Chapter 18
eighteen
SLOANE
Rowan’s forehead is still against my sternum and his arms are around my waist, but then his exhale lands warm on my skin, and his hands shift from resting on my hips to pressing, and my breath changes.
I slide my fingers from his hair to his jaw and lift his face.
He looks up at me, tired past sleep, and I kiss him.
His grip goes from pressing to holding, and he makes a sound at the back of his throat I feel more than hear. He starts to stand — ready to take charge, the captain-reflex — but I plant my hand flat on his chest and push him back onto the stool.
“Stay,” I say.
His eyebrows lift, and the protest is gathering, the let me do it. But I push again, just enough, until his back meets the stool and he gives up on whatever he was about to do. Then I step closer, between his knees, until we’re nose to nose.
“Don’t move,” I say.
His breath stalls as I pull my sweater over my head and drop it on the kitchen floor. There’s nothing underneath but a plain black bra, and his eyes go straight to my chest. I watch him forget every other thing in his apartment.
His hand lifts to my back and his mouth finds my collarbone, then he kisses down to the curve of my breast above the bra, warm against my skin. I reach behind me and unhook the clasp.
The bra falls, his mouth moves to my nipple, and the sound that comes out of me is not quiet. But this time, with this guy, I let myself be loud, and I don’t flinch from the sound of my own voice.
As one hand slides up my back, his other arm tightens around my waist, holding me to him. I give him a long minute with his mouth on me, because the look on his face when he switches sides is wrecked.
Then I step back, and he makes a small involuntary noise. “Sloane…”
“I said don’t move.” I grab the hem of his sweats and pull. “You moved your mouth.”
“So?”
“So that’s not allowed,” I say. “And now you’re going to be punished.”
He huffs out a laugh, low and unsteady, and lifts his hips when I tug the sweats and his boxers down together. I pull his T-shirt over his head while I’m at it and toss it onto the second stool. And there he is — hard and flushed.
I don’t rush it. I wrap my hand around him and he hisses through his teeth, head tipping back, throat working. I stroke him once, slow, just to watch his face, then again, and his fingers go white-knuckled on the edge of the stool.
Then I drop to my knees.
He makes a sound that isn’t quite a word, and his hand comes toward me like he’s going to lift me up, but I catch it and press it down to his thigh. He stares down at me, chest rising and falling fast, then nods like he’s giving himself permission.
I take him into my mouth, and the sound he makes creates a hot pull low in my belly. As I go to work, I put a palm flat on his stomach because I love feeling the muscles clench every time my tongue moves on his cock.
I look up at him and his eyes are on me, glazed, his lips parted. When I take him deeper, his thighs tense on either side of my shoulders and his breath turns jagged. Then I pull off him with a slow drag of my tongue, and his whole body shudders.
“Not like that,” I say. “I want more.”
I stand, undo my jeans, step out of them, and then off goes my underwear. Then I’m standing in his kitchen completely naked in front of him. He’s on the stool with his sweats around his ankles, hands open on his thighs, looking at me like I’m something he doesn’t want to fix.
His gaze snags on the birthmark high on the inside of my left thigh — the spot his mouth always finds first — and holds there. And while I once felt self-conscious about that spot, this time I just let him look.
“Condom,” I say.
He blinks like he’s coming back from somewhere, then twists and pulls open the drawer beside him — the same drawer where he keeps his garlic, except this side has a strip of condoms tucked next to a stack of takeout menus from June’s.
“Rowan.” I stare at the drawer. “You keep condoms with the garlic.”
“Since we slept together, I keep condoms everywhere,” he says.
The way he says it — matter of fact, like a man who went to the pharmacy the day after the library and distributed them around his apartment like emergency supplies — makes my mouth twitch.
“Everywhere,” I say, with some degree of skepticism.
“Nightstand. Bathroom cabinet.” He pauses. “Gym bag.”
“You’re insane,” I say, tearing one off the strip, “and I’m going to find every one.”
I roll it onto him and climb onto him.
I brace my feet on the rungs of the stool and my hands on his shoulders, and I sink down onto him, taking every inch. The stretch fills me so completely I have to stop breathing, and his hand grips the counter edge to keep the stool stable, and it all hits me at once.
“You can touch me,” I whisper. “Just don’t — don’t take over.”
His forehead drops to mine. “Okay.”
I roll my hips, slow, again and again, finding the angle that works on this piece of furniture, my hands cupping his face. His eyes are open. He’s watching me, he has nowhere to hide, and he isn’t trying to.
I catch his jaw and make him hold my gaze. “Don’t look away.”
“Couldn’t if I tried,” he says, voice gone rough.
I kiss him and keep moving, slow and deep, my forehead against his, breathing the same air. His hands settle on my waist, light, then heavier as I lean into him, and he’s fighting it — the urge to lift me, take me to the bed, be the one doing this to me instead of with me.
