My Big Fat Daddy Issues (Forbidden Father Figures #7)

Lily

Ishouldn’t be in his office.

Not like this.

Not with mascara streaking down my cheeks and my thighs pressed together like I can hold in the shame. Like I can pretend the hallway stares didn’t happen. Like I didn’t hear Tyler laugh when he showed my photo to his friends.

I’m not even crying anymore.

I’m shaking.

And when the door creaks open behind me, I flinch so hard my knees knock.

“It’s just me, sweetheart.”

The principal’s voice is quiet but underneath it, there’s something…off. Like he’s holding back a thunderstorm.

I don’t turn around. I hear the soft click as the door closes.

“Turn around and look at me.”

God, I can’t.

Not when it’s him.

Not when it’s Dane.

The man who used to make me pancakes with Mickey Mouse ears. The man I’ve called dad for years.

After he gave my mom an ultimatum, quit drinking, go to counseling or else, she chose or else.

She left a note and me behind. Dane didn’t flinch. He never made me feel like being left behind with him was a problem.

Dane Weber is my stepfather and also the principal at my school. It’s been an interesting four years.

I turn as my heart hiccups.

He’s across the office in three long strides, all six foot four of him in that tailored black suit that makes him look more like a bodyguard than a school administrator. Hands flexing. Jaw all hard right angles and those ice blue eyes that send heat waves prickling over my skin.

Why does he have to look like that? All the girls talk about him. They wonder how big his dick is. They ask me. Tease me.

I don’t know for sure. I’ve never actually seen it, but I’ve seen hints.

Evidence against the front of his pants. An occasional gray sweatpants sighting.

A new rush of wetness coats my panties.

God, I’m going to hell, I know it.

My step-father is forty-two. I’m eighteen, a month from graduation and he’s the hottest man I’ve ever seen. None of the boys at school compare. Dark hair, silver at the temples, just the right kind of lines around his eyes and in his forehead.

And don’t get me started on his forearms. I’ve been drooling in my Captain Crunch at breakfast for longer than I should staring at them every morning as he sits bare chested at our kitchen table, drinking coffee, asking me questions about the upcoming day, what I might need help with not knowing that I’m secretly fantasizing about how his lips would feel on mine.

“What happened?” he asks as his scent tickles my nostrils. I’d know it anywhere. It’s this dark spicy cologne I’ve given him every Christmas for years.

Being the daughter of the principal is no picnic to begin with. Making friends is like playing some lawless LARP game. You never know who really wants to be your friend and who is about to stab you in the back with a foam sword.

I shake my head. “Nothing happened.”

I tap the toes of my regulation black lace up Mary Janes on the black linoleum floor.

He steps closer. Goosebumps rise on the exposed skin of my legs where the hem of my navy-blue plaid skirt rests mid-thigh.

“What. Happened.”

My throat dilates. Mouth like the Sahara. “It was just a picture—”

“A picture?” His voice turns to thunder. “Someone posted a picture of you?”

Heat rushes to my cheeks. “No. Yes…not really posted, Tyler sent it. From his phone. Someone from gym class must have taken it. I don’t know how many people he sent it to.”

His eyes darken. “What kind of picture.”

I cover my face.

But he doesn’t let me hide. “Show me.”

Large, warm hands close gently over my wrists and tug my arms down. My lip trembles, but his touch is…not angry. He’s never angry with me.

With mom, he was. A lot.

Especially when she would berate me for random things.

Like not keeping my room as spotless as a surgery suite. Or, her favorite, not cooking her daily breakfast omelet exactly how she wanted it. Slightly runny in the center but crisp and fluffy on the outside.

Adding some bravery to my spine, I untuck my phone from under my leg, tap the screen and hold it up so my dad can see it. The photo is of me in the girl’s locker room, wet from the shower, white towel open, the full Monty on display.

My classmates tease me about my flat chest. I’ve barely developed compared to most of them. I have only a hint of hair down there and I’m still in a training bra.

His teeth grind and it takes all my courage not to bolt out of his office. Silence is all he gives in return as he releases a shaking breath and darkens the screen on my phone, setting it on top of my backpack next to my feet.

“You’re shaking,” he’s right in front of me, and for a second, the storm in his voice breaks. “Baby, why didn’t you come to me?”

