27. Poppy
twenty-seven
Poppy
“Stay here, Sunshine. Stay here with me forever.”
Quiet words whispered in Dylan’s delicious voice float to the surface of my dreams, growing more insistent and more real until they lure me out of sleep. The first hints of morning sunlight dance pink and orange across my eyelids, but the heavy warmth of Dylan’s arms still anchors me to the mattress and his hand still cups one breast like I belong to him. My back is still curled against his chest, his long legs are still tangled up in mine, and his breath still tickles my neck.
I relax into sleep again and inhale the scent of his sheets. Linen and soap and sex. His skin is smooth and hot. His body is hard and constant. His hands grow curious, and his mouth on my shoulder grows bold.
I know this dream.
With a needy moan, I snuggle in harder against him, sliding my hands over his forearms and rolling my hips toward his pelvis. Dylan’s cock jerks against my ass, the vague brush of my skin enough to have him thickening between us, and I tilt my hips so he can drag my underwear down, slip himself between my thighs, and feel how wet he makes me.
His groan feels real. It reverberates down my spine, and when he ghosts his finger down over my hip and then to my clit, I drop my head against his shoulder and rock my hips over his hand, soaking his cock with my arousal.
I love this dream.
Dylan circles my waist with the arm underneath my body, holding me fast against him as he drags his fingers through my folds, then pulls away to fumble with a rubber. I wriggle my hips impatiently, sleepily wondering why dream sex requires a condom, until the tip of his dick nudges at my entrance.
Dylan’s teeth graze the soft muscle between my neck and shoulder as he impales me from behind with a single thrust that makes me cry out in pleasure. In pain. In the most sublime contrast of too much and not enough and go slower and fuck me harder and fuck this is so good.
Dylan’s thrusts turn shallow, and his teeth sink into my shoulder before he sucks on the mark to soothe away the sting. I gasp and moan as I grind back against him, and when the feel of his bite doesn’t disappear like it’s supposed to, I slowly start to understand that I’m not dreaming at all. My eyes flutter open, and I look around the room—Dylan’s room—painted in the golden-orange glow of sunrise.
I close my eyes again and moan. Oh, God. This is real. And now I’m even wetter.
Dylan chokes back a grunt as he unloops his arm from around my waist and glides his palm down my back. He sets it between my shoulder blades, and with the other hand gripping my hip, he hinges me forward, folding me almost in half and shoving himself even deeper into my pussy.
I turn my face into the mattress, wanting to scream with how insane this feels, and again when Dylan opens my knees to spread me wide. He applies the pads of his first two fingers to my clit and rubs it with tight circles that push me closer and closer to the end. Dylan ruts into me with feral grunts and rough thrusts as he loops one arm around my waist again and yanks my ass against him hard enough that I can’t move.
But I can come. And I do. I explode everywhere—with fire and light in every nerve of my body. In wetness and warmth between my legs. With need and adoration in my chest. I come apart as Dylan comes with me, tensing and jerking and unloading while I clench and release around him. We come and then we collapse and try to catch our breath.
Dylan rains kisses over my neck, brushing away the locks of hair sticking to the sweat on my skin. “Damn, Sunshine,” he says. “That’s quite a way to wish me good morning.”
“I thought I was dreaming.”
“Nope,” he says with a smile in his voice. “That was real. Very real.”
“Oh, I know. I’ve never come that hard in my sleep before.”
He chuckles and kisses my shoulder as I carefully pull away.
“I’m just going to clean up,” I say, wrapping myself in a sheet as I push off the mattress. He grunts as he lets me go, and I quickly use the bathroom, rinse my mouth, and run my fingers through my hair before I dash back to his arms.
By the minty freshness of his kiss, Dylan snuck away too, and I snuggle up against him as he sweeps the hair from my forehead and pulls me into his arms.
We recline on the pillows and Dylan skates the featherlight touch of his fingertips up and down the dip of my spine. He regards me with an expression serious enough to make my pulse quicken, and it reminds me that the smart thing to do when I’m feeling safe is leave before anyone asks me to go. And that’s exactly what Dylan is about to do.
I shift under the sheets and pull back as much as his arms will allow. “Dylan—”
“I want to tell Daisy about us.”
His words kind of float around me before they settle enough to make sense. I drop back onto my pillow a second before the panic sets in.
“What? Why?”
