Chapter 22 #2
“No,” she said again, firmer now. “You did not create her illness. You did not make the ice break. You saved your son.”
“I saved his body,” Rowan said, and the bitterness in his voice cut through her. “Then I spent years teaching him that safety meant silence.”
Emmeline’s throat tightened.
There it was. The truth beneath every harsh word, every rigid command, every time he reached for Aaron too late and too awkwardly.
She tightened her hand around his. “You can still teach him something else.”
His eyes moved over her face, searching, wounded. “You say that as if people are easily remade.”
“No,” she whispered. “I say it because I saw you sit on a library rug this morning.”
His face shifted.
“And because Aaron smiled when you touched his hair.”
Rowan looked away, but not before she saw what it did to him.
After a long while, he said, “My marriage to Catherine became a harrowing thing. Not because she meant harm. Perhaps she loved him too much and had nowhere sane to put it.” His voice roughened. “But I cannot repeat it.”
Emmeline felt her heart falter before he finished. She knew, before he said the rest.
“I struggle with the child I have,” Rowan said. “You see that. Everyone sees that. I do not know how to be what Aaron needs half the time. I will not make more children only to fail them in new ways.”
The words broke something.
Emmeline looked down at their joined hands, at the way her fingers rested over his, pale against the darker strength of him.
She had wanted children so simply once. A family had always seemed to her like a room she would one day enter and fill with warmth.
Now that room stood before her with its door partly closed.
“I understand,” she said. Her voice was steady.
Rowan looked at her. “Do you?”
“Yes.” She lifted her gaze to his and tried to smile, though it hurt. “I understand why you are afraid.”
“I am not—”
“Rowan.”
He stopped.
The corner of his mouth almost moved. “I am afraid.”
She understood, even though understanding did not make the loss smaller.
“I did not say I was happy,” she whispered.
His eyes dropped to her mouth first, and Emmeline felt her lips part before she could stop them.
Then his gaze moved over the open hollow of her throat, the fragile ribbon at her sleeve, the thin white cotton resting against her breasts.
Her skin seemed to wake beneath each place his eyes lingered, warmth spreading under the fabric.
The grief between them grew quieter as her breath shortened and his did the same.
“I know,” he said.
His voice had roughened and Emmeline felt her body answer immediately.
He lifted one hand and touched the ribbon at her sleeve. “I cannot give you everything.”
The words hurt. Then his fingers brushed her wrist, and her breath faltered.
“But I can give you this,” he said, lower now. “If you want it. I can come to you. Touch you. Taste you. Make you forget, for a little while, every cruel thing I have been too cowardly to say properly.”
Heat rushed through her. “Rowan.”
His gaze lifted to hers. “I thought of you all day. In my bed. In this room. I thought of the way you sounded when I had my mouth on you, and I nearly lost my mind in my own study because you smiled at me.”
A blush tore through her so violently that she looked down.
His hand slid to her waist. “Do not hide from me now.”
“I am not hiding.”
“You are.”
She looked up, heart hammering. “And if I want more than forgetting?”
His face tightened.
Then he leaned closer, his mouth near enough that the next breath she took belonged partly to him. “Then take what I can give tonight.”
It was not enough, but it was everything she wanted in that moment.
“Yes,” she whispered.
His hand stilled at her waist. “Say it plainly.”
Her throat worked. “I want you.”
His eyes darkened.
“Again,” he said.
She trembled. “I want more of you.”
The last word had hardly left her before his mouth found hers.
This kiss sank into her, deep and devastating. His hand curved around the back of her neck, thumb beneath her jaw. Emmeline’s hands rose to his shoulders, to the open throat of his shirt, to the warm skin beneath, and the feel of him there, bare beneath her palms, made a sound break from her.
Rowan answered by lowering her carefully onto the bed.
He came over her, his body weighing above hers while his mouth moved from hers to her jaw, her throat, the place where her pulse beat wildly beneath thin skin.
“You are beautiful,” he murmured. “So soft. So warm. Do you know what it does to me?”
Her fingers tightened in his hair. “Show me.”
His mouth returned to hers, and she felt his hand move down her body, over her waist, her hip, her thigh. The nightgown bunched beneath his palm, and then his fingers were on bare skin. She gasped into his mouth.
“Still?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He touched her slowly, opening her with patience that made her shiver, his fingers finding the slick ache he had left in her body from the night before. His breath broke against her mouth.
“God,” he rasped. “You are ready for me.”
The words sent heat through her so fiercely she arched toward him. Emmeline’s breath caught, then spilled out in a shaken sound as her hips lifted toward his hand before she could stop them.
