His rhythm stays steady. My legs tighten around him as the pleasure builds, coiling low in my belly, burning through me, every nerve ending focused on where we’re connected. I’m strung so tight I might snap.
Rowan’s mouth finds mine again, but this kiss is different. Messier. His tongue moves with desperation, chasing something he’s kept locked away for years and finally giving in to everything he’s been pretending not to feel.
I feel it everywhere. In the way his hips grind deeper, searching for something more than just physical release. In the way his jaw clenches, holding back words that want to escape
“Tessa,” he breathes, his forehead pressed to mine. “Look at me.”
I do.
And what I see there breaks me more than his hands or mouth ever could.
It’s all there in his eyes—no sarcasm, no carefully maintained control. Just Rowan, raw and exposed.
My Rowan.
I cup his face with trembling hands, thumbs sweeping over the edge of his jaw where that muscle always jumps. “I see you,” I whisper, the words barely audible. “I’ve always seen you.”
He thrusts again, slower now. Deeper. Chasing something with me, not just inside me.
The pleasure starts to crest, and I bite my lip hard, breath catching, trying to hold on to some shred of control.
“Don’t hide from me now,” he murmurs, his voice rough and shaking with his own loss of control. “Let me see you come.”
I try to answer, try to make some sarcastic comment about him being bossy even now, but I’m already gone.
It crashes through me with devastating force. My hips buck against him. My eyes slam shut without my permission?—
“No,” he growls. “Eyes on me.”
I force them open, and let him see everything. The tremble. The surrender.
And when I come, it’s with his name torn from my throat and his eyes locked on mine with an intensity that says he’s been waiting years to see me fall apart for him again.
He follows seconds later, and watching him lose control is almost as overwhelming as my own release.
One last thrust that goes impossibly deep.
One strangled sound that might be my name.
His whole body goes rigid, every muscle tense as he finishes, still buried inside me, still watching me with that devastating focus. Holding himself perfectly still while he shakes apart, using my eyes as his anchor.
And when it’s over, when we’re both shaking and gasping, he doesn’t look away. Doesn’t retreat into his usual armor. Doesn’t make it safe with distance or sarcasm.
He just stays.
We lie there, foreheads touching, hearts hammering out of sync. The silence carries everything we haven’t said that brought us to this moment.
Until finally, he whispers, so quiet I almost miss it:
“I never stopped loving you.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rowan
The silk slides through my fingers for the third time, and I let it fall. The tie isn’t crooked. Nothing about it needs adjusting. But I’m nervous.
Behind me, I can hear Tessa through the bathroom door, her voice drifting out in fragments of off-key Billie Eilish. She’s singing like she’s happy. Actually happy. Not the performed kind she’s been wearing all weekend, but the real thing that used to make her glow from the inside out.
