28. Daisy
28
DAISY
I ’m lying in bed, but I don’t see myself falling asleep anytime soon.
All the things he started last night still beg for completion. My nipples ache for the sting of his teeth. I picture his weight above me, his cock grazing my clit, and I buck upward against the air. That’s how real the memory is.
You just need the experience of being with someone who cares about you enough to make it worth your while but who isn’t expecting the performance of a lifetime. Someone who will take his fucking time building up to—
Building up to what? There was a clench in his jaw as he said it, a flicker of what seemed an awful lot like…frustration. As if, perhaps, he was thinking of himself and the way he’d take his fucking time building up to whatever it was.
Maybe he doesn’t care about me the way he’s supposed to, but he does care. And I bet he knows exactly what he’s doing in bed—those fingers of his moved with expert precision last night before my moral compass came in to cockblock us both. So why shouldn’t it be with him? Why shouldn’t he be the one who proves this supposed truth to me? He made it abundantly clear last night that he wants to.
I flip on a light, climb out of bed, and come to a halt at the sight of my reflection. My pajamas are as unsexy as they could possibly be—tank top, flannel bottoms. If I actually had sexy lingerie here, I’d consider putting it on, but it’s better this way. How humiliating would it be to prance in there wearing lingerie and still get rejected?
I take a deep breath, as if I’m about to jump into ice-cold water, and then I pad down the hall to his room.
“Harrison?” I tap lightly. “Are you up?”
“Yeah.” His voice is already wary. I should take that for the warning it is and turn my ass around, but instead, I open the door.
He turns on the lamp beside him as he sits, all the visible parts of him deliciously bare. I glance at the bunched-up covers, hoping for a glimpse of his lower half, while he fumbles on the nightstand for his glasses.
When he turns to me, that knot in my stomach tightens. Jesus Christ. Harrison, shirtless in those glasses, should be his own category of porn. There’s nothing he could ask of me right now that I wouldn’t agree to.
I cross the room and take a seat on the end of the bed. “I didn’t know you wore contacts.”
He raises a brow. “Is that what you came in here to discuss in the middle of the night?”
“No. I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”
He shakes his head, something miserable in the gesture. “No. I couldn’t fall asleep. So, what’s up?”
I take a deep breath, tugging nervously at the hem of my tank top. “You know how you said I just need to meet someone who knew what he was doing but also knew me ?”
He freezes. I haven’t even stated my request, and it’s already clear this is going to end badly .
“Well,” I continue with a forced shrug, “what if it was you? I mean, I know you don’t like me that way, and you’re still getting over Audrey, but you seem like you could perform if you chose to, and you aren’t dating anyone, so…”
He places a palm over his face and keeps it there for far too long. “Oh my God, Daisy. Did you seriously just come in my room to ask me to fuck you?”
My eyes narrow, and I cross my arms over my chest. “Well, not just that. You’re the one who talked such a good game about foreplay.”
“Daisy,” he groans, “if Liam and your mom knew we’d even had this conversation, they’d never speak to me again, and if we acted on it, they wouldn’t be able to speak to me again because I’d be dead seconds after Liam learned about it.”
I brace my hands on my knees and stare at the ground. I knew I wasn’t going to be great at seducing Harrison, but I’m not sure we could possibly be having a less sexy conversation than this one.
“I wasn’t asking you to have sex with me a million times. Just the once. Maybe twice, if there’s really as much to sex as you’ve implied. Okay, three to four times to cover most of the basic positions, but it’s not like I’m planning to give Liam the play-by-play in the morning.”
“These things have a way of getting out eventually.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, as if I’m a child who’s frustrating him. “I think you better go back to your room.”
Great, and now he’s dismissing me like a child, but the situation is a thousand times more shameful because I basically threw myself at him first.
He’s full of shit, too. If he was actually scared about it getting out, he wouldn’t have let me stay here in the first place. No one is ever going to believe we didn’t sleep together if they hear about this summer.
“Don’t blame it on Liam.” I swallow down a horrifying desire to cry. “You just aren’t interested. That’s all you needed to say.”
I walk out the door and close it behind me. He doesn’t try to stop me, though I guess a part of me was hoping he would. I get back to my room, sink onto the edge of the bed, and press my face to my hands.
It was so fucking stupid to think that I could just waltz in there, ask him what I did, and have it miraculously not be awkward tomorrow. What did I think was going to happen? It’s almost too dumb to admit it to myself:
I didn’t want him to sleep with me once. I was hoping he’d sleep with me, and it would be so magical and life-altering that the age difference and his friendships would no longer matter. It was absolutely crazy. If I had an ounce of sanity left, I’d start packing my shit right now.
