Cherished (40 page)

“Do you have a few minutes?”

“For what?” She was afraid to say more. Afraid she’d cry.

Gillian walked in, talking and laughing with Jules, who halted and gave a serious-menace-face to Levi.
“You.”

He held his hands up in surrender. “I’m here to talk to Daisy.”

Daisy climbed down and Gillian took her aside. “You don’t have to. We can shoo him away.”

“No. I have to.” She put the drill back in the case and the case in the utility closet. While back there she took a moment to get her breath and to smooth a hand over her hair and reapply her lipstick.

Damn, she was glad she’d had an appointment before she came to Tart so she was dressed up and had makeup on. Levi needed to see just what he was missing. Ass.

“Do you have a coat? I thought a walk would be nice.”

He had really good manners. She’d forgotten that. No, no, she hadn’t. She didn’t get close enough to let him help her get her coat on and she again was glad for that earlier appointment because she had her cute gloves and shoes on too.

“I’ll be back in a bit.”

Jules gave Levi the eye for long moments before she leaned in to kiss Daisy’s cheek. “No matter what, you are special. You are awesome. If he can’t see it, there will be others who will.”

“Love you guys,” she said quietly before turning to the door and going out while he held it open for her.

“You look beautiful.” He shoved his hands in his pockets as they walked. It wasn’t a cold day, but a brisk breeze had kicked up, sending her hair all over the place.

“What do you want, Levi?”

“I wanted to see you again.”

“Why?”

“You’re tough once you really get mad.”

She stopped, really, truly mad. “You broke my heart, Levi. That’s not me being tough, that’s me trying to hold my shit together so I won’t cry.” Her bottom lip started to wobble and she had to look heavenward and blink fast before she actually did it.

“You tear me apart. I swore I’d never give anyone that power over me again. But I never counted on you.” He said it quietly. Vehement. “All that stuff you said was true. I was hiding you. Sort of. Not for the reasons you think.”

There was enough traffic up and down the sidewalk that they had to continually move out of the way. “My car is there.” He pointed. “We can sit out of the wind and talk.”

She chewed her lip as she considered it.

“Please?” He held his hand out but she didn’t take it. She did nod and cross with him, pausing as he opened her door. It smelled of him so strongly she nearly burst into tears. She didn’t want to hope. He could be there to talk to her about any number of things.

She took her gloves off and laid them carefully in her lap as he got in.

He got in and they sat there, silent for several moments. “I’m sorry.”

She looked to him. “For what?”

“For breaking your heart. For making you cry.” Anguish washed over his features and she had to wrestle back her need to touch him, to comfort.

“You were right. Like I said. I let myself think Gwen was right. But she isn’t. It’s not that you and I are from two different worlds.
Though we are. It’s that I didn’t want to imagine a world without you in it. And that freaked me out. You matter to me in a way I promised myself I’d never allow again. Only it’s different in that I never felt this sort of intensity before. Not with anyone. Which made me feel like an asshole. After all I was married to Kelsey, shouldn’t I have felt like if I didn’t see her or hear her voice, I’d simply waste away?”

“You feel that way about me?”

“That’s what I’m saying. You matter to me, Daisy. You matter to me and I matter to you. You took care of me and never let me get away with stupid stuff. You were my safe place to be and I shit all over that.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Ew.”

He smiled. “Can I touch you?”

She shook her head. “No. Why are you telling me this?”

“This is groveling. Am I doing it wrong?”

She tried not to be amused but it was impossible. “I don’t like groveling because it means you’ve done something bad enough to need to grovel.”

“I told my parents I was bringing a guest to dinner on Sunday. I hope you don’t mind. I want you to meet them. I’m telling you this because I love you. I love you and I want to be with you. I hate that I hurt you because I was dumb.”

“You were scared.”

He nodded, heartened by the way she’d shifted herself in the seat to face him instead of looking down at the gloves she kept rearranging so carefully.

“I don’t want to hide you. I want to show you off.” He’d told her he loved her, damn it. Didn’t she have anything to say to that?

