Hard Wood Daddy

7. Tess

Chapter 7

Tess

L et me show you.

Who is this girl? I’ve gotten so bold with Rutger that I barely recognize myself. I’m talking myself up like a porn star, all husky-voiced and messy-haired. All it took was a few hard orgasms all over his bearded face for me to start channeling my sexy inner Dr. Ruth.

Don Patron would be so disappointed if he knew what I was doing right now.

If he knew I had just smeared my virgin blood over the fattest dick.

I’ve got Rutger’s eyes on me as I spread my knees, giving him a clear view of everything that lies in between. My fingers wander down to my slit. It’s sore, because, yeah, how could it not be? But in the most glorious way possible.

“You’ve been good with your mouth,” I say, rolling two fingers over my clit. “The things you do—oh—it’s different from what I do with my hands. If I want to come, I always have to rub…here.” I show him the exact spot, just a little to the side, my eyelids fluttering with the familiar touch.

“Here?” he asks, sliding his hand in next to mine.

His hand is stronger and bigger. It feels even better. My knees draw up near my chest. “Yesss, right there. But it’s—it’s not just on the outside. You can get to it inside too.”

“Inside?” Rutger asks, surprised.

“The clit’s an iceberg, basically,” I say, and he just looks more confused. I burst out laughing. He makes me stop with a flick of his thumb. “Oh, God...” I gasp.

“What do you mean, iceberg? It’s not cold.”

“Only a little bit is on the surface,” I clarify. “Most of it is underwater…or inside, in this case. Should I draw a diagram for you?”

I’m kind of joking, but he takes it seriously. “Later, babygirl,” he says, gazing at my pussy like it’s the Holy freaking Grail. “How does Daddy get to your clit inside, too?”

I guide his hand lower, sliding his hands through our mixed juices. “Turn so that your palm is facing up… Yes, right there!”

He slides a finger inside of me. I ache and sting, but it melts into the most delicious feeling of satisfaction.

“If you crook it,” I croak out, “like you’re calling me over to you, then on the wall there—ooh!”

He found it on its own. That spot inside my pussy that makes me shake and moan.

He watches my face closely as he moves his hand. First he rubs—which is good, and he can see. But then he kind of flicks and that’s even better.

It only takes one little adjustment to get his hand just right. Then he’s stroking two thick fingers inside me, massaging my inner walls, with the heel of his palm grinding on my clit from the outside.

Rutger’s a fast learner. And he’s an eager student. He kisses the side of my neck while rubbing me, inside and out, and I cling to his shoulders helplessly as pleasure swells and surges and drags me down.

“Come for me,” he says.

And I do.

After I come for about the billionth time, Rutger feeds me.

“This is my grandma’s pancake recipe,” he says while he works in the kitchen, naked except for an apron that looks like it probably belonged to his grandma. There’s rope knotted to the ends of the little bric-a-brac edged ties because there’s no way they’re long enough to connect around his middle.

I grin as he pours batter onto the griddle, steam and sizzle coming up in greeting as I enjoy the occasional glimpse of that otherworldly dick swinging half flaccid down below the hem of the apron. And more than occasional glimpses of thick, hard slabs of muscle that cover him from head to toe.

He has hair almost everywhere, and I never thought I’d like that as much as I do. It covers his chest, hiding the ripples across his pectorals that I can feel when I spread my fingers there. Hair clings to each defined abdominal that points the way down to the part of him that makes me shiver.

His shoulders are hairless, but they’re built for carrying logs… Or carrying little girls who need Daddy to take them up to bed.

“You like pancakes, right?”

I clear my throat, casually brushing the back of my hand under my chin making sure the drool that’s gathering in my mouth isn’t making an appearance.

“I love them. And I’m starving.” My stomach is growling. We’ve lost hours curled up with each other, and I forgot that I needed anything except Rutger.

Luckily, he remembered. He gets bacon and eggs going, then puts a coffee pot on the stove. The apron has a little piggy embroidered on the front pocket where he sticks his utensils. It’s impossibly cute.

