Kiwi Strong (New Zealand Ever After Book 3)

by Rosalind James

  His voice, finally. Not controlled, not like Gray. A little rough. A little demanding.

  “Come on, Daisy,” he told me. “Come on. Do it for me. Give it up. Come on.”

  My muscles were contracting around him, and I suddenly realized what Kegels were for. They were for this.

  Oh. Bloody. Hell.

  His breathing got louder, and he was saying, “Yeh. Do that. Oh, fuck. Do that.”

  He was over me, driving into me, pressing me down. But I was the one in charge. I was the one pushing him past his limits. He was trying to wait for me. I could feel it. And he couldn’t. He was beyond trying.

  The triumph made me surrender.

  The orgasm was sudden and sharp this time, and hard as iron. I was jerking forward and back, my cries muffled by the mattress, because my face was buried as deep as he was buried in me. He gave a shout. And then he groaned and spilled into me, over and over again.

  I felt like the queen of the world.

  Gray

  That wasn’t one bit what I’d expected. And I couldn’t move.

  I had to move. Condom. I couldn’t anyway. I was pressing Daisy into the mattress, breathing hard, feeling her shudders beneath me, knowing I’d thrilled her, and excited her, and satisfied her all the way to her depths. All the way to her heart. And surely, there’s no feeling better for a man than that.

  Even when I finally managed to lever myself off her, I didn’t get far. Instead, I was running my hand down her slender back and back up it again, needing to touch all of her, to claim it for myself. And I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

  Neither did she. She was sprawled, boneless, beneath me, quivering a little as I touched her. I pressed my lips between her shoulder blades, and she gave a sigh. And my heart filled with something, an emotion so strong and so sudden, it knocked me sideways.

  Condom, I thought dimly, and headed to the bathroom to get rid of it, trying to process whatever that had been. Too much wine, except that it hadn’t been. I’d barely had a glass.

  Too much of somebody else. Too much of Daisy. Or never enough.

  When I got back, she’d rolled to her side again. Not away from me. Toward me. I slid into bed, pulled the duvet up over us, got a hand on her cheek, stroked her hair back, and kissed her mouth. Slowly. Sweetly. And asked her, finally, “All right?”

  “Mm,” she said, and put her own hand against the side of my face. “You’re a very good lover, aren’t you?”

  I wanted to say, Compared to who? I didn’t. This wasn’t the time for comparisons. Instead, I said, “So are you.”

  “Oh, yeh,” she said. “Right.”

  I laughed, snuggled her closer, so her head was on my shoulder and my arm was around her, which felt just bloody brilliant, and said, “Do you know what a man wants? Or, rather—what this man wants?”

  “No,” she said. “Tell me.” Her palm was flat against my chest again. Feeling my heart beat, I knew. Wanting to get closer, to climb inside me, the same way I wanted to do with her.

  “I want to know that I’m pleasing you,” I said. “I want to know that you feel carried away, overwhelmed, and you feel safe, too. Which is a nice way of saying that I love to feel you come.”

  “Funny,” she said, kissing my chest, “because I find I love it, too.”

  You couldn’t have stopped me smiling if you’d tried.

  48

  Joy

  Daisy

  We took a shower together, and it was a revelation.

  I’d always dashed in and out of my showers. Always something else to do, somewhere else to be. When I was being held under the warm, pelting spray, though, pressed against the wall, my legs around Gray’s waist and my arms around his neck, our bodies illuminated only by a light far away on the bedside table, while he kissed me? There was no “something else to do.” There was no “somewhere else to be.” Nothing to do but this, and nowhere to be but here. He kissed me and touched me and told me I was beautiful, and when he turned the water off, he was still holding me. He grabbed towels with one hand and carried me out to the bedroom that way, after which he tumbled me onto the bed, dried me off, got both little tubes of high-end body lotion from the bathroom, and rubbed the orange-and-ginger-scented lotion into me. Into my neck. Into my breasts. Into my belly, and into my legs. All the way to my feet. He took a foot in his hand, ran his thumb over my rose-gold toenails, and said, “I like everything about how you look, but these could be my favorite. Well, except for your thighs.” He lifted my foot, kissed the instep, and then he did the same thing with the other foot.

