by Penny Wylder
“What about this one?”
It takes every ounce of effort in me not to physically flinch at the hot pink shag carpet Daisy’s pointing to. Still, I must give something away, because one glance over her shoulder at me, and Daisy dissolves into a fit of laughter.
“Oh, my god. You should see your face, Bronson. You didn’t think I was serious, did you?” That grin of hers, the one she wears when she’s deliberately trying to drive me crazy—which, to be honest, is most of the damn time—still drives me wild.
I make a grab for her waist, but she dances out of reach. “You know, much more of this and I’ll have to spank you later,” I comment, one eyebrow raised as she skips ahead of me up the aisle of Ikea.
“Oh, trust me, I’m counting on that,” she calls over her shoulder, those baby blues flashing in the bright neon overhead lighting.
I know we’re a walking cliché. The way she makes me feel is something I’d only ever seen in cheesy rom-com movies—movies I assumed were exaggerated, playing up the romance to unbelievable levels just so they can paint a healthily unrealistic ideal for us men to try (and fail) to live up to. But even being in this fucking Ikea with her, of all places, the dreaded store where relationships go to die…
It feels right.
My heart feels lighter than it has in years as I follow her through the aisles, my gaze glued as usual to her perfectly proportioned backside, drinking her in as she skips from one ridiculous set of apartment decor to the next.
“And this one?” Also pink, this time a bedspread with embroidered kittens on it.
This time I don’t fall for it. I roll my eyes skyward right off the bat. When I look back at her, though, she’s pouting. “You do not actually like this,” I say.
“Not for our room, silly.” Her eyes flash.
“Oh, you’d like this comforter for the baby’s room, then?” I reply, smirking. Two can play at this game. The see-how-serious-you’ll-pretend-we-are game.
Her cheeks flame bright red, and I know I’ve scored a point. But when she glances down and away, I catch a hint of something else. A downturn at the corner of her mouth. Like maybe she wasn’t completely kidding.
Then again, neither was I.
It’s only been a month you lunatic, I scold myself internally. But what a fucking month it’s been.
From the day we met, we’ve been inseparable. We drove to her place straight from our ignoble beginning in that grocery store parking lot, and we wound up fucking three more times in the next 24 hours. The second time, we barely made it through her front door before I pinned her against it, unable to wait another second to feel her tight, hot pussy clenched around my cock again.
The third time we managed to control ourselves for a couple more hours, until we’d finished cooking dinner together—turns out she’s a shit cook, but I more than make up for it with the culinary skills I picked up in between jobs back in Vegas. You learn to get real creative in the kitchen when you realize that your seemingly bottomless pool of backup money is dwindling fast.
On the bright side, Daisy is very good at serving dessert. My favorite course of the night was when we finally gave in and shoved her silverware and dishes to the floor, halfway through cleaning up the meal, so that I could hoist her ass onto the dinner table instead, spread her legs and savor her all over again.
And then there was the blowjob she woke me up with the next morning, straight from a sex dream I’d been having about her, as if she could read my mind… Or maybe as if she’d popped right out of my brain herself, a dream brought to life, who always knows exactly what I want, when and how to touch me, even just to smile at me, to get me rock hard again.
But it isn’t just the sex that’s got my brain going haywire. It’s everything. The way she memorized my coffee order the first time we stopped at a Starbucks on our way to work together—her at the local bank where she’s interning as the secretary to gain experience before she starts to apply for a higher level office job; and me to my apartment where I “work from home” (at least, so I tell her). Since then, she keeps the brand I like and the milk I drink it with stocked at her house, even though she’s lactose intolerant and can’t have any herself.
I got sick a couple weeks ago, and I came home from a late night of negotiating my way into a longer back-payment option, only to find her outside my house with her arms full of cold remedies and at least six different types of tea, because she didn’t know which one I preferred yet.
