Chapter 28 – Tessa
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Tessa
Idon’t know what I expected when he walked back in. Maybe anger. Maybe one of his surgical takedowns about whatever toxic masculinity festival just went down in the cigar room. I definitely expected him to catalog every offense against his sense of order while looking constipated about it.
What I didn’t expect? Him closing the door and looking at me with something broken in his eyes.
And I really, really didn’t expect him to drop to his knees at the edge of the bed.
“Okay,” I breathe, because apparently, my brain has short-circuited. “That’s new.”
He doesn’t smile or make a joke. He just looks up at me with an expression I haven’t seen since the night before I left—all raw and wanting and terrified.
Great. This is exactly what my already-fragile emotional state needed—Rowan King on his knees, looking at me with actual feelings.
“Rowan,” I whisper, because that’s all I’ve got.
His hands find my legs and start sliding up, slowly. Each inch of contact makes my skin light up. My body’s having a complete system malfunction, and he’s barely touched me.
I forget how breathing works when his fingers trace over my knees. Completely abandon the concept when his mouth follows. A kiss lands just above my knee—soft, warm, and way too reverent for someone who once called me “aggressively chaotic.”
Another kiss, higher. Then one more, higher still, and suddenly the oversized sweatshirt feels unbearable.
“You’re shaking,” he murmurs against my thigh, because of course, he notices everything.
“Because you’re kneeling,” I manage to say, though my voice sounds wrecked. “It’s very disorienting. You’re usually looking down at people, both literally and metaphorically.”
“Then come here.” His voice does something complicated to my insides. “And let me worship you.”
Oh, fuck.
That shouldn’t make my heart hurt. It shouldn’t make me want to cry and laugh and possibly throw something all at once. But it does, because no one’s ever said that to me before. Not with devotion instead of just heat. Not with reverence instead of conquest.
He looks different tonight. Unguarded. Whatever happened downstairs knocked something loose in him that he’s been holding together with spite and good tailoring.
His hands slide under the hem of my sweatshirt, and my arms go up automatically because apparently, my body has decided we’re doing this whether my brain has caught up or not.
The fabric disappears in one smooth pull, and there I am, vulnerable and exposed and trying really hard not to think about how my bra is from Target and definitely doesn’t match my underwear.
But he doesn’t look at my chest. He doesn’t do the typical male inventory check. He looks at me with an intensity that makes me feel more naked than the actual nakedness.
“You don’t have to,” I start, but my voice cracks embarrassingly. “What I mean is: you don’t have to be gentle with me. You don’t have to pretend this means something. You don’t have to treat me with care I haven’t earned.”
His brow furrows, and pain flashes across his features.
“I need to,” he says, as simple as a simple fact.
And then he kisses me, and oh, this is different. This isn’t the angry kissing from earlier, or the performative kissing for the partners. This is slow and deep and devastating. It tastes of all the arguments we never finished and all the apologies we never made.
My hands tangle in his stupidly expensive shirt. His palm curves around my waist, warm and solid, and I realize he’s holding on just as tight.
When I kiss him back, really kiss him back, something inside me cracks open. Some carefully guarded thing I’ve been protecting since I walked away from us. The feeling makes my eyes burn.
He takes his time with me, treating my body with the same intense focus he brings to everything that matters to him. The first place his mouth goes isn’t where I expect—not the obvious destinations that usually get immediate attention from guys. No, he goes for my shoulder. My shoulder.
He brushes a kiss there asking permission for something we both know he doesn’t need permission for.
“Rowan...” His name comes out broken, a confession.
But he doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he drags his mouth across my collarbone with the intense focus.
His lips find the center of my chest, pressing kisses to my sternum that feel too significant for what we’re supposed to be doing.
Then my ribs, each kiss deliberate and patient.
He’s being thorough about driving me completely insane, and it’s working.
By the time his mouth grazes the side of my breast, my back has already arched off the bed. My fingers are buried in his hair probably destroying whatever product he uses.
He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, and there’s something fierce in his expression that makes my stomach flip.
“Something happened,” he says, voice rough and barely controlled. “Downstairs. In that room.”
