Becca Ritchie - Hothouse Flower

Her tense muscles can’t loosen with me this close. The more I knead my fingers into her shoulder and skim her back with my palm, the more she stiffens and holds onto my kneecaps for support.

 She purposefully scoots her ass harder into my crotch. Fuck me.

I remove my hand from beneath her shirt and comb my fingers through her hair. “I like your hair down because of how wild you look, but you could do anything to it and I would still love it.” I want her to choose the length and color based on what she wants. Her mom and agency have dictated her appearance so much. I’m not fucking replacing them.

She spins around, my hands falling off her shoulders. And in effect, she half-straddles my lap. Her ass is on the edge of the seat, not on me.

“Can I have your knife?” she asks.

I stare down at her and cup her face, brushing my thumb along her smooth cheek. “What knife?”

She reaches towards my ankle, and I grab her wrist to stop her. A smile plays at her lips, mischievousness dancing in her eyes. “The knife you used to wear to bed,” she whispers in a silky voice.

I’m wearing that knife now, but I stopped strapping it to my ankle at night because I thought it would lessen her anxiety—for her to see that I wasn’t worried about someone breaking into her apartment anymore. “Don’t talk about my knife, Calloway,” I deadpan.

She eases forward, straddling my lap. “I like your knife.”

She’s a wicked fucking girl. There’s a reason why guys haven’t been able to last with her. In bed, she probably won’t lie still while a guy dominates her. She doesn’t beg to be in full control either. She wants to be a part of the experience, so when I fuck her, she’s going to fuck me with equal intensity. It’s a back and forth between us that I didn’t expect to translate to sex, but I already know it will.

My gaze hardens, giving her a look that intimidates most women. Instead her eyes brighten, hypnotized by the darkness inside of me. The I don’t give a fuck what you think mentality scares some people, but it attracts her. It always has.

She breathes deeply and runs her hand through my hair before her lips touch my ear, “You’re my wolf.” Her hands fall to the back of my neck, watching me watch her.

“Cute,” I say.

“The cutest?” She smiles.

I shake my head, lean forward, and whisper in her ear, “The cutest is you, wrapped in my arms, coming three or four times before you fall asleep.”

Her fingers grip my neck tighter. “I can barely come once,” she whispers.

My eyebrows shoot up. “You came pretty fucking quickly with me,” I breathe. She stares at my lips while I reach down in my boot and pull out my serrated knife.

I hand it to her, and she touches the point of the blade to her finger, not drawing blood but just inspecting the sharpness.

“It can cut through hair,” I assure her.

She still scrutinizes the blade with a faraway look. Then she says under her breath, “I’ve never had sex with a guy like that.”

I frown. “With someone holding you?”

She nods. “Usually they have their head on a pillow, watching me while I’m on top.”

That really fucking bugs me, and the irritation passes through my features.

“I shouldn’t have brought up other guys I was with. I know it’s like a relationship faux pas.” She slides off my lap and steals back her hairband from my wrist.

“I’m not upset because you were talking about your past hook ups,” I tell her. I glance at the front of the car. My brother is fast asleep while Connor switches lanes, acting disinterested in everything. I don’t think he can hear us, and if he can, he’ll probably keep everything to himself. I look back at Daisy who ties her hair in a low pony.

“You looked pissed,” she says.

“I fucking am,” I whisper. “You deserve better.”

“What’s better?” she asks.

“Someone who pays attention to you,” I tell her. “Someone who can tell what you like and dislike without asking.” And then I lean forward and whisper in her ear, “Someone who makes you so wet that you scream when you come.”

Her face flushes a little and she ties her hair off and whispers back, “Where were you three years ago?”

She was fifteen. I was twenty-two.

“Three years ago,” I whisper, “I met you at a New Year’s Eve party where you got roofied and I carried you to my car.”

She shakes her head. “You met me before then at my house. You waved at me.”

I remember that. “I didn’t know you were Lily’s sister. Honestly, I thought you were twenty-two and one of Rose’s friends.”

When Lily pointed at the tall blonde eating a pomegranate in the kitchen, I thought she was fucking gorgeous. So I waved. Her face lit up and she gave me a quick once-over, her lips curving in a cute smile.

I immediately wanted to fuck her, to start something, wondering if she was the kind of girl who did long term, short term, or one-night stands. I planned to do any of the three, just based on the way she was smiling, her carefree nature where she radiated with energy, and her beautiful fucking features.

I was going to walk over and see if I could ask her on a date, but then Lily said something that burst my fucking plans.

She said, “Oh, that’s my youngest sister.”

My face hardened. “She looks older than you.”

“I know, but she’s only fifteen.”

Fifteen. A weird feeling washed over me, like I did something really fucking wrong even though I hadn’t done it yet. I closed off to Daisy instantly, burning every thought and image I had constructed on a fucking impulse.

“You really thought I was Rose’s friend?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. A big fucking mistake.

She lets this sink in with a faraway gaze.

My phone buzzes on the seat. I sigh with more frustration as I check the message.

My interview with 60 Minutes airs tonight. I hope you can watch it. I love you. – Mom

I delete the text before I let the words affect me.

“How’s this length?” Daisy asks. The hairband lies right above her chest. It’s a length between Rose’s long hair and Lily’s short shoulder-length.

“If you want to go shorter, I won’t care,” I tell her roughly, just making sure it’s not staying this long because of me.

