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“See? Now, do you understand? It’salreadynot enough, and I haven’t even fucked you.”
“I thought you weren’t interested infucking?” she taunted.
Harrison answered with a warning look. “Don’t.”
She loved it when his cool veneer slipped a bit, but this time, something told her not to push. “No, I don’t understand, damn it, and if you’re trying to teach me a lesson, you’re failing. And I’m enjoying it.”
“There’s no lesson, Rowan. I’m trying to show you how I feel, in a language you seem to prefer.”
She frowned and shook her head. “When you want more, you have more sex. More orgasms.”
“I get myself off whenever I want. So do you, I’m sure.” He swallowed hard, sweeping a hungry gaze down her body. He moved back up the bed to sit beside her near the headboard. “That ache you feel, still wanting more? I feel it too, but for me it’s about more than physiological release. We could do every sex act known to humankind, but if that is all I ever have of you, I will spend the rest of my life wanting more.” He dragged a hand over his mouth. “Christ, I think I already will.”
Rowan sat up too, protectively pulling his T-shirt down between her legs. “I don’t know how to respond to that.”
“Let me frame it as a question, then. What if you walked out of this room, and we never saw each other again?”
His question had teeth, the sharp, needling kind that left tiny bleeding wounds before a person realized they’d even been bitten. Rowan frowned.
“It’s not a trick question. You got off, right? You wanted an orgasm, you got it. Several,” he said, and Rowan didn’t miss the subtle, smug satisfaction in his tone. “Would this have been enough? What we did tonight? Is this really all you want from me?”
Rowan trusted science, and the idea of sex as a biological imperative. She trusted her own raw, organic power when she got naked with someone. Sex made sense. It had no messy nuance to it, no wondering who was more invested, who was feeling more feelings. It was hormones and nerve endings and physical satisfaction. Sex was exactly what it was, and nothing more.
When feelings weren’t involved, it didn’t matter if the other person was fucking someone else on the side, or ten someone elses.
It was simple biology, and biology didn’t have feelings.
And after the orgasm, it was over.
Rowan didn’t date, she didn’t do afterglow, and mornings after were absolutely out of the question, no matter how good the sex had been. She didn’t hold hands in public, or share popcorn at the movies, or remember birthdays, or meet parents. She had a no-tolerance policy on expectations. Harrison was trying to establish expectations. He was asking for a pear from a lemon tree. What he wanted,needed—she didn’t have it to give.
Noah Tully had left scorched earth in his wake. Made her shallow, and she didn’t care. Far less chance of anyone drowning that way.
She could walk away from what they’d begun tonight. Shehadto walk away. Even if they did this, every night, for months.
“What if I don’t have any more to giveyou?” she countered.
“You think I don’t know what you’re doing when you answer questions with a question like that?” His words were sharp and fast. He sighed hard through his nose, bit his teeth together, and palmed her kneecap. “Tellme,” he urged, “tell me you feel what is happening here.”
His hand was clenched hard into her muscle, hard enough her skin dimpled inward beneath his fingertips.
She looked down at the T-shirt twisted around her fists. “I don’t know.”
Harrison watched her for a long time through narrowed eyes. Then, he snatched his hand back from her leg, vaulted off the bed, and gathered the bedcovers. With a rippling flip of the linens, he covered her, then tossed the discarded boxer shorts to her on his way to the door.
“Let me know when you decide on an answer.”
Rowan pulled blankets to her chin as the door clicked gently closed. She’d been completely outmaneuvered, but it had very little to do with sex, and everything to do with some acutely alarming emotions. She wasn’t completely ignorant. Thereasonthose orgasms felt so good was because Harrison Brady had given them to her.
Hell yes, she felt it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Rowan
It was still too early in the spring for the grapevines to leaf out, but their bareness had an expectant beauty, studded as they were with swelling buds. With the help of the sheep, Rowan and her crew had cleared the non-native plants in each vineyard block, and soon, they’d plant seeds of a native cover crop. It would bloom later in May, carpeting the rows with tiny purple flowers.
Compared to the terrible condition of those same fields last September, seeing the land poised for an eruption of clean new life gave Rowan the same kind of satisfaction she got from her most difficult academic work. The work she did here was arduous—challenging for her bodyandher brain—but none of it required those Ph.D. letters beside her name.
