Chapter Twenty-two – Ivy
He planned this. I can tell the second we reach the top of the ladder and the loft blooms warm with light.
After Bailey packs the last of the picture books and the kids tumble down the lane sticky with lemonade, Rowan murmurs, “Help me shut down the barn?” and palms the ladder like it’s nothing.
When I climb up behind him, the string lights wink on—soft, low, and gold instead of bright—looped along the rafters like fireflies that decided to stay.
There’s a quilt spread over the smoothest boards, two pillows, a small battery fan turning lazy circles, and a dented thermos with tin cups.
On a crate, he’s laid out apples, cheddar, and the last two peach hand pies from the cooler like a man who pretends he doesn’t know how to make a moment and then makes one anyway.
“It’s not much,” he says, that shy edge he gets when he cares too loudly. “Figured we could… cool down. Hear the creek.”
It smells like hay and clean wood. The lights don’t flicker—they’re the warm kind—and I clock that detail like a love note. No surprises for my brain. He thought about it. He always does.
I settle on the quilt and fold my legs under me while he lingers at the rail, looking out at the dusk settling over the pasture like he needs the horizon to steady himself.
His shoulders are loose, but his hands are braced—one of those Rowan tells that says there’s a lot inside and he’s choosing where to put it.
“Come sit,” I say, patting the quilt. He comes halfway, then stops, watching me like I’m the song he can’t get out of his head.
“Rowan,” I whisper, the crickets taking the rest of the volume. “Talk to me.”
He doesn’t, not with words. He crosses the space in three strides and drops to his knees in front of me, mouth finding mine like he’s been holding his breath since the first kid asked me to sing.
The kiss is sure and hungry and a little wrecked.
I fall back onto the quilt and pull him with me, fingers fisting in his shirt, the soft halo of those lights turning the world small and golden.
“I missed you,” I breathe against his lips.
He groans, low and rough, sliding his mouth to my throat, a hand framing my jaw like I’m something fragile he refuses to fumble. “You don’t get to vanish again,” he says into my skin. “You don’t get to walk in, sing a song like that, and make me feel like—”
“Like what?”
He pulls back just enough to look down at me, his hands braced on either side of my head.
“Like I’m yours.”
My chest aches. “You are.”
The words break something open between us.
He kisses me again, slower this time, his weight pressing into mine as he slides his hand beneath my tank top. My skin shivers at his touch, and I arch into him, needing more—of him, of this, of the connection I’ve been starving for since Nashville.
Clothes disappear. His T-shirt. My shorts. The soft cotton of my underwear.
And then we’re tangled together, skin to skin, under the soft glow of the lights. Rowan’s mouth trails fire down my stomach, his hands rough and reverent as he explores every inch of me like he’s memorizing the landscape.
He settles between my thighs, lifting one over his shoulder, and when his mouth finds me—
“Rowan,” I gasp, my fingers clenching the quilt.
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even pause. He licks and sucks and groans against me like he’s never tasted anything better.
When he slides two fingers inside me, I cry out, the sound echoing off the rafters. He eats me like it’s his favorite damn meal, whispering praise between every moan.
“Beautiful… so fucking sweet… been thinking about this every night…”
I fall apart beneath him, shaking, breathless, my thighs trembling against his shoulders. And even then, he doesn’t let up. He kisses his way back up my body, mouth finding mine, letting me taste myself on his tongue.
“You’re mine,” he growls. “You have to know that.”
“I do,” I whisper, tears stinging the corners of my eyes.
Then I flip him. Straddle him.
I ease him back onto the quilt, and the breath he takes isn’t steady—it’s the kind you drag in when you’re bracing for impact. The string lights honey his skin, turning the hard lines I know by touch into something I want to memorize by sight, slow.
“Hold still,” I murmur, already mapping him with my fingers.
Up close, I can see them all. I start with a weather-softened compass on his left shoulder, edges blown a little from sun and years. “Eighteen,” he says when I glance up. “Thought it’d keep me from getting lost.” His mouth quirks. “Turns out staying put worked better.”
Near his inner biceps, a stalk of wheat rendered in fine lines—nearly the color of his skin now. I trace each grain with my nail. “First harvest after Dad named me CEO of the farm,” he tells me, voice low. “Didn’t think I could do it. We did.”
There’s a neat line of numbers under his collarbone, almost delicate, that are coordinates. “The bend in the creek,” he adds before I ask. “Where I let my mind take a rest.”
