Chapter Five #2
She cries out when my tongue finds her, a sharp, broken sound that makes me want to do it again. I lick her slowly, thoroughly, from her entrance to her clit and back down, savoring every tremor that runs through her body. She tastes like honey and need, and I can’t get enough.
I push two fingers inside her while I suck on her clit, feeling her clench around me, hearing her moans get louder and more desperate. I curl my fingers, find that spot that makes her buck against my face, and I work her with relentless focus.
“River, please…”
“Daddy,” I correct, the vibration making her gasp.
“Daddy, please, I n-need…”
“What do you need? Tell me exactly.”
“I need to come. Please let me come, Daddy.”
“Not yet.” I pull my fingers out, slow and torturous, and bring them to my mouth to suck them clean while she watches, her cheeks flushed pink. “I said I was taking my time.”
“You’re cruel.”
“I’m thorough.” I grin up at her. “There’s a difference.”
I go back to work, licking and sucking and fingering her until she’s writhing, her hands fisted against the couch cushions, her thighs trembling on either side of my head. I bring her to the edge again and again, backing off every time she gets close, until she’s sobbing with frustration.
“Please, Daddy, please, I c-can’t—”
“You can.” I kiss her inner thigh, bite gently. “And you will. When I say.”
“P-please.”
I tap her pussy, warning her, making her scream and arch off the couch. “Who decides when you come?”
“You do, Daddy.”
“That’s right.” I do it again, watching her face, the way her mouth falls open in shock and pleasure. “I do. And I want to feel you come on my cock. Not like this. So, we’re waiting.”
She whimpers, but she doesn’t argue.
“Good girl.”
I strip off my clothes quickly, not caring where they land, and pull her up with me. “On your knees. Face down, ass up. I want to see all of you.”
She obeys, scrambling onto the couch cushions, presenting herself to me like a gift. The sight of her, open and waiting, her thighs slick with arousal, nearly undoes me. I grip the base of my cock, squeezing hard to keep from coming just from looking at her.
“Perfect,” I murmur, running my hands over her ass, her hips, her back. “So fucking perfect. You have no idea what you do to me.”
I position myself behind her, teasing her entrance with the head of my cock, sliding through her wetness until she’s pushing back against me, trying to pull me inside of her.
“Greedy,” I chide, but I’m smiling. “Ask nicely.”
“Please, Daddy. Please fuck me. I need you inside me.”
I thrust in, one long stroke that seats me to the hilt, and we both groan. She’s so tight, so hot, clamping down on me like she never wants to let go. I give her a moment to adjust, then I start to move.
“That’s it.” I grip her hips, pulling her back to meet every thrust. “Take it, angel. Take all of it.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
I reach around her throat and squeeze, just enough to feel her pulse hammering against my palm, just enough to remind her who’s in control.
She moans, long and low, and pushes back harder.
“You like that?” I growl, tightening my grip slightly. “Like when I hold you down? When I use you like you’re mine?”
“Yes, please, I’m y-yours,” she whimpers.
“Mine.” I thrust harder, deeper, angling to hit that spot that makes her cry out. “Say it.”
“Yours, Daddy, I’m yours, only yours!”
I release her throat and reach beneath her instead, finding her clit with two fingers and working it in tight, merciless circles in time with every thrust.
She screams, “Daddy!”
Her whole body convulses as she comes apart around me. I feel her orgasm, feel her clenching and fluttering, and I can’t hold back anymore. I pound into her, chasing my own release, my handprint red on her ass, her name and mine tangling together in the air between us.
When I come, it’s blinding. It goes through me like something breaking open, leaving me shaking, wrung out, and somehow still hungry for more.
I collapse against her back, breathing hard, pressing kisses to her shoulder, her neck. “Good girl,” I whisper. “Such a good girl for me.”
She turns her head, seeking my mouth. I kiss her slowly and deeply, tasting her satisfaction.
“Mine,” I say again, because it bears repeating. “Whatever happens, Nadia. You’re mine,” I say as I slowly slide out of her.
She doesn’t argue. Just settles back against me and lets me hold her.
Later, we end up in bed with the lights off and her head on my chest.
“The flower stall,” she says finally.
Yeah?”
Her fingertip traces a line of ink along my forearm.
“My mother kept sunflowers in her room. Not the whole apartment. Just her room, on the windowsill, where he wouldn’t see them.
” A pause. “He thought they were common. Peasant flowers. He filled the rest of the place with white orchids because a decorator told him they photographed well.”
“So she kept the ones he hated.”
“She kept the only thing in that apartment that was hers.” Her voice goes very quiet. “I used to sit on her floor and do my homework while she read. That was the safest room in a nine-thousand square penthouse. Because it was the one he didn’t want to be in.”
I don’t say anything. I want to. Every instinct I’ve got is screaming at me to fix it, to find a thing to break on her behalf. For once, I make myself lie still and just listen.
“He made every decision for me—clothes, friends, my future.”
She laughs, but there’s nothing in it.
“I didn’t have a phone that wasn’t monitored until I was nineteen years old, River. I bought it with cash in a gas station in Oklahoma, and I sat in the parking lot and cried, because I owned something.”
Her hand goes flat against my sternum.
“You gave me a key to this apartment on the first night. You didn’t even think about it.”
“It’s your apartment too.”
“That’s what I mean.” She lifts her head, and even in the dark I can see her looking at me. “You didn’t think about it.”
I don’t have an answer for that. So I pull her back down against my chest and hold on to her. I lie awake for a long time after her breathing evens out, doing arithmetic I don’t like the end of.
Nineteen days.
The next morning, on my way in, I stop at a flower shop and buy every sunflower they have.
***
The following weeks settle into an easy rhythm that neither of us acknowledges aloud. Our arguments never disappear. We debate whose turn it is to cook, whether pineapple belongs on pizza, how towels should be folded, and whether my handwriting qualifies as a public safety hazard.
Most of them end with me fucking Nadia on whatever surface is closest. I’m starting to realize our arguments are always foreplay. We’re flirting, but neither of us is brave enough to admit it.
The realization changes everything.
Years of being alone left her starved for affection, and the woman behind the mask has finally come out from behind it.
She’s still feisty, still antagonizing, but softer now.
More open. I love hearing her call me Daddy when I’m inside her, and now, I’ve encouraged her to keep calling me that anywhere inside these walls.
It makes me want to slay her demons and put her on a fucking pedestal where no harm can reach her. She’s irrevocably mine now.
Without thinking, I begin reaching for her more often, resting a hand against the small of her back whenever we walk through crowded places or pulling her gently behind me whenever someone gets too close.
She slips her hand into mine without hesitation, leans against my shoulder whenever we’re watching television, and unconsciously searches for me whenever something startles her. I’ve become her protector, and it’s a role I take seriously.
Where I’m brash and blunt, she brings a calm to my distorted view of the world. My perfect angel. I might have deluded myself into thinking I could let her go once we sort out her enemies. But I’m fucked without her. I need her like air.
I need to find a way to keep her with me once the danger to her passes. Because the idea of watching her walk away twists something deep inside my chest.