His cabin is generally a much more pleasant place than I expected. I thought he’d live like a bear in a cave. But it’s actually really cozy, filled with old photographs, crocheted blankets, and some clumsy wood carvings.

While he cooks, I explore a little. He’s got a rustic bathroom with a huge bathtub, which I want to use later.

When I open another door down the short hallway, I’m stunned to see…myself.

That is to say, drawings of me.

They’re everywhere.

I recognize some of them. I’ve spent enough time in class with the students to recognize their art. Plus, I remember the poses, with the drape situated over my shoulder and between my thighs.

Most of the students only draw the suggestion of my face. They focus on the curved lines. That’s what the teacher calls “gesture” drawing.

But some of the art is different.

There are pages with bold lines. I’m not drawn with any real detail on them at all, but it’s definitely me. Simple pastel shapes capture the way my body looks. Shockingly bright slashes mark my fingers and toes—the impressionist depiction of my painted nails.

It’s childlike, yet simultaneously sophisticated.

I remember wiping pastel chalk off of Rutger’s cheek in his pickup and realize.

My mountain man has been drawing me.

I vividly imagine him gripping the stump of broken pastels between his massive fingers, tongue caught between his teeth as he scribbles. He’s done it over and over again. When I pick open crushed paper left on the floor, I find more of his attempts. Whatever he’s been trying to capture about me, he hasn’t been satisfied.

There’s hours upon hours of work here.

Even though he’s dead silent, I still sense him coming up behind me. There’s his warmth but something else, more a vibration, a connection that I feel like a pressure down into my ear drums when he’s close. I ease back, my back meeting the solid expanse of his rigid muscle. He wraps his arms possessively around my shoulders, his forearms covering me from shoulder to shoulder. I’m encased in him and I take a long moment to close my eyes and feel the way he’s changing me in so many ways.

“You’re amazing, Rutger,” I say.

He stoops to rest his head on my chin. I’m fully enveloped. “I can explain…this.”

“It explains itself.” I pivot inside the circle of his arms, loop my hands around the back of his neck.

Rutger kisses me, soft like an apology, letting his hands sweep roughly down my back, one grabbing my ass, then another grabbing my tit, shoving a thigh between my legs, his thick muscle spreading my thighs. “I want more. Again. Now.”

“Aren’t you making breakfast?” I ask with a giggle, taking in the lingering scent of my sex on him and the savory smells of the food.

“Bacon’s getting just right,” he says. “Pancakes are on the warmer.”

“So…we don’t have time unless we want the bacon to burn.”

“It can burn,” he rumbles.

Honestly, I’d let him do it. But my stomach chooses that moment to announce its deference to the potential side track Rutger is pursuing. “I’m so hungry,” I admit, embarrassed.

“Then I’ll feed you.” His eyes are bright when he steps back, brushing his hands down his chest, and I snort, looking at the drape of the apron now exposing his rising erection.

“Who’s in all your photos here?” I gesture to the walls, trying to distract myself from taking a ride on his hard-on and saying to hell with what my stomach wants.

“I got this cabin from my grandparents. All the land came from my grandparents. Look.” He points to a big oval frame underneath a deer head mounted on the wall. “This is Grandma. This is Grandpa.”

“They’re a beautiful couple. You look so much like both of them.”

He brightens. “I do?”

“You have your grandfather’s jawline.” I glance around, then meet his gaze again. “What about your parents?”

His eyes darken, and I sense him almost turn away.

For a moment, my heart skips a beat, torn between the instinct to apologize for obviously saying something upsetting and the reflex to run and hide from the mistakes I’m making.

I’m pretending to be someone I’m not. And when Rutger finds that out, he’ll wonder what else I’m lying about. I should tell him the truth, right now, rip the band-aid off and take the consequences, but I know those consequences might include losing him.

And I’m a coward.

“I’m sorry,” I say after too long a pause. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Dad’s dead,” he grumbles, his jaw tightening with the words. “He died when I was ten. And my mother…”

I expect to see sadness in his eyes, but I don’t. Instead, they turn to hard, angry flint as he mentions his mother, and he gives a slight shake of his head like he’s tasted something bitter.

