Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Forrest
I give her everything, all at once. Pressure, speed, the rhythm I know drives her crazy.
Her body tenses, tightens, and she’s there, coming hard, back arched, mouth open in a silent scream.
I don’t stop, ride it out with her, feel the aftershocks run through her.
She’s still shaking when I finally ease up, let her hips down gently.
She’s boneless, dazed. I lick her clean, slow and careful, then move up to her face, kiss her, let her taste herself on my lips. She kisses back, desperate, and drags my head down so she can bite my lip.
“Well,” she says, voice wrecked, “that was incredibly rude of you.”
I laugh. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It was. I had a personality before this.” She swallows, then gestures vaguely toward the ceiling. “Plans. Boundaries. A working relationship with gravity.”
“You still have gravity.”
“I do not. I’m emotionally horizontal.”
I grin before I can stop myself.
She rolls her eyes, but her cheeks are pinked, and she’s got the smile of someone who can’t help but give herself away. I kiss her again, soft this time, and smooth her hair back from her forehead. She shuts her eyes, breathes me in.
We stay like that for a while, just heat and sweat, the tangle of our bodies and the slow come-down after something seismic. She’s calmer now, but I can still feel the undercurrent. The want. She’s always been greedy, and I love her for it.
She’s the first to break the spell. She opens her eyes, searches my face like she’s looking for hidden messages, then trails her hands down my chest. I shiver, goosebumps erupting in her wake. She traces the line of my ribs, the cut of my waist, then opens his jeans.
“You are wearing,” she says, voice pitched low, “far too many clothes.”
“Me?” I say, innocent. “You’re the one in socks.”
She kicks me, heel to my calf, but she’s laughing. “Shut up and undress.”
I toe off one boot.
Then the other.
Her gaze tracks the movement, then lifts slowly back to my face.
“You’re taking your time,” she says.
“I’m standing up.”
“You’re making standing up seem suspiciously theatrical.”
“I’m removing boots.”
“With dramatic intent.”
“You asked me to undress.”
“I didn’t ask for a one-man show at a vineyard-adjacent scandal site.”
I almost smile. “You want me to stop?”
Her eyes drop to my belt.
“No.”
That one word does something to the room.
I bend and pull off one sock, then the other, because apparently I’m still civilized enough to avoid getting naked in another person’s childhood bedroom while wearing socks. When I straighten, Daisy is watching my hands.
Not my face.
My hands.
Fuck.
I unbutton my jeans.
Her fingers curl in the sheet.
I notice.
She notices me noticing.
“Don’t look smug,” she says.
“I’m not.”
“You are internally smug.”
“Can’t prove that.”
“I can sense it. I’m very gifted under pressure.”
“You’re also still wearing socks.”
“They’re load-bearing socks.”
“For what?”
“My last shred of emotional stability.”
This time, I do smile.
Barely.
Enough that her mouth softens in response before she can stop it.
Then I drag the zipper down, push my jeans off my hips, and step out of them, kicking them aside with the boots. My shirt is already gone, lost somewhere near the foot of the bed before either of us had enough sense to slow down.
Now there’s nothing between her and the fact that I’ve wanted her for longer than I was willing to admit.
Daisy looks at me.
All of me.
Her breath catches, small and honest, and that sound is worse than a hand on my skin.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Absolutely,” she says too fast. “Just doing a quick structural review.”
“Structural.”
“Yes. Load-bearing thighs. General stability. Possible zoning violations.”
I stare at her.
She blinks back, solemn as a judge, except her cheeks are on fire.
I move back toward the bed.
Her humor fades by degrees, not gone, just quieter. Waiting. Letting the wanting show through.
I stop at the edge of the mattress.
“Daisy.”
“If you want me to stop, I stop.”
Her hand reaches for mine.
She pulls me down until my palm braces beside her head and my body hovers over hers.
“I don’t want you to stop,” she whispers. “I have condoms in my purse.”
I don’t say anything. Just reach over the side of the bed, snag her purse, and dig through it. She’s prepared, of course she is. I tear the packet open with my teeth, glance at her as I roll it down, and she licks her lips, equal parts hungry and reverent.
I line myself up, but don’t push in yet. Instead, I run a hand up her side, splay my fingers on her stomach, feel her breath stutter. I look at her face, memorize it: the dark, blown pupils, the pink of her mouth, the tension in her jaw that says she’s waiting for me to do something—anything.
“Ready?” I ask.
She grabs my wrist, squeezes. “If you don’t fuck me right now, I’m going to burst with need.”
I believe her.
That is the dangerous part.
Not the wanting. Not the bed. Not the rain pressing against the window or the fact that her hands are on me like she has decided, finally, to stop pretending she doesn’t need anything.
I believe her when she says she doesn’t want me to stop.
So I don’t.
I press in slowly, careful enough to give her time, not careful enough to lie about how badly I want this.
Her breath catches, and her hands tighten on my back.
For one second, her whole body goes still beneath mine, not from fear.
From feeling it. From realizing there is no joke fast enough to outrun this.
“Daisy,” I rasp.
“I know,” she whispers, like she does. Like she knows exactly how close we are to ruining every rule and still wants to watch it happen.
Then she rolls her hips up to meet me.
Fuck.
We both groan.
The sound is too loud for this room, too honest for her childhood bed, too real for a fake relationship built out of ink and panic and bad ideas.
Her nails drag down my back, and her mouth finds my jaw, my neck, anywhere she can get to while I try to remember how to be a decent man and not lose myself in how good she feels.
It’s obscene.
Not just the heat of her. Not just the way she takes me, the way her body grips mine like it has been waiting to call my bluff.
It’s the trust.
