Daisy & Baby

2 - Rednecks Love Boot Stomping

An hour later, Daniel was still at the bar and I was getting a little wobbly on my feet.

"I'm gonna have to get someone to come pick me up," he said.

We were back at the table with my friends and the karaoke was getting worse by the second.

"I'm good to drive," Jenna said. "I've only had two."

"That's because you don't need alcohol to-" She cut me off with a wet kiss on my cheek.

"I don't live anywhere near here," Daniel said as he pulled his phone out and started to get up.

"Just come to my place," I blurted. "We've got a couch."

He stiffened, my stomach just about climbed out through my throat, and Jenna started bouncing up and down in her chair.

That's how, another hour later, we ended up at my apartment. Jenna and her boyfriend went down the hall to her bedroom and shut the door, which left Daniel and I drinking glasses of water at the kitchen island.

I knew what was going to happen before either of us said anything. I knew because of my sweaty palms, because of the way we swayed closer to each other with each breath. He let my hip bump into his and dropped a heavy arm over my shoulder. I took a drink of water and dribbled half of it down my chin, wondering how we were going to jump from standing in the kitchen to my bed.

That was the part I wasn't any good at. Someone was going to have to make the move and it definitely wasn't going to be me.

Daniel set his glass down and took mine, too, then turned so that he was facing me. One arm was still crooked around the back of my neck, simultaneously holding me close and at a distance. All I could do was try to breathe and stare at the way the hem of his t-shirt was caught on the top of his pants on one side. The top of those brown canvas Carhartts, stained with oil, a snag just above the double knee...

Then he was kissing me. Or I was kissing him. It didn't matter, his lips were chapped and rough and he tasted like beer and something else. I thought about secondhand nicotine, did he have tobacco in his lip still? Did that explain the mosquitoes buzzing around in my core? He was kissing me gently, one hand on my waist, kissing me like he had all of the time in the world.

But I didn't.

I slammed my hips into his and he reacted by sucking in a breath.

I started pushing him backwards and bumped him into the corner of the fridge on our way down the hall.

"Are you sure this is where you want to go?" he asked as I shut my bedroom door.

I reached for him in the dark and pulled him back into me. I had to stand on my tiptoes to kiss him and ended up dragging my mouth across his beard in the process. He gripped my hips so hard that it hurt, like he was hanging on for dear life, but he kissed me back. And slowly, like he was afraid I would tell him off, he slid his hands under my shirt. His palms were rough on my skin. Working hands.

Was I a hypocrite for finding that sexy? Was I one of those hipsters he hated?

He edged his thigh in between my legs and oh god it didn't matter. I grabbed the bottom of his shirt and pulled it up. He pulled it over his head and let it drop along with his baseball hat, then went back for my lips. I ran my hands into his soft hair and through his beard, down his strong shoulders and arms toward the softer parts of his belly.

My ex had abs like a model and I loved every part of him, but I didn't mind that Daniel was soft. It made me feel better about myself, like he wouldn't judge my own pudgy stomach or small breasts.

I dipped my fingers into the waist of his pants and pulled him closer, but he stiffened and shifted away from me.

I closed my eyes and braced for something bad. He was going to back out. He didn't like my B cup breasts. He hadn't drank enough. In that moment, I loathed myself for allowing things to go this far.

"Fuck. I don't have a condom," he said as he touched his forehead to mine.

"What?" Was that some sort of lame excuse?

"They're in my truck."

I thought on that for a minute. It was probably the truth, or some version of it. He slowly slid his hands down my sides and back out of my shirt and it was that last swipe of roughness that got me. I probably had a condom somewhere in my room, under the bead or buried under my bras, but I took a step toward him instead. He put his arms around my back and hugged me tight, pressing the side of my cheek into his hairy chest.

"We can do other stuff," he suggested.

And we did do other stuff. Daniel was surprisingly devoted to other stuff, like he either had a lot of experience or just knew how to tell when something was working. We should have just stuck with that, should have played it safe.

But I was drunk and he still had his pants on and I felt like I had to know. Like figuring out what was under his pants was this burning undying question, like if I didn't see I might miss out on the most amazing experience of my life.

It didn't help that I kept thinking about Jenna's penis size comment and I was sort of dying to prove her wrong.

He let me take his pants off and there was a tense, drawn out moment where I stared and he tensed. And I realized that even Daniel, as cool and calm as he seemed to be, had doubts about his body. But size was not the issue. The real problem was the way all of my thoughts about unprotected sex evaporated like water on a hot stove top.

I touched him, tentatively, with just the tips of my fingers and he groaned.

"Just your hands," he whispered, though he didn't sound all that convincing. "Or your mouth, if you want."

I didn't want. I climbed on top of him and straddled his hips. I made the choice he wouldn't make. He made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded somewhere between a moan and a whine. "Just for a minute, don't go too-"

I wasn't listening. I was somewhere in the middle of pain and pleasure, trying to work through it, trying not to act like I wasn't in the middle of the best sexual experience of my life. He was slowly losing control, starting to move with me instead of away from me. He sat up and rolled me onto my back, then propped my legs up until I had to muffle a cry under my hands.

Some guys are painfully quiet when they have sex, like they're afraid to make an embarrassing noise, but not Daniel. He was a swearer. Every move was a grunt, a swear, a masculine combination of the two. It made everything ten times better, to know that he liked it, to know that I liked him liking it.

He stopped too soon.

"No!" I cried, grabbing his thigh and pulling him back.

Another swear, a few more thrusts.

I pushed into him as he pulled away and I knew it was too late. For him, for me, for any sort of rational thought about what we were doing.

He yanked himself out and spilled onto my thigh.

"Fuck," he whispered. "I think I got most of it on your leg. Hell, I don't know. Fuck, fuck, fuck."

I pulled him down so that he was laying next to me. His heart was still racing, pounding against my arm like a bass line. "It's okay. I'm not ovulating." I didn't know shit about ovulation, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

He relaxed into me and ran his hand up my side and into my hair. "Do you want me to go?"

"No." I reached over the edge of the bed and pulled a dirty towel from my laundry basket to wipe my leg. "Cuddle with me."

"For a little while," he mumbled into my neck.

A few minutes later, when I was almost asleep, he whispered, "Seeing you boot stomp on stage was the god damn sexiest thing I've seen in a while."

"You're such a redneck."