Becca Ritchie - Hothouse Flower

“Better than chocolate?” he asks, wiping my lips that stay parted. His forearm rests beside my head, propping up his body as he stares down at me.

“I don’t know,” I pant. “I think I need to test this out five or six more times to make a definitive answer.” I smile playfully.

“I have a strong fucking feeling that we’ll hear your answer quickly.”

“I love your strong feelings,” I tell him.

“I love watching you come,” he says like it’s a simple fact. But it’s not simple at all.

“How much?”

He kisses my good cheek and then whispers, “More than you’ll ever fucking know.”

Damn. He slips his fingers out of me, wiping them on the blanket, and then he slides my soaked panties off my legs at an extremely slow rate. So slow that my body clenches all over again. When they’re off my feet, I turn on my stomach and moan into the covers. “Just take me now,” I say into the muffled blankets.

He’s on his knees, and he lifts me by the hips so I’m on mine too. “That’s not how I take women,” he says, squeezing my ass.

“You torture them,” I say, turning my head. “I can’t come twice before we have sex.”

“Want to fucking bet?” he says with narrowed eyes.

I grin. “Yes, I do. Let’s test it out now.”

“We don’t have time,” he says, shutting it down. It was worth a shot. He wipes between my legs with the blanket, and then he swiftly grabs me around the waist and sets my feet on the floor. Completely naked. I watch as he grabs a clean pair of panties from my bag.

He dresses me, helping me step into them. And once the soft cotton touches my hips, he puts the shirt on over my head and lets me step into my shorts. He’s taking care of me to a new degree. It makes me feel more than just loved. I feel like I’m truly his.

I hold onto the back of his neck while he zips my shorts, his body so close to mine again. He fishes the button through the hole, tension constricting his muscles. My breath is ragged. How is this possible? I just orgasmed.

I look up at him as he finishes. “I guess that answers my question.”

“What question?”

“Before, I was going to ask you if this was it for us.”

He frowns. “What are you fucking talking about?”

I don’t back down to the darkness in his features. I cling to every dangerous quality he possesses. “I just thought you’d want to go back to being just friends after what happened with my face.”

His confusion turns into a hard glare. “I’m not with you because you’re a fucking model.”

“I know.”

“Clearly you didn’t.”

“I do now.”

He’s not happy with that answer. “I didn’t think I was going to have to spell it out for you, Calloway.”

“Now I’m confused.”

He shakes his head. “I’ve never met a fucking girl that I wanted to stick around for longer than a month, and then I became friends with you—”

I cut him off, “And I thought that you could go back to being my friend.”

“No, you thought that I’d want to. You think I’m with you just because you’re fucking gorgeous? Daisy, I could have been with you the moment you turned eighteen. Having sex with a hot fucking girl that gets me hard isn’t worth risking the relationship I have with my brother.”

I breathe heavily. “What’s worth the risk then?”

“What we fucking have,” he says. “I love you beyond physical attraction.” He cups my smooth cheek, looking deep into my eyes. “I love you, Dais, because you’re the wildest fucking girl with the biggest fucking heart. And without you in my life”—he shakes his head like it’s an inconceivable picture—“I’d be the unhappiest fucking guy.”

His words flood me with so much emotion. For however ineloquent they are, they sound perfect off his lips—because they’re one-hundred percent Ryke Meadows. I focus on the three most important ones of the bunch.

“You love me,” I breathe.

He lets out a short laugh. “You’re such a fucking girl.”

“Say it again.”

He smiles, a full blown one that tingles my body all over. “I fucking love you, sweetheart.”

I lean in to kiss him, forgetting I’m hurt, but he holds my jaw, controlling the touch of our lips that desperately wants to be something more. Before it turns wild, he kisses my forehead and murmurs, “I’m not going anywhere.”

I never knew that a relationship could be so mental, so emotional before all the physical. I wonder if we’re doing this backwards or if this has been the right way all along.

Right. I’ve found the one person who makes me the happiest, but I just wonder how long I’ll be able to keep him. I wonder if there are too many outside forces pulling us apart for this to last.

I’ll take each day as they come.

Live in the moment with Ryke Meadows.

