38. Bubble Wrap
BUBBLE WRAP
Ivy
Anxiety rolled through my veins as I typed out the message for the fifteenth time.
We’d been back home for a few days now, slipping right back into the routine we’d begun crafting before the California trip.
Only now, Sunny was back home, and I stayed panicked that he’d catch us even when we were behind closed doors and fully-grown adults.
Not as if we were breaking the law or something.
“Why are you so nervous?” Oliver asked from next to me. We were sitting on the couch in the living room together. We’d finished breakfast, and he’d taken the rest of the day off to help me.
“I just…What if they’re there?” I arched a brow his way as if my worry was completely normal and understandable. And I knew it was, but it still felt stupid to be this anxious about it.
“So what if they are? I’ll be with you the entire time.” He sounded so sure of himself. The confidence oozed off him in waves, like it always did.
My eyes dropped back to my phone and I typed it out one more time, hitting send.
I’ll be there this afternoon to get the rest of my stuff and return the apartment key. I already talked to the landlord.
“Done.”
Oliver leaned over and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Good girl.”
His hand glided down my thigh, and it was that movement that made me realize my leg was bouncing.
The truck slid into park, his fingers squeezing along my leg, his eyes intent upon me as I stared out the windshield.
“Talk to me.” His words interrupted the small amount of spiraling I was doing internally.
“I just want to get this over with. I think I’m nervous he’s going to show up and try to cause a scene. Which is stupid, but that’s where my anxiety keeps slipping to.”
He nodded. “Well, let’s go inside and ease your anxieties, baby doll. The rest of the gang will be here in a bit with the moving truck. Let me help you get your stuff together.”
I blew out a breath. “Okay, let’s do it.”
Letting Oliver Carragan into the apartment I shared with my now-ex-boyfriend wasn’t something I’d thought a great deal about.
That was, until I slid the key into the front door and it swung open.
The heat of him at my back had my brain stuttering to a stop, and my feet stuck to the concrete hallway floor below them.
“Are we going to go in?” He must’ve leaned down, because I could feel his words against my bare skin.
“Um, yes.”
His hands came to settle on my shoulders, and I was suddenly desperate for more clothing. The tank top I’d thrown on wasn’t enough, and his bare hands were settling against my skin as he maneuvered me into the entryway and the door swung closed behind us.
“You did it. Now, Rowan and Aspen are bringing boxes with the truck, but Aspen said you had some totes we could use to start packing up some of the miscellaneous stuff and your books?”
I forced my throat to swallow as I nodded. “Yup.”
“Well, let’s get to work, baby doll.” He started walking around me, but as he went past, his palm slapped my ass, the jump as immediate as the small yelp that slipped past my lips.
I couldn’t even pretend to be mad as he smirked and strolled over to the bookshelf against the living room wall. Those fucking Levi jeans would surely be the death of me.
“Tote?” he asked with an arched brow.
“Oh. Um. Yeah.” Tearing my eyes away from his jean-clad ass, I walked back to the bedroom, pulling out the few long totes I had beneath the bed. I pushed to my feet, my eyes drawn to him as if he were the only light source in the room.
He leaned against the doorframe, his thick arms crossed over his chest as he watched me. Clearing my throat, I forced a small smile. “Totes.”
He nodded, not speaking for a moment as he looked around the room. The queen bed with the modern-style light wood bedframe. Two nightstands that matched. A TV in the far corner and the mirrors that made up the closet doors.
“So—” I began, but when his eyes met mine once more, the words died on my tongue.
“Put the totes down, Ivy.” The command was clear as I set them back on the ground. “Undress for me.”
The blush reached my cheeks before words could even form. “Oliver, what are you?—”
“Take your clothes off, baby doll. I told you I’d rid you of your anxieties, right?”
“I mean, of course you did, but that doesn’t mean I need to?—”
“Ivy,” he interrupted once more. The look on his face said it all. The darkening of those endless, ocean-blue eyes of his. The tightness of his forearms as they crossed his muscular chest. “What happens when you don’t listen to Daddy?”
My teeth sank into my bottom lip as my shaky hands clutched the bottom of my tank top and I pulled it, along with my bra, up and over my head in one swoop. I kicked off my sneakers, and then my jean shorts and panties were last.
His eyes took me in, the hungry look never faltering.
“Hands and knees on the bed. Make sure you can see yourself in that mirror.” His chin tilted towards the closet. I lowered myself onto the middle of the bed.
It wasn’t even made, like Todd had just rolled out of it and gone to work without a care in the world. Had Becca been here? In this bed with him? Had Oliver thought about that? Did he care?
A million questions raced through my mind as I found myself on all fours and Oliver circled around behind me. Still fully clothed, one finger reached out and glided along my spine. Shivers wracked through my body.
“What are you thinking about right now, baby doll?” The words came out in a quiet whisper, making the lack of noise in this apartment even more apparent.
I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t want to voice my concerns, but I knew he wouldn’t touch me where I wanted if I didn’t.
“He didn’t make the bed,” I found myself mumbling.
Oliver chuckled, the sound dark and full of promise. “Worried he left in such a hurry, he didn’t have a chance? Or are you worried he had another girl in the bed with him and was more focused on her than cleaning the apartment up? He did know you were coming today, right?”
