Chapter 30
30
brYCE
I thought I was obsessed with Daisy well enough before today. Thought I knew everything I needed to and was content with taking my time to learn the rest. But now, after sharing this moment with her, I realize that I had no fucking idea how obsessed I could become.
The taste of her sweet pussy lingers on my tongue as I busy myself with kissing and stroking her inner thighs, soothing her through the comedown from her orgasm.
I’ll never forget this first one. Every cry and whimper and plea for more has been etched in my goddamn soul. I’m anxious to collect more of them, slowly, quickly, anywhere and everywhere.
It’s not the time, though. Fuck, it wasn’t the time ten minutes ago either, but that didn’t stop me from falling to my knees and feasting on her tight, wet pussy the first chance I had.
Every word I spoke while she thrashed against my tongue hangs suspended above us. An invisible clock counts down the moments left before we’re forced to revisit them.
My eyelids droop as I nuzzle my cheek against her thigh and palm her hip bone, touching her with a need that I feel all the way in my bones. I’m tangled up inside, so aroused that even just existing in the same space as her without touching myself is a struggle.
The fingers that were threatening to rip my hair clean from my scalp have relaxed and now stroke the sore places and guide me through the fog of need.
“Did you mean all of that?” she whispers.
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
There’s no going back now. I’m not diminishing the weight of my words. Not after this.
“Yeah, Sunshine. I meant all of it.”
The bed shifts beneath her weight, and then she’s sitting on the edge of it, staring down at me with such an honest, open expression. It’s who she is, my Daisy. Trusting and kind without judgment. There’s no doubt in my mind that if she decided to turn me away, she would still be gentle with her words. Even if she was struggling with doing so.
“Have you felt that way for long?” she asks, the apples of her cheeks burning a bright red.
I hesitate to tell her the full truth. It’s never stopped making me feel guilty, and right now, if I admitted that I’ve been interested in her for years instead of the weeks she’s expecting to hear, I won’t be able to handle it ruining anything. I’ve come so close to making her mine, and it feels too good to be true to take even just one more risk.
“A couple of weeks,” I say instead.
“So, from before we kissed the first time?”
I turn my face inward and press my lips to her thigh a final time while moving her panties back in place. With a hold on both her knees, I push to my feet. Her skirt is soft in my hands as I lower it over her legs.
She watches with a wide grin as I fuss over her, going as far as to smooth down her hair and wipe away the smudge of mascara below her wet lashes.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you for a while, Daisy. Before you brought up the idea of practicing. I’m sorry that I made you feel like I didn’t want you.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t apologize. I let myself overthink and, like you said earlier, convinced myself of something completely off base. Clearly, I’m lacking in relationship knowledge after so long without one.”
“So am I. My last one was a total sham, so I guess we both have to relearn everything.”
“We’re a mess,” she teases, reaching for my hand and yanking me onto the bed beside her.
“What happens now?” It’s a blunt question, but after waiting so long for this, I don’t want to spend any more time wondering.
“We keep doing what we’re doing. Nobody will know anything we don’t want them to. I’d really like to take the time to get to know you more, Bryce,” she murmurs, leaning her head against my shoulder and holding on to my arm.
“Is that your way of saying that you feel the same way I do?”
Her smile is wide enough I feel it against my shoulder. “You mean in the keeping you in my bed for hours and kissing you until your lips are swollen and sore way?”
I breathe a laugh and kiss her hair. “Exactly.”
“Yes, Frosty, I do,” she admits gently.
“No more disappearing, then.”
“That goes for you too.”
“I haven’t bothered with disappearing in a while.”
Her nails dig into my arm as she tightens her hold. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just don’t do it again unless you want me to shout your name all over town looking for you.”
“I was with Kiki. It’s the place I go when I need to think.”
“Not your parents’ place?”
“Sometimes. But not with this. I needed them to see us together like they did in the yard for them to believe it. If I had shown up here with the way I was feeling before, Mama would have read right through the fake status, and I would have had to tell her the truth.”
“You could tell her the truth. If it upsets you to lie.”
She drapes her legs over my lap, and my eyebrows jump at the surprisingly confident move. “No, it’s okay. If I tell one of my moms, they’ll tell the other, and then before we know it, my sisters know, and Johnny’s plowing your door down to tell the both of us off for deceiving him.”
“Your brother doesn’t scare me, Daisy.”
“That’s because nothing scares you.”
