6. Daisy
SIX
daisy
Every single nerve in my body was alive. There was a foreign pressure growing deep in my belly. With every stroke of those thick fingers, he was pulling me closer and closer to a cliff I didn’t even know existed but I was happily following him over.
I was going to be damned later, I was pretty sure, but I wanted this. I wanted him. I shouldn’t have trusted a man like him. A man that no doubt had tattoos. A man that had hair that was just this side of too long. A man that smelled of grease and manual labor. A man that knew how to fuck me with his fingers like he was doing.
My fingers dug into the sweatshirt he wore. I didn’t even remember how my arms got around his neck, but the second those lips touched mine? My entire body shorted out and I was pretty sure this was how I would die. My pussy clenched around his fingers and I couldn’t remember how to breathe.
I don’t know how long we stood like that. I couldn’t tell you when he finally let me drink in air into my starved lungs or when exactly he’d removed his fingers. The heat of his hand was still there against my pussy, but I felt so empty. But then his words caught up to me. I came down from that dance among the clouds and I was here again. Just me. Just me with a little more life in my soul mind you, but just me. Just me and him and a loud crack filled his closet as my hand stung.
Oh shit.
I tried to pull out of his embrace, but damn it if his arms weren’t massive. The guy was huge. Maybe that was what had set him apart at first. But now it was a giant pain in the butt.
“I did not ever ask to be fucked as you put it, you crude jerk.”
It took me a few seconds to register what was vibrating, or rather no. Laughing. The silent chuckle that started in him slowly built until he let out a full-hearted laugh and I wasn’t sure if I should hate him or love the way his face seemed to lighten into an entirely different person.
“What’s so funny?” I tried to pull away again, but he just seemed to double down and tighten his arm around me.
“So you ask to be kidnapped frequently but not fucked? Lucky me?”
I pursed my lips. And crossed my arms over my breasts the best I could, putting all of an inch between our bodies.
“Something tells me that you would mind if I did ask you to take my v-card right now, so what does it matter?”
I could feel the heat in my face as I stopped and realized what I’d just admitted.
His laughter stopped. He cleared his throat and stood up straight, letting me go slowly, but letting me go nonetheless.
“I need to get back to, uh, what I came here for.”
He was rubbing the back of his neck and rocking from one foot to the next before he looked at the floor, grabbed his sweatshirt, and practically tossed it at me. He then put his hands on either side of my waist and lifted me off the ground like I was paper and set me where he’d just been standing and walked out without another thought.
What in the hell?
I don’t exactly know how long I stood in the closet before I felt the chill in the air and remembered I was damn near naked. I was damn near naked and still a virgin.
Were the only men in my life going to be the ones that would pay heavily for my innocence, but not because it was that, just because it was my father behind it all?
My father was a real asshole, and my mother? I’d like to think she might have been a nice person once upon a time. Once upon a time before my father got to her and created the cold bitch that was better at drinking than a fish.
I slid on the sweatshirt that hit me mid-thigh and stood there letting it swallow me up. It smelled like him. It smelled like a man that one minute had to be the sexiest man I’d ever seen in my life and then looked like he’d just seen a ghost. I don’t know why, but a giggle bubbled up and I laughed before a tear trailed down my check. Right.
What had I thought? I would get some stranger to take me away from my cage and for what? He was never going to rescue me. He said as much. He was never going to change my life.
He was just going to give me an escape for a few minutes, and oh what an escape it had been.
“Daisy,” Zeid said from the room outside my hiding spot. I rolled my shoulders back and put on a fake air of confidence just like I had when I’d rebelled tonight by not wearing nylons or stockings like any dignified woman would.
One foot in front of the other. I made my way into the large bedroom.
“Yes, Zeid? What is that short for anyway? Zeiden?”
The room was big but not anything I hadn’t seen before. Pretty typical of a penthouse. A large bed was on one side of the room. I hated the way my fingers played with the edge of the hoodie, and I crossed my legs thinking about what might have happened in that bed if I hadn’t scared him off. Of course I would scare him.
