Chapter 26
Rowan
I’m not sure who woke who up.
It’s unclear which wandering hand made first contact while we lingered in that hazy half-asleep state. Or how exactly we went from holding each other to devouring each other to Jason’s southbound detour. But…
“Please… like that… Jason!” My fingers are knotted in his hair as I shamelessly beg this man, whose seductive skills are beyond measure, for more.
And he’s giving it to me. Making me gasp and writhe and tip into his deepening kiss.
“Up, baby,” he growls from between my legs. “Want you to watch me make you come.”
Wow. I almost finish right then. But I do as he says, somehow managing to push to my elbows so I can see the sexy satisfied look in his eyes when he—
“Jason,” I gasp as he licks and sucks at my most sensitive flesh, pleasure-laced tension building deep inside me, straining and pulling.
“Give it to me, Rowan.”
He sounds like he’s getting off on this more than I am. Impossible.
“Come on… Let me have it.”
More ravenous kisses.
“So… close.” I’m almost there.
More of that building perfect ache.
More of that too-intense, too-sexy eye contact.
“Want to taste you coming on my tongue.”
And that’s it. I’m tipping over the edge, coming hard in wave after wave of relentless bliss while Jason’s eyes never leave mine.
His kiss softens. Slows as he lingers with me in the aftermath. And then he’s rising up on his knees, looking me over in a way that promises what he just gave me was only the prelude.
God, that look is so potent, my body is already starting to ache for him again.
“Need you,” I whisper as he moves over me, powerful arms braced at either side, impossibly broad shoulders flexed, the gilded tips of his bedhead begging for my fingers to get lost in it.
Wait.
My eyes widen, and Jason’s pure-sex expression shifts to curiosity. “What?”
I blink, looking from his hair to his eyes and then the room around us. “Look.”
He turns around and then back to me, astonishment bright in his eyes. “It’s not raining.”
“It’s… sunny,” I say breathlessly, eyes flitting around the room at the golden sunshine spilling over a space that’s lived exclusively in shadows since the power went out.
From one sun-drenched surface to another.
My bags piled against the wall, his desk, the forgotten glass of water from God knows when.
I laugh. “It’s beautiful.”
But when I turn to Jason, his eyes are on me. “Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
I don’t know what it is. But something in the way he’s looking at me, there’s a tenderness. No. Maybe affection. Or depth of it. I don’t know. It’s different.
Or maybe it’s the same look he’s been giving me all along, and I just needed a little sunlight to see it.
But it makes me ache in a way that is so far beyond the physical pleasure he’s been showering me with for days.
It makes me feel lighter and fuller, and an inexplicable kind of buoyant joy takes my breath away.
I reach for him, my thumb brushing the soft scrape of his morning stubble. And then I lean in to kiss him. I feel almost shy, which is madness considering the things this man was saying to me as he made me come harder than I have in my entire life less than five minutes ago. But there it is.
And maybe it’s the same for him too. Because then he’s giving me this smile that feels like possibility and joy and wonder. And he’s gathering me into his arms and kissing me like it’s with his whole heart.
No. I think maybe it’s the other way around. I think, maybe I’m kissing him like that. Like I want him to have all of me.
“Rowan.” There’s a reverence in the way he says my name. Because of course he noticed. Of course he stopped to search my eyes, my face. To brush my cheek with his thumb the way I did with his. “Tears?”
“What?” But then I can see the remnants glistening on his thumb before evaporating away.
I shake my head as this sound that is somewhere between laughter and tears born of joy slips past my lips. “I’m just really happy.”
And then he’s laying me on the bed, and we’re kissing and touching and laughing and then not laughing as our eyes meet, and I feel this thing inside me click into place.
And this time, when Jason pushes thick and long inside of me, making my body one with his… it doesn’t feel like Escape.
It feels like making love.
Jason
I’m tracing circles around Rowan’s navel while she runs her fingers through my hair again and again and again as we laze in bed.
“We should get up,” she says, and even though I’m not looking at her, I can hear the smile in her voice. “For real this time.”
I got so far as putting one foot on the floor the first time she suggested it, but then she murmured something about my shoulders and wanting to bite them. And then she was in my lap, and I was inside her… and yeah. That was about an hour ago.
“Don’t know. This seems like a pretty perfect way to spend the day.” I’m only half joking.
She hums. The light run of her nails over my scalp ceases, and she stretches her arms wide before crawling out of bed with a saucy smile. “I know I wore you out, but it’s sunny. Game time, Static. Let’s do this.”
“Static?” I like that she almost never uses my team nickname. But the way she says it now? It sounds pretty good.
I sit up and watch as she shimmies into her panties and then grabs the T-shirt I was wearing yesterday and pulls it overhead. Slayers red spills to the midpoint of her thighs.
So sexy. “If it were game time, that shirt would have my name and number on it.”
She grins back at me as she heads down to the bathroom. “You like having your girls wear your number?”
“I’d like you wearing it.” I’d love it.
There have been girls I’ve dated who showed up to the games wearing Stanvic jerseys. It was nice. I always made sure they knew that I appreciated it. But seeing them did nothing compared to just imagining Rowan wrapped up in my name and number.
I trail after her, watching the sway of her hips and auburn cascade of soft curls as she pulls her hair up and then shakes it out.
I want to tell her that I’ll send her a jersey. Ask her to wear it to my games. To sit in my seats. To be there after the games and—
Just. Chill.
Yeah, this morning things seem different. I don’t know what it is. Couldn’t say what changed exactly, except that something has. Like maybe Rowan might actually be feeling the same way I am. Or close. Close-ish.
Still, I need to go slow. Start small.
She turns on the faucet in the bathroom and starts to brush her teeth as I prop a shoulder against the open doorframe. “You like hockey?”
“I used to watch with Ed every once in a while when I was home for winter break.”
I slide into the spot beside her at the sink and grab my own toothbrush.
She hands me the paste. “Your dad was bananas about watching you play. He’d tell me stories about what you were like when you were just learning to skate.
How they always put you on offense when you were playing club hockey in grade school because you could outscore everyone else…
but when they put you on defense, you changed the game. ”
I start brushing my molars, watching as she rinses and spits. “Think you’d like to come to a game sometime?” Or all of them?
Jesus, I sound like I’m asking her to prom.
She smiles at me through the mirror with a glop of paste covering the corner of her mouth. God, that little cocked brow shouldn’t be so pretty.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Geah?” I ask slowly around my toothbrush and a mouthful of paste.
“All those gorgeous teammates?” There’s a demon glint in her eyes. “Count me in.”
I drop my toothbrush, but the whole lightning-fast reflexes thing saves me from having to pick it up off the floor… but not from somehow managing to get paste all over my hand, chin, chest, and neck.
Rowan winks, flashing her pearly whites as she skims past, leaving me staring into the mirror with paste dripping down that too…. for three, two, one… I grab the hand towel, dragging it over my face as I tear down the hall after her.