She cuddles up to me, her cheek on my chest. With her snuggled up against me, I feel just how I’ve always wanted to feel with a woman. Her protector. Her comforter. Her lover. All that kinky stuff is delicious, but this is the reason I want to be Daddy and not Sir.
“You’re not weirded out by what I told you before?” she whispers.
That she’s never had a boyfriend or a lover? “No. Of course not.”
“You don’t wish I was different?”
“Baby, the only thing I’d change is how often I get to see that beautiful smile of yours.” I want it more. She deserves to be happy. Best of all, she’s been thinking about what I’m asking for. I can still feel her hesitation. She’s not quite there, but she will be.
I understand why she hesitates. Relationships when you’re both so busy are challenging. Relationships are hard period. If she becomes my girlfriend, then she’ll be subjected to the sort of scrutiny that most people never experience. Given my history with Striker and her history with Striker, she’ll be notorious from the moment it gets out we’re dating.
My arms tighten around her. Dree’s eyes are closed. I’ll keep all those fuckers away from her. I’ll protect her. If she doesn’t want me to talk about her publicly, then I won’t. Not unless people need to be told to fuck off and leave her alone.
Whatever happens, I’m ready for it.
15
Dree
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
Rush looks down at my naked body, and then at his. “But we barely know each other.”
“Ha ha. A controversial question, I mean. Did you sleep with Striker’s girlfriend?”
Rush’s eyes flash with anger. “I kissed his girlfriend, and I didn’t know she was his girlfriend at the time. I don’t chase after what belongs to other people. I want only what’s mine.”
“Okay, okay, I believe you. But what happened?”
He props his cheek on his fist and his jeweled gaze is stony. “We were at an after party for the Mercury Prize,” he says, naming the UK’s biggest music award. “There was a lot of liquor. A lot of coke. I was still into that scene then and I was absolutely ratted, because that night we’d won.”
“Four years ago, right? You guys won the Mercury for Umbra. I danced around to ‘Wild, Reckless’ in my bedroom on my seventeenth birthday. I liked that song.” Actually, I loved that song, but I refuse to be a gushing fangirl. Rush also doesn’t need to know that I may have stared a few times at a particular photo of him in the album art in which the wind is whipping his hair about and he’s shirtless and wearing very low-slung jeans.
He passes his hand over his face and laughs. “Seven-fucking-teen. You’re so poised that I forget how young you are.”
“That’s because I’m so grown up, Daddy,” I say in a sultry voice, batting my lashes at him.
“Yes, you are,” he replies, squeezing a handful of my ass. “Anyway, I was feeling pretty fucking pleased with myself and a beautiful woman came up to me and said congratulations or something. She smiled up at me like the seven other girls I’d just kissed, and so I kissed her. God knows why other than that I could. I looked up, and there was Striker fucking Jones glaring daggers at me from three feet away.” He clears his throat. “And when I realized my mistake, I may have given him the finger.”
I drop my face against the mattress and howl with laughter. The picture of Rush cranked up to peak asshole with his arm around Striker’s girlfriend and then giving him the finger is too funny.
When I look up, Rush is grinning at me. “I know. I was such an asshole until recently. Thank god you didn’t meet me then. You would have thought I was an even bigger idiot than you did that night at Baroque.”
He groans and rolls onto his back. It seems like it still really bothers him that he acted that way. I haven’t thought about him inviting me up to the VIP room and me refusing him since it happened. I’ve dwelled more on the horrible memory of taking that champagne from Striker and drinking it. Thank god Rush found me before anything really horrible happened.
I sit up, frowning. “How did you find me that night? What were you doing down in the main bar?”
Rush wraps his arm around me and scoops me against his bare chest. “I was leaving because I was so disgusted that I’d made a fool of myself to the most beautiful and talented woman in the club.”
“You were really leaving? It bothered you that much?”
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “My mate Eoin caught me staring at you, and I didn’t try very hard to stop him when he went to get you. I’d told myself I wasn’t that person anymore, and there I was acting like the old Rush. I thought you were great. I wanted you to like me.”