: Chapter 19

It takes us about thirty seconds to end up in Rowan’s bathroom which may be the most gorgeous I’ve ever been in. I expected us to use my bathroom but Rowan lifted me into his arms before I could take even a step into my bedroom and carried me down the hall to his room while his lips devoured mine.

“I’ve never been in your bathroom…or your room,” I say as he helps lift my shirt off over my head, his lips dropping to my neck and trailing kisses down my shoulder.

“Don’t remind me.” He cups my face and presses his lips to mine, pulling my bottom lip gently with his teeth. “You are not leaving this room without letting me fuck you in my bed.”

I nod excitedly. Last night unlocked something inside of me. Maybe because I was already so worked up—because as he’d guessed, I had been touching myself earlier that night—but I feel like my pussy is still throbbing from where he’d been. I want him again. And again.

He turns on the water in the massive shower but I can’t stop my eyes from staring at the marble sunken tub on the other side of the bathroom.

“You want to take a bath instead?” he asks while kneeling behind me to slide my leggings down my legs before he drags his lips over my ass cheeks, nibbling gently.

“No, but maybe next time if there’s an opportunity?”

“Next time we’re completely alone,” he says as he pulls off his shirt, and it will never get old seeing this man’s naked chest. When he slides his sweatpants down his legs revealing his bare cock, I let out a choked breath.

I slide my underwear down my legs and make my way into his shower which is large enough for a group of people. There’s a rain shower feature in the center as well as different retractable shower heads shooting water from the sides. “This shower is…so nice.”

“You’re my first guest in here,” he tells me and I gape at him because while I know he said it had been a year, I know he’s lived here since his divorce.

“Am I?”

“Why do you sound so shocked? Do you think I’m a manwhore, Miss Riley?” he jokes.

“No! I just…you’re…I know you’ve lived here since your divorce and I just assumed…”

“I rarely brought women into my house. It just felt too personal with all of the kids’ stuff here and I was never super serious about any of the women I dated in the three years since my divorce.”

“Oh.” I don’t have anything else to say, because what could I? It’s like he’s telling me I’m the last woman he’s been this intimate with since the woman he was married to. “So, this is a pretty big deal for you?”

“It is. But it doesn’t need to be for you…” he says. “Please don’t panic on me. I know I’m older and maybe you don’t want more…”

I press a finger to his mouth, silencing him. “You do remember I hadn’t had sex since…more than likely before your youngest was conceived?” I stand up on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around his neck to bring his lips to mine. “This is a pretty big deal for me too.” His lips crush against mine, pushing me against the wall, and I whimper when I feel the cool marble against my back. His lips leave mine and he trails kisses down my neck. He lifts me into his arms and my legs immediately wrap around him. When his lips find one of my breasts, he pulls my nipple between his lips and rolls his tongue around it.

“Rowan,” I say through a shaky breath when I feel his teeth graze against the nub and bite down.

“Oh, fuck me, sunshine. I love your pretty tits,” he says before switching to the other to pay it the same attention. “I haven’t had nearly enough time with them.” He flicks my nipple with the tip of his tongue before dragging his lips back up to my mouth. My pussy is resting right against his torso and I grind myself against it, trying to stimulate my clit and he groans in my mouth. “You drive me crazy; you know that?” I whimper when his fingers find my sex and glide through my folds. “You did know that, didn’t you? You know that when you walk into a room, I can barely take my eyes off of you. You’ve been here for a month and you’ve got me struggling to even focus at work because I’m thinking about you and this and the fact that you walked into my life so effortlessly and somehow both fixed everything and turned it completely upside down.”

“Oh my God.” I moan, both at his words and from the feeling between my legs as he continues to stroke me. He sets me on my feet and pulls his fingers from me, immediately sliding them into his mouth. I don’t even have to question what he’s about to do because he’s on his knees with my leg over his shoulder, instantly attaching his mouth to my pussy.

I press a hand over my mouth, still not wanting to be too loud even though the sounds of the shower should drown out any noise we make. I run my other hand through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead, and stare down at this man I’m developing stronger feelings for by the day. “This…” I moan. “This is what I was thinking about last night while I got myself off.” His eyes meet mine and I can see the smile in them as he worships my pussy with his mouth. He pushes against me harder, sliding his tongue as far inside as possible like he’s trying to touch every inch of me he can. “Oh fuck, I’m going to come.” I sigh and those words must spur him on because he moves back to my clit with faster and more uncontrolled strokes.