His fingers still on my back, hurt swims in his beautiful blue eyes, and his throat bobs in a nervous swallow.
I set a palm to his cheek. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean no . But I don’t get it. Why do you want to tell Daisy now after we’ve spent months keeping this quiet? To protect her. And to protect Izzy.”
And me.
“Why?” Dylan’s smile is as much amused as it is hesitant. “Because I want to be with you.”
Hope—stupid, dangerous, blind hope—buzzes like dragonflies low in my stomach. Behind my ribs. In the tips of my toes.
“Izzy fell asleep without me last night,” Dylan adds, and at my puzzled frown he says, “When you took her to bed after pancakes. She fell asleep with you instead of me, and she hasn’t fallen asleep without me in months.”
“She did,” I say as the significance of an otherwise insignificant moment lands. “Is that okay?”
“It’s more than okay. It’s the moment that made me realize how much Izzy and I will lose if I stay stupid and let you go.”
“Oh, Dylan.” I nestle deeper in his arms and close my eyes so the only thing I have to focus on is the meaning of his words and the warmth of his arms and the steady thud of his heart against my cheek.
“I’m so grateful that you want to protect Izzy as fiercely as you do,” he murmurs, “but keeping her safe is still my biggest fear, you know? Probably always will be. And at first, I was terrified of Izzy growing attached to you, knowing you were going to leave. And then…”
“Then what?”
“Then it was too late. Izzy fell for you. And I was suddenly terrified that if you left her—us—it would be my fault. I’d be the reason for her broken heart.”
Something in his honesty makes me twitch, and I fight a battle with my heart about giving it a voice. But in the end, my insecurities win out, like they’re looking for a reason to prove this really is too good to be true.
“Dylan. You’re a wonderful father, and I want Izzy to be happy more than anything but…” My voice grows small. “That can’t be the reason we’re together.”
Dylan tightens his arm around me and presses his lips to my hair. “Dammit. I’ve screwed this up. Izzy is not the reason I want to be with you, but she is the reason I stopped being so fucking scared of asking you to stay, even though your answer might be no.”
I roll away just enough to check that he’s serious. “You want me to stay? Really?”
His brows draw in, and his jaw feathers as his fingers on my hip dig into the soft muscle and don’t let go. “I want you to stay. Not for Izzy. Not even for me. But for us. I want to be with you. Do you…? Do you want to be with me?”
“Oh, Dylan.” I press my forehead to his chest, embarrassed by the emotion that catches in my throat. Do I want to be with him? It’s enough to make me laugh, and it comes out thick with emotion. He’d be better to ask if there was ever a time in my life when I didn’t want that. And the answer is never. Never ever. It’s always been him. “Yes. Yes, I want to be with you.”
I throw an arm over him and clutch him to me, feeling light enough to float away if I let go. Dylan enfolds me in his arms and presses his lips to the top of my head.
“You can move in—it’ll be crazy and busy, but I kind of like the idea of us all under one roof. We’ll make it work.” He talks like he’s already done the work of imagining a future with me, and the more he says, the faster my heart beats. “You can enroll in the community college. Business or cosmetology or whatever you decide to do. Did you know they have programs to support students with learning differences? They can help with registration and scheduling and tutoring—lots of things. I know that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy, but I also know you can do it. We’ll do it together. And we’ll have to work out care for Izzy. It might be weird to still be the nanny when you’re officially my girlfriend. I don’t know. What do you think?”
Officially his girlfriend. I’m spinning and falling and drowning in possibilities.
“You’ve really thought about this,” I say.
“Well…yeah. Haven’t you?”
A hundred times. A thousand. A million times a million.
“And Daisy?” I ask.
“She’ll be okay,” Dylan says. “Better than okay. She’s been pushing me to find someone, right? The more I think about it, the more certain I am that Daisy’s going to be our biggest supporter. She loves you, Poppy. All she wants is for us to be happy. Now all we have to do is show her how happy we are together.”
Hope flutters again. Could it be that simple?
“Stay here, Sunshine,” he says, his hands cupping my face and blue eyes gazing into mine. “Stay here with me forever.”
“Okay.”
Amazement twitches across his lips and dances across his eyebrows. “Yeah?”
I nod, then laugh as he almost buries me with his body, scooping me up with arms and legs into a hug hard enough to make my bones creak.
Dylan wants me . He wants me to stay. And I can finally tell Daisy the truth. Somehow everything’s going to be just fine.