Over his ribs, a thin, pale scar catches the light—barbed wire, I know without him saying. I kiss just above it, and he shivers.
“More,” I whisper, greedy for the story of him.
And then I see it, tucked just beneath his right pec, where the sweep of muscle meets his ribs: a little songbird perched on a strand of fence wire.
New enough that the lines are crisp, the black still a whisper of midnight, the skin around it the faintest pink.
My finger hovers, careful. “When?” I ask, breath gone thin.
He swallows. “Week ago,” he answers, like a confession. “Couldn’t get the sound of your song from the barbecue out of my head. Figured if it was staying, it might as well have a place to land.”
Something in me gives, clean and quiet. I press my mouth beside the bird and feel him exhale under me, a rough, helpless sound I want to keep.
“Hi,” I say to the songbird, then to him, and keep going, kissing slow paths over old ink and older stories—compass, wheat, creek—letting my hands learn what my eyes are only just catching up to.
He’s all heat and patient strength and the kind of control that feels like worship.
When I circle back to the new lines—the fence wire, the tiny feet—I feel his pulse kick against my lips.
“Careful.” His voice is a rasp, not a warning so much as a plea. “She’s still tender.”
“I know,” I whisper, and I do. I treat the little bird like a secret, then follow the trail the ink maps—down the firm plane of his stomach, the dip of muscle where he’s strongest. He’s already tense beneath me, a question strung tight, and when I look up, hunger and something softer war in his eyes.
“Ivy.” My name, wrecked and reverent.
“I’m listening,” I tell him, palms sliding to his sides, thumbs stroking where breath becomes body. He catches one of my hands, brings it to his mouth, and kisses the palm like he’s thanking it for learning him.
I take my time because I can and because he lets me. Mouth to skin, past ink and the history it carries, tasting salt and summer and the man who puts his body between storms and everyone else.
He’s already hard. Already twitching. And when I wrap my lips around him, he lets out a string of curses that echoes through the loft.
He fists the blanket, hips jerking as I suck him slow and deep, swirling my tongue and humming until his legs shake.
“Ivy,” he warns, voice wrecked. “If you keep going…”
I crawl up his body again, chest heaving. “Then take me,” I say. “Please.”
He flips me in an instant, gripping my hips, sliding inside me with one long, slow thrust. We’re both so far gone that when he slides to the hilt, I can feel my walls begin to quiver. Rowan’s brows furrow as he murmurs about going slow.
But I want nothing to do with that.
Reaching up, I thread my fingers in his hair and yank at the strands as I pull him toward my lips.
“You better fuck me like you own me, Rowan Wright.”
“Oh, baby girl, you’re about to unleash a wild man,” he says, sliding all the way out and plunging back in my sex. “Too many days I’ve gone without you.”
He persists with the achingly slow thrusts, driving me completely mad. My head whips back and forth on the quilt as his fingers join his cock between my legs, rubbing my clit.
“Am I driving you mad, Ivy? Just like I’ve been going mad since the day I met you.”
“Insane. I need more.”
“Beg me for it. Get on your hands and knees and beg me to fuck you hard enough to lose control.”
Rowan slips out of me, and I scramble onto my hands and knees, ass facing him, then look over my shoulder with my hair cascading over the opposite.
“Please fuck me. I want to feel you everywhere. I need to.”
His calloused palm runs across the globe of my ass before dipping between my legs. I watch in fiery fascination as he lifts the now drenched fingers to his mouth and licks them clean.
God, I’m about to come from just watching him do that.
“Fuck, you taste good,” he tells me, aligning his cock with my entrance, gripping my hips with his big hands. “But you feel even better. Your pussy was made for me, Ivy. Now, hold on,” he demands, and my hands fist at the quilt before he drives into my sex.
It’s a harried pace with no rhythm, but it’s exactly what the two of us need. My body rocks back to meet each of his thrusts.
“Give me your wrists,” Rowan barks, and without missing a beat, he hauls me back against his chest, gripping my wrists in one of his massive hands while the other reaches around and squeezes one of my breasts.
“You feel so good,” I moan as he licks and nips at the side of my neck while his cock sinks farther into my channel. “I’m so close. Don’t stop.”
“That’s it, baby girl, come for me,” he rumbles, and we both shatter.
We stay tangled together long after the rush fades, our bodies slick with sweat and breaths gradually slowing. My head rests against his shoulder, and Rowan’s arm wraps tight around my waist like he’s anchoring us both in place. Like he can’t let me go.