10. Daisy
TEN
daisy
Nothing I wore was mine, not really a giant leap from my normal life. The comfort of it though? I took the hand Zeid offered me and followed him out into the main room of the penthouse. What did it say about me that I’d barely taken in the place last night?
It might have been that I was a little too blinded by Zeid, but the other side of the coin was that nice things didn’t even register anymore. I know if it all went away tomorrow I’d struggle, but I also had no idea how to appreciate any of it.
Zeid was pulling me along like there was a missing piece he’d forgotten to fill me in on. All eyes were on us when we stopped, and I peeked around my mountain of a man. Then I tried to hide even more.
“Hey, I’m Cali.”
A hand reached around Zeid regardless of how much he tried to hide me and I tried to hide. I took the hand with bright yellow nail polish, having zero idea what a real handshake was until she yanked me out of Zeid’s shadow.
“Welcome to the family, short stuff. What’s your name? That’s Rylee. These two thugs are Cas and X. There, intros are over. Now spill the beans on where the hell you came from and how you got this guy to agree to whatever this is.”
The guy she’d pointed to as X grabbed her by the back of her sweatshirt, and she let my hand go.
“Down, sparky. The little thing looks terrified. Give her a second before the guard dog locks them back in that room,” X said with a little too much humor in his eyes.
The thing was, it all was too funny. This wasn’t formal at all, and I couldn’t stop my answering smile like it was infectious.
“Zeid and I shared the same dark corner last night, and one thing led to another, and here we are.”
My eyes bounced from one face to another.
“I… is that okay?” I asked when no one answered.
Zeid’s hand wrapped around my waist and pulled me back into his body. Nerves had me sucking on my bottom lip. The women looked nice enough, but the guys? I didn’t want to stare, but it was hard not to take in the tattoos on them. Now that I was in the light and Zeid was no longer in a hoodie, I looked down and noticed tattoos on his arms, something well hidden by his suite yesterday.
I looked back up when X’s voice broke the silence.
“Uh. Sure. Shared a dark corner. But let me get this straight. Zeiden. Our little Zeid here, invited you to share his corner and then brought you back here?” X’s expression was a mix of shock in his widened eyes and humor in the way he fought a smirk.
“I mean, it was my corner first. I wanted to hide from my dad and his business arrangement of a marriage for me. Zeiden made a really nice door though and kept me hidden when they came looking. But yes, I guess that sort of sums it up. He was bored. I was bored.”
The other girl, Rylee, stepped around the counter and handed me a plate. Absentmindedly, I took it. I don’t know why, but I thought she looked pretty normal, not that tattoos weren’t normal. I’d just never seen so many of them. One on X’s neck caught my attention when he leaned down to kiss Cali, and when Cas stood up and stretched, I got a glimpse of the same one on him.
Plate in hand, I turned in Zeid’s arms, trying to see if he had the same one, but from my angle, it was impossible to confirm.
“Okay. Well, looks like we have all morning for catching up. Let’s all eat before the food gets cold,” Rylee said and turned back to the island.
My stomach growled again, but so did Zeid’s, I grabbed his hand from around my waist and tried to put it on the plate.
“So, prince asshole, you first, k?”
The way he cocked his brow had my body growing warm all over again. Sore or not, the idea of staying in bed in a little bubble of fantasy sounded great. I knew that fantasy would have to wait though when my stomach rumbled again.
“Guess someone worked up an appetite,” X said, but Zeid ignored him. He took the plate from me and pushed me forward.
“Not a chance, dove. I’m feeding you.”
The entire room was silent.
The tink, tink of forks scraping the large plates of eggs and the bacon crackling on a burner behind the guy named Cas were literally the only sounds.
“And I thought my house was quiet,” I mumbled.
That was all it took for everyone in the room to start laughing and doing what I could only assume was normal things, like Cas gave Rylee a kiss and X grabbed another bite of bacon from Cali’s plate. She swatted at his shoulder and he pulled her into his lap.
The girls looked similar to me, leggings and hoodies far too big to be ours. Cali had the coolest color of teal hair I’d ever seen. Rylee’s hair was in a messy bun and might have looked more like medusa than it looked like she brushed it.
“Come on, dove, sit with me.”
I hadn’t paid any attention to what Zeid was doing.
