Page 12 of Daddy P.I. 3.0

“What are you doing with your free time this morning, little love?” Daddy asks as he plows into his eggs and links. I noticehe’s pushed the whole wheat toast I made for him to the side. I nudge it closer to his eggs with the handle of my fork.

“Bren and I are going to work on the fairy book this morning. My editor wants the galleys approved by the end of the week.”

“Bet you didn’t think you’d end up a published author,” Master Mac says to Brenna.

She shakes her head. “Emily’s the author. I’m just the illustrator.”

“That’s not true,” I protest, because Bren tends to hide her light under a bushel, as my aunt used to say. “You were the one who came up with the whole idea of the Bunny Queen rescuing Olivia from the troll. You wrote those scenes as much as I did. I already told Maxine that you need to be listed as co-author, as well as illustrator, so it’s too late.”

Brenna glowers at me but she’s blushing. I think she’s secretly happy about being listed as an author.

Daddy lays his big hand over mine and squeezes my fingers. “Have I mentioned how proud I am of you, baby doll? Not just writing a whole book for Olivia but for going outside your comfort zone.”

“A good-girl flogging level of proud?” I ask, wishing I was wearing my cat ears this morning. Daddy would immediately agree to a good-girl flogging if I was wearing cat ears.

“Is that what you want?” he asks. “Because I was thinking that we might do that breeding scene I mentioned.”

“Breeding scene level of proud,” I whisper, delighted from my nonexistent cat ears down to my toes. “That’s really proud.”

“It is,” he agrees.

I toy with a crust of my whole wheat toast. “You, um, also mentioned, maybe, giving me the second brand while we were doing a breeding scene.”

“I did,” he says.

My breath catches as joy fills up every cell. Daddy’s going to brand me again. It’s Christmas and every birthday rolled up together. I know even some of my fellow submissives don’t understand why I’d want to be branded, or why Logan would want to give me such excruciating pain.

It’s hard to explain but nothing Daddy and I have done together except my collaring felt more intimate, morespiritual. I had an out-of-body experience when Daddy gave me the two-moon brand. My soul was subsumed in Daddy’s: consumed, uplifted, floating somewhere up among the stars. I’ve never felt so submissive, so completely in Logan’s control, as that moment when the red-hot metal touched my skin. It was overwhelming, agonizing, sublime.

I’ve seen art that captures a moment of spiritual fractioning, like Bernini’s “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.” But even in subspace, I’ve never felt it.

Until Daddy branded me.

After Daddy and Master Mac leave, I head up to the third floor with Bren. We’ve got everything for the book spread out in what we’ve all started calling “the studio.” It’s next to the area Daddy walled off for storage and too small to be another bedroom. We’ve squeezed a desk with a drawing board and lots of shelves into the space and Bren’s taken it over as her workspace in the house.

Currently, it’s covered with sketches and proofs for our book. I stop and take a minute to admire one of the finished plates. It’s the moment Olivia meets the Bunny Queen, with the crowned rabbit peeking out from behind a tree as Olivia sits under a rainbow toadstool. The colors of Bren’s art are so vibrant, and she’s perfectly captured the mutual delight of the rabbit and little girl on meeting each other. The piece brings a happy tear to my eye.

I run my fingertips down the framed edge of the plate before I turn to where Bren’s standing beside the messy desk.

If I didn’t know Brenna better, I’d say she looks ... embarrassed. She stares at her wool-socked toes, twisting the hem of Mac’s dress shirt between her fingers. Her cheeks are so pink it looks like she has a fever.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Look, you don’t have to wear it, okay? I don’t even know why I had it made. You’ll probably think it’s stupid.”

I sidle over to her and slide my arm around her waist. “You had something made for me?”

She rolls her eyes. “You and the baby.”

“You had something made for me and the baby? Like matching outfits?”

She clears her throat. “I heard you talking with Logan, about how you wanted to take Livvy to baby swim class. That it’s good for babies to learn to swim really young so they never develop any fear of the water. I, um, wish someone had taught me when I was a baby, because swimming’s still hard for me and I just thought, well, whatever.”

“Whatever?”

“Ugh, I hate you.”

Bren moves to one side, revealing a long box sitting on top of the pile of galleys.

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