Rowan pushes my sleep shorts down slowly, handling me with care. His hands don’t rush. They reassure, giving me endless opportunities to change my mind, though we both know that ship has thoroughly sailed.
When the shorts are gone, he doesn’t immediately pounce the way I expect.
He breathes.
One slow inhale, nose brushing along the inside of my thigh, and I realize he’s memorizing this moment. Memorizing me.
Then finally, finally, he crawls back up my body, pressing a kiss to the underside of my jaw as he moves.
I want to tell him something—that I’m terrified, that I’m ready, that I’ve never wanted anything more in my life, that mybrain has completely abandoned me and all I have left is feeling—but words are apparently beyond me right now.
I can only find him.
He’s everywhere. His hands map my skin with careful precision. His mouth leaves promises I’m afraid to believe. The weight of him settles between my legs with an inevitability that has nothing to do with gravity and everything to do with us.
When his hips meet mine, I wrap my legs around him instinctively, pulling him closer.
He stills completely.
Eyes locked on mine.
“Tessa,” he whispers, voice completely wrecked, “I want you back.”
The confession cuts straight through me.
“Then take me,” I whisper, surprised I can form words when my entire body is ready to combust. “All of me.”
His mouth crashes into mine, overwhelming in the best way.
The kiss carries everything we didn’t say when we had the chance. Everything we didn’t fix when we could have. Everything we didn’t stop wanting, even when we tried.
He enters me slowly. So slow it borders on torture, and I’m caught between wanting to beg him to hurry and never wanting this moment to end.
My hands clutch at his shoulders, fingers digging into the muscles there, because my body remembers the shape of him even after all this time.
He groans into my mouth, completely undone.
We move together in a rhythm that feels natural. Just the two of us finding our way back to something I thought we’d lost.
He kisses my neck. My shoulder. The center of my chest where my heart is trying to escape my ribcage.
His hand slides up and finds mine, lacing our fingers together above my head, anchoring us to this moment. Thegesture is so tender, so unlike the Rowan who weaponizes everything.
He thrusts again slowly and I cry out, not from pain, but from relief.
This is Rowan making love to me with the same intensity he brought the first time, back when we were young and stupid and thought love was enough to fix everything.
Back when I mattered to him more than strategy.
And maybe I still do.
He rests his forehead against mine, breath ragged and uneven.
“I missed you,” he chokes out, the words sounding torn from somewhere deep.
“I know,” I whisper, my throat tight. “I missed me, too.”
Because that’s the truth neither of us has said—I lost myself when I lost him. And I’ve been trying to find that girl ever since.
