Chapter Nine #3
I said, “It’d be nice if you texted me a time when I could
come back and get my stuff and arrange for someone to let me into your
penthouse.”
The air in the room changed.
I ignored it.
“Why?” he repeated, sounding more terse, in other words,
demanding.
“I just really need to go. Now,” I told him.
“Without telling me why?” he pushed.
I knew it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.
But I guessed I didn’t have in me what I needed to have in
me to do this fair and right.
Not even for Marcus.
Because I was leaving Marcus.
“Can we just please make this easy?” I requested.
“You wish to come back and get your stuff. This indicates
you’re leaving and not coming back. Except to collect your things.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Why?”
I swallowed.
“Did something happen?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Then why?”
“Marcus, please.”
“Tell me…”
And then I jumped when he completely lost it and I’d never
seen Marcus lose it, not ever, and definitely not with me.
He did this leaning toward me and shouting, “Why?”
“You don’t want me,” I returned.
His torso reared back.
“Are you insane?” he asked.
“You won’t sleep with me,” I replied.
“I’ve been sleeping with you for weeks.”
“Right,” I bit out, losing it myself. “I’ll say it
different. You won’t fuck me.”
“No, Daisy, I’ll never fuck you.”
My head jerked like he’d slapped me.
“I’ll never fuck you,” he repeated and went on, “You aren’t
that woman to me.”
“Right.” It came out weak, broken, pained. “So, now can I
leave?”
“Christ, you don’t get it,” he clipped.
“You’re right,” I returned. “I’m not gettin’
it.”
“Daisy, we need to take this slow,” he informed me, sounding
like he was seeking patience.
“And that’s been your excuse since the beginning,” I shot
back.
His voice was low and dangerous when he asked, “Excuse?”
“A man wants a piece of ass, it’s on offer, he has it, and
it’s been on offer, Marcus, for weeks. So, you see, you not takin’ it
tells me you don’t want it.”
“You are insane,” he said softly, like he wasn’t
even talking to me.
“No. I’m not. I’m a woman falling in love with a man who
doesn’t want me.”
I watched his body jerk in surprise.
“Daisy—”
Honestly?
I could take no more.
And who could fucking, fucking blame me?
“Fuck this!” I exploded, the emotion coursing through me
taking control so I couldn’t stop myself lifting my hands in fists over my head
and shaking them. I dropped them and shouted, “Just let me fucking leave!”
“You called me, terrified.”
Hunh?
“What?” I asked.
“That night. That night you called me and you were
terrified. I’ve never seen anything like the state of you when I got to you. I
arrived in your room, Daisy, you were curled into a corner, awake, but lost in
a nightmare. Did you even know I was there?”
“Of course I knew,” I snapped.
“Do you know what you said to me?”
That I didn’t remember, seeing as he was right. I was lost
in a nightmare. Though I was worried I’d babbled on about building my castles.
To cover that, I hissed, “I know you were there.”
“Right,” he whispered, totally seeing through me. Then he
declared, “He scraped your ass raw on that asphalt.”
I winced and looked away.
Marcus kept at me.
“He did not fuck you. He did not bang you. He did not have
sex with you. He raped you. Do you get the difference?”
“Yeah,” I bit out sarcastically, turning back to him with
squinty eyes, my face hard. “I was there, darlin’. I get it a fuckuva lot better than you.”
“But he was inside you.”
Oh God.
I started shaking.
“Stop talkin’,” I demanded.
He did not stop talking.
Oh no.
He did not.
“And I’m the man who has to come after that. How do I do
that, Daisy? How do I do that and make sure you don’t go back there? How do I
do that and make sure it’s good for you? Make sure I take you where I want us
to be? Give you that at the same time keeping you safe? Give you what I want
you to get from me? Make you understand what being inside you means to me?”
I stood still, staring at him, frozen, but I did it still
trembling.
Though now for a different reason.
“How, Daisy?” he pushed.
I kept staring, trembling, unable to speak.
Marcus was able to speak.
“I talked with a woman called Bex who’s worked for years at
a rape crisis center. She told me to be watchful, communicative, patient, and give
it time. We need to give it time so I can be certain to give you
what you deserve when I give you me.”
“You don’t wanna fuck me,” I
whispered.
“No, I don’t want to fuck you,” he bit off.
“You want to make love to me.”
“Yes, that’s what I want to do and that’s what I need you to
feel when I do it.”
Oh my God.
I was in love with this man.
And he was in love with me.
He was in love with me.
“Marcus?”
“What?” he clipped.
“Please make love to me.”
We stood staring at each other in the dim lights in his
fabulous entryway.
But all of a sudden I had my hand in his and was being
dragged up an elegant winding staircase.
I tripped.
Marcus stopped, jerked my arm, and then I was flying through
the air.
I settled in his arms like a bride carried by her groom as
he stalked up the rest of the steps and prowled down the hall to his room.
