She tilted her head to the side, studying him like he was a strange creature she’d never encountered before. He felt a bit out of sorts. He wasn’t really acting like himself.

And yet at the same time, this felt right.

“I don’t think anyone ever actually wants to be scaly and itchy, do they?” she asked.

He crossed his arms over his chest, giving her a firm look. “Well, that’s what could have happened, little girl, if you’d gone out and picked a squirrel up. Now, what do you have to say for yourself?”

“Well, I’m kind of wondering what’s going on right now,” she told him. “And I’m wondering if maybe I did go out and touch a squirrel and he gave me rabies and now I’m living an alternate reality where you lecture me about getting ringworm and call me little girl.”

Shit. He had called her little girl.

He hadn’t meant to do that. It must have been because he’d been thinking about yesterday’s conversation.

However, he didn’t want to start something he’d have to explain to her. Not before this weekend.

And not before he’d figured out what he wanted to do. Who he was to her and to himself.

So he took the only route he could see working and decided to ignore that part of their conversation.

“You are not living an alternate reality, unfortunately for you. Because in your actual reality, you put yourself in danger.”

“By touching a non-existent squirrel with non-existent diseases?”

“No, if that had happened you would be in a lot more trouble. For going outside without coming to get me.”

“I’m not allowed to go outside?” she asked, rubbing her head and giving him a confused look. “But Roman said I could.”

“Roman did not know that you heard a bang.”

“Which was a bird,” she told him with a note of exasperation in her voice.

Oh, his hand itched to give her another spanking.

The brat needed it. She needed a firm hand. But she also needed some fun. And caring.

What could he give her that the other two couldn’t? Salem could dish out discipline and aftercare easily.

Only . . . Salem was known to talk shit to death. And he might go easy on her when he should go hard.

Sometimes action was the way to go.

Sometimes a naughty sub just needed to be disciplined then and there, not given a five-page lecture and sent to the corner to think.

Hmm. He didn’t think that Tamsyn did well with thinking.

And sometimes a naughty Little just needed their Daddy to put them over their knee. Whether they were in the privacy of their own home or out in public.

Of course, the out in public part would only work in BDSM friendly places.

Or in a private area.

Was he really thinking this could work? That he could be a proper Daddy to her?

“Which could have been something else,” he told her, shaking himself back into the now.

“Like what?”

“A gunshot,” he informed her.