Chosen 🌶️
? Ivy ?
I read Willow’s letter twice beneath the low infirmary lamp.
Aurelian waits outside the infirmary with a copy of the final Brooks entry folded in his hand.
Now he knows Willow survived the raid, gave birth, and died at the river safehouse after sending me away.
I don’t invite him in. Blood may explain why the crown erased me, but it doesn’t create a childhood between us.
The first time, my voice breaks halfway through the line about Aurelian. Roman doesn’t reach for the page or try to take it from me. He only shifts closer against the headboard, his shoulder warm beside mine beneath the blanket, and waits until I can keep going.
The second time, I read more slowly. I stop where Willow says Marissa and Wade were never blood, only the last cover she could find before the crown learned that road.
I stop again when she tells me Aunt and Uncle were names meant to protect me, not a debt I was supposed to carry for the rest of my life.
Then I reach the words about my father.
Your father is Aurelian Vance. He knows I carried you. He’ll come for you if he can. If he can’t, it won’t be because you weren’t wanted.
By the time I reach the end, the paper has softened beneath my fingers.
Choose the people who let you remain yourself.
The infirmary is quiet around us. Nora checked Roman’s bandage for the third time, left a brass bell on the table beside his bed, and went downstairs to the night ward.
“Ring once if you need me,” she told him. “Twice if the bleeding starts again.”
Then she shut the heavy door behind her, leaving us with the low lamp, the fire, and rain scraping softly against the infirmary windows.
Roman says nothing now, and I’m grateful for it.
Nothing he says can make this right. Willow should’ve told me herself. Fenner shouldn’t have found those records, and Sloane shouldn’t have turned an old route against me.
Knowing the truth doesn’t make any of it smaller.
“I thought I was a mistake for so long,” I say.
Roman turns toward me. He doesn’t wear the careful expression people use when they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. He only listens.
“I thought I was something the Brooks house had to manage,” I continue. “Something everyone was waiting to see become difficult enough that they could decide where I belonged.”
“You were never an obligation to me.”
The words land harder than anything grander could have.
I look at him. His shirt is open at the throat, and the white edge of the bandage shows beneath the dark fabric.
He’s pale from the challenge and the pain he won’t pretend has vanished just because he won.
There’s no court around us, no crowd, no moonlit arch waiting to turn a feeling into a ceremony.
There’s only Roman, sitting beside me and leaving the silence alone until I’m ready to fill it.
“They made surviving sound like something I had to repay,” I say. “Every meal, every dress, every room I was allowed to enter. I thought I was supposed to be grateful enough that no one would notice I wasn’t really theirs.”
Roman’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t hand that anger to me.
“They were asked to shelter you,” he says. “That didn’t make you theirs to punish, manage, or trade.”
Something in my chest loosens. It doesn’t make the grief disappear, but it gives me enough room to breathe around it.
I fold Willow’s letter carefully and set it on the table beside the bed. The brass compass rests next to it, its face catching the lamplight.
Roman follows the movement with his eyes. “Stay or go. You don’t have to decide the rest tonight.”
I reach for his face.
My palm settles against his jaw. He stills beneath my touch, waiting while I cross the distance between us.
“I don’t want to go to my room,” I say.
His eyes darken, but he doesn’t move.
“I don’t want you to make this better.”
“I can’t.”
“I know.” My thumb moves over the roughness near his cheek. “I still want you.”
His hand rises to my cheek. His fingers are warm and rough at the pads, and I lean into them before I can think better of it. Then he kisses me.
It isn’t careful in the way our first kisses were careful. Roman has never stopped being gentle with me, but there’s hunger in this one, close to the surface now. I kiss him harder.
His hand slides into my hair while mine moves down the front of his open shirt, over the warmth of his chest and the hard line of muscle beneath my palm. I feel the bandage near his ribs and pull back before I press too close. Roman’s mouth leaves mine.
“The wound?” I ask.
“It’ll hurt if I twist.”
“Nora said the wound is closed enough for careful movement, but that doesn’t make this sensible. You were stabbed barely two weeks ago.”
“I remember.”
I glance toward the bandage again. He catches my hand before I can retreat and brings my palm back to his chest.
“Tell me when something hurts,” I say.
“I will.”
The promise is plain enough that I believe it.
When I kiss him again, his hand slides from my hair to the back of my neck. I climb carefully over his legs and settle across his lap, keeping my weight clear of his injured side. His hands find my waist, warm and firm, and the breath leaves him when I shift closer.
Warmth stirs beneath my vow mark. It doesn’t brighten or change shape. It only answers, steady beneath my skin.
I slide my fingers beneath the collar of his shirt and ease it open farther. The fresh bandage hides the wound at his side, but the rest of him is bare beneath my hands, warm and solid and familiar in ways that make my throat tighten.
I’ve seen Roman bloodied and furious. I’ve seen him refuse cruelty even when it would’ve been easier to use it. I’ve watched him stand between the crown and everyone it expected him to sacrifice.
