Chapter 7 #3
His fingers and cock rubbed against each other through my walls for just a moment as he moved in counterpoint, and I jerked at the sensation. By the third time it happened, I was waiting for it. Leaning into it. Quietly begging for it.
I was pretty sure I was sobbing.
And then he really started to move, and I screamed, the orgasm hitting so hard that my vision went dark.
I was still coming when his fingers pulled out of me completely, and his hand slapped down beside mine as he curled his body over me. His other arm pressed against my mouth, and I opened, sucking the small wound into my mouth as the taste of him intensified every single sensation.
The feeling of his teeth biting into my neck was almost secondary. I was swimming in such a sea of sensation.
By the time I came down, I was draped over the edge of the tub, my forehead resting on my bent arm.
“So fucking beautiful,” Daniel murmured against the skin on my back as he kissed his way down my spine.
I felt so empty when he pulled out that I nearly whimpered.
Moving slowly, I let him help me back into the shower, which had grown cold, so he could quickly rinse us off.
I wasn’t much help. Every limb felt like it weighed a thousand pounds as Daniel helped me back out of the shower and dried us off.
Without a word, he looped my arms around his neck and once I’d latched on, grabbed the backs of my thighs so I’d wrap my legs around his waist.
He carried me naked to my room and tucked me firmly beneath the sheets with a kiss to my forehead.
As I let my eyes drift closed, he left the room, came back to get dressed, and then left again.
Seconds later, I could hear him just a wall away, cleaning up the bathroom floor where we’d left a huge puddle of water.
Then, nothing.
When I woke up alone, I panicked.
Jumping out of bed, I hurriedly threw on whatever clothes I could find, not even bothering with a bra. He wasn’t in bed with me. Why wasn’t he in bed with me?
I’d fallen asleep thinking that he was just cleaning up the evidence of our debauchery before climbing in with me. Instead, Daniel had left me naked and alone.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears as I lunged for the door to my room, throwing it open so hard that it banged loudly against the wall. The house was so quiet that I knew no one was inside. Not even Thunder’s snores broke the silence.
Holding back a sob, I raced through the kitchen and out the back door, searching for him.
The barn was dark. The yard was empty. The door to the smaller shop was closed and locked, and the chickens weren’t making the noises they made when someone was near their coop.
Ignoring the wet ground, I jogged around the house, searching everywhere.
I came to a stumbling stop when I reached the edge of the front porch.
Pop was sitting in his wheelchair, Thunder lying beside him, and Daniel was on his knees in the flower bed, painting the new lattice he’d installed beneath the porch.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Pop called. “You get dressed in the dark?”
My cheeks burned as Daniel’s gaze met mine, and I quickly looked away and down at what I was wearing.
The pajama pants I’d thrown on were zigzagging stripes of lime green and neon orange. The socks—purple. And my shirt was a button-down that Aunt Halle had bought me that I’d never worn before, because I generally didn’t have any reason to wear blouses, and it reminded me of the color of baby poop.
“I, uh…” I stuttered. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A couple of hours,” Daniel replied, pushing to his feet. “Gary came back about half an hour after you fell asleep, so we decided to get this done after we’d put the groceries away.”
“Well, aren’t you helpful?” I asked snarkily.
I wasn’t sure why I’d said it or even why I’d used that tone. I wasn’t mad at him.
“You’re grouchy when you wake up,” he said, his lips twitching like he was trying not to laugh. “Good to know.”
“I am not,” I argued as the panic in my chest started to calm.
I was stiff as a board when he reached for me, his thumb gently tracing the curve of my cheek. “I wouldn’t leave without letting you know first.”
I nodded, though I found that hard to believe. Daniel seemed to think he knew what was best for both of us, and if he thought that leaving without telling me was best, he’d do it.
“You want to help me finish this up?” he asked, jerking his head toward the porch.
“It looks so much better,” I replied grudgingly as I walked over to inspect his work.
The lattice under the porch had been broken for months.
It had begun slowly rotting and was just soft enough that when Thunder had been chasing some animal that ran through the holes but hadn’t been agile enough to stop in time, he’d crashed right through it and gotten stuck.
We’d then had to widen the hole just to get him free.
I looked up at him. “This is all your fault, you know.”
“Leave poor Thunder alone,” Pop ordered, leaning down to pet his head. “He doesn’t get around like he used to.”
“He was moving fast enough to break through the dang lattice,” I countered, picking up one of the paintbrushes. “I think he’s playing you.”
Thunder lifted his head off the porch, his sad eyes looking me over, then dropped it back down.
“You’re such a con artist,” I accused, laughing.
He just slowly closed his eyes like he couldn’t be bothered.
“If I would’ve known you’d be doin’ projects around the property,” my pop said as he watched Daniel and me paint, “I would’ve let you start havin’ boys over a whole lot sooner.”
I glanced at Daniel, who was studiously staring at the lattice. He had to be thinking the same thing I was—if my father had any idea what we’d done in the bathroom, he would’ve shot Daniel in the ass as he chased him off the property.
