5. Saoirse
SAOIRSE
We’ve been back in my apartment for four days when my father calls.
Not the scheduled check-in—the real call, the one where he actually talks to me.
My father runs personal calls like debriefs: concise, information-dense, no ambient conversation.
He calls twice a month. I’ve been so thoroughly inside the bubble of Lachlan and the apartment that I’d forgotten it was coming.
The notification pings on my laptop at eight PM.
Lachlan is in the armchair reading. I’m on the couch.
I’ve been on the couch for twenty minutes with my feet in his lap, which is not a thing we explicitly decided to do—it just happened, incrementally, over the last few days of post-cabin adjustment to being back in the city.
His hand is resting on my ankle. Neither of us has mentioned the hand.
“My dad,” I say.
“I’ll move,” he says.
“Stay.” The word comes out before I’ve decided to say it. He looks at me. “He doesn’t know you’re here. Physically here. He knows you’re on the contract, but he thinks you’re—nearby. Not in.” I look at my laptop. “I can take it at the table, you don’t have to?—“
“I’ll stay,” he says.
I take the call at the table. Video. My father appears on screen in the study of his Maryland house—the same study he’s had for twenty years, same bookshelves, same photograph of my mother on the desk.
He looks like a general retired into himself: the bearing is still there, the shoulders, the way he takes up space even through a screen. He looks at me.
“You look better,” he says.
“Than what?”
“Than before the security arrangement. You look like you’re sleeping.”
I am sleeping. I’m sleeping extremely well. “I’m fine, Dad.”
“Burke treating you well?”
“Professionally,” I say.
Behind me and to my left, Lachlan shifts in the armchair. I don’t look.
“He’s good,” my father says. “Served with him briefly. He’s the kind of man who does what needs doing and doesn’t talk about it.”
“I’ve noticed,” I say.
My father talks. He asks about my work, the consulting contract I’ve taken on, my apartment building’s new security setup.
He doesn’t mention the break-in directly—I know he’s been briefed, I know he’s handling his own version of the threat assessment—but his questions are pointed in ways that tell me he’s tracking it.
Seven minutes into the call, the couch shifts.
He moves without sound. Of course he does.
He doesn’t make sound when he moves through an apartment at two AM; he’s not going to make sound crossing a room.
I know he’s moved only because the armchair is empty when I don’t look at it, and then the couch is occupied when I also don’t look at it, and then his hands are on my hips from behind, pulling me carefully, precisely, back into his lap.
His forearms settle against my sides—tan against the pale of my skin at the hem of my shirt, warm and unhurried and completely certain.
I keep my eyes on my father.
“The client timeline,” my father is saying. “How’s the scope holding up?”
“On track,” I say. My voice is completely even. I am proud of this. “I had to restructure the third deliverable but the timeline holds.”
Lachlan’s hands settle at my hips. Present. Steady. Not moving. Just—there.
My father asks a follow-up question about the client and I answer it and I am absolutely not thinking about what Lachlan Burke’s hands feel like when they’re being patient.
He slides one hand to my stomach. Flat, warm, unhurried.
“Saoirse.”
“Sorry.” I blink. “What?”
“I asked about the security situation. Are you comfortable with the arrangement?”
“Completely,” I say. I am extremely comfortable and also quite uncomfortable and both are true. “It’s been very professional.”
“Burke’s not—crowding you?” My father knows me. He knows I don’t like being managed.
“He’s appropriately aware of when to give space,” I say.
Lachlan’s hand slides lower. Slow. Deliberate. Stops at the waistband of my leggings.
“Good.” My father looks at something off screen. “Threat assessment suggests another four weeks at minimum. I know that’s not ideal.”
“It’s fine,” I say. My voice is steady. Four weeks is not a problem. Four weeks is, in fact, very good news. “Four weeks is fine.”
Lachlan’s fingers slip under the waistband.
I breathe through my nose.
“Tell your father you’re safe,” Lachlan says. Quiet. Against my ear. So quiet only I can hear it.
“I’m safe, Dad,” I say.
His fingers move.
I bite the inside of my cheek. Not my lip—I’m on camera. My father looks up from his desk.
“Good,” he says. “That’s all I need to know.”
My father talks for another four minutes.
I talk back. I have no idea what I say—I’m tracking two conversations at once: the one happening on screen and the one happening in my lap, which is wordless but requires considerably more attention.
