Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Rae
Big romantic gesture.
Easy, right?
Except what do you get for the guy who wants the one thing you can’t give?
The answer—everything else you can think of and hope it’s enough.
It was clear he wasn’t expecting to see her when he opened the door.
She’d been on pins and needles waiting for him, even though Olivia had told her what time he was supposed to be coming in, and she’d never known him to be late to anything.
For some reason, even though he hadn’t known she was the reason he’d been invited in, she’d convinced herself he wasn’t going to show.
She hated thinking that he might not have come if he’d known she was the surprise.
“Hi, Papa.” Ew. Nope. Rae wrinkled her nose at the exact same time as Brian. That one wasn’t going to work. Shaking his head, Brian stepped into the room, letting the door close behind him. Well, at least he hadn’t gone running. That was something, right?
“Hi, Papi.”
Nope. Not much better. Maybe a tiny bit better in some ways, but worse in others.
None of these were comfortable.
Brian put his hands on his hips, his expression caught somewhere between exasperation and amusement.
“What are you doing, Rae?”
“Trying to find a compromise, Pop.” She snorted. Nope, that one not only felt weird, but she couldn’t take it seriously with Domi’s voice echoing in her head. Pop Top.
Pointing a stern finger at her, Brian shook his head vehemently.
“Absolutely not that one.”
Which, of course, meant she had to do it.
“What? A Pop Top is basically the same thing as a Daddy Dom.” Well, that was one way to keep him in the room. His jaw dropped at the same time she saw his hand actually twitch.
He wanted to spank her bad.
Thanks, Domi.
Wanting to spank her would probably keep him from running off before she could get her words out. She took a deep breath. Bratting wasn’t what she was supposed to be doing, though she didn’t think it was hurting her case.
“I want to date you.”
Brian frowned.
Okay, that didn’t quite cover it.
That was not a grand gesture. Be vulnerable. Open yourself up. Give him what he needs. Fight for him. Rae took a deep breath.
“I’m falling in love with you.” The words had been so hard to say, yet they felt like such a relief to finally get them out there. And they worked.
Brian froze. The look of astonishment was even better than when he’d walked in the door and saw her standing there, but not quite as satisfying because she didn’t want astonishment—she wanted reassurance.
She wanted to hear that he was falling for her, too, but she knew that when it came to their past, he’d put himself out there more than once for her…
and she’d walked away every time. It was her turn.
“I think I have been from the very beginning. I kept walking away from it because… because I don’t know how we’re going to make this work.
I saw a fight about the whole ‘Daddy’ thing, and it was just easier to avoid it than to face it.
But I don’t want to keep avoiding it… I don’t want to keep avoiding you.
I want to see if we can find a way to make it… to make us work. If you still want to.”
With her hands twisting in front of her as she spoke and her heart pounding like a stampede of elephants inside her chest, she felt almost like she was going to throw up.
But she got the words out. They weren’t as polished as she’d hoped or sound as good as she wanted them to, but she’d gotten them out.
Hopefully, that was the important thing.
But Brian wasn’t responding. He was just standing there, staring at her, poleaxed.
“Um, feel free to chime in any time… otherwise, I can just, like, go back there,”—she jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the door to the bedroom—“and you can leave, and we can pretend like this never happened.” And she would cry herself to sleep here tonight, then never talk about this with anyone again.
Sounded like a plan. But if that was the way it was going to go, she really needed him to get out now before she started to fall apart.
Rather than answering, Brian looked around the room. What, did he think someone was going to jump out at yell ‘Pysch!’ at them?
“You rented the room for tonight? To tell me that?” he asked in a hushed voice.
Okay, that sounded promising. He seemed touched. Touched was good. She could work with touched. Hope started rising up inside her.
“Yes?” It came out as more of a question than a statement. The question was whether he would stay. Whether or not she’d done enough.
Whether or not she was enough.
He didn’t answer her. Instead, he strode forward, reaching her in two steps, his hands coming up to cup her face, and he caught her lips in a searing kiss. Rae’s lips parted with a sigh of relief, and his tongue delved between them, claiming her mouth as his own.
But they hadn’t finished talking.
Rae pushed at his chest, squirming back.
“I’m still not calling you ‘Daddy,’ though.” Dammit. Did it have to come out sounding like a challenge? She hadn’t meant for it to. Brian didn’t move his hands from her face, though. His thumb made a slow sweep over her lower lip, holding her right where she was, with her hands on his chest.
“I think…” He took a deep breath. “Would it be okay if I called myself ‘Daddy’?”
She frowned, not because it sounded bad but because she wasn’t quite sure what he meant.
“Like, talk about yourself in the third person?”
A rueful smile twisted his lips.
“I know it might sound a little silly—”
“No, no, I’m just trying to understand what you’re saying.” Even if it did end up sounding a little silly, she could live with that. The important thing was that he was right here with her, wanting to find a way, looking for a solution. A compromise.
Maybe they couldn’t have it all, but they could have enough.
