Chapter 16 Daisy #3
"Mirror's dishonest," he pants. "Makes me look like I might survive you."
"You won't." I squeeze him until he curses. "Not tonight."
"Good." He hitches me higher and the new angle punches a helpless sound out of my chest. "Die happy. Drown useful. Come undone in a flood and call it weather."
I kiss him to shut him up and come apart with a muffled scream, legs locked around his waist, body milking him in furious pulses.
He drives into me without slowing, praising me in broken filth (that's it, take it, use me, fuck, Daisy) until the oversensitivity makes me whimper and shove at his chest.
"Too much?"
"Don't you dare stop."
"Yes ma'am."
He turns us without pulling out (my back leaving the shelf, his shoulders hitting it instead) and I ride him standing, legs still hooked around him, his hands supporting my weight, dress bunched, underwear a soaked wreck shoved aside.
His hands bruise my hips. I dig my thumbs into the hinges of his jaw and watch his face come apart.
"Spectacle," I taunt, breathless. "CEO of Meridian. Covered in basement water. Fucking his almost-ex against damaged inventory. What would the board say?"
"They can choke." His smile is feral. "This is the only meeting that matters. Motion to make my wife come again. Seconded by my cock. All in favor—"
"That motion—"
"All in favor say yes ma'am."
"Yes ma'am," I gasp, laughing and furious, and the second orgasm rips through me without warning: meaner, wetter, my body locking so hard around him that he swears and has to plant his feet in the puddle to stay upright.
"Fuck, Daisy, that's… I'm—"
"Gonna fill you," he warns, voice gone, unfinished thoughts colliding. "Nothing between us. Last chance to say no. Last chance to make this careful. Last chance to pretend we're people who plan."
"Do it." My laugh is unhinged. "Come in me like it doesn't count. Come in me like the roads are closed and the morning can't find us. Come in me like you're sorry and I'm not ready to hear it."
"Daisy, fuck, Daisy—"
He buries himself deep and spills with a groan that sounds like a building collapsing, heat pulsing into me unprotected, pulse after pulse while I cling to him and hate how much I love the feeling.
His knees nearly go. Mine already have. We sag together against the poetry section.
A paperback finally loses the fight and flutters into a puddle.
Neither of us moves to save it. His come slides warm between us; he watches it with a dazed, filthy reverence and then looks at my face like he's waiting to be slapped or kissed.
I do neither. I breathe.
"Still angry," I whisper into his throat.
"Good." His arms tighten. "Stay angry. Stay honest. I'll take the sharp version over the silent one every night of my life. And if you need quiet, I'll listen to that too."
"This doesn't count."
"Yes ma'am." He kisses my temple, soft for the first time in twenty minutes. "Marked and uncounted. Same storm."
I ease off him; the empty ache makes my eyes sting.
He helps me straighten my dress with hands that shake, then yanks his jeans up without bothering to look civilized.
We are a mess of floodwater and sex and things we refuse to name.
My thighs are sticky. His shirt hangs open.
The emergency exit sign keeps bleeding red light across the wet floor like the night has a pulse.
I stay against him in the poetry section afterglow, and I pretend, just for the length of one storm, that not counting is a kind of mercy.
Later, after we climb out of the basement and wash up, we lie tangled together on the back room couch, his shirt somewhere on the floor and my dress a wrinkled mess around my hips, and the rain has finally softened to something gentle against the windows.
"We didn't—" I start, and then stop, because finishing that sentence feels impossibly awkward.
"I know." His arm tightens around me. "We should have used one. I knew better—"
"I knew better too." I stare at the ceiling, at the shadows the emergency exit sign casts across the plaster. "We both chose it. We both own that."
"Whatever happens—"
"Let's not." I turn my face into his shoulder. "Let's not do the whatever happens conversation right now. Let's just—" I don't know how to finish. Let's just pretend this wasn't stupid. Let's just pretend we're still the people who used to do this without it meaning everything.
"Okay." He presses a kiss to my forehead. "Okay."
We lie there for a while longer, listening to the rain, and then I sit up and grab his shirt from the floor and pull it over my head.
"I'm going upstairs," I say.
"I'll stay here."
"Good."
At the stairs, I send Adam a text, from ten feet away:
You're not coming up.
He types back: Wasn't going to.
I hesitate, then add: Breakfast at my door is allowed. Knock before you come up.
His answer comes immediately: Understood.
Three dots appear. Then: Still yours. Still not counting.
I go upstairs alone, and I fall asleep wearing his shirt, and I don't let myself think about what any of it means.