Page 10 of Big Daddy

The amber liquid jumps as I suddenly tip forward in my chair, my eyes set on a barrage of loud voices erupting behind my door.

I’m about to lower my glass to the desk and get shit sorted out when the door is flung open, a worried Ken standing behind…

“Winnie?”

“See?” she goads, dragging out the word as she points at me while eyeing Ken. “I told you he knows me. I told you it’s fine for me to come in. Jesus, chill. He isn’t POTUS, Christ already!”

She stomps in, using her foot to kick the door closed behind her, the same way I do. Yet when she does it, my hackles rise. I stare at her over-the-knee boots a moment before lifting my eyes to find hers.

Glittering emerald with specks of hazelnut floating near her iris, her eyes are… fucking beautiful.

“Why are you staring at me?” She gripes, putting her hands on her hips as if I’m the one who barged into her life.

“You shoved your way into my office. I don’t think you have the right to play indignant.” I lean into my chair, finding the soft leather with my back, stacking one leg over the other. Smoothing my fingers down my tie, I keep my eyes locked on her.

Continual eye contact typically intimidates and often alienates. That’s the goal.

But Winnie meets my gaze, widening her eyes in a way that makes me think she’s entered a staring match and that I challenged her. “Ever think I’m not playing?”

I reach for my glass, wrapping my hand around it slowly. I watch her, and something in my groin tightens. Something in my gut thrums.

After a sip of scotch, I try a different approach. I glance at my phone. No missed calls or texts from my daughter, so that can’t be why her best friend is here. “What do you want?”

She digs into her coat pocket, letting loose a string of vulgarities as she searches for something. I’d been so focused on her eyes a moment ago that I’m seeing her for the first time as I peruse her outfit. A peacoat, black, a knee-length maroon corduroy skirt, and some naughty black boots that cover the swell of her knees and leave just a few inches of visible skin. Her curly hair is in a bun again, a style she clearly favors. Her eyes are winged, black and seductive, her lashes painted in darkness, thick and alluring. Her lips are a deep mauve, and there’s another painful tug in my groin just staring at her.

She slaps a wad of bills onto my desk. “Here’s the money I owe you.”

“How much of my daughter’s food and electricity did you consume?” I ask, staring at the wad of filthy cash on my desk.

She glares at me, her nostrils flaring. Such a fucking brat.

“This is for the therapy appointment,” she says, returning her hands to her coat pockets. She blinks at me as if waiting for a response, and as much as I want to go into a standoff over who will speak first, I take the high road.

“Based on the fact you’re always at my daughter’s apartment and were recently looking through classifieds, I’m going to make the leap that you cannot afford to pay me back.” I adjust my already perfect tie as I force my eyes to stay on hers, despite the fact that she sinks into a chair across from me and crosses her legs.

Her bare knee is tempting me, like the witch coaxing Hansel and Gretel into her home with sweets. That knee is my sweet, and her home is?—

“If you stare at all of your clients with dead, cold fish eyes, you probably creep them out.” She plucks lint from her coat. “You’re creepingmeout, Big Daddy.” Reaching out, she pushes the pile of wadded up bills toward me. “And I can afford to pay you back because look, I clearly have.”

She chews the inside of her mouth as I study her, saying nothing. We wait each other out as bits and pieces of what Brielle has told me flutter through my mind.

Her parents are dead, Dad, that’s why she gets loans. Brielle had said that when I asked why, out of everyone at an Ivy League school, her best friend had to be poor.

She gets hit on everywhere we go, but she rarely dates. Brielle had told me that after I questioned why she and her friend go out so often, insinuating that they were potentially being promiscuous.

The silence and my penetrative glare make her nervous, as she breaks, saying, “I went to the appointment because I needed it. Not because you caught me crying and thought I was crazy.” Adjusting herself in the seat to draw nearer to my desk, she begins talking with her hands, the volume in her voice rising. “That was such typical man bullshit,” she grouses, shaking her head, a delicate curl springing free from the mass of chestnut locks. “Let me guess, you also think because I was crying alone that I’m on my period.”

I shrug because yes, that thought had occurred to me. Only for a fleeting moment, though, because shamefully, that thought led me down a twisted and dark path I wasn’t prepared to visit.

Maybe she’s on her period.

Would she feel better if she had someone to fuck her good? To slip inside her warmth, to stroke her little clit and fuck herdeep, fuck her so hard that her emotional tears turn to tears of need and desire as she begs me to let her come.

I envision pulling my cock out of her, seeing her streaked on my shaft, reminding me she’s young, she bleeds, she’s fertile.

That’s where I stopped. With a hard-on, no less.

She rolls her eyes at my shrug, and my cock stiffens along my thigh. I’m grateful to be at my desk, but I take a sip of my scotch to drown one burn with another. Unsurprisingly, Winnie rolls her eyes again.

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