That was life, wasn’t it? Nobody ever got one hundred percent of everything they wanted.
Yesterday, the woman who ran Human Resources at Rae’s accounting firm had told her a fun fact about job hiring—they looked for the candidate who came the closest to getting ninety percent of the qualifications they wanted.
They could work on the other ten percent from there.
Trying to find someone who fit one hundred percent was an impossible task.
That’s what Rae had been doing. She’d been trying to find one hundred percent, but that wasn’t life. That wasn’t people. But she thought she and Brian were well above ninety percent. They could keep working on whatever percent they had left.
“What do you mean, call yourself ‘Daddy’?” she asked, prodding him when he didn’t answer right away. He took a deep breath, and she realized this was a moment where he was making himself vulnerable, the way she had.
To her amusement, a blush was reddening his cheeks. Whatever he was going to say, she might agree to it just for that. It was incredibly adorable. He cleared his throat, his expression altering just a bit, as though he was trying to make himself appear surer of himself than he actually was.
“Well, when we were on Hideaway, I had to hold myself back from speaking the way I normally do. Normally in bed, I would say things like ‘Be a good girl for Daddy’ or ‘You’re taking Daddy’s cock so well.
’ I didn’t while we were there, but since we’re talking about it, I wondered if calling myself ‘Daddy’ would also be a hard limit for you.
” The blush on his cheeks darkened as he spoke, but his gaze never wavered from hers, taking in her reaction.
No disgust rose, no immediate rejection of the idea, nothing that made her think ‘absolutely not.’ In fact, there was an odd little tingle between her legs at the sentences he’d apparently been holding back for her.
“I think I’d like that,” she said, almost wonderingly. She wouldn’t have expected to, but hearing Brian actually say them… it was hot. Maybe it really wouldn’t hurt to try it herself. “Daddy.”
Oops. Nope. She ruined it. The second she called him that, her entire body flinched.
Ironically enough, so did his. The horror in his expression was almost enough to make her laugh. See? He didn’t want her calling him ‘Daddy’ either.
“That just sounded wrong,” he complained. “You don’t say it right.”
Rae bristled. She’d just wanted to try it, to see if she could. She didn’t like how it sounded, but she also didn’t like hearing that she’d done something wrong… even if it was better that he didn’t like hearing her say it. Yeah, she was a mass of contradictions. So what?
Before she could express her disgruntlement, Brian must have noticed her reaction, and his expression softened.
“It’s not going to mean to you what it does to me,” he said.
“It’s better for both of us if you call me Brian or Sir.
I can call myself Daddy if I really need to hear it…
and yes, I know what that sounded like. You can just let it go.
” He raised his eyebrow at her, giving her a stern look as a warning not to ruin the moment.
She closed her mouth again, pressing her lips together to keep from making a joke. They were finding a compromise, and that was more important than making fun of Brian for talking about calling himself Daddy. At least for now. Maybe she’d get another opportunity in the future.
It really was a good compromise. While it didn’t feel right for her to say it or even think it, somehow, Brian made it sound good when he said it.
“So, we have a compromise?” she asked wonderingly.
Was it really that easy? Just talk through the things she thought were insurmountable, and—since they were both willing to bend—they found a solution that worked for both of them.
It seemed almost too easy. Or maybe it just made sense.
They’d been fighting this for so long, and it had been so hard, giving in was just naturally easier.
“We have a compromise. Thank God.” He closed his eyes briefly before opening them again, the bright blue boring into her. “Because I’m in love with you too, Sunshine.”
Rae’s heart jumped in her chest, her heart thrilling to the words, but she didn’t have a chance to respond before his lips claimed hers again. This time, she kissed him back with all the fervor of her emotions as they surged up within her.
This.
This was it.
This was everything she’d been wanting and who she’d really been wanting, and just letting herself finally feel it all and be swept away by the emotion was an ecstasy as good as an orgasm. Though she knew she was going to get at least one of those, too.
Then, suddenly, she was being spun around, and she squealed as his lips were pulled away from hers.
“Hey!”
“Hey, yourself, Sunshine. You didn’t really think you were going to get away with calling me a Pop Top, did you?”
“It wasn’t my idea, it was Domi’s!” Did she throw her bestie under the bus in a heartbeat? Absolutely. In situations like this, it was every brat for herself. Besides, Domi wasn’t here, so she was safe. And Mitch would probably think it was hilarious when he heard about it.
He was a sadist, so it wasn’t like it would be hard for Brian to convince him to give Domi a punishment. But Domi was a masochist, so she’d like it.
Not that Rae was going to hate it. She already knew that as she was turned to face the spanking bench, which was so helpfully set up right behind her.
It was a cutesy-looking bench with pink leather and light wood, but that didn’t detract from what it actually was…
and as soon as Brian had her skirt down, he started bending her over the bench.
She wasn’t actually protesting, though. She wanted his hand coming down on her ass. She wanted the spanking and the heat and the pleasure. She wanted all of him.