But when I held it up, he shook his head, tearing his gaze away from me again. “You can’t go by that. Everything went to hell the night Carina’s friend was murdered in our house. I brought the threat to our family. I knew I had to do something—make myself into someone—who could protect them too.” He let out a rough laugh. “But my family fell apart anyway, and the guy you knew might as well be dead.”
I grasped his arm. “I don’t think that’s true, Rowan. Going through shit like that hardens you, but it doesn’t have to take you over completely—and I can tell that it hasn’t. I know I was harsh on you when I first came to the Nobles, but that was only because I didn’t understand why you vanished on me. There’s nothing wrong with who you are now. And that guy can still make me smile with some pen on paper.” I waggled the sketch.
Rowan winced. “That’s the most I’ve really drawn in years,” he admitted. “I still get the urge, but… It doesn’t feel like it fits with the life I’m living now. How can I even deserve to enjoy trying to make something… something beautiful or whatever when I’m also the kind of person who’ll destroy a person’s life by hacking his neck in half with a piece of plywood?”
Now we were getting somewhere. “You did what you had to do,” I said. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”
“I know. I don’t. That’s the point. They were the enemy, and we needed to take them down by whatever means necessary. I can’t apologize for it, because I’d do it over again if I had to.”
I ran my thumb up and down his forearm. “I’m not asking you to apologize.”
“But maybe you should.” He raised his head, his eyes somehow fierce and sad at the same time. “The guy you loved is gone. Something… something’s broken in me. I thought I was protecting my little sister by joining up with the Nobles, but I’ve become someone I don’t even trust around her anymore in case I scare her somehow. That’s just how it is, but that doesn’t mean—” He cut himself off and exhaled sharply. “That doesn’t mean I like you seeing it.”
A sudden rush of affection hit me. That was the most Rowan-like sentiment I’d ever heard, even if he didn’t recognize it.
I tugged him closer to me, gazing up at him. “You know what? Seeing you like that doesn’t make me like you any less. Maybe I even like you more. I’m sure I’m broken in all kinds of ways most people wouldn’t understand. But you can now. I don’t have to hide anything from you—and you don’t have to hide anything from me.”
“Mercy,” Rowan said roughly. Heat lit in his eyes, but he held himself still as if he was afraid of what would happen if he let himself move.
I reached up to touch his cheek. “You were a total badass out there tonight, as brutal as you needed to be. But I think—I know—you can still be tender. If you can still find beauty in things, then of course you deserve to let your other talents shine. You can be more than one thing, and I’ll enjoy all of them.”
I eased up on my toes, giving him enough time to move away if he didn’t want this after all. My body was already burning with just a few inches between us. Rowan let out a strangled sound and dropped his head to meet my kiss.
Despite everything he’d been telling me, our kiss was pure honey, sweet but intoxicating. His hands came up to cradle my face. His tongue traced the seam of my lips and coaxed them apart, and I melted into him.
I tugged him over to the loveseat. Rowan moved with me without breaking the kiss, lowering himself with me and lining his body above me as if we were picking up exactly where we’d left off five years ago.
I liked his weight on me. I ran my fingers over his short-cropped hair, enjoying the softness of the tufts. Rowan grazed his teeth over my bottom lip before sucking on it. I groaned, and he slipped his hot tongue back into my mouth.
Making out with him was so familiar but at the same time a rush of a new experience. I could sense the new confidence and fierceness in him.
But like I’d assured him, that ferocity didn’t take away his capacity for gentleness. He left my mouth to kiss a slow trail down the side of my neck, soft and reverent, as if he were worshipping my body. I found myself flashing back to the first time we’d slept together, when he’d worked over my cunt with his mouth until I’d come and then entered me when I was so slick and eager I didn’t feel more than a pinch of pain.
In the present, I yanked his collared shirt, impatient for the feel of his newly hardened muscles against me. Why the hell had we waited so long to get back to this?
When I traced my hands over Rowan’s bare chest, he groaned. “I missed you so much. No one else could ever compare to you. It feels like a miracle to have you back.”
“I missed you too,” I murmured, my throat tightening as I realized just how much I had. He’d been the only gentle thing I’d had in my life, and maybe I’d needed that. Needed someone I could be tender with, not always putting on a tough front. Rowan had given me room to discover a side of myself that wasn’t always on the defensive.
He drew my T-shirt over my head and gazed down at me. The bra I was wearing was plain, but he looked at me as if I was the most amazing sight he’d ever seen.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “You always were, but somehow you’ve gotten even more gorgeous.”
Emotion swept through me. I pulled him close again, tucking my legs around his hips so he had no choice but to lean into me. He rocked against me with a rhythm that brought a moan to my lips that he caught with a kiss. His deft artist’s hands removed my bra with a few tugs and closed over my breasts.
He caressed them until pleasure was flowing all across my chest and then dipped his head to catch one of the peaks between his lips. He twisted the other nipple, provoking a sharper jolt of bliss. I gasped, arching into him.
“Fuck,” Rowan muttered. His hand dropped to the fly of my jeans. We squirmed against each other as he peeled those off and I undid his. When he pulled back to kick them off completely, I made a disgruntled sound at the loss of contact.
Rowan chuckled and lowered himself back over me, but not before I noted the outline of his rigid cock straining against his boxers. My mouth watered. I wanted him so bad.
I sat up, meaning to devour him in the best possible way, but Rowan shook his head and eased me back down with a sweetly sly smile. “I don’t know if I can make up for the five years I left you on your own, but I’m going to give it my best shot. Tonight is all about you, Mercy.”
He tugged my panties down. Before I could argue, he’d curled his finger inside me. My head tipped back with a moan. He pumped the finger in and out of me slowly at first before adding another and another, gradually filling me, stroking my clit with his thumb.
Did I deserve this kind of sweet devotion? It was kind of hard to believe it, but I couldn’t see stopping him either. If Rowan thought I deserved it, if it made him this happy to cherish me like this, it couldn’t be wrong, could it?
“So wet for me,” Rowan said, his voice rough. He brought his fingers, now coated in my pussy juices, to his lips and licked them off one by one. “I’ve missed your taste too, Mer.”