I choke on a scoff. “Plenty of things scare me.”
“Like what? Don’t tease me with this! I’m desperate to know what makes the ice queen shiver in fear.”
I lean away from her, making sure she’s looking at me before scowling. “I don’t shiver in fear of anything.”
She rolls her eyes dramatically. “Mhm, if you say so. Now, spill!”
“I don’t like when my feet touch the bottom material of a pool.”
A long, stagnant pause, and then a laugh explodes from her mouth. “Are you being serious?”
“Make fun of me, Daisy, I dare you,” I warn, attempting to sound threatening, but the humour in my tone is a massive giveaway that it’s a facade. “And stop laughing.”
“I’m just . . . what material exactly? The bumpy kind in an in-ground pool or the slick plastic from a pop-up?”
I shiver. “You’re having too much fun with this.”
She holds my stomach, leaning close, body shaking with bright laughter. “I’m sorry! I wasn’t expecting something so mundane to be what scares you. If it makes you feel better, I don’t like bodies of water.”
“That’s not the only thing, smartass, but I’m not telling you anything else until you tell me what you’re afraid of. Truly afraid of. ”
Sobering slightly, she nods. “Okay, okay. Well, I think out of everything, I’m most terrified of running out of time.”
“In what way?”
“Like, imagine if you had this entire list of things you wanted to accomplish before you died, and instead of making the effort to start crossing them off, you kept putting it off further and further until you woke up one day and realized that you’d wasted too much time. You kept telling yourself that you’d send that text to catch up with a friend tomorrow or that you’d accept that date invite next weekend, then before you knew it, you’ve grown apart from your friend, and you’re spending another night in your bed alone.
“My mama used to tell me that everything that’s supposed to happen will happen eventually, but Johnny was the twin who believed in fate and all those shiny things we’re told as children. I’ve always known that if you want something, you need to be the one to take the steps to make it happen. Good things happen to good people, yes, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to chase them. So, yeah, I guess my biggest fear is getting too comfortable in the life that I have and forgetting that there’s more out there waiting for me. I just have to put in the effort to find it and take it for myself.”
“Here I am talking about pool floors, and you go and drop that? Christ, Daisy, you’re too good for the likes of me,” I mutter, her words banging around in my mind.
She laughs that wind chime laugh, and I melt. “Not at all, actually. I might not believe in everything Johnny and my moms do, but I’ve never not believed that opposites attract. It’s science, as far as I’m concerned.”
“And you think we’re opposites?” I ask.
She scoots from the mattress to my lap, making a home for herself in the arms I wrap around her. With her head nestled against my collarbone, she traces the black lines at the base of my throat .
“Yes, but in the best way. If we were too similar, I don’t think we’d be here right now.”
I rub her arm, soaking in the way the simple contact soothes the strike of fear that follows her statement. It’s there and gone before I can examine it fully.
“You’re right. My relationship with Vic was never meant to last, considering we were almost the exact same person.”
Daisy straightens slightly, her head lifting so we can look at one another. “I don’t remember her much from before I left for Calgary. You weren’t together then, right?”
“No. It was a couple months afterward and lasted just shy of a year. By the time Anna moved to town, we’d been broken up for a few months.”
“For what it’s worth, I’d have broken his dick too.”
A smile rips my lips apart. “So, you do know what happened, then. I wasn’t sure.”
“I think everyone in Cherry Peak knows what happened, Frosty. It’s not every day someone breaks a guy’s dick in the supermarket parking lot and gets driven away in the back of an RCMP car. Kristen called to tell me about it in the middle of one of my classes.”
My smile slowly falls as the heavier part of the story comes tumbling free. “She’d been cheating on me for months. I figured she was, but I was too headstrong to call her out on it, only to be wrong. When I did find out . . . I might have overreacted.”
“It’s too late to go back and change your actions now. If you could, would you?”
I roll a couple of answers around on my tongue before going with my gut. “No. The prick deserved it.”
She beams, eyes twinkling. “Yeah, that’s what I figured. My girl’s vicious when she wants to be.”
“Your girl?” I rasp.
I’ve never had such an obvious claim laid to me by someone before, let alone a woman whom I’ve wanted to claim as my own for a long fucking time .
Her confident smile doesn’t waver. Not for a single second.
“Yes, Bryce. My girl. In here and out there and everywhere in between. If that’s okay with you, of course.”
“More than, Sunshine.”