Chapter 24 Daisy #3
He understands. He fucks me through the understanding, hand alternating between my mouth and my hip, whispering broken soft filth between kisses: how perfect I am taking him quiet, how he loves the way I pull him closer, how he'll wait for the words as long as I need.
"Close," I warn into his palm.
"Then come quiet for me." His thumb rolls tight against my clit. "Come on your husband's cock in a cornfield like a menace. I've got your mouth. I've got your hip. I've got you."
The orgasm hits in a silent earthquake: my scream trapped against his hand, my body locking, corn shaking around us as I shudder. He follows with his face pressed to my neck, a groan bitten into my skin, hips stuttering through careful pulses that never turn reckless.
We stay tangled together while the maze breathes. Distant music from the fair drifts over the stalks. My dress is a wrinkled confession. His forehead is damp against mine.
Still half-dressed, still catching our breath, he hasn't let go of me.
"So," he whispers. "I appear to have forgotten every turn we took."
I snort into his shirt. "You're impossible."
"I'm happy." He kisses my hair. "Happy and waiting."
"You're looking at me like that again," I whisper.
"I'm memorizing." He thumbs my lower lip. "The way you look when you're trying not to moan. The way your pupils blow when I hit that spot. The way you trust me enough to do this in this ridiculous hiding place. Daisy, I'm never getting over you."
"Good." I bite his thumb lightly. "Don't recover. Stay ruined and mine, still waiting."
When he eases out, he ties off the condom, helps me straighten underwear and skirt, smooths a leaf out of my hair with absurd ceremony. I fix his belt. We look almost respectable. We are not.
"I still can't say it back," I tell him quietly, hands on his chest. "But I'm showing you. Like that. Like this."
"I noticed." His eyes are soft. "I'll keep saying mine in mazes and kitchens and every stupid place you'll let me."
A flashlight beam sweeps a distant corridor of stalks, maze workers doing a sweep, and we freeze like teenagers, my face in his chest, his laugh silent against my hair.
The beam passes. We exhale as one organism.
Then we finish fixing our clothes for real: leaf out of his collar, my dress hem tugged straight, his zipper coaxed up without pinching.
Respectable enough to face the fair. Ruined enough to remember.
"Ready?" he asks at the edge of the clearing.
"As I'll ever be." I squeeze his hand. "Don't look smug when we find the exit."
"I contain multitudes of smug." He steals one last quiet kiss. "I love you. Waiting continues. Maze ends."
Neither of us moves for one more stolen second. Then we do (hands linked, clothes decent, hearts indecent) and the corn closes behind us like it never saw a thing.
We finally emerge from the maze as the fair lights flicker on, transforming the grounds into a glittering carnival dream. Adam's hand is warm in mine, and I'm carrying the stuffed dog with the crooked smile tucked under my arm.
"One more stop," Adam says, pulling me toward the ticket booth. "Ferris wheel?"
"You hate heights."
"I love you more."
"That's cheating."
"That's romance."
I'm about to answer when I see her.
Kendra is standing at the ticket booth, three people ahead of us in line. She's dressed casually (jeans, a cardigan) and she's alone. When she turns and sees us, she smiles. It's not a friendly smile.
"Daisy." Her voice carries a false sweetness that makes my skin crawl. "What a coincidence."
"Is it?" I step slightly in front of Adam, some protective instinct flaring. "The diner was a coincidence. The sidewalk across from my store was a coincidence. This is starting to look like something else."
Her smile doesn't waver. "It's a public fair. Anyone can come."
"Anyone can also leave."
"Daisy." Adam's voice is low in my ear. "What's going on?"
"Kendra's been showing up," I say, not taking my eyes off her. "Places I go. Places you go. It's becoming a pattern."
"I just like to stay informed," Kendra says, and there's something unhinged in her eyes now. "About things that matter to me."
I step closer, pitching my voice so only she can hear.
"I'm going to say this once. Whatever you think you're doing, whatever you think is going to happen, it's not.
He doesn't want you. He never wanted you.
And if you keep following us, I will document every instance and I will take it to the police. Are we clear?"
For a long moment, she just looks at me. Then her smile returns, wider and somehow worse.
"Crystal clear," she says. "Have a lovely evening."
She walks away into the crowd, and I watch her go with a sick feeling in my stomach.
"What the hell was that?" Adam is at my side, his body tense.
"I don't know." I turn to face him. "But I think we need to talk to fair security. And this goes in the record with the rest."
"Every sighting?"
"Every sighting. Every 'coincidence.'" I pull out my phone, making a note with the date and time. "Because I don't think she's going to stop."
Adam's hand tightens around mine as we make our way to the security booth. The fair spins on around us, bright and loud and cheerful, but all I can see is Kendra's smile.
And the way it never reached her eyes.