Chapter 34
Natalia
Rowan barrels right through the apartment until we’re in my room and on my bed.
I’m heaving with desperation, aching with hunger, as I’m tearing at his clothes.
He’s struggling to pace himself, and I am too.
This isn’t us. We don’t take our time to strip each other of the clothes for sweet slow kisses that say more than words ever could.
It’s always rough and fast, without much thought.
It always war—clashing of tongues and teeth—but this has so much thought.
And all of my thoughts are of him and the words I want to say, words I wish existed to explain what I feel.
I take the kisses to ease my hunger and slow us down. I let myself feel him, his warm skin under mine, burning through my fingerprints with his passion.
I’ll never be able to contain all of this around him again. I’ll never be able to hold myself back from him ever again and it’s okay. He can keep every piece of me because I would rather they belong to him than to anyone else.
And he…
He handed me the key to get into his ribcage a while ago, and I didn’t know what to do with it. Now, I let myself in to him, opening his ribcage and making myself comfortable in his heart the way he’s done to me.
Rowan lips remain focused, never once missing an inch of skin. He’s always been thorough with his praise and adoration. He’s thorough with his love and his lips and his hands, holding me in a way that can only be translated to those three words that make my heart call out to him.
“Rowan,” I gasp, my hips bucking.
Rowan’s hands wrap tightly around my hips, his thumb pressing into my hipbones as he holds me down. His lips presses just below my belly button. “I’m here.”
My fingers delve into his hair, one of their favorite places to be, as he kisses down, down, down…
His hands on my ass lift my hips, tilting me the way he needs me before his mouth meets my slick, sensitive flesh. With every stroke of his tongue and thrust of his fingers, my hips buck, grinding against his face.
“Fuck, sweetheart,” he growls against my clit. “Ride my face.”
The mixture of his tongue, words, and fingers pushes me over the edge and I come, frantic and wild. I’m still trembling when he settles between my legs, his fingers still circling my clit, and I think I still might be coming.
“Rowan?” I breathe.
He removes his hand and the head of his cock presses against me. He brushes his lips over my forehead and then I feel him where I want him and wait, expecting it to be how it usually is—all at once and quick and hard. His first thrust is anything but.
It’s patient and calm and slow. It’s as though he is scared he may never feel me again but he is so, so wrong.
“We don’t have sex like this,” I pant, my fingers twisting in and tugging at his hair.
I want to keep having sex like this.
Rowan presses deeper and whispers, “How do we have sex then?”
“We fuck,” I gasp when he thrusts slowly—hard.
“Well, I don’t feel like fucking you tonight.”
“Then what are we doing?”
“I’m making love to you, sweetheart,” Rowan moans in my ear and my nails burrow into his back, potentially breaking through skin, marking him. “Is that okay with you?”
He presses in slow, hard, and deep.
“Yes,” I breathe.
Rowan makes love to me and I reciprocate everything he gives me. It’s a quiet confession of the words I can’t find—words I wouldn’t know how to say to his face. Words I might not say out loud just yet.
“Natalia,” Rowan breathes against my neck and picks up his head.
“Rowan?”
He presses his forehead to mine. Our fingers link together and he presses our hands into the mattress on either side of my head. “You okay?”
I nod. “Yes. Yes, you feel…” I arch, my eyes rolling back with a particular movement of his hips that presses down against my clit with each rock of his hips. “So good.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Rowan hisses, his hips slowing. “Shit, Natalia.”
“What’s wrong?”
He shakes his head and kisses the corner of my mouth. “Nothing. It’s perfect.”
He pulls out to the tip, and pushes back inside me in a slow stroke that makes my eyes roll, my lungs tighten, and my head presses back into the mattress.
“Say it again,” I manage.
“Nat,” he groans, his forearms bracketing me in and holding him steady as he peers down at me. A hand comes over my head, his palm touching the crown of my head in a way that makes my heart sore with emotion. “I love you.”
I sigh, overcome by the pleasure only he brings to me.
He says he loves me again and I turn us over.
Words don’t always have to be said, I think. Words can be expressed in silence and looks and actions. So when I sink down onto him, using my hands on his chest for leverage, I tell him everything.
Every moan, every gasp, every kiss, every touch.
I tell him I had a crush on him when we were fifteen.
I tell him blond guys were never really my type but my type was always him.
I tell him I’m a mess and he’s perfect but I love that he loves me anyway.
And when I lower myself over him, my forearms on either side of his head and his hands gripping my ass to urge on my movements, I tell him I love him the way he loves me, maybe even more—that I think I have for longer than I thought and that I hate that I’m too stupid.