She was so beautiful there. So real after he’d done nothing but dream of her for the last two weeks. She smelled good, looked good. Her lips were shiny red but it still hurt his heart when her
bottom lip had trembled as she’d fought back tears a few minutes earlier.

“What if I’ve moved on?”

He frowned. “Have you? I told you I loved you. Don’t you have a response?”

“I told you I loved you two weeks ago, mister. Your response was walking out my door and going out on dates with tall, thin blondes.”

He cringed.

“Yes, exactly. I
saw
the pictures in the paper.”

“Nothing happened. Not with any of them. I didn’t even hold hands with any of them. None of them was you. I love you, Daisy Huerta. And so I refuse to accept you’ve moved on. Because I know you love me too. Give me another chance, Daisy. I promise to make you glad of it for the rest of your life. I’ll fuck up again. I’m a dude, this is part of the package. But I won’t betray your trust. I won’t hide you. I respect you and damn it, come on. Love me again.”

“I never stopped.”

He didn’t ask to touch her this time, he simply reached out and took her, brought her into his arms and held on tight as she buried her face in his neck. “If you ever do something like this again I will let my friends loose on you. You have no idea the pain I saved you from.”

He smiled. “That’s so true in so many ways.”

Chapter 16

“I can’t believe you never play on the Wii. What’s the point of having it if you don’t use it?”

She stood in panties and a tiny shirt, her hips circling again and again as she did some sort of Hula-Hoop thing on the screen.

“Goddamn, I’m a lucky man.”

She looked back over her shoulder at where he lounged on the couch in his sitting room, watching a half-naked woman pretend to Hula-Hoop.

Her smile told him she knew exactly what she was doing.

They’d gone to dinner at his parents and mostly had left unscathed. Gwen didn’t get anywhere near them. His brothers were charmed fairly immediately, as was his mother of all people.

Levi hadn’t expected that at all. But Daisy had started a conversation with her about art and it had gone from there. By the end of the night his mother had advanced to the double cheek kiss and a hand squeeze.

Daisy had been sweetly insufferable ever since they’d arrived back at his place.

“You should come over here.”

Her mouth tripped up into a smile. “Should I? But you’ll try to touch me in my no-no place if I do.”

He burst out laughing. “I will definitely do that, yes. But I promise you’ll like it.”

“I haven’t heard that one in a very long time. Does it work for you?” she asked, settling herself in his lap, straddling him.

“Looks like it does.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“I am. It’s a wonder I got into college at all. I was expelled three times from two different schools. My mother had to scare a lot of people to get me back in.”

She grinned. “She’s totally scary. I sort of like her. On the other hand, Gwen is a dingus. I don’t like her. Mal is adorable; what he sees in her I don’t know.”

“I have an idea, let’s speak of them no more. You should fuck me instead.”

“Okay.”

She put her arms behind her back and waited, sending him off into a fantasy for several vivid seconds.

His hands shook as he balled them into fists for a bit until he wrestled his control back into place.

He stood and she wrapped herself around him as he walked them into the bedroom and tossed her on the bed.

She laughed, her hair a tumble around her face as she got to her knees, pulled off the T-shirt and put her hands back into position.

He opened the box he bought only a few days before they’d broken up. A box for all the things he used and wanted to use on her, with her, to her.

She shivered as he slid the cuffs into place on her wrists and tightened them. He breathed out slowly, kissing up her back to her shoulder where he bit and she made that soft sound of hers.

He was so hard he had to count things and recount the rules
of adverse possession just to keep from coming. It had been too long. Longer than he’d ever wanted to be away from her again.

The mask dangled from his fingers as he moved around so she could see it. Her lips parted and her pupils swallowed the color in her eyes. He leaned in to nip her bottom lip, tugging it between his teeth and then securing the mask over her eyes.

She loved when he used the mask. The dark soothed her, opened her senses in every other way. Each touch of her skin, each kiss he laid over her shoulders, every breath against her body was an underlined, exclamation-pointed declaration of what he felt.

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

She breathed in deep, moved by his declaration.

