7. Saoirse
SAOIRSE
He makes the bed.
Every morning, this. But this morning it’s different—careful, not efficient. Like he’s making it for someone else’s use. Like he’s not going to be sleeping in it again.
His bag is open on the floor by the door. He packed last night. He didn’t tell me he was packing. He didn’t need to—I heard the zip and I lay in the dark with my eyes open and said nothing.
Day thirty-one. Contract over.
I sit on the edge of the freshly made bed. He picks up the bag.
“There’s a debrief call with your father’s team at ten,” he says. “They’ll let you know the ongoing risk level. The threat’s been neutralized but there may be residual?—“
“Lachlan.”
He stops.
“Stop briefing me,” I say.
He looks at me. He’s in the same clothes he was wearing on day one—dark cargo pants, long-sleeved shirt pushed up to the elbows the way it always is, the tan of his forearms and the corded muscle exactly what I first noticed.
Same close-cropped dark hair, silver at the temples.
Same glass-cut jaw. Exactly the man who walked through my door.
His bag in one hand. My front door behind him.
“Okay,” he says.
“Put the bag down.”
He doesn’t.
I stand up. Cross the room. Stand between him and the door.
He’s six-five. I’m five-three. The odds are not in my favor and I don’t care.
“You’re not my bodyguard anymore,” I say.
He holds my eyes. “No.”
“The contract is over.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not here because my father hired you.”
“No,” he says. “I’m not.”
“Then why are you still holding the bag?”
Something moves in his face. Not the coffee cup crack—something slower.
Thirty days of layering: cracked cups and split knuckles and three days in a mountain cabin and my father’s video call and the first aid kit at three AM and all the days since, all of it dense enough now to be its own gravity entirely.
He puts the bag down.
“You’re my Daddy,” I say. Steady.
“Yes,” he says.
“Not because of the contract. Not because I needed security.”
“No.”
“Because I needed you.” I hold his eyes. “Say it.”
He crosses the space between us—one step, that’s all it takes at his height—and his hands come up and cup my face, both of them. The careful hands that cracked a cup and split their knuckles. That zip my dress. That write notes on the counter and hold me in the dark until his heartbeat slows.
“I’m your Daddy,” he says. “That has nothing to do with your father or the contract or the threat or any of it.” He holds my face.
“It has to do with you, specifically. What you are. What you did to me in a breakfast conversation on day three.” His thumbs trace my cheekbones.
“I’ve been this my whole life. I just didn’t have my girl yet. ”
My eyes go hot.
“Stay,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “There wasn’t a version where I left.”
I put both hands on his chest. He puts his arms around me. I press my face into his shirt, and he’s so certain, so mine, that I can barely hold it.
“Daddy,” I say.
“Yes.”
“I love you,” I say. “I know that’s fast. I know it’s—thirty-one days and a cracked coffee cup?—“
“Thirty-one days,” he says. “And a cracked coffee cup. And the porch incident. And three days in a mountain cabin. And your father’s debrief call.” A pause. “It’s not fast.”
I laugh, muffled against his chest. “No. It’s not fast.”
“I love you,” he says. Like it’s a fact in a threat assessment. Certain, documented, not subject to revision. “You’re my good girl and I love you and I’m not going anywhere.”
I hold on. He holds on.
We stand in my entry hall with his bag on the floor between us, the door behind me, all thirty-one days around us. And he doesn’t leave.
Neither do I.
“The bed,” I say eventually. Into his shirt.
“I made it,” he says.
“Unmake it,” I say.
He picks me up. The bag stays on the floor by the door.
We unmake the bed.
He takes his time—he always takes his time about this, and I’ve stopped being surprised by it, the patience of him, the absolute attention.
He undresses me slowly and when he’s done he just looks at me. Morning light on my skin, his eyes traveling over me completely, unhurried. The warmth of both reaches me—the light and his gaze, moving the same direction. His eyes go to my chest, my belly, my thighs. Where he looks lands like a hand.
Like this is what he was assessing all along and now he’s done pretending he wasn’t.
“Good girl, look at you,” he says, and the praise hits my bloodstream. My knees go soft. I pull him down.
“What’s the rule?” he says, his mouth at my jaw, my throat, the curve of my collarbone.
“You decide,” I say. “Before ten.”
“It’s nine thirty in the morning, baby girl.”
“Good,” I say. “We have time.”
We have time.
He makes good use of it. He goes down on me first the way he always does—both worship and authority, his hands holding my hips, his mouth finding exactly what it’s been finding for thirty days because he remembers, he remembers everything.
“Tell me what you need,” he says. Against my inner thigh. Not where I need him. Just—near.
“Your mouth,” I say. “Please, Daddy.”
