Daddy! Read online

  Tom was wonderful about it, but I could tell immediately the night I had told him that the confession was going to be the end of us. And, when I finally began to recover from the loss of him, I realized that he was right to simply break it off, no matter how hard it was for me.

  But I still wore his collar. It was a comfort thing now—there was nothing between us. He'd gotten married and had a beautiful baby girl, and he deserved to be happy. I couldn't quite get myself to take off the necklace he'd given me, though. It represented safety and security to me, and I found myself unable—or unwilling—to part with it.

  Surprisingly, Mane—as wonderfully possessive as he was about me—had never asked me to remove it.

  I shook my head to clear myself of the daydreaming I'd been doing. I knew he wouldn't wait forever for me to respond, especially since he'd already prompted me once, when he didn't usually do that.

  When? I sent quickly.

  Such enthusiasm! he joked. Why do I get the feeling you're about as happy to come see me as you would be to face a firing squad?

  Oh, gee, I wonder why!

  I know you, so I know you won't believe me, but you're worried about nothing. How about I'll cook dinner for you? I'll swing by and pick you up when I'm done with work? About five or so?

  That would leave me carless when I was pretty sure I was going to end up bolting out of his place again—for the second time in two days. Nope. That didn't work for me at all. How about I drive over to your place about five thirty? I suggested instead.

  There was a pause before he responded, as if he was in front of me, a slight frown on his face as he looked down at me, which, in either case, meant that I was not going to get my way.

  How about you be ready for me to pick you up at five, Tahlia.

  No question mark, because it wasn't a question. It probably wasn't a question before, either, but I preferred to ignore that possibility. That was another way he'd earned points with me from the start. He—like me—texted in full sentences, complete with correct spelling, grammar and punctuation.

  Maybe I was getting old—getting? I chided myself. I was looking at middle age in the rearview mirror! But, as much as I would have loved to have banged a younger man—just for the fun of it—I don't think I would have been able to tolerate all of the abbreviations. And I fucking hate emojis. Such are the pitfalls of being an English teacher, I suppose. My cross to bear. The young folks'll just have to pry my Oxford comma from my cold, stiff, and dead hands one day.

  K.

  Another pause I knew was deliberate on his part.

  I'm sorry?

  I sighed heavily, even though he couldn't hear me. The bastard probably knew that I was doing it, anyway. Yes, Sir.

  Good girl. I can't wait to see you!

  And I'd rather wear hornets' nests for shoes while a thousand cockroaches and spiders crawl all over my naked body than…oops. Damned autocorrect! Can't wait to see you, too!

  He knew how much I hated any kind of insect—he ought to by this time, anyway. I'd made him my personal bug assassin since practically our first date. We ended up vacationing in Maine during black fly season last year—which overlaps viciously with mosquito season, especially if you're in the woods, which we were. And before we'd even opened the car door at our destination, we were surrounded by both types of insect, pounding on the windows trying to get in to make us their meal. There were literally hundreds of them buzzing around the car. He'd reached into the back seat and handed me a present, and it was the best present I have ever received in my life—one of those bug-net hats and a pair of gloves.

  "That oughta at least get you inside the cabin, hmmm?"

  I swear, there were tears in my eyes as I looked up at him and whispered devoutly, "I have never loved you more than at this moment, I swear to God."

  He laughed at me then, and I knew he was laughing at me now, and his next text proved me right.

  LOL. Then he sent, Take a deep breath, hon. Really. Take a deep, slow breath. Everything is all right, I promise you. I love you. See you soon. Out.

  Bette sighed as I read it out loud to her. Then she frowned. "Have you still not said it back to him?"

  I frowned in return. "He knows I have a lot of baggage that makes it hard for me to say that to him as easily as he does to me. He doesn't push about things like that."