“I fix stuff all the time,” I argued, trying to ignore the heat in my cheeks. “Ian and I mowed and cleared all the brush at the end of summer. Plus, I’ve swept off this porch and the patio out back like fourteen times since then, and I pressure-washed them too.”
“But you didn’t fix my lattice,” Pop pointed out with a small chuckle.
I grinned at him. “Ass.”
“Brat,” he shot back, still smiling.
I glanced at Daniel. “Is it strange when he calls you a boy?” I joked with a snicker.
“Just a bit,” Daniel replied dryly, shooting a look at my dad.
“To be fair,” my dad said. “The boys she brought over before were boys.”
“Well, this one isn’t,” I reminded him. “He’s older than dirt.”
“Offensive,” Daniel sputtered, pushing just hard enough on my shoulder that I almost lost my balance.
“Sorry, not dirt. Just older than telephones and cars and airplanes and Jell-O and sneakers and—”
“No, I’m not,” he argued, flicking paint at me. “All of those were invented before I was born.”
“Seriously?” I asked in surprise.
“Okay, a couple of them were.”
I giggled and then made the mistake of looking at his disgruntled expression and laughed even harder.
His eyes widened, and before I could dodge him, he’d reached out and drew a wide line of white paint down the front of my chest.
“Hey,” I complained, lunging for him. I barely made contact with the sleeve of his shirt, but his biceps and elbow got the same treatment as my chest.
“Actin’ like a couple of teenagers,” my dad announced as he turned his wheelchair and went back into the house.
I scrambled to my feet as Daniel stared at the paint on his arm. He dodged quicker than I expected when I swiped at his face.
“I don’t think you want to do this,” he warned as he rose.
“You started it.”
“That seems to be your go-to response, huh?” he said as he stalked me through the yard.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I replied loftily, lowering my center of gravity a little as I moved around his car.
“That was your excuse when you were talking at the breakfast table about some kid who got his hand down your pants,” he reminded me.
“Jealous?” I taunted.
The grin on his face could only be described as wicked.
“Baby, I doubt he had his fingers in your ass.”
My mouth dropped open in shock.
“And he sure as fuck didn’t taste your blood. So, no, I’m not jealous.”
“You sound jealous,” I wheedled, still carefully backing away.
“There’s nothing to be jealous of,” he said easily, his arm shooting out to put a matching stripe of paint down my arm. “You’re mine.”
“Maybe he was better with his hands,” I countered, swinging my brush so little droplets splattered the front of his shirt. “Did you think of that?”
His laugh was deep and throaty and delicious.
“There’s no fucking way,” he replied. “But keep it up, mate. I don’t mind proving you wrong.”
I saw the change in the way he was distributing his weight a second before he lunged, and I was already spinning out of his reach.
Using the car as a barrier, I ran like hell around the back of it and toward the backyard.
I could hear him behind me, laughing under his breath, and I screeched when I felt his fingers or the brush against the small of my back.
“You’ll never outrun me,” he warned as I jumped over a pile of rocks that Seamus had built for his RC cars.
“I don’t have to outrun you,” I panted, twisting toward the barn. “I just have to outthink you.”
I cut the corner into the barn door and grinned when I heard him bang his shoulder into the doorway, and then I was climbing like my life depended on it.
There was a series of moves that Ian and I had developed over the years.
Hopping onto the workbench along the wall, I ran across it, praying that I didn’t step on anything sharp, and then leaped for the top of an old metal cabinet.
It swayed under my weight, but I didn’t stop to steady it.
I just kept going, tossing the paintbrush ahead of me before jumping just high enough that my gut slammed into the floor of the loft.
As soon as I caught the board that was a little less than an arm’s length from the edge with my fingertips, I pulled my lower half to safety.
When I’d recovered the paintbrush—that was now absolutely filthy—and spun around, Daniel was standing just inside the doors, staring.
“What the fuck was that?”
“What?” I asked breathlessly, unable to keep the huge grin off my face.
“You’re like a fucking cat.”
“You could try to follow me,” I told him, crossing my legs and bracing my elbows on them. “But the cabinet would never hold your weight. Or, you know, you could use the ladder.” I nodded toward it. “But I’d probably jump down before you made it up here.”
He moved further into the barn, his head tipping back to keep me in sight.
“I’m done,” he announced, dropping the paintbrush. “Come back down.”
“Truce?”
“Truce,” he confirmed.
Leaning forward, I dropped my own paintbrush over the ledge. It landed with a smack in the hard-packed dirt.
Climbing to my feet, I grimaced. “I’m not cleaning those.”
“I’ll buy new ones,” he replied. “Wait, don’t—”
But I was already falling through the air.
My feet hit the dirt, and I dug my toes in, knees bent to soften the landing, and my arms outstretched in case I’d overcompensated on the trajectory.
It hadn’t happened since I was fourteen, but there was always a risk, and I didn’t feel like getting a face full of dirt.