If I ever die, I want that across my headstone.

DAISY CALLOWAY

Janet hands me a plastic bag with all my valuables and the bloodied maroon turtleneck I was wearing that night. I slip the gold ring on my thumb while Ryke heads down the hall, talking on the phone and waiting for me to leave.

“You need to go over to that cashier’s window and they’ll give you the hospital bill.”

I nod. “Will the ambulance fee be added with that?” I don’t know how the French medical system works.

Janet frowns. “There is no ambulance fee. Didn’t you know that?”

I shake my head. “No, but I…” I blink as I wrack my brain. The pub isn’t even close to this hospital, so how…

“He carried you,” Janet says, a hand to her chest, like that night was emotional, even for her. “You were in his arms when he reached the hospital doors. He arrived about ten minutes before anyone else from the riot.”

Tears well, and I suppress them as best I can. My voice trembles. “He ran here?”

She nods and reaches out to touch my wrist in comfort. I glance down the hallway at Ryke who speaks with force into the phone, like he wants the person on the other end to fully listen to him. He’s the hero of my story, but he refuses to claim any of those moments, as if they don’t matter.

They do matter. Everyone sees partial sides to Ryke, and he lets them think he’s just an athlete with no brains, an aggressive asshole. It’s like he’s been alone for so long that he’s lost any interest in showing off his worth.

I think I’ve hit the lottery—to have him in my life.

To me, he’s worth every loud moment, every peaceful silence, the crazy and the sad, the restless and the quiet. I would trade it all to be with him, but I have a feeling there will be no price for my mom. She’ll keep us apart at any cost.

I feel it in my bones like a bad, bad omen.

RYKE MEADOWS

“What the fuck is Rose hiding?” I snap at Lily on the phone. I decided to call her while I wait for Daisy to finish sorting through her belongings.

Daisy looks up at me with a plastic baggy in her hand and then points to a cashier’s window, standing in the line.

I nod to her and listen to Lily’s response. I’m not expecting much.

“Like I told Lo, I’ve made this pact with Rose not to talk about it, like a Ya-Ya Sisterhood thing, and I can’t go back on my word. And just so you know, Rose is scary. She took out a knife and was saying something about blood oaths, and before I knew it, she slit my palm.” Her voice lowers, almost comically that it’s hard to take her serious. But she is. “And this comes from a girl who cannot walk on the hardwood without shoes. You don’t have to say anything, it surprised me too.”

I roll my eyes. “Lily,” I say forcefully. “If it’s something serious, you need to tell my brother.”

“The pact,” Lily hisses. “What if Rose put a curse on me? I can’t say anything.”

“You can’t be that fucking superstitious.”

“Rose might as well be a supernatural force when she’s upset. You haven’t seen her truly angry, so you can’t say anything.”

“I’ve seen her so fucking pissed that she almost tased my brother, how’s that?”

“This is a different kind of upset,” Lily says. “We’re handling this, okay? I think it’s good that Lo is with you, and I’m here with Rose for a little bit.”

I frown, never thinking I’d hear Lily say that. She’s usually glued to my brother’s side and vice versa. “You’re really okay without him?”

Silence stretches before she says, “I mean, I miss him a lot more than I can articulate. It hurts without him here. But I’m better than I was when he first left for rehab. I’m at a better place.”

“I know you are,” I tell her. Back then, she was almost in tears every time I called her. It was kind of fucking pathetic, but I didn’t understand their relationship. I didn’t understand that kind of unconditional love. And then Daisy left, and I felt out of my fucking mind for three days. I yelled at Lily for bitching after only seven days without Lo, so who’s the hypocrite now?

“We’re meeting you in two weeks right?” Lily asks. “It won’t be too long.”

“You sure you want to keep it a fucking surprise from Daisy?” I ask. Rose has been calling me non-fucking-stop, trying to find ways to see Daisy without upsetting her. I told them that they should just meet us on the road, but to wait until her face heals a little. They agreed.

“She likes surprises,” Lily says. “Otherwise, we would have told her.”

She’s right about that. “Just don’t come early. I can’t spend thirty days in a car with all of you. Eighteen is already too fucking much.”