Chapter 35
“All right, I’ll just leave now. Nice to know . . . wait . . . did you say yes?” she said croakily.
He said yes?
How did that happen? Well, she probably shouldn’t be surprised since he’d been the one to start all this. But there was a part of her that didn’t believe anyone would ever want anything to do with her.
Yes, her self-confidence was in the tank. She wasn’t sure she’d ever had any. If she had, it had disappeared as a child under her father’s neglect, her mother’s mood swings, and the bullying from other children.
She guessed that it probably all started when her father first abandoned her and her mother.
Hard to believe that any other man would want you when your own father hadn’t.
“Yeah, baby. Surely that isn’t a surprise?”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Are you?” he asked.
“No,” she wrote. “But I want to give this a go. If things go wrong, if you don’t like it, if you get sick of me, will you tell me?”
He frowned. “And what if you don’t like it? What if you want to stop? Will you tell me?”
It was a good question, and one she wasn’t really sure she knew the answer to.
“If either of us want to stop, we can tell the other person. I’m not going to get upset if you don’t like this and don’t want it anymore. If there’s something I’m doing you don’t like, then either use a safeword like red. Or a gesture. How about you tap my cheek three times?” he suggested.
She thought she could probably do that. She nodded.
“Give it a go now.”
Reaching up, she tapped his cheek three times.
“You can do it harder than that.”
She touched him harder.
“Whoa, easy. Not so hard. I’m gonna have a mark there.”
Addie gaped at him in horror. Had she really marked him? She hadn’t meant to. Oh my God, what had she done?
“Sorry, Addie, that was just a joke,” he said. “Obviously, not a very funny one from the look on your face.”
Oh, right.
Yeah, it hadn’t been very funny.
“Just to be clear, you’d rather keep this private? To ourselves?”
“I don’t mind if other people know, so long as no one is laughing at me. But I’m not sure about . . . about doing anything in front of others,” she said through the phone.
Urgh. That sounded so awkward.
He nodded. “Understood. We can ease into that. So now we need to discuss the rules.”
Oh. Eek.
“No more talking until your throat is no longer sore and you’re speaking more easily.”
“I know my voice sounds awful at the moment so I’ll try not to talk but sometimes it’s hard to remember.”
“Your voice does not sound awful. That’s another rule.”
What was? Not saying that her voice sounded awful? But it did. It was all raspy.
“What is?” she asked.
“You are not allowed to put yourself down. Next is honesty. I’m relying on you to be honest with me, Addie. No lying to me or to yourself. and I won’t be pleased if you aren’t honest. Fair warning.”
Sheesh.
“Addie is a good girl.”
Cash raised his eyebrows. “Well, of course Addie is a good girl. Who said differently?”
She gave a firm nod, and then felt a little bit foolish. “No one.”
That time she spoke.
And the look on his face made her freeze. “Uh-oh.”
She’d already broken a rule. How had that happened so quickly?
Urgh.
“Addie’s still a good girl?” she asked through the tablet.
“Addie is. But she just broke a rule so it might be a good idea to discuss consequences.”
She gave him a big smile. “But we haven’t discussed any yet, so I can’t be punished, right?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that’s true,” he drawled.
Rats. There went her loophole.
“First, let’s discuss limits. What do you not want me to do? So we don’t have anything like what happened this morning.”
Because he didn’t want her to freak out like the nutcase that she was.
“And you better not be thinking bad thoughts about yourself either.”
Okay. There was no way that he could police her thoughts. That wasn’t happening. Although it did seem like her face was depressingly easy to read.
“Is there anything that you absolutely don’t want me to do? For instance, I’m guessing giving you a spanking in front of someone would be a limit?”
Wait, was that even a possibility? Her eyes grew wide as she gaped at him.
He grinned. “Some people like it. They like people watching them. It gives them a buzz. Voyeurism, exhibitionism. Being punished in public can make the punishment more effective and means that the naughty Little or sub doesn’t misbehave again.”
There was no way she ever wanted to be punished in public. She didn’t even like being scolded in public.
Was she being too sensitive, though?
“It’s all right if you don’t like that, Addie,” Cash told her gently. “You’re allowed to like what you like and dislike what you don’t like.”
Right. That made sense. She eyed him before typing into the tablet. “How come you can read me so easily? Is my face such a dead giveaway?”
“Kind of. Also, I’m pretty good at reading people. What other limits do you have? Are there any sort of punishments you don’t like? Is there any way I might touch you that you wouldn’t like? Are spankings on the bare bottom okay?”
He just kept shocking her tonight, didn’t he? Thank God the wind hadn’t changed direction, or she might have been left with her mouth gaping open and her eyes super wide. That would have been incredibly embarrassing.
She hastily typed into the tablet. “What makes you think that I want any spankings at all? They might be a limit.”
“They’re not a limit,” he said, sounding very sure of himself. How the heck did he know?
“How do you know?” she asked. “They could be. Maybe I’m terrified of getting my bottom spanked.”
He eyed her for a long moment. “You’ve been very naughty today. You keep talking when you shouldn’t. When Little girls break the rules, they get punished, don’t they?”
She was staring at him. She couldn’t tear her gaze away. It was like he had her mesmerized.
“And do you know what happens when Little girls are naughty? When they don’t listen to Daddy and they break the rules?”
Oh, God. How was he doing this? How did he just know what to say? Her heart was racing and her mouth felt dry.
Everything he said sounded like it could have come out of one of her books, as though she might have dreamed it up.
“It seems you’ve forgotten what happens to naughty Little girls.
