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Jared knew what bone-deep tiredness felt like and he had a sneaking suspicion that Rowan was no stranger to it either. He turned off the big screen and the lights and let the stars shine down on them. He dragged pillows towards them, pulled a cover over, tucked her into his side until they fitted together like pieces of a puzzle, and followed her into oblivion.
And the little bird inside his chest—it was singing.
Rowan woke before dawn—it was just her way. She’d been doing it for too many years to adjust easily to waking at a later time.
This time, however, she woke to a sea of pillows and blankets, the sky overhead, and a warm weight at her side was—Jared West. And he was a possessive bastard, even in his sleep, if the hand splayed over her heart was any indication. He hadn’t pressured her into anything last night. In fact he’d given her what she’d needed. A place to unwind from the pressures of a hellish week, permission to lie back and breathe.
She might have wanted soul-stealing sexual relations, but he’d given her exactly what she’d needed.
She rolled onto her stomach and moments later he followed, awake and tracing gentle fingers down her spine.
‘Did you sleep well?’ he murmured.
‘Mmm.’
‘Want to not sleep any more?’
‘Mmm.’
How was that even a question, given that his lips were following his fingers down her spine, soft and dragging and wholly reverent? A breaking dawn and the promise of lovemaking. She arched back against him, helpless in her longing for him.
‘Want you to be in me.’
He savoured her—there was no other word for it—and she surrendered to the blinding pleasure and the warmth.
He curled his hands around her thighs once he’d finished exploring every dip of her back. He lifted her to his mouth and for a while she thought he might be a sex god. And then he released her, and then blanketed her again as he slid into her, slow and easy, and then she could have sworn he was a sex god.
He rode her slowly, teased and tormented, built a stairway to the sky for her. She climbed every step of it. And in the light of a new day they climaxed together.
This wasn’t sex as she knew it.
This was different.
‘Children,’ Rowan said to Jared later that afternoon, over a meal of barbecued ocean perch and mixed salad, served on plastic plates on the deck of Jared’s yacht. ‘What’s your view on them?’
‘I like them,’ he told her. ‘Got nothing against them. Not sure I want any.’
‘You’re young yet. This is only to be expected. Do you envision them anywhere in your future?
‘What if I get it wrong?’ He gestured with his fork, barefoot and expansive, looking ever more carefree. ‘If I fall down on the parenting job the child wears it. Parenthood requires careful consideration.’
Indeed it did.
‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Do you want children?’
‘My parents are really bad role models. My grandfather, by his own admission, was neglectful of my mother, and my mother continued the tradition. I figure that if I remain childless the cycle will stop.’
‘And I figure that for bull. Do you want children? If you had a loving family to raise them in … a village full of caring people to help you … would you want them then?’
Her hesitation told him many things.
‘I’d still have to make a lot of lifestyle changes,’ she murmured. ‘And I’m getting a little old for child-bearing.’
A valid point—but not insurmountable, by his reckoning.
‘And I’ve never really met a man I’ve felt a compelling urge to have children with,’ she added quietly. ‘I don’t know what kind of parent I’d make. What about my job? You know the hours I keep. It took me five days and two IOUs to get this weekend off.’
Jared frowned.
‘I gave up on the idea of motherhood when I got the directorship,’ she told him. ‘I know you don’t think that the age gap between us matters, but maybe my ambivalence when it comes to having children will matter to you.’
‘You’re pushing me away?’
‘No.’ She looked troubled for the first time that weekend. ‘I’m letting you in. Telling you about the hopes and dreams I still harbour, as well as the ones I’ve let go of.’
Jared digested that, as she’d meant him to all along, and then he looked out over the ocean and realised that fatherhood held no appeal for him if the woman by his side didn’t want to be a mother. It was one of the more easy decisions he’d made in quite some time.
‘How do you feel about being an aunt?’
‘I would make a really good aunt,’ she told him solemnly. ‘Alas, I have no siblings.’
