Chapter 17 #2
“Sweetheart,” he says softer than before.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to do this, really,” I rasp, hoping he doesn’t agree just because. Then it hits me—what will I do on the day that Rowan doesn’t want me anymore but I still want him? “You never have to do—”
“I do, Natalia,” Rowan assures me with a brush of his lips over my cheekbones. “I want everything with you. I want to give you everything.”
“Then give me everything, Rowan,” I say. “Give me all of you.”
“We’re talking about this after,” he whispers on my lips and I reach down between us to wrap my hand around his cock, dragging his head over my arousal.
I shake my head and line him up with my entrance. “No, we won’t.”
“Yes—” I lift my hips and he slips inside me, only an inch. He groans against my clavicle, his teeth crazing over the bone. “Fuck—We will.”
“Rowan,” I breathe and he looks down at me with the shade of concern in the blue of his eyes. “I’m asking you for one thing. This is what we do, isn’t it? Sex? So just have sex with me.”
“Sex isn’t what you need right now,” he rasps.
He might be right, but instead, I say, “Please.”
To answer my request, Rowan thrusts into me until I’m so full I see stars glittering around us. We’re the only two people in the universe—our bodies coming together like a stellar collision.
He takes a moment, and so do I. I take a breath and revel in the feeling of how full I am with him. Like this, and in this stupid organ in my chest. He has the power to bring the sore, tired heart beneath the cage of bones back to life.
Some days I hate him for it. Some days I’m scared of how much I don’t hate it at all.
Rowan’s head drops into the crook of my neck and my nails gently scratch his head. I can’t seem to get him close enough. Softly, in my ear, he whispers, “Natalia.”
Rowan holds himself up on his forearms, and stares down at me with a softness in his eyes that reminds me of a calm beach day spent admiring the ocean. He pulls out slowly, and pushes back in even slower, our mouths both open and lips touching. “Holy shit, Nat.”
“Hmmm,” I moan. “More.”
He keeps his pace, not changing our momentum for what seems like a while, and I don’t mind it. Not when it feels this good, and not when I feel him this deeply and this much—somehow more than I ever did before. I might even be able to do this forever.
Despite the loud moans and heavy breaths, this is the quietest sex we’ve ever had.
Softer, gentler. Too tender for my poor heart right now.
I do not deserve tenderness right now, not today.
He isn’t spanking me, he isn’t calling me his good girl, he isn’t being as rough and claiming—and I can’t handle it.
“Fuck me, Rowan,” I moan in his ear, and I gasp when he thrusts harder, my nails in his skin.
The next thing I know, Rowan is kneeling. And I miss his weight above me, his warmth against me. He sniffs and pushes his hair back before his hands come around my hips and lifts my lower half onto his lap, and that’s when his thrusts become hungrier. Harder. Rougher.
He’s doing exactly what I asked for and yet the emotion swells in my heart and head, pressure growing behind my eyes as my vision blurs. I see the shape of him behind clouds of tears so I blink them away, needing to see him—one of the people I feel the most safe with somehow.
And now, I’m even safer in the dark with the tears in my eyes and scars on my skin hidden.
I sniff, and it’s a mistake because his eyes move from where he disappears inside me to my face. “No,” he breathes, his thrusts slowing. “No, no, sweetheart, don’t do that to me.”
Rowans stops moving and comes back over me, forearms on either side of my head. “Natalia, baby, please,” he rasps. “Don’t do this to me, sweetheart. Don’t cry.”
“Keep going,” I croak. “Keep going.”
His hips slow, his thumb caressing my cheek. “My sweetheart,” he breathes so quietly, I would have missed it if I weren’t this close to his lips.
My hand cups his nape to press his lips back to mine. “Please. Please, Rowan.”
Rowan’s body comes to a painful stop. “Natalia.”
I hiccup and my hands go to his lower back, pressing him down into me. “Rowan.”
His eyes say everything he doesn’t, and I can’t figure out why it hurts to be looked at like this—by him most of all.
What if I don’t deserve to be looked at like this?
I know the answer to that: I don’t, and I should push his face away from mine.
I should walk out of this room and tell him he deserves better, but I won’t.
That is something I’m not strong enough for.
Regardless, Rowan brushes his lips across my cheek, then presses a kiss at the corner of my eye. “My sweetheart,” he whispers, his voice carrying from my ear to my heart.
Finally, he moves, but he does so slowly. Reverently.
