DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN Read online

  Although it didn’t exactly change him, because he still rarely phoned, and he still came over only after he took care of whatever he had to take care of, she felt that it matured her. She wasn’t as obsessive about their relationship the way she used to be. She felt she understood him better now. He was accustomed to women chasing him down. He was accustomed to women as the aggressors for his affection. They pounced while he rolled easy. But Nikki knew she was the one who had his attention. And she also knew, in order to keep his attention, she had to learn to roll easy too.

  It wasn’t a piece of cake, because Daniel had already made it clear that forever, such as marriage, wasn’t in the cards for them. But she believed, if she played her cards right, his heart could eventually change too.

  That was why she never pressured him. She had the man so many of these single ladies in town would give their right arm to have, and she wasn’t letting her almost obsessive love for him, and her youth and inexperience, cause her to lose him. He was her first romance, her one and only love, and she had to do this right to keep it that way.

  She wasn’t without her detractors, however. She had almost every female she knew tell her time and time again that she was a pure fool if she thought that a man who looked like Daniel Crane was going to remain faithful to her or any other woman. Even Val, who liked Daniel, told her that. But since she had no evidence to back up any of their assertions, she let his affection speak for itself.

  Although she wondered more than a few times, given how often he was out of town, given those many lonely nights she had to endure, if he was spreading that affection around.

  “I wasn’t sure if you would want to eat when you came over tonight,” she said cautiously, “so I haven’t cook anything yet. But it won’t take me long to whip something together.”

  Daniel walked up to her, took the towel from her, and began drying her body himself. “Is it true?” he asked her in a soft voice.

  Her first inclination was to answer with a question of her own. But that would only beg the obvious. She knew what he was talking about. “Yes,” she said.

  She could see that flash of anger in his eyes. He stopped wiping her and looked at her. “A shouting match with the mayor, Nikki? Really?”

  “But you should have been at that press conference, Daniel. Mayor Bainbridge knew what he was doing. He knows his plan is a joke. He knows that all of those minority set-aside contracts went to his cronies instead of minorities.”

  “You were out of line, Nikki.”

  “Because I told the truth?”

  “Because you argued with the mayor!”

  “I didn’t argue with him. I just pointed out the facts and he didn’t like that I was pointing them out. I wasn’t out of line, how can you say that? Todd Bainbridge knows what he’s doing, Daniel. Not one minority contractor received a bid on that better roads initiative, and that was no accident.”

  “I know that.”

  “Everybody knows that. But nobody says a damn thing! It was my job to point that out.”

  Daniel didn’t respond. He just stared at Nikki.

  “I didn’t deserve to get raked over the coals because I told the truth. How can you say that?” Then she hesitated. “Even my editor got on my case. He said I insulted the mayor, that I disrespected the mayor, and that wasn’t even true. All I did was what any good journalist was supposed to do and question why no minorities were getting any of those contracts. Minorities pay taxes too and they’re entitled to reap the benefits when the city decides to spend those tax dollars. I pointed that out.”

  Then she paused again. Daniel could see the anguish in her eyes. “But Mr. Poindexter called me into his office like I was some kind of a criminal and said I have to apologize to the mayor before I can come back to work for his paper. He didn’t even want to hear my side of the story, and I’m one of the best reporters he has. Consider myself fired, he said, until I apologize. Nobody track down stories the way I do. Nobody. But that didn’t matter to him. I either apologize to the mayor, he said, or kiss my job goodbye. My editor said the same thing. But I can’t apologize, Daniel, I don’t care how much they threaten me. I did my job. I did what I was supposed to do.”

  And this, Daniel thought, was why he loved this woman. Nikki Graham in a nutshell. Always confronted with ultimatums, always choosing to do the right thing. Her integrity was her strength.

  He frowned. “No,” he said to her.

  Nikki’s heart dropped. Was he finally saying no to their relationship? Was he finally saying that he was tired of those crusades of hers and was calling it quits? “No what?” she asked him, with hesitation in her voice.

