Chapter 9 #4
I spread more lotion over her left cheek. She exhaled and pushed subtly into the touch.
“You liked it,” she said.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“So much that stopping was difficult.”
Pleasure touched her face.
She reached back and caught my wrist.
Then she guided my hand down.
Over the hot curve of her ass.
Toward the wet heat between her thighs.
My body answered before my mind did. My fingers flexed. Her legs opened for me. The scent of her rose warm and sweet.
I stopped with my fingertips an inch from her.
Then I took her hand away from my wrist and kissed each finger.
“No.”
Her eyes flashed.
“But I’m wet.”
“I know.”
“You made me wet.”
“I know.”
“Then do something about it.”
I held her hand against my mouth.
“Not tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because tonight is about discipline ending in safety.”
“It could end in an orgasm and safety.”
“Another time, yes.”
She tried to pull her hand free. I let her, because restraint had not been negotiated for aftercare.
“You said the agreement included orgasm control.”
“It does.”
“Then control it in the direction I prefer.”
I smiled broadly. “That isn’t how control works.”
Her glare could have stripped paint.
I stroked her hair back from her face.
“I need you to learn that I may put you over my knee, make your ass red, and still carry you somewhere safe afterward without taking anything else. Discipline does not create a debt.”
“But I’m asking.”
“Yes. And I’m saying no. Not because I don’t want you.”
She looked pointedly at my trousers. My erection remained obvious.
She went quiet.
The adrenaline had begun to fall. I saw the change in her eyes. The bright edge softened. Her shoulders drew inward. Her lower lip trembled once, and she bit it.
There she was.
Not the brat who had stretched her feet across my lap.
The vulnerable part beneath the test. The one that had needed proof I would hold the line and was now frightened by the fact I had.
I pulled her pajamas back into place with careful hands.
Then I lifted her again.
The scratchy blanket had arrived that afternoon. Grey wool. Ugly as requested.
I wrapped her in it and settled her in the corner of the sofa.
She rubbed the edge between two fingers.
“It’s horrible.”
“You specified horrible.”
“I said scratchy.”
“This is scratchy.”
“It looks military. Like I was washed in goat milk.”
“I may have chosen poorly.”
She almost smiled.
I went to the kitchen.
Milk. Dark chocolate. Cinnamon. Not too sweet.
When I returned, she had arranged the blanket around herself until only her bare toes showed. Her coloring book lay open on the table.
I handed her the beverage.
“Two hands.”
She took it with both hands.
“Drink slowly.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
No bite in it now.
I sat beside her and offered the pencils. She chose red, then gold.
The page showed a firebird inside a ring of black branches. She colored the first feather while I opened the storybook I had found through a dealer who owed me a favor. It was an English translation. Poor in places.
The prince received the voice of a pompous Palermo customs officer. The wolf sounded suspiciously like Tonio after three glasses of wine. The tsar developed a Chicago accent I could not sustain for more than two pages.
Yelena looked up from the firebird.
“What are you doing?”
“Reading.”
“That is not how a Russian tsar sounds.”
“You’ve met many?”
“It’s criminal.”
“I am a criminal.”
She snorted.
I continued.
The horse sounded like Pietro when annoyed. The firebird became a dramatic woman from Brooklyn who refused every instruction and complained about captivity while stealing golden apples.
Yelena put down the red pencil.
“You made the firebird me.”
“I would never.”
“She just called the prince an incompetent kidnapper.”
“Lots of people would do that.”
Her laugh arrived.
Not five seconds late. Immediately.
Warm and helpless and tired. It filled the room more thoroughly than noise had any right to.
By the time the prince reached the third task, Yelena had left the sofa. She sat on the floor between my feet with the blanket around her shoulders and her coloring book on the table. Her cheek rested against my knee. I read with one hand and stroked her hair with the other.
The red and gold firebird slowly took shape beneath her pencils. Her movements became less exact as exhaustion settled over her.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, little one?”
“Was I still a good girl?”
I closed the book around one finger. She did not look up. The question hurt more than the marks in my palm from her nails had.
“You were honest,” I said. “You told me what you wanted.”
Her pencil stopped.
“You were brave enough to trust me with it.”
I smoothed her hair behind her ear.
“And you took your consequence beautifully. So yes, my little falcon. You were very good.”
She released a slow breath. Her body softened against my leg.
Five minutes later, the pencil slipped from her fingers. She slept with one hand resting around my ankle beneath my trouser cuff, as if even unconscious she needed to confirm I remained there.
I did.
The untouched hot chocolate cooled on the table. The firebird waited half-finished beneath the lamp. My cock had finally softened, but the ache in my chest had not.
I had been naked with women.
I had given pleasure. Taken it. Woken beside bodies I desired and left before breakfast without considering the departure a loss.
None of that had felt like this.
Yelena slept against my knee with her ass warm beneath an ugly blanket, trusting me to guard the vulnerable hours after surrender.
I understood then that tending to her was not what happened after intimacy.
It was the intimacy.
Perhaps the deepest kind I had ever known.