“Don’t be gentle,” I whisper, my fingers burrowing into his back, urging him on.
Rowan, being the man he is, listens. It starts slow, careful—almost as though he is scared of hurting me.
Then I’m overwhelmed by the sound of skin slapping against skin, feeling him so far up in my stomach that I gasp with each thrust, and my nails and heels burrow into his back.
Then my body trembles, harder and harder as I near a blinding peak of pleasure, and I scream out his name just as he grunts mine.
Rowan is bent over me and his arm slides beneath the curve of my spine, his other hand firm on the bed, and he lifts me just slightly.
The backs of my thighs press into the front of his, and his forehead is pressed into mine.
Our open mouths allow our oxygen to mingle, to get to know each other before we breathe each other’s air.
“Oh my god,” I breathe, feeling myself fall into an abyss there is no rescuing me from.
He fucks me relentlessly, mercilessly, until my body reaches new heights and jumps off the diving board—sensations that have accumulated exploding like a cannonball. He sets me down gently, driving into me aimlessly.
Moans fall from his lips that turn me on even more, and if I weren’t already tired and limp, I’d want him again. And again and again.
“Natalia,” he growls. “I’m gonna come.”
“That’s okay,” I pant, reveling in the way his body presses so far into mine. Adoring the way his skin feels against mine. “Come, Rowan.”
“I’ll pull out,” he groans.
“Okay.”
It only takes a few more jerky thrusts while his thumb circles my clit, trying to pull another mind-bending orgasm out of me before he comes. Breathlessly, he rasps, “Natalia…”
“It’s okay,” I breathe and his hips pull back.
Rowan groans as he comes on my stomach and I moan as he does—the sight making my mouth water, unabashedly. I never realized how much of a turn on that could be for me.
“Fuck, Natalia.”
“Hmmm.” I bite into my lip and tease my nipple as I watch him stroke his cock, milking his pleasure as it spills warmth across my skin.
A moment of heavy breathing passes before I fully process that it’s over. I put my hands at his waist, my fingers pressing into his skin and my legs still slightly shaking around him.
It’s strange to have this comfort. It’s like something new you have to get used to—like added weight you need to learn how to walk around with. But it’s one that straightens your spine and feels like protection. Until you lose it.
My breathing shudders against his lips with his forehead pressed against mine.
“Are you okay?” Rowan asks.
He has no idea, does he?
“I’m okay now,” I want to say. “Because of you.”
I nod anyway, though, because now is not the time to profess or confess. And even if it were, I don’t know how to do it. I resent myself for not knowing how to give myself to him fully.
I want to pour myself into him, confess my darkest thoughts and secrets, and let him hold me together while I do. If there is anyone I’d give myself to, it would be him. It’s him. And it terrifies me beyond measure.
How? I scream the question to myself at least twelve times a day. How?
How do people do it? How do they let someone in that far?
The last time I did, he told me my mental illness wasn’t an excuse for my behavior. He told me it wasn’t real—I used it for attention. I just needed to get my shit together.
He didn’t know what it was like. And Rowan may not know what it’s like to its full extent personally, but he still gets it. He still stays and he keeps his patience.
I can’t even think about his patience without feeling like absolute shit. The guilt eats at me every day when I ask myself, Why am I like this?
I don’t know how to get out of it. I want to scratch at my skin to see if I can find away out of the claustrophobic box I’m living in. But I’m trapped. Stuck. I sleep to get out of it but sleep isn’t enough to relieve all of it. I don’t know a way out.
“Natalia,” he whispers, and I swear it’s the promise of a lifetime. It’s him telling me he’s got me in seven simple letters that just so happen to spell out my name.
What was that? I ask myself. What did we just do?
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?” Rowan asks again. “Did I…I was too ro—”
“No,” I say, “you were perfect. You’re always perfect.”
The corner of his mouth ticks up and his ocean eyes soften to a calm, low tide. “Shower.” He brushes his lips over my temple before he starts lifting himself off me. “I’ll order pizza.”
“Rowan—”
He pulls on his briefs and I sit up, watching as he moves around my bedroom like he lives here, like it’s his own.
He knows where to find my pajamas so he opens the second drawer on the left side and pulls out a flimsy pair of sleep shorts with black and white vertical stripes, but he finds his discarded undershirt instead of one of my own shirts.
Rowan sets them down beside me, and reaches to kiss my head again. “Shower,” he says again. “I’ll wait for you in the living room.”
“I…”