The way she lets go by degrees. A little gasp. A muttered curse. A breathless laugh that breaks when I move again. Daisy Thorn, who can organize an entire vineyard into obedience, falling apart under me and looking furious that I have noticed.
“You okay?” I ask, because I need to hear it.
Her eyes open. Dazed. Bright. Still Daisy.
“If you stop now,” she says, breathless, “I will write a strongly worded letter to your entire bloodline.”
I kiss her hard and give her more.
Her arms lock around my shoulders, and the rhythm changes. Not rushed. Not careless. Deeper. Rougher because she asks for it without asking, because her body tells me what her pride won’t say out loud. She likes the pressure. Likes being met. Likes when I don’t treat her like glass.
She is not glass.
She is fire with a notebook.
She is a woman who has spent too long being useful, polite, easy to work with, easy to survive, and tonight she doesn’t want easy.
I can give her that.
I move harder, and she takes it with a sound that goes straight through me. Her fingers dig into my skin. Her mouth opens against mine, and the things she says are filthy, brilliant, breathless little insults that make me want to laugh and lose my mind at the same time.
She clings to me, forehead pressed to mine, breath coming in broken little bursts.
That’s when it changes again.
The heat stays. The rhythm stays. But something softer gets underneath it, something neither of us invited and neither of us can push out of the room.
Her eyes find mine.
For a second, she looks scared.
Not of me.
Of how much she’s here.
I slow without stopping. “I’ve got you.”
Her mouth trembles once.
She hates that. I can tell.
She hates needing it.
She hates believing it more.
“Don’t make that sound romantic,” she whispers.
“It is romantic.”
“No, it’s not.” Her fingers slide into my hair. “It’s . . . aggressively supportive.”
I almost smile.
Then she pulls my mouth down to hers and kisses me like she’s done arguing with herself.
After that, there is no clean thought left. Only Daisy under me, around me, wanting me with a kind of honesty that makes my chest ache. Only her name in my mouth, her hands on my back, her breath breaking each time I give her what she asked for.
I fuck her like I mean it.
Because I do.
That is the part I will have to survive later.
For now, she arches beneath me and says my name again, not like a joke this time, not like a threat.
Like she trusts me with the sound.
And I have never wanted anything more carefully in my life.
That is what breaks me.
Not the heat. Not the way she moves under me, taking every inch like she has decided to stop being polite about what she wants. Not even the way her nails drag down my back hard enough to make my breath leave through my teeth.
It’s the trust.
The terrible, quiet trust of Daisy Thorn looking up at me like she knows I could ruin her and believes I won’t.
I lower my forehead to hers.
“Daisy.”
“I know,” she whispers, though she doesn’t. Not all of it. Not what it does to me when she says my name like that. Not what it costs to keep myself from taking too much when she feels like this beneath me, warm and open and mine for one reckless, impossible minute.
Her legs tighten around my hips.
The movement pushes us deeper, and her mouth falls open on a sound she tries to swallow.
I give her more.
Deeper.
Enough that her body pulls tight beneath mine, enough that her breath stutters against my mouth, enough that her eyes lose focus when I look down at her.
She is close.
I can feel it in every part of her. The way her thighs tense. The way her fingers press into my back. The way her mouth tries to form words and fails, which might be the first time Daisy Thorn has ever been defeated by vocabulary.
“Wolfe,” she says.
My control slips.
I move harder, and she takes it with a sound that goes straight through my chest. Her head tips back. Her lashes squeeze shut. One hand flies to my shoulder, the other to the sheet, twisting hard enough that the fabric pulls beneath us.
“That’s it,” I tell her. “Let go.”
The next movement steals it from her. Her body tightens around mine, and the sound she makes is soft, broken, too honest for the room. She comes apart beneath me in waves she can’t organize, can’t joke through, can’t turn into something easier to survive.
I watch her.
I have to.
Her mouth opens. Her brows draw together. Her body trembles through it while she clings to me like she needs somewhere safe to lose herself.
Fuck.
It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
And the most dangerous.
Because when her eyes open again, hazy and stunned, she looks at me like she didn’t expect to be held through the end of it.
Like she expected the wanting to take and leave.
I kiss her once.
“I’ve got you.”
Her face changes.
Just a little.
Enough.
That is what does me in.
I move again, and she gasps, still sensitive, still around me, still holding on. Her hand slides up my neck to my jaw, and she pulls me down until my mouth is near hers.
A choice.
A place to fall.
I bury my face against her neck, because if I look at her, I’ll say something I can’t take back.
The room narrows to her breath, the rain at the glass, the old bed under us, the heat of her wrapped around me. I lose the rhythm I was trying to control. She feels it. Her arms tighten around me, and there is no pretending after that.
I come hard, with my mouth against her shoulder and one hand buried in her hair, holding myself there so I don’t crush her, so I don’t lose the last thread of care in the force of it.
For a few seconds, I can’t move.
Daisy’s fingers move first, slow through my hair.
“You’re very intense for a fake boyfriend,” she whispers.
My laugh comes out rough. “You’re very mouthy for someone who just lost the ability to speak.”
“I recovered quickly. It’s one of my gifts.”
I lift my head.
Her eyes are tired, bright, a little scared.
Mine probably are too.
I brush my thumb along her cheek, and she lets me.
That almost hurts more than the rest.
“Still okay?” I ask.
Her mouth curves, small and real. “No.”
My body goes still.
She touches my jaw. “But in the good way.”
I breathe again.
She sees that too.
Of course she does.
For once, she doesn’t make a joke about it.
She only pulls me down until my forehead rests against hers.
Not sure how fake this can continue or what will happen but I can only hope that we can keep this moment until at least the end of fall.