34. Daisy
34
DAISY
Harrison
Tide’s in at 5. I’ll be there.
I just got cut. That’s a very long time to wait. How should I pass the time?
I can think of several ways.
It’s not really the same without you jerking off on my stomach afterward.
Filthy girl. Now I’m hard as a rock. It’s going to be very awkward if my boss walks in.
I could take care of that for you. You could hide me under your desk.
Now I’m gonna need you to take care of it for me as soon as I get home. Be waiting. Panties off.
I ’m giddy. Even if it’s all pretend, this pretense makes me happier than any real thing I had before him.
I’m at home, showered and waiting just before he’s due. When my mom calls, I consider not answering but we never talk for long, and I’ve got a few minutes ‘til Harrison gets here. Besides, if I talk to her quickly today, I won’t have to talk to her tomorrow, and the less we speak, the fewer lies I’ll be forced to tell.
“I have to go soon, Mom,” I warn. “I’ve got an, um, date.”
“Anyone special?” she asks.
“No.” The lie is necessary. It’s what she wants to hear, and I sure as hell don’t want the questions that would come if I answered in the affirmative.
“Good,” she says, as I knew she would. “The next six months are too important to be getting distracted. Did you see that article I sent about tricks for taking the LSAT?”
“Yeah, thanks.” I wish I could tell her the truth—that it’s hard to get geared up to take an exam for law school when you’re not even sure you’re going to be graduating from college.
“So the reason I was actually calling is that I wanted to make sure you’re coming to the opening of the theater next week,” she says.
“Huh? Didn’t it open weeks ago?”
“That was the soft opening. They’re doing a big thing to celebrate.”
“I don’t—”
“Honey, you have to go. Liam did the restoration. This is his night.”
Downstairs, the garage door is opening.
“We’ll see, Mom,” I say, desperate to end the call. “Oh, there’s someone at the door. Can I—”
“Liam and Emmy would appreciate it. I seriously think he’s going to wind up marrying her. I’ve never seen him like this over someone.”
Harrison climbs the stairs and takes me in like something he’s starved for. He comes to the end of the couch, raising a brow at the shorts I’m still wearing, wrapping his hands around my ankles and spreading my legs.
“Mom, let me call you back,” I squeak, hanging up the phone before she can continue.
He tugs at my shorts. “I thought I told you to have the panties off.” He leans down, pulling my thong to the side. The heat of his exhale ghosts between my legs before he presses a gentle kiss to my clit.
“I was working on it,” I reply breathlessly. “But it felt a little weird to keep going once I got on the call with my mom.”
He tugs the panties off and runs his tongue over my center, letting it circle, then dip inside me.
“You still deserve a little punishment,” he says, sitting up. “Come here.”
I pout. “I kind of liked where we were.”
His grin is positively feral. “You’ll like this too. Probably.” He pats his lap. “Ass up.”
I suspect I know what’s next, and I’m already soaked from the idea of it.
I climb over his lap. His palm rests on my back. “So tell me what was so pressing about this call that you couldn’t take off the panties?”
He smacks my ass hard and I gasp at the sting, but before I can complain, he’s letting a finger slide back along my center.
“Ohhh,” I murmur. I’m losing track of the conversation, and he’s barely begun. “She wanted—”
He slips a finger inside me and I gasp again. He adds a second one and begins to slowly fuck me with his hand.
“She wanted what?” he asks calmly .
“She wanted—” Oh, God, it’s so hard to think when I’ve been craving this all day long. “Go to the theater opening.”
“I thought the theater already opened.” His other hand slides between us and reaches my clit while his fingers continue to move.
“Harrison,” I groan. “More.”
His laugh is low and menacing and makes me want him even more than I already did. He smacks my ass again, but that finger on my clit never stops circling. “Greedy girl. You’re still explaining why you didn’t follow orders. I’m the one who decides when you get more.”
“It was a soft open.”
I brace for the sting of his hand, craving it in a weird way. He delivers, and I groan.
“Oh God, I’m going to feel so weird about coming while you spank me. That would be weird, right?”
The bulge in his pants throbs beneath me. “That sounds like a challenge, Daisy.” His hand lands on my ass again. “Should I attend this premiere too? Should I finger you during the movie but never let you come?”
I can see it. His hand lands again, harder this time, and I barely notice because I’m too consumed with the idea of him fingering me in a theater, refusing to let me get off.
I sit up on my knees. “I’ll do it back to you.”
He opens his belt, unzips his pants, and pulls his cock from his boxers, long and swollen and ready.
“Show me what you’d do in that theater, then,” he says, and he gasps as I lean over and pull him into my mouth.
“I’ll go straight from work,” he hisses. “You won’t have been fucked for at least twenty-four hours, and you’ll be so wet that it’s dripping down your thighs.”
Smack!
Fuck, it feels so real right now. His cock is hitting the back of my throat, already close. It’s as if we’re in that theater, and the idea of it is so fucking filthy that when he jams two fingers inside me, I come apart.
“Fuck, Daisy,” he hisses, holding my head, unmoored by the fact that he’s made me come this way. “ Swallow .”
He floods my mouth with a groan. It takes him a moment to come back down, to realize he’s got my hair in a death grip. “Jesus, sorry,” he says with a breathless laugh, releasing me. “That was a lot. I need a new couch now, don’t I?