I suck in a breath.

Because even after everything—after Mom vanished and he had to put the pieces of an abandoned teenage girl back together, I still dream about him standing at my bedroom door, saying, “Ready for a story, princess?”

Because I’ve never felt safe with anyone but him and I have a secret fear that if I’m too much trouble, he’ll toss me out like yesterday’s garbage.

Not that he’s ever done anything that hinted he would consider it, but the whole situation has always felt precarious.

I whisper. “I didn’t want you to be mad.

His jaw ticks.

Then—God help me—he lifts me.

Just scoops me into his arms like I’m made of porcelain and forbidden dreams. “When have I ever been mad at my little girl?”

He carries me to the leather couch by the window and sits down with me in his lap, my legs over his, one of his hands already pressing gently to my lower back, the other cradling the back of my head.

And I melt.

Like a pad of butter in the sun, I lean in, head on his shoulder my entire being going soft and pliant.

“Never.” I admit. “I just want to be good. I don’t want your life to be harder because of me.”

“Oh, baby. I don’t care what the law says,” he growls into my hair as I remember how he informed me two months ago that the divorce was final but that as far as he was concerned, that didn’t change anything between us.

“You’re my daughter.” The last word sounds painful and he adds, “You’re mine. No matter what the world thinks.”

His hand moves up and down my spine in long, slow strokes. Like he’s reminding himself I’m real. Like he needs to calm himself down before he does something illegal.

I’m eighteen so it’s not that kind of illegal. But, he’s my principal. I’m at the end of my senior year, but there are still rules. Laws.

“What did I say the day your mom left?” his lips brush my temple.

I blink up at him.

He tips my chin with two fingers. Forces me to look into his eyes.

The same dark green ones that used to soften when I danced around the kitchen barefoot.

“You said… I’d always have a home with you.”

He nods. “That hasn’t changed.”

“But I’m not—”

“You’re mine,” he repeats on a grunt. “Not hers. Never hers. You know that.”

His chest draws me in. My fingers twitch to reach up and lace them into his hair, brush my lips on his just to share his breath.

“I don’t know who I am. Where I belong.”

“You know the only reason I stayed with your mother was because of you. I would never leave you or let her take you away.”

I shouldn’t feel this hot, this horny for him. Not with the man who shared a bed at least for a moment with my mother.

But I do.

Because the way he’s looking at me right now—like he wants to break every rule, ruin every boundary, burn down the world—it lights something deep and wicked in my belly.

“You’re not a little girl anymore, are you?” he says, his thumbs moving to brush my cheeks.

“No,” I whisper.

His eyes drop to my mouth.

“You’ve grown up so beautifully, sweetheart.” His voice drops to that rumble that makes things inside of me reevaluate my moral compass. “And you don’t even know what that does to me.”

My thighs clench. Wet warmth seeps from my body sending dark shame coursing through my veins.

He notices.

And his whole body goes still.

“You’ve been needing this,” he says, pulling me tighter until I feel like we are merging into one person. “Needing me to see. Needing me to protect you. In a different way.”

My breath hitches my insides fluttering. “Yes.”

His lips graze my forehead. “I’m going to be taking care of you now different than before. No more hiding. No more crying alone. Those boys, they don’t get to look at you ever again. You understand me?”

I nod against him.

“Now, say it,” he growls. “Who is going to take care of you?”

“You are.”

“Good girl.”

My breathing turns to shallow pants.

And that’s when I feel it. A movement. A twitch against my backside.

Hard.

Thick.

Pressing beneath me.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t hide it. He lets me feel what I do to him.

And when I shift in his lap, he groans in a way that shakes me down to my marrow and my nipples nearly pop through my white button up blouse.

“Daddy…” I whisper, the title I used for him over the years feels decadent on my tongue. I haven’t called him that for so long. That word is for little girls not for eighteen-year-olds that know better.

His whole-body jerks. That thickness under my behind nearly catapults me off his lap.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he rasps. “The Daddy I am to you now is not the same as I was then.”

The way his arms engulf me makes my pulse tick faster.

There’s a spinning sensation inside my head like I’m falling.

And I squeeze my eyes shut and hope.

He feels it.

Just like me.