Chapter 1 Daisy #2
He rises slowly, bracketing me against the shelf. "Your heart isn't stupid."
"It definitely is."
"It chose me." His voice drops, rough at the edges. "That seems intelligent."
"Jury's still out on that one."
He kisses me again, softer this time. I let myself sink into it, let my fingers thread through his hair, let five years of loving this impossible man overwhelm my better judgment.
His mouth finds mine again and the shelf digs into my shoulder blades: not hard, just present, a reminder that we are surrounded by every paperback my mother ever loved enough to annotate in blue ink.
"Books," I gasp against his teeth when his thigh slots between mine. "Adam… the books—"
"I know." He reaches past my hip without looking and steadies the row behind me, palm flat against a battered spine like he's bracing a foundation. "I am not knocking Annie's paperbacks off a shelf while I fuck my wife. What kind of monster do you take me for?"
"The tall kind." My laugh breaks into a moan when he presses closer. "The kind who shows up mid-livestream and ruins ten thousand people's groveling discourse."
"They'll survive." His mouth skims my jaw, then the soft place under my ear. "I might not. Daisy, Christ, tell me if this is too much. I've been gone a week and I am not… graceful… right now."
"I don't want graceful." I shove his suit jacket off his shoulders; it hits the rug with a soft thud. "I want you present. Hands. Mouth. The whole inconvenient height of you."
He goes still for half a second, dark eyes searching my face in the fairy-light glow. Then his fingers find the buttons of my cardigan like they have a conference agenda.
"Present," he repeats, voice rough. "I can do present. I am catastrophically bad at distance and catastrophically good at this part if you let me."
"Letting you." I tip my head back against the spines. "Consider yourself authorized, Mr. Smith."
His laugh is low and filthy around the edges.
He opens my cardigan, then the blouse underneath, and the cool air of the reading room kisses my skin a second before his mouth does.
He maps my collarbone like he's verifying inventory (kiss, pause, kiss) until I thread my fingers into his travel-wrecked hair and tug.
"Christ, look," he murmurs against my sternum. "Standing in your reading room with your shirt open for a man who can't even text twice a week. God, Daisy. You're soaked already and I've barely touched you."
"Don't flatter yourself—"
He slides his hand down, palm pressing between my legs over my leggings, and the sound I make betrays me completely.
"Flattering myself," he agrees, smug and shaky at once. "May I? Properly. Not through fabric. I want to feel how wet my wife got because I walked through a doorway looking like airport trash."
"Yes. Yes… careful of the—"
"Shelves. I heard you the first three times." He peels my leggings down just far enough, knuckles brushing the inside of my thigh, and when his fingers slip under the lace I grab his wrist hard enough to bruise. "Fuck. You're… Daisy, you're dripping on my hand."
"Then do something useful with it instead of narrating the weather."
"Bossy." He works two fingers into me with a patience that makes me want to scream.
His thumb finds my clit like he filed the location years ago and never lost the memo.
I rock against his palm, forehead pressed to his rumpled collar, breathing him in, airport and cologne and the faint metallic edge of exhaustion.
"That's it. Take what you need. Use me. I've been useless all week; let me be good for something that isn't a spreadsheet. "
"You're… ah… good at this."
"I'm good at you." He curls his fingers and my vision sparks white at the edges. "Been studying the same material for five years. Supply and demand. You're demanding. I'm supplying. Rate my service."
I laugh, broken, and shove his undershirt up so I can drag my nails down the ink on his ribs. He shudders. The tattooed CEO who terrifies boardrooms makes a helpless noise into my hair because I scratched him near a bookshelf.
He drops to his knees on the rug without warning, six-foot-five folding down in front of the shelves like the floor is a boardroom he finally respects. His hands slide my leggings lower. He looks up once, dark eyes blown, mouth already wet from kissing me.
"I'm going to taste you before I take you," he says, careful and filthy. "If I don't, I will think about it through every meeting tomorrow and invent new ways to hate Singapore."
"Then taste." My fingers fist in his hair. "And if you narrate it like a quarterly report I will—"
"You will what?" He noses the lace aside and drags his tongue through me in one long, devastating stroke.
My head thumps softly against a spine; he flinches upward to check the shelf, steadies three books with one palm, and goes back down without missing a beat.
"Sorry. Multi-tasking. Your mother's collection and your clit are both priority items."
"Adam—"
"Say it louder when I do this." He seals his mouth over me and sucks, tongue working in focused, almost academic circles that make my thighs shake around his ears. One of his hands braces my hip; the other stays on the shelf like a vow. "Fuck, you taste like I should have canceled Seoul."
I come apart against his mouth with a broken laugh that turns into his name, yanking his hair hard enough that he groans into me like it hurts in the best way. He licks me through it, gentling, then presses a wet kiss to the inside of my thigh.
"Floor," he rasps, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, looking ruined and pleased. "Before I pass out from gratitude."
"Yes," I manage. "Floor. Before I knock the whole romance section into the void and have to explain it to the livestream."
"Yes ma'am."
We sink onto the thick reading-room rug in a tangle of half-shed clothes.
He remembers (God, he remembers) to angle us away from the lower shelves, one long arm braced to catch a paperback that wobbles when my elbow hits the baseboard.
He sets it carefully aside: blue ink visible on the margin, my mother's handwriting looping oh no honey don't fall for that.
"Safe," he whispers, almost reverent, and then he's over me, six-foot-five of rumpled suit and wanting, kissing me like the week in Singapore was a personal insult to the concept of marriage.
I get his belt open. His cock springs free, heavy and already slick at the tip, and when I wrap my fingers around him he drops his forehead to mine with a punched-out breath.
"Daisy, if you keep stroking me like that I'm going to embarrass both of us before I'm inside you."
"Inside. Now. I waited seven days and two texts. You don't get to be polite about the next part."
"Polite was never the plan." He hooks my leggings the rest of the way off, reaches into the side-table drawer for a condom, then settles between my thighs and rolls it on before notching himself against me.
The blunt heat of him makes my stomach flip.
"Tell me again that you want this. Out loud.
I need the audio file for the nights I'm alone in hotels pretending work is a personality. "
"I want you to fuck me on this rug until I forget how to resent you for at least twenty minutes."
His eyes go dark. "Copy that. Twenty minutes is a lowball. I'm aiming for an hour."
"Ambitious."
"Motivated."
He pushes in slow (ungainly for half a second, too big, too careful) and then my body remembers the shape of him and pulls him deeper. We both swear. The fairy lights blur into warm constellations. His hips roll once, testing, and I dig my heels into the back of his thighs.
"Move," I demand. "Adam, if you stay still I will—"
"You'll what?" He thrusts properly, deep and steady, and the rug burns softly against my shoulder blades. "File a complaint? Write a blog post? Tag me in the groveling discourse?"
"I'll… ah… bite you."
"Please do." He finds a rhythm that turns my insults into gasps.
One hand braces beside my head; the other slides under my back to tilt my hips so every stroke drags against the place that makes me see stars that aren't fairy lights.
"Look at me while I fill you. I want those eyes.
The ones that argued about fictional apologies with strangers while I was dying to get home to this exact view. "
I look. I can't not. His hair is a disaster. His mouth is wet. The scar near his eyebrow catches the light when he drives into me harder, and the praise that spills out of him is filthy and soft at once, like he practiced restraint on the plane and left it in baggage claim.