Footsteps creak in the hallway, interrupting my train of thought. Is he leaving? He has work tomorrow, and now I’ve—
There’s a knock on my door.
“Daisy? Can I come in?”
“Please go away,” I beg, but my voice cracks. It’s bad enough that he’s rejected me. I won’t survive pity from him afterward.
“Daisy,” he croons from the other side of the door. “Shit. I’m coming in.” He steps inside and his face falls. “Honey, why are you crying?”
I brush at the tears on my face. “I just made a fool of myself in front of you and got shot down in the worst way. Why the hell do you think I’m crying?”
He sits beside me on the bed. “It’s not like I didn’t want to say yes, Daisy. But your mom and Liam would never, ever forgive me.”
“Please just stop.” My voice is a bare rasp. “If you wanted to, you would have. Liam and my mom wouldn’t find out, so you’re just making excuses.”
He sighs. “Daisy, I assure you—I want to. If you had any idea how many times I’ve jerked off thinking about you bent over doing your stretches you’d feel a lot less rejected. But it would be wrong. It’s one thing to let you stay here, but—”
“You jerked off thinking about me?” My tears are forgotten.
He laughs. “I think you focused on the wrong part of what I said. But, yes, I have. I’m probably going to jerk off later just to the thought of you asking me about jerking off.”
I glance at his crotch, and he elbows me. “Eyes up, Daisy. But for the record, hearing you say anything vaguely dirty makes me hard, and this conversation is no exception.”
“How hard?” I ask, my voice laughably breathless and eager. My gaze drifts to that bulge in his boxers again.
“Please do not ask me that question in that voice when I’m trying to do the right thing,” he says between his teeth. “You have the voice of a webcam girl even when you’re not trying.”
Harrison fucking Reid has jerked off thinking about me. I’ll never recover from the shock of it. “I’m a little less familiar than you are with webcam girls apparently.”
His laughter sounds slightly pained. “I’ve never paid one. But if I had, I imagine she’d sound just like you.”
“If you were going to pay one, what would you have her say to you?”
He groans. “I’d probably just ask her to repeat this conversation verbatim.” His thighs tense as if he’s about to stand. “Well, I should—”
“So when you think about me bent over stretching,” I say, cutting him off as I scoot backward, leaning against my pillows at the head of the bed, “what is it you picture?”
His gaze flickers to me, his eyes narrow. “That hardly seems like the kind of thing we should be discussing when you’re in that tank and I’m in nothing but boxers. I’ve admitted enough for one night.”
He braces to rise again but I slide my foot out to nudge his hip .
“I put myself out there, and you rejected me. The least you could do is put yourself out there a little too. So, tell me what you picture.”
He releases a heavy sigh, his hand fisting his hair. “I have several different fantasies about you. Some involve walking up behind you when you’re in that one pose…” he trails off with a strangled noise. “The one where you’re down on the ground with your ass in the air. I assume you can figure out the rest. And that night you mentioned how easily you can find your own clit has occupied many of my thoughts in the shower as well.”
I bite down on a smile. “So you like the thought of me getting myself off?”
He laughs, more to himself than me. “I’m a guy. Of course I like that thought.”
I settle back against the pillows and let my legs open a little bit more. Never in my life have I masturbated in front of someone, and I can’t imagine why I’m considering it now when not two minutes ago I was crying about the way he rejected me, but…he’s already admitted he wants to see it. He’s already admitted jerking off to the thought of it.
I slide my hand into the waistband of my pants and down between my legs. “So you just picture watching me like this?”
His eyes are dangerous now, hazy and feral. “Daisy, what the fuck are you doing?”
I shrug. “I’m pretty sure you know exactly what I’m doing. I’m sliding my finger along my clit, then—”
I slide one finger inside myself and my head falls backward. I started this just to torture him, but find myself strangely turned on by the whole experience too.
He swallows. “I should go.”
“I want you to watch,” I reply. I’m growing bolder by the minute.
He winces, nostrils flaring as his head turns, as his gaze drifts to that hand between my legs. “Do you have a finger inside yourself right now?” His voice is pure gravel.
When I nod, he groans, his jaw grinding. “Oh, God.”
“Do you want me to do it again?” I ask. “Should I add a second one? Because I want to. I’m pretending it’s your fingers sliding inside me.”
He gives his cock a hard squeeze, as if he can’t stand not to be inside me while I do this. When I run one hand over my tank top and pinch a nipple, he leans closer, his exhale reverberating over my skin.
“Do it again,” he whispers, wrapping a hand around my ankle. “I want to watch you make yourself come.”
