Chapter 4 Daisy #3
"Hi." He wipes his chin with the back of his hand, then grimaces at how uncivilized that is, then does it again anyway. "Was that… acceptable? On a joy scale. One to catastrophic."
"Catastrophic." My thighs are still trembling around his ears. "You eat pussy like you're afraid the board will audit your technique."
"Let them." He presses an open-mouthed kiss to my lower belly, then rests his cheek there for a moment.
"Adam."
"Too much?"
"Exactly enough. Now get up here before I start crying about joy and ruin your data set."
After the second climax on his tongue, I make him pause long enough to drink water from a candlelit glass like athletes.
He obeys, throat working, eyes never leaving the flushed wreck of me on the window seat cushions.
Snowlight stripes his tattoos. I reach out and smear a drop of water down his chest just to watch him shiver.
"Hydration is sexy," I decide.
"You're sexy. Hydration is logistics." He sets the glass aside, climbs back over me, and kisses the taste of cold water into my mouth. "Now where were we on the joy curriculum? I believe I was failing upward."
I tug him closer by the waistband of his slacks. We kiss, messy, tasting me on his tongue, and he makes a wounded noise like the flavor alone might finish him.
"I can still taste you," he whispers. "I'm going to think about that every time it snows. Every single storm for the rest of my life is going to be pornographic."
"Good. Weather should be useful for once." I palm him through his slacks and he jerks. "Now take your pants off before I file a complaint about unfinished curriculum."
He stands long enough to shove his slacks and underwear down, cock heavy and flushed, and the sight of him (awkward giant, candle-gilded, snow at his back) makes my mouth go dry.
He sits again, gathering me into his lap so I'm straddling him, the window cold behind my shoulders and his chest furnace-hot against mine.
"Condom," he starts, then freezes. "I don't… Daisy, I didn't plan… I don't have—"
"Drawer. Side table. I bought them when I bought the candles you didn't know existed."
His laugh shakes through both of us. He finds the foil, rolls it on with hands that tremble once, then steadies. When he notches against me, he goes still again.
"Can I?" he asks. "I need you to say it. I want to hear you."
"Adam Smith." I sink down onto him inch by inch, watching his face fracture. "Fuck me on the window seat you built. Make it real."
"Daisy." He says my name like a verified fact: checked twice, stamped, filed under true. "Daisy. Daisy—"
I take him to the hilt and we both groan. He holds my hips like glass for three thrusts, forehead pressed to mine, breath shaking.
"Okay?" he asks.
"Okay. More than okay. You're… big… and careful… and I need you to stop treating me like crystal."
"You are crystal."
"I'm a woman who just came on your tongue twice. Bite me back."
I bite his shoulder. The last of his careful restraint shatters.
He drives up into me with a punched-out curse, guided by my hands on his jaw, snow exploding white beyond the glass, candles guttering one by one as the room tips toward dark.
The window seat creaks. The paperback stays safe under the cushion.
"You feel—" He breaks off, thrusts harder. "You feel like the first true thing in this penthouse. Like I could live here. In you. In this. Fuck, Daisy, tell me if I should slow down—"
"Don't you dare slow down." I roll to meet him. "I waited four months of polite distance. I want the unedited version."
"Unedited incoming." His laugh fractures into a moan.
One hand slides between us to rub my clit while he fucks up into me, the dual pressure making me swear against his mouth.
"Look at you. Riding me in a blackout. Taking every inch like you ordered me custom.
God, the sounds you make. I'm going to hear them in board meetings and get hard under the table like a menace. "
"Less poetry," I gasp. "More… there… yes—"
"Here?" He adjusts, hits the spot that makes my vision narrow, and grins like he solved a proof. "Found it. I'm keeping it."
"Shut up and—"
He kisses me quiet and fucks me thorough.
The storm erases the city. Sweat slicks our stomachs.
I come again clenched around him with a broken sound that breaks into his name, and he gentles me through the aftershocks, whispering Daisy like the word itself is the orgasm.
When he follows, it's with a sound like a man learning joy by force: face buried in my neck, arms banded around my back, hips stuttering as he empties into the condom with a full-body shudder.