I feel the moment he loses the fight — his hands loosen, and his whole body softens underneath me like something heavy has finally been set down. So I go faster, and the angle shifts, and then he’s hitting something deep inside me that makes my thighs shake.
The stool creaks and I get louder and I don’t care, because his face when I moan is something I want to see again. He buries his face in my neck, his arms wrap around my back, and he’s holding on, both of us moving together, and he trembles under me.
“Stay with me,” I say into his hair.
“I’m here.” His voice is barely holding together.
His hands slide up my back and haul me flush against him, shifting the angle so every roll of my hips drags right where I need it — and I almost laugh, because even when I’ve told him not to take over, he can’t stop looking after me.
“Rowan—”
“I know,” he says, rough against my mouth.
His hands settle at my hips — not driving, just holding me steady at the angle that’s unmaking me — and every nerve I have narrows to where our bodies meet. Then I come with my forehead pressed to his, loud enough for the neighbors to hear.
“They can just deal with it,” he says, as if sensing my thoughts.
I laugh and clench around him and feel him lose it, his hips jerking up into me twice, then once more, his arms crushing me to him, his face in my neck. Then comes a long shuddering exhale, his teeth gentle against my collarbone, and my name muffled into my skin.
We stay there for I don’t know how long, him softening inside me, his arms tight around me, his breathing evening out against my chest. The kitchen smells like garlic and sex, and his heart beats where I’m pressed against him.
“I think you broke me,” he says.
“Good.”
He huffs a laugh that turns into another long breath.
Eventually I lift off him and my legs don’t hold, but he catches my elbow, steadying me. We deal with the condom and the scattered clothes in the graceless way nobody puts in movies. He pulls his sweats back up and hands me his Halden Hockey T-shirt.
I pull it over my head, and it falls halfway down my thighs. “Bed,” I say.
I take his hand, lead him there, and we crawl in together. I expect him to lie on his back and pull me against his chest, the way he did before, but he turns into me instead, his head against my chest, one leg hooked over mine, his arm heavy across my stomach.
As I adjust to the weight of him against me, his breathing has already started to steady, like his body trusts mine. I’m sure he’s going to sleep, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing for him, given how stressed and tired he is.
But then he speaks. “I don’t know how to do this part,” he says.
“What part?”
“The part where someone else is the strong one.”
I stroke his hair. “You’re doing fine.”
“I’m lying on you like a Labrador.”
“And doing it beautifully.”
He laughs, just once, and I feel it in my chest.
I think about what I want to say, but I’m not sure whether to say it to him or not. The only light is from the streetlamp outside, slanting across the duvet, and his hand finds mine and holds it.
“If I’m not useful, if there’s no plan, I don’t know what I am,” he says after a minute.
“Rowan—”
He cuts me off. “It sounds insane out loud.”
“It doesn’t.”
He’s quiet for a long time. His thumb moves against the back of my hand.
“My ex, Nina,” he says. “When she ended it, she said I was everybody’s safe place and nobody’s actual partner.” His voice has gone flat. “I think she was right.”
I close my fingers around his. “I’m not asking you to be safe. I’m asking you to be here.”
“Okay,” he says, then exhales loudly.
Neither of us sleeps, though we try. I feel him shift twice, then resettle, his breath going shallow each time like his mind keeps catching on something. After a while, he sighs against my collarbone and says he can’t sleep, and I say I can’t either.
We drag ourselves back out of bed, him still in sweatpants and me still in his T-shirt and nothing else, and shuffle back into the kitchen barefoot. He goes to the pan with the leftover pasta and eats it cold standing at the counter.
“You’re an animal,” I say.
“Hockey player.” He grins. “Same thing.”
That’s when the front door opens.
It opens quickly, like whoever’s coming in has done it a hundred times — because apparently crashing at Rowan’s after a night out is standard operating procedure, which is information I could have used an hour ago — and then I hear Luca’s voice.
“—told you the Uber would be—”
Then he comes around the corner into the kitchen, with Seb behind him and Theo bringing up the rear. When they see us, all three of them stop at the same time, and then, one after another, they do the math.
Me in Rowan’s T-shirt, barely covering my ass.
Rowan shirtless.
Rowan’s hair.
My hair.
“Oh,” Luca says.
Seb, very slowly, sets the spare key down on the table.
“We’ll be at June’s,” Seb says, in his usual flat tone.
The three of them turn around in formation and walk back out, and through the door I hear Theo say, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” all the way down the hall before it clicks shut again.
And I lose it completely.
I’m laughing so hard I have to grab the counter — the loud, uncontrollable kind that hurts your stomach. Rowan is laughing with his head tipped back, and he keeps catching my eye and setting me off again.
When we finally stop, I cross the kitchen.
I put my hand flat on his chest, over his heart. His skin is warm and the knock under my palm is steady, and I don’t say anything, and neither does he. His eyes close, his hand comes up and covers mine, and he breathes out slowly.