling to him, and there’s a huge smile on his face. Just watching him, carefree and unguarded, my lungs forget to work for a second. “The things you make me feel, Night.”
“Right back at you, Purple,” he signs, the corner of his mouth lifting.
“I want all of you. Now.” I push my sex against his thick erection, shifting side to side and earning a sharp hiss out of Rowan.
His eyes darken with desire, finally deciding he’s been patient enough. He aligns his cock to my entrance, and I shiver at the feel of him.
With bated breath, I wait for him to claim me fully. I wait for him to be completely mine. I wait for a moment that will be one of our most cherished memories.
But instead of pushing in, Rowan pulls back—
“Fuck.” The word comes out almost pained, his eyes squeezing shut. “Protection.”
“I’m on the pill,” I say softly.
He opens his eyes.
When I went to have my cast removed, Rowan insisted I schedule a full checkup to make sure nothing had been missed earlier.
“Before the accident, I was on the pill to balance my periods,” I tell him. “And had the prescription renewed while I was there.”
His eyes widen as though the possibility had never once crossed his mind.
“I’ve never been with anyone without a condom, Ro.”
I’m not someone who carries many regrets.
But right now, I wish I could go back and tell my nineteen-year-old self not to waste her first time on the high school quarterback who turned out to be two-timing her with another classmate.
If I could just reach back through time and whisper, “Wait. There is someone beautiful and patient waiting for you. Someone who is worth waiting for.”
“I’ve only ever been with two guys, and even then—”
He places a finger against my lips.
“You don’t have to explain,” he signs. “I never imagined I would find my soulmate in this lifetime, Violet. I found you anyway. Asking for anything more than that would be greedy.” Then he signs, one hand braced beside my head, “Are you sure?”
“I have no doubts about you. About us. Do you?”
He shakes his head and mouths. “None.”
After that, no more words are needed, his or mine, spoken or signed.
Rowan guides himself inside me slowly, with a gentleness that makes my eyes sting.
I’m so ready from the previous orgasm and his presence that he slides in easily, and yet he is being extra careful.
So I wrap my legs around his waist, my crossed feet looping over his ass, pulling him closer until he is seated flush inside me.
His forehead drops to the curve of my neck. His hot breath coasts over my skin.
When I try to move, his hand settles over my hip.
He lifts his head and looks at me, undone in a way I have never seen him, every careful layer completely gone.
“Give me a moment, baby.” He signs and squeezes his eyes shut. “I… I’m trying very hard not to embarrass myself and come already. But I don’t think I can hold on if you move right now.”
I cup his face in my hands.
“Rowan, you could never embarrass yourself with me. And I never want you to hold back around me. We have a lifetime to be patient.” I pull him closer. “Tonight, let’s be greedy. We have waited long enough. You don’t know how much I want to feel you coming inside me.”
His reply is a groan followed by a kiss that is nothing like the careful ones from before, and then he moves.
It’s as though my words have finally set him free. His thrusts are deep and gentle, and I feel him everywhere, in every place, and I know with absolute certainty that I will feel him tomorrow too.
I feel another orgasm growing, higher and faster than the last, and Rowan picks up speed.
His worries were pointless. As usual, he doesn’t let go until I’m moaning his name, and this time we come together.
“That was—” I search for the word as the world around me is still reassembling itself. “Just—”
Rowan rises on his elbows, his face directly above mine, our noses almost touching, and he smiles. “Perfect,” he signs.
I nod. Yes. Exactly that.
“I love you so much, Purple.”
I get goosebumps hearing his voice. Before I can reply there’s a knock on the door, followed by Vienna’s too sweet and too amused voice.
“Ro, the motion sensor alarm went off when you came in through Violet’s window. Since we didn’t see you leave and your dad is now sleeping in the living room, given how thin the wall between your old room and ours turns out to be, does this mean you two are back together?”
Every shade of red that exists moves through my face simultaneously.
“B-babe.” Zane’s voice is a soft but clear murmur from somewhere behind the door. “I t-told you to leave th-the kids alone.”
These walls are really thin.
“But Zane—”
Whatever Vienna says next is muffled by the sound of Zane shepherding her back into their room, followed by the firm thud of a closing door.
I look at Rowan. He looks at me. And then a wide, helpless, completely undignified smile takes over both our faces. I have to press my hand over my mouth to contain the laugh that is trying very hard to escape.
“I love your mom,” I whisper, when I have recovered enough to speak. “But I genuinely don’t know how I am going to look her in the eye at breakfast.”
“There’s a solution,” he signs, his expression entirely too composed for someone who was just caught having sex by his parents. “We leave now. To home.”
“Now?” I blink. And then I think about it. The solarium. The porch. The kitchen in the early morning. Echo’s spot by the plants. All the places I have missed, and which, without my ever planning it, became the feeling of home.
Rowan nods.
“Okay,” I say. “Give me five minutes.”
I dress quickly and pad to his childhood desk and pull a sheet of paper and a pen.
Dear Vienna and Zane,
Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me in the last few days. For opening your home and your hearts to me. For giving me the experience of what it might have felt like to have parents in my corner.
You are two of the kindest, most extraordinary people I have ever known, and I hope that Rowan and I build something half as beautiful as what you have.
It’s time for me to go home, and I can’t wait to see you both at the weekend breakfast.
All my love and gratitude,
Violet
P.S. Vienna, we are never, ever discussing the thin walls of your home.
I slip out, place the note just outside their door, and call out quietly into the dark hallway, “Zane, please keep Vienna inside for five more minutes. There’s a note at your door. Thank you for everything.”
And then I run before Vienna can say anything.
When I return, Rowan is dressed in his still damp clothes, and Echo is bundled in a clean, dry blanket in the center of the bed.
“You are going to get sick,” I whisper.
Rowan’s expression turns mischievous. “Then I can’t wait for you to play nurse,” he signs. “I want to be thoroughly pampered.”
My heart swells so fast and so completely that I feel it in my fingertips.
I look at him, damp and disheveled and more beautiful than anyone has a right to be at this hour, and I think, I cannot wait to live this life.
Every single day of it.