I barely got the words out of my mouth before Rowan pushed off the wall and hoisted me into his arms without the kid gloves he’d been handling me with since I got out of the hospital.
My blood started pumping, and desire coursed through me.
“You will not use that fuckin’ vibrator without me in the vicinity,” he growled.
I let out a delighted squeal.
“And my cock hasn’t felt that sweet cunt in weeks, so I’m gonna be using that to make you come,” he added as we ascended up the stairs.
It was safe to say the vibrator stayed in the drawer, and I was very satisfied.
Unfortunately, we burned the lemon meringue pie.
Chapter
Nineteen
Recipe: Carrot and Pecan Cake
From ‘Dessert Person’
Things were going well.
Ronnie Cockran had not come to beat me up, kidnap or kill me like Rowan had thought he might. Same with Nathan. We hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him.
I had recovered almost fully from my surgery and had been cleared by the doctor for a little over a week. I didn’t work until close yet, though—Fiona and Tina took care of that. I still came in in the mornings, with Rowan and Maggie in tow, doing all of the baking and spending most of the day at the bakery.
But the second it hit two in the afternoon, my phone was ringing. If Rowan wasn’t physically at the bakery, that was.
“Cupcake,” he’d greet me. But not in the sweet, melty tone I had become accustomed to. I’d also become accustomed to Rowan’s ability to communicate very different moods with a single word. That single word usually being ‘cupcake’ or ‘Nora.’
The two p.m. greeting was an order. A warning.
“I’m going!” I would say. “I’ve just got to frost—”
“You ain’t frosting shit,” he’d interrupt. “You get your ass in the car and get home and rest, or I’ll drive myself over there, throw you over a shoulder, make a big fuckin’ scene and punish you when we get home.”
Whatever variation of argument we had always ended with this or a similar sexual threat. Ones that made my knees weak and my fingers clutch the phone even harder. Ones that made me want to disobey him so he’d make good on that threat.
And it would be really fucking good.
But he had to work. It was unfair of me to expect him to come running in the middle of his workday in order to sexually punish me.
Which he did half the time anyway.
There was no need for Rowan to be spending so much time with me anymore. Sleeping in my bed every night. No need for him to get up with me in the morning or follow me to the bakery. Yet he did all of those things. He was a constant part of my day. My mornings, my afternoons, my evenings. Sometimes Kip would come to my place with him for a home cooked meal—upon my request ever since I found out he relied on takeout and microwave meals.
I enjoyed Kip’s company. He was easy to be around, charming. He and Rowan were close. They’d been deployed together, spoke about it a couple of times. Not a lot because whenever the subject came up, Kip’s easy smiles no longer looked easy. The light in his eyes went out, and he stopped looking like the happy-go-lucky man he was. He looked… tortured, for lack of a better word.
And although Rowan could not be described as a happy-go-lucky man—he was still positively broody which I had come to find out I fucking loved—something changed in him too. His posture visibly stiffened, and if he was holding on to me, his grasp would suddenly tighten as if someone might try to tear me away.
Rowan hadn’t spoken to me about what life had been like when he was deployed. He hadn’t told me where his scars came from, though I ached to ask. I’d run my fingers over them while we were in bed, tracing the puckered skin, the question on my lips.
He’d tense beside me, as if he were bracing for the questions. Bracing for me to take him back there. I was desperate to know him in every way I could, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t mar the happiness that we had, couldn’t be the reason why he went back to a place that made him tense like that.
The worrier in me, the anxious girl in me, wanted to get the conversation over with. To rush through all of the hard topics because things couldn’t possibly be that good. But I resisted.
We would eventually go there, that I knew. But I didn’t have to rush it. We had time. Rowan wasn’t going anywhere. Rowan loved me. He said it often. At the end of every phone call, as I was drifting off to sleep, when he was inside me. Most importantly, he showed it in all of his actions.