Chapter 25
CIARAN
“Teach me.”
We’ve been standing here in my room for hours now, restoring the Noctis while moonlight spills across black lacquer and tarnished silver detailing that looks older than half the academy itself.
The curtains shift softly in the night breeze, and a bottle of whiskey sits open between us with two abandoned glasses beside scattered tools and dust-covered cloths.
Rowan is still focused on the bow, a small crease between his brows as he studies it with complete concentration. He hasn’t stopped touching the instrument since we brought it back to the mansion, and I haven’t stopped watching him.
Finally he looks up, blinking slowly as if only now registering my words. “What?”
“I said teach me.” I gesture toward the Noctis. “Mom gave up after three lessons. Maybe you won’t.”
A snort escapes him, but he keeps staring at me like he’s trying to decide whether I’m serious.
“I’ll sit here.” I drop into the chair and spread my legs comfortably, grinning when I catch his eyes flicking toward the bulge pressing against my pants before jerking back up to my face.
Light. I’m already hard. Apparently the combination of Rowan, whiskey, and watching him obsess over the Noctis is enough to wreck my self-control.
Rowan hesitates, adjusting his grip on the bow before looking back at me. Something cautious passes across his face which, frankly, only makes me want him more. “You’re impossible,” he mutters.
“And yet you keep ending up in my bed.” My mouth lifts before my gaze drifts back toward the Noctis between us. “I could ask whether this thing is part of whatever the hell you came to Sero looking for.”
“I...” He stops, the word dying in his throat.
My grin fades. “Or whether it has something to do with whoever was following you.”
His eyes drop to the Noctis resting between his hands, thumb sliding slowly across the dark wood before lifting back to me. “Don’t do this tonight.”
I hold his gaze. “Perhaps you’re right. If I start tonight, I’m probably not going to stop. Now come here, mouse, and teach me how to play this instrument. After all, it’s yours now.”
Heat flashes across his face before he finally crosses the room toward me, the oversized sleeves of my shirt hanging over his hands while moonlight catches softly against his hair.
Fuck me, I could watch him walk around my room forever.
Rowan steps directly between my spread legs and carefully hands me the Noctis first, treating it with almost painful reverence as I settle the instrument awkwardly against myself.
He rolls his eyes, but I catch the corner of his mouth twitching before he steps behind me instead. The second his body brushes against my back, my brain stops cooperating.
Rowan reaches around me slowly, one hand covering mine against the neck of the Noctis while the other adjusts my grip on the bow with impossible patience. “Relax your wrist,” he murmurs near my ear.
I don’t think he realizes what the fuck that voice does to me. Or maybe he does.
His fingers slide carefully between mine, guiding the movement inch by inch until the bow finally settles properly against the strings, and all I can focus on is the warmth of his chest against my back and the soft concentration in his breathing every time he moves my hands.
“Like this.”
My heartbeat stutters when his mouth nearly brushes my throat, and my voice is rough when I say, “Mouse, I’m already so fucking hard, and we haven’t even started.”
“Stop,” he breathes, the command undermined by the way his body gives in to the proximity. He goes still behind me, and then I feel his heartbeat stumble against my back.
For a second, neither of us moves. The bow slips against the strings, pulling a low, unsteady note from the Noctis that hangs between us in the twilight of my room.
Rowan exhales shakily behind me. He tightens his fingers over mine and guides the movement slower this time, and another note unfurls through the room, smoother now, deeper, its resonance lingering long after the sound itself fades away.
He reaches around me again, fingertips brushing over the side of the Noctis before adjusting something near the pedal assembly. “Easy. Luneth hates it when people push too hard on the left side.”
He freezes, heat already crawling up his neck like he knows exactly what he just said. But I heard him loud and fucking clear, and nothing, not even his pouty mouth, can stop the smirk pulling at my face.
“Mouse. Did you just call the Noctis Luneth?”
“No.” He shakes his head, cheeks still flushed.
“You absolutely did.”
“I meant the mechanism.”
“Mm. Luneth.” I glance down at the instrument. “And what does she think of me?”
Rowan glares at me. “She thinks you’re taking a very long time to learn.”
I grin. “Funny. I think I’m learning her owner pretty fast.”