My whole body tenses. “What did they say?”
“It doesn’t matter what they said.” His jaw clenches hard. “What matters is that I sat there listening, and all I could think about was how much more you are than what any of those assholes could ever understand.”
He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice has dropped to something softer but more dangerous.
“I’m done letting anyone reduce you. Including myself.”
Well, shit. That’s not fair. He can’t just say things that profound when I’m already emotionally compromised and half-naked. That’s cheating.
His lips find my skin again, and this time, each kiss feels important, and necessary.
“I’m going to worship every inch of you,” he says against my ribs, and the words vibrate through me, settling somewhere deep in my chest. “Every part they’ll never deserve to understand. Every part I was too stupid to protect before.”
And there it is—the admission hidden in the promise. That maybe he’s been protecting me all along in his weird, controlling way. That maybe every IOU, every moment of him being an absolute dick was just him trying not to care as much as he does.
That maybe he never stopped loving me; he just got really good at hiding it under all that emotional armor.
“Rowan,” I whisper again, because I need to say something, but my brain is currently offline, and all I have is his name and this feeling that I’m unraveling in the best and worst way.
“Let me,” he says against my skin, and it’s not an order. It’s something vulnerable. “Just for tonight, let me show you what I should have shown you then. What you deserve. What you’ve always deserved.”
And because I’m weak... I let him.
Heaven help me, I let him.
He shifts slightly, brushing his nose down my side, over the dip of my waist, and my entire body responds to that simple touch with embarrassing enthusiasm.
“I’m going to show you the difference between being looked at”—his mouth finds the edge of my ribs—“and being seen.”
I can’t breathe. Actually cannot locate my lungs or remember their basic function.
Not because he’s touching me—though that’s definitely scrambling my circuits—but because he’s actually seeing me.
Every freckle I’ve tried to cover with concealer.
Every shaky inhale that gives away how much this is affecting me.
Every scared, unhealed part I’ve been hiding under sarcasm and law school stress.
His hand slides behind my knee, lifting it with a tenderness. The trembling gets worse, but I can’t tell if it’s from want or from the terrifying realization that he’s treating me with actual care.
And then he kisses my inner thigh.
Just once.
But it absolutely wrecks me.
My eyes sting with tears I refuse to acknowledge, and I have to blink hard to keep them from falling. “Don’t make this a favor,” I whisper, because I need to know this isn’t just another transaction. “Please don’t make this another thing I owe you for.”
His head snaps up.
The look in his eyes burns hotter than anything else has tonight—fierce and offended and tender all at once.
“Tessa,” he says, voice low and absolutely certain, “you don’t owe me a damn thing.”
Then he kisses the inside of my other thigh, slower this time. Each press of his mouth feels intentional.
I cover my mouth with one hand because the sound that escapes isn’t polite. Or quiet. It’s raw and needy.
He smirks against my leg, but even that expression carries gentleness.
“Let me earn you back,” he says quietly.
And just that easily, my heart isn’t mine anymore.
Again.
Fuck.
By the time he kisses the soft crease of my hip, I’m shaking hard enough to register on the Richter scale.
Not because I’m nervous—though okay, yes, also that—but because I’ve never been touched with this kind of intention.
Not with just hunger, but with something that feels dangerously close to reverence.
My body is being treated as something worth honoring, and I don’t know what to do with that.
Rowan pushes my sleep shorts down slowly, handling me with care. His hands don’t rush. They reassure, giving me endless opportunities to change my mind, though we both know that ship has thoroughly sailed.
When the shorts are gone, he doesn’t immediately pounce the way I expect.
He breathes.
One slow inhale, nose brushing along the inside of my thigh, and I realize he’s memorizing this moment. Memorizing me.
Then finally, finally, he crawls back up my body, pressing a kiss to the underside of my jaw as he moves.
I want to tell him something—that I’m terrified, that I’m ready, that I’ve never wanted anything more in my life, that my brain has completely abandoned me and all I have left is feeling—but words are apparently beyond me right now.
I can only find him.
He’s everywhere. His hands map my skin with careful precision. His mouth leaves promises I’m afraid to believe. The weight of him settles between my legs with an inevitability that has nothing to do with gravity and everything to do with us.
