11. Chapter 11
T hey drove to the station in absolute silence, although halfway down the driveway, he reached across the seat and took her hand. She liked that too. Even now, he was trying to comfort her.
She squeezed his hand back. Saying goodbye was going to be brutal. She looked out the window, refusing to cry. She didn't want to make this any harder than it was destined to be already.
Daddy didn't take her report, one of his deputies did that. Before they were separated at the interrogation rooms, Daddy tapped her shoulder and said, "Gideon looks scary, but he's really just a teddy bear."
If he was talking about the giant Hispanic man coming down the hall towards them just then—and she assumed he was, judging by the affronted frown he gave the sheriff—then he was right.
The man towered over her. Although not as tall as Daddy, he was every bit as broad in the chest and shoulders, and the scar that cut down the left side of his face, through his eyebrow and cheek, to the corner of his mouth, all the way to his chin made him look permanently angry.
"I am not a teddy bear," Gideon corrected mildly, startling Tabby because he didn't sound mad at all. "How's your house?"
"Shot to hell."
"So I heard." The deputy unlocked and opened the door, holding it for her to enter first. "It's your own fault."
Tabby swung around, looking swiftly between the two, in that instant afraid Daddy was about to catch all the blame. "No, it's not."
"It's all right," Daddy tried to soothe, but Gideon just laughed.
"Sure it is." He tossed her a wink. "Next time, try telling him what to aim at. He’s absolutely useless on his own."
Gideon laughed, Daddy rolled his eyes, and then rested his hand on her shoulder. “The truth, the whole truth, and you’ll be fine. Trust me, okay?”
She nodded, but she was so anxious, she felt sick.
The interrogation room was sparsely decorated and looked nothing like what she’d seen on TV. There was a small desk, three chairs, and a mirror directly across from where she sat. She stared at it, wondering who was watching from the other side and clasped her hands tight in her lap.
“I’ve got your file right here,” Gideon said, holding up the legal-length manila folder he’d brought with him. It was very thin, but she could see the half dozen or so pages stapled inside it, and she knew what those papers were going to say. “Give me a minute to get caught up, okay?”
Picking at the bandages on her hands, she nodded and settled in to wait.
With nothing else to do, she stared at the papers he was reading from.
She didn’t know how good she was at reading upside down until he got to the last page.
A picture of human bones in a red-dirt grave was paperclipped to the top.
She recognized in an instant the barbed wire and sheet metal coral where Travis had locked her up.
They had found the missing girl, and it was in the same place where Travis had left her to die.
"Okay, I think I'm caught up now," Gideon said only minutes later.
He flipped back and forth between two pages in the folder, and she was just gearing up the courage to see if she could read what was on them, when he closed the folder, took a sip of his coffee, and pulled out a pad of yellow paper and a pen.
"In your own words, tell me what happened last night.”
She told him everything—well, except for everything that happened between her and Daddy, her breakdown, the bottle and binky, getting the tops of her thighs spanked with the spatula, and she especially avoided talking about diapers.
She flushed, growing hot just thinking about it.
Her pussy fluttered, but her stomach knew better.
Ever the responsible one, it was a riot of knots.
“At what point did you and the sheriff meet up?” Gideon asked.
Her mind racing to delete the embarrassing things from last night’s timeline, Tabitha started over, and told him about having to go to work and not knowing what kind of farm it was until she got there.
She told him about Bobby, and the call to Travis, the shed and the table and the thin length of cane that he’d used to beat her feet.
He watched her, no trace of a smile anywhere on his face as she told him about having to walk home and not being able to make it.
About lying down in the grass and waking up with Da—the sheriff's headlights on her.
"So, you got in his truck and let him take you home? To his place?"
“He wanted to take me to the doctor’s, but I didn’t want to.” She didn't want to talk about her feet. "So, yes," she said simply.
A knock at the door stopped everything. In hindsight, she probably shouldn't have been surprised to see Daddy standing outside when Gideon opened the door.