Rowan makes a strangled sound before looking away sharply and reaching for the tuning keys like they’ve become the most important thing in the room.
I let him avoid the subject—for now that is—and focus back on the instrument.
The Noctis hums beneath my hands, the sound deep and resonant, vibrating through my chest and settling somewhere beneath my ribs. Rowan’s chest rises against my back while the music curls through the dark, and I understand why he loves this thing so much.
It doesn’t feel like we’re playing it anymore. It feels like the Noctis is listening back.
Something about the sound tears open a memory. Small hands. Mom bent over dark strings beneath low lamplight. The glow of the mansion before everything changed. Then flashes of shouting, breaking glass, Dad dragging me toward a door while the music cuts off too fast.
Light, I haven’t thought about that night in years.
“Mouse,” I groan under my breath, letting my head tip back against Rowan’s shoulder, exposing my throat as a rough sound escapes me.
Rowan stills. Then his hand slides slowly over mine, grounding me back into the present while the resonance keeps vibrating through both of us at once.
And maybe that’s the part wrecking me most right now. The fact that every time something inside me starts splintering apart, Rowan somehow pulls me back together without even realizing he’s doing it.
“Where did you go?”
The question catches me off guard.
Where did I go? To a moment I don’t want to relive.
The memory is still sitting half-open inside my chest, raw enough that I can barely tell where the sound of the Noctis ends and Rowan begins anymore.
I turn my head and catch his mouth before he can say anything else. The second Rowan kisses me back, the bow slips from our fingers, forgotten against the strings, as I haul him closer, refusing to leave so much as an inch between us.
Rowan lets me pull him closer between my legs, kissing me like he’s still learning me, and somehow that destroys my self-control more than if he knew exactly what he was doing.
I’ve stopped pretending my body doesn’t react to him anymore.
The second he gets close, something in me gives in automatically.
Rowan is sitting in my lap and somehow it still isn’t close enough.
How the hell does he taste this good?
He always acts so shy about it afterward too, like he doesn’t realize what he does to me every time he breathes against my mouth. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here trying not to lose my fucking mind because Rowan has somehow become a habit I can’t seem to break.
A strange tightness twists through me at the thought that someone else could ever know this side of him. I will never let that happen.
Rowan kisses the way he plays the Noctis, careful at first, almost shy in his concentration, and then fierce once he loses himself inside it. He doesn’t overpower. He lingers. Learns. Stays there until I’m the one unraveling beneath his mouth.
And Light, maybe that’s the problem. Nobody’s ever made me feel this wanted while still handling me like something worth being careful with.
Where I usually go for control, Rowan forces me to slow down without even trying. He kisses me into distraction, licking slowly into my mouth like he’s memorizing every rough breath and every slip in my composure.
He’s ruining me without even realizing it.
Before I can think better of it, I grab his waist and pull him into my lap. Rowan gasps against my mouth as the Noctis bow slips from our fingers and clatters forgotten to the floor.
“No... please...”
“Don’t.” My voice comes out rougher than I intended. “If you keep kissing me like that, I’m going to completely lose my mind.”
Heat flashes across his face. Which, apparently, only makes me harder.
I yank his shirt over his head and fling it somewhere across the room before his hands find mine too, dragging my shirt over my head with a level of urgency that hits me right in the chest.
His eyes drift over me afterward, lingering a second too long across my stomach, my chest, the stupid little mole near my ribs, and Light, the way he looks at me might actually kill me.
I get distracted watching him, only realizing after a few seconds that his fingers are moving hesitantly over me, exploring instead of touching with any real confidence. The innocence of it drives me fucking insane. I keep forgetting I’m Rowan’s first guy. Technically his first anything.
Fuck, I love how focused he looks, brows pulled together, lips parted, shallow breaths slipping out while I can feel his growing hardness against my thigh.
“You like looking,” I murmur with a grin, flexing once just to watch his eyes follow the movement.
Rowan exhales sharply through his nose before looking back up at me. “You’re showing off.”
“Guilty as charged.”
His fingers pause near the button of my jeans, lingering there before his eyes flick back to mine again. “You do this on purpose.”
“Maybe.” I cock my head. “Want me to stop?”