Chapter Seventeen Daisy #3
So she embraced it, embraced him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and arched against his body like she was trying to get closer to him, as if she could ever be close enough. Suddenly it felt like she was on fire.
This was Zach Woods. He was touching her. He wanted her.
She wanted to tell everybody.
She also wanted to tell no one, because while it felt like an insane, amazing fantasy, it was also real. Shocking and intimate, and as scary as it was liberating.
“I . . . I don’t know if I . . . I don’t really know . . .”
“Be quiet.” His tone was firm but soft. “Just stop right there. Daisy McNamara, from the moment I met you, I thought you were one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. But I was wrong. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“That can’t be true.”
“Sure it is. Some people think the city is beautiful, and some people think the mountains are beautiful. Beauty takes all different shapes. What gets to be the most beautiful, that’s in the eye of the beholder.
To me, you are the pinnacle. This is my fantasy.
You don’t have to do anything to fulfill it.
Nothing but just be here being you. I’ve never had a real relationship.
I got chewed up and spit out by the machine, and it took me a long time to figure out who I was again. ”
“Is this the I can’t promise you anything speech?”
His eyes glinted in the light and made her stomach drop. “Not exactly.”
“It can be if you want. Because I can’t . . . I can’t see past tonight.”
He held her face in his hands, comforting, electrifying. “That’s okay. I don’t need you to. But I also don’t need you to worry or think that you’re not going to please me. Because you already have.”
Everything he said was exactly right, was the sexiest it could be. That she was enough just like she was, and she tried to believe it.
It was so hard when the man who was supposed to love you had gotten tired of you. But she wasn’t going to think about him. She wasn’t going to let him push away this moment.
Jonathan McNamara had taken enough moments in her life.
This was just her and Zach. Maybe it was the beginning of something.
Maybe it was just tonight. But she wanted it to stand alone as something significant.
She had done long term, and it had burned her badly.
She knew better than to try to imagine happily ever after, because apparently twenty years didn’t guarantee it was a happily ever after.
So tonight might as well be happily ever after for the night.
She might as well give everything to it.
She might as well take everything from it.
He kissed her again, and this time he devoured her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been kissed like this, if ever. Deep and slow, the friction created by their tongues maddening. He pulled her body against his, pressed her against the wall, let her feel how much he wanted her.
He wanted her. He wanted her.
He kissed her as he propelled her up the stairs, down the hall, to his bedroom. It was a huge room with a vaulted ceiling. A window on the back wall stretched from floor to ceiling, but there was no covering.
“There’s an internal shade,” he said. “But I just use that to block out the light. No one’s out there to see.”
So he could just walk around naked right in front of the windows. It was certainly an interesting mental image.
She was going to see him naked.
It was like getting hit by lightning. Because of course she understood what was going to happen, but the reality of it was sinking in deeper and deeper.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m so good,” she said. “I’m not really spontaneous usually, so this is kind of extreme for me.”
“We don’t have to do this tonight.” His brow furrowed with concern.
“No. I do. Because I want to. Because I need to.”
“It’s not going anywhere. It’ll keep.”
She shook her head. “No. No. Because life is . . . scary and unpredictable. Frankly, if life is going to fuck me like it has been, I’d rather have an orgasm.”
It was his turn to laugh, and it did something to dissolve some of the tension in her chest. Then he closed the distance between them again and wrapped her in his arms as he pulled her shirt up over her head and cast it onto the floor.
He pressed his thumb to her lower lip, and her breath evaporated. “What if tonight you take a break from life, and let me fuck you instead?”
She could only nod.
He took her clothes off like it was a choreographed dance.
Always keeping her in his arms as he separated fabric from her body, as he exposed her to his hungry gaze.
She didn’t feel embarrassed. Didn’t feel awkward.
Not when he looked at her like she was a revelation and he’d been badly in need of one.
A soft, tender part of her ached. Like a growing pain. Like something withered and ignored was beginning to come back to life. Expand.
She had never done a thing for Zach. She hadn’t been particularly nice to him. She hadn’t done him any favors. She hadn’t done his laundry. She hadn’t cooked him dinner. He was still treating her like she was special. He was looking at her. Really looking at her. It had been so long.
It had been so long since she felt like her just being there was good enough.
He lifted her gently and set her down at the end of the bed, and then he began to take off his own clothes. She dug her nails into her palms as she watched the expert strip show. Watched every inch of his muscular build reveal itself to her.
Her mouth went dry, and she shifted where she sat. He was more beautiful than any fantasy she could have ever had about him. He was a gift to every person who experienced attraction to men.
He was masculine beauty personified, and she wanted to worship at the altar of him. But before she could, he went to his knees in front of her and pushed her legs apart.
And she found herself as the object of worship.
She gasped, lifting her hips off the bed, but his iron grip kept her from moving away. He was a man with a mission, a man intent on doing exactly what he wanted, and God help her, she wasn’t going to fight it.
He scooted her backward on the mattress, and she lay back as he vaulted up onto the bed, pleasuring her with intense focus with his lips and teeth and tongue.
She forked her fingers through his hair and realized she wasn’t even tempted to compare him to her one and only other lover, because this was already an experience that transcended everything she’d ever felt before.
This wasn’t a perfunctory act of going down on her to pay her back for a blow job. He wanted her. He was tasting her, savoring her, luxuriating in her. She had never felt so beautiful, so filthy, so . . . cherished.
So she just let him.
When her orgasm crashed over her, she was shattered, broken into thousands of sparkling pieces of herself and put back together in another shape. Like he had rearranged parts of her and made her something else entirely.