When his hips meet mine, I wrap my legs around him instinctively, pulling him closer.
He stills completely.
Eyes locked on mine.
“Tessa,” he whispers, voice completely wrecked, “I want you back.”
The confession cuts straight through me.
“Then take me,” I whisper, surprised I can form words when my entire body is ready to combust. “All of me.”
His mouth crashes into mine, overwhelming in the best way.
The kiss carries everything we didn’t say when we had the chance. Everything we didn’t fix when we could have. Everything we didn’t stop wanting, even when we tried.
He enters me slowly. So slow it borders on torture, and I’m caught between wanting to beg him to hurry and never wanting this moment to end.
My hands clutch at his shoulders, fingers digging into the muscles there, because my body remembers the shape of him even after all this time.
He groans into my mouth, completely undone.
We move together in a rhythm that feels natural. Just the two of us finding our way back to something I thought we’d lost.
He kisses my neck. My shoulder. The center of my chest where my heart is trying to escape my ribcage.
His hand slides up and finds mine, lacing our fingers together above my head, anchoring us to this moment. The gesture is so tender, so unlike the Rowan who weaponizes everything.
He thrusts again slowly and I cry out, not from pain, but from relief.
This is Rowan making love to me with the same intensity he brought the first time, back when we were young and stupid and thought love was enough to fix everything.
Back when I mattered to him more than strategy.
And maybe I still do.
He rests his forehead against mine, breath ragged and uneven.
“I missed you,” he chokes out, the words sounding torn from somewhere deep.
“I know,” I whisper, my throat tight. “I missed me, too.”
Because that’s the truth neither of us has said—I lost myself when I lost him. And I’ve been trying to find that girl ever since.
His rhythm stays steady. My legs tighten around him as the pleasure builds, coiling low in my belly, burning through me, every nerve ending focused on where we’re connected. I’m strung so tight I might snap.
Rowan’s mouth finds mine again, but this kiss is different. Messier. His tongue moves with desperation, chasing something he’s kept locked away for years and finally giving in to everything he’s been pretending not to feel.
I feel it everywhere. In the way his hips grind deeper, searching for something more than just physical release. In the way his jaw clenches, holding back words that want to escape
“Tessa,” he breathes, his forehead pressed to mine. “Look at me.”
I do.
And what I see there breaks me more than his hands or mouth ever could.
It’s all there in his eyes—no sarcasm, no carefully maintained control. Just Rowan, raw and exposed.
My Rowan.
I cup his face with trembling hands, thumbs sweeping over the edge of his jaw where that muscle always jumps. “I see you,” I whisper, the words barely audible. “I’ve always seen you.”
He thrusts again, slower now. Deeper. Chasing something with me, not just inside me.
The pleasure starts to crest, and I bite my lip hard, breath catching, trying to hold on to some shred of control.
“Don’t hide from me now,” he murmurs, his voice rough and shaking with his own loss of control. “Let me see you come.”
I try to answer, try to make some sarcastic comment about him being bossy even now, but I’m already gone.
It crashes through me with devastating force. My hips buck against him. My eyes slam shut without my permission—
“No,” he growls. “Eyes on me.”
I force them open, and let him see everything. The tremble. The surrender.
And when I come, it’s with his name torn from my throat and his eyes locked on mine with an intensity that says he’s been waiting years to see me fall apart for him again.
He follows seconds later, and watching him lose control is almost as overwhelming as my own release.
One last thrust that goes impossibly deep.
One strangled sound that might be my name.
His whole body goes rigid, every muscle tense as he finishes, still buried inside me, still watching me with that devastating focus. Holding himself perfectly still while he shakes apart, using my eyes as his anchor.
And when it’s over, when we’re both shaking and gasping, he doesn’t look away. Doesn’t retreat into his usual armor. Doesn’t make it safe with distance or sarcasm.
He just stays.
We lie there, foreheads touching, hearts hammering out of sync. The silence carries everything we haven’t said that brought us to this moment.
Until finally, he whispers, so quiet I almost miss it:
“I never stopped loving you.”