Rowan

by Tilly Delane

  We meet at the same intersections of our day, we sit with the others whenever we have free time and we take Tristan back to the pool the next two nights.

  And what happens on the top floor after lights out, stays on the top floor.

  Raven

  The closer it gets to Sunday, the more of a buzz lies in the air.

  It is always the same. Halfway day is a milestone for the guests and everyone looks forward to their visitors.

  Simon is frantic because he doesn’t know if his wife and kids will even show. He’s undergoing some sort of odd change this week that I’ve never witnessed in a guest before. He’s gone from argumentative and self-obsessed to quite mellow and almost pleasant to be around, but there is something weirdly incongruent about it that I can’t quite work out. Not that I’m complaining. Simon not being disgruntled about wanting to change houses any longer is a good thing. Especially now that I have a secret to keep. Disgruntled people have a habit of noticing things you don’t want them to see.

  Tristan seems relaxed in the knowledge that his mom is certain to turn up.

  Charlie pretends that he couldn’t give a fig if his folks show, but I know he does. He cares about his sister being there very much. I remember how relieved he was last time when she came. She’s a few years younger than him and cute as a button with all the sass of a teen who knows her sex appeal and who never had anything bad happen to her. Though part of me will always be jealous as hell of girls like her, it gives me pleasure to see that such people exist.

  Rowan seems the most subdued of all of them on the subject. I know he wants to see his adopted brother, Silas, more than anything in the world. From what I can tell, that’s a proper bromance right there.

  Apparently Silas, too, has a brand-new American girlfriend, called Grace, and he is bringing her along. I feel a weird kind of pressure there to get along with her. Completely self-imposed because Rowan was the first to point out that having the same nationality does not necessarily make for instant friendship.

  But I want this Grace woman to like me.

  Fuck knows why.

  It’s not like we’re all gonna ride off into the sunset together. But maybe, for a little while at least, I’d like to pretend. Although chances I’ll even get to spend much time with them are next to none.

  On halfway day, the Halosan nursing staff very much melt into the background. We are on hand should anyone need us, but we pretty much hand over the complex to the therapists, our guests and their guests.

  People would start asking questions if I suddenly became part of Rowan’s crowd for the day. I wish I could. I wish I could do away with the secrecy and show the world that I, Ravenna Alexandra Vanhofd, am with the sexy-as-fuck giant.

  Especially because the day is already not going to go quite the way Rowan had hoped. He’s disappointed because Sheena, Silas’ real mom and Rowan’s adopted mother, can’t get away from her job. She is head of housekeeping in a hotel in Brighton and it is the height of tourist season.

  Sheena is one of the people Rowan feels he needs to make amends to the most, despite the fact she’s already told him on the phone not to ‘be daft, and let bygones be bygones’. Those were her exact words. I was listening in to the conversation while waiting for Rowan to get off the phone, so we could cuddle some more.

  Who would have known that it would only take getting thoroughly fucked a few times by an ex-gambler and bare-knuckle fighting thug to turn me into a sappy snuggle bunny?

  That phone call happened late last night, just after he’d just got me to sixty-nine him into oblivion. Another first for me. I’ve given plenty of blowjobs in my life, mostly to shut up the men I was getting ready to fuck, and get them on their backs, but getting eaten out while sucking him off was a whole new experience.

  I was still reeling from the intimacy of it all, all relaxed and vulnerable and curled up on his chest, while he was stroking my hair, when Sheena texted him that she was free to be rung if he was still awake. It was nearly midnight and she’d only just come off her shift.

  I’m fascinated by the way his family operates. I mean, John and Elena are my saviors, but they run a home for twenty kids at a time, so there are strict rules about everything, including communication.

  Phone times are between 10am and 12pm and between 7:30pm and 9pm. That’s it, no exceptions. I don’t think either of them has ever sent me a text message. If I need to unload, I write them an email and I will get one back within 24 hours, telling me how proud they are of me.

  But if I ever need to run home, I can. Old fosters are always welcome. Just don’t turn up without announcing that you’re coming at least a week in advance. If you do, you get the disappointed look from John and hands in the air and an eye roll from Elena, and then you are made to do the dishes for the duration of your stay as punishment for your spontaneity.