I could argue that if he’s going to watch me, he might as well participate, but I’m too far gone. I do it again, my fingers slipping in and out easily now, and suddenly he’s kneeling between my spread legs, grasping himself tight, his eyes on me as if I’m something that could vanish at any moment.
“Take off the pants,” he growls. His hesitation has vanished entirely. He’s every bit as demanding, as certain , as I thought he might be.
I tuck my thumbs into the waistband of my pants and lower them. Air hisses between his teeth when he realizes I’m not wearing panties and he yanks them the rest of the way down my legs.
“Touch yourself,” he says, his voice low and guttural.
I battle a wave of stage fright—somehow it was different when he couldn’t see precisely what I was doing, but I go ahead and slide my hand over my stomach again and between my legs, where I am so soaked that I’m a little embarrassed by the sound as I circle my clit again and push my middle finger inside myself.
The expression on his face—eager, desperate—emboldens me. I let my knees fall open and his sharp inhale in response leaves my body tightening, clenching on air .
While I normally come pretty easily on my own, it doesn’t happen this fast, but I’m already close. His hand starts to slide up my calf.
“How is it, Daisy?” he asks. “Tell me how it feels inside that tight little cunt of yours.”
“Oh, God,” I moan. “Say that again.”
His grip on my calf tightens even farther. His other hand is fisted around his cock. “You like that, do you? You like that it gets me off, imagining what it’d be like inside your tight cunt? I’ve been thinking about it every day since you fucking arrived. Thinking about how hard I would fuck you, how hard I would make you come.”
“Harrison. Fuck .” I go right over the edge at the words, my eyes squeezed shut. He utters a curse under his breath, and that hand on my ankle is the only thing keeping me tethered to the bed. He didn’t even touch me and it’s still the best orgasm of my life.
I have to fight to return to reality. Under heavy lids, I take in several things at once—those avid eyes of his, his cock pushing hard against the elastic of his boxers, which he grips as if he’s in pain. He’s so goddamn desperate for it.
“Your turn,” I purr. “You owe me one now.”
I fully expect him to offer some tedious explanation about why that can’t happen, but instead he tugs the boxers down and thrusts into his fist, inhaling through his nose.
“Jesus,” he whispers. “I’m already close.”
I stretch, wishing he’d push inside me or crawl up and demand I take him in my mouth.
“Tell me what you were thinking about just now,” he says as his hand moves faster. He slides my tank top up with the other. “Tell me what you were thinking about when you came.”
“I was thinking about you above me, about to push inside me.” Like you were last night, though you don’t remember it. Hard as steel, aggressive, certain you wanted it. “I was thinking about how tight it would be, how you’d barely fit—”
“Fuck,” he hisses and then he leans over me and lets his orgasm spray out across my stomach in three long bursts, his hand still flying over his cock.
My thighs clench. I just came, and I’m so turned on again that it’s as if I haven’t finished in a year.
He’s still breathing fast when his eyes open. He takes in the design he’s just painted all over my stomach as if he’s never seen anything hotter.
“Well, it’s a good thing we didn’t have sex,” he says with a quiet laugh.
“We could have,” I reply. I know you want to. “We still could.”
His gaze meets mine. There’s so much indecision there, and though I desperately want him to crawl over me and end the torture, I’m not at all surprised when he rises from the bed instead.
“I can’t,” he says. “You have no idea how much I want to, Daisy, but I can’t.”
He walks out of the room, and nothing feels finished. I’m every bit as worked up as I was before I went to him, but I suspect he’s pretty worked up too.
And I haven’t even put on the blue yoga pants yet.
I blink awake.
For a second, I wonder if I dreamed last night, but no…there’s still a trace of him on my stomach, and it was way too good for even my very active imagination to have fabricated.
It’s still early. I consider heading out to surf, which seems easier than sitting through the inevitable lecture from Harrison about how sorry he is and how it shouldn’t have happened, especially as I plan to derail his good intentions as fast as humanly possible.
Except…if he doesn’t get the tedious lecture out of the way, will he spend the entire day going into a tailspin over it? Will he feel guiltier and guiltier? That won’t help my cause either.
I brush my teeth, throw on a sweatshirt, and leave my room…only to discover that his door is open, though it’s not even seven, and he’s never up this early unless we’re surfing. Downstairs, there’s a coffee cup in the sink and his keys are gone.
My stomach knots. The only reason he’d be gone this early is if he was trying to avoid me. And if he can’t even face the conversation we need to have, it sure doesn’t bode well for what that conversation will entail when it happens.
I didn’t want to listen to him apologize—but it never occurred to me until now that he might ask me to leave.
I surf just to clear my head before I go into work, but it doesn’t help as much as it should. I keep expecting a text from him. Some version of “ Hey, sorry, I know we need to talk, but I had a meeting ”…anything to explain why he wasn’t there, but it doesn’t come.