“Fuck yes, you are. Give me what I want and come all over my tongue and then you’re going to come all over my dick again.”

Memories of fucking him on my bedroom floor after shoving my wet underwear through his lips come back and my climax hits me hard and slow, starting at my toes and moving through the rest of me. “Oh my Goddd.” I groan as I drag my nails against his scalp. “Yes yes yes. Fuck yes.” I grind myself against his mouth through the rest of my orgasm, trying to wring out every ounce of pleasure. I let go of his hair just as he places a final kiss on me and stands up.

“Let’s finish up in here. I need to fuck you in my bed.”

We finish showering, which I’m surprised didn’t end in round two with the way Rowan used his hands to rub the soap into my skin everywhere. My breasts, my cunt, he’d even slid his hand between my ass cheeks to circle the hole back there and when I shuddered in both lust and nerves, a grin found his face that had such promise.

We’re on his bed now, and his firm hands are rubbing lotion into my skin that I made him retrieve from my bedroom. Thankfully, he had decent body wash that wasn’t a three-in-one, nor was it something so overly manly that it would have been obvious I’d used his, but I needed my specific lotion. I had been applying it myself before he grabbed it from me for being ‘a tease’ so he could do it himself.

He glides his hand up my leg, smoothing the cream into my skin. “You always smell so good,” he says pressing his nose against my ankle before placing a kiss there. The bottle of lotion hits the ground with a quiet thud as he climbs up the bed and rests on top of me.

“Can I be on top?”

“Whatever you want, sunshine.” He presses a kiss to my lips and lies in the center of his massive bed stroking his cock slowly. He’s been hard since we got in the shower and it hasn’t lessened at all so I know he’s ready for me. I replace his hand with mine as I straddle his waist and hover above him. I drag him through my slit once and he takes a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. “Don’t tease me, baby. Let me in that wet cunt.”

I push down on him and I feel like the wind is momentarily knocked out of me because this position somehow feels deeper than last night. I don’t move right away to give myself a chance to adjust to how full I am.

“You alright?” He grabs my hands, yanking me forward and I fall to his chest but keep him snug inside of me. He cups my cheek before giving me a light kiss on my lips. “Does it hurt?”

“No…just…I need a second. I’ve never done it in this position…but I’m good.”

“Take your time,” he says against my mouth and I fucking melt.

I sit back up, placing my hands on his chest for leverage as I slowly move up and down on him. Every time I take him all the way in, I grind my clit against the base of his cock and a spark shoots through me.

“That feels good, doesn’t it?” he says as his hands find my hips and he pulls me down harder with every thrust. He’s not controlling the pace, but the pressure, allowing for even more friction between us.

“Yes yes yes.” I toss my head back and pull my hair from the bun I’d had it in and my curls fall around me.

“God, you’re fucking sexy, baby.” He glides his palm up my torso dragging his thumb over one of my nipples. “I can’t believe you’re mine.”

Hearing those possessive words fall from his lips spur me on faster and I move up and down quicker as I feel the beginning of my climax brewing. “Does this work both ways?” I ask him.

“Fuck yes.” He groans. “I’m yours, sunshine. Think I have been since the first time you walked through my front door.”

“Rowan!” I cry out. I actually feel the tears forming in my eyes as my orgasm approaches and also at his words. “I’m close.”

“Me too. Take me with you, Elianna.”

Our movements are fast and erratic as we both chase our releases and my orgasm comes a beat later, like that command in his voice had the power to force it out of me. I wonder if I could come from the sound of his voice alone.

“Fuuuuuck,” he groans and I feel the delicious sensation of his dick pulsing inside of me.

“I love feeling you come,” I tell him.

I look down at where we’re connected and I stare in amazement while I lazily ride him through the aftershocks of our orgasms, watching as his cock disappears inside of me with every stroke.

“So, fucking perfect,” he murmurs and when I look up, he’s staring at the same thing I was. His eyes find mine, slowly tracing my face and then he reaches up to drag his knuckles down my cheek and the movement is so sweet I want to cry. Who knew I’d end up being so emotional after sex? “Hi, sunshine.”

The next day is Wednesday and Margot is used to coming home right after cheer practice so I can leave for my weekly meeting with my advisor, but because I’m meeting Rowan for dinner afterward, I’ve dressed up a little more than usual.