“My mother was a city girl, born and raised. She never liked it here, and she grew to dislike me too. She waited only a few months after Dad died. My eleventh birthday came and went, and she decided she’d had enough, packed her bags and headed back to the city.”

“Rutger…” I reach out, my fingertips finding the patch of skin just over where his beard starts under his cheekbone. Every part of him turns to wired tension. But the anger is masking something deeper. Rejection. Loneliness.

I want to take it all away for him. I want to make him see that the world doesn’t have to be such a hard place.

“Grandpa and Grandma raised me,” he says, and as he does, his face softens and I realize what love he has for them, even if they’re not here anymore.

“Grandpa was a handsome man,” I say, and mean it. From his photo, he was just as strong and wide as Rutger himself. The gentle edge comes from his grandmother. It shines out of her eyes.

I see that same shine when he serves me breakfast. Nothing makes this man happier than making me happy, and he watches every bite I take with the same eagerness as when he’s waiting for me to come.

“How did you get here?” Rutger asks, and I understand he’s not asking about here-here, in his cabin. Both of us know perfectly well that he dragged me in here like a caveman with the spoils of a hunt.

No, it’s a more complicated question. One that I wouldn’t answer coming from anyone else.

But this is Rutger. And he deserves the truth, even if I’m too afraid to give him all of it, because if he knows that I lied about who I am, and that I’m from the city, I think it might break him.

“I mentioned that I had to work for the last few years,” I explain while chasing maple syrup around my plate with the fork. “Well, the last job was washing dishes at a diner. And that’s where I met Eldon Patron. Don.”

Rutger’s brow lowers, shadowing his eyes. “Who is he?”

“He was my boyfriend for a minute. I guess. That’s what I thought at the time. Now, I don’t really know what he was, except mean.” I eat a whole piece of bacon before I can make myself continue. “He singled me out from all the other girls working as waitresses, so I thought he must have been really into me. Who picks the frumpy dishwasher when the girls out front are so cute, right? Don did. He was older, a businessman, had nice clothes, money. At first, he showed up with flowers every day. Then he started taking me out to dinner. He got me some dresses to wear when we went out. It felt good to have attention.”

“But then?” Rutger’s lip curls, nostrils expanding and contracting as his fingernails dig into the edge of the table so hard they leave indents in the wood.

My cheeks warm, and I know I’m getting those pink blotches on my chest I always get when I’m embarrassed or unsure. “If I disagreed with him, he’d tell me I was an idiot. A simpleton, he said. He’d hold his finger to his lips when I talked, shaking his head. My opinions didn’t matter to Don. He just wanted me to be obedient.”

“This is a bad man,” Rutger says. “Not like a Daddy. Not like me. I want you to talk all the time. I want to know everything you think. If you are worried, you give me all of it. If you are happy, you shout it to me so I can be happy with you. This man? I hate him. I hate that he has eyes still because they looked at you. That he has a tongue because it talked mean to you.” His eyes go black, the blue a thread of color around the center. “Did he…kiss you?”

The room turns cold as Rutger’s shoulders drop. His eyes narrow and his life is somehow hanging in the balance between yes and no.

I shake my head, hoping that’s enough for him for now, then continue, feeling that comfort he gives me. Feeling he does want me to tell him everything so it’s his to carry and not mine.

“Finally, my mom and I had a fight and I had nowhere else to go. Don was almost too pleased to take me in. He said it was going to be a special night, and I was at his house, and I went into this other room while he was on the phone in his office. He always closed the door or walked away when he was on the phone. Turns out, his interest in me wasn’t really about me . Only about one certain part of me.” My eyes prick with heat, remembering how humiliated I felt. “Don likes virgins. He deflowers them on white bedsheets, cuts out the blood stain, and hangs them up in this fucked-up trophy room underneath Polaroids of them laying on the bed right after... I counted three hundred and four little scraps of fabric before I got sick and ran out of there.”

Rutger growls. “Mother. Fucker.”