  “No to apologizing to the mayor.” He looked her in her eyes. “You’re not going to do that.”

  Nikki’s heart soared. “I’m not?”

  “You’re not. You did your job, which is what Herb Poindexter and Joe Paulson should have expected you to do.”

  “But Mr. Poindexter says he’ll fire me if I don’t apologize. And Joe Paulson backs him up.”

  “I’ll talk to Poindexter. Don’t worry about that.”

  Nikki stared at Daniel. There were times when she wondered why she fell so completely in love with this particular man, when no other man got so much as a rise out of her. It was moments like this, when his goodness was on full display, that reminded her why. Like when he helped the Newsome boys. The charges against them were eventually thrown out, once the lawyer Daniel hired came onboard. She threw her arms around his neck.

  Daniel put aside the towel he was holding and gathered her into his arms. This was what he’d been craving, and had been missing, for an entire week. Her warm, beautiful body. The smell of her fresh scent. The look in her sincere eyes. And he had to have her. Now.

  He lifted her into his arms, her legs wrapping around his body, and he started kissing her. Her familiar, sweet taste got him lust-filled immediately and he couldn’t stop exploring every inch of that mouth, that tongue, her bright white teeth. He moved down, to her chin, to her neck. And her breast started screaming for attention too. They hadn’t been together like this for a full week, but by the way Nikki’s body was responding, and Daniel’s penis was throbbing, it may as well had been a full year.

  And he was making her wait even longer, as he traced kisses along every inch of her neck, then he moved to her shoulders, and then to her chest. By the time his tongue licked the fully extended nipple of her breast, her entire body was on fire. And as he moved from one nipple to the other, circling both with his tongue, licking and then biting and then sucking them, and then sucking the fat of her breasts, the rest of her body began to scream for his attention too.

  But Daniel Crane was a methodical lover. He covered his tracks. And that covering included moving from her breasts to her toned stomach, with his tongue licking her belly button. Until suddenly, as he began to move further down her body, even his masterful control broke.

  He sat her naked body onto the vanity, positioning her between the two sinks, opened her beautiful brown legs as far as they could go, and bent down and buried his head between her thighs.

  “Daaaan-iel!” she screamed as soon as his tongue licked her vulva. It felt like fire when he touched her there. And as he ate her pussy with the urgency of a starving man, she tried to lift her body, twist her body, do something to her body to get away from the agonizing but euphoric feeling.

  But Daniel had control of her completely. His hands tightened on her hips, forcing her in place whenever she attempted to get away. Because he knew, like she knew, that the last thing she wanted to do was get away from this. And the last thing he was going to let her do was get away from this.

  He kept branding her with the fire of his tongue as he parted her folds and kissed her with deep kisses. His tongue would not ease up. He licked her there, and sucked her there, and lifted her skin between his teeth and gently bit her there. He would not ease up. Her legs were trying to close, for fear of his wonderful burns, but he kept digging deeper,
flaming her desire, making her realize that this big, beautiful man had the goods on her because no way was she ever giving this up.

  He slid his tongue along her walls, giving her a massage that had her crying out in ecstasy, as if he was determined to fuck her out of her own skin. And that was when he came up for air. But only because his cock had tented his pants and looked as if it was going to pop through the material.

  He slung off his suit coat and tossed it aside. That suit had to have cost well over five thousand dollars, but Daniel treated it as if it was absolutely worthless compared to that pussy he was now craving. Because his eyes wouldn’t leave it. Because as soon as she moved to close her legs, just to give herself some cooling off too, he’d force them back open. He wanted to see it as he undressed. He wanted to see every wrinkled, wet inch of it. And he undressed quickly, removing his tie, his shirt, his shoes. And when he removed his pants and boxer’s, and his massive cock sprung out as if it was greeting a long lost friend, even Nikki paid attention.