“Sure. Okay. Is every morning like this?” I asked the question as I continued to study the shirtless guys. In my house this would have gotten you kicked out and no meals for the rest of the week. Not that I’d ever tried. I wore the day dress picked out for me. I let the maid do my hair however my mother dictated. My makeup was always just right. All before I was served a perfectly curated breakfast that would ensure I wouldn’t get fat, which was defined by my mother as anything more than starved.
My mouth watered at the smells in this house. When was the last time I’d been given bacon?
Zeid pulled out a chair at a smaller table and I was thankful that it wasn’t a damn barstool. Still, I sat gingerly on the chair. And I’d thought walking caused a bit of tenderness.
“What’s wrong there, no-name girl. Our Zeid rock your world last night so much that you can’t sit over here?” A slap cracked over X’s shoulder as Cali shut him up.
I didn’t mind it though because something about it all just seemed like a family.
Zeid reached for me and slid me onto his lap, careful of my sore body.
“He doesn’t deserve an answer, Daisy.”
“Ah, it’s Daisy. Nice to meet you, oh tamer of the Zeid.”
Zeid flipped off X, and that damn smile seemed to be finding a permanent home on my face.
“Uh… well… crudely as you put it, X, I’d say it’s a combination of some hardware and well… I mean look at the guy.”
“Wait, what? What hardware?” Rylee’s voice nearly screeched.
“It’s always the quiet ones, I swear, Rylee. I told you he’d be the one to be all wild and crazy.”
As I watched Cas grab Rylee and X pull Cali to him, I moaned as Zeid placed a small bit of the bacon on my tongue.
“Why are you two talking about my dick anyway?” Zeid asked, breaking through my bacon-induced haze.
I wanted to hear this, because I’d read too many books and needed to know if there was something I was missing.
Zeid turned my legs over his lap and held out a fork with a bite of pancake.
“Eat, dove. You look like you haven’t had a meal in a decade.”
My jaw dropped, but he just shoved the damn bite into my mouth.
“Geez, Zeiden. You can’t blame us for wondering exactly what you were hiding. Hell, Rylee and I were trying to figure out which way you swing. Thanks for answering a few questions all at once.”
I nearly choked on the pancake. I looked between him and Cali and back at him. I finally swallowed and lowered my voice to a whisper.
“When you said you were very clean, exactly when was the last time you, uh, dated anyone?”
He cocked his brow at me and shoved another bite of bacon in my mouth before he bit into the piece himself. The bacon was so damn good that I wasn’t sure if I would rather be in bed with this guy or doing exactly what we were doing.
This time it was his voice that was so low only I could hear.
“You moan like that one more time, and breakfast is over regardless of how sore you are.”
I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to scare me, but I leaned forward and bit a chunk off the bacon in his hand and moaned just because the banter and playfulness in this room was addictive.
I missed Zeid’s hand move, but when he slid it between my thighs and put pressure against my pussy, I nearly choked on the bacon.
“Don’t play with me, dove. I am as serious as they come.”
This time the whole room heard him because Cas chimed in for the first time all morning.
“He isn’t lying. So, Zeid, what does she know?”
The room went back to mausoleum quiet, something I was too practiced at. It also triggered something inside me. Fear.
Zeiden’s hand slid under the sweatshirt and rested over my chest, but not in a way that was sexual.
“Hey, dove. Calm yourself. What’s going on?” Zeid wasn’t looking away as he held me tightly.
I shook my head as I tried to slow my breathing and focus on something else. He felt so safe.
“I don’t know. I… It just got so quiet. It reminded me of home.”
The heat of his hand had some kind of magic as it melted into me like some kind of salve to my racing heart.
“Well, we aren’t your home. We are our own home, and no one here will harm you.”
He looked up and started to talk to the others while I tried to control whatever the hell was wrong with me. This was his home. Not mine. But there was the problem. I was going to have to go home. Wasn’t I? At some point this strange little dream would all end. He’d get bored of me. Maybe my dad would pay some kind of return fee.
“She doesn’t know much. Daddy is Senator Ashford though, and before you ask, no I wasn’t aware of that beforehand. I have it on good authority that the highest bidder for her fiancé is the new judge. Hart.”
There was a buzzing in my ears that I couldn’t shake.
Fiancé. I was going to be in so much trouble.