But I didn’t know how to stop myself right then.
A surprised mewl rolled up her throat. Vibrating through me like a foolish invitation.
“You have any idea the ways I’ve imagined having you, Daisy? All these fuckin’ years picturing you showing up at my door so I could devour you the way I always wanted? And here you are…real and alive. Shining all that beauty you always did. My Little Wallflower.”
Grief wound with the last, and a flash of fear tightened every muscle in my body.
I needed to remember why she was here. That I was responsible for her.
But I knew with every fiber of my being there was no chance I’d allow that monster to get to her.
She was safe from him, but I wasn’t so sure she was safe from me.
Not right then when I felt myself splintering apart.
Every restraint I possessed crumbling at her words.
I exhaled a broken breath at her neck as my hands flexed on her thighs. “Don’t want to hurt you, Daisy. Never wanted to hurt you.”
Electric fingertips dragged up the back of my neck and into my hair. Both gentle and pleading. “You won’t. Why do you think I’m here? Because I know you, Cash. I know you better than anyone.”
“I’m not that same kid you once knew.”
I’d been telling her and telling her, but she still couldn’t comprehend it.
“It doesn’t matter. I know you. I know you,” she rushed into the air that whipped and stirred around us. A heatwave that blasted and ricocheted against the walls.
It didn’t matter that there were still a billion barriers between us. Obstacles we could never surmount.
I let my tongue run down the length of her neck.
Lips plucking as I went.
Tasting her delicious floral scent.
Woman like the sun and the air and new life that beat through the middle of me.
Her head tipped back farther, and her fingers curled in my hair.
“Cash.” My name coming from her mouth hit me like a prayer.
Like I could be more than the beast I’d become. More than bare strength and brutal barbarity.
But she didn’t know the darkness I held inside. Didn’t know the lengths that I’d gone.
She might have had some idea, but until you witnessed that type of ruthlessness, you could never grasp what it meant. It would only ever be a figment. Outside of true reality.
Because if she could?
She never would have asked me to stand for her children, and she sure as hell wouldn’t be begging me to touch her this way.
“Please,” she mumbled into the disorder.
“You need me to make you come, sweet girl? You need me to make you feel good?”
A needy sound dripped from her mouth. “I need it so badly I can’t think. I always did. But since I came here…”
I splayed my hands wider on her hips and tugged her to the edge of the counter. My hips wound between her legs. Heat radiated from her, compounding the greed that blazed a path through my insides.
