Chapter Seven Daddy, Can I?
A couple of days into this, Jonas was already driving me out of my mind.
Not because he was doing anything wrong. That was the worst part. He was being patient, methodical, and maddeningly consistent about all of it, like he had all the time in the world to drag me through the process one careful step at a time while I felt like I was vibrating out of my skin.
He had made me redo the checklist twice.
The first time because I had marked interested on almost everything, which had felt fair to me at the time because I had been excited and curious and in no mood to play picky when the man I wanted was finally taking me seriously.
He had looked at it for about thirty seconds before calmly sliding it back across the table and telling me to do it again because it was obvious I had not read half of it.
The second time had gone even worse, because according to Jonas it was also obvious I was choosing things I thought he would like instead of being honest about what actually interested me.
That had earned me a long look and a quiet, “Try again, baby girl.”
“Baby girl?” I repeated, like I was only teasing and not trying to throw him off from making me redo the whole thing again.
His eyes lifted to mine. “Yes.”
I looked at him. “So if you get to call me baby girl, what do I call you?”
“I prefer Daddy.”
I thought maybe he was joking at first, but he sat there with a look serious enough to dare me to laugh.
Daddy.
The word just sat there between us, and I lost my nerve so fast it almost pissed me off.
I dropped my eyes back to the checklist like that had been my plan all along, but my brain was still stuck on it.
Not because I didn’t want to call him that.
That was the problem. I did. It just felt too big, too real, like if I said it out loud I would not be teasing him anymore.
I would be giving him something. Claiming him right back.
Eventually he had sat me down and gone through it with me himself, line by line, making me talk through what I was actually curious about and what experience I had with any of it.
That part had been humiliating in a way I had not expected.
Not because I had no sex life, because I definitely had, but because once I had to say it all out loud, there was no dressing it up.
Compared to him, compared to the world he clearly knew inside and out, my experience looked exactly like what it was.
Vanilla.
He had not made me feel stupid about it. If anything, he had done the opposite. He had told me more than once that if I was going to trust him with this, then he needed the truth so he could do better by me.
Which was sweet.
And helpful.
And still somehow managed to feel like one giant yellow highlighter dragged across every difference between us.
Still, it had narrowed things down. He had made me actually pick out what I wanted to try first instead of just circling everything that sounded remotely filthy and hoping for the best. Some of it had been easy.
I already knew I liked the idea of being lectured for misbehavior, of being corrected when I was acting up, and I had wanted to try paddling badly enough that just saying it out loud made me warm all over.
Other things had surprised me once we got into them.
Like the thought of verbal degradation and there were whole pages of role play options I had not expected to even pause on, and getting down to different types of bondage.
Going through all of it had forced me to stop acting like I wanted everything and admit what actually interested me, what I was curious about, what I thought I could handle, and what made my stomach turn over in a way that felt more like nerves than fear.
It had also shown me the places where what I wanted overlapped with what he liked.
That should have made me feel better. .
Instead, by Monday afternoon, I was wound so tight I could barely think.
Because the weekend had passed, and the most physical attention I had gotten out of him was breakfast in his lap and the occasional brush of his hand at my back when he moved me somewhere. He had been careful. Deliberate. Too deliberate, if you asked me.
Everything was moving too slowly.
By the time I got home from class, I was already irritated enough to do something stupid, and the second I walked past his office and saw him at his desk with his phone pressed to his ear, I decided that today was probably as good a day as any.
I went straight into his office, dropped my bag by the couch, and sat down with my textbook. Then I stretched out and propped my feet up on the cushion like I knew damn well I was not supposed to.
His gaze cut over to me immediately.
I ignored it.
This was the fun part.
He was still on the phone, still talking in that clipped, controlled work voice, and I could practically feel his annoyance from across the room even though he hadn't said a word to me.
I opened the textbook and pretended to read, like I was being perfectly reasonable and he was the one with the problem.
When he finally ended the call, the silence in the room shifted.
He let it sit for a second.
