Page 7 of Claimed By the Don

“You gonna take a swing at me?” I say, hands casually in my pockets.

Her cheeks turn red. “Why would I bother? If nobody taught you any manners since high school, it’s not my job,” she says.Damn, I think.Still a mouthy little savage.

“How many times did your mom wash that mouth out with soap growing up?” I ask slyly.

“I don’t know. How many times have you been shot?” she snaps back. I chuckle.

“Shot or shotat?” I say, lifting a shoulder, “There’s a difference.”

“Not unless you got better at running in a zigzag pattern like they said in PE,” she snorts. “That slow ass never made cross country.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve got moves.”

“New ones? Or the same three?” she says, a little grin on her face because she’s enjoying the shit out of this even though she won’t admit it.

“If you want to find out, you know my number.”

“No, I don’t. Lost my phone a couple years ago. I don’t have it memorized.” She’s lying and she knows I see it.

“Look, I’m just here to get Mom some new coffee. Hers sucks.”

She turns to go back in the store and I trail after her. I have this idea if I take my eyes off her she’s going to vaporize like an illusion.

“You need something?” she says.

I reach over her shoulder—she always hated being short, I think with amusement, and get the can of coffee off the top shelf.

“Italian roast espresso. It’s the best.” I offer it, see defiance flare in her eyes. I’ve missed her so much, I realize, that the strange feeling I have is the loosening of that knot, that pain I still carry.

She shakes her head decisively, chin jutting out a little.

“No thanks. I’ll stick with domestic,” she says and tries to grab a Seattle brand off the shelf by standing on tiptoe and grappling at it with her fingertips.

I pick it up and hand it to her. She barely hides the tiny scowl at being helped. I grab a frozen Coke, offer her a drink. She shakes her head, but she’s walking around with me instead of leaving with her coffee. At the check-out stand, I reach for the can of coffee.

“Allow me,” I say, “A get well for your mom. She was always—”

“Hating you with the fury of the sun?”

“Pretty much, but I hope she gets better anyway.”

“I don’t want any favors, thanks anyway,” she says. I shrug it off, buy my coke, and wait for her at the door.

Ishould have ignored her when I saw her, instead of stopping traffic. It turns out I can swallow my pride every day of the week and twice on Sundays if I have the slightest hope of it getting me what I want. Ego is nothing compared to the chance to get my mouth between Daisy Cooper’s thighs again. I damn near black out when I think of it.

The salty taste of her soft skin, the musky heat of her scent filling me as I breathe her in. Wanting her is an electric jolt, the spark I can’t ignore that rips through me with the force of a craving, the kind addicts get where the need for a fix blots out everything else. Who needs to sleep or drink water or go to work or take a shower when nothing matters but that craving that shakes me to my bones?

This minute, she’s exactly what I want. Not Daisy when she was nineteen and things were good between us, not a trip down memory lane. This is a lot more potent than nostalgia. Overwhelming hunger consumes me, so powerful I nearly stagger and lose my balance.Let me taste you, I want to say. It’s on the tip of my tongue.

I could do this, too. It’s not just a fantasy. I have the kind of power that would buy me privacy and discretion.I could give Mrs. Santino a hundred bucks to close the store and leave. All I’d have to do is step over to the counter and offer her a bill, say in a low voice,why don’t you go home, and I’ll lock up when we’re done?She’d wink at me and tuck the money in her apron.

I know exactly what I’d do. It’s an impulse as fundamental as the urge to cross myself when I walk into church, to put my cart back when I’m done at the store. Instincts bred in my blood. Say please and thank you, tie your shoes, tuck in your shirt, put the lid down on the toilet, and the cap on the toothpaste. If you lay eyes on Daisy Cooper again, never let her go. Fall on your knees and eat her out till she doesn’t remember the word no.

Daisy meets my eyes.

“Are you gonna get out of the way or what?” she says, exasperated.

I grin at her and step aside, “It was good seeing you again,” I say.

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