When Rowan opened the door to his house and ushered her inside, at first she didn’t know what she was seeing. She knew his home almost as well as she knew her own, but the sight that greeted her was wholly unfamiliar.
There were candles everywhere, dozens of them, all lit and giving Rowan’s living room an ethereal glow. In the middle of his coffee table stood a vase full of red roses. Music, something soft and instrumental, played low, as though the notes were emerging from the very air.
She stood there taking it all in, wordless, and her heart soared.
Rowan had never done anything like this for her before. He’d always been so casual, as though this thing they had together was just another part of his day. But this? He’d put in effort. Planning. Thought. He’d taken time to consider how to please her, and he’d done … this.
This romantic, perfect thing.
She turned to him, her eyes wide and shimmering with tears. “Oh, Rowan. It’s beautiful.”
He looked pleased with himself. “I had help. Lily came over to light the candles while we were having our dessert.”
“I’ll have to thank her.”
“Just her?” He grinned at her playfully, and she went up onto her toes to kiss him.
“No. Not just her.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his. The taste of him, the feel of his tongue caressing hers, nearly made her bones melt and her blood ignite.
He ran his hands up her back. “Champagne?” he said.
“Yes, please.”
A bottle stood in a bucket of ice next to the roses, with two flutes standing by. Rowan opened the bottle with a pop, then filled the glasses and handed one to her. Aurora drank, but she was so consumed with Rowan that she barely tasted it.
“Should we go to the bedroom?” His voice was a low rasp, and the way he looked at her made her body quake.
“But it’s so pretty out here.”
He gave her a mischievous smile. “Just wait.”
When Rowan escorted Aurora into the bedroom, she gasped. It was exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for.
Everything that he’d set up in the living room was here as well, but more. More candles flickering, casting light on the walls and the ceiling. More flowers. More soft music. And more expectation for what was to follow.
“You really thought ahead,” she said.
“I did.”
“Rowan … It’s lovely. It’s so … It’s just …”
Before she could finish her thought, he cut her off with a kiss. But not just a kiss. An earth-shattering kiss, his hands entwined in her hair, her lips and tongue and breath mingled with his, her body straining toward his, the urgency and the need nearly driving him insane.
He didn’t break the kiss as he reached behind her to unzip her dress. Still tasting her, still exploring her soft, yielding mouth, he moved his hands over her shoulders to ease the dress down until it pooled on the floor at her feet.
Rowan pulled back from her a little just to look at Aurora in candlelight, her hair a riotous mass of curls, her skin smooth and inviting in a lace bra and panties. He wanted her so much he could barely control himself, but this was no time to rush. This was a time to take things slowly, to savor her. To fully enjoy and experience everything his emotions and his body were feeling.
“God, the way you look …” He trailed off, his words inadequate to the task.
She began unbuttoning his shirt slowly, pressing a kiss to his chest with each button undone. Lower and lower she moved, a button, a kiss, again and again until at last she rose to slide his shirt off of him and discard it on the floor.
Aurora slid her hands over his chest, his shoulders, and his back, and he closed his eyes to focus on the pleasure of it, the way it felt to be under Aurora’s power.
When she reached down to unbuckle his belt, he worried that all of this might be over before it really started.
“Wait.” He put his hands over hers to stop her. Then he thought of things to cool himself down: his gas bill. The need to get his car serviced. The unfathomable bureaucracy of HMOs. When he thought he had himself under control, he kissed Aurora and let go of her hands. “Okay. I’m good.”
So she resumed what she’d been doing. She unbuckled his belt, unzipped his pants, and lowered them over his hips. Then she wrapped her fingers around him and stroked him.
“Ah … God.” Rowan sighed her name. “Aurora …”
Then he said nothing as the sensations washed over him.
Aurora knew that at some point, they would have to talk. They would have to discuss where things with them were going, what he wanted, what she was willing to accept. But not now. Now, she wanted only to lose herself in him.
She took off her bra and let it fall to the floor, and he held her breasts in his hands. When he caressed the hard nipples with his thumbs, she felt it like an electric jolt that went all the way to her toes.
Then he closed his mouth around one breast, caressing the hard nub with his tongue, and she threw back her head, eyes closed, and reveled in the sensation.
Slowly, he ran his hands down her body. He slipped his fingers under the waistband of her panties and pulled them down, down, lowering himself to his knees as he did it. Then, holding her ass in his hands, he pressed his tongue between her legs and found the sweet, wet center of her.
One thing about sleeping with a man who had this much sexual experience was that he knew exactly what he was doing and what it would do to her. When his tongue found its mark, her legs shook and she could barely stand upright. She moaned his name.
“Rowan. Oh. Oh, God.”
He rose to his feet, then picked her up and lowered her onto the bed, covering her body with his.
She wrapped her legs around him, and he thrust into her. When they were like this, their bodies joined, Aurora always felt as though all the joy and pleasure in the world were concentrated right here between them. When she was with Rowan, she lost track of time, lost track of her worries and obligations. Everything left her except this, this feeling.
She’d enjoyed sex before, but never like this. Never anything like this.
He moved inside her, and the pleasure within her rose and intensified. She ran her hands over his chest, his back, and his ass, wanting to feel all of him, wanting to experience every part of him.
When her orgasm came, it shook her body and her soul, spasm after spasm roaring through her veins.
Moments later, he went still and then shuddered, his body trembling with the force of his release.
Rowan came so hard he nearly blacked out. He collapsed onto Aurora, then worried that she might not be able to breathe under the weight of him. He rolled onto his side next to her, pulling her to him and holding her in his arms.