Lachlan is working slow and exact. Measured.
Exactly what I can sustain without visibly losing my composure on a video call with my father.
I am holding it together with roughly the poise of someone doing long division in a burning building. My father, a man who has read terrain under live fire, notices nothing. I will be taking this to my grave, and so, apparently, will Lachlan’s right hand.
He finds the angle that works and he doesn’t change it. He doesn’t escalate. He just—holds. Patient. Watching the room over my shoulder while he takes me apart one degree at a time.
I say goodbye to my father with my voice completely steady and close the laptop.
I sit in Lachlan’s lap with his hand where it is and I stare at the closed laptop for approximately three seconds.
“That was,” I say.
“Yes,” he says.
“You—you planned that.”
A pause. “I made an assessment about what would happen if I did that, and I decided to do it.”
“You assessed,” I say.
“Yes.”
“While I was on the phone with my father.”
“He’s a general,” Lachlan says. “He’d appreciate the tactical thinking.”
I turn around in his lap. Look at him. He’s looking back with the river-rock stillness and the ghost of something that is not quite a smile but is in the neighborhood. His hand is still where it was. He’s not moving it. He’s waiting for me to decide what happens next.
“You’re terrible,” I say.
“Yes,” he says.
“You are absolutely—“ I stop. “What was the assessment? What did you think would happen?”
He considers the question with genuine seriousness. “I thought you’d handle it,” he says. “You handle everything. I wanted to see how you handled something you couldn’t control.”
“You wanted to see how I handled something I couldn’t control,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
“While talking to my father.”
“It was a controlled scenario,” he says. “You were always safe.”
“Daddy,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Take me to bed.”
He doesn’t move. His eyes stay on mine. “You didn’t ask nicely.”
I put my hands on his shoulders. I lean in, close, close enough that there’s nothing between us but the warmth of the ten PM window we’re both accounting for. “Please,” I say, because I’ve learned what the word does to both of us. “Please take me to bed. Please, Daddy.”
He stands and I’m airborne—his arms underneath me before I’ve processed the movement. I wrap around him. He carries me to the bedroom like I don’t weigh anything and sets me down at the foot of the bed.
And I don’t wait.
I’ve been following his rules. I’ve been asking nicely and earning the word and coming when he tells me to. I want to give him something back. Not because he’s asked. Because I want to.
I drop to my knees.
The look on his face is worth everything. Not surprise. Confirmation—like he suspected I’d get here eventually and he’s pleased I got here on my own.
“Saoirse.” Low. A warning that isn’t quite a warning.
“Daddy.” I look up at him. “Let me.”
A pause. He looks at me on my knees in the low light of our bedroom, and his jaw goes tight, and he doesn’t say no.
He threads his fingers into my hair.
I get his belt. His pants. He’s hard before I’ve done anything—and when I take him into my mouth he exhales through his nose, slow—the sound of him holding himself very still.
I take my time the way he always takes his time with me. Slow. Learning the shape of him, what makes the sounds slip past his control. He’s careful about sound—always careful—and I like finding the places where the care goes.
“Baby girl.” His hand tightens in my hair.
I look up at him. His jaw is locked. His eyes are on me—completely on me, nowhere else on earth. This is the look I only see here: the one underneath the professional stillness, the one that’s just him.
“Good girl,” he says. Rough at the edges. His hand begins to move—slow at first, setting the pace, taking over. Not asking. Taking. His cock in my mouth at the rhythm he decides, his fist in my hair. “Look at me,” he says. “Don’t look away.”
I don’t.
I hold his eyes while he moves. While he gives himself permission to take what he needs from my mouth, his cock thick and deep, his breathing going shallow through his nose—controlled, but only just, the control costing him something now.
His hips move. His grip tightens. I let him—let him take it, let him set every beat, let him decide when I’ve had enough.
“That’s it,” he says. Low, certain. “Daddy’s good girl. Just like that.”
He stops me before he gets there.
“Up,” he says. His voice has the texture of gravel—lower, rougher, the edges worn off it.
He pulls me to my feet and his mouth finds mine, and the kiss is not patient at all.
His hands strip off the rest of my clothes, and when he lays me back on the bed he looks at me the way he always looks—like he’s keeping everything he sees. Then:
“My turn,” he says.