I’ve never let myself look at him like this, not when I knew I could want more than safety from him.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he says, but his hands tighten at my waist.
“I want to.”
Roman’s gaze drops to my mouth, and he kisses me again. My fingers find the fastening of my dress, fumbling with it because I can feel his hands against my body and his breath catching every time I move closer.
He finds the clasp at my back before I can. The fastening loosens beneath his fingers, and I raise my arms so he can pull the dress down. Cool air brushes my skin before his palms cover my back, warm and deliberate as they move over me.
When the dress slips away between us, Roman looks at my face first.
The tenderness in his expression almost undoes me.
“Don’t look at me like I’ll break,” I whisper.
“I’m not.”
“What are you looking at?”
His thumb moves slowly along my side. “You.”
My chest aches with something too full and soft to name without being afraid of it. I touch his face again, then bend down and kiss him.
His hands move over my back and lower, holding me closer as I shift in his lap. I can feel the hard length of him beneath his trousers, and heat rushes through me fast enough that I have to brace one hand against his shoulder.
Roman rests his forehead against mine.
I take his hand and guide it beneath the hem of my dress. His breath leaves him.
His palm slides over my thigh, then higher when I press closer. I imagined this in flashes I never let myself hold, but nothing prepared me for the heat of his hand or the way he watches me.
His fingers slide through the wetness between my thighs, and my breath catches.
Roman watches my face for one second, then his mouth finds my throat while his hand moves with slow, certain pressure. The first rush of sensation makes my hips press forward, and I grip his shoulder as the touch becomes firmer.
“Roman.”
My voice comes out broken. He lifts his head.
I pull him down by the back of his neck and kiss him, and he understands.
His fingers move inside me while his thumb circles my clit. He starts slowly, giving me time to learn the pressure, then follows the rhythm my hips ask for. I can feel him holding himself still beneath me, not out of distance, but because he’s listening with his whole body.
I bury my face against his shoulder when pleasure rolls through me too hard to stay quiet.
Roman’s hand comes to the back of my neck, holding me close while his mouth closes over my breast.
His lips pull gently at my nipple before his tongue soothes the ache, and the sensation runs straight through me.
His name leaves me again, barely there.
The pressure builds until I can’t hold still. I breathe him in while his fingers keep their slow, devastating rhythm, and when I come apart against his hand, he holds me through every tremor.
For several breaths, I stay folded over him, breathing hard against his skin. His palm remains warm between my thighs, and his mouth brushes once over my temple. Then I lift my head.
Roman’s hair has fallen across his forehead, his shirt open and his breathing uneven beneath my hands. I want him because he’s Roman, not because he can stand between me and the world.
I reach between us and unfasten his trousers.
His eyes close when my fingers find him. A low sound leaves his throat, and the heat of him fills my palm. I wrap my fingers around him slowly, watching his face as I move.
“Ivy.”
I lean down and kiss him while my hand keeps moving.
His hips lift once beneath me, then he forces them still. I slow my hand, letting him feel the pace I’m setting.
“I’m trying not to move too fast,” he says against my mouth.
“Then follow me.”
His eyes open.
I slide from his lap just long enough to pull the dress over my head completely. Roman watches me, his breathing uneven now.
I stand beside the bed in only my underclothes, the lamplight touching every part of me I’ve spent years learning to hide. For one painful second, I want to reach for the blanket.
Then Roman holds out his hand.
He isn’t trying to cover me or pull me down. He’s only there. I take it.
His fingers close around mine as I climb back onto the bed. The mattress shifts beneath our weight, and I settle above him carefully, one knee on either side of his hips while keeping his injured side clear.
Roman’s hands move to my thighs. His gaze never leaves my face.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
The words should make me want to laugh them away. Instead, I lean down and kiss him.
His body responds beneath mine, and the sound he makes against my mouth sends heat through me so fast that I have to brace one hand against his chest. Roman’s fingers tighten at my thigh, not enough to stop me, but enough that I feel how much he’s holding back.
I draw his hand beneath the last layer between us. His breath breaks.
The room narrows to his touch and the way he says my name. I don’t want to stop.
I shift closer until the heat of him presses against me through the last thin layer.
Roman frees himself from the rest of his clothes, moving carefully around the bandage.
I help him without speaking, my hands following the familiar shape of his body until there’s nothing left between us but breath and the steady beat of his heart beneath my palms.
When he’s bare beneath me, I stop.
I need him to look at me before we go any farther.
I place both hands against his chest. His heart is beating hard under my palms.
“I’m not ready for a child,” I say.
Roman goes still, but his hands stay warm on my thighs. “Then I pull out.”
“Yes.”
“If you want to stop, we stop.”
“I don’t.” I lean down until our foreheads touch. “I want you, Roman.”
His eyes close. When he opens them again, there’s nothing guarded in them, only want and the care he has always given me.
I brace one hand on his chest, reach between us to guide him where I want him, and hold his eyes.
“Now,” I say.