“Seriously, really, truly,” I whispered to his hard jaw. “If
you’re carryin’ me in this way to your bedroom, honey
bunches of love, somethin’ needs to come to
fruition.”
He looked down at me when he cleared the doorway then he
walked me across his room and slid me down his body so I could take my feet
when he made it to the side of the bed.
He bent to the side to switch on a light but straightened in
front of me, right in my space.
“Are you leaving me?” he asked.
“Never,” I answered.
That was when he kissed me.
We fell back to the bed when Marcus pressed into me.
I immediately went after his suit jacket.
He went after the zip of my hoodie.
He let me win and I shoved the jacket down his shoulders.
He threw it off and then took down the zip.
I yanked his shirt out of his trousers and dove in at the
back.
God, not for the first time I encountered skin that felt amazing.
Through all this, Marcus kissed me.
Suddenly, he rolled so he was on his back, I was on top, and
he sat up, so I was forced to straddle him.
My coochie liked the kissing.
It liked the straddling better.
“Baby,” I whispered.
He pushed the hoodie down my shoulders.
I tossed it away.
His eyes holding mine, he went after the back clasp of my
bra.
His fingers there, and that was it.
He needed me to give him permission. To let him know where I
was at. To show him I was with him, only him, this was only him and me.
God.
Marcus Sloan.
“Please,” I breathed.
It came loose then the bra was gone.
He looked at me exposed to him in his bed for the first
time, not on a stage, and he whispered, “So beautiful.”
God.
Marcus Sloan.
“Kiss me, honey,” I begged.
His hands went up my back, into my hair, pulling my face to
his, and he kissed me.
He did a lot of kissing. In fact, he kept my mouth occupied
with his lips and tongue the whole time it took him to get my clothes off, his
clothes off (but he let me help with that part). And he kissed me the whole
time he touched me, no, caressed me, his hands roaming, slow, gentle,
sweet, over every inch of me.
Finally, finally, he bent and took my nipple in his
mouth.
That shot so hot up my coochie, I
slid my fingers in his hair, my neck twisting to the side, and I gasped, “Yes.”
He worked me there just like he always worked me with his
kisses these past weeks and everything he’d done that night.
Slow. Gentle. Sweet.
And just the same way, as his lips moved to my other nipple,
his hand slid over my hip, over my belly and down.
I opened my legs for him.
His fingers slid through me.
My lips parted, my hips lifted, his mouth went away, and I
righted my head to catch his gaze.
Watching me, his face dark and beautiful, he stroked a
finger inside.
And when he did, his face got darker, more beautiful.
And hungry.
My hands darted out and clutched his arms, my eyes drifting
closed, I whimpered, “Marcus.”
His thumb hit me, my body jolted, my eyes shot open, and I
saw he was still watching me.
“Inside,” I gasped.
“In a minute, baby.”
“Inside,” I pleaded.
“Daisy—”
I lifted my hands to wrap them around either side of his
neck, moaned as his thumb put on more pressure, and then I demanded huskily, “I
need you inside, honey.”
He was Marcus.
He didn’t make me ask again.
He rolled between my legs. I felt his hand leave me but
right after something hard and silky started gliding, sliding.
And then…
Then…
Eyes locked to mine, slow, gentle, sweet, Marcus Sloan, my
man, the man every step of my life had been leading me to, slid inside me.
“Now, this…” I breathed. “This is where I was
always meant to be.”
Beauty scored through his expression before his head
dropped, he shoved his face in my neck and he groaned, “Daisy.”
I turned so I had my mouth to his ear. “Take what’s yours,
baby.”
He did.
Pulling his face out of my neck, taking my mouth, he moved
inside me and he took what was his.
Giving himself to me.
And a whole lot more.
I cried the intensity of my orgasm down his throat,
clutching him with everything I had, limbs wrapped around, fingers gripping his
hair, body shuddering.
He returned the beauty when his head snapped back, he buried
himself inside me, his body bucked into mine, and I received it gratefully
(still shuddering).
When he was done, he dropped to me but only for a breath
before he rolled us but kept us connected and held me tight on top of him.
My forehead pressed to the side of his neck, I didn’t bother
trying to steady my breathing. I just let each breath rush out against his skin
as I committed every second of the last twenty minutes to memory.
Every second.
It was only when I felt his fingertips drawing patterns on
my hip that I realized both our breaths were steady.
His fingers clenched into my flesh suddenly and his voice
was thick and astounding when he asked, “You’re falling in love with me?”
I drew in breath.
Then I lifted my head and looked down at him.
God, he wasn’t handsome.
He was everything.
“I was,” I answered.
His sated gaze went guarded.
“You were?”
“That ship has sailed, sugar. And I’m on it. It’s called,” I
drawled out my last, “the Love Boat.”
And I grinned when, under me and all around, I heard, saw,
and felt my man burst out laughing.