  She snorted. "Obviously not, since you're still wearing another man's collar, too." Bette shook her head. "Do you know what you have in him? He's absolutely unreal. He does housework without having to be asked—you're the messy one, for fuck's sake! He cooks for you and packs a lunch for you when you're going to work from his place. He was the first to say 'I love you'. I know I've asked you this before, but does he have a brother?"

  "No, sister."

  "Uncle? Father? Stepbrother? Nephew? Second cousin, twice removed? I'm not picky—I'm desperate, here!"

  "You're married!" I pointed out to her as I always did when she asked this question.

  "But I'm not dead! I can dream, can't I? Evan hasn't quite killed those yet, and that's a good thing, isn't it? Do you know how long it's been since he said 'I love you' before I did? And he's never either cooked me a meal or put a dish into a dishwasher in his life. I owe a big thank you to my bitch of a mother-in-law for that."

  "Yes, you do." I leaned towards her. "Now, what kind of drama is going on in your life? And, more importantly, are we ordering dessert?"

  Chapter 2

  Another of the Lt. Commander's many annoyingly good points was that he was punctual. TV—especially the old black and white sitcoms—always had the female characters being notoriously late. Well, apparently, women's liberation liberated the male of the species from having to learn time management—as well as manners—too. Fellow employees were late, friends were late, and when I dated—which I did rarely, granted—I always seemed to end up waiting for some man to grace me with his presence.

  But not Mane.

  He'd said he'd pick me up about five. I knew he was realistically leaving some wiggle room just in case anyone in his unit had a problem or he got caught in a conversation with his commander or whatever. But he was there at five on the dot.

  I'd been wearing a path in my carpet since I'd gotten home after my lunch with Bette, worrying myself to a frazzle. So, when he drove into the spare parking space I was allotted at my apartment complex, I was already waiting for him out on the doorstep. Normally, I dressed to see him—even if it was just nice jeans and a cute top—but, since I figured I'd be back here, devastated, in no time at all, I wore the grubby clothes I'd been wearing all day—a tank top that had seen better days, no bra and old, comfortable shorts that, since I'd been hanging around him, were getting quite big on me.

  I wasn't usually quite so anxious. He always came to the door, escorted me to his car, opened that door and helped me in, then closed it behind me. His mama had taught him how to treat a woman right.

  He wasn't in his uniform—black jeans and a teal golf shirt was certainly nicer than what I was wearing. I have to confess that I missed it, but then he wouldn't have been able to do what he did if he was wearing it, I suppose. It wasn't as if anyone here was going to rat on him about PDAs while in uniform, but again, he was a stickler for rules—and didn't I know that!

  Mane met me on the walkway, tipping my chin up so that our eyes could meet. I hadn't noticed that I was looking down as I walked towards him, but he had. He did have that tendency to notice small things about me that no one ever had, and it always made me feel very cherished and looked after—both things that appealed to the submissive—as well as the well-hidden, I had thought—little side of me.

  "Smile, beautiful," he whispered, actually waiting for me to do so.

  All I could give him, though, was a rusty, nervous one, my eyes darting away from him.

  He chuckled softly and gathered me to him. That was the only way to put it. His arms closed around me very gently, tightening until our bodies were pressed together, ho
lding me there while he used his other hand to bring my lips to his. His kiss was as warm and welcoming as the hug was. There was nothing rough or insistent about it whatsoever, and it succeeded in relaxing me more than anything else he could have done.

  But he kept it short—deliberately—I thought, stepping away from me, but keeping his arm around my waist and me close to his side.

  "How was your afternoon, babygirl?"

  I'd never had such a dichotomous reaction to an endearment before in my life. He was pretty good at using them, too, but it was generally "sweetheart" or "honey" or occasionally "darling". The fact that he had called me "babygirl" had very important parts of me melting—making my panties wringing wet—although the rest of me kind of tensed up.

  "Fine, thank you."

  Formality had never—and would never—be my thing, so that answer got me a look from him that said he didn't believe me.

  "And is there any carpet left in your apartment from your pacing?"