"Care to take a break?" he told the deputy, looking right past him and straight at her. It was not a question and none of them mistook it as one.
The two men traded places, and Daddy shut and locked the door.
Her heart sped up, thumping behind her ribcage until by the time he’d seated himself at the table across from her, the mirror at his back, she was picking at her bandages all over again.
Folding his hands on the table, he looked at her. He kind of smiled, but there was a sternness in his eyes that made it hard for her to believe he was anything close to amused. "How's it going?"
She swallowed hard, then nodded.
"Are you scared?"
"No." Not especially, although this was the most scared that she had been since he’d brought her here.
He nodded. "Are you telling my deputy the truth like I asked?"
She wasn't stupid. Looking past his shoulder, she stared at her reflection in the giant mirror behind him.
"Tabitha…"
She looked at him again and this time swallowed hard. "Yes?"
His already stern gaze grew harder. "Yes, what, babygirl?"
She froze, from her fingers to her heart pinned under his steady blue gaze, her mouth running dry. "Yes, Daddy."
He shifted in his seat, and he did not look happy when he fixed her with another stern look.
"Do I need to take you out behind the station house and drop your britches?
Because if it takes my whooping a layer off your pretty little backside before you'll tell my deputies the truth, then I will happily march you out back. How's that sound?"
If he was trying to scare her… okay, her bottom was a little scared.
She could feel the tingle his words ignited racing over her skin, especially where she was sitting down.
It was also in her clit and the tips of both breasts, and it wasn't because she knew he was bluffing or thought he wouldn't follow through with his threat.
She absolutely believed he would. She no longer had the spatula marks on her thighs, but the memory of those four sharp smacks were very much in her mind.
And so was the knowledge that she wouldn't be going back to his house after this. There was no together after this. There was her and Travis getting carted off to jail together and the best she had to hope for at this point was that they’d be sent to two different prisons.
Shoving back his chair, Daddy stood up. “All right. Let’s go.” He dug out his pocket knife. “Have you ever had to cut your own switch before? I suspect today is going to hold a lot of new firsts for you.”
She stood up, throwing her hands up to stop him when he started to reach for her arm. “W-wait, Daddy, please! I… I didn’t lie!”
“Not lying isn’t telling the truth,” he coldly told her. “Especially when you’re omitting parts and pieces they need to know. Let’s go.”
“But I’m trying to protect you!” she cried when he took firm hold of her arm.
“The best way to do that is by telling Gideon exactly what happened. From the moment you got to town, until the moment we pulled up to the station house, you got it? Don’t gloss over what Travis did to you.
Don’t gloss over how your life was endangered last night, and why you took my truck and bolted.
Don’t gloss over the fact that it scared you senseless that Travis, the guy who hurt you so badly, is related to me and that played a part in why you panicked.
Tell them we slept together, and when. It’s all going to come out anyway.
Any omission you make absolutely will be known and dragged up in court by the prosecution.
Any chance they have of making you out to be a liar is one more chance that Travis will get off scot-free! ”
God, she hated having to be the one to break this to him.
“He’s going to get away with it anyway,” she told him sadly. “I’m a felon. I’m nothing, Daddy. No one is going to—oh!”
His grip on her arm tightening, he grabbed the back of her vacant chair, jerked it out into the middle of the room and dropped to sit on it.
In the next instant, he had her off her feet and sprawling face down across his knees.
He didn’t take her pants down. He didn’t need to.
Right from the first mighty— clap! —she felt the full disciplinary strength of his bare hand and it was exactly that: disciplinary.
And oh, how it hurt. Hard and fast, he paddled her bottom, igniting a blistering fire that had her bawling and flailing back to grab his arm and somehow protect her from having to take even just one more spank.
“Daddy! Please!” she sobbed. “Stop!”