“Someone has a hot date?” Margot calls from the living room where she’s got her laptop perched on her lap.

“No…a few of us are just getting dinner after.”

“Well, you look really nice for someone just going out with school friends,” she emphasizes as she looks me over. Maybe I have gone a little overboard, but this is our first official date and I saw the way he responded to what I was wearing when I went out last weekend. I’m wearing a short but tight, long-sleeved, open-back dress. I had the foresight to put on my coat in my room so Margot isn’t aware that my dress is backless. Hopefully, it doesn’t look quite so sexy. I’m currently wearing knee-high boots, but I plan to change into black pumps once my meeting is over. I usually wear my curls naturally, but tonight I straightened them and added curls from my wand giving it a glossy blowout look.

“I’ll take that as a compliment?”

She shrugs with a smile and I feel like things have been off with Margot lately. I wonder what’s bothering her. “How are things with Gabe?” I ask her and she scrunches her nose.

“Fine.” She looks toward the television, I think as a way to end the conversation.

“Are you still together?”

“Yeah. Homecoming is in two weeks. I wasn’t dumping him before that.”

“But…you want to?”

“I don’t know. He says that whole thing with the other girl was just a misunderstanding,” she says glumly and I wonder if she doesn’t really believe that.

“I told you he was a loser,” SJ interrupts as he walks into the room eating an apple obnoxiously before jumping on the couch next to Margot and taking the remote from her.

“Hey!” She goes to reach for it but he moves to the end of the couch out of her reach. “This was a private conversation, you jerk.”

“Then have it in your room next time! Living room is fair game,” he says before changing the channel to ESPN.

“You have an entire television in the basement that is basically just yours. Go away.” She puts her laptop on the coffee table and moves closer to him to smack the back of his head before snatching the remote.

“What did he do anyway? I have friends with older brothers, you know,” he says before dragging an imaginary line over his throat.

“Nothing. God, you’re annoying. And don’t tell Dad. He’ll just get all up in arms.”

“Because he also knows your boyfriend is a loser?” SJ says through another bite of his apple.

“Okay enough,” I tell them. “Where’s Isla?”

“Here I am!” she says coming through the living room with a coloring book and a box of crayons. She drops her things to the ground and lies on her stomach before opening her book.

“Okay, so you know your Uncle will be here at about seven? The food is ready whenever you want to eat it.” I’d started chili in the slow cooker earlier this morning much to everyone’s excitement as I learned it was one of all of their favorite meals.

“You do this every week, you know. It’s not like we were never here alone before you came into the picture,” Margot says before turning the television back to what she’d been watching and I can’t exactly tell if I detect sass in her voice or not.

“Okay. No one in the house. Don’t answer the door,” I remind them.

“We know. Enjoy your dinner,” Margot says without looking at me.

Isla gets up and comes over to hug me. “Only crayons in here.” I point to where she was previously lying. “No markers.” I give her a knowing look and she puts a hand over her mouth and giggles.

“Okaaaay!” She nods. “Will you wake me up when you get home?” This is the first time she’s asked me that and I try to ignore the way my heart squeezes in my chest at her request.

“It might be very late.”

She shrugs. “That’s okay.”

“If I don’t, I’ll see you first thing in the morning.”

“Okay.” She wraps her arms around my neck and presses a kiss to my cheek. “Bye, Ellie!”

“Bye, munchkin.”

A few hours later, I’m pulling up to the Italian restaurant that Rowan picked. It’s technically still the city but more on the outskirts; we didn’t want to go somewhere too close to home in case someone recognized us. We know there isn’t anything necessarily wrong with our new relationship, but we don’t want anything to get back to the kids before we talk to them about it, and as we quickly learned from the instance with SJ, it’s that parents talk and so do the kids.

I pull up to the valet, per Rowan’s…advisement because he didn’t want me walking around at night by myself after dealing with street parking in the city, and before I can even turn the car off, my door opens. I yelp, having not noticed anyone approaching the vehicle when I see Rowan’s breathtaking smile.

“Sorry, baby, I thought you saw me. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He holds his hand out for me to take.

“Were you outside waiting for me?”

“Of course.” He cups my chin and drags his thumb gently over my bottom lip. “Hi, beautiful.”

I get out of the car and he pulls me into his arms and presses his lips to mine. He slides his tongue against mine once, touching it lightly and then pulling away before either of us can try to deepen it. “Finally. I’ve been thinking about kissing you all day.” He runs a thumb over his own mouth and it amazes me that even his simplest moves are so fucking sexy. “I love when you wear this color. Is it on me?” he asks and I shake my head.

