Chapter 18
eighteen
OLEANDER
The hallway was narrow, the air inside Rowan and Julian's apartment smelling of cedar and old paper.
I stood at the threshold, my hand still gripping the brass key in my pocket.
It wasn't the whiskey talking this time.
There wasn't a drop of it in my system, which made the vulnerability feel like a raw nerve.
Julian was the one who opened the door. He didn't look surprised to see me, though his dark eyes held a weary kind of recognition. He stepped back and gestured for me to enter.
"He's waiting for you," Julian said, nodding toward the bed in the far corner.
I walked past him, my arm brushing his sleeve. I expected him to close the door and leave, to seek the sanctuary of the bar or the streets, but he simply walked toward the kitchen. He didn't close the bedroom door as I passed it. He left it wide, an invitation or a witness, I wasn't sure which.
Rowan was sitting on the edge of the bed, his broad back a wall of solid muscle against the pale light filtering through the window.
He waited until I was standing right behind him, until the heat radiating from his skin began to dissolve the chill that had been following me since I left my own apartment.
"You're late," he said, his voice a gravelly rumble. He turned then, his pale green eyes tracking the movement of my hands. He looked at me with a terrifying kind of clarity, stripped of the shadows that usually cloaked him in the bar.
"I wasn't sure I was coming," I admitted. "But I'm here now. I'm choosing this."
Rowan stood up, his height forcing me to tilt my head back.
He reached out, his thumb catching my chin, tilting my face up so I had nowhere to look but at him.
There was no alcohol to blame, no desperation to hide behind.
I was awake, I was sober, and I was looking at the man who was currently the only thing keeping the ghosts at bay.
"Good," he murmured, his grip firming just enough to be a command. "Because if you're here, Oleander, you're mine. All of you. Even the parts you're trying to drown."
He fisted his hand in my hair, pulling my head back until a small gasp escaped my throat, and his mouth crashed against mine.
I leaned into him, my hands finding the heavy fabric of his coat, pulling him closer until there was no space left for the cold to seep in.
I could hear Julian in the other room, the soft clink of a glass, the low hum of a melody that sounded like the one that had been haunting me.
The knowledge that he was there, just feet away, transformed the moment from an act of escape into a deliberate submission.
Rowan pushed me back toward the bed, his weight following me down, heavy and certain.
He stripped me with a focused intensity, his eyes never leaving mine.
When he saw the bruises I'd been hiding, the ones from the shadows, the ones I couldn't explain, his jaw tightened, but he didn't ask.
He just leaned down and pressed his lips to each one.
His cock was thick and hard as he knelt between my legs, the tip already glistening with pre-cum.
I watched him, my breath hitching, as he reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the small bottle of lube along with a condom.
He slipped it on and then flipped the cap with his thumb before pouring a generous amount into his palm.
Then he slicked himself in slow, deliberate strokes, his eyes locked on mine the entire time.
He didn't rush. He pushed two slick fingers between my cheeks and worked them inside me, stretching me open with steady, unhurried movements.
I exhaled hard, my hands fisting in the sheets as he crooked his fingers just enough to make my back arch.
Only when he was satisfied did he pull them free, line himself up, and press the blunt head of his cock against my hole.
He thrust into me in one long, deliberate movement, his size stretching me wide around him.
"Fuck, you feel good," he groaned, fisting both hands in the sheets beside my head.
He started to move, his pace relentless, each slam of his hips against mine a reminder that I was alive.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, my nails raking down the broad expanse of his back.
I could hear my own whimpers echoing in the small room, mingling with the sounds of Rowan's exertion.
He flipped me over, pulling my hips high, his hands gripping my thighs as he pounded into my ass from behind.
I buried my face in the pillow to muffle my screams, the sensation of him filling me so completely that I couldn't remember my own name.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice a low growl.
I turned my head, catching his gaze in the mirror above the dresser.
He was watching us, his eyes dark with a hunger that felt bottomless.
He reached around and wrapped his hand around my cock, stroking it with a punishing rhythm while he continued to thrust. The friction was too much, a white-hot spark that ignited my entire body.
I came with a cry that felt like it started in my toes, my ass clenching rhythmically around his cock in tight, pulsing waves.
A few seconds later, Rowan followed, his body stiffening as he drove in deep and came inside me, filling me with his heat.
He collapsed on top of me, his heart thundering against my spine, his breath hot against the back of my neck.
For a long time, neither of us moved. The apartment smelled like sex and the quiet presence of Julian in the next room.
I felt Rowan's arm slide across my chest, his hand coming to rest over my heart.
For the first time since Dominic died, the voice in my head that sounded like him was finally quiet.
I lay there, drifting, listening to Julian. He had started humming again, a low, melodic tune that drifted through the open door like a lullaby. The peacefulness of the moment lasted for exactly ten minutes.