Rowan’s eyes darkened at the movement, and the last fragile edge of his restraint seemed to tear. A rough sound left him as he bent over her, one hand pushing the nightgown higher up her thighs while the other flattened possessively against her waist.
His hot mouth came down over her breast through the thin cotton. The damp heat of his breath seeped through the fabric until she cried out and arched beneath him. He dragged the cloth aside, baring her to the candlelight, and then his mouth was on her skin.
He kissed the curve of her breast, the flushed peak, the soft hollow beneath, each touch slower and deeper than the last. His tongue moved over her until her fingers twisted in the sheets.
When she reached for the fall of his trousers, his hand closed over hers.
For one heartbeat, she thought he would stop.
He only looked down at her, jaw tight, eyes burning. “Slowly.”
She obeyed, though her hands shook.
When he came to her bare, Emmeline’s hands tightened against his shoulders.
He settled between her thighs, hot and solid against the place where her body still ached from his touch. Her breath caught high in her chest, and her knees opened for him.
His hand stilled on her hip. His forehead lowered toward hers, close enough that his breath brushed her mouth, but he did not move further. “Look at me.”
She did.
He pressed forward slowly.
Her breath caught at the first stretch, the impossible fullness of him entering her by degrees. Sharp pain flickered briefly, swallowed almost at once by the heat of his mouth on hers and the careful stillness of his body as he waited.
“Emmeline,” he said, voice strained. “Breathe.”
She did.
He moved another inch.
She clutched at him.
“There,” he murmured, kissing her cheek, her mouth, the corner of her eye. “That is it. Take me slowly. Just like that.”
When he was fully inside her, he stopped, trembling above her.
The intimacy of it overwhelmed her more than the act itself. His body joined to hers. His breath rough against her lips.
She touched his face. “Rowan.”
Something in him broke.
He moved. It was slow at first, drawing back and pressing in again until her body began to understand the rhythm. The sharpness faded. Every stroke dragged heat through her until her breath turned to soft, helpless sounds against his mouth.
“You are beautiful,” he murmured, voice rough against her skin, mouth brushing her cheek. “Perfect.”
The words wrapped around her until she could no longer remember anything else. His hand slid beneath her hip, angling her to take him deeper, and she cried out. He swallowed the sound with his kiss, then gave it back to her with a rough groan of his own.
The pleasure rose too quickly for her to prepare for it.
It gathered low and bright, every slow, deep thrust pressing it higher, every rough murmur against her skin making her body tighten around him until she could scarcely breathe. Emmeline clutched at his shoulders, then his hair, her mouth open against his as the room began to blur at the edges.
“Rowan,” she gasped, frightened by the force of it. “I—”
“I know,” he said, voice strained and dark. “Let go.”
His hand tightened beneath her hip, holding her exactly where he wanted her, and he kept moving, deep and relentless now, each stroke dragging a helpless sound from her throat until the tension broke.
Her body arched beneath him, her fingers digging into his back as the climax tore through her, hot and blinding, making her cry his name into the side of his neck.
Rowan groaned as she clenched around him.
“God, Emmeline,” he rasped, but he did not stop.
He kept driving into her, slower but still deep, his body forcing every last tremor from hers while she shook beneath him, too undone to do anything but hold on.
The pleasure softened into aftershocks, then sharpened again each time he moved, until she was gasping against his shoulder, overwhelmed, boneless, half begging without knowing for what.
Only then did Rowan’s rhythm change.
His breath grew harsher. His jaw tightened against her temple. The restraint in him turned brutal, almost painful to watch, his body trembling with the effort of holding back even as he drove into her once more.
“Emmeline,” he warned.
She barely understood him at first.
He pulled out sharply, the sudden loss making her gasp. His hand moved between them, and he turned aside at the last second, finding his release with a broken sound, his whole body shaking.
For a moment, neither moved.
Emmeline stared at the canopy above them, breathing hard, one hand still buried in his hair. The meaning of what he had done settled slowly. Painfully.
A door closing even in the middle of his surrender.
Rowan lifted his head. His eyes searched hers and she made herself smile before he could find the disappointment too easily.
He saw it anyway.
“Emmeline,” he said.
“I know,” she whispered.
His face tightened.
She drew him down before he could retreat. “Stay.”
He went still.
Then, slowly, he lowered himself beside her and pulled the coverlet over them both. His arm came around her, hesitant at first, then firmer when she curled into him.
His body was warm against hers, his arm careful but still there, and for tonight, with his confession still aching between them and his breath moving against her hair, she let that be enough.