  I glared up at him. "It's a lousy apartment. There was barely any carpet to begin with." Smacking him sharply on the arm, I complained—knowing I had no right to about this, "And how did you know I was pacing, anyway?"

  "Because I know you better than you know yourself, Tahlia," he answered all too smugly.

  We were at the car, and he opened the door for me, which he always did. What was glaringly different—to me, anyway, even though he managed to accomplish it very naturally—was that he beat me to reaching for the seatbelt, bringing it across me to latch it.

  Then he kissed me again, tenderly, cupping my cheek in his big hand, before rising to close the door.

  When we were on the road, I said what I had planned ahead to say to him, "Look, you don't need to go through the bother of cooking for me. In fact, we don't have to have dinner at all. It's not necessary."

  He glanced at me—although I didn't detect any kind of censure in the look at all—but didn't say anything. Instead, he just reached down and took my hand in his, threading his fingers through mine and resting our hand hands on his thigh.

  "Well, I haven't eaten since lunch, and I'm hungry. How about if we swing through Mac's and eat at that nice spot by the water?"

  Mac's was a little regional place with a drive-thru that made the best fried shrimp around. Unfortunately, it was only open during "season"—Memorial Day through Labor Day—so we went there as often as we could, while we could. I usually got fish and chips, and we both switched the fries for incredibly yummy onion rings, or one got fries and the other rings so we could share and have frings. It was way more food than I could ever eat in one sitting, but Mane usually polished off whatever I couldn't handle.

  I was too nervous to be hungry, but I didn't want to deny him a meal. "Okay."

  But once we got it, I could barely down a mouthful of it before I handed ninety-nine percent of it over to him. I could not manage to convince myself to relax, despite the fact that we were at a gorgeous, secluded water spot on the edge of the Piscataqua River, near the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which, surprisingly, is located in the southernmost part of Maine. We usually occupied this spot when we did this, except when it was tourist season and some lucky flatlander stumbled on it.

  He took my food with a quiet sigh. "Well, I'm going to be ungentlemanly in the extreme and finish my dinner—dinners. Then we'll go home and talk."

  "We could just talk here," I suggested, hoping he'd go for it when I knew he wouldn't.

  "No, we'll go back to my place." He winked with a smile. "I want you captive while we discuss this. You're a definite flight risk, Miss Rivers."

  He tried to entice me with bites of the mountain of food he was diligently mowing his way through—where did the man put it, anyway—but I couldn't. My cold, clammy fingers remained knotted in my lap, where they lay over the corresponding knots in my stomach.

  When he was done, he threw away the garbage, checked to make sure that my seat belt was secured, then, on taking possession of my hand again, we headed for his place. It was actually in New Hampshire, right on the coast. It was a modest home on a big lot that real estate agents had been trying to hand him enormous sums of money for, so that their clients could build yet another McMansion, but he'd never taken it and probably never would. It was the house he grew up in, and he wasn't about to part with it. He just about died every year when he wrote out the check for his taxes, but it was more than worth it to him to have the open ocean directly across from his house and his family home still in the family.

  His mom usually snowbirded to a condo in Florida—like most of the older population of New England—so as to avoid having to shovel three feet of snow at a time over the winter. Then she spent the early part of the summer with him—avoiding the tourists—and the rest with his sister, who had landed not too far away, in Vermont.

  I had long since told him that his house was the biggest reason why I was dating him. He'd nodded at the time, then an evil grin spread over his face as I paused and recanted, "Well, okay, one of the biggest, anyway," fitting my hand over his ever-hard cock.

  Not insulted in the least—even if it had been true—Mane didn't miss a beat. "Whatever keeps you beneath me in my bed works for me."

  But the unbelievably gorgeous location of his house was now the furthest thing from my mind. I didn't even comment on how wonderful the water smelled this time when he pulled into his driveway, then came around and opened my door for me.

  I had already undone the seatbelt, and he warned softly, "Don't do that on your own again, sweetie," before I found his arm wound around my waist again, somewhat tightly, as if he thought I was going to bolt or something.