“I missed you so much I can’t even tell you.”

“You should try.”

He kissed her smile. “Jonah came to my house and rousted me from bed and yelled at me for not coming after you. I didn’t even punch him because I knew he was right and I needed him to push me.”

She frowned. “I slept like shit for two weeks. I’d wake up every morning and remember you weren’t going to be next to me and I’d be mad all over again.”

“Show me how much you missed me.”

He’d been gently brushing her temples with his thumbs and those hands slid into her hair and yanked, exposing the line of her throat to him. Shivers worked through her as she fell, softly and slowly into that warm place where all she felt was him.

He growled as he scraped his teeth over her neck and she jumped with a cry when he bent and bit her nipple, tugging hard enough for her to see stars. Enough that when he licked over the sting every part of her tingled.

“When my hands are on you, when you’re here exactly how I want you—
because
that’s how I want you—I feel invincible.” Covetous hands slid all over her body, igniting her senses, making her
need him so much she ached with it. “I don’t know why you do it—give yourself to me the way you do. But I’m glad you do.”

“Because you deserve it. Because you cherish me and make me feel beautiful. When you didn’t anymore it was like a punch to the face. I never want that again.”

He kissed her lips, sweet and full of contrition and she took everything he gave. Giving back, giving everything.

There was a tug on one nipple and the ring and then a weight. The process repeated and then he did something so that the cool metal of what had to be a chain with weights, pulled her nipples until they throbbed.

“I’ve been looking for the perfect chain and weights since the first time I saw the piercings in your nipples. How does it feel?”

It took a moment for her to find her words. “G-good. Really, really good.”

He rolled her to her side and then onto her belly, pulling her panties off. The rustle behind her told her he was taking off the rest of his clothes so she pulled her knee up, knowing how much he loved to fuck her that way.

He kissed up from her ankle to each cheek of her ass before slapping it until she went a little numb. And then he spread her open and teased her clit with the head of his cock until she squirmed and got close enough to beg.

“Yes, that’s what I needed to hear.”

And then he pushed in, his cock filling her, his weight on her, pressing her throbbing nipples into the cool bedding, the heat of his skin actually cool against her ass where he’d spanked it.

He adjusted her hips, angling her so her ass was tipped up, and he rested her pubic bone on his knees as he fucked her in quick, shallow digs.

He looked down at her ass. At the pinked, high, tight cheeks. He watched his cock disappear into her cunt over and over again, only to pull out, dark and wet with her honey.

Her wrists were bound with wide, black leather cuffs, lined of course, because he didn’t want her to be in pain. Not unless he planned it.

Something about the way she looked with her eyes covered in the mask never ceased to move him. When she slept and used a mask because his place was so bright in the mornings, he’d lay awake for an hour or so, just planning on what he was going to do to her when she woke up.

The mere sight of her inflamed his senses. He leaned down as he fucked her to breathe in the scent of her skin. The change in his balance took him deeper, tilted her ass higher.

She stuttered a breath as he reached around and found her clit, sliding a fingertip back and forth over it very, very slowly.

“Oh god.”

He smiled though she couldn’t see. “Do you like that?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“Good. I want you to come all around my cock. Can you do that for me?”

She nodded and he dug his fingertips into her hip while he increased his thrusts. Harder. Deeper. And kept his pace on her clit. Slow and steady.

It went on between them for some time, a slow, insanely good buildup to climax. She squirmed and tried to hurry him along but he kept his pace.

“When it happens, when I let it happen, it’ll be good. Be patient, beautiful.”

She gave a frustrated sort of sniff of indignation and it made him laugh. He kissed her shoulder. “I missed that snotty little sniff you do. Saucy. Makes me think later on tonight after I’ve rested a bit that you might need to be tossed over my knee so I can use the paddle.”

“Oh!” She tightened around him and began to come, turning her face into the bedding to yell out.

Too late to hold himself back, he let it go, pressing deep and hard and coming with such intensity he tingled from head to toe as he kept climaxing as her cunt squeezed him to near blindness.