“No, it’s a stain. We’d have to do some heavy kissing for it to transfer to you.”

“Damn. I was hoping to have your mark on me.” He winks before dragging his fingers through my strands gently. “I love this.”

He hands the valet my keys and we make it inside and up a flight of stairs to our table that’s nestled in the corner up against a window that gives us a view of the waterfront. He helps me out of my jacket and the sharp intake of air I hear behind me is just the reaction I was going for. He moves to stand in front of me before taking a step back and dragging his eyes slowly up my frame. “You look beautiful.” He smiles. “Stunning actually.”

“Thank you,” I tell him as I take a seat. “You look really nice too.” He’s wearing an all-black suit and shirt without a tie, and the top two buttons of his shirt are undone. I just want to run my lips over the exposed skin. “Better than nice, actually.” I prop my head up on my hand and eye him up and down. This man can wear the hell out of a suit.

He bites his bottom lip and leans back in his chair. “Stop it, or we won’t make it out of the restaurant.”

After the waiter comes by to bring our water and take our drink order, I broach the subject I’ve been curious about. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” he says before taking a sip of his water.

“Can you tell me what happened?” I wince, nervously. “Why did you get divorced? I’m sorry if that’s insensitive.”

“It’s not. It’s natural for you to be curious and I’ve been waiting for you to ask.” He clears his throat. “There really wasn’t one specific thing but a lot of things. We just…fell out of love, I guess? We had kids and I started working like crazy and…I definitely didn’t prioritize her and our marriage; I’ll own that. She stopped wanting to be intimate and then I stopped trying. We started fighting all the time about everything…” he winces, “and then we kind of became complacent?” He looks a little nervous before he continues. “Very much between you and me, we were planning to separate after SJ, but one night, we’d gone to an event for my job, we’d been drinking, and one thing led to another and…then we had Isla. We lasted another two years after she was born and then one day, she told me she was moving out and I…didn’t try to stop her.”

“Did you ever try counseling?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t want to try and neither did she. I had and have so much respect for her as their mother, but we didn’t grow together. Not the way a successful marriage should. She wanted more from me and I didn’t have more to give. Looking back, I wonder if I should have tried more or if it would have made a difference. If maybe we had just gone too far down separate paths that we couldn’t come back together.” A look of disappointment crosses his face and I wonder if there’s any part of him that would have been willing to try again if she were still alive.

“Do you think you just didn’t like being married?”

“No, I loved the companionship and having someone to come home to and raise a family with. Sometimes certain marriages just don’t work.”

“I see.” I nod. “Do you see yourself getting married again?”

“I’m not ruling it out,” he says. “I know I’m probably not selling myself on being a great husband…” Someone brings us our drinks, setting his scotch in front of him and my cosmopolitan in front of me before they disappear quickly. “Neither of us were happy.”

“I get it.” I nod. “Well, that’s all I wanted to know.” Hardly. I did have some other questions but I didn’t want to ruin our one night of true privacy by talking about things that could wait.

“Now I have a question.” He leans forward, dragging a finger over my knuckles before he brings my hand to his mouth and kisses it gently. “I know there’s a pretty big age gap here and I have children and…I guess I just want to know where your head is at about all of this.”

“Well, I know you have children,” I joke.

“You know what I mean. Do you just want to have fun? That’s fine if you do. I just feel like we should talk about this.”

I shake my head slowly. “No, I want more than that…with you, if that’s something you’re interested in.”

He gives me a smile that damn near takes my breath away. “I think you know I’m more than interested.”

Excitement courses through me at the thought that we are on the same page. “Maybe we just shouldn’t tell the kids yet?”

“No…” He shakes his head. “I think we should wait a bit.”

“Do you think Margot suspects something?” I fidget nervously with my hands. “It’s just a feeling.”

I see a hint of worry in his green eyes. “I thought the same, but…Margot is pretty good at not beating around the bush. If anything, she might suspect that I have feelings for you but that nothing has happened.”

“We just need to be careful, especially at home.”

When we finish the heavy talk, we move on to lighter things and I can honestly say it is the best first date I have ever had.

“So can I see you again?” he asks with a cheeky grin as we walk out of the restaurant hand in hand.

I roll my eyes. “Like another date?”

He nods. “Something like that.”

