Page 7 of Daddy!

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.

"So," he began, rubbing his hand up my still tense arm gently. "Let me guess what you did all afternoon, besides pacing. I bet I can guess what you didn't do quite accurately—you didn't take any of the relaxing breaths I asked you to take?"

I was amazed at how overwhelming the impulse to bury my face against his neck was. It was very nearly impossible to resist! But I did, stiffening in his arms then trying to move away, but I wasn't much allowed to.

"Instead," he continued smoothly, "you spent the afternoon all worried and tense and dreaming up all sorts of awful scenarios where we break up because of what you blurted out and I throw you out of here in disgust and your world comes crashing down around you." His hand began to rub with just the perfect amount of pressure right between my shoulder blades, where he knew I carried a lot of my anxiety. "How am I doing so far?"

"Much too well," I replied, then I deliberately craned myself away from him so that I could look into his eyes while I said what I felt needed to be conveyed to him, in support of me being horrified at what I'd done and terrified that I was going to lose him because of it. "But, as a matter of fact, what you've just described, that overwhelmingly negative reaction of my partner—is exactly what has happened to me in the past when I've revealed…that part of me to men I was dating."

I literally watched him bare his teeth while hearing him growl from deep in his chest at that, and it conversely relaxed me and made my clit jump at the same time. "Well, those guys were some real winners, weren't they? Someone actually kicked you out?"

I nodded emphatically. "Yup. Said that what I wanted was disgusting and all sorts of other choice words, pushed me out the door and locked it behind me. At night. In January. In New Hampshire. It was about fifteen degrees out. We'd been dating for about as long as you and I have been dating. If you don't believe me, you can talk to Bette. I had to call her to come and get me."

"Of course, I believe you." He cupped my cheeks in his hands. "No wonder you're so wary about what happened. I'm sorry; I had no idea any man would react that way! I mean, everyone has needs, and part of becoming a couple is blending those needs together, hopefully."

For some reason, his words—that I knew were intended to soothe—only made me more nervous, and I began to babble. "But it's not a need I absolutely have to have fulfilled—it's never really been fulfilled, so it's not something I miss the reality of. I'm utterly ecstatic at our life together—and you are incredibly wonderful for me and to me—in bed and out! And you've taken to being my Dom like a natural and…and…" The tears began to flow again, no matter how hard I fought for them not to as my words tumbled over each other in my haste to reassure him about how I had no expectations that he would fulfill this need for me. "I'm not gonna ask you to do this for me, too—it's—it's not something—I-I'm just f-fine without it. Really, I am!"

"Baby love," he sighed, pulling me back to him and holding me more tightly than before, cocooning me with his body as best he could while using his hands and tone to comfort me. "Shhhhh. I want you to be quiet and just listen to me, okay?"

I nodded, but his expression told me that he wanted more of an acknowledgement.

My "Yes, Sir," was soft and tentative, and I don't think he realized that it was my little answering him already.

"Good girl." His hand cupped my cheek as the other lay against his chest. "I want you to really hear what I'm saying and take it into your heart." The tip of his index finger tapped firmly over where my heart was. "And your mind." It moved to tap my temple. "Being your Dom comes naturally because I am a dominant person, and being that way with you clicks very much with something inside me. You definitely have been given your way for entirely too long and you're a bit spoiled, and Lord knows I love to discipline you. And wipe away your tears and croon to you afterwards—" he sighed almost longingly. "The whole damned experience is incredibly powerful to me on every possible level, and I'm sorry if I haven't told you that enough or emphatically enough to make you believe that it's not some chore I resent or that I'm struggling to do."

He was apologizing to me?

"Being your Dom is not some kind of favor I'm doing for you, Tahlia." He moved me enough so that he could look me in the eye. "It fulfills a basic, primitive need in me that I have to take care of you, and it allows me to do so in a very intimate, emotional and physically satisfying manner. Understand?"

"Yes, Sir," I whispered, trying to look down, but his hands prevented me from doing that, so my eyes remained locked with his when he spoke his next words.

"Good. And being your Daddy—if that's what we decide should happen—is going to extend that intimacy, deepen it and bring us closer in every possible way. It's going to be an utter and complete joy to me."

Chapter 3

I leaned away from him again, and this time, he let me, so that I could stare up into those dark blue, almost violet eyes of his. Mine were saucer wide, and I was biting my lip. What he was saying was what I had literally dreamt of for as long as I could remember, and that had only become more acute when I met him. Nowadays, when he was gone, and I allowed myself to fantasize about having a Daddy, it was always him. But I ruthlessly never allowed those lovely dreams to carry over into our real life.

"You don't h-have to say that, you know—"

"I do know, little one, and I promise you that I wouldn't say it unless I really felt it. Ours is a relationship built on trust and honesty, right?"

As soon as his fingers left my chin, my eyes were downcast. "Yes, Sir." Again, it was a higher, much more childish voice that came out in answering him, but I—either consciously or unconsciously—spoke very softly, and I was relatively sure that he wouldn't notice that very subtle change. But I had underestimated him.

"There you are," he greeted in a warm, rumbling tone that sent equally potent fissures of desire and somehow relaxation through me at the same time. When I looked hesitantly back up at him, he smiled broadly. That voice of his was utterly perfect—coaxing—carefully not demanding—welcoming and loving, all at once. "I've seen you peeping out at me sometimes, looking like you wanted to come forward and meet me, but I wanted you to determine the best time to do that yourself, pumpkin. Perhaps I was wrong in allowing you to do that, but that was what I thought at the time. But things advanced a little quickly for you all of a sudden, yesterday, huh, and now here we are?"

It floored me how quickly his demeanor and his tone had the tensions that had coiled within me relaxing almost against my will, my little taking baby steps—still cautiously, though—towards him as he sat there holding me loosely. "You're perched on my lap like a little bird, ready to fly away from me at any moment, at any sign of danger. But there won't be any of those, I promise you, babygirl," he vowed, gathering me to him. He did so slowly, so as not to startle me, which was a subtlety that a lot of men might forget. Being grabbed and held against my will at that point would have been a grave misstep that probably would have caused me to take flight as he had thought I might.

But instead, he closed his arms very carefully around me, as if he had all the time in the world, letting me become accustomed to him holding me when I was little, not assuming that it was exactly the same thing as holding me when I was in an adult headspace.

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