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“Do you think, when you’re not around, I’m not thinking about you?” he said. “You think, if I go back to my room right now, I’ll take off these fancy clothes, slide calmly into that big bed, maybe read a little bit? Then fall into some kind of easy, restful sleep, where I don’t dream of you?”
Oh, god.
Rowan shuffled backward and stumbled on the shoe she’d carelessly thrown behind her. As she toppled, he caught her by a handful of sweatshirt and pulled her into him. Harrison swallowed audibly. A long, controlled breath from his nose warmed her top lip, the scent and heat of him pluming around her. She smelled brandy in the exhale.
“Are you drunk?” she blurted.
“I swear, I have never been more lucid in my life.”
He breathed deep and measured, but her own lungs felt ragged, ineffective. Harrison was as steadfast as she was turbulent—like an ancient reef, and she was the tide. Her pulse slammed so hard she felt it in the roots of her teeth.
“I made a mistake.” He released her. “I shouldn’t have made this transactional. You don’t need to say words you’re not ready to say.” He cupped her face, fingers slipping into the curls behind each ear. “Right now, all I need is a yes, and I’m all in.”
The tip of his nose grazed the side of hers. “I—still plan to leave,” she managed. “Eventually. This won’t change that.”
His pupils eclipsed the irises of his eyes, crowding out all but a thin rim of smoke around the edge. “I’d rather have you now and miss this for the rest of my life, than never have you at all.”
Rowan had never experienced the depth of feeling surging through her in that moment. It was transcendent, bigger than simply being physiologically turned on. Something in her brain had been activated—a key inserted into a lock she hadn’t known existed. Her insides strained against the confines of her skin, like she’d been filled with helium. Surely, in seconds, she’d float away.
For this man, her inner fortress was really just a Jenga tower made of cheap glass, and tonight, he’d brought a wrecking ball.
“I want this,” was all she managed before Harrison’s mouth collided with hers. They moaned in unison, and Rowan’s entire core liquefied.
He made love to her mouth with his own, deep and slow, though tension vibrated in his body like a struck clock-tower bell. He clutched her hair in his fists. Now that he’d surrendered to the desire he’d been restraining for months, it was like he was afraidshe’dbe the one to change her mind.
Rowan tilted her jaw, opening herself fully to his kiss. He tasted her, consumed her. The entirety of her consciousness becamehim. The slide of his tongue, mating with hers. The urgent ridge of his arousal against the curving bone of her hip. The clean, carnal musk of him, the impossible heat of him.
The way she trusted him.
The way she trustedherselfwith him.
He guided her the rest of the way into the room until the backs of her legs hit the mattress. In seconds, he toed off his shoes and socks, and her ugly sweatshirt hit the floor. His shirt and pants tumbled after. For a moment, they stared each other down in the dim light coming from the room’s little foyer.
Rowan wanted to run her hands along every honey-dustedbit of him. There were thicker bands of muscle on his upper arms that hadn’t been there in December, and his ribs were no longer visible through his skin. The generous thickness inside the front of his low-slung heathered briefs made her vision blur.
Harrison didn’t give her long to look. Bare skin ignited against bare skin as he propelled them both onto the bed. The weight and heat of him was elemental. On his hands and knees above her, he buried his face under her jaw, inhaled her like she was oxygen. Rowan trailed fingertips down his belly. She palmed the insistent erection arcing sideways in his tight underwear. The fabric was damp at the head’s conspicuous outline. His hips thrust hard into her hand, and he gasped like she’d scorched him.
“You good?” she asked.
“Too good.” He sucked in a shaky breath and lowered his body onto hers, locking her hand between his dick and her own thigh. “Thinking about baseball.”
Rowan sank teeth into the curve of his shoulder. “You’ve said that before.”
He laughed into her hair, a short, distracted sound. “Need a minute.”
She withdrew her hand, reveling for a moment in the heat of him, the feel of him pressed into her thigh. When he finally raised his head and met her eyes, the frenzy was gone, replaced by intense, hungry purpose.
A thick lock of hair fell over his forehead. She was dying to spread her legs wide and wrap around him like a vise, but he pushed back and propped up on his elbows, all focus diverted to her breasts.
“We’re still wearing—” Rowan choked when the flat of his tongue swept her nipple, “too many clothes.”
He reached down between their bodies, hooking a finger into the wet lower edge of her underwear. “These?” Rowan felt a slight tremor in his hand.
She dug her hands into the stretchy fabric covering his ass.“Yes.”
A breath later, he sat up and skimmed the panties down her legs. The mattress bounced as he rolled off the bed, and he pulled his own underwear off in the same sleek movement. Rowan heard the tinkle of his belt buckle when he picked his pants up from the floor. Then, the faint rustle of a condom wrapper.
Rowan propped up on her elbows, taking him in as he stood beside her. Champagne brown hair fanned out like wings across his chest. It narrowed to a thin trail between the notches of his hips, and terminated in the hair above his prominent arousal.