I look away. Telling someone, telling Rutger, a weight comes off me. Like I can let it go now. I shake my head on a shrug, rolling my lips together, remembering how he got to me. “A waitress told him I still had my v-card. He paid girls to find virgins for him.”

When Rutger repeats himself—“Motherfucker!”—there’s murder in his roar, and he surges to his feet.

He erupts from the table and goes for his shoes and jacket.

“Oh, shit,” I say. It hadn’t occurred to me that my painful memory might be motive for Rutger to murder my ex-boyfriend. I hurry to follow him. “Nothing happened, I promise. When I saw Don’s bedroom, I knew what I’d heard from the one member of his staff that liked me was true. I climbed out the window with Frida and a few clothes in my backpack, and got on a bus. I’m safe now. I’m here.”

“Tell me where he is. I’m going to fucking murder him,” Rutger says, whipping his jacket around his shoulders.

The thought of Rutger and Don fighting terrifies me. Even though Rutger is so much bigger, he’s really just a teddy bear. Don is rotten on the inside. He’s got goons. He fights dirty. That doesn’t mean Rutger won’t win against him—he would—but Rutger might have to use enough force to murder Don, and what happens to him after that?

So I wrap myself around Rutger’s arm, press my cheek to his biceps. “You wouldn’t leave me alone, would you?”

He’s still seething, but when he catches a look at my face, something shifts. He promptly starts forgetting the outside world again. “I want to kill him,” Rutger says, matter-of-factly.

“But then I’d be alone.” I run my finger down the hard muscles of his chest. “I want to be with you…Daddy.”

That gets his attention.

His eyes wander down my body, and every passing second makes him get further from rage and closer toward desire. He’s like a horny teenage boy.

Rutger just discovered sex, and he wants more.

Hell, it feels like the two of us invented it. Like nobody’s ever been as good or amazing or mind-shattering as we are together.

I want more too.

So when he picks me up, swinging me into his arms, I’m already getting wet again. It doesn’t take much with Rutger. Just feeling the strength vibrating in his muscles is enough to liquefy my legs.

“You’re not a trophy,” he snarls.

“Not for anyone but you,” I say.

“Not even for me. You’re so much more than that.”

He tosses me on the couch in his second bedroom. We’re surrounded by drawings of me. I have no choice but to see my curves from every angle, drawn by people who are grateful for my presence—people who are kind, artistic, and understanding. It’s not like facing myself in a mirror. It’s like facing myself in a dream.

Rutger’s are my favorites. They stick out from the others, all bright and vibrant and alive in a unique way.

“You see how beautiful you are?” he asks, running his hands up my bare legs. He greedily memorizes my shape by curving his fingers around every inch of skin. “Even those people, they see it. They see you’re special. That you’re art.”

“I’m art when you’re drawing me,” I say as his touch finds its way down to my ankles. “Your eye is the only one I care about.”

He draws my foot into his mouth, rolling his tongue over my toes. It’s just this side of ticklish. I had no idea my feet were so sensitive.

Rutger massages those powerful thumb pads into the soles of my feet while his tongue explores my painted nails, the space between my toes, the creases where they bend. An inhuman groan of satisfaction rolls out of my chest.

“Pretty girl,” he says, rubbing his beard along the sole of my foot, biting the side of it, licking my ankle. He licks his way up the inside of my leg to the crux of my thighs again. “I can’t get enough of you. My girl.”

“Yours,” I say.

“You’re never leaving.”

“I won’t,” I promise. And I mean it.

I don’t know how much time passes. He ate me out, and then I ate him—fair is fair. I couldn’t even get both of my hands around his cock. My mouth barely could take the head. He didn’t let me finish him inside my mouth anyway. As soon as he started tightening up and breathing fast, he shoved himself up inside my pussy and poured himself out there.

“Gonna put a baby in you.” Those words tipped me over the edge.

But after a while, Rutger fell asleep wrapped around me. I can’t help but feel a little smug about it, like I sucked the absolute life out of him. He’s dead to the world. I lift up an arm to roll out from underneath, and it flops back to the bed limply. His breathing doesn’t even change.

