“You like that?” I growled, holding her gaze. “You like that I wanted you to hear me fuck other women?” My other hand slid between our bodies and worked urgently at the button on my jeans. Shaking—I was shaking, and my teeth were gritting together to calm the tremors passing through my limbs.
Kylie’s hands softened in my hair, loosening their grip as they slid from between the strands and smoothed over the skin of my neck. She shook her head. “No.”
“No?”
For fuck’s sake. Thirty-two years of getting myself undressed, and I couldn’t manage to undo my jeans with one hand. I reluctantly untangled my hand from her hair and put it to my waist, when Kylie’s hands wrapped around my fingers. I looked to her, locked onto her eyes, and she shook her head as she placed my hands on her hips.
“I hated it,” she whispered as she slowly popped the button, moving even slower as she worked the zipper down. “I hated that it wasn’t me.”
“It should have been you,” I responded, and without another word, without looking away from her eyes, I lowered to my knees. I untied her black boots and pulled them off, one after the other. I reached up to her hips, hooked my fingers into the waistband of her leggings and rolled them down.
I could have watched the reveal of her legs. Witnessed the uncovering of her black lace panties, watched as the bunch of daisies tattooed to her thigh came into full view. But my gaze never left her face. I didn’t want to miss the quivering of her jaw or the way her teeth sunk into her pouty lower lip. I wanted to witness her relentless swallowing. The scraping of her teeth over her upper lip as her eyes teared up with the realization that this was happening. And maybe it wasn’t happening in the way I had envisioned it so many times, but … it was happening.
With her leggings on the floor, I stood up on unsteady legs, hoping my knees wouldn’t buckle underneath me. I pulled my desperate erection from my briefs and sighed with immediate relief.
Kylie gasped, her gaze aimed downward and she surprised me with an anxious giggle. She surprised herself with the trembling of her hands as she wrapped them around mine. “Oh God, why am I so nervous?”
She raised one hand to her chest, laying my palm over her breast. “My heart is beating so fucking hard,” she said, her voice hushed. I felt the pounding reverberate through my arm. A direct line to my own thundering heart.
“Mine too,” I admitted.
She giggled again. “God, why is this so scary? I mean, it’s just … it’s just you, for fuck’s sake.”
I moved my palm over the curve of her soft breast and along her neck, back into the purple nest of hair.
My smile was lopsided as I softly shook my head.
“KJ … that’s exactly why it’s scary.” She found my gaze and reached up to thread her fingers behind my neck. “Because it’s real, and real is fucking terrifying.”
She broke my heart when she sniffled, as a single tear escaped through her lashes, and she put it back together when she slid one hand between our bodies and pulled her thong aside. Accepting the fear, and embracing it. Inviting me in.
I cupped the back of her head and all of that hair of royal, glittering gemstones. With my heart beating violently against my chest, I succumbed to the possibility that I might die on impact, that I would end my life a happy man—the happiest—and I kissed her. I slipped my tongue deftly into her mouth at the exact moment I pushed forward, wrapping myself in the most soul-satisfying heat I’d ever felt before in my life. A sensation so blissful, I was certain this was it, the moment I would die the happiest man alive. But I was wrong.
Because with her arms around my neck, her legs around my waist, and her tongue slipping and sliding within my mouth, I found my beginning. A place beyond spoken confessions of love and a decade-long affection. With every steady thrust, I collapsed into it. I reveled in it, shuddering through the release we found together on the dresser in her old bedroom.
And there was absolutely nothing quiet about it.
“Oh my God.” Her words floated around me, lazy and serene. Her fingers combed through the length of my hair, smoothing the strands off my forehead. “God, Devin …”
I smiled, quickly tucking myself back into my jeans, and all at once realized how badly I needed to get off my feet. Lightheaded, I teetered on legs turning to jelly.
“Holy fuck, I need to sit down,” I announced as I wrapped my arms around her waist and carried her to the bed.
I sat beside the boxes, long forgotten due to the best, most needed sex of my life, and she straddled my lap, planting sweet kisses on my lips. I laid down backward, taking her with me, my torso nearly covering the width of the twin-sized bed, and I chuckled.
“Maybe we’ll just take this mattress home with us,” I joked, and she giggled, planting another kiss at the corner of my mouth.
“Well, it is a virgin bed,” she said, and I raised an eyebrow. “You were the first boy to ever be in here.”
“I’m honored,” I said, truly meaning it. I placed a hand over my heart. “You’re the first girl to ever be in here.”
Her flush crept up from the collar of her t-shirt, and she said, “You could’ve had anybody, Devin.”
I nodded as I wrapped an arm around her, pulling her against my chest where she laid down her head. “Maybe. But I only wanted you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Kylie
Life is full of transitions. Some of them come naturally to us, while others are a struggle.
Take my relationship with Devin, for instance.
Two months into our solidified status of being an official couple, and nothing had felt more right. We had slid into being boyfriend and girlfriend easily, and I suspected it was because not a whole lot had changed. We were still us. We still watched our horror movies every week, ate dinner together and spent Wednesday nights at the café with his guitar and our friends. But now, we also shared a bed and had sex with each other instead of other people.