Then, very calmly, he said, “Baby girl, what are you doing?”
Baby girl. That nickname had been worming its way deeper every time he used it. His baby girl. Just hearing it now sent that warm little pull through me all over again, but at the moment it wasn’t enough to get me out of my mood.
So naturally, I looked up from the page and gave him my most innocent face.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m studying.”
His eyes flicked pointedly to my feet.
“Feet down.”
He was using that voice. The dom voice. Low and filled with expectations.
I set the book down slowly and dragged my feet off the couch, making a show of it, then looked back at him with a little smirk. “Oh. Sorry. I forgot.”
“Did you?”
He leaned back in his chair and watched me for a second in that way he had, the one that made it feel like he could see through every bit of nonsense I tried to throw in front of him.
“What else did you forget?” he asked.
I knew exactly what he meant. It was one of the newer rules, one that had felt weirdly domestic when he first gave it to me.
Whenever I got home from work or school, he wanted me to shower and change before settling in, because, as he had put it, he wanted a clean break between outside life and here.
I had rolled my eyes at the time.
I still kind of rolled my eyes now.
“I was supposed to shower first,” I admitted.
“And?”
I lifted one shoulder. “I forgot.”
His brows rose just enough to tell me he was not buying that for a second.
“Come here.”
I did.
He moved a few papers aside, pushed his keyboard back, and then tapped the edge of his desk. “Sit.”
I climbed up and perched there in front of him, trying not to be too aware of how close that put us. His chair rolled forward slightly as he settled in, knees parting just enough that mine brushed the outsides of them, and suddenly the office felt much smaller than it had a second ago.
He looked up at me. “Why are you acting like a brat?”
I look away from him. “Maybe I feel like it.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe something else is going on.”
I let out a breath through my nose. “We haven’t talked about punishments yet. I figured maybe now would be a good time.”
His expression changed just enough to tell me I had finally said the thing he’d been waiting for.
“Do you want punishment,” he asked evenly, “or do you want my attention?”
I frowned. “Of course I want your attention.”
“Have I not given you enough?”
He asked it so calmly that it made me feel childish for a second, which only annoyed me more.
“Yes,” I said, then immediately huffed out a frustrated breath. “No. I mean, yes, you have. Just not…”
“Not what?”
I looked away for half a second, then back at him. “Not the right kind.”
His gaze didn’t move. “Then tell me what you want.”
I should have said it clearly. I should have said it like an adult.
Instead I felt myself getting hot and flustered and pissed off all at once, because I knew exactly what I wanted and he knew exactly what I wanted and somehow he still had me sitting on his desk spelling it out like this was an exercise.
“Physical attention,” I snapped. “Like actual physical attention. Like fucking, for Christ’s sake.”
His mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
“That covers a lot.”
“Oh my God.” I threw my hands up. “What do you want me to do, get on my knees and say, Daddy, can I please suck your cock?”
The second the word left my mouth, the whole room changed.
It had come out wrapped in sarcasm, but the second it hit him, that part stopped mattering.
I saw it move through him all at once, the way his nostrils flared as he pulled in a deep breath, the way his jaw tightened, the way he leaned back in the chair and dragged a hand over his face like he was trying to get a grip on himself before he did something reckless.
Then my eyes dropped, and there was no missing the outline of his cock straining against his jeans.
Oh.
Well, that answered that.
The weirdness of the word flew right out of my head. Daddy. Just one word, and I had gotten that kind of reaction out of him. I felt the power of it all at once, hot and sharp and way too satisfying.
No way in hell was I ever calling him anything else again.
A wicked little smile pulled at my mouth before I could stop it.
I rolled the chair back just enough to give myself room and slid off the desk to kneel in front of him.
His eyes snapped back to mine. “Get up.”
I stayed where I was.
“We should talk this through first,” he said, and now I could hear it, that first real crack in all his control.
I looked up at him, licked my lips once, and said it again, slower this time.
“Daddy, can I suck your cock? Haven't I been good enough for you.”