With the windows shut and boarded, it looks like nighttime. But the clock says that it’s only late afternoon. I need to feed Frida and get myself to a drawing class.

Rutger would hate it if he knew.

So it’s good he’s asleep.

He didn’t think to nail the window closed in his second bedroom, so I get dressed silently and crawl out that way. All the drawings bear witness to my crime. They can see how awkward I am, sliding first one leg over the ledge, then the other, and then falling into the bush outside Rutger’s cabin with a hissed “Ow!”

One of the art students is walking around the bottom of the trail, a few yards away from me. She hears the crash of me falling. She sees my head pop out of the bush.

“Hi,” I say casually, like she just saw me doing something totally normal.

She keeps walking.

I’m running late, so I quickly give Frida another can of food and a snuggle. Then I rush to the building where they have my normally-scheduled drawing classes.

“You’re late,” Lindsay says in a sing-song voice. She’s not mad at me. Everyone’s still getting their easels ready.

“Sorry, Linz.” I don’t offer an explanation, and she doesn’t ask.

She does, however, take a few minutes to pick twigs out of my hair. I blush the whole time.

They’ve got a screen in the corner so that I can undress in privacy. It feels a little silly to hide away and get naked when everyone else is about to see me in my nude underwear, but I appreciate the moment to get ready out of view.

That moment is also enough time, apparently, for Rutger to find me.

At first, I think we’re under attack by bears.

I’ve got my shirt halfway over my head when I hear the first shout of dismay. The thudding. The footsteps. The front door bangs, the walls shake, and it sounds like everyone is running.

Then comes the roar.

“ Tess! ”

Crash, smash, bang. Things are breaking in the classroom.

I stick my head out the side of the screen to see Rutger having a massive meltdown. His shaggy hair hangs over his face. He didn’t even stop to put on a shirt, and his muscles glisten like he’s The Incredible Hulk.

“Where is she?” he shouts, throwing over an easel.

Everyone has fled out the door, so there isn’t anyone to answer except for me. I pull my shirt back down. “Rutger! What are you doing?”

He spins on me. He’s red-faced, breathing hard, fuming. He’s holding a broken easel in one hand and a two-by-four in the other. It looks like he ripped his way out of his boarded cabin to wreck the class.

He looks so relieved that I’m wearing clothes. “I told you, you can’t get naked in front of them!” he shouts, throwing the easel aside. “It’s for me! Only for me!”

Rutger’s on top of me immediately, holding me close.

“I want to give you that, I really do,” I say. “But you heard my story, right? I don’t have anything. And this is my job now.”

“You don’t need a job.”

“I have to earn money! I have to take care of myself, and my cat, and—”

“ I have money,” he interrupts. “You can have any of it. All of it. But you can’t let other people look at you.” He searches the ceiling like he’ll find an explanation that makes sense up in the boards. It must work, because when he refocuses on me, he says, “It’s not safe for anyone if you strip in front of them. I can’t control myself.” Hotly, sincerely, he adds, “I might murder someone if they look at you. I will definitely start chopping off dicks.”

He’s so primitive. Thinking of him as a caveman is probably more accurate than thinking of him as a Sasquatch.

Truthfully, I love it. I’m having trouble hiding the grin. I’m squirmy with delight. “If I promise to stop posing for everyone else, will you apologize for messing up their classroom?”

He frowns. “They were going to look at you.”

“But not anymore. I’m yours.”

Finally, Rutger starts calming down. “I’ll apologize. And replace their…stuff.” I don’t think he even knows what an easel is called. He’s an amazing artist in his own right, but he’s totally self-taught in this, and all things.

It just makes me love him harder.

I’m under his arm when he addresses the students he scared off, and I love how tightly he holds me, too.

“I shouldn’t have interrupted the class,” Rutger grunts out. “I am…sorry…for scaring all of you. I thought something was wrong.”

The murmurs from the class suggest forgiveness, although none of them are willing to look at me anymore. They have learned their lesson. I have too.

I belong to Rutger, and I should always be under his arm or on top of his dick.

It’s all I want.