All in all, it was a vast improvement.
Then, there was the idea of my mother having her own new boyfriend.
That didn’t come as naturally.
Honestly, I was trying. I tried to smile when she texted me about him. I tried not to miss my father when she mentioned something nice Richard did for her. These things made me feel like a child and I knew it was wrong, but do we ever really grow up when it comes to our parents?
I didn’t think so as her appointed tone chimed from my phone during dinner one night, and I sighed around my bite of cobb salad.
“You gonna see what she wants?” Dev asked, glancing between the phone and me.
“We’re eating dinner. I’ll check later,” I said, stating the obvious, and he smirked.
“Like that’s stopped you before. If it was Brooke, you’d check.”
I slowed my chewing. “She’s just going to tell me something else about how great Richard is, and—”
“And, you’re acting like a big baby.”
I grabbed the phone and held it out to him. “You’re more than welcome to check my phone and see what she wants.”
Putting his fork down, he kept a smug expression as he took the phone from me and leaned back in his chair. “Can I also go through the texts from your other boyfriends and all the dick pics they send you?”
“You mean all the dick pics you send me?”
“Hey, I have a beautiful dick,” he said, punching in my phone’s pin code. “Oh, and your mom wants to come to Black & Brewed on Wednesday.”
“This Wednesday?”
He nodded. “Yep. She wants to know if the offer still stands for them to stay—”
“Them?” I worried my lower lip.
“Yeah, uh …” He scrolled through the message. Mom was notorious for sending novel-length texts. “Apparently Richard’s in town and he’s dying to meet us. She wants to know if the offer still stands to stay here.”
“That offer was made before we knew she had a boyfriend,” I retorted.
Devin l
owered my phone and cocked his head. “Baby, if it makes you uncomfortable to have him stay here, I get it, but you can say that without sounding like a brat,” he said gently, sliding my phone onto the table. “You didn’t like it when she accused you of shacking up with me.”
“That was different,” I defended weakly.
“Oh yeah? How?”
“I had been friends with you for years when we moved in together, and I wasn’t sleeping with you.”
“Okay, and she’s apparently known Richard for a while, and you weren’t sleeping with me … yet.” He waggled his brows as he grabbed his fork and continued eating. “It’s also different when you’re older. You have less time to waste. Things move quicker. I mean, look at us.”
He had a point there.
I felt my submission approaching and I leaned against the back of my chair. “Okay, so what do you think?”
“No way. That’s a loaded question.” He shook his head. “This isn’t my decision to make, baby.”
My sigh was accompanied with a gentle roll of my eyes. “I’m not asking you to make a decision for me. I’m just asking what you think I should do, and not for nothing, but this is your home too. If you were uncomfortable with my mom’s boyfriend staying here, you have a say in that.”
Lowering his fork again, he rested his elbows on the table. He leaned forward and ran his tongue over his upper teeth before saying, “Well, that’s a fair point, but no. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all, so we’re good on that front. As for what I think you should do? I personally think you should give the guy a chance. But, if that’s more than you think you can do right now, then I respect that. And if that’s the case, then I wouldn’t expect you to ask him to stay here.”
He shrugged gently, and said, “But I do think you need to meet him. I know it’s hard, but … I really think it’s the right thing to do.”
I nodded and wordlessly I stood up from the table, taking my plate into the kitchen. To process, to think.
“Kylie, don’t be mad,” he said to me from the table.
Scraping the remaining bits of my salad into the garbage, I said, “I’m not mad.”
“Okay, maybe you’re not mad, but you’re still upset,” he said, getting up to bring his dish to the sink. “There’s nothing to be upset over.”
We had been over this topic countless times over the two months we had been together, over the two months since I found out about my mother’s new relationship. It amazed me that Devin had so much patience. He never once got annoyed or angry at me for running in circles around the same thoughts. From sadness to acceptance, over and over again.
If there was anyone who deserved to be nominated for sainthood, it was him.
I leaned my back against the counter and pressed my fingertips to my forehead. “I am upset.”
His mouth quirked. “No kidding.”
I dropped my hands to my sides and I gazed up at him. Defeated. “And I know it’s ridiculous. I know I’m acting like a kid and not a grown woman, but it’s just hard.”
He turned the faucet on. “It’s okay for it to be hard, baby,” he said, and I swallowed my pride. “But, it’s only going to get harder the longer you resist. And who knows? Maybe you’ll like him.”
♪
And if anybody could talk me into something like that, it was Devin. I texted my mother back, typing out a message stating I’d love for both her and Richard to come by on Wednesday. She asked if they could stay longer the next day, if we could have breakfast and maybe lunch together, and I begged Devin to take Thursday off.
I went through Tuesday, building up my confidence and convincing myself that I would be fine and that meeting Richard wouldn’t be that big of a deal. By Tuesday night, I was laughing about ever finding it a reason to panic at all, and I easily fell asleep in Devin’s arms.
The alarm clock went off at five-thirty in the morning, as per usual, and Devin rolled away from me to blindly smack his nightstand until his hand made impact with the squealing asshole. He turned it off, and instead of climbing out of bed, leaving me to sleep for another hour while he went to the gym, he rolled back toward me and nuzzled his face into my hair.