  I get the impression, just from those two short conversations I witnessed last night between Rowan and his adoptive mom and then him and Silas, that Rowan could turn up on their doorstep out of the blue, covered in someone else’s blood, and they wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

  They’d help him clean up, bury the body and never ask any questions.

  But that doesn’t stop Rowan from being jittery about seeing Silas today. I can tell, as soon as I wake up to him watching me, that he’s full of nervous energy. It’s funny, I can feel it ticking away beneath his skin, despite his pulse flowing true and calm underneath the side of my hand.

  The side of my hand that just so happens to be resting on his femoral artery while the rest of my fingers are curled around the erection that lies flat against his rock-hard stomach. He smiles at me when I prop myself up onto my other elbow and look back and forth between his warm gaze and his cock twitching in my grip. I look into his eyes and lick my lips.

  “What time is it?”

  “Six.”

  “How long have you been awake?”

  He grins.

  “Long enough to know that sleeping Raven loves my dick as much as awake Raven.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “Conceited much?”

  “Gorgeous, you’ve been hand-jobbing me in your sleep for the last ten minutes. And you’re making sucky noises while you’re doing it.”

  He pauses for effect before he smirks.

  “With your pussy.”

  Then he changes from crass and cocky to serious in an instant.

  “How long do we have?”

  “Half an hour before shower.”

  He shakes his head in dismay.

  “Not long enough.”

  He sighs then clasps his hand around my neck and pulls me up on the bed, so we can be face to face, which means I have to let go of his boner. Sometimes it’s a real pain in the ass that he’s so tall. But although he makes a small protesting noise when his length slides out of my hand, he doesn’t stop tugging me up until my lips land on his.

  He gives me a long, languid kiss, rolling me onto my back to thoroughly tongue fuck my mouth ─ for the whole of the time we have left before my alarm goes off.

  I come up for air, bedazzled and disorientated with a throbbing pussy, clenching around unfulfilled need, and a clitoris screaming she wants to be touched. He rolls to his side, and I grumble.

  “That’s it?”

  He folds his arms behind his head and nods up at the ceiling.

  “Yup.”

  He half crunches up, looking at his engorged cock.

  “See that?”

  He flops back down again.

  “That’s gonna stand for you all day now, lady. And if he thinks of wavering, even for a moment, it’ll take exactly half a second of looking at your fishnet covered calves and at your tits falling out of one of those dresses of yours, and one glance at those fuck-me-lips of yours, and he’ll be right back in a state.”

  He turns to me and the fire in his eyes is almost scary.

  “And when I get you back here tonight, he’ll be fucking burning for you. And that�
��s how I want it.”

  His speech does all sorts of weird and wonderful things to my insides. But rain on his parade I must.

  “No sexy dresses today.”

  His face falls and it’s almost comical.

  “But it’s Sunday,” he protests in a petulant child voice that makes me giggle.

  I shake my head.

  “Not professional enough for halfway day.”

  “Meh.”

  He pulls me on top of him and kisses me again, deeply. I let him rut against me, his hands palming my ass, his fingers skimming my butthole and his cock sliding over my clit, stoking the fire. I’m ready to impale myself on him when he rolls me off him again.

  “Uh-uh.”

  He shakes his head mock disapprovingly.

  “Nice try but just ‘cause there are no fuck me clothes to look at doesn’t mean I’ve changed the game. The game’s the same, the rest is just window dressing.”

  He slides his cheek against mine, the rough stubble chafing against me and giving me another thrill I never valued before. Then he takes my earlobe between his lips and sucks sharply, once, running the tip of his tongue along the lobe as he does.

  “But you could wear the suspenders and the fishnets under your jeans, couldn’t you?” he whispers in my ear as soon as his lips let go. “That’d be hot as fuck. Just you and me knowing what you’ve got on underneath. Yeah...” his voice trails off dreamily while his fingers do the walking, and he slips two of them into my pussy.

  He curls them and massages my magic spot for just a moment while his thumb draws one lazy circle on my clit. I cry out and buck up at the sensation so hard, my entire butt lifts off the bed. He grins and withdraws on a rumbling parting shot.

  “Time to get showered, gorgeous.”

  I watch him as he brings the fingers to his lips and licks them clean like a cat that got the cream then gets up unceremoniously.

  This man is going to kill me with his tantric sex bullshit.

  How the fuck am I gonna slide through this day?

