Page 77 of At First Dance
He follows with a growl, burying himself deep, coming with a rough cry of my name.
Rowan collapses over me, both of us panting, trembling. After a long moment, he lifts his head and brushes his lips over mine.
“I’m not letting you go again,” he whispers.
I don’t reply. I kiss him back like I believe it. Like I want to. Because I do.
The silence that follows is anything but empty. It’s thick with the scent of sweat and skin and something sweeter—like peace if it had a heartbeat.
Rowan lies beside me, one arm flung across his eyes, the other stretched toward me, palm open like he’s not done touching me yet. I turn on my side, pressing my cheek into the pillow, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. His breath is still ragged. His skin glistens. And there’s a crooked smile tugging at the corner of his mouth that makes something low in my stomach flutter all over again.
“Are you smiling because of the orgasms?” I murmur, teasing.
His lips twitch, but he doesn’t open his eyes. “All of them. And also because I finally got you in my bed.”
My cheeks flush. “So you have been imagining it.”
“Since the day you stole my sweatshirt and turned my world inside out.”
I let that settle. His world. Inside out. There’s a weight to those words I’m not ready to lift.
I stare at the wooden beams above the bed, tracing the lines in the grain with my eyes and grounding myself before I turn the conversation too serious.
“I thought you were going to keep pretending nothing happened,” I say, voice quiet now. “After the fire… I heard you. In the shower.”
His arm drops from his face. Our eyes meet.
He doesn’t flinch or look away. “I thought about you the entire time. You don’t want to know how many nights I’ve done that.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks again, this time from something deeper than embarrassment. From want. From ache.
“Then why didn’t you say anything?”
He sighs and turns toward me, resting on his side. His hand finds my waist, fingers smoothing over my skin like he needs that anchor.
“Because I was scared,” he admits. “I’ve been living in the past. Letting old scars tell me what I do and don’t deserve. But this?” He dips his head, pressing his lips to the spot just below my jaw. “You? I’m not scared anymore.”
My throat tightens.
God, he says things like that and makes it feel real. Like we’re not going to break under the weight of it all.
I pull the blanket up to my chest and nestle closer, my leg sliding over his. “I wasn’t sure you wanted me here.”
“I always wanted you here,” he says. “Even when I didn’t know it.”
We lie there for a while, tangled in soft sheets and softer truths. His fingers draw lazy circles on my hip. My hand rests on his chest, feeling the slow, steady beat of his heart.
And in what feels like years, the ache in my chest isn’t fear. It’s hope. A quiet, steady thing that’s still fragile but is finally taking root.
Chapter Fifteen – Ivy
The bell over the café door jingles when we step in, and the smell of coffee and buttered toast wraps around us like a quilt. Heat flares under my skin—not from last night, though my body remembers every place he learned by heart—but from the way Rowan’s hand finds the small of my back as two ladies at the counter whisper my name like it might bite. He doesn’t look at them. He looks at me, checks, the question in his eyes quiet and plain:you good?
I am. And I’m not. I feel soft and skinned, fluttery and floaty, like I’m walking around with a secret and everyone can hear it humming.
It’s the way he was after. How the edges of him went gentle. How he gathered me closer like I was something breakable and precious, set his mouth to my temple, and murmured, “I’ve got you,” into my hair. How every time the breath hitched in my throat, he stilled and asked—quiet, certain—“This okay?” until the word yes felt like a promise I was making to both of us. When the room finally settled, he slid his palm slowly over my spine, rubbing steady circles until my heartbeat matched his. I fell asleep on his chest with his T-shirt bunched in my fist and woke once to find him tucking the sheet higher, brushing the hair from my cheek, and whispering something I was too drowsy to catch and too greedy to ask him to repeat.
Morning was a softer version of him that I didn’t know I was allowed to keep—coffee set on the nightstand the second my eyes blinked open, a clean T-shirt handed over without comment, his thumb skimming the back of my knuckles while he asked if I wanted toast or something real. He kissed myforehead instead of my mouth, like he knew which part of me needed tending first, and stood in the doorway while I tied my shoes, smiling that small, wrecking smile that never makes it to photographs.