She was recovering, while he went and got a condom, while he positioned himself between her legs, moving his hand behind her head and kissing her, intense and long as he thrust inside her.
She clung to his shoulders as he began to move, their foreheads pressed together, the feel of him so deep within her, taking her, making her gasp.
This was like touching the sun.
It was almost too much, but it was not enough all at the same time.
When she came again, he followed her over the edge, the rough growl in the back of his throat sending aftershocks through her body.
She lay there for a moment, trying to catch her breath. Trying to breathe. Trying to think.
Would he want her to stay the night? Should she leave?
“I’ll drive you home in the morning, as long as everything is good with your kids.”
“Oh, you . . . you don’t mind if I spend the night?”
“Do I mind? No,” he said.
He sounded incredulous, but she didn’t know what to think. “Well, I’ve never . . . I’ve never done this before.”
“You did say Jonathan is the only man you’ve been with.”
Her face went hot. “Yes. That.”
“I’m still me. You’re still you. Based on everything you know about me, do I seem like someone who would throw you out onto the street after that?”
“No. But I’ve heard people get weird after that. Need distance.”
“Do you need distance?” His gaze was searching. Intense. Maybe she did need distance.
“Do you want a hot chocolate?” he asked, not waiting for her to answer the last question.
She blinked. “Do I . . . ?” The most beautiful naked man she had ever beheld was offering her a hot chocolate after giving her two screaming orgasms? What other dimension had she fallen into?
“Well, I . . . I would like one. But you don’t have to . . .”
“Yes, I do. Get cozy. I’ll bring it to you.”
Get cozy.
A few minutes later, he returned with a tray that had two mugs on it and a plate of cookies.
She didn’t want distance from this at all. She wanted to freeze time and just be here for as long as she possibly could.
“Do you do this a lot?”
“No,” he said. “I assume you mean the hot chocolate and cookies. Not the rest.”
Well, that was lowering. Not that she was entitled to a brief history of his sex life.
“I have sex, Daisy,” he said, his tone firm. “But not usually here.”
“Usually as in . . .”
“Never. Never at my house.”
Her face felt warm. “Okay.”
“Why? Would you be jealous?”
This made her feel inexperienced and silly. “I think so. But, in fairness to me, I’ve kind of had a rough run, what with my husband cheating on me and all. The idea of being one in a string of people feels kind of painful right now.”
“Fair enough.”
“This doesn’t have to be anything. But I just want to know if it’s not. I don’t want it to be open-ended where we might do this again, but maybe you’ll be with other people. I can’t do that, not after everything. I feel like that’s probably not very modern dating of me.”
“I don’t need to sleep with anyone else. Whether or not it continues is kind of up to you.”
“Okay.” She wasn’t sure what she wanted. Not right now. Because that had been amazing, but this whole thing was also a little bit scary.
And she was just a girl.
“It feels weird to bring this up now, but the business . . .”
He sat on the edge of the bed, hot chocolate in hand.
“I don’t have a lot to do with daily operations—well, to be honest, I have nothing to do with them.
I helped him get the business all set up, I invested a lot of capital in it, and I’ve been taking a cut of profits for years.
I think he’s let things slip, do you agree? ”
“Yes. Not just because I’m mad at him. Though I’d guess some of it was the stress of trying to keep that double life going for a while.”
“I hear those are tricky.”
“You don’t know?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never had the need for a double life. When I felt more and more like that was what being famous—and trying to stay famous—asked of me, well, that was when I decided to be done.”
“I find that reassuring.”
“Good. I want you to feel reassured. And I want you to accept my offer to take my fifty-one percent of the company.”
She laughed. “Oh. That would be so . . . sweet. Marching into his office and telling him I’m technically the majority owner.”
“Do it. You can do whatever you want. You can take ownership and just collect passive income, or you can really go in here and start messing with him.”
She didn’t think she was hallucinating the look of pure enjoyment in Zach’s eyes when he mentioned her messing with Jonathan. And it was a good fantasy. But she just wasn’t sure about any of this. It seemed like a no-brainer in many ways. She needed time to sit with all of this, though.
“I’ll think about it.”
“I didn’t expect to have to talk you into it.”
“It’s probably good for you to have a woman who isn’t a sure thing.”
He shifted, his expression getting serious. “I don’t want to cause you any stress. So if it stresses you out, we don’t have to talk about it right now. But I’d like to do this again.”
“So do I. But it feels like . . .” Too soon? Irresponsible? Like something she shouldn’t be doing because it felt too good, because it felt too self-centered, because it felt . . . “Yes, I want to keep doing it. But I don’t want Jonathan to know.”
“Okay,” he said, his expression neutral. “If he did, he’d think you were getting back at him.”
Part of her couldn’t deny that sounded a little bit satisfying.
You’re also afraid of losing the high ground.
That was lowering. But it was true. Right now, even his mother was on her side because Jonathan was being so ridiculous. But if anyone knew she was sleeping with someone else?
You guys made out on the street, it might get around.
It might. But she wasn’t going to announce it.
Whether he could pick up on her thoughts, he didn’t say so. “It’s whatever you need, Daisy.”
She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had said that to her. If nothing else, Zach Woods was a fantastic vacation from everything else happening in her life.
“Oh, shoot. I’m opening the apothecary tomorrow, and then I have practice and—”
“I’ll drive you back in time.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Really. You know, it’s okay to let people do things for you.”
When she finally fell asleep, warm and in his arms, she kept replaying those words.
She wanted them to be true.