Chapter 11 #2
She could feel his arms around her. She could feel the heat of his body boring into her. But what, with the baby sleeping in bed between them? Her crib was in the other house. There was no other place to put her. Two was cozy when intimacy was involved; three was definitely a crowd.
“I’m inclined to say one bed,” Brock added when she said nothing. “That’s why I need to know, yes or no, baby girl, because if you don’t tell Daddy what you want, there’s a very good chance that we’ll end up in one bed. If we do, the last thing I want is for you to regret it.”
She was already regretting it, already following that line of desirous thinking to its inevitable conclusion.
For all that she could feel him in bed with her, for all that she ached to wrap her arms and legs around him, whispering ‘Daddy.... ooohhh Daddy...’ in his ear as he slid so full and deep inside her, she couldn’t imagine doing any of that with Lily in bed beside them.
Unless she, what... put her on the floor while she romped about with a man she barely knew?
Or left her child asleep without protection in her bed, while she and Brock fucked like horny teenagers in his, on a completely different floor of the house, as if there was no danger that Lily might roll off in her sleep?
Or she could get down on the floor herself, while they both killed their knees trying to get relief from the relentless pull of their passions?
There was no good solution that didn’t end with Stace feeling selfish.
Her in-laws had been right. She was a horrible person, the sort that used others to get what she wanted, a horrible wife and an even more horrible mother.
She turned her face to the window, feeling the cold outside slowly seeping through the glass to chill her skin.
The heat of the tears she didn’t want to cry and yet which stubbornly leaked from her fast-blinking eyes, grew cold within seconds.
“Yes, or no,” Daddy coaxed her. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
She bit her bottom lip to stop its trembling before she did something pathetic, like let him know she was crying. That’s what horrible people did when they knew they weren’t about to get their way, wasn’t it? They cried, and made the other person feel bad.
What did she want, though?
She wanted to be held, Stace thought sadly.
She wanted to be held by someone who thought so much of her as to call himself her Daddy, extending his protection and his concern, and most of all his attention to her no matter what.
And maybe that meant he spanked her too, when he thought she needed and deserved it.
And maybe that meant she wouldn’t always get to do things for herself, but was that really such a terrible thing to want?
“Do you think I’m selfish?” she asked.
“I’m sorry?” he countered, confused. ”Why would you say that? In what way?”
She rubbed her stomach, twisting her head even further away from him.
She was breathing through her mouth now, so he wouldn’t hear her crying.
She looked out at the magical blinking of all those Christmas lights, and the reindeer goat who was wandering out into the lawn now, eyeing the cars all lined up along the curb on both sides of the street.
It was probably her imagination that made her think it was looking back at her, as if wondering when she was going to get out of the car and come to pet it, right on its fake little antlers.
The car rocked as suddenly Brock grabbed the lever under his seat and shoved it back as far as it would go.
“Come here,” he said, taking hold of her upper arm. “Look at me.”
She didn’t want to. Pulling a leg up into the seat with her, she took off her seat belt so she could turn her back all the way to him. “I’m okay,” she said, and yet that was when her body ruined the illusion by gasping in a huffy breath, forcing her to sniffle. He definitely knew she was crying.
His hand settled on her shoulder, trying to turn her all the way around. “Look at me.”
Stace shook her head, but his will was stronger, He pulled on her shoulder, his grip gentle and yet firm, and he didn’t stop until she turned around to face him.
He didn’t stop then either. Moving his hand from her shoulder to under her arm, he pulled her over the gearshift, catching her leg to keep her coming until she was kneeling over his lap, the steering wheel brushing at her back and involuntary shivers dancing in her core when he caught the back of her head and gently forced her down onto his shoulder.
He held her close, letting the dam of her tears break and his soft flannel shirt absorb the worst of it.
“Who said you’re a bad person?” Brock asked, rocking her as much as the confines of the vehicle’s front seat would allow.
