Thank you, Daddy (The Good Girls #3)

Chapter 4

Chapter

Four

I’ve had two other moments in my life where time seemed to alter itself. Where it became flexible and stretched itself out before me.

The first was when the police showed up at my house and took me from my parents.

The second was the moment I saw Jesse, standing in the hallway at the hospital. His first night home on leave in six months, and he and Kent had gone out to decimate the local Golden Corral buffet. And there he was, waiting for me, the look in his eyes telling me everything my nightmares were made of.

My brother was gone.

Jesse had always had power. Not just over me, but over everyone he ever met. As I lay across his legs in that office, completely at his mercy, I felt it in the deep strike of his blows, restrained as they were. But it was so much more. It was something deep inside every fiber of his being that made him almost vibrate. Elevate. The energy that surrounded him made people take a step away, give him a wide berth, without even knowing why.

Holding my breath, the next stinging smack layered upon the last and dots of white light speckled in my vision.

Smack.

“Holy shit, stop it!” My pitiful voice was barely above a whisper as I lay over the legs of the man that had been the object of my fantasies back before I should have had fantasies.

His open, bare hand made sickening smacking noises against the naked flesh of my upturned bottom.

The force of his blows was immeasurably more intense than a mere spanking.

Like smack smack to the n’th degree.

The world seemed to tip over on itself. I felt the flex of his muscles against my belly. The warmth of his body holding me down as much as his hands were.

There was pain, sure, but under that prickle of nerve endings the connection went deeper.

Deeper.

God, so much deeper.

My eyes exploded in stinging rivers of tears, along with soul-shaking sobs that emanated from a place so walled off and fortified deep within me, that no light had penetrated since Kent died.

There was a pause, a silence so ear-splitting I filled it with words I barely recognized as my own.

“More. I need—” My throat closed, fists balled, eyes squeezing shut to block out everything but this, right here, right now.

Jesse’s hand pressed down on my back as his other came down.

Somehow, in a moment between the blows, I teetered on that knife’s edge, that thin space between pleasure and pain as the heat and stinging impact of the spanking wrenched through my body.

The thunder of his open palm against my soft flesh made my ass sing with the heat of the sun, then a strange base layer of comforting warmth gathered under the impact.

The sensation sunk through the fleshy layers, finding its home, wiggling its red fingers into my outer lips, teasing and tingling before the next impact.

Smack . I sucked all the air from the room. Popping my lips together to hold it inside.

When I could hold my breath no more, I took huge gulps and gasps between sobs as Jesse’s heavy hand took point on top of my welted ass, creating a connection deeper than our history or the fact that my upturned ass was across his lap.

“It’s okay,” he said, and those simple words opened up parts of me I wanted to keep hidden forever.

All the fight left me as though his voice and the hand on my ass was relieving me of all my shame and fear.

“ Why? ” It was all I could manage, unsure even what I was asking. There were so many ‘Why’s’ in my short life, and I knew he didn’t have the answers, but somehow I felt if I gave him the questions, I wouldn’t even need the answers anymore.

In the deepest, most sacred part of my soul, I knew that he would take care of me as he promised. And it didn't matter if I refused it, it didn't matter if I fought against him. In that moment, I knew Jesse was going to love me and keep me safe, for the rest of my life, with my permission or without it.

“Kat?” My name felt like a hug coming from his lips. That warmth inside me turned from angry flames to honey, dripping and sticky and sweet.

“What?”

“You just need to trust me.” There was a restraint in his voice. A tension I had never heard before, and my heart clenched somewhere between grief and bliss.

“Okay,” I said, accepting whatever he was going to give. Whatever he was going to do.

“Whatever I say, you have to trust me. I’m going to take care of you, you just have to let me. Tell me you promise.”

I was so tired. Tired in my body, tired in my heart and my soul. Tired in my mind.

There was no one else, nothing else to rely on. I was spent, and I needed someone to show me the way out of the darkness and back into the light.

“Yes, I promise. Please, just help me. I’m so lost.” The tears overflowed as I spoke. I was overcome by the deep depression that always overtook me the morning after I drank myself into oblivion. It was a place from which I wasn't sure I could any longer lift myself out. I desperately needed his help.

Powerful arms lifted me up and onto his lap as he pulled my head against his shoulder, and the tears came without any noise, but flowed like rain down my cheeks. But sitting there, I realized something else had happened as Jesse’s hand stung and reddened my skin.

I was wet.

Like... soaking, pounding, throbbing, screaming to be fucked kind of wet.

“Say, thank you.” He half growled and the strange demand only served to add to the warm flood streaming from my body. “Say it, say thank you.”

“Thank you.” I mumbled, unsure what I was thankful for, but knowing I was.

There was a desperate part of me that wanted to tear off that fucking white t-shirt and beg him to fuck me as I pressed myself against his shoulder. But I was also feeling vulnerable, and self-conscious. Sitting there with no panties and my jeans pulled half down my legs did not make me feel sexy. It made me feel embarrassed. My full, round hips and not-so-flat tummy were on full display, and I knew if I stood up there was sure to be evidence of my soaking sex on his pants.

As he shifted me in his arms, my heart began to thunder like gazelle on the stampede.

“Time to go.” The deep timbre of his voice vibrated in his chest, somehow connected directly to my womb that answered with a corresponding throb.

I pushed my hands down into my lap, trying to cover myself, but nodded, breathing in his scent and enjoying the sensation of his stubbled jaw against my forehead.

“You’re going to learn to live without panties. Just so you know, I decide from now on, panties or no panties, got it?” He gently pushed me to stand, turning his head slightly to the side as I pulled my jeans up and over my naked lower half.

Thankfully, he pretended not to notice the small dark spot on his lap where I sat a second before.

“Yes... I think so.”

"No." He shook his head. "From now on, you don't think, Katrina, you know. Because if you ever have any doubt about anything, you just ask me and I'll tell you. Understand?"

I nodded, drawing a deep breath. It should have felt wrong, giving up my control like that, but instead it was a relief. I surrendered it willingly. "Yes. I understand."

"Good girl. When you don’t understand, you just say, ‘I’m sorry, Daddy, I don’t understand’ and I’ll be sure to make myself clearer. So, panties are only one thing, but if I want you naked, you'll be naked. I choose your clothes from here on out."

"Yes." My voice still shook, especially at that Daddy part, but there was a small part of me that drew strength from his strength and a connection I shouldn’t want knotted inside me, taking root. I stood up straighter, my headache and nausea somehow more manageable. "Where are we going?"

"Home."

Home? What did that mean? I didn't have a home, except the one I shared with Jenette, and I doubted he was taking me there.

I wanted to ask him about that. I wanted to ask him so much.

But I also just wanted to trust that he knew what was best, and that I would always be safe so long as he was with me.

I didn't want to know the details, because Jesse would take care of it all. Kat could just be Kat again, the little girl who needed someone to care for her, and love her, and make sure she had everything she needed.

“What time is it?” I asked instead.

“It’s 10:30.” He rummaged through his desk drawer, pulling out his black key fob.

“A.M., right?”

There was the slightest upturn on one corner of Jesse’s lips. His hard, intense face showed the smallest of softening smiles. “Come on, baby. I guess you’ll see when we get outside.”