Page 4 of Daddy Crush (Silver Fox Daddy)

I remember she was a rail-thin little girl, even though she downed a bigger stack of pancakes than me every breakfast and was raised on goat’s milk and cheese with every meal.

Nope, the only female who got off at this stop was a tall, curvy woman, with auburn hair and a determined stance. She stepped off that bus, and it hit me like a lightning bolt to my nuts. The lady held her suitcase in one hand and wore a bright pink tank top, stylishly slashed jeans, and sneakers. No rain coat. We’d have to take care of that right away, since the rainy season on The Lost Coast could occur all year round.

As soon as she saw me, she waved her hand in the air like a flower blossom dancing in the wind. I hardly recognized her as the same girl I’d last seen twelve years ago. She approached me with a confident swagger that caught me off-guard. To say nothing of the round swell of her breasts, which tempted my eyes in a way that was impossible to resist.

Shit. This was really terrible. I shook my head and raised a single brow. Was it some new, sick joke God played on me, or what? Placing me in yet another predicament where my go-to line from the past,“Let me drink about it and get back to you,”was the perfect response? Was I being tested? Just because I didn’t imbibe—okay, let’s be honest, guzzle—anymore, didn’t mean I didn’t want to.

Her smile was made for the camera, and she directed it at me. A man strengthened by the darkness of his days, who knew full well that suffering was the Lord’s medicine for salvation.

Her father said I’d suffered enough, but my brother was still deciding whether to offer me a second chance. I didn’t blame him. I’d take all the time I needed to prove I’d become a grown-ass man with my shit together.

“Duke,” she bubbled, arms already outstretched for a hug.

I inclined my head and scratched my jaw, muttering, “My God, you look so grown up. What happened to the little girl I used to know?”

Fuck, if Troy knew the thoughts running through my head right now, he’d gut me right here on the sidewalk.

This was wrong.

I couldn’t do this.

Offer her a job?

A place to stay?

What was I thinking?

She was no little girl, and my feelings for her were strictly adult. Maybepurely adolescentwould be more accurate since I could bust cement right now using my cock as a jackhammer.

IwatchedClover’severymoveasI unlocked the door for her, stood aside while she climbed in, and buckled her seatbelt for her as if she were still that shy schoolgirl who needed help to tie her shoes and loved to read books as much as she loved to run wild on her parents’ farm.

Once behind the wheel, I glanced over her body and met her eyes, which lingered on mine for just a moment, before I stuck the key in the ignition and turned it, igniting the engine. Suddenly, my erection whipped against my zipper, as if offering its salute.

WTF?

The years and the abuse I’d put my body through had corroded and wracked its frame, butI wasstill the same personher fatherhadmet at UC Davis before I went off to Afghanistan. Timehadnotbeen kind, yet when my eyes met Clover’s, it felt as if it had stopped. Did she feel it, too?

MystomachdroppedasIrealized the gravity of the situation. Ifeltawaveofemotion—doubt,anger,despair—allcrashing over me.

The most disturbing thing of all wasn’t the rando lust that hit me like a ton of bricks all at once. It was the nearly irresistible urge to ask her,“Are you going to be a good girl while you’re staying with me?”

Which, of course, I resisted.

But I wasn’t immune from fantasizing the entire way home about how I’d punish her if she disobeyed her daddy.

And I wasn’t talking about Troy.

I wasn’t exactly known for my willpower, but for real. Was she a temptation any mere mortal could actually refuse?

3

CLOVER

BRIARVILLE, CALIFORNIA

My feet ached from standing all day, but the chance to be alone with Duke was worth it. After going years without seeing him, it surprised me to learn when I got off the bus a month ago that he was hot as hell. I never thought of him that way when I was little, but something about the hint of silver in his hair now drove me wild.

I never imagined myself falling for someone my dad’s age, but holy shit, Duke was smoking. I’d been enjoying that fact while staying in my private room in the huge house he lived in all by his lonesome, getting up at the crack of dawn every morning to toss alfalfa flakes to the horses in his boarding stable before going to work in his café.

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