Chapter 7 #2
“Pops,” he called as he layered two sandwiches into the pan, buttered side down and already sizzling. “Want to help me set the table?”
“You just think about that,” Pops told her, getting up from the table. “Pastry or strudel. There are no wrong answers, now.”
“There are too,” she said as he shuffled into the kitchen. “Strudel. Every time.”
“Oh,” his father whispered with a grin as he shuffled past Brock to fetch down three plates. “She’s a keeper, boy. We have found our companion.”
“The hell we have,” Brock whispered back. “Stop. Just stop. She’s not what we’re looking for, and you know it.”
Pops scoffed, grabbing a handful of spoons and forks before heading back out into the dining area again. “He’s such a grouch,” his father told Stace, leaving Brock shaking his head and flipping sandwiches.
“How do you put up with him?” Stace replied with a touch of humor. It was the first time he’d heard her sounding anywhere close to cheerful and it actually made Brock pause in the midst of adjusting the stove temperature to listen.
“God only knows,” Pops scoffed, and they both giggled.
Or at least Stace did. His father’s laugh was just as wheezing and voiceless as ever, a rasp of coughing sounds that offset the lightness of her voice.
He quickly adjusted himself, the unwelcome stirring in his rising cock the last thing he needed right now.
She was his neighbor, not his girlfriend.
He was trying to help her; the last thing either one of them needed was for him to get a stiffy every time she laughed.
He couldn’t believe he’d spanked her. The franticness of her voice as he’d pulled her over his lap, had been a reviving gasp of life for his inner Daddy Dom.
He might not have liked the reason for it, but he’d enjoyed paddling her bottom until she was sobbing and apologizing, and he’d really enjoyed feeling the furious heat of his discipline rising up through the weave of her pants.
He’d liked how small and compact she felt as he’d caressed her afterward, rubbing and soothing away the pain he’d caused.
He never should have touched her like that, but it was like spanking her in the first place.
The snap of dominance that had shot through him when he’d seen her sloppy swing of that axe narrowly missing her own leg, was every bit as instinctive as holding her afterward had been.
She’d fit in his lap, in his arms, as if she were a treasure ordered straight from a catalog and built to his specifications.
She’d felt good. She’d smelled good. And for those few moments when she’d let him comfort her, he could almost see, feel, and smell himself holding her like that for the rest of his life.
He really needed to start dating.
He really needed to not burn the sandwiches either.
Coming sharply back to himself, he snatched the slightly smoking pan off the stove and quickly flipped the grilled cheeses all to see how bad the damage was.
Fortunately, although a little darker than he liked his sandwiches, the bread wasn’t burned.
In fact, the butter had caramelized the crust, and the cheese when he cut the sandwiches in half diagonally was the perfect melty-stringy consistency.
Perfect, just like Stace.
Except, no. She really wasn’t. If only they’d met under different circumstances. If only she weren’t in desperate need of a job he couldn’t offer. If only he could offer it without fear that something might happen to Pops if he left him with her. She just wasn’t suited.
But he wished she was.
***
The morning dawned as bright as only the winter sun on last night’s snow could.
She drowsed, aware of the light although everything else felt like a dream.
She was warm, toasty warm for the first time since she’d come to Myrtle Creek.
The bed was softer than the one she’d left behind.
Her dreams were all about caramel and apples, and hot pies resting on the windowsill while she rested much less comfortably, perched on an equally hot bottom on Brock’s lap.
“Are you going to be a good girl for Daddy?” he’d asked, one hand resting on the side of her hip, while with his other, his thumb brushed lightly back and forth across her right nipple, teasing it until it puckered for him, begging for more of his caresses.
Her face flushed every bit as warm as the throb pulsing so wantonly between her clenching thighs. She squirmed as he teased her, unable to loosen her too-tight throat enough to answer that embarrassing question.
“Naughty girls need to answer Daddy when he asks them a question,” Brock warned. “If I have to take off my belt again, it’ll be your naughty bare bottom that I spank with it. Do you really want that? Because I promise, without your pants to help protect you, Daddy’s belt will hurt a lot more.”