And it’s our conversations. No matter what we’re talking about, from the weather to sports scores to our dreams, Daisy has an opinion about it, and it’s one I want to hear. She’s whip-smart, funny…
I’ve never met anyone like her. I’ve never felt so comfortable with anyone before, and I’ve definitely never fallen into a relationship this easily. Hell, normally at this one-month point in seeing a girl, I’d be chomping at the bit, eager to cut and run. And I’d never use the R-word, even in my head.
Yet somehow, with her, her little joke about buying a comforter for a hypothetical baby’s room someday in the future doesn’t even freak me out. It gets me… I don’t know.
Excited.
This must be what going crazy feels like. But if so, I don’t ever want to be sane again.
“Seriously, though,” Daisy is saying, as we both drift further into the Ikea. “What kind of a vibe are you going for?”
She talked me into coming here—mostly by hyping up the meatballs I’ve been promised after we complete this walk-through—because, as she puts it, my apartment is “a barren wasteland where taste and culture go to die.” Or, as I put it, “tastefully minimalist in its decor.”
But she does have a point. I have a single uncomfortable couch, a dining counter with two stools, and my bed—that, I notice, she has no complaints about. Probably because I’ve tied her down to it enough times that she’s been forced to concede it is comfortable as hell. And plenty large enough for me to toss her across it easily…
And that’s it.
It’s the apartment of someone who doesn’t plan to stay here long. The apartment of someone just passing through, someone who doesn’t want to—who can’t want to—put down roots. Because that’s the reality of my situation. I can’t stay here.
No matter how surreally perfect this month has been. No matter how easily I could picture folding into a lifestyle here—picking Daisy up after work every day, grocery shopping for dinner while we both flash each other grins as we pass our parking spot under the tree out back, decorating a house together on the weekends, watching scary movies until she hides under the blanket and needs me to hug her all night long (which might be my motive for always choosing scary movies in the first place)…
No matter how fast I’m falling for her, I know this can’t last. Sooner or later, my past will catch up with me. And then I’ll need to move on. No matter how perfect a life it is, I’ll be leaving it behind.
And yet. Here I am.
“Hello? Earth to Bronson.” Daisy waves a hand in front of my face. “Did you have a stroke at the idea of more than a single decorative element in your minimal apartment paradise or something?”
I laugh and roll my eyes. “I was just debating the pink shag. You know, now that you’ve brought it up, I do think it would add a fun pop of color to the room. Maybe we should go look at it again.”
She scowls. I laugh again. Daisy hates pink even more than I do. “I said be serious, Bron! This is your home we’re talking about. How do you want to feel when you walk into it?”
I reach out and wrap my hands around her waist. Tug her toward me. She moves with me, steps right up so her body is flush against mine, and the soft touch of her belly against my hard abs makes my blood run south. “How do I want to feel when I come home? Turned-on, does that count?”
She snorts. “So you want us to find you one of those sexy leg lamps, is that what you’re saying?” She wriggles against me, and I tighten my grip on her waist, sliding one hand down dangerously cl
ose to her ass in this public a space.
She bats her eyes at me. I grin at her. “Only if it’s a model of your legs,” I counter. Then, with a quick glance around—the aisle we’re in is deserted—I drop my hand to squeeze a handful of her pert ass, hard. “Your ass, too, would look fantastic as a light fixture.”
She slaps my chest with a groan. But her cheeks are going red, too. I know she’s getting just as turned on as I already am. Yet this time, she twists out of my grasp. “How come you always do that?” she asks.
“Do what, grab your ass? It’s magnetic, Daisy, hardly my fault if I can’t keep my hands off you.”
She snorts and rolls her eyes again. “No, that.” She waves a hand at me. “Deflecting. Every time I try to get you to talk about your place in any serious kind of way, you dodge my questions.”
“Interior decorating just isn’t my thing.” I shrug one shoulder.