  In the light.

  I said, “I need to touch you, though. I’ve never …” I had to stop and get my breath.

  His eyes were so dark. So kind. He said, “You’ve never touched a man. Not because you wanted to.”

  “No.” It was hard to say, and it was good to say. “I want to do it now.”

  I got a chance to kiss that scar beside his eye, to trace every single scar on his face with my fingers and my lips. The places he’d bled and healed, during all those battles when he hadn’t given up. I got a chance to kiss his neck, and to be gentle with the healing scrapes on his forearms. I got a chance to tell him, while I kissed the undamaged crook of his elbow, “I love that you did this for me. I hate that you did it, because it was so much too dangerous, but I love it, too. Isn’t that odd?”

  “No,” he said, his hand in my hair. “It’s the way things should be.”

  He let me do everything I wanted, even though I could tell it was so hard for him to hold back, to wait while I traced the pattern of his tattoo with my fingertips and my mouth. Over his bicep. Over his shoulder. And, finally, over his chest. I ran my hands over both his arms, from his shoulders all the way down to his hands, and he took them the same way he’d done before, threading his fingers through mine. I lowered myself over his body like that while he held me steady with all the deep-rooted strength of his outstretched arms, his chest, his core, and I thrilled at that strength, and at his restraint. I kissed his mouth, and then I moved down and touched and kissed everything else. Slow as I wanted. Hesitant as I needed to be. And he held still and let me do all of it.

  I didn’t know how to be on top of a man, and I felt clumsy and awkward trying. Gray must have known that for now, I could only do this in ways I never had. That if he was over me, his weight on his elbows and me on my back, I’d panic. He must have, because he helped me. He lifted me onto him, then lowered me slowly down, and he looked into my eyes all along the way. He held my hips in his big hands and guided my movements, and when it got too exciting and I couldn’t focus on trying to do it right anymore, he took over the work from me. He showed me how, and I’d swear it was a thrill to him to do it.

  When we were lying together again, our breathing finally slowing, my hand on his chest again, I said, “I shouldn’t be sleepy. This is my work time.”

  “Mm,” he said, his hand lazy on my back, stroking down it and back up again. “I should be, though. I am. Wore me out, didn’t you.”

  I laughed and kissed his shoulder, there where the triangles of the tattoo swirled up and over the bulge of deltoid. “I did not. I’m guessing you could do this more or less all night.”

  “Nah,” he said. “Getting old, aren’t I.”

  I laughed, and he did, too, his chest shaking under me. I said, “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to disparage your own sexual abilities.”

  I could hear his yawn, and feel it, too. “Mm. You’d find out anyway.”

  “We should ring your mum,” I said. “The girls.”

  “It’s late,” he said. “They’ve noticed that we’re not back.” He reached up and flipped off the light. “Sleep with me a little. Let me hold you. Us older fellas like to cuddle.”

  How could I resist that?

  It might have felt odd, walking into the kitchen at eight o’clock that morning, still in my clothes from the night before. Fortunately, I didn’t have to experience it. We went home at f
ive instead, driving into a windy dawn, the rising sun lighting the edges of the clouds. We got into our kit, rescued Xena from her desperately lonely night without Gray—I might know how she felt—clambered into the ute, and took the dog for a long trail run on the Otago Peninsula. Up and down the undulating green hills, in amongst the sheep and over the stiles, through air full of spring green and the ozone scent of approaching rain, watching the clouds gather, the wind rise, the light change, and the storm blow in, all the way up from Antarctica.

  He was the best training partner I’d ever run with. So fast, I had to push to keep up, and so tireless, you never had to take a break. A little past halfway along the loop trail, when going back would be more work than going on, it started to rain, and I said, “You’re going to hate me.”