  Daniel placed his hand behind her hair and moved her head down, toward his cock.

  “You know what I want, baby,” he said to her as he moved her in that direction. He wanted it in her mouth before it ripped through her pussy, which they both knew it was going to do. But he didn’t have to guide her far. She knew where she was going. She licked the tip, causing him to sigh, and close his eyes. And then she moved slowly down, to his big, beautiful balls, that rich masculine smell of his making her heady, too. And then she licked the underside of his tip, which made him leaned back with a grimacing throb.

  And then she moved back up, to his top, as the pre-cum began to ooze out. And when she placed it completely inside of her mouth, he couldn’t help it. He began to mouth fuck her. Hard. And he placed his fingers inside of her silky wet pussy as he did.

  When it was clear to both of them that his erection was growing too hard to be denied, he lifted her into his arms, and carried her to her bed.

  Daniel held her tightly against his body. He loved her above any woman he’d ever had, and moments like this made him feel almost drunk with that love. It was enough that she was good and kind and beautiful, and that she was all heart, but her sex was unbelievably good and kind to him. That was the clincher for him. No woman made him feel better. No woman made him want to lose control whenever he fucked her.

  But young Nikki always did. His young, impulsive, idealistic girlfriend that many of his sophisticated friends declared wasn’t sophisticated enough for him, knew exactly how to turn him on. Because she, to Daniel, personified sophistication. Whatever it was that he was looking for in a woman his entire life, he found in Nikki. She had it. Whatever it was, she had it.

  He slid her up further onto the bed, opened her legs wide again, and laid his naked body at the lower end of hers. But instead of fucking her, he began eating her again. He was addicted to her smell, and her taste. But this time it was a quick meal because his dick wouldn’t cooperate.

  He had to get in or he would spill out.

  So he entered her. They’d been dating for four years, but for Daniel there was still nothing like that feeling he got whenever he first penetrated her. He slid in and out, in and out, at first. Then he’d take his cock and dick-whip her clit, tapping it until it hardened, and slip in and out of her again. It was all a tease, causing Nikki to close her eyes in enjoyment of that tease, until he slipped in and moved in deeper and deeper until it felt like a thick rod was actually lodged inside of her.

  As he began moving it forward and back only slightly, forward and back, she could feel every tingle of sensation on every inch of her vaginal walls. It was as if everything began to heighten in intensity as he fucked her. And he kept that same rhythm, he kept that same stroke, as she relaxed to his gyrations.

  Daniel watched her as he stroked her. He watched as her body responded to his every motion. And the tightness of her, a tightness that made his movement nearly impossible, caused him to feel as if he was going to lose it. He couldn’t believe how good she made him feel. He thought he was going to explode every time he pushed further and further inside of her.

  Until the rhythm itself became a drug that kept elevating in potency until he had to have more. And the rhythm changed.

  When his strokes began to increase and he started thrashing into her, that smothering fire within her ignited and she lifted up on her elbows to blunt the flames.

  “That’s my baby,” Daniel said, watching her convulse with intensity. “I want you to feel every inch of my cock. Do you feel it, baby?”

  “I feel it,” she cried. “I feel it so deeply!”

  And that was what he wanted. His deepest penetration. Sometimes she couldn’t bear it, and he would ease up. But she was taking it all this time.

  And he gave it all to her, pushing so deep down into her that he was jutting against her back wall. And then the muscle of his massive biceps began to strain as the feeling began to overtake him too. And then his jutting became spurting and he was releasing spunk all over her, and saturating her.

  Now it sounded like slouching as he fucked her; as they both grunted out the euphoria of coming; as his dick couldn’t stop pounding her. Until he rammed down as deep as he could, and trembled with a shattering tremble. This was his woman. She was his. She was the reason that he finally decided to stop playing the field, and hitch his wagon to her.

  Later, they were still in bed, and still arm in arm. They both were drained, and Nikki was nearly asleep. But Daniel, staring at her, was wide awake.

