Chapter 16 Daisy #2
He backs me against the shelf, one hand in my hair and one on my hip, and I pull at his shirt like I can drag him closer through sheer force of will. His teeth graze my lower lip and I make a sound I'd be embarrassed by if I were capable of embarrassment right now.
"This doesn't count," I gasp when we break apart for air. "This isn't forgiveness."
"I know." He kisses my jaw, my throat, the spot behind my ear that makes my knees go weak. "It doesn't have to count."
"I'm still angry with you."
"Good." His breath is hot against my neck. "Be angry. I deserve it."
"You do."
"I know."
And then he kisses me again and I stop talking, for about three seconds. Then the anger comes back up through the wanting like floodwater through a basement window, and I bite his lip hard enough to make him hiss.
"Still doesn't count," I snarl against his mouth. "Say it."
"Doesn't count." His hands fist in my dress. "Yes ma'am. Doesn't count. This is weather and spite and my self-control drowning in three inches of bookstore runoff."
"Good."
Thunder rolls over the store like applause for bad decisions.
My damp dress clings to my thighs; his jeans squelch when he shifts.
The smell of wet cardboard and spoiled glue should kill the mood.
It doesn't. It makes everything meaner, like the flood is permission to stop pretending we're civilized people who text boundaries and wait for Thursdays.
He backs me into the shelf hard enough that poetry paperbacks shudder.
A water-warped paperback tips; he catches it one-handed without looking and shoves it higher, then returns both hands to my ass and lifts.
My legs go around his waist on instinct.
Wet denim scrapes my bare thighs where my dress has ridden up.
He's soaked from mopping. I'm soaked from him.
The emergency exit sign paints us both the color of a wound.
"Angry," he says, like he's tasting the word. "Be angry. Use your nails. Use your teeth. I deserve the sharp version."
"You deserve worse." I rake my nails down his back through the damp shirt and he groans like I've blessed him. "You deserve to want me and not get to keep me."
"Then don't keep me." He mouths my throat, rough. "Just let me fuck the week off your bones. Let me make you come so hard you forget the viral photo for ten minutes. That's the bargain. No forgiveness. No morning speeches. Just this."
"This," I agree, and yank his shirt open hard enough that a button pings into a puddle.
His chest is hot under my palms, ink slick with rain-sweat. I scrape a thumbnail over a nipple and he jerks, nearly dropping me. He laughs once (wild, unhinged) and pins me harder to the shelf with his hips.
"Dangerous," he warns. "You do that again and I come in my jeans like a teenager and this angry fantasy ends early."
"Then take the jeans off, CEO."
"Yes ma'am."
He sets me down just long enough to shove denim and underwear to his thighs. His cock springs free, thick and flushed, and the sight of him (ruined, wet, furious with wanting) makes my mouth water with a hunger that isn't kindness. I wrap my hand around him and stroke once, mean and slow.
"Daisy—"
"Quiet." I pump him again. "You don't get soft talk tonight. You get my fist and then you get inside me with nothing between us because I am out of good decisions and condoms are upstairs and I am not walking away from this to be responsible."
His eyes go black. "Nothing. You're sure."
"Yes. I know what I'm choosing."
"Fuck." He hitches my dress to my waist, hooks my underwear aside, and drags two fingers through me. The sound is obscene in the quiet flooded dark. "Soaking. For a man you're punishing. God, that's hot. That's… Daisy, that's the hottest mean thing you've ever done to me."
"Then earn it."
He lifts me again. The blunt head of him notches against me.
For one suspended second we stare at each other (storm in our ears, mold and paper in our noses, all that watching and wanting jammed between our bodies) and then he thrusts up as I sink down and the fit is brutal and perfect and unprotected.
We both shout. The fit is so deep it borders on punishment, exactly what I asked for, exactly what I shouldn't want.
"Doesn't count," I gasp, head thunking against a shelf edge. A water-warped spine digs into my shoulder blade; I don't care. "Say it again. Keep saying it while you… ah—"
"Doesn't count." He draws out and drives back in, wet and relentless. "Not a promise. Not a reunion. Not me earning a single goddamn thing except the privilege of being used." His mouth finds my ear. "Use me harder. Dig in. I want bruises I have to explain to no one."
"You're… insane—"
"I'm wet, hard, and finally honest." He snaps his hips.
The shelf complains. "I've watched you for eight weeks like a man haunting his own life.
Tonight you put me inside you with nothing on and called it weather.
I'm taking the weather. I'm taking every angry clench.
I'm taking the way you look at me like you want to ruin me and kiss me in the same breath. "
My laugh comes out cracked. "I do want both."
"Then have both." He kisses me filthy, tongue and teeth, and fucks up into me until the poetry section rattles on its brackets. "Be my disaster. Be my flood. Come on, Daisy, mark me up."
I do. Nails. Teeth at his throat. He hisses and thanks me for it like gratitude is another kink he discovered in the dark. Somewhere a bucket tips; water whispers across concrete. Neither of us stops.
"Doesn't count," he agrees again, and starts fucking me like the phrase is a metronome.
He carries me three steps toward the basement stairs before my brain catches up and I thump his shoulder.
"Shelf," I correct. "If you take me upstairs this becomes something. Basement stays weather."
"Shelf it is." He pivots, laughing once against my mouth, and pins me again among the damaged poetry. "Your rules, your storm. My cock. Tell me what you want."
"Then stay here," I say, and his next thrust turns the words into a moan.
It's nearly ten weeks of separation translated into the slap of wet skin and the creak of a shelf that has never consented to being used as furniture.
His hand covers my mouth when I get too loud (brief, questioning) and I nod against his palm, then bite it, then shove it away because I want him to hear every filthy syllable.
"Harder," I demand. "Adam, harder, if you're going to ruin me, commit—"
"Committed." He snaps his hips and the shelf rattles. "You feel… Christ… bare. Hot. Pulling me in like you're mad about that too. Squeeze me. Punish my cock. Make it hurt in the good way."
I clench around him on purpose and his forehead drops to mine with a broken laugh. Rain hammers the high windows. Somewhere upstairs the emergency lights hum. Down here there is only the wet drive of him into me and the angry prayer of our breathing.
"Tell me it doesn't count," I order, nails in his shoulders.
"Doesn't count." Thrust. "A rain check on forgiveness." Thrust. "Just this. Right here with you."
"I'm not your wife tonight."
"You're whatever you say you are." He shifts the angle and hits a place that makes my vision white out. "And you're coming on me anyway. I can feel it. You're fluttering. You're close. Give it to me. Give me the angry orgasm. I want it on my cock with no condom and no mercy."
"Shut… up—"
"Make me."
Between thrusts I catch our reflection in the dark window glass, two soaked animals using a bookstore as an alibi, and the sight makes me laugh meanly into his mouth. He sees it too. His rhythm falters, then doubles down.