"Joy," he croaks after a minute. "I think… I think that was joy. Confirm?"
"Confirmed," I whisper, stroking his hair. "Verified. Peer-reviewed."
We stay locked together while the last candle dies. Snow keeps falling. His heartbeat hammers against my breastbone. When he finally eases out of me, he deals with the condom with awkward seriousness, ties it off, and sets it on a tissue like even trash deserves process.
"You're absurd," I murmur.
"I'm thorough." He tugs a throw blanket over us, one I bought and he never noticed, and pulls me sideways so we spoon facing the snow.
His chest cradles my back. His mouth finds the hinge of my shoulder.
"Daisy. Was I… was that… okay for a first time?
I know I talked too much. I know I almost crushed the book.
I know my knee hit the window frame twice. "
"Your knee is fine. The book is fine. You are—" I search for a word that isn't too dangerous. "You are very good at showing up when the lights go out."
"Rule I haven't named yet." His arm tightens. "Stay. Sleep here. Don't go back to your own room like we didn't just invent weather."
"Okay."
"Okay," he echoes, and the word sounds like a vow he doesn't know how to format.
In the darkness of the window seat, with this impossible man's arms around me and sweat cooling on my thighs, I think: This is real. This is actually real. The snow keeps erasing the city. Somewhere my mother's paperback keeps our place under a cushion. Somewhere a generator fails to matter.
I could love this one.
Present.
The hospital waiting room smells like antiseptic and exhaustion. I'm sitting in a hard plastic chair, an ice pack pressed to my temple, watching a fluorescent light flicker in a way that suggests the facilities budget hasn't been updated since the Reagan administration.
After I pulled myself up from the hallway floor at Aurelius, I found a bathroom and assessed the damage.
The cut on my temple wasn't deep, but it was bleeding impressively, and my vision was doing concerning things around the edges.
I called a car and came here. I didn't return to the dinner to explain my absence, because explaining would require Adam noticing I was gone.
The ER nurse was efficient and kind, the sort of woman who has seen everything and is surprised by nothing. Low blood pressure, she said after checking my vitals. When did you last eat? I couldn't remember. She ordered bloodwork and sent me to wait. That was two hours ago.
I've texted Adam once: At the hospital. Getting checked out. Nothing serious. The message shows as delivered. It does not show as read.
A nurse appears in the doorway. "Daisy Williams?"
I follow her to a small room where a doctor with tired eyes reviews my results on a tablet.
"Low iron," she says. "Blood pressure was concerning, but it's stabilized now.
The head wound is superficial (we've cleaned and bandaged it) but you should watch for signs of concussion over the next twenty-four hours.
" She looks at me over her glasses. "When's the last time you had a full meal? Not a snack, a meal."
"Yesterday. Maybe." I try to remember. The anniversary party, the confrontation with Adam, the reading room floor, meals have been collateral damage.
"That's not enough. Your body needs fuel, especially if you're under stress. Are you under stress?"
I laugh before I can stop myself. "You could say that."
She doesn't smile, but her eyes soften. "Do you have someone who can stay with you tonight? Keep an eye on the head injury?"
"My husband."
"Good. Take it easy, eat something substantial, and follow up with your regular doctor about the iron levels. We'll give you some supplements to start."
I nod through the rest of her instructions, accepting the prescription and the printout of warning signs and the business card for the hospital's nutrition counseling services.
By the time I'm discharged, it's nearly midnight.
The waiting room is mostly empty now. I sit in the same hard plastic chair and check my phone.
One new message. My heart does the stupid hopeful thing it always does, and I hate myself for it even as I'm opening the text.
Adam: Late tonight. Don't wait up.
That's it. Three hours since I told him I was at the hospital, and his response is: don't wait up.
He doesn't ask where I am. He doesn't ask about the bruise rising purple on my temple, visible in the bathroom mirror I passed on my way out.
He doesn't ask about the bloodwork or the low iron or whether I'm okay.
He doesn't ask anything. I think about the window seat and the candles and the night he asked permission to kiss me like I was breakable.
I don't know where that man went.
I put my phone face down on my knee, close my eyes, and wait for a car to take me home to an empty penthouse and a husband who doesn't know I'm bleeding.