“No, this is what feels right.” She hands the knife back to me, and she sits on her knees. “I want you to cut it.” She inhales strongly, as though preparing herself for the moment.

“How many times have you envisioned cutting your hair?” I ask her seriously.

“A million.”

And she’s asking me to do it. Out of all the things we’ve done together—ridden motorcycles, swam with sharks, snorkeled, skydived, rock climbed—this is the most intimate. Not because we’re dating but because this means so much to her.

She’s waited for it to happen for years.

My hand wraps around the hilt of the knife, and I hold her pony in my hand. She watches, her palm sliding on my thigh.

I cut right above the hairband, and her smile grows as I slice through her blonde strands quickly. In a matter of seconds, the ponytail is in my hand, and her hair is chopped raggedly near her collarbones.

She grins as she touches it, like it was cut by a professional and not hacked by someone with coarse hands. I slip the blade back in my boot, sheathing it on my ankle strap.

She kisses my cheek and rushes to the window, flicking the button. “Connor, can you unlock it? I just want to see how my hair feels in the wind.”

Connor looks at her through the rearview mirror. “That depends, are you going to howl again?”

She shakes her head quickly. “No. No howling, I promise.” She flicks at the button repeatedly with the widest grin, knowing she’s going to get what she wants this time.

“We’re on backcountry roads,” I tell Connor. “There aren’t that many cops around.” We’re heading towards the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, and trees border either side of the one-lane street.

Connor gives in and unlocks the windows. As soon as Daisy hears the click, she bounces on the seat. The window is already rolling down, and she hoists half her fucking body out of the SUV. She sits on the windowsill.

“I don’t know who’s a worse influence,” Connor says, “her with you or you with her.”

I almost smile. I grip her ankle, letting her do her thing. “If she falls, I’ll pull her back in,” I tell him. I have confidence in my strength. If I didn’t spend almost all of my life building it by rock climbing and running, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with her.

She raises her hands in the air and laughs, the wind whipping her shorter blonde hair. She shuts her eyes and inhales deeply.

Freedom doesn’t come with age. It doesn’t magically appear when you’re a legal adult.

It comes when you stand up for what you believe in. Right now, I see a semblance of that peace for Daisy.

But she called her mom three days ago, and when Daisy told her that she quit modeling, Samantha hung up. She just shut her out. She didn’t listen to Daisy explain why. And then her mom called Rose, and she bitched about the whole situation to her other daughter. My name was slung through the fucking mud by her mom.

It’s my fault Daisy isn’t modeling.

I forced her here.

If Samantha thinks my friendship with Daisy caused her to quit her career, then I wonder what she’s going to believe when she sees Daisy’s face.

I have no doubt that’ll be my fault too.

DAISY CALLOWAY

“Don’t eat anything heavy,” Ryke tells me. I sit cross-legged in a booth, moose and antelope heads chopped and mounted on the walls of John’s Backwoods Smokehouse. We stopped in the Kentucky Mountains for dinner, and now that I’m without stitches and no longer modeling, I can eat real freakin’ food.

“I don’t like that suggestion.” My eyes glaze ravenously over the pictures on the giant menu. Juicy steaks. Baby back ribs. Barbeque sandwiches. Greasy burgers.

My grumbling belly wants it all.

“You’re going to be fucking sick. You can’t go from eating fruits and vegetables for months to eating red meat.”

I stare at him over the menu. “I have this theory.” I pause for dramatic effect. “That my stomach is made of steel.”

Ryke crumples his straw paper and throws it at my face. It sticks in my hair. I smile, but he can’t see it behind the menu.

Lo doesn’t notice our exchange, even if he sits next to me. He’s busy scanning the other full tables and booths, wondering if anyone notices us. So far we’ve stayed anonymous.

He tips my baseball cap lower on my eyes to hide me from sight. My scar is facing the wall, so on the off chance that someone photographs us, they won’t catch the cut. And it’s not really my hat. Ryke gave me his.

Connor sips his water across from Lo. “If you act like you’re hiding something, generally people are going to think you are,” Connor tells him.

Lo glares. “I just don’t want to be hounded the whole trip.” He squeezes a lemon in his water, glaring at that too like it affronted him in some way. I guess it has by not being whiskey.

“No one’s picked up where we are,” Ryke says. “We’re good.”

Lo nods, trying to believe this.

I keep looking at Ryke above the menu, only my eyes visible to him. He had his stitches removed too. A cut slices through the corner of his eyebrow, small but noticeable. It’ll turn into a scar after it heals fully.

He catches me skimming his features, but I don’t shy from him. We play a dangerous game of who’s gonna look away first. Not me. I eye him like I want to crawl into his lap and lick his face. He stares at me with an intense hardness—rugged and alpha and a tad bit assholish. That’s Ryke Meadows. The singular look forces my heel into the spot between my legs. The pressure is nice against the throbbing place.

I fear that I’m going to break first. So I say, “My scar is bigger than your scar.” I smile behind the menu again.

His dark expression never falters. “And my cock is bigger than your cock.”

Ohhh. Burn. I laugh, and Lo cringes. He’s past scolding Ryke for feeding into my inappropriate talk. He just shakes his head and flags down the waitress to come take our orders.

I give Ryke another look like I want to fuck him, my eyes softening but still narrowing. I can speak through my gaze pretty well after practicing different expressions for modeling.