  He took a curl of her hair and slanted it out of her gorgeous face. But he could also see the concern on that face.

  “I want you to do me a favor,” he said.

  She opened her eyes. His heart squeezed when her expressive eyes looked at him. “What?” she asked.

  “I want you to promise me that you won’t sit around here tomorrow worrying about what happened.”

  “I was fired today. I’ve never been fired before.” She looked at him. Her big, sweet eyes melted his heart. “I may never get another job in journalism again. Who wants to hire a reporter who can’t keep a job?”

  Daniel smiled and rubbed the smooth skin of her face with the back of his hand. “If they have any sense at all,” he said, “they would hire you in a heartbeat.”

  “I’m not that good,” she said with a grin.

  But Daniel didn’t crack a smile. “Yes, you are,” he said as he rubbed her hair again. “And I don’t want you to ever forget that.”

  Nikki’s smile evaporated too, when she saw his seriousness.

  “I won’t,” she said. And allowed him to pull her, once again, into his tight embrace.

  Cypress Road was pin-drop quiet at midnight as all manner of activity that once dominated the landscape had packed up and gone indoors. Melanie Chandler, in a dark blue, older model Corvette, sat peacefully in the shadows of the quiet street, just across from Nikki Graham’s townhouse. The car had dark tinted windows and headlights that blared up and pointed out like two watchful eyeballs. Like a lurking Peeping Tom. And it was not there by accident, but there because Daniel Graham’s Jaguar was there, parked on the driveway of his girlfriend’s home. A home, Melanie was able to discover, he purchased for that girlfriend two years ago, as a gift for her college graduation.

  But as soon as it could be seen from the street that the light in the upstairs room had gone out, and the man she knew so well would not be coming out of that house tonight, Melanie clenched her fist into a hard squeeze. She squeezed until her hand bled. And eventually her car, her dark blue lurking Corvette, slowly drove away.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Word that Daniel Crane was at the Wakefield Gazette newspaper building spread like wildfire that next morning. By the time he made his way into the newsroom, it was Daniel, not the latest breaking news, that was the hot topic of conversation.

  “As soon as they fired that girl,” one female reporter said to a group of female reporters who were hanging out at
her newsroom desk, “I knew he wasn’t going to stand for it.”

  “She got what she deserved,” another female reporter chimed in. “And I say good riddance.”

  “Wonder why he love her so much?” yet another reporter asked. “She’s a pretty girl, I’ll give her that. But she’s not the prettiest girl.”

  “Not by a long shot.”

  “Not by a long shot,” the reporter agreed with her colleague. “And she’s so young and wild. Buck wild, if you ask me. He could do way better than her.”

  “I hear he keeps her around because she put it on him something fierce.”

  “Oh, really now? And how the hell would you know something like that?”

  “Because I know! Why else would he still be with somebody like Nikki Graham when that hunk of man can have any woman he wants? Heck, I’m a happily married woman, and he can have me!”

  They all laughed.

  “I think it’s sweet,” still another female said. “Wish I had a man who cared about me like that.”

  But Daniel never heard her praise, or any of the other disparaging comments. Because word had spread to the editor’s office also, to Joe Paulson’s office. And as soon as Daniel dawned the doors of the newsroom, Joe, who happened to be Nikki’s immediate supervisor, hurried out of his office, shook the man’s hand, and escorted him upstairs to the office of the publisher.

  “It’s so good to see you, Danny,” Herb Poindexter said jovially as soon as Joe deposited Daniel and left. Herb hurried from behind his desk and shook Daniel’s hand. “I haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays, boy, where have you been keeping yourself?”

  “It’s been a hectic few months.”

  “It has, hasn’t it?” Herb said. “I used to be able to be a silent partner at my own newspaper, but with so much going on nowadays I find myself at this place more than I am anywhere else. Have a seat, have a seat.”