Her tummy tightened as much as her throat. She tried to shake her head no, but helplessly nodded instead.
“Daddy’s good little girl.”
She hadn’t moved and yet, just that fast she was sitting in his lap with her pants and panties around her ankles and her naked bottom perched upon his thigh.
His warm breath brushed the shell of her ear, sending prickling need dancing through her skin.
Her pussy flooded. She could feel the molten liquid gush and her embarrassment grew, knowing any minute he’d be able to feel her lust soaking into his jeans.
“Say it, Stace baby,” he cooed. “Tell Daddy how much you need him to take you in hand.”
She shivered, her breasts growing heavy, her nipples tightening hard as diamonds. She ached, not just in her breasts, but in her core. Deep inside her in a way no one had ever touched before. Not even Jim.
“Daddy...” she whispered, liking how the word tasted when she said it to him. Liking the poignant hunger that lit the dark of his eyes as his fingers trailed from her nipple to her chin, pinching it lightly as he tipped her mouth up to meet his.
Her tummy flipped wildly, her heart racing as the warmth of his lips possessed hers. Flicks of his tongue teased her to open, and his gentle kiss turned consuming. Her hands came to rest on his shoulders, feeling the strength with which he was so careful as he rolled her over onto her back.
No longer sitting on his lap, she lay in the softness of her bed, beneath him as he slid his hands under her to catch her ass and squeeze, making the tantalizing ache in her flesh pang.
She arched into his kiss, her sigh devoured from her lips as he consumed her.
Her clit throbbing along in time with the age-old ache of wanting that only got worse as he kissed his way down the length of her squirming body, until the heat of his next exhale burned into the folds of her exposed pussy.
She moaned, but already he’d scooped her legs up over his shoulders. She bit her wrist as he parted her with his tongue, but the only pain she felt was the sharp slap Brock gave her hip when he said, “No one hurts my baby girl, Stace. Not even you.”
“I’ll be good, Daddy. Please,” she pleaded. “Please... don’t stop.”
The sound of those words spoken in her actual voice startled Stace out of her drowsing dream.
The room was both familiar and not, the shadows on the ghostly gray-lit walls nothing like they had been before she’d turned out the light the night before and yet, it was exactly as she’d remembered it.
Her pussy ached, that slow pulse of emptiness hammering away at her insides until the need made her fingers itch to relieve it.
Beside her, Lily slumbered on, her head pillowed on Stace’s right arm, her diapered bottom up in the air while she propped on her knees. She felt like a little furnace tucked up against her, and because she was there, there was no covert way to relieve need.
As if Lily would even know what she was doing if she did wake up.
But Stace would, and that right there would be one too many people knowing what she was doing.
Sliding out from under Lily, Stace carefully climbed off the bed.
Dressed in t-shirt and panties, she went to the window, drawing the drapes back to look first at the five or so inches of snowfall they’d gotten last night, and then at the burly figure sitting on her side porch next door, sharpening her axe.
He was bundled up in jeans, brown work boots and a thick brown Carhartt coat that made his already broad shoulders and chest that much broader.
A pang of unrequited need pulsed through her.
Her hand twitched—to what, silence the desperation, to touch herself until the sight of him just going about his day brought her arching onto tiptoes in the first orgasm she’d had in months.
She almost did. She caught hold of the windowsill in both hands to keep from touching herself.
“Come on, Stace, knock it off,” she whispered, bowing her head as she strove to get the wayward impulse under control.
If anything, the throbby need of her pussy grew that much worse.
Right up until she lifted her head to look down at him again, only to find him sitting motionless on her porch, staring straight up at her through the second-floor window.
Their eyes locked, and her tummy flipped that same twisty motion that had kept her up late last night, painfully aware that the silence of the house did not mean she was alone.
Somewhere on the floor below, probably directly under her room, Brock had his big body folded into his own bed.