“Your ex? Because I’ve got to say, honey, if you’re crying right now over something he said, I’m sorely tempted to take you straight home, without ice cream and without looking at any more lights. ”
“You don’t think it’s true?” she sniffled. “He wasn’t the only one who said it. His mom d-did too.”
“And where is he right now?”
Her breath hitching in her throat, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Prison.”
“Sorry, honey,” Brock said flatly. “That right there guarantees I pay zero attention at all to anything he has to say. And moms of ex-husbands don’t get a say either,” he interjected before she could do more than open her mouth in protest. “Mama bears respond to the cries of their babies, even long after said babies should have grown up to accept the consequences of their actions. And this Mama bear in particular did some pretty shitty things to you. I think I’d have a very hard time keeping a civil tongue around that woman, and I have yet to even meet her. ”
Stace laughed awkwardly. “You won’t meet her. She’s six hours away, on the other side of the state from here.”
“That only makes it less complicated when it comes to hiring a lawyer to get your things back from her. What she did to you was criminal and if she thinks I won’t pay her a call, she can think again. And so can you.”
Sniffling, she pushed against the embrace of his arms until he relaxed his hold. Sitting up, she looked at him. “Why would you do that?”
Catching her by the chin, Brock forced her to hold his gaze.
Her tummy blossomed, but she was getting used to how it did that.
A look, a touch, even just thinking about something he might do was enough to make her insides flush hot and bring all these shivers and tingles, thumps and throbs to life inside her.
When he cocked an eyebrow, she wrung at her fingers, incapable of looking away, caught somewhere between loving the way it made her feel when he took on this stern expression and hating it, because that tingling now sweeping across her backside warned a spanking might be coming.
Brock could have a very hard hand when he wanted. His belt was even more ouchie.
“Because,” he said firmly, “Daddy’s are just as protective as Mama Bears, and there are reasons for why Mamas lead their cubs away from Daddies.
Piss us off, and we won’t stop until our baby girls are safely out of danger.
Right now, she thinks she’s won. She thinks she’s wounded you to the point you’ll never be a threat to her again.
The problem is, the more I learn about you and the situation you escaped from, the more I see just how wounded you really are.
Well, she’s had her say. Now I’m going to have mine. ”
“It won’t do any good.”
His chin hiked. “And you say that, why?”
Wringing her hands, she haltingly told him, “B-because she has a lawyer.”
“Did they serve you with papers?”
Brow furrowing, she shook her head. “N-no, but... I only have a little money to get by. I was scared I’d lose all of it if I didn’t do what they said.”
“Do you know why they didn’t serve you with papers?” Brock asked.
She shook her head. “Because the law’s on their side and they knew they’d win?”
“Because they were buffaloing you. If you had gotten a lawyer, I can almost guarantee she’d have backed off, and I can definitely guarantee her lawyer would have wasted no time in telling Mama Bear to get over herself, because this is one case she’ll never win.”
“But I tried to get a lawyer. Every time they heard her name, they told me they couldn’t accept my case.”
“Let’s see what Daddy’s lawyer has to say about this, hm? I’ll bet once he hears what’s happened to you, he’s going to laugh. Then he’s going to crack his knuckles, and take you on as his next client. I’ll be seriously surprised if it actually goes to court.”
“I don’t want to go to court.” Stace tried to look away, but his light grip on her chin tightened. He refused to let her look away. “I just want it to be over,” she pleaded. “It’s just stuff. I can replace it; I just need a job.”
“And a car,” Daddy Brock reminded. “And how about your clothes? Your dishes? Your furniture? She didn’t even let you take your bed.”
“They let me take everything I brought with me into the marriage,” she pointed out, but that was kind of sad. They really hadn’t even done that.
The look he gave her said he clearly didn’t believe it either. “Look me in the eyes, and tell me that everything you moved with was all you were entitled to.”
She couldn’t look away, not with his hand on her chin. She looked down instead. “Well... they might have got confused on one or two things. I mean, it’s hard enough to keep stuff straight when it’s your own. We were together almost five years.”
Brock didn’t look impressed.
“Married for two,” she offered.