The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection

Chapter 1

one

When I was nine, Uncle Max gave me a magic eight-ball.

Uncle Max did. So did his magic eight-ball.

It’s sitting on the corner of my desk. It’s substantially more battered than it was when he gave it to me, wrapped in newspaper because no one had wrapping paper left on Christmas Eve, sitting on the kitchen table because we didn’t have a Christmas tree.

It’s been with me through three tours of duty, seven ops I can’t talk about, even with the man at the other end of the phone who is as close to me as anyone in the world. As close as I let anyone get.

“Clever girl,” the man on the phone says.

“I hope you’re talking to Emily rather than me,” I respond.

There’s a sweet giggle at the other end of the line.

Logan must have me on speaker. I hate when he does that, because hearing Emily laugh, hearing the soft-sweet note that’s in her voice right now, stirs me.

I ease the edge of my hand against my dick, shifting it into a more comfortable position as it twitches and fills, grateful we’re not on a video call.

There’s silence and I realize they’re waiting for me to say something. “What have you done now, clever girl?” I ask.

Emily is clever. Her geekitude rivals mine.

She can keep up with me when I talk X-Men and Tolkien and Heinlein.

She understands why I spend my evenings reading rather than partying.

Add to that smart, well-read mind her sweet face, edible body that I’ve seen way too much of, and the endless love that she showers on my best friend and it’s no wonder that my dick is hammering against my palm even while guilt chews its merry way through my gut.

I thought being pinned down under fire was bad. I had no idea how much wanting my best friend’s girl would screw with my head.

“Found three pieces of the puzzle we’re doing,” she answers. And then she does it. She says the thing that makes my cock kick against my palm and wet my boxers. “Daddy says you’re coming to playgroup with us on Sunday.”

Daddy.

How can that one word affect me so much?

“I haven’t decided,” I say, sawing the heel of my hand back and forth over my dick, knowing it’s fruitless. I’ve already jacked off three times today. My hand hasn’t gotten this much action since I was in high school.

And it’s still not enough.

“We’re making pizza,” Emily says. “I don’t eat pizza and Daddy can’t eat a whole pizza on his own—”

The D-word again. It punts my cock into overtime, throbbing and twitching and I swear it’s fucking snarling in my damn pants.

She stops talking after saying something about cupcakes.

I’m supposed to answer her. I can tell by the awkward gap. My life is filled with these interstices. Places where I’m supposed to be saying something, doing something. I’ve never known the right ways to plug those gaps.

Yer awkward, boy. Never met a kid who doesn’t like candy.

I liked candy. I just didn’t like what Uncle Greg did to me after he gave me candy.

I swear at that memory. Fumble and find some words to plug the gap.

“You know how much I like those.”

“With the cream-cheese frosting,” Emily singsongs.

Fuck-fuck-fuck. The D-word makes me harder than titanium but when she gets that child-like quality to her voice, I can’t help it. I come in my pants. I grip the edge of my desk through the spurts that make my boxers stick to my dick like plastic wrap.

“That’s bribery,” I grunt out. “Isn’t that against the rules?”

I’ve got no idea what the fucking rules are.

I don’t understand the first thing about Logan and Emily’s relationship.

Daddy Dom and little girl. What the fuck is that?

All I know is that the shit she does makes me crazy and I’m jealous of my best friend in a way I’ve never been jealous of any man before and it’s not even that I want Emily or would ever, ever try to take her away from him.

I just want what she is.

Logan laughs and that makes the guilt roar higher than my fading orgasm.

I reach under my desk and grab my trash can in case I need somewhere to puke.

“Emmy can bribe anyone anytime she wants, particularly if I get leftover cupcakes,” Logan says. “C’mon, mate, it’ll be fun.”

There’s nothing fun about this. It’s the worst I’ve ever felt. Worse than I felt after I took the candy from Greg. Worse than when Uncle Max told me his diagnosis. Worse than seeing the only man who ever stayed shrink to a sad husk with no control over his bladder and bowels.

Worse than sitting by his bed after I gave him the first and only thing he ever asked for from me and holding his hand until his went cold.

I thought that was the fucking nadir of my life. Until Logan found his little girl.

“Swear you won’t try to set me up with anyone,” I force out.