I laugh, collapsing on my side and holding my arms out for him to join me. “Probably. You needed one anyway. Audrey decorated this place like the combination of a really boring museum and Lady Havisham’s moldy old tomb in Great Expectations .”
He pulls me against him, pressing his smiling lips to my neck. “A boring museum?”
I shrug. “You know—the ones with really plain sculptures and where all the rooms are mostly empty, and everyone murmurs quietly about how brilliant the shit is when it’s, like, a rectangle made of marble? I don’t know how hard it is to work with marble, but I guarantee that I could make a rectangle out of one if I’d taken a class or two.”
“So how would I turn this place into a house that isn’t half boring museum and half Lady Havisham’s moldy old tomb?”
I reach for my phone and begin scrolling. This is something I’ve actually given a fair amount of thought to, perhaps because I want to rid his life of any remaining signs of Audrey. “First of all, ditch the velvet couch, because that just doesn’t work at the beach. I’m shocked it’s not already full of sand. Something like this.” I show him an oversized couch with plump cushions. “And ditch the coffee table too. I don’t even understand why you bought it if you guys wanted kids. That thing’s an accident waiting to happen.”
He frowns. “I brought up the table corners with Audrey. She said if we had kids visiting, their parents should be watching them.”
Hope flares inside me: maybe he’s realizing how wrong she was, how right I am . I banish the thought as soon as I note it. No matter how true those things are, I’m not the girl he winds up with. I know that.
I continue showing him all the other things I’d change. The soft area rugs I’d buy, new light fixtures, a suede platform bed, a big oak table so he could have friends over.
He reaches to the floor for his pants, grabs his wallet, and hands me a credit card. “Order it.”
My brow furrows. “ What? The nightstand? It wouldn’t really work unless you—”
“All of it,” he says.
I stare at him. “Dude, all this stuff will cost a hundred grand. If you want to spend that kind of money, you should probably call a designer and—”
“Please just order it,” he says. “I don’t care about the money. I just want it done as soon as possible. This is all shit Audrey picked out anyway. I don’t need the reminder.”
The euphoria of a moment before drains away. He doesn’t need the reminder of Audrey, which means her absence still bothers him. And I’m only here as a bridge between Audrey and whoever comes after me, a woman who’ll be older and smarter and more sophisticated. I am simply the rebound fuck, a pleasant memory he’ll one day shake his head at…somewhat appalled by his decision-making once he’s come through the other side.
If I’d gone out with Jon, it would have been smooth, like riding a wave into shore. I might have vaguely enjoyed it, but I’d have had no regret when it was time to jump off and call it a day. With Harrison, though, I’m at the top of a wave that’s beyond my skill level. I know the crash is coming and that it will be ugly. But I’m already inside it and there’s no turning back.
“She’s gone dark again,” he says softly. “What are you thinking about?”
I’m thinking this is a fling for you, but it isn’t for me.
I’m thinking this is going to ruin me when it ends.
“Reverse cowgirl,” I reply. “I’ve never done it, but it looks fun.”
He studies me for a long moment—I worry he’s not going to let me distract him—and I’m relieved when he finally pulls me close. “I guess the furniture can wait.”
Yes, it can.
Everything can wait. I’m already inside the wave, and it’s too fucking late. I might as well enjoy the ride.
The next morning, I follow him downstairs, dressed to surf but unwilling to leave before he does. Something’s been bothering him since last night and the uncertainty makes me want to cling, a deeply unattractive quality. I’m trying hard not to let it show.
“When do you go back to school?” he asks as he makes his coffee for the ride to work.
Why is he asking? If he wanted to get rid of me, he couldn’t now. Maybe he’s just waiting for me to leave.
“I’m not sure,” I reply. He stiffens, as if he senses the lie. “I’ve got to figure it out. I don’t think my car is going to survive the trip back. Why?”
He’s silent just a second too long before he meets my eye. “You barely talk about school. I’m wondering if there’s more to the Lazy Daisy nickname than I realized. Or if there’s just shit you’re not telling me.”
It’s in his expression and tone more than it is his words: a slight irritation with me that he’s trying—and failing—to repress, which is exactly how Christian was at the end. He started picking fights and it was only in hindsight that I realized the problem wasn’t that I’d done something wrong or that I’d begun to fail, but simply that he was tired of me.
Is that what’s happening now?
Or maybe it’s that I’m lying to Harrison. I’m lying to everyone.
“Why would I talk about school?” I reply. I sweep my foot out and let my toes curve around his belt to pull him my way. “We have so many better things to do.”
His hand wraps around my ankle, gentle but firm, and he removes my foot.
“It would be nice,” he says as he grabs the travel mug and his keys, “if you’d stop trying to distract me with sex when you don’t want to answer a question.”
He walks out, and my stomach drops. Is this how it begins—with some vague displeasure and fault-finding on his end…and then suddenly I’m dumped?
He thinks he wants the truth, but if I told him, he’d run as fast as he fucking could.
I still haven’t decided what to do when he texts to say he’s not coming home tonight. A client thing , he says, without explaining why a client thing would require him to be gone until morning.
Maybe it’s nothing, or maybe the end is already here.
At least I’m not pregnant this time around.