“Stop isn’t a safeword.” He grabbed her wrist, pinning it to her side with his other hand. “And I’ll tell you something else, young lady. You.” He punctuated each word with a blistering spank. “Are. Not! Nothing!”
He finished with three of the hardest swats of all. Hauling her to sit upright on his lap, he caught her chin and forced her to hold his stare. “You’re not nothing. I just read your record. Do you know what you are?”
Holding her blazing ass with both hands, her heart pounding at her ribs, she nodded. “A felon?” she squeaked, truly hoping that wouldn’t end with her turned right back over his knee.
“No,” he said with just finality that she almost believed him, and she, more than anyone else, knew the truth of it.
“You got three years for a car you didn’t steal and weren’t driving.
You were trapped in a speeding vehicle with a driver holding you hostage; you didn’t evade anybody.
They made an example out of you, babygirl.
And it was wrong of them to do it. I’ve placed a call to a friend of mine.
He’s a retired attorney who sometimes does pro bono work for worthy causes.
It’s not certain, but I’m going to ask if he’ll at least try to get your record expunged. ”
So shocked she stopped trying to rub out the burning pain still scalding her ass, she stared at him. “You can do that?”
“There’s a chance. But what difference will it make to fix that if you’re only going to get into trouble again, this time by withholding what happened.
I will not be able to protect you if Travis wriggles out of this.
Do you understand? As a witness, I can move you into my care 24/7.
No matter what, I’ll be cleaning out my spare room, because you are not going back to that motel. ”
Her jaw dropped. “I’m… I’m going home with you? Really?”
“I told you that last night. Didn’t you believe me?”
She locked her lips, really not wanting to admit to him just how convinced she’d been that she would be in handcuffs at this point.
He leaned back in the chair to get a better look at her. “You didn’t, did you?”
Her eyes stung and she had to bite her lip to keep it from trembling.
It wasn’t the lingering burn from the spanking, or even the scolding now reducing her to tears.
It was the relief… the dreadful, crushing certainty that no matter what she did, she’d just known she would spend the rest of her days alone and ashamed for something she hadn’t done and couldn’t get forgiveness for.
Until now, she hadn’t really believed she would ever escape Travis, or Bobby, the prison or the guilt that hadn’t stopped following her since that day.
“No, Daddy,” she confessed, her voice a broken whisper.
“Look at me.”
She did.
His blue gaze held hers sternly. “The things we talked about this morning… were you being honest with me?”
The dam of her tears broke. “Yes,” she cried. “Yes, please.”
“You have choices, baby girl.” He stroked her hair once. “I don’t have to be Daddy to take care of y—”
She covered his mouth with her hand, stopping him from saying it.
This was all her fault; she’d made such a mess of things, but if she really did have choices then she knew exactly what she wanted.
“I want…” Her face burned, the heat blazing in her belly as much as her cheeks.
Both fires grew hotter by the second as she realized what she was about to confess with God only knew who was watching behind the two-way mirror.
“I want you,” she whispered, hoping only he would hear her.
“I want you, Daddy. If I haven’t screwed things up too badly? ”
“Oh baby,” he said, letting go of his aggravation as he stroked her hair and shook his head.
“Nothing is broken beyond mending, except perhaps your bottom after I get you home tonight.” He pointed at her nose, then tapped it, almost playfully.
“That naughty voice inside you is the first thing we’re going to work on.
Just so you know, they might not carry ginger root in the grocery store, but they do have tubes of ginger paste. ”
She wrinkled her nose in confusion. “What does that mean?”
“I promise, as soon as we get home, you’re going to find out. Trust me.”
Oh, she did. This time. But if he was trying to scare her, then he widely missed the mark.
In spite of all her insecurities, there was no shadow of a doubt anywhere in her that he would hurt.
She shifted in his lap. Obviously, he’d spank her and the ginger…
well, considering the way he said it, she didn’t know what to expect, but she did know one thing: For as long as he would have her, she had no problem taking it for Daddy.
The End