  He said, “Nah. Rain just makes it more of a challenge. It’s downhill anyway. A push for the finish line, that’s all.” Which it was. Slipping in the mud, our shoes caked, our jackets and hair streaming with water, running faster just to keep warm. Stretching out, muscles all the way warm, pushing for the carpark. Xena galloping along beside us, her tongue lolling from her grinning mouth, her tail wagging, her entire Labrador self just happy to be here.

  A final sprint, giving it everything I had, laughing aloud at the effort and the joy of it, and Gray laughing back at me, saying, “Come on, Daisy. Come on. Let’s do this,” exactly the same way he had in bed. Like this was our adventure, and we were in it together. All the way to the end.

  Gray

  Never in my life had I been with a woman like this. One who could run 15K in the rain without complaint, who was energized by the storm, excited by the challenge. When we got our dripping selves to the ute at last, she was still laughing, and so was I. I turned the engine on, turned the heat up, opened the back door for Xena, and climbed in myself. The dog repaid me by shaking muddy water all over both of us, and Daisy shrieked and laughed, her arms over her head, making me, laugh, too. And kiss her.

  Filthy. Soaking wet. Bone-tired. Exalted.

  I put the ute in gear and pulled out of the carpark, the two of us, and the dog, all alone out here, all the way free, and Daisy said, “This is joy. Isn’t it? This is joy.” Wonderingly, as if it were new. As if it were a shining gift that somebody had pressed into her cupped hands, a gift she’d never expected and couldn’t believe was hers.

  Which it was.

  49

  Full Disclosure

  Daisy

  It wasn’t so bad when we got home. For one thing, I was too muddy to stand about and chat.

  Honor, Oriana, and Frankie were sitting around the table drinking tea and eating eggs when I came in. It seemed odd, and then I realized that it was barely half-past seven.

  “Hi,” I said, once I’d stripped off my muddy shoes outside the door and divested myself of my soaking-wet socks and jacket. “Shower.”

  I took my third shower in barely twelve hours, and enjoyed it almost as much as the one before. I took some extra time warming up, scrubbing down. Washing my hair, because it was muddy, too. Probably from the time I’d slipped on a downhill and gone down straight onto my bum and my back. Gray had hauled me to my feet, only managing not to slip himself by some preternatural strength and balance, and we’d staggered around laughing like lunatics.

  My extra-long shower, though, was probably why, by the time I came out again in my raspberry dressing gown, Gray was sitting at the table as well. With Xena. The dog, still damp and smelling of—well, wet dog—sprawled out beside him with her muzzle on her paws, not even looking up at me. Blissful exhaustion. I got it.

  Gray stopped in the act of taking a drink and said, “This is coffee. Do you want some, or are you going to be sleeping?”

  “No,” I said, and smiled at him with everything in my overflowing heart. “I may never need to sleep again. But if I’m going to be awake forever, coffee would be good.”

  He handed me his mug and said, “Have this one, then, and I’ll get another.”

  I didn’t, not quite yet. I bent down, kissed him, and said, “That’s so sweet. Thank you. And good morning.”

  In answer, he set the mug down, put his arm around my waist, and pulled me into his lap. “Morning,” he said. “We’ll share the coffee, how’s that. I like your pretty dressing gown.”

  I told the girls, “We need to get you some of these,” then explained to Gray, “You don’t wear dressing gowns at Mount Zion. You wake up and get dressed, and you get undressed just before you go to bed. Lounging in your dressing gown is slothful, and sloth is one of the seven deadly sins. Normally, the girls would have been up for at least an hour and a half by now. Earlier, if they were on Cooking rotation.”

  Frankie said, “Uh, Daisy? You’re sitting in Gray’s lap.”

  “And you’re showing again,” Oriana pointed out.

  I looked down. It was true. I said, “Whoops,” and adjusted the dressing gown.

  Honor said, “Breakfast, I think,” and got up to fix it.

  I said, “I can do it.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “You’re too comfortable there.”

  I couldn’t tell what she thought. I could worry about that, except that I didn’t seem able to.

  Frankie said, “You didn’t come home until morning.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I didn’t.”

  “Honor said Gray didn’t, either,” she said.

  “Also true,” Gray said.