“Hey baby, are you awake?”
I giggled sleepily. “Kinda hard not to be when that thing sounds like Armageddon every time it goes off.”
“Oh, good,” he sighed, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me into him. “I had such a weird dream.”
“Mm,” I responded, burrowing my back against his chest and finding a comfortable spot on my pillow. “Uh-huh. I’m going back to—”
“I was a woman,” he interrupted, lifting his head to rest his chin against my shoulder. “It was so fucking weird. Like, I had a vagina and everything.”
I couldn’t help myself as I giggled into my pillow. “Oh, I’m sure you loved that.”
He shook his head. “No, I really didn’t. I missed my dick. But, we were still together, and we were lesbians, so I mean … that was kind of hot, I guess, but it got me thinking …”
“Oh, here we go,” I groaned, grinning.
“Would you still be with me if I was a woman?”
“Are you asking if I love you enough to be a lesbian for you? You don’t even know if I’d be any good with a woman,” I laughed.
He chuckled into my ear, tightening his grip around my waist. “Not everything is about sex, Kylie, but if you handle sex with a woman the way you handle my dick, I’m not too worried about it,” and said dick twitched, hard against my back. “And I trust you know your way around a pussy,” he growled into my ear, and his fingers were untangling from mine, sliding down over my stomach.
I wrinkled my nose. “Ugh, don’t call it that. It’s so gross.”
“Hmm,” he said, his hand slipping underneath the waistband of my shorts, and I hummed my drowsy approval. “What do you call this then?”
“Vagina?” I laughed, and I felt his frown.
“Well, that’s not hot at all.” He stroked lightly, just barely touching my hypersensitive skin, aching for him. “What about—”
“Oh, this is gonna be good, I can tell,” I said, tilting my hips to push his hand against me. “God, you’re barely doing anything.”
“That’s the point. I love driving you insane,” he said against my ear, and I groaned. “Okay, let me think … It should have a cute name. What about, um, Fluffy?” He actually giggled against my ear, tipping his forehead against my temple.
“I hate you, Devin,” I said, my flat voice surrounded by my own giggles.
“No, no, okay, let’s see … Milky Way?” I turned to him and scrunched my nose. “Yeah, that is kind of gross. Okay, how about … Buttercup?” I didn’t react, and he said, “Oh, you like that one.”
“It’s not terrible,” I admitted, and I found myself smiling.
“Well, why doesn’t Buttercup hop on and give me something to help me get through the day without her?”
“Why don’t you just come to work with me?” I asked, rolling toward him and pressing my hand to his chest. “Then, on my lunchbreak, you and Buttercup can spend some time together up in the loft …”
“Oh, Brooke would love that,” he laughed, and his lips touched mine, kissing me in a way that made waking up easy.
“So, you’ll come be my assistant today?” I asked, lifting my leg to rest over his hip.
“Mm, I wish I could, but I should still go to work this morning. It’s bad enough I’m leaving early to meet up with your mom and Richard.”
The reminder of my mother visiting brought my jaw to flop open and I stared unseeing at his face. Sleep had caused me to completely forget about my mother coming. Devin asked if I was all right, as I turned away, getting up from the bed.
“KJ?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just have to shower,” I said, crossing the floor to the closet to find something to wear as my stomach rolled anxiously.
He followed and stood, leaning against the doorframe. “Kylie. Baby, what’s w
rong?”
Even two months later, my heart still jumped happily at the sound of the pet name, even as my stomach flopped at the thought of meeting my mom’s new boyfriend. The man who had made my father nothing more than a memory to her. The man that helped her to enjoy life and want to be a better version of herself. While I knew deep down that I should love him for this, I couldn’t push beyond the truth that he was the reason she had moved on. And it was really hard for me to feel okay about that.
I licked my lips as I rifled through the closet. Nothing was good, nothing was right. I actually had a moment where I was convinced I should buy something new, something appropriate. But what the hell do you wear when you’re meeting your mom’s new boyfriend, and it felt oddly like a funeral for the past? I thumbed a black sweater at the thought, and my body stilled. I turned to Devin, standing there in all of his beautiful glory.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” I confessed, my mouth dry. “I should be happy for my mom, but instead, I just keep thinking about my dad.”
He nodded sympathetically. “I know, and you know that that’s okay, right? Nobody is telling you how to feel. Just, you know, don’t be a dick to the guy. It’s not his fault.”
I laughed as a tear weaseled its way from my eye and over my cheek. I wiped at it quickly, urging myself to smile despite it all. “I thought I was okay with it, but … God, I’m such a wreck.”
“It’s okay,” he said, pressing his lips to the top of my head. “There are situations in life when you’re allowed to be, and I think I’d consider this one of them.”
I kissed the center of his chest as I inhaled his scent. Comfort. Masculinity. Strength. I tightened my arms around his waist and said, “I really don’t know what I’d ever do without you.”
“Good thing you’ll never have to find out, huh?”
Daisies & Devin Page 19