Page 69 of Daddy, Sir

“I feel really safe now.”

“I’m glad.”

I accepted the kiss he gave me, but the moment he pulled back, I reached up and cupped his cheeks between my palms. “Now I’m ready to feel really loved.” The next squeal I gave was when he wrapped his arms around me and rolled until I was flat on my back in the center of the bed.

“Has your safeword changed?”

It had and yet it had also remained the same. In the clubs when I’d started playing, I’d chosen to use the traffic light system. Green for good to go, yellow to slow or pause, and red to stop everything instantly. But Landon had never been one of those Doms. He’d never be. He was Landon. He was my Daddy. The only man I loved.

“It’s Firecracker.”

He grinned and felt my lips turning up as well. After all, he’d been the one to suggest it when we’d first started our research into kink. I’d wanted to use “cookie” but he’d said with the obsession I had with cookies, he didn’t want there to be a chance of confusing my calling the word out as a request for chocolate chip with a need to have a scene immediately cease.

“We’ll be going over rules, expectations, needs, etc. but for now, any changes in your limits I need to be aware of?”

“Just one.”

“Well, are you going to share or am I supposed to read your mind, baby?”

“No, Daddy, you’re supposed to stop talking and start loving!”

Landon didn’t speak. At least not with his words. Instead, it was to teach me that his hands were capable of doing more than caressing my skin or setting it on fire. He sat back on his heels, took hold of the shirt he’d loaned me and spread his arms. Buttons popped, fabric tore, and my shock turned into delight as his head lowered and his lips closed around a nipple that had been hard since the moment he’d tipped me over his shoulder.

Turned out he could also teach a few classes on making a girl swear she couldn’t come again, only to discover she could. When her Daddy Dom looked up from between my widespread thighs and demanded, “Come,” a moment before his tongue came out to take a long, deliciously slow lick, she obeyed.

Chapter Ten

Landon

It wasn’t any sound that woke me. It wasn’t even the presence of a soft warm body pressed up against mine. Looking down, I saw a coppery blanket spread across my chest as well as a pair eyes the color of the lushest forest canopy looking up at me.

“Hi, Daddy.”

Two words were all that was required to have every cell in my soul ready to do whatever it took to make sure I’d hear them repeated until we were both old and gray.

Sliding my fingers through a handful of silky curls in order to find soft flesh, I pulled her up my chest until her hair hung in a curtain around us both. “Say it again.”

She didn’t ask what, she just smiled, laid a palm on my cheek. “Daddy.”

“I’m never going to get tired of hearing that.”

“Good, because I’ve been waiting to say it for so long.” With a slight dip of her head, her mouth found mine. Unlike the ones the previous night, this kiss didn’t hold a note of desperation. Itwas soft and sweet, a kiss of one who isn’t afraid it might be the last one shared.

The sound of a ringtone had her pulling back, a wistful smile on her lips. “I don’t suppose you can ignore that?”

It was the knowledge that outside of this room, these walls, there was a person who was threatening to harm the one thing that made waking to a new day so glorious that had me shaking my head. “Sorry, babygirl, I’ve got work to do.” I closed the distance between us to give her a last peck before lifting her off me and setting her in the space I vacated.

“Landon?”

Her tone had me looking over my shoulder as I grabbed my jeans to dig my ringing phone out of my pocket. With a press of a button, I silenced the phone, not breaking eye contact with Fiona. “What, baby?”

“In here, when it’s just us, in the bedroom, I love you being in control and I offer you my submission freely, but out there, in the world, don’t freeze me out. I don’t want to be a client, I want to be a member of the team. Not an equal, as I realize you’ve had far more training and experience in these things than me. I’ve not served in the military or gone on missions, but I’ve not lived in an ivory tower either. You said “you’ve” got work to do, well so do I. There are people who look to me for the type of protection I can offer. Let me help you find this stalker so we can both get back to our jobs. Not by just answering questions or making lists. I need to be fully on board.”

My first reaction was to shut her down, to tell her she’d do nothing of the sort. Not because she was a female, I had worked with women many times and respected them all. Hell, Audra was one of the most competent, bravest, intelligent women I’d ever known. I could just see her reaction if she learned I’d tried to keep Fiona in a cage no matter that I thought it the best way to protect her. “Promise me one thing.”

“If I can.”

That was the one and only answer I would accept for it told me while she was submissive, she wasn’t an automaton. “You’ll follow orders no matter which member of the team issues them. Consider yourself the space that existsbeneaththe first rung of the chain of command. If someone says jump, you won’t stop to ask how high, you’ll jump. If someone says run, you keep running until you’re told to stop. Got it?”

---