  “Where did you sleep?” Frankie asked.

  “In a hotel room,” I said. Gray was getting more than he’d bargained for here, I was sure.

  Oriana asked, “Did you have sex?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  She asked, “Was it nice? Or not?”

  “It was very nice,” I said. “It was more than that.” I should shut this down, but here we were, modeling a respectful, mutually pleasurable sexual relationship for them, right? So maybe …

  I wasn’t sure, because Honor wasn’t saying anything at all. She was just coming over with another coffee and setting it in front of me.

  “It didn’t hurt?” Frankie asked. “Really?”

  I said, “No. It felt amazing. It felt awesome. All the things you read about—or that you haven’t, but you will—that was how it felt. Women are made for pleasure the same way men are, I found out. And it’s never felt one bit that way before, so that was Gray. It’s different if a man is patient, and if he’s kind. Also if he knows what he’s doing.”

  Gray said, “Is this a Mount Zion thing? The frankness? I’m just asking.”

  “More or less,” I said. “The other girls will ask about it, at the … I guess you’d call it the wedding reception.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Is the groom generally present at the time?”

  “No.” That was Frankie. “He’s talking to his mates. Telling them as well. What, don’t they do that, Outside?”

  “No,” Gray said. “Not once you’re grown, at least. And not when you’re a teenager, either, unless you’re a certain kind of kid.”

  “Women do talk,” I said. “Outside. Really, though? Men don’t?” This was more comfortable, anyway. More abstract. I could deal with “abstract.”

  “No,” Gray said. “Talking about what you did with a girl is a di—” He stopped, and went on. “A jerk move.”

  “Why would it be OK for women to talk and not for men?” Oriana asked. “I thought you said men and women were the same, Outside.”

  “I may have been a bit wrong about that,” Gray said. “Or call it incomplete, because it’s complicated.” He sat back, his hand on my hip, drinking his coffee, and whatever he’d said, this line of chat didn’t seem to be bothering him all that much.

  But then, if you made love like that, you probably weren’t too worried about what women would say.

  Gray went on, “I reckon it’s the way they talk. Women share because they want to tell somebody how they feel, or at least that’s how it seems to me. They want advice, maybe,
if it wasn’t good, if they’re worried they didn’t do something right. Or just to share, if it was good. What d’you think, Mum?”

  “I think I raised a good son,” she said.

  “Whereas men can share,” Gray went on, “more for competition. If it wasn’t good, if he didn’t perform the way he wanted to, if he’s worried about it? He’s not telling anybody about that other than his doctor. Maybe. But usually, the kind of man who talks isn’t interested in sharing his feelings. He’s interested in sharing what he got a woman to do. He’s sharing that to humiliate her, at least in his mind. She’s going to go out with him next time, not realizing he’s been laughing about her with all his mates, and that he’ll laugh after this time, too. And I don’t think women do that. Not unless the bloke she went out with was an arsehole. Sorry, Mum.”

  “No worries,” she said, sliding scrambled eggs and fried tomatoes on top of toast onto two plates and bringing them over. “Reckon that’s the right word. Though it’s not one you use out there in the world,” she told the girls. “And be careful what you share about sex, all the same. You wouldn’t normally ask any of this unless you were alone with your sister. People won’t be expecting it. Though you can ask me as well, if you have questions.”

  “Oh,” Oriana said. “Sorry.”

  “No worries,” Gray said. “It’s different, maybe, with family.”

  I got up, somewhat reluctantly, and sat down in an actual chair to eat my breakfast. Oriana jumped up and said, “I’ll do the washing-up, Honor. Would you like me to bring you another cup of tea?”

  “That’d be lovely,” she said, sliding into the seat beside Gray. “I want to talk to the two of you anyway.”

  I braced for it, because here it came.

  “Yeh?” Gray said. “Something I can do for you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve got things to do with the girls this week. Registering them for school, going back to the lawyer with Frankie. Doing a bit more shopping, because they need more clothes. Dressing gowns. More shoes. Togs and jandals for summer. And everything else.”