“Where?”
“You know where.”
“Say it.”
“My pussy,” I say. Looking at the ceiling, his breath on my inner thigh, no armor left. “Please, Daddy. I want your mouth on my pussy.”
He gives me what I ask for the moment I do.
He goes down on me and takes his time—thirty days of knowing exactly what works, what makes me grip the sheets versus what makes me arch off the mattress. He finds my clit and stays there—pressure, tongue, patience.
I arch up off the mattress before I mean to.
“So wet for me,” he says, against my pussy, against my clit. “Dripping. Soaking already and I’ve barely touched you.”
I grip the headboard. He stays exactly where he is.
His tongue on my clit, two fingers inside me, working together the way he learned on day two in the cabin and has never once forgotten.
I come with his name in my mouth and my hands in his hair—louder than I mean to, louder than I’ve been in weeks, and I don’t care.
Then he moves up my body, holds my gaze.
His cock presses against me—familiar weight, thirty days of knowing exactly what this is—and he pushes inside me.
I say Daddy the way I always do when I’m fully seated around him—not deliberate, just the word that falls out of me at the moment my body understands what it has.
The stretch of his cock, the deep weight of him.
His tan shoulders above me, the silver at his temples catching the morning light.
Thirty days and my pussy is still soaking wet when he pushes inside. Still clenches around him on every thrust like it’s the first time.
“Look at me,” he says.
I look at him.
“Say it again,” he says. “The way you mean it. Tell me whose cock this is.”
“Daddy,” I say. Looking at him. Fully in it. “My Daddy.”
Something shifts in his face. He holds completely still for one beat—like he’s committing the exact sound to memory—and then he moves and I stop thinking in words.
His voice in my ear, his hands on my hips, his cock thrusting into the angle he’s known for thirty days. Tell me how this feels, good girl, your pussy is perfect for me, exactly like that, Daddy’s got you.
“You’re soaking wet for me,” he says, low. “Every single time. Your pussy dripping for Daddy. This pussy is Daddy’s. Say it.”
I grip the sheets.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he says. “All of it.”
The morning light and the unmade bed and the bag by the door. He thrusts deep—once, deliberate—and holds. Then again. His thumb finds my clit and I make a sound that has no words in it.
“Tell me who you belong to,” he says. Low against my ear.
“You,” I say. “Daddy. I belong to you. Your cock, your— Daddy please?—“
“Good girl.” He thrusts harder. Faster now. “Soaking wet and mine. That’s my good girl. Come for me.”
I come with my nails in his arms and his name in my mouth, my pussy clenching tight around his cock. He keeps going—his thumb, his cock thrusting deep, the angle—and I come again, a second wave before the first one’s finished, my whole body shaking through it.
He follows. His cock buried deep, the warmth of his cum filling me, the slow pulse of him that I’ve learned to feel for, that I will always feel for.
After, he pulls me against his chest and lies still.
“The bag,” I say.
“Yes.”
“You’re not taking it.”
“No,” he says. “I’m not taking it.”
I put my hand on his chest. Feel his heartbeat. It’s steady now—completely steady, not the harder beat from the night he came back with split knuckles, the proof that he’d been afraid for me. This is his resting rate. It means he’s done bracing for something.
“Three more rules,” I say. “My rules.”
He goes still. “What rules?”
“My rules,” I say. “I get three.”
A pause. “Go ahead.”
“You keep making the bed. The correct way. Not the this-is-my-last-morning way.”
“Yes,” he says.
“You keep leaving the notes when you go somewhere.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t ever—“ I look at him. “You don’t ever think the word contract again when you think about us. That’s not what this is.”
He looks at me for a long moment. Morning light, his hands in my hair, the thirty-one days behind us.
“No,” he says. “It’s not.”
“Say what it is.”
“Mine,” he says. “You’re mine. That’s what it is.”
I put my face back against his shoulder.
“Yes, Daddy,” I say.
He covers my hand with his. We lie there in the light until his phone goes off for the ten AM debrief call with my father’s team. He answers it with me still against his chest. At one point my father asks directly: “What’s your status, Burke?” There’s a pause. Lachlan says, “Staying on.”
My father says nothing for three seconds.
Then: “Good.” And moves to the next agenda item.
Lachlan ends the call. Puts his phone down. I’m looking at him.
“He knows,” I say.
“He’s a general,” Lachlan says. “He knows everything.”
“Are you scared of him?”
Lachlan looks at me. “No,” he says. “I’m scared of exactly one thing.”
“What?”
“Losing this,” he says. Simple. Factual. “That’s the only threat I can’t handle.”
I put my arms around him.
“You’re not going to,” I say.
“No,” he says. “I’m not.”