Page 16 of Bossh*le Daddy
My breath caught, making my next words come out fractured. "We're still . . . just pretending."
Even as I said it, I knew it was a lie. My body knew it, responding to his proximity with enthusiasm that had nothing to do with performance. My skin felt too tight, too hot, despite the cool breeze raising goosebumps along my arms.
"Mm." The sound rumbled from his chest, vibrating through the minimal space between us. His free hand lifted, and I stopped breathing entirely as his fingers found the loose curl beside my cheek. He tucked it behind my ear with devastating gentleness, the gesture so at odds with the predatory hunger in his eyes that I shivered.
"That's what you keep telling yourself." His thumb traced the shell of my ear, following the path of the vanished curl. "This elaborate fiction that what's happening between us is performance. That your pulse doesn't race when I touch you. That you don't press closer when I hold you. That you didn't mean it when you said you don't have to pretend I own you."
Each word was a nail in the coffin of my denials. Because he was right. God help me, he was right about all of it. My pulse was racing now, a hummingbird trapped in my throat. I was pressing closer, drawn by invisible strings to the heat of him. And I had meant it, every treacherous word.
"Tell me something, little one." His voice dropped to that register that bypassed my brain entirely. "When I introduced you as mine tonight, how did it make you feel?"
I should have lied. Should have deflected. Should have done anything except tell the truth. But his thumb had moved to trace my lower lip, and coherent thought was becoming impossible.
"Safe," I whispered against his skin. "Wanted. Like I belonged somewhere for the first time in my life."
Something shifted in his expression, a crack in the marble facade that let me glimpse the fire beneath. His hand left the railing to cup my face, thumb still painting impossible patterns on my lip.
"You do belong somewhere." The words were quiet but carried the weight of a vow. "You belong to me. Have since the moment you walked into my office clutching that folder like a shield, trying so hard to be what you thought I wanted."
My knees went weak at the possession in his voice, at the implication that this had been inevitable from the start. I gripped his jacket for balance, fingers curling into expensive fabric.
"I don't understand what you want from me," I said, echoing my words from nights ago in his office. But now they carried different weight, different meaning. Because I was beginning to understand, and the knowledge thrilled and terrified me in equal measure.
His eyes darkened further, storm clouds gathering before lightning strikes. "You do understand. And I want you to say it."
I knew what he wanted. Knew it from the tension in his body, the way his fingers had gone still against my face, the hunger barely leashed in his gaze. But knowing and doing were different things, and the words stuck in my throat like honey.
"Say it," he repeated, and now his voice carried that edge of command that had ordered executives and expectations with equal efficiency. "Just for me. Say, 'I want you, Daddy.'"
The words hit me like electricity, lighting up every nerve ending I possessed.
Daddy.
He wanted me to call him Daddy.
He waited, patient as a hunter, while I struggled with the magnitude of what he was asking. Not just words. Not just play. An admission. A surrender. A step off a cliff I'd never be able to climb back up.
"I—" My voice cracked, and I swallowed hard. His thumb resumed its torture of my lower lip, encouraging and demanding in equal measure. The city noise faded away, leaving just us in this bubble of possibility and danger.
"Good girls do as they're told," he murmured, and that title—good girl—sent a fresh wave of heat through me. "And you want to be good for me, don't you, little one?"
I did.
God help me, I wanted it more than my next breath. Wanted to be good for him, to please him, to see that savage satisfaction flash through his eyes again. The need was overwhelming, washing away inhibitions and social conditioning and every wall I'd built to protect myself.
"I—I want," I whispered, the word barely audible over the blood rushing in my ears. Then, because he was waiting, because I was drowning, because I'd already fallen off this cliff the moment he'd called me little one in the dark of his office: "I want you . . . Daddy."
The change in him was instantaneous. A growl rumbled from his chest, primal and satisfied, and his hand slid into my hair, gripping the carefully pinned strands. "Good girl," he praised, and I nearly came apart at the approval in his voice.
Then his mouth crashed down on mine, and the world exploded.
This wasn't a kiss. It was a claiming. A conquest. A brand seared into my soul with lips and teeth and tongue. He kissed me like he was starving and I was the only meal left in the world. Like he wanted to crawl inside my skin and take up residence. Like he was marking me as his in a way that no title or ring or public declaration ever could.
His tongue swept into my mouth, demanding and receiving immediate surrender. I opened for him helplessly, a moan escaping that he swallowed like tribute. The hand in my hair tightened, angling my head for deeper access, while his other arm banded around my waist, crushing me against him until I couldn't tell where he ended and I began.
I kissed him back with desperation I didn't know I possessed. My hands fisted in his jacket, pulling him closer, needing more. More pressure, more heat, more of this feeling like I was being consumed and reborn in the same breath. Every stroke of his tongue sent lightning through my veins. Every nip of his teeth made me whimper into his mouth. Every growl of approval made me melt further into his demanding embrace.
He walked me backward until my spine hit the stone railing, then pressed against me until I was trapped between cold stone and burning man. The contrast made me gasp, and he took advantage, deepening the kiss until I was nothing but sensation and need. His thigh pressed between mine, and I rode it shamelessly, seeking friction against the ache he'd created.
