Chapter 43
43
DAISY
Bryce takes us home.
Home .
Ours.
Grateful to have walked to Darren’s instead of driven, I follow her inside and pause just beyond the front door. The wings I refused to take off in the car are itchy as they hang off my shoulders. Still, I keep them on.
When she notices my absence behind her, Bryce turns and raises two eyebrows at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
Her blue eyes fill with suspicion. “Why are you standing in the doorway, then?”
“Well, you haven’t actually officially welcomed me into the house as your girlfriend yet.”
Suspicion shifts into a bright humour. “Oh, my bad. How do I fix this great mistake?”
I roll my lip between my teeth and push my hair over my shoulders, chest starting to rise a little faster.
“Well, kissing me here would be a good place to start.”
She’s on me in a single heartbeat. The soft yet controlled press of her lips makes my head empty of anything but her name on repeat.
“Is there anything else I can do?” she murmurs between slow kisses.
“Well, you missed your shot to carry me through the door, but—Bryce!”
With a beaming grin, she sweeps me into her arms and carries me through the living room archway. I cling to her, my fake wings smacking into her, and let our laughs intertwine. They make a beautiful sound, one that I want to hear a million more times.
“Please forgive me, your majesty. Let me rectify my mistake,” she teases lowly, nipping at the tip of my nose.
I sigh dramatically, pressing the back of my hand to my forehead. “Well, if you insist.”
Bryce slowly lowers me to the couch, and I watch with a loopy smile as she climbs onto my lap, pinning me beneath her weight. Her hands find purchase on the couch, bracketing my head as she leans in, our faces mere inches apart.
“I love you, Sunshine,” she declares, her eyes flicking between mine.
The blue in them is so bright, so alive, that I swear I can make out every tiny ridge of the black surrounding them.
My eyelids droop when she skims her lips across mine. “I love you, Frosty.”
“I’m going to make love to you now, so I hope you’ve thought ahead and called for a sub.”
My stomach flutters, a zip of excitement shooting up my spine. “I might have.”
“Might have? That’s not good enough.”
“Play me my playlist, Bryce,” I whisper.
Recognition flickers across her features. “Right now?”
“Right now.”
She slowly climbs from my lap and pulls her phone free of her pocket. With a few swipes across the screen, music begins to play from the speaker.
“I wrote out every song on a piece of paper for you,” she says.
“I know.”
“You never said anything.”
I gaze up at her and smooth my hands down my thighs. “I wanted to see you and hear the songs. Not have them slipped under the door like a dirty secret.”
Taking my movements as the invitation I meant them as, she comes back to me, reclaiming her place on my lap. Her phone falls to the cushion beside us.
“Hear them and see me, then, baby.”
With a finger to the underside of my jaw, she tilts it to the side, baring my neck. I stretch it a bit further just to be a smartass, loving my ability to get under her skin. She presses an open-mouthed kiss to my throat and chuckles.
My voice is breathy when I ask, “Is it true you’ve been turning down female clients?”
She rakes her teeth against my pulse. “Yes.”
“You don’t have to do that for me. I don’t care who you tattoo as long as you get to do it.”
“I don’t want to touch another woman, Daisy. Period. Just my woman. And before you ask, I haven’t wanted a man in three years. They may as well not exist.”
“If I say that I love you again, will it start getting annoying?” I ask, shivering with desire when Bryce sucks at my throat.
My skirt is high and tight, and the feathers keep tickling me, only making my sensitivity to touch that much more intense. I’d be happy if we were both naked already, but that would mean Bryce getting off me, and that’s just not acceptable right now.
I like being her plaything, and right now, she’s enjoying toying with me in any way she can.
“That’s impossible,” she states.
Guiding my head the opposite way, she starts giving the other side of my neck the same love as the other. My toes curl when she swirls her tongue around the love bite I already feel the sting of.
With her distracted, I carefully move a hand between us and start hitching my skirt up my thighs. I’m pulsing between them, and I’d prefer to wear this skirt and costume again without having it to have it dry-cleaned first.
Bryce is too zoned into my movements. She swats my hand away and bites the underside of my jaw as punishment.
“Are you uncomfortable in your skirt, baby?”
“I don’t want to ruin it.”
I can feel her smile against my skin. “How would you do that?”
“Why don’t you reach beneath it and find out?” I taunt.
She hums, sending the vibrations racing down my body. Too slowly, she palms my knee and then slides her hand up my leg. Her fingers brush the daisy tattoo on my thigh before swivelling inward.
“Are you wet, Daisy?”
“Yes,” I answer without delay.
She brings her mouth to my ear and whispers, “Me too.”
I quiver beneath her fingers. “Oh, God.”
“God is a woman after all.”