“And what exactly is your thing?” She rests one hand on her hip, and cocks it to one side. My eyes drop right to the target zone. I hate that she knows exactly how to use this weapons-grade body of hers.
Well. Hate it and love it in equal measure, actually.
“What are you talking about?” I lift one eyebrow.
“You never tell me about your work. ‘Work from home,’ you always say, but whenever I try to ask more about it you just say—”
“It’s classified,” I reply with a shrug of one shoulder. I try my best to look apologetic.
“Even CIA operatives and FBI agents get to tell their partners hints about what they do, you know. ‘Criminal counter-intelligence for the government,’ or something. You’ve given me absolutely no idea whatsoever.”
“I’ve been told women like a man of mystery.”
“I don’t even know what your plans are.” She flings her hands wide. “What are your dreams, your aspirations, anything?”
“We talked about that Sunday, remember?” I flash my winning grin. The half-smile that always distracts her. “You and I are going to learn how to sail, and then we’re going to sail down to the private island we’ll buy in the Caribbean after we win the MegaMillions—”
“I’m talking about real dreams, Bronson.” She takes a step closer to me. Reaches up, as if she’s going to catch my hands. But before I can grab hers, she lets them drop to her sides again. “I’ve told you everything. How I want to work in marketing, make enough to save up for one of the nicer houses out in the countryside around here—”
“And I told you you’d make enough to do that in about half the time if you moved to a bigger city to try your luck. LA or New York, where a smart girl like you would be making triple the salary you’d be able to get at a company here.”
She raises her voice and keeps going. “I told you how I want a family and kids someday; how I want to raise smart girls and kind boys and I want to marry someone who’ll be a good father, who won’t ask me to stay at home with the kids but who will be an equal parent in the equation, the way I want.”
“Again, I really think the options are going to be broader in LA, even when you’re searching for husband material—”
“And all you do is give me advice on my choices,” she finishes, and suddenly there are tears glittering at the corners of her eyes, and my heart feels like it’s ripping down the center. I’ve never seen her cry before. “You don’t tell me what you want. Which leads me to believe that you don’t want the same things I do, or else wouldn’t you have told me before now that you agree?”
My chest aches. So does my throat. I want to tell her. I want to shout it from the hilltops. I want all of that. With you. I want you, and I want that future.
Because I do. I long for it so badly it makes me see red sometimes. Late at night when I’m lying wide awake, listening to her slow, steady breathing beside me and wishing I were someone else, anyone else. The kind of man who could give her the future she so desperately deserves.
“Hold up,” I say. I gesture around us. “I really thought we were going to pass the Ikea test with flying colors, but I’m worried if we start a real serious conversation in here, the magical evildoing powers of this building might get under our skin.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “Only if you think you’re about to say something I won’t like,” she points out.
Touché.
I run a hand through my hair and manage to hold in a sigh, just barely. “Rustic,” I finally say.
Her eyes narrow. “What?”
“Rustic, I’m looking for rustic style. Log cabin-y, something that’d look like it belonged in a house out in the country. Scandinavian, maybe, since I guess that’s where outdoorsy woodsmen and modernists intersect…”
“You really think you’re going to talk your way out of this conversation by answering the question about what you want your apartment decor to look like?” She arches one single, perfect, deadly eyebrow.
“You wanted me to tell you something real, Daisy.” I step closer to her again. This time, at least, she doesn’t back away from me. Not yet. “So I’m doing that. This?” I gesture back and forth between us in midair. “Whatever it is, it’s real, okay? It’s happening crazy fast, and it was unexpected as hell for both of us, I know, but please just believe me when I tell you, this is real. You want to know what I dream of? Well I want to know how the hell you escaped from my brain, okay, because you’re the kind of girl I’ve always dreamt of and never thought I’d have. I’d never even imagined a future before I met you.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” she asks, her voice a whisper now. Suddenly we’re just a hair’s breadth apart, and my hands catch her shoulders, trace up until I’m cradling her face between them, my forehead coming to rest against hers. Her lips are so close I can practically taste the mint lip-gloss she’s wearing. “Why wouldn’t you dare to imagine a life, a future? Everybody does that.”
