He kisses me back, but it feels tentative, like he’s trying to keep me away even though he doesn’t want to.

I drag his hand across my skin. His breath shudders when I stop at my breast, the piercing at my nipple resting in the center of his palm. A conflicted groan escapes Rowan’s control. His hand presses harder to my flesh. But the kiss is still not the same as it was in the barn, not when it felt like we’d escaped one fate to fall into a better one.

So I move his hand. I pull it to my sternum. Glide it down my skin. Let his hand slip into the water, slow and gentle over my navel. I know he likes that piercing too. I could see it in his eyes when he watched me in the mirror.

Our kiss breaks when I keep going lower. His breath floods my senses, the hint of bourbon a phantom between us. I inhale the scent and trap it in my lungs as my pulse hums in my ears.

I press Rowan’s palm to the apex of my thighs and hold it there.

He sucks in a ragged breath.

“Sloane…is that…”

My hand floats away as I let him explore. His fingers find my clit and the triangle piercing there and I bite down on my bottom lip at the burst of sensation. He then moves down to the symmetrical outer labia piercings where the bars on each side are capped with small titanium balls. By the time he reaches the fourchette piercing, he’s nearly vibrating with tension.

“Out of the fucking bath,” he growls as he grips my good arm and hauls me to my feet. A wave of water sloshes over the edge of the tub and soaks the bottoms of his jeans, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“But I just got in, as instructed I might add.”

“I don’t fucking care.”

I give him an innocent smile, one that earns me a sharp and heated glare. “I thought you said you needed to take care of me.”

“And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

The moment my second foot is out of the tub and touches the bath mat, he lifts me into his arms. He doesn’t give me a towel, doesn’t wrap me in anything but his embrace. Fat drops of suds slide from my body and drift to the floor as I soak his shirt.

Rowan yanks the door open with more force than necessary and marches toward the bed.

“But I’m no fucking angel, Sloane.”

He sets me down on the edge of the bed and steps away. His chest strains against his wet shirt with every breath. Arms folded, he glares down at me where I sit, my legs crossed, my good arm clutching the injured one to my body as the water cools my skin.

“Show me,” he demands.

My brows hike as my heart tries to spear itself against my ribs. “Show you?”

“You heard me. Get up on that bed and spread your legs and show me.”

“I’ll make it wet—”

I don’t even get my last word out and he’s in my face, barely an inch away, his hands bracketed to either side of my hips. “Do I look like I give a fuck? Do you really think I care?” My skin tingles as though begging for his caress, but I’m sure he knows it, can sense it in every ragged breath that passes my lips. He’s careful not to touch me with anything but the fire burning in his eyes. “I’m done running around this, Sloane. I’ve wanted you for four years. And you’re going to show me what I’ve been missing.”

Rowan doesn’t move as I slowly uncross my legs and release my hold on my body to brace myself with my right hand. I slide up farther on the bed and he looms over me, his fists pushed into the edge of the mattress and his eyes hooked to mine until he seems satisfied that I’ve made it far enough. When I stop in the center of the bed, Rowan stands straight and crosses his arms once more, his jaw clenched.

“Spread your legs, Sloane.”

His eyes stay fused to mine as I let out an unsteady breath. My left heel slides across the mattress, then my right, my knees still bent and my upper body braced off the mattress with my elbow. Rowan’s eyes still haven’t left mine even though I’m bared to him, as though he’s torturing himself, denying himself of his desire to look down.

“Wider.”

Heat surges in my core as I shift my legs a little farther apart. An ache builds beneath my bones, an emptiness that begs to be filled. Every demand Rowan makes is fuel, every word incendiary.

“Wider, Sloane. Stop trying to hide from me because I promise you now, it’s not going to work.”

I swallow. My legs spread to the point of discomfort.

A beat of time passes before Rowan’s gaze unlinks from mine to travel down my body. I feel it in every inch of flesh, the weight of his desire as it travels over me, his thinning restraint like fire beneath my skin. His attention settles on the apex of my thighs as the muscles of his forearms tense.

“The clit piercing. Tell me.”

He doesn’t look up when I pause. He just waits, watches. “I was eighteen,” I say. “It was my second body piercing, after my navel. It hurt, of course, but not as bad as I thought it would. Once it healed, it helped, I think. With orgasms.”

“You couldn’t orgasm before?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t have the right…situation…up until that point. But it felt like it gave me control.” I remain still as the muscle in Rowan’s jaw jumps. His eyes are dark, hooded. He knows just enough about my past to cement the gaps in his knowledge with his own imagination. “The labia piercings I got when I was twenty. I liked the way it looked. I know they’re small, but somehow they remind me of armor. Maybe that doesn’t make sense.”

“It does,” he says as his eyes anchor to mine.

I give him a faint smile that fades in a heartbeat. “The last one, the fourchette, I got that a few months before I met you. It just made me feel more confident. And I thought a partner might like it too.”

Rowan’s eyes are a lightless void, his voice a deep and gravelly rasp when he says, “Did they?”

My gaze travels across the room to land in the shadows. I don’t look at him when I shake my head. “I don’t know. I haven’t been with anyone since I met you.”

Those words are met with silence. They hang in the air. They consume the oxygen in the room. When my gaze lifts from the shadows, it collides with Rowan’s and I see it, the exact moment his restraint detonates.

“Why not,” he demands.

I shake my head again.

“I told you already. Stop hiding. It’s not going to work with me, not anymore. You want this? You want me? Then fucking tell me, Sloane.” Rowan’s arms unravel from his chest. His hands lay on my knees, steady on the tremor in my bones to capture the tectonic shift that’s cracking me apart. “You fucking tell me, so that you know when I ruin you for all other men, it’s what you asked for. Tell me—”

“You,” I say. Every breath shudders through my lungs. “I met you. I didn’t want anyone else. Just you. I only want you.”

There’s no amusement or relief in his eyes, only predatory intensity. He looks at me the way a tiger would a lamb.

A meal to be devoured.

The mattress dips as he shifts one of his legs onto the bed and then the other to kneel between my spread calves.

“Remember what you just said when you think you can’t possibly come again. Because you will. We’ve got four fucking years to make up for.” Rowan sinks down between my thighs, his calloused palms wrapped around my tender flesh to keep me bared wide open. Every exhalation warms the moisture gathered at my entrance. His eyes still hold mine from the length of my body, a gravitational pull I can’t escape from. “Pick a safe word. Do it now.”

I swallow. Hard. “Chainsaw.”

He huffs a laugh, a burst of warmth against my core. “How fitting, love. Now be a good girl and find something to grab on to…” he says, then passes one long, slow lick over my center. “...Because I’m about to destroy you.”

OceanofPDF.com

17

OceanofPDF.com