I nodded, my throat tight with a slew of emotions as his hand settled on the top of my ass.
His hand disappeared for the smallest of moments, and my gaze glanced up into the mirror in just enough time to see it swiftly come back, landing back on my ass in a loud smack.
I gasped, my eyes wide with shock as my core tightened without a thought to the turmoil of my mind.
“I asked you a question, Ivy.” I met his eyes in the mirror, his face devoid of any emotion as his hand ran in small circles against me. “He knew you were coming today, correct?”
I nodded once more, but as his hand left my skin again, I blurted, “Yes! Yes, he knew.”
His hand came back down, softly this time. “Good girl. Spread your thighs a little for me.”
As I moved, it was as if I turned off any thoughts that were previously gathering there. His eyes meeting mine seemed to just make them all stop. I tried to fight off the shiver as his hand slipped between my thighs and through the wetness already pooling there.
“Not my baby girl enjoying getting her ass smacked,” Oliver tutted. “I’m starting to think you enjoy giving me sass and questioning me just so I’ll give into what you really want. Is that what it is?”
“I-Well-I don’t—” I stumbled over the words as he slipped a finger inside of me.
He let out a dark chuckle and added a second finger, the sensations tangling up any of my remaining thoughts I’d left behind.
“Don’t worry. Daddy will take care of you, baby doll.”
His fingers moved in a rhythmic motion that had my thighs shaking within moments. As if in such a short time he’d already learned how to read my body like it was the only thing he’d been consuming since the moment he could decipher words.
“Oliver,” I whimpered, falling down to my forearms. “Please let me come.” It was a plea that I was becoming accustomed to with him. A sensation I thought would infuriate me the first time he’d said it, but it just seemed to increase every touch, every moment.
I glanced up to see him shaking his head in the mirror. “The only place you’ll be coming is on my cock. You know that.”
Biting back the pleas that wanted to start slipping in excess, I squeezed my eyes shut and fought off the urge to succumb to the burning inferno that was my oncoming orgasm.
But just when I thought I’d erupt, he pulled away.
My eyes shot open, back in the mirror as he smirked and slowly licked his fingers clean.
“Is there something you’d like to say, baby doll?” His hands were back to slowly running along my spine and back over my hips towards my butt.
“Please,” I mumbled.
His hand left my skin, only to come back in another swift smack, the shock of it going through my entire body and back to my core.
“Try again.” While his face gave away almost nothing, nothing could hide the bulge in those jeans or the heat within his eyes. A heat that seemed to push me onwards.
“Please give me your cock, Daddy,” I whispered.
My eyes tracked his hand this time, my body more prepared for the next smack, but it didn’t change the gasp and pitiful moan that left my lips.
“Close. But not quite.”
My mind ran through what he could possibly expect of me right now. When it finally clicked, though, all I could do was shake my head.
“I can’t?—”
Another smack had my thighs quivering, my core drenched, and my teeth back in my bottom lip as I tried to focus anywhere else but on how much I craved him inside of me.
“You can and you will if you want my cock, Ivy.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I mumbled. Squeezing my eyes shut, I blew out a breath before the words tumbled from my mouth in a high-speed chase. “Please fuck me in his bed, Daddy. Please make me come all over his sheets. Please show him I belong to you now.”
My chest heaved, my eyes still squeezed closed. I could only just make out the sound of his belt clicking and his jeans unzipping. But his calloused hands came back to my hips, and he wasted no more time before he sank his cock inside of me with a groan.
“Come for me, baby doll,” he growled. Two achingly slow thrusts was all it took for my entire body to alight, the fire finally burning through me as my toes curled and my fists bunched in the sheets below me.
“Fuckkkk, that’s right. My perfect fucking girl.
” Each word annunciated with a thrust, his fingers holding onto my hips like I was his last grip on this life.
“Look at us, Ivy.”
My eyes flicked up towards the mirror as I watched this man take me from behind, still fully dressed, those dark Levi jeans pushed down enough for his cock to be free while I was completely naked. The contrast was stark, and all around us was my old life.
The only thing new was him.
The sheets still held the faint scent of Todd, but the more time that went on, the more I stared back into those deep blue eyes of his, all I smelt was him. Cedar wood and cloves surrounded me. Cinnamon assaulted me.
It was only him. Only us.
Only Oliver and me.
He leaned down, his arm reaching around and his fingertips running over my clit.
“One more for me, baby doll. One more for Daddy.”
His eyes were still set on mine in the mirror, and I found I couldn’t refuse him even if I wanted to. As if he had the only remote control to my body.
My core clenched around him, and I fell once more. Only this time, he fell with me, and it was somehow exactly what I needed to fully shove this chapter away and embrace the one I was firmly planted in now.
The one with this cowboy who ran his hands gently over my hips and pressed kisses along my spine. The one who flipped me back over to my back and massaged my calves and thighs until I was giggling from small tickle spots on the backs of my knees.
The one who helped me clean myself up and then carefully packed all my books away, even making sure to wrap the special editions in bubble wrap, promising me they wouldn’t be tucked away like this forever.
The man who made it easy to close the last chapter and fully accept that sometimes, good things can happen.