They get their bottoms spanked. They go over Daddy’s knee, and sometimes he’ll pull down their pants and panties to bare their bottoms. Sometimes he won’t.
He’ll slap his hand down on his naughty girl’s bare bottom until it’s red and throbbing and sore, and she might end up sobbing or begging him to stop.
But Daddy only stops when he thinks that his girl has learned her lesson, doesn’t he?
No point in stopping too early. Then, once the spanking’s finished, Daddy will roll her over in his arms and hold her tight.
He’ll tell her what a good girl she’s been, how wonderful she is, and how much he admires her.
How special she is, and how much she means to him. ”
She was just sitting there. But in her mind, she could see exactly that happening. She could see herself over his lap, getting her bottom reddened, how hot it would feel, and then how he’d hold her tight and tell her what a good girl she’d been.
Yeah, she wanted that. She was such a liar saying that she didn’t want any spankings.
“You’re not worried about being spanked. That’s not a limit,” he told her. “And I think that you should stop pretending that it is.”
Oh, shoot. That had been a test, hadn’t it?
She eyed him suspiciously. He just smiled back at her.
“Yep, I was testing whether spanking really was a limit. If you’d acted all upset or scared, I would have known that it was, and we would have come up with a different punishment.
But now I know that’s actually something you’re interested in.
But you should know that if it’s a punishment spanking, your bottom’s going to hurt, and it’s going to be hard for you to sit the next day. ”
What other kind of spanking would it be? For pleasure? She couldn’t imagine actually enjoying it.
Can’t you?
“How do you feel about corner time?”
She shrugged. She hadn’t really thought about it before.
How did she feel about standing in the corner? She didn’t really want to do it, but it didn’t make her feel scared.
“All right, I’d say that is a go. Same with lines.”
Ugh, they didn’t sound fun at all.
“I don’t think I want to use chores as a punishment for you. It doesn’t feel quite right, not in this sort of situation.”
Yuck, chores?
No, she definitely didn’t want those as a punishment. She wrinkled her nose.
“Is there anything else that might be a limit? I won’t speak badly about you or do anything that you’re not comfortable with in public,” he reassured her.
“Nothing else that I can think of,” she said through the phone.
“Rules for Addie,” he told her. “You might want to write these down.”
She gave him a suspicious look. Just how many rules did he have for her? So many that if she didn’t write them down, she’d forget them? Is that what he was saying?
“Just don’t want you to claim that you’ve forgotten them,” he told her.
Right. There went that plan. She really did wish that she was more mysterious and less easy to read.
Pretend Addie was mysterious and brave. Too bad that was only in her head.
“You already have not putting yourself down and honesty. I want you to tell me anytime you need something, whether it’s to hold my hand or to be able to hide behind me, whether you need period supplies or chocolate or whatever.”
She nodded.
“Good girl. You’re being very brave.”
She was a good girl.
“If you want to call me Daddy you can, even if it’s just in private.”
A part of her really wanted to call him Daddy, but the other part of her knew that would just make it harder when she didn’t have him in her life anymore.
“We’ll see where that goes. Also, if you want to slip into Little headspace at any time, tell me.”
She picked up the tablet. “Sometimes I don’t even know that it’s coming. I just slip into Little headspace without meaning to, often when I’m scared or anxious.”
“Got it,” he said. “I’ll watch out for her.”
“You’ll tell me if you get sick of me,” she said in Batman’s voice.
Nobody could ever get sick of Batman.
Why couldn’t she be more like Batman?
He narrowed his gaze. “Careful. That sounds very much like you’re putting yourself down.
And while I’m willing to forgive anything you’ve done up until this moment, from now on, break any of the rules and you’re getting lines, corner time, or your butt spanked.
Sometimes, depending on the infraction, all three. ”
All three? Was he nuts?
That wasn’t happening. There was no way that Addie would earn all three.
“It was just a statement. I wasn’t putting myself down. You might not like this doing with me.”
“Pretty sure I’ll like anything I do with you.”
Oh, wow. Those words sent a shiver of delight through her, because now she was thinking about all kinds of other things, and that wasn’t what this was about.
This wasn’t about sex.
“I want to do this to help you,” he said. “I want you to feel more comfortable and at ease. At the moment, it seems like you’re always on the edge, always anxious and worried. I don’t think you worry or stress as much when you’re in Little headspace. Is that right?”
Addie nodded. She didn’t.
“I’m not going to get sick of this or you, because being in control, making the rules, making the decisions, keeping you safe, it makes me feel good. It makes me feel useful, like I have a purpose. All right?”
She nodded. She felt silly for thinking that he’d do anything he didn’t really want to do.
“Now we get to safety. You need to keep yourself safe and healthy, all right? Which includes not leaving the house without permission. As well as not talking with a sore throat. And if there are ever any threats to you, I want to know about them.”
Uh-huh. Okay. Got it. She had it. Yep.
Threats to her. She’d never had any threats until now, and that wasn’t really aimed at her. They were aimed at Monroe. It wasn’t very likely that someone as boring as her would get threatened.
“I like touching you. I hope that you like me touching you. But if there’s anything I do that you don’t like, just tell me.”
Oh, God. If only he knew how much she liked him touching her. It was strange when she wasn’t usually fond of people she didn’t know touching her. But there was no way that she was going to tell him that.
She’d had enough embarrassment for the day.
“Anything else, baby?”
She shook her head. She thought that was more than enough.
To her surprise, he cupped her face with his hands. “I’m going to look after you, Addie. No one is gonna hurt you while I’m around.”
Too bad this was only for a short time, and that he wouldn’t be around for longer.
Because she really liked the sound of that.