He goes down on me, his mouth on my pussy—patient and precise, his hands holding my hips still while I try not to grip the headboard and fail.
He goes slow. Teasing, which he doesn’t usually do, because he wants to remind me how much I’m at his mercy.
My pussy is soaking before he’s even started properly—the phone call took care of that—and he says “Dripping already. Soaking wet.” against me, quiet, satisfied, and I make a sound I don’t plan to make.
He puts his mouth directly on my clit and I grab the headboard. He works it steady—slow circles, then faster, then slow again—until I’m saying Daddy please and he says “Good girl” against me and doesn’t stop. Heat floods down my throat and into my chest. My hands fist in the sheets.
He makes me come like that—that’s what Daddy does, this is how Daddy takes care of you—and I’m a wreck, soaking and shaking, by the time he moves up my body.
“Daddy,” I say. Into the dark. At him.
“I know,” he says. “Good girl. You’re so wet for me. Soaking. I could feel how wet you were the whole time.”
He pushes his cock inside me—slowly, every inch deliberate—and I say Daddy because I always say it at that exact moment, the word falling out when my body understands what it has.
He says good girl, baby girl against my throat.
His cock fills me completely, my pussy stretched tight around him.
His shoulders above me, tan skin in the low light, and I put my hands on his back and feel the muscle shift under my palms.
He takes his time. He always takes his time—unhurried, thorough, possessed of infinite patience and an equally infinite desire to find every thing that works for me. He moves in slow and deep, each thrust deliberate. He watches my face.
When I try to move with him he pins my hips. “My pace,” he says. “Not yours.”
“There,” I say, at one point. “Right there, Daddy—please?—“
“I know,” he says. Not smug. Certain. “This pussy is Daddy’s.
You understand that? I know exactly where.
” He found it the first time and he’s never once forgotten where.
He keeps his cock there, each thrust shallow and deliberate, staying right at the spot—his thumb on my clit—and I come with my face in his neck, his name in my mouth, my pussy clenching hard around his cock, wet and tight and his.
“Good girl,” he says, while I’m still trembling. His cock still deep inside me, still hard. “Daddy’s pussy gives me what I ask for.” His thumb stays on my clit. “Move for me,” he says. “Take what you need from Daddy’s cock.”
I do. My hips lift. I thrust against him, take him deeper, my pussy clenching around his cock, his thumb steady on my clit. I come a second time with my nails in his arms and his name in my mouth.
After, I lie in the dark and think: I was supposed to be the one who got away with everything.
He said it himself on day one—he didn’t do celebrity details anymore because they were too soft.
And now I’m in my own bed with a retired special forces operative who just fingered me through a video call with my father and I’m not sure I’ve gotten away with a single thing since he walked through my door.
I’m not sure I want to.
“My father would actually appreciate the tactical thinking,” I say.
Lachlan laughs. Out loud. Low and real and brief.
It’s the first time I’ve heard it, and it does something to my chest that I’m not going to examine right now. I’m going to examine it tomorrow. Or the next day. Or never, because some things you just have to let be true without taking them apart.
“Good girl,” he says.
I shiver. My pussy clenches around him, tight, sudden—I come again, just from that—the praise and the laugh and the word and him, all at once—and he follows, his cock buried deep, filling me with his cum, every warm pulse of it—and after, in the dark, I hold onto his arm and think: this is not the contract.
This is not four weeks and then nothing.
This man has never once made me feel small. He makes me feel held. These are not the same thing. I’ve been confusing them my whole life.
My father hired him. That’s still true. Will still be true in eleven days when the contract ends.
Her father made the call, allocated the resource, hired the best available operator and the best available operator did his job and is now in my bed with his arm around me while I stare at the ceiling thinking about his laugh.
I know what my father would say if he knew about this.
He’s a general. He’d call it a conflict of interest and he’d be right.
He’d also, if I’m being honest, recognize what Lachlan is.
My father has spent his life surrounded by men whose authority is institutional—backed by rank and protocol.
He recognizes men whose authority is something else—the kind that exists before the rank, underneath it, regardless of it.
Eleven days.
I’m not worried about eleven days.
“Daddy,” I say.
“Yes,” he says.
“That’s all,” I say. “Just—yes.”
His arm tightens around me.
Yes.