I turned away from the bed and saw the small loveseat in the other corner next to a nightstand with a tv, and then the room wrapped around into a small sort of office, I supposed. Except Zeid had a lot of monitors and several computers neatly tucked into a small cabinet. There was no desk. He was standing up and using some kind of pad.
“What? Yeah. Zeiden. My mother liked fancy shit. Anyway, who did you say your father was?”
I doubt he could see me when I sighed but walked up next to him.
“I didn’t. But my name’s Daisy Ashford. I’m Richard Ashford’s daughter.”
Zeiden did something, and then one of the monitors had a video playing. It was my father shaking hands with another man that I’d seen photos of but I didn’t have his name memorized. They were laughing.
“Looks like Daddy isn’t missing you much.”
At some point I’d gotten closer, like I couldn’t believe that he was there laughing and smiling while I was possibly missing.
“Is this live?” I asked, reaching for the screen but pulling back at the last second. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to smudge your screen.”
I stepped back and put my hands in the pocket of the hoodie to keep myself from doing something dumb.
“It is live. Here’s your mom.”
Another screen showed the bar, and there was my mother, putting down one drink for another. I watched as she put something in her mouth before she took a glass and drank it down in one gulp.
“Yup. That looks like mommy dearest. The only thing she’s been good at other than spending my dad’s money is drinking.”
I studied the videos a while longer.
“Is there a reason you’re showing me just how much my parents don’t care about me? They aren’t worried that I’m gone. I’ve never been able to disappear a day in my life. You’d think they’d be freaking out. Or at least my dad.” My heart hurt. “Thanks for showing me that no one wants me.”
Zeiden came up next to me and pointed out a guy that my father was shaking hands with. I watched as an envelope was passed from the guy’s hands to my father.
“That, my little dove, looks to be the future Mr. Little Dove.”
I shuddered.
“Who is he?”
Zeiden pulled out a keyboard that I hadn’t noticed before attached to a desk like stand. I didn’t care anymore.
“Looks like he’s the replacement judge to one that was murdered a couple of months ago. Raymond Hart. How do you feel about the name Daisy Hart? Wife to a judge who seems to have some very strange locked files and a dismissed case about rape.”
I didn’t realize that I’d been backing away until my back hit something hard, and then two warm arms were wrapped around me.
“Daisy? Something tells me that you don’t much like the idea. I’m certain he can give you money. Status. Children.” Zeid said all the right things but the chill to his voice mirrored the cold in my soul.
“Yeah. I’m sure he can. He can probably give me a lifetime of bruises—both physical and those you can’t see. He’ll just turn me into my mother.”
Zeid’s hands pulled me around and I let him.
“Thanks for showing me just how much worse my life can be. Any chance you need a maid or something? Since you aren’t interested in me and all.”
I don’t know why I said it. I’d known this guy for all of what, an hour? It didn’t matter though. There had been something in the way he looked at me. Like he saw me, and it had been everything.
“Is that what you think?” Zeid forced my face up to meet him. “You think I don’t want you?”
If I looked to the side, the ceiling, anywhere I might be able to stop the tears from coming, because I didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t want to say it anymore or know that this couldn’t even be a fun escape because he’d shattered that little dream of mine.
“Well, you don’t. Do you?” I hated the way my voice wavered.
I hated the way I leaned into his palm when he placed a hand over my cheek as his thumb brushed away a tear that escaped my stupid eyes.
“No, I don’t want you, Daisy. I’m fucking desperate for you, and I just met you. That’s a problem in my world. To be this desperate for someone, you have a weakness. Something about the way you trusted me to just take you. To keep you safe. Why would you do that?”
I placed my hand over his like I could siphon more warmth from him.
“I don’t know. I don’t know why I asked you to help me get away. Who would do that, right? I’ve lost my damn mind. But if this is insanity, maybe it’s okay. Maybe I’d rather have a moment to live life my way before I’m thrust into a world where every day my soul dies a little more at a time.”
And then he pulled me into his chest and just held me. No more words. Just me crying as quietly as I could. Because showing weakness wasn’t okay. My mother had taught me that. So then why had I not only shown my cards with this man, but asked for help?