The more I wait, the more disturbed I am by his silence. My waitressing skills—never laudable—are worse than ever. I can’t focus on anything but the question of what he’s thinking and why he’s gone dark. People angrily ask for drink refills and that side of mayo they requested ten minutes ago, and I don’t care. If Harrison’s this quiet, he’s either apartment hunting for me or he’s fled the fucking country.
Griff, the artist, is the only one who doesn’t mind my substandard serving abilities. Today, he’s drawn me in a micromini with black stars covering my nipples—I’ve noticed that I’m wearing fewer and fewer clothes in these drawings of his—and the breasts he’s given me exceed anything a human female could carry while remaining upright .
“If you ever wanted to come pose for me, I could do a much more detailed one,” he says as he pays the check.
I force a smile. “I’d have to ask my boyfriend.”
The excitement in his face dims a little, as I’d hoped it would. “It wouldn’t have to be a big deal,” he offers. “Not necessarily nude or anything if you weren’t comfortable with it.”
I know exactly how Harrison would react if his girlfriend or wife was asked to model in a strange guy’s home, not necessarily nude. I guarantee the words “that’s not fucking happening” or “over my dead body” would be uttered. I can’t think of anything I’d love more than to be the person he wanted to keep for himself, something he was determined to protect, and a tiny part of me last night dreamed it was possible. Sure, I knew he’d feel guilty and might backtrack a little, but I figured he’d give in again. And then he’d give in more. And eventually, after weeks or months of giving in, maybe he’d see that the age gap isn’t that big a deal.
But there’s not been a peep from him by the time my shift ends, so that’s definitely not happening. Is he going to ask me to leave? Or is he going to fabricate something that calls him out of town until the summer’s end?
I fish my phone from my pocket as I close out my tables, no longer able to stand the suspense.
Are you coming home to surf?
He doesn’t answer right away, which could mean nothing but bothers me anyhow. And the answer—which doesn’t arrive until I’ve already biked home and changed into my bikini—bothers me more.
Harrison
Baker is on the warpath. Not sure when I’ll be back but it’ll be late .
I stare at the phone. So, not only is he avoiding me…he isn’t even going to reference what happened. I’d bet a hundred bucks when he finally gets in tonight, he’s going to tell me this just isn’t going to work out. My heart is already splintering at the thought.
I think of a thousand follow-up texts, but I don’t send any of them, hoping that if I just wait long enough, he’ll clarify. He doesn’t. I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to be this weird, desperate girl who thinks a guy is her boyfriend just because he jerked off on her stomach—jerked off under duress . But I’m apparently that girl anyway. I wanted more, it’s not coming, and I’ve got no idea how to salvage the situation.
Or if he’s even going to give me the chance.
When I wake the next day, I can’t tell if he came home.
I limp through my shift. Working at Wharf Seafood has never been a heavier burden than it is today and when I return to the still-empty house afterward, I’ve never felt more alone.
Yes, I wanted more from him. I wanted so much more. But what we had here when we were simply friends or unwilling housemates was good too. And I don’t know how I’m going to get that back.
Hey, your silence is freaking me out. Can you just tell me what you’re thinking?
The text seems so mature and grounded until I’ve hit send , and then it seems clingy and adolescent. I might as well have sent him a note asking, “ Do you like me? Check yes or no .”
And he doesn’t reply at all to that one. Which means that what he’s thinking is bad or needs to be said in person. Fuck.
I go out to the break. Surfing won’t necessarily improve the situation, but it sure won’t make it worse. Jon, the guy who invited me out with him and his friends a while ago, is there. He’s friendly, funny, chill—exactly the kind of guy Harrison was describing when he suggested I see someone casually. Jon isn’t glorifying me into someone I’m not, and I wouldn’t need to play a role with him. I could tell him what wasn’t working for me.
And if I were seeing someone, maybe Harrison wouldn’t feel like he had to kick me out. Maybe I can still salvage this. In spite of my stupidly needy text, if he gets home from work to discover that I’m perfectly fine and possibly going on a date, perhaps it’ll dial back the panic I’ve definitely set in motion.
He won’t have to make up a reason to leave. He won’t give me the “it’s not you, it’s me” talk that will be equal parts humiliating and heart-breaking.
I float closer to Jon. Our conversation is entirely surf-related. I tell him I just went down to Malibu and he says oh, you should have surfed at Rincon on the way and I think yes, I know .
“We’re heading to a bar down in Capitola tonight,” he says. “If your uncle is willing to let you out of his sight.”
I laugh as I give him the finger. And then I agree. If dating someone else can fix things with Harrison, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.