“I love you,” she said.
And everything inside him froze.
He wanted to say something—to tell her he loved her too—but the words didn’t come. Nothing did. His body tensed and his brain shut down. Even as he made that critical mistake, he knew he was going to regret this moment.
“Aurora, I …”
I love you.
That was all he had to say. Only three words, and short ones, at that. But the words froze in his throat.
And now he could feel her tensing.
What had started as a perfect date was now going straight to hell.
Aurora hadn’t meant to say what she did. But she felt it so completely, so intensely, that her feelings just couldn’t be contained. He’d swept her away so thoroughly with the dinner, the candlelight, the flowers, and his masterful command of her body. How could she not say what she felt?
And she’d been pretty sure he felt it, too. Why else would he go to so much trouble to please her? How else could he have looked at her the way he did? Surely he’d planned to say those same words to her tonight. That had to be what this was about.
But now? Now, she felt humiliated by the way he was staring at her in horror, his reaction to what she’d said the opposite of what she’d wanted and expected.
“Oh. I see.” She pushed away from him.
“Aurora, no. That’s not … I didn’t …”
Aurora stood up and started hunting for her clothes, embarrassed at having revealed her feelings to him only to have him react with revulsion.
She grabbed her panties and her bra, but she wasn’t sure where her dress was. Where had he taken it off of her? By the door. She walked across the room, snapped up the dress, and took the bundle of clothes into the bathroom.
She told herself she wasn’t going to cry, but she’d also told herself she wouldn’t say she loved him. The tears came, regardless of her intentions, and she tore some toilet paper off the roll to blow her nose into it and dab at her eyes.
“Aurora?” Rowan knocked on the bathroom door.
“Rowan, go away.”
“Are you okay?”
Hell no, she was not okay. She’d loved Rowan for months. She’d been sleeping with him just as long. And there was no denying it now—he didn’t love her. If he did, he’d have said so. She was nothing to him but his daughter’s nanny, who was willing to warm his bed whenever he didn’t have a better offer.
She washed her face, which was blotchy from crying, dried it carefully, ran her hands through her hair to tidy it, and put on her clothes. She opened the door only when she believed she had her emotions in check.
She was wrong.
“Aurora, what’s going on?” he said when she emerged from the bathroom. “Are you all right?”
She found her shoes and put them on. Then she squared her shoulders and looked at him evenly. “This isn’t going to work. We need to end this.” That was how far she got before her lower lip started to tremble and her eyes began to blur with tears.
Damn it.
“What do you mean, end it? Aurora, what the hell are you—”
“I love you,” she said. She’d already blurted it out once. What was once more? “I’ve loved you for—well, for a long time. Since before the wedding, at least. And you don’t love me. I knew you didn’t, and I told myself that was okay. I told myself that whatever you were willing to give me, I would take. Because maybe you would get there someday. Maybe you’d get to where I was. Then tonight, I thought …”
Her voice shook, and she took a deep breath to steady it. “With all you did, the candlelight, the dinner, the flowers, I thought you were ready to love me, too. So I said it. I told you how I felt. Because, Rowan, I couldn’t hold it in anymore! And the way you reacted? The pure horror on your face?”
She shook her head. “It’s my fault, really. I misjudged myself, I misjudged you. Myself, because I thought I could be with you without you being all in. And you, because I thought you were capable of more. Or, maybe you are capable of more, just not with me. I don’t know. What I do know is that I can’t keep feeling this way knowing you don’t feel the same. It’s too hard, and it hurts too much.”
She dragged in another shuddering breath. “Goodbye, Rowan. Tell Molly …” And now the tears came back in earnest. “Tell Molly I love her and I’ll miss her.”
Aurora stormed out of the house—and only then realized that Rowan had driven her here and she didn’t have a way to get home. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—ask Rowan, so she started walking down Main Street toward home.
Rowan didn’t react at first because he was so stunned by what had just happened. How had things gone so spectacularly wrong so suddenly?
And, he was supposed to tell Molly that Aurora said goodbye? So he’d just lost not only his girlfriend, but his nanny? And his baby had lost the closest thing she had to a mother?
He didn’t know what to do. Aurora didn’t mean it, surely. She was just upset. If he could talk her down …
Then he realized she was out there on foot. He needed to go get her and drive her home. And maybe on the way, he could straighten this out.
He put on his pants and a T-shirt, stuffed his feet into a pair of shoes, grabbed his car keys, and went after her.
He found her about a block away, on Main Street, walking in the dark.
Rowan pulled over his car and lowered the passenger side window to talk to her. “Aurora, get in.”
“No.”
“What are you going to do, walk home in the dark? There are no street lights—you’re going to get hit by a car. Or fall down an embankment. Also, your house is four miles up the road and you’re wearing heels.”
She stopped walking, but she didn’t look at him and she didn’t get into the car.
“Aurora, please. If you’ll just get in the car, we can talk about this.”
“I’ll get in the car,” she said, “but only if we don’t talk about it.”
“That’s silly. Just—”
“I swear to God, Rowan, if you don’t promise to keep your mouth shut for the duration of the drive, I’ll choose the embankment.”
What else could he do? It wasn’t safe out here in the moonless night for her to make the walk on her own. Cars, wild animals … who knew what might happen?
“Fine,” he said.
“Not a word.”
“I said fine. And that’s the last thing I’ll say.”
She glared at him and then, grudgingly, got into the car.