Page 15 of Daddy's Princess

“Add the four inches for your heels, and you’re five eleven.” I look pointedly at her bright red heels.

She merely shrugs. “You could always wear heels, and you wouldn’t be the size of a munchkin. How was the club?”

“It was fine.” More than fine. I got spanked and orgasmed half to death and fell asleep snuggled up to my idea of a perfect dominant.

“Just fine?”

“Did Andre call you?” I ask accusingly.

“He was worried. He said—”

“That blabbermouthed jerk face!” I rant, cutting her off. “One minute he’s telling me to be open to the possibility of playing again and then when I do, he’s—”

“Wait, what? You played last night? With who?!” It’s Candace’s turn to cut me off.

All of my indignant anger drains away. I should’ve known better. Andre would never talk to anyone about me, even Candace. “Just some guy named Oliver, it’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal, she says.” Candace gives me an incredulous look. “It’s been what, six months since Cody?”

“Something like that… Look, it was a one-time thing, alright? I got caught up in the moment, and it just sort of happened. We scened. I left. End of story.”

“If you say so,” Candace says, her words laced in disbelief. She must decide that continuing on that line of questioning is a bad idea. Candace is right, I'll shut her down. With a mischievous glint in her eye, she changes the subject to all things Oliver. I humor her, answering questions about his appearance. She hints several times at wanting to know more intimate details of our scene, so I decide to give her something new to focus on and tell her all about what happened with Brock and Jack.

“Back to Oliver. How big would you say his penis is?” She holds her hands out in stages until her hands are a foot apart, and she’s wiggling her eyebrows.

“I’m not telling you about his penis!” I can feel my cheeks turn pink in embarrassment. I could just tell her I don’t know how big he is—I mean I felt him through his pants, and he’s definitely not small—but for the first time in our friendship, I don’t want to talk about what happened behind the closed door of our private room.

“Oh, come on! Was he Wee Willy Winkle or Moby D—"

I poke the on button on the blender a little harder than necessary. The sound very nicely drowns out her next words. I point to my ear and mouth,can’t hear you.She gives me her favorite one-finger salute as she takes her coffee to her room to get ready for work.

Five minutes later, my smoothie is safely in my to-go cup, and my lunch is stowed in my backpack along with my schoolbooks and, most importantly, my sketchbook. I don’t go anywhere without my sketchbook.

“I’m out of here,” I yell down the hallway toward Candace’s room.

“Dinner and drinks at Joe’s after work. Don’t forget!” she yells back.

Crap. It’s not that I forgot… it’s more that I don’t want to go, so I blocked it out of my mind. Intentional amnesia. Once a month, Candace decreed that we had to go out and “be vanilla.” Her way of saying, ‘go out and drink with all our single subbie friends where there are no doms around to distract us.’ So, once a month, Candace and I meet all ‘our’ friends for cheap drinks and tacos at Jose Locos. It started life as a Mexican restaurant, but business was terrible, so they turned half the dining room into a bar, and now they offer cheap tequila and cheaper tacos every Tuesday.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of Taco Tuesday. Well, taco any day of the week is perfect in my book. It’s the whole cheap tequila thing I’m not a fan of. I’ve gone down the party-with-Candace-and-nearly-die-the-morning-after road before. Once. I learn my lessons quickly. Tequila and I do not mix.

“Meet you there.” I try to sound excited about our night out, but I know I fail when I can hear Candace cackling as I close the door. She thinks it’s hilarious that I can’t handle my liquor.

* * *

Ten minutes later,I’ve managed to snag one of the few open seats on the train. I should go over my study notes since I have an Art History exam next week, but I find myself pulling out my sketchbook instead.

I turn it to a blank page and set my pencil to the paper, thinking about the most recent story acquisition Titan-Rose landed. I was making copies for Nadine, my manager, and realized someone had left their papers on the copier. I was about to put them in the box kept beside the copier when I realized it wasn’t just boring office work. It was a manuscript for a storybook.

Usually, I would set up the job for the copier then leave it so I could move on to my next to-do list task. Multi-tasking has become my new hobby. At least, it feels like it. Instead of doing the responsible thing, I hid in the corner of the little room that holds the copier and started reading.

Instantly, I could visualize the fantastical world the characters live in. A magical forest with animals unlike any in the real world. The narrator of the story is a grandmother who is telling her grandchildren about her adventures as a child. I haven’t been able to get the story out of my head. For the last two weeks, I’ve been sketching the animals described, the cottage the young girl in the story lived in, the trees as old as time that whispered secrets to the little girl, and more.

Not that anyone will see my ideas. Being an intern definitely gets my foot in the door, but no one cares what I think. Yet. I’m not there for thinking or creating, I’m there to work. Nadine has made sure we all know our place in the hierarchy of the office. Which is below the bottom rung, in case you’re wondering.

Another group of people gets on at the next stop, and an elderly woman takes the seat across from me. She smiles kindly at me then pulls knitting needles from her bag and starts in on whatever it is she’s making.

My pencil starts moving over the paper. Slowly, the old woman comes to life on my page. I smudge the lines, making the grooves of her wrinkles stand out. The old woman in front of me isn’t smiling, but she has deep lines around her mouth and eyes that speak of thousands of smiles in her past. I draw her smiling in my picture. Her eyes sparkling with happiness.

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