Page 101 of Off the Mark
“Rowan,” she whispered.
“Hmm?” I was too busy gathering her naked body against my chest in a hug for coherent answers.
“That was a pretty good first date…first real date…for two people who don’t know what they’re doing.”
I blinked my eyes open and laughed. The sound started as a low rumble, but the combination of exhaustion and euphoria kicked in, and suddenly I couldn’t stop laughing. Charlie was beaming down at me, biting the tip of her thumb, and all I could say was, “Yeah, I think we did all right.”
“Can you feel your toes?”
“I couldn’t tell you my name if I tried, gorgeous.”
She stroked the side of my face. “My precious cupcake.”
I smiled through her kiss, then contemplated running victory laps when she curled up on top of me a second later. Her breathing slowed, limbs growing heavy against mine. When she whispered, “You’re all I ever think about too, Rowan,” it was so soft I could have dreamed it.
I held her close, my lips in her hair, thinking about anvils. And glitter signs.
Thinking about my parents. Dean and Tabitha. All the times I worried I would never know what this felt like, only to realize I already did.
We just hadn’t found our way back to each other yet.
23
CHARLIE
“Tell me again why you want to leave this bed?” I asked. Sighed, really. Because I was on my side with Rowan’s broad chest pressed to my back, his fingers stroking lightly—skillfully—between my legs.
His hot breath caressed the shell of my ear. “We’ve been here since last night.”
He circled my clit with the perfect amount of pressure. I sighed again, tilting my head, and he responded with open-mouthed kisses down the column of my throat. I hummed, happy. Sleepy. Wrung out and deeply satisfied yet somehow still desperately turned on, all at the same time.
“Time has no meaning to me anymore.” I sighed. An approving rumble came from his chest. His other hand cupped my breast, my nipple pebbling against his palm, while he kept moving behind me. Rocking into my hips, teasing my clit, running his tongue up the nape of my neck.
“I’m worried we’ll get scurvy,” he said, the amusement in his voice clear. I didn’t miss how hoarse he sounded either, but then again, wehadspent the entire night reaching for each other every few hours. Fucking each other senseless in the dark, our muscles sore and skin salty with drying sweat.
And then we’d collapse into an exhausted, satiated sleep until the next time.
“If you’re so worried you shouldn’t have…shit, that’s perfect, Rowan…shouldn’t have…”
“Shouldn’t have what?” he murmured with a bite. He was using two fingers to circle my clit and two fingers to circle my nipple, and my thoughts had gone hazy again. “Am I distracting you?”
“…turned an innocent spooning session into…into…” He flexed his cock, sliding the head through my slick folds. “Oh god, don’t stop.”
“I won’t, I promise,” he whispered at my temple. My heart flipped and spun at the tenderness etched into his words. The tenderness he’d demonstrated all night, from carrying me up the stairs after our wild kitchen sex to the way I kept waking up to him holding me against his body like he was worried I would simply float away.
All of this was new to me, and my body and voice weren’t the only things feeling raw after my first night in Rowan’s bed—after our first true date, which was absent any of the usual verbal tap-dancing we both did the second we felt vulnerable.
This type of pleasure felt like freedom.
This type of craving felt like seeing and being seen.
And even if we had given in to our flirtation back in the day, part of me knew it wouldn’t have been likethis. It was everything we’d done togetherbeforethat made us this wanton. That made me feel like I would never, ever get enough of Rowan.
And therein lay the terror. Because if he decided to walk away from this, like I’d seen him do so many times before, I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover.
Behind me, he rolled on a condom before nudging the thick head of his cock at my entrance. His palm slid around to my knee, propping it on top of his thigh, opening me wide for him. His thrusts were sweet and deliberate and let me adjust to the delicious, aching sensation of being filled by him.
“Every time, it gets better,” he groaned. “How is that possible?”
