Page 22 of Claimed By the Don

I trail my hands down her sides and drop to my knees, kiss my way from her sweet nipples down the curve of her belly. I bury my face between her legs, inhale her scent. I give her a long, lush lick from her core before flicking the tip of my tongue under her swollen clit. She grabs my hair and holds my head, presses me hard against the place where she needs me. I could come from that alone.

I’m shaking now, and I feel the tremble in her hands when she touches my face, my jaw, my hair. I make her come with my tongue, then surge upward to hold her in my arms while she cries out and clings to me. Somehow, I get us to the bed, press her down into the mattress and kiss her again. She unfastens my pants and I kick them away, impatient.

I move her backward toward the bed and lay her down on her back. I lever myself above her, braced on my forearms. When I dip my face to kiss her, she reaches for me, holds me and kisses me back, sweet and languorous, nothing urgent. I lick into her mouth and rock against her core. I hold as still as I can, wait for her to give me a sign.

She opens her eyes to meet mine and slides one of her hands down my back all the way to my ass. Daisy gives me a squeeze there and breaks our kiss to whisper, “What are you waiting for?” I grunt against her neck, amused and annoyed at the same time.

I push forward, work my way into her. I move slow, rocking into her, savoring her slickness, the grip of her tight body. She holds my gaze, and the intimacy is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. I stroke her cheek with the backs of my fingers, kiss her lips softly, her temple, her forehead. The union I feel with her, the connection is shaking me to my core even as I try to keep control of myself.

When I think I’m going to lose my mind, just pound into her with a roar, my patience and determination unspooling in pleasure, she reaches for me, kisses me again. She matches my rhythm, rocks into me with every thrust. Daisy meets me stroke for stroke, kiss for kiss. I feel the pull at the base of my spine, the sharp knowledge that I’m about to come, sheathed in the body of the only woman I’ve ever loved.

I roar when the pleasure hits me, pumping into her wildly. Even in blinding ecstasy, I try to make it good for her, grinding against her clit just above where we join. Her short nails scrape my bare shoulders so I do it again. Then her inner muscles clench on me sharply, an iron grip, and she bows up off the bed. I catch her around the waist and roll onto my side, hold her still for my thrusts as I give her the friction she needs for completion. She comes apart for me, and feel her lips at my throat, sucking until she throws back her head and cries my name. That sound, the knowledge that I’m hers nearly undoes me.

I gather her against my chest and let her burrow in. I kiss her hair, tell her how beautiful she is, how perfect she is. She lifts her face to kiss my cheek. Daisy smiles at me, strokes my hair as if I’ve done very well at something I might deserve praise for.

“I love you,” I say without thinking. She freezes and stares at me for a second, but I have the courage to brazen it out. “I never stopped, Daze. I didn’t know it till you came back, and the minute I saw you. I’ve never stopped loving you.”

There are tears in her eyes when she looks up at me.

“Are you okay?” I ask. She nods. A tear slipping from the corner of her eye. I kiss it before it can fall, kiss her temple again, my eyes dropping shut, I know I shouldn’t ask but I have to know. This could cost me everything, but I’ll ask anyway.

“Did you stop loving me?”

“Never. Not even close,” she admits quietly. “There’s no one. There never has been. No one but you.”

I cradle her head in my palm, kiss her lips. “Stay,” I say. “Let me learn to love you the right way. Whatever it takes. Don’t run again. Please.”

“There are things you don’t know about me,” she whispers, anguish in her face as she pulls away from me.

“Doesn’t matter. Nothing could ever change the way I feel about you. Don’t you see that? I lost you because I was an arrogant bastard and didn’t know what I had till you were gone. There’s nothing you could have done that would make me question this.”

“You don’t know that,” she pleads. I shake my head, stilling her.

“There’s not a damn thing you could say to destroy this. You’ve got to trust me. I’ve only ever loved one woman, and you’ve come back to me. Don’t imagine there’s anything that could threaten us, not as long as you want me.”

With tears ears in her eyes, “You don’t know that.”

“I know everything I need to know,” I say, and I kiss her until her tears stop, until she’s pliant and slick beneath me once again. When I take her, I tell her I love her as I make her come again and again, until all she can say is yes.

15

DAISY

Benny says he loves me. It felt like a slap, another shameful thing I’ve done along with keeping this massive secret from him.

I don’t deserve that love. Not from him. Maybe not from anyone. I knew better than to get mixed up with Benny Falconari again. I played with fire and now I’ve got guilt burning a hole in my chest for starting something I never should have.

I bury myself in work, taking my son fun places I remember from my childhood. We help my mom clean out her storage closet, and he has a blast playing with all the old stuff—a field hockey stick and my ribbons from cross country, my ugly shiny prom dress, and my old yearbooks.

He’s mostly interested in the pictures of me, finding a shot of me in profile decorating a homecoming float and one of me in the stands during a basketball game. I’m not in the student council photos or homecoming court, I wasn’t a prom queen, and he’s annoyed I’m not in the pictures of groups of beaming gorgeous girls, with their sleek, glossy hair and fake tans.

“Mommy, who are those people?” he demands.

“Popular girls. Ones with boyfriends.” I say wryly. “I did her highlights though, with a box kit from the drug store,” I say, pointing out a girl

“Why didn’t you have a boyfriend?” he says.

“I was, uh, studying really hard,” I say.

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