An hour later, we are in an abandoned parking lot twenty minutes from home, kissing in the back of his Mercedes like two teenagers who are sneaking around behind their parents’ backs.

“I should get back,” I tell him between kisses. I’m in his lap straddling him, grinding against his dick as we kiss and a part of me wants to take him out of his pants so we can go past dry humping. It’s nearing eleven-thirty though, and the plan was for me to come in at least twenty minutes before him.

“Okay,” he says even as he continues to kiss me.

I cup his stubbled jaw, dragging my fingertips over the skin as our mouths devour each other hungrily.

“Rowan.”

“Sunshine,” he grumbles against my neck before sinking his teeth into the skin and running his tongue over it.

“It’s getting late.”

“I know, fuck. Can I come to your room later?” he asks with a hint of desperation in his voice.

“I thought we said we were going to be careful.”

“We are. I’ll be quiet. We don’t have to do anything, I just…like being near you, and I spend so much time away from you. And what’s worse is I spend more time around you but not being able to touch you like I want to.” He drops his forehead to my shoulder and lets out a breath.

“Okay, but not until we’re sure everyone’s asleep again.”

I’d thought ahead, especially with the lipstick I was wearing, and brought makeup wipes to help fix both the inevitable ring I knew would end up around my mouth and the bright red all over his from all the kissing we’d done tonight. Once we’re both cleaned up and my lipstick is reapplied, I’m on my way back to the house.

When I walk through the front door, I see River and Margot on the couch watching a slasher movie. Well, River is watching and Margot seems to be peeking through her fingers and half-opened eyes. She yelps when I walk in and lets out a sigh when she sees it’s just me.

“This seems like a good idea to watch right before bed?” I ask, glaring at River for subjecting her to something that is clearly scaring her.

“It was her idea!” River says with a chuckle.

Margot pauses the movie and looks at me. “How was…your dinner?” She blinks at me.

“Great,” I tell her.

“Well, Row isn’t home yet,” River says as a part of our cover, “but now that you’re here, I am going to head out.”

“Thanks so much for staying so late,” I tell him and I hope he can read between the lines. Thanks for helping us tonight.

“We would have been fine for the record. It’s not even midnight,” Margot adds as she pulls out her phone.

“So, I can’t come hang out with my favorite nieces and nephew?” River shoots her an incredulous look as he slides on his leather jacket.

“We’re your only nieces and nephew,” she replies dryly.

“Which is why you’re my favorites!” He leans down and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Turn off the movie and go to bed,” he tells her.

I follow him out the front door, closing the door behind me. “Everything went okay?”

“Oh yeah, all good,” he tells me with a smile. “Where’s Rowan?”

“Around the corner.”

He chuckles. “Man, he’s really crazy about you. He hasn’t been like this in…years.”

“Like what?”

He hesitates for a bit and scratches the back of his neck. “Light, I guess you could say? He’s been so tense and stressed the last few years. Like he didn’t have time to take a breath, or like he didn’t even know how to breathe for that matter. The kids are his main source of happiness but I’m his brother and I’ve known something was missing for him for a while. Remember I told you he was drowning?” He nudges my shoulder. “It’s like you threw him a life raft in more ways than one.”

“Wow.” I already had a feeling about some of this, but it’s different hearing it from the person closest to him.

“Oh, and Isla?” He nods at the house. “She’s crazy about you too.” He pauses before starting to walk backward toward his car. “Really glad we bullied you that day at the grocery store,” he says with a final wave before he jogs down the steps.

When I’m back inside, Margot is still sitting on the couch. “You’re not going to bed?”

“In a minute. I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Of course, what’s up?” I ask and her chestnut eyes immediately begin to water. “Margot, what’s wrong?” I sit next to her on the couch and pull her hand into mine but she immediately scrunches her nose and pulls her hand back. “Isla was really upset that neither you or my dad were here to tuck her in tonight.”

My eyes dart to the stairs thinking about the tiny person upstairs that I knew I already loved while figuring out my feelings for her father. “I thought she’d be okay for one night.”

“Me too and maybe it was just a one-off, but…Isla is already really attached to you and I just hope you’re not planning to hurt my little sister.”

“Margot, you don’t have to worry about that. I would never.”

“Even if you left or something happened that made you want to leave…” She trails off. “She’s only six and she’s lost so much. Please don’t be another thing she has to get over losing,” she says before she gets up and makes her way upstairs without another word.