  I wasn't.

  Not that I hadn't thought about that possibility, but there really wasn't anywhere to go even if I did escape him, which I severely doubted he'd allow, anyway. If it was over, and I decided to leave, I had no doubt that he'd drive me home—even if he really didn't want to let me go back there.

  When we were inside the cozy Cape Cod, he asked, "Can I get you something to drink?"

  For some reason, I couldn't seem to answer him—my throat and my eyes were choked with tears all of a sudden—so I just shook my head. What had overcome me suddenly—besides the trepidation I was already feeling—was the fact that it was glaringly obvious to me that he'd gotten off work early, come home, changed out of his uniform and set the stage for our talk. There was quiet classical music playing in the background, the fireplace was lit to make the room just that much cozier, and, most touching of all, I could see that, on the coffee table in front of the couch, there was a pink princess sippy cup sitting there, as if waiting for me to claim it.

  Mane stopped in the middle of clinking ice into a rocks glass that he was probably going to fill with reasonably good Irish whiskey and came to me.

  I had been very quiet as I cried, not really wanted him to see me doing it for some weird reason. Like he hadn't held me as I ugly cried at a Hallmark commercial, for fuck's sake. But this situation was very emotionally charged for me, and I was so far on edge about it that I was quite undone by his efforts.

  Before I even realized it, his arms were loosely draped around me. "Ahhh, sweet pea." He was so genuinely sorry at my distress. "I told you that there's nothing to worry about, and there really, truly isn't. Okay?" He bent down rather than forcing my face up, contorting himself so that, even though my head was bent, he could meet my crying eyes. "You know it's always okay for you to cry with me, Tahl. But I hate to see you so racked up when you don't need to be." As he spoke in that calm, reassuring way that annoyed the crap out of me sometimes—when I didn't want to be comforted but he managed to do it anyway by having a voice that could soothe a charging rhino—he guided me to the sofa and sat me down.

  "Gimme just a sec—I'm just going to finish building my drink and I'll be right back. Is there anything I can get you?"

  I'd never been with a man who so unhesitatingly—unashamedly—assumed the role of caretaker. That was probably one of the reason
s why I saw him the way I did.

  I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak quite yet.

  He patted my leg and practically jogged over to the small sideboard he'd set up as a bar, then back again with not one but two rocks glasses.

  Mane saw me open my mouth in protest but preempted me. "I only gave you a generous shot, and I want you to down it all, right now. I know it's inappropriate to give alcohol to a little girl—"

  My cheeks glowed neon red at that.

  "But I think that it might help you relax a bit."

  He extended the glass to me, although I didn't reach up for it. "But I—"

  An eyebrow rose at me. "Uh-uh-uhhh. When I give you something, Tahlia, I expect you to take it."

  I squirmed under his relatively stern gaze, because I really didn't want to obey him, but I also didn't want to find myself getting spanked. So, I acquiesced, however grudgingly, downing it in one gulp and handing it back to him.

  He laughed. "Well, I guess that's one way of doing it. I had intended that you sip it over the course of our conversation, but that works, too." Then he handed me the sippy cup. "I hadn't intended that it be used as chaser, but it'll work, I think."

  When I did shots, I always chased them with something, and I was desperate for something—anything—by now, so I took a gulp of what turned out to be cherry Kool-Aid—my favorite—and it didn't go too badly. It was an odd, kind of discordant combination of my big and my little, and, on second thought, I was glad I wasn't going to be expected to drink any more of it.

  Then he took away the sippy cup and put it back where it had been. At first, he sat down next to me, but as soon as he had things adjusted the way he wanted them to be, he lifted me onto his lap.

  I immediately began to try to move back, but his arms closed—just slightly—and I found myself cradled against his chest. I'd like to say that it was against my will, but I couldn't. Not quite, anyway. He was too warm and solid beneath me, his heartbeat all too steady and reassuring.