She could practically see him, lying on his back, hands folded behind his bed, scorching his ceiling—the underside of her floor—with that same hungry stare that had so haunted her dream.
She shivered, but she wasn’t cold. The pressure points of his fingertips echoed in the flesh of her ass, and under the backs of her thighs. As if he were still holding her legs bent over his shoulders while his tongue flicked between the folds of her sex, opening her up so he could drink her in.
Ducking away from the window so he couldn’t see her anymore—so she couldn’t see him either—she rolled her lips to muffle a humiliated moan. Covering her stomach with both hands, she stood there, a victim to her own lust until she heard the muted thud of the axe chopping into its first log.
Wilting, she lay her forehead briefly against the wall. Yeah, she wasn’t at all ready for this. Not for Brock, not for any of it.
Lily roused while Stace was getting dressed. She sat up, flopped over onto her back and rubbed her eyes before whimpering a half-hearted cry.
“I know.” Stace finished tying her too-big sneakers before picking her up. “Let’s get into a fresh diaper and breakfast in our tummy, huh?”
Outside, the steady chopping sound paused while Brock put another log on the chopping block. Like the thumping of her own heady heartbeat, she imagined she could feel the vibrations of each hard sound through the very floorboards under her feet as she wandered downstairs.
She had only to venture as far as the dining room table, the stillness of the house trying once more to convince her she was alone.
One peek out the kitchen window told her otherwise.
Brock had unzipped his coat. It hung open while he worked, steadily cutting wood to fill up the empty wood-bin on her porch.
He paused to wipe his brow and picked up the chopped wood. She quickly ducked out of the kitchen window when he turned, looking upward toward the second floor.
Lily began to cry, successfully distracting Stace.
Digging a fresh diaper and wipes out of her overnight box, she carried Lily into the bathroom and took care of both their needs before venturing back out to the dining room.
Another peek out of the window gave Stace a start when she saw Brock’s coat, tossed haphazardly over her porch railing, with the rest of him nowhere in sight.
She raised her hand to push the curtain back so she could see further around the back of her cabin when suddenly a short section of tree trunk flew in from the side to plop into the snow near her cabin, bouncing once and rolling the rest of the way until it knocked into the side of the chopping block.
When she craned her head, she spotted Brock at the wood pile behind her house, chucking several large sections of tree trunk as if they weighed nothing at all.
She’d barely been able to carry just one of those things yesterday.
That he was strong enough to toss them like rings in a child’s game was enough to bring that pulse thumping back to life between her legs.
Shit. She froze when he paused between tosses to wave at her. He’d spotted her.
The instinct to duck back out of sight again felt childish and yet, her face flushed hot, so did waving back.
She did it anyway, then quickly drew the curtain so she wouldn’t be tempted to keep standing there, gawking while he worked.
Lily made the rest easier. Pulling at the front of Stace’s shirt, she began to cry.
Leaving the room entirely, Stace made her way to the couch, sitting down to breastfeed.
She was still there, singing softly as Lily grew milk sleepy against her breast when the front door opened and in walked Brock. He had his coat draped over his arm, and a thin sheen of sweat on his brow, which he was wiping at until he saw her.
His gaze went from her face to her breast, and neither one of them breathed much less moved. It seemed forever before, with a single blink, his gaze shot back to her face. It was like her dream this morning all over again.
He wasn’t looking at her, he was looking into her and she still couldn’t move.
Heat licked up through her core, the phantom caresses of his fingers, lips and tongue scalding her senses.
If he walked over to her right now, she knew she wouldn’t stop him.
If he bent down, she wouldn’t turn her face away.
Her lips were already tingling and her heart was pounding against her ribs.
She could almost taste the brush of his mouth as he lowered himself to taste her in return, and yet he hadn’t moved.
Frozen in the open doorway, he stared at her with such longing.
“Excuse me,” he said thickly.
“Okay,” she replied in kind, sparks dying in disappointment when he backed out of his own house and closed the door to give her privacy. And so she sat there, Lily sucking and dozing on her breast, wishing she were brave enough to go after him.