My brain short-circuits as she speaks the words while also bringing her thumb to press over my swollen clit. I jerk up off the couch, but she’s there to settle me back down by making a slow circle over my wet panties.
With a strangled noise, I snap a hand out and cup her breast, needing something to hold on to. Her nipple is hard against my palm. It scrapes against it with every one of her inhales, and her lashes flutter against my cheek.
“There are too many layers between us,” I croak, the songs coming from her phone beginning to grow deeper and throatier as the minutes pass.
“Your costume stays on. ”
I wiggle my hips. “At least take off the skirt so I can spread my legs.”
“You’re perfect like this. Just like you were the first time I saw you in these ridiculous white feathers and fake wings. It shouldn’t have surprised me that you could make something so cliché look like it was pulled from a runway show. You didn’t even have to do anything, and I was ready to carry you off somewhere we could be alone.”
“Why didn’t you?” I ask on a shuddered exhale.
“You weren’t mine to carry off, Daisy. I knew that before I’d even considered changing my costume.”
“But you still did. We were all expecting something else, and you wore what you knew would match me.”
“I wanted you to notice me,” she reveals, her face remaining hidden in my neck.
“There was never a time when I didn’t.”
The soft noise that escapes her strokes something inside of me. Something raw and sensitive.
“Maybe it wasn’t in the same way that you noticed me, but you were never invisible. I always saw the black-haired woman with the startlingly blue, don’t-piss-me-off eyes and the take-no-shit attitude. You couldn’t blend into a crowd if you tried.”
“I wish I’d said something earlier,” she whispers.
Six words and I know her remaining walls have dropped completely. There’s an honesty to her tone that strikes that raw, sensitive spot all over again.
“I love you, Bryce. This was the perfect time for us. I feel it.”
She pulls back, her teary gaze lifting to meet mine. I kiss away the two that fall first and wipe the next few. She doesn’t look away from me.
Her thumb makes a single pass over my slit, and then she’s pushing my skirt up to rest at my waist before taking my panties off. As soon as I’m bare, her fingers are back, this time running up and down my slick lips .
She parts them, and I gasp, nuzzling my cheek against her temple. “You’re perfect.”
“I need—I need you, Bryce.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Anything. Everything.”
She watches me, eyes lined with bold desire, as she sinks a single finger inside my opening. I inhale sharply and dig my teeth into my lip.
She presses the pad of a finger to that same lip and pries it from where I’ve trapped it. “Be loud for me. Paint the walls with your moans and make this house officially your home.”
I let my eyes roll back and rock my hips with every pump of her finger. “It’s already my home.”
“Then do it for me. I want to hear you cry my name.”
With a nod, I lean up as far as I can and kiss her while she brings a second set of fingers to toy with my clit. The dual sensation is intoxicating, but it’s her presence that’s going to send me over the edge.
I feel her everywhere. Between my legs, in my blood, and tucking herself in the walls of my heart.
She swirls an expert touch around my pulsing clit, and a second finger slides inside of me. I rip my lips from hers as my head falls backward, and a whimper escapes.
“Louder,” she coaxes, curling her fingers and stroking them deep inside my pussy.
Reaching for her, I grip her wrist and use the hold as an anchor. She strums my clit at a quick pace that only seems to grow faster as the seconds pass. I forget to breathe and then gulp down air, repeating the same motions until my head feels too light.
“Bryce! Bryce, Bryce, Bryce.” I repeat her name like a chant, a plea.
It hits me suddenly. One second, I’m lurching my hips in search of more, and the next, I’m going boneless as release rips into me. I think Bryce moans at the sight of my pleasure because that can’t only be me . . .
“You’re so beautiful. Let it go, baby. I love you so much,” she murmurs, continuing to work her fingers.
“I can’t . . . I can’t take any more,” I whisper a beat later, pulling at her wrist.
She removes her fingers instantly and is quick to bring them to her mouth, licking them clean. I’m so wrung out that it takes more strength than it should to cup her breast again and pinch her hard nipple between my fingers. But I want to bring her the pleasure she brought me.
“Come to bed with me, Sunshine,” she says, gently removing my hand and using it to stabilize her when she swings off my lap.
“You need to be the one coming.”
Her smile is soft. “Not right now. I didn’t sleep well last night, and I just want to lie with you.”
“Okay,” I say, voice barely audible. “That sounds perfect.”
She helps me up, and we head to her bed. Our bed now.
I stall only a handful of steps from the couch. “Can I bring the yellow blanket with us?”
“Already trying to redecorate?” she teases.
“What do you think I’ve been doing the last few weeks?”
“Bringing sunshine to my life. I think I’ve stolen some of it along the way.”
I squeeze her hand as tight as I can and snag the blanket, pressing it to my chest.
“Keep it. I think it’s always belonged to you, anyway.”