  Rowan

  One of the best things about halfway day is not having to endure the food in The Windchimes.

  Despite it being Sunday, there is no pub walk. Instead, a catering company that provides a pretty decent looking all day buffet sets up in the therapy centre, so that everyone and their guests can grab food whenever, and then go wherever they fancy.

  The whole idea is that we in recovery can start facing our families with our remorse while we’re still at the clinic, so we can cry about it at length to our therapists afterwards. Not that crying to Lewin will get you any sympathy but even if it did, as the day unfolds it soon becomes clear that it doesn’t have the sombre atmosphere you’d expect from it.

  There is genuine joy in the air as each pod of people grabs their food and goes to huddle somewhere on the lawn on Halosan provided picnic blankets or elsewhere in the complex.

  Or maybe the joyfulness is just me. I know I’m supposed to be all apologetic and shit, but Silas and I are too chuffed to see each other again to spoil it by dwelling on the past. I have no idea how I lived without this guy for as long as I did.

  It’s amazing what being dead inside does to you.

  I know I’ve only been here two weeks but before that, I only had him back for a couple of weeks, and a lot of that was heart-to-hearting anyway, so I kinda feel like I just wanna fuck around with him for the day. But I have to honour the program, so as soon as Grace and he rock up in Sheena’s Capri and we’ve done the bear-hugging thing, I pull him aside and I ask him straight.

  “Right. Therapy says, I have to make amends. So I have to apologise, again, for fucking your girlfriend when she had your ugly dick in her mouth.”

  Grace, who is in full earshot, grins and looks around the empty car park.

  “In case anyone heard that, they’re not talking about me,” she announces to an imaginary crowd surrounding us.

  Then she looks me straight in the face and starts whispering, so only Silas and I could possibly hear if there was anyone near.

  “’Cause the cock I suck every night is fucking beautiful. And the only cock I’ll have inside me is his. Now show some respect and don’t talk about a guy’s ex in front of his current girlfriend. It’s rude.”

  She delivers it so deadpan that for a moment I don’t know if she’s seriously pissed off. But then she starts laughing and slapping her thigh.

  “Your face! Priceless,” she howls and carries on until she has to wipe away tears of laughter.

  Silas just looks on with a bemused expression on his face before he grabs her and tugs her into his side.

  “We’ve been through this,” he says to me, seriously. “We’re cool. We don’t need to revisit that one ever again as far as I’m concerned.”

  He lifts a sarcastic brow.

  “Now, we can always talk about how you nearly lost me my home or how your scaredy cat arse didn’t face up to its responsibilities for years or, if you really want to go to town, maybe about how you let me think you were gonna fucking kill me. And then almost did.”

  I shiver at that.

  It was by far the ugliest as well as the most beautiful moment of my life to date.

  Choking him out in our bout to the death, whispering ‘trust me’ in his ear as he faded away and feeling, just as he went limp in my arms, that, actually, he still did.

  Sometimes you nearly have to kill someone to get them back.

  I look deep into his hazel eyes, marvelling as I so often did as a kid, at the fuckloads of colours that go on in them, and well up.

  “I...” I start stuttering.

  But I don’t get anywhere because he gently lets go of Grace to cup my neck in the hand he just had around his woman, so he can draw me in, until we’re forehead to forehead.

  Like ninety percent of the people on the planet, he is shorter than me, but not by as much as most, so when he pulls me down no gap is created between us to bridge the difference.

  “I’m fucking with you,” he says, his breath fanning over my face.

  He smells of cinnamon and I know he’s been chewing Wrigley’s Big Red all the way here. He draws me into another hug with his other arm until his mouth is by my ear.

  “I didn’t drive all the way to Purbeck to talk about the shit we just left behind,” he says quietly. “I wanna know how this party is going. And I wanna meet your girl.”

  I draw in a sharp breath. I didn’t tell anyone about Raven. Not even Silas.

  “How do you know there is a girl?” I whisper and feel him smirk next to my ear.

  “Because, I can feel your hard-on, sucker.”

  His grip on my neck goes painfully tight.

  “And it better not be for Grace.”

  I know I should leave it be, but I just can’t.

  “Who says it’s not for you, arsehole?” I ask.

  It’s the moment of truth and I can feel him coil. But then I finally, after all this time, get his forgiveness. His real forgiveness. Silas style.