“Not me.” I smile, just a little. Enough to cover the pain. “I was just a dreamless drifter until I met you, Daisy. Totally unmoored.”
She snorts, but she doesn’t pull away. With my forehead pressed to hers, I can feel it when both of her eyebrows arch this time. “What are you now, then?”
“Anchored,” I reply. Then my lips find hers, and we stop talking and start putting our mouths to better use. My hands slide down the curve of her back, come to rest on her hips. I pull her against me, and she arches up, crushing her upper body to mine, her breasts sandwiched between us, nipples already growing hard, which I can feel because god dammit, she didn’t wear a bra today, under that slinky dress she has on, which leads me to believe from past experience that she probably isn’t wearing any underwear either.
I run my hands from her hips down to her ass, pressing just hard enough to check.
She gasps into my mouth and pulls back, a grin on her face that makes me want to devour her all over again. “If you’re looking for panties, I left those at home,” she says.
“I’m not,” I reply, dropping my hand. “At least, not anymore.” I step back from her and turn to glance around us. “Now, I’m looking for the nearest supply closet.”
She slips her hand into mine. “There was a handicap stall back by the kitchen supply section.”
Before she even finishes speaking, I’m already steering us that way. The Ikea gods bless our journey because we don’t run into any innocent bystanders when we reach the bathroom. Only one employee in sight, and he hurries off in another direction after a moment’s hesitation. Then I wrench open the handicap stall and yank Daisy in after me. The door is barely latched before she grabs my belt, tugging to unhook it with one deft stroke.
“So, do you want that spanking we talked about now or later?” I ask as I grab her waist and hoist her onto the edge of the sink, one of those low-placed, sturdily built ones.
“Mm, I’d say now, but I’d prefer to be able to squeal properly when you do it,” she replies with a sly smirk.
“Guess I’ll just have to punish you the old fashioned way, naughty girl.”
I run my hand up her thigh, under her dress, all the way up to the bare crook where her leg meets her hipbone. I trace it over and down, toward the hot, wet place between them.
Her pussy is already drenched. Which is good, because as she undoes my belt and shoves my pants down, I can feel that I’m already rock hard, too.
“Just make sure you give it to me hard, bad boy,” she replies, peering up from beneath her lashes with that sexy little pout that always drives me wild. She pushes my boxers down next, and my cock springs free, thick and flushed with desire. The veins stand out on the sides, and she traces her fingertips along them, in a soft, delicate motion that nevertheless makes an involuntary shudder run through me.
“I plan to,” I reply, my finger stroking along her slit, collecting her juices, swirling them around the entrance of her pussy, teasing. “But first, I want you to give it to me.” I step back, then, and she makes a little mewl of protest when my hand breaks contact with her pussy. “Kneel down,” I say.
Her eyes flash hot with lust—I’ve learned by now she loves it when I tell her what to do. But she always wants to resist, first. “Say please,” she counters.
I take another step backward, away from her. “Or we could just behave,” I point out.
Her gaze drops to my cock. “You clearly don’t want to.”
I raise my hand to my mouth. Place the finger I was just stroking her pussy with between my lips, and slowly, deliberately lick it clean. “And you don’t?” I arch one eyebrow.
With a playful scowl, she hops off the sink and sinks to her knees instead.
“Good girl,” I reply.
“Not a chance,” she answers, winking. “But then, you love that I’m not.”
I step toward her, and she reaches out with eager hands, grasping my cock once more and drawing me toward her eager lips. “I really, really do,” I say, just as her tongue lashes out to stroke my length, up one side of my cock and then down the other, coating me until I’m slick with her saliva. She circles one hand around the base of my shaft and puts pressure on it, the other hand between my legs toying with my balls.