“I swear,” Logan says easily. Like he’s got no agenda and didn’t ram this shit down my throat to start with until something caught and kindled and now this constant fire runs through my blood no matter how many times I push it out of my dick.

There’s another of Greg’s awkward gaps, but this time, it isn’t mine to fill. And she’s not filling it.

“Emily.”

“I have a really sore throat, Max.”

She gives a small, fake cough. All I can think of is what she was probably doing with Logan not long ago that would leave her with a sore throat.

My dick starts to fill again. Fuck-fuck-fuck.

“I only need one word,” I say.

Daddy.

Emily tries to weasel, explaining that there are two girls at this playgroup she really wants me to meet and that I wouldn’t have to physically abuse one of them to date me—like that motivates me to go to this fucking thing—but Logan doesn’t give an inch.

When I first saw them together, heard how he speaks to her, I gave them a week.

Maybe two. I didn’t understand it then. I’m not sure I understand it now. But I’m beginning to.

She needs his sternness. She melts, and glows, and becomes even more of that wondrous thing that shines from her all the time but most brightly when Logan brings her to hand.

And Logan, the friend I thought I knew, the man I reported to for years, who led me safely through a special kind of hell.

The guy who always had these high-maintenance, Insta-influencer type of women hanging off him.

Who shed them for the sweet geek who wears Wonder Woman sweatshirts and drinks milk out of a sippy cup.

This man somehow found the thing I so desperately want.

He schools his girlfriend with a few words and a commanding tone which, despite the fact I reported to the fucker, he never used on me.

“Promise Max,” Logan insists.

And she does.

I pick up the magic eight-ball and shake it. Turn it over even though all the water drained out years ago and left the pyramid stuck to the plastic on one response.

It is certain.

“Thank you, Em. I’ll see you guys on Sunday. I still want those cupcakes.” Then I give her what she wants to hear, even though it makes me a complete fucking sucker. “I might even be convinced to share one with your friend.”

“Thank you, Max.”

She says it so sweetly. My dick pulses against the wet fabric of my boxers.

“Behave, girlie-girl, you’re killing me.” And she is. “Logan, I’ll send you whatever I’ve got tomorrow.”

“Sounds good, mate,” Logan says.

I hang up before he has a chance to. I said goodbye to Uncle Max before I put my hands over his mouth and nose and he held quiet and still while I gave him what he asked for.

I don’t ever have to say goodbye to anyone again.

I drag myself up out of my gamer chair: ergonomic, heated for winter, vented for summer, with the bonus lumbar massage feature because I spend so much of my time in the fucker.

I take one of my phones with me and pull up the porn site I have on the home screen.

I put on one of my favorite videos while I stand over the toilet and jack off, listening to the girl’s moans and whimpers as she’s held down and fucked roughly by the man who has bound her hands behind her back and smacked her ass a blushing pink.

When she calls him Daddy, I come all over my hand.

The job Logan’s got me on isn’t complicated.

It’s just plodding, trying to track down women named Wilson that Logan’s creepy client has slept with.

What an asshat. I don’t care if he’s paying my fees.

I’d rather eat pot noodles for a month than help that fucker.

Not that I’m hurting for money. Even with the wedge I stupidly gave Julie, I’ve got enough, between what I’ve banked away and the rents from the seven other apartments in the building, that I could play video games for a couple of years without having to resort to pot noodles again.

But this isn’t really a job for Rick fucking Errol, porn star and possessor of nine-inch dick. It’s a job for Logan. And I’d do pretty much anything for him, even help the world’s worst asshole slither out of the trouble he’s landed himself in.

I have a bunch of different searches running, feeding information into the database of Wilsons that I’m building. Most of the searches are combing through social media, but a few are creeping slowly and steadily into the big DMV databases.

With too much time on my hands while my programs are running, I flick on my third, fourth, and fifth screens.

The third screen is dedicated to the Dutiful campaign I’m running.

Fourth screen is the DDoS attack I’m running against a website in Belarus that pirated a bunch of Emmy’s books.

Fuckers. Fifth screen shows a security forum I contribute to under the name UncleM4xx.

I tap in my daily personal security tip before switching it over to porn.

Pixie won’t be on for another few hours so right now it’s set on a subscription service. As soon as I switch it over, a girl in ponytails looks up a me. She smiles, croons “yes, Daddy,” and takes a huge dick so far down her throat her eyes bug like a frog’s. Not sexy.