Chapter 10
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. It was 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 exists beneath the 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?”
“I can promise that.”
“And, Fee?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“I won’t care if we are in my apartment, my office or in the middle of the damn street. If you hesitate to obey, you’ll discover that lying isn’t the only offense that has you tilted over my knee and that pretty bare little bottom turned as red as your hair. Is that absolutely clear?”
“Yes, Dadd… sorry, I mean, yes, Sir.”
Grinning, I lifted the phone to my ear. “Babygirl, I don’t give a damn if anyone hears you call me Daddy. I’m damn proud of the title you’ve honored me with. All I care about is that you follow orders. Starting now. Out of bed and into the shower. I have a feeling we’re in for a busy day.”
“Yes, Daddy Dom Major Sir,” she said, saluting as she hopped off the bed and flew to the bathroom. Like a red cape, her hair flowed around her, parting just enough to give me a peek of her bare ass which had my cock rising in its own salute.
It was the shrill sound of a whistle that had me yanking the phone away from my ear. “What the hell!”
“Stop gawking and answer the damn phone, sir.”
Lifting the phone again, I said, “Please tell me you didn’t hear that.”
“Let’s just say we’re all pretty sure the schedule you’re supposedly working on won’t include night shifts for any of us,” Zeke said.
I closed my eyes. “And by ‘us,’ you mean…”
Good morning was followed by various members of the entire Citadel team adding anything from sir, to major, to Daddy, and I was pretty sure I heard a few kissie-kissie sounds being made.
“You really do need to learn the difference between the mute and speaker buttons,” Matt said.
“Shit!” The expletive was followed by a thought that had my eyes darting toward the door where Fiona had disappeared. “Fuck audio! Zeke distinctly said ‘stop gawking’. If you value your life, you’ll?—”
“Relax, Landon. No one saw anything.”
“Audra, if you’re lying?—”
“Not your sub, sir.”
The switch in tone from conciliatory to absolute authority told me I’d stepped over a line.
“Sorry, that was uncalled for.”
“Consider it forgotten, but rest assured, you didn’t FaceTime anyone. It just doesn’t take a rocket scientist to follow the conversation and fill in the visuals.”
I groaned. “I’ll stop for donuts if every one of you swears you won’t ever let Fiona know about this.”
“We’d never rat you out, Landon,” Audra said.
“But it might be a good idea to throw a few kolaches in with those donuts,” Kurt offered.
“Be there in thirty.”
“Boss, want a bit of advice?”
The answer would have been an automatic ‘no’ if the question hadn’t come from Audra. “Sure.”
“Take an hour.”
I couldn’t help but grin, my gaze going to the door of the bathroom again.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Making sure I was actually looking at the phone’s screen, I pressed the end call button and headed toward the beckoning door. Halfway there, I turned and launched the phone, watching it bounce on the bed and then disappear beneath the sheet Fiona had thrown back. I grinned in satisfaction. For what I was about to do, I sure as hell wasn’t taking any chances. The only buttons I planned on pushing would be those that had only one person crying out and that person’s silhouette was just visible in the steam roiling over the top of the shower’s glass door.
Without anything to remove, my stride didn’t pause across the tile floor. I opened the door. “I think you missed a spot, babygirl. Daddy better wash every inch of you just to make sure you’re squeaky clean.”
Fiona’s laugh tripped like a string of musical notes as she turned to hand me the loofa she held. “I suppose that’s only fair. After all, it was my Daddy who made me such a dirty, dirty, little girl.”
The sight of her pink nipples tightening and her tongue coming out to lick across her bottom lip had me changing my plan.
“I seem to remember someone telling me they loved swallowing. Why don’t you get down on those pretty little knees and show Daddy just how dirty his girl can be?”
As she slowly sank to the floor, I gathered the red, heavy length of her hair, wrapping it around my fist. Tugging her head back, huge, pools of green looked up at me, my body blocking the water from splashing into her mouth when she opened it and that tongue swiped not across her lip but up the shaft of my dick from balls to tip. Groaning, I pressed my free hand against the tile wall as her hands, looking so small and pale against my skin, braced against my thighs.
“Feed me, Daddy.”
There were chains of command, then there were the chains this woman had around my heart. “Open wide, babygirl.”
And like a beautiful, exotic little bird, her lips parted and I fed her my cock inch by inch.
When we walked into the office an hour and a half later, while the men fell on the pink boxes of donuts and kolaches as if they’d not eaten in a week, Audra just looked over at us and smiled.