Rowan shifts slightly, sitting up against the pillows and headboard, adjusting our angles enough to feel him deeper so he can capture my nipples in his mouth as he moves me up and down on him.
It only takes another minute until everything crashes and burns to ashes, my bones melting and my existence connecting with his.
Rowan comes inside me with deep, breathy moans that I will never get tired of hearing. I feel myself die a little for a moment, only to be brought to life by him when he kisses me—both of us panting and sweaty.
Gently, he rolls me over onto my back and stands. What’s that saying? I hate for you to leave but love to watch you go? Well, that’s how I feel staring at his ass as he walks toward the bathroom for a washcloth.
Never thought I would be jealous of a man’s ass but…
He disappears out of view and my eyes flutter closed for a moment. This is like a dream I don’t want to wake up from. It’s perfect, and if I touch it, even just tap it lightly, it might crumble at my feet.
“Sweetheart,” Rowan whispers, pulling me out of an oncoming slumber. “Open your legs. Let me clean you up, then I’ll let you sleep.”
“Hmm.” I smile, reaching up to kiss his chin. “Thank you.”
My legs fall open. Overstimulated beyond belief, I twitch at the contact, but he’s soft and light, and I love him like this. I love us like this.
Quiet and soft and safe.
It’s everything I always thought a home should be.
Rowan kisses the inside of my knee before he closes my legs and sets them down on the mattress, allowing me to sink into the bed while he throws the wash cloth in my hamper.
I shift to make enough space for him, which he claims quickly, pulling me to him. Knees against knees, face to face, with his arm around my waist.
“You have seventeen freckles on your nose and cheeks,” he whispers. “I’ve counted them so many times.”
I giggle quietly. “Why?”
“Because they look like stars.” The tip of his index fingers traces a line down my nose before moving left across my left cheek. Then my right. “Hydra is the constellation with seventeen stars. But yours look like…Pisces.”
“I didn’t know you knew so much about astrology.”
Rowan snorts quietly. “I don’t. I only know those two. And our star signs.”
I smile and tap his nose. “Taurus for you.”
“And Pisces for you,” he says. “Just like the freckles.”
The smile on my face does not fade. “Do you know all of our friends’ signs?”
Rowan smiles too. “Grace is February third, so she’s an Aquarius.”
“The best one.”
“Exactly,” he agrees. “Christian is a Cancer. Lana is a Scorpio. Luca and Isabelle are both September twelfth so—”
“Virgo.”
“Nico is also a Cancer and Julian is a Sagittarius.”
“Impressive.” I giggle. “I didn’t know anyone’s signs except for ours and the girls.”
“I might have…had…a brief zodiac obsession,” he says quietly. “Very briefly though. Learned what a chart was—moon stuff.”
“Moon stuff?”
“Yeah, like retrograde and shit.” He chuckles. “Quite interesting.”
“You—” I laugh and gently place my palm on his cheek, feeling his smile against my hand. “You are quite the interesting man.”
“And ugly.” He chuckles, tracing my lips with his pointer finger.
“You’re a beautiful man, Rowan,” I say, my thumb brushing up and down his cheekbone.
“Lately, I’ve been thinking about how the universe puts certain people in your life, and I love the people in my life.
I love my friends—Lana, Isabelle, Grace, the boys—even Elena.
The universe doesn’t do that for no reason.
I was also thinking that, maybe, the universe picks someone to be your person. ”
“I think it does,” he whispers.
“I think the universe picked you to be my person.”
“Natalia,” he rasps, fingertips grazing my cheek. “I’ve known you were my person for a long time.”
“Since when?”
“Since we were seventeen,” he confesses.
“Ten years ago?”
He nods. “It was when you were in the hospital. It sounds…morbid. But it was the first time I think you let me see the real you. And when I saw you, I knew you and I were the same. Your pain and my pain may be different, but pain understands pain, and for the first time, it felt like someone finally understood me.”
“I understand you,” I say, my voice small and hushed.
“More than you know, sweetheart,” he whispers and uses the moment to press his lips on mine, solidifying his words—signing them, copyrighting them. They’re real words because he loves me. Real.
“Can you stay?” I ask quietly.
“You want me to stay?”
“I wouldn’t ask if—”
“Okay,” he breathes, a hint of a smile on his lips. “I really like your pillowcases, by the way.”
I giggle. “They’re satin—better for my hair.”
“And mine?”
“I don’t see why not.”