Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Price
A fter the team meeting, I practically trample the staff that stand between me and my prize.
Anger coils inside me. At myself.
I shouldn’t have bolted like I did last night, but when I saw she was going to be on my staff, I fucking panicked like a kid caught with his pants down. I suck with people. Knowing how to handle most normal situations challenges me.
Then, when I tried to casually ask Ted about a counselor named Summer Greer…
He told me she’s the girl we hired as the ages six through eight cabin monitor but also…Hailey’s speech therapist.
Fuck. I want to be the dad my daughter needs. I want to break the cycle of shitty parenting that goes back three generations in my family.
It’s only been a year since we’ve been together full time, and when I found out kids at her school were teasing her because of her lisp, I damn near burned the place to the ground. After I scared the shit out of the principal and her teacher, they said she might get some help from a speech therapist.
The summer camp and our move was already planned, so when Ted came across a counselor’s application that had some speech therapy background on it, I told him to get her here.
Now, here she is, and I’m totally fucked.
All I want is to carry her back to my office, shove her over my desk and mount her like a junkyard dog. I can practically hear the sound of wet flesh slapping, her breath being driven from her lungs with every pump, pump, pump.
And then give her more, because I’ll never be able to stop when it comes to her. I’m surprised I’m not getting complaints about the obvious hard-on tenting the front of my combat pants ever since she walked in the room.
I damn near kicked the door down when she disappeared into the ladies’ room before I could chase her down.
She emerged wearing her Camp WanderLust t-shirt and our standard khaki shorts, and the fuck if she doesn’t make the uniform look like Victoria’s Secret on steroids. She’s tamed her hair into two braids tied with little lavender ribbons, as I watch her park her wobbling suitcase next to a bookcase filled with lime green bins with each camper’s name on the side.
Taking on the camp with my friend Ted will not be without its challenges for me. But I agreed that sticking with the standing schedule of a youth camp this summer would be a good way to ease into the closest thing to a job I’ve had in a decade.
As she fists her hips, her make-up freshened and a shimmering pink lipstick applied to the lips that were around my cock, our eyes find each other.
My fingers twitch as I start her way, remembering how her hair felt clutched between them.
A few other staff are gathered around as everyone does the expected mingling after the meeting.
The main hall is used for activities and meals, and I pick up from the group standing around me that the mounted boars’ heads and stuffed black bear in the corner might not be PC. I don’t care right now.
They’re talking, but I’m processing none of it. My eyes are locked on her as she scans the room, looking unsure, her gaze flickering over me with an impish smile, and I walk away from the other counselors without a goodbye.
“About last night,” I start, barely able to form words, remembering how I had the hardest orgasm of my life hours ago in her mouth.
“That’s a movie isn’t it? ‘About last night’…” She clicks her front teeth together, nipping at her manicured fingernail, and Jesus, I want that smile with me for the rest of my life. “Anyway, it’s fine. We both knew it was no strings. I was a little…” She tugs her lips to the side, squishing up her face. “Not myself. I would have never done that without tequila and blow job shots.”
My heart sinks. Is she trying to tell me in a polite way that without her beer goggles on, she would have never been interested in me?
Of course she isn’t, you ugly motherfucker. She’s so far above your paygrade, you couldn’t touch her if you were standing on a twelve-foot ladder.
No strings .
I suddenly hate that fucking expression. Yes there are fucking strings. The strings are, I don’t ever want to see you with another man. That no fraternization policy goes double for you, little sister.
There’s an unreadable squint in her left eye, and my palpitations kick up a notch. I have to keep things professional. She’s not just a counselor, she’s gonna be working with Hailey.
I’m frozen, mute, hands in my pockets, dick hard, brain shutting down…
Then, she fucking saves me, poking at my chest, her eyelashes fluttering, a little glitter catching the light on her cheeks as she says, “Did you know you were going to be my boss?”
“No.” I finally form words, then clarify. “Not until I spotted the Camp WanderLust t-shirt in your bag.”
She nods, chewing the corner of her mouth, tapping the toes of her floral-patterned hiking boots. “So, where do you want me?”
I grunt as my cock finds a new inch it didn’t have before. I want to tell her I want her everywhere. Right here, right now. In my office. Under the stars. In her cabin.
And that teasing sparkle in her wide, eat-me-alive-eyes tells me she knows what she’s doing to me.
I grind my molars and growl through clenched teeth, “I need to introduce you to someone.”
“This is Hailey,” I tell Summer as we come into the activity room, and the way her face lights up almost makes me crumble. “She’s the young girl we hired you for, as a speech therapist.”
Her hands clasp in front of her mouth.
Hailey turns at the sound of her name, the finger painting she’s up to her elbows in forgotten, and raises her hand in a quick salute, leaving a stripe of purple and yellow paint on her forehead.
“Where you been, Papa Pwice?” Hailey squishes up her nose. “You said you would paint wif me.”
Hailey called me just Price for the first year after we met, which was fine by me. Then she started putting the ‘papa’ in front. Someday, maybe she’ll drop the ‘Price’ but whatever works for her. She’s not had the easiest path in her six short years, so I promised myself above all else, I won’t do anything that makes it harder.
The salute is something my dad and I used to do when I was a kid before he disappeared, leaving me and my brother with my mom, who had no business raising kids.
Weird how the past comes back to the present, even when you wish it wouldn’t. Hailey clasps her paint-covered hands together like she’s saying a prayer, an excited sparkle in her eyes as she says, “I made it to the top of da rope today wif Miss Wiley!” she bursts out with her cute as fuck little lisp, then turns to Summer. “Who are you?”
“This is Summer,” I say, her name as sweet as honey on my tongue.
Miss Wiley is Monica Wiley, my accountant and assistant, and the closest thing I have to a mother and a stand-in grandmother to Hailey. I begged her and paid her a boat load of cash to come with us this summer as a ‘counselor’, but really I just needed a friendly face and someone I trusted besides Ted to help me with Hailey.
“Thummer…” Hailey squints and nods. “I wike your name.”
“Thanks,” Summer smiles on a soft laugh. “I like yours too.”
“She’s going to be helping you. You remember we talked about what a speech therapist is?”
“I wemember.” Hailey nods, scratching at her cheek, leaving another paint smudge behind, and my heart sings whenever I see her smile. “She’s nice. I wike her.”
With that, she’s done with me and goes back to her painting. I turn, Summer’s eyes narrow and I already know what she is thinking.
“My daughter,” I exhale, my heart breaking at the flicker of shock and pain in her warm brown eyes, feeling the unusual need to explain. “I didn’t really know her mom. Tequila was involved,” I say, and her face softens in understanding. “I’m not proud of how it happened, but I’m proud to be her father. She’s changed everything for me.”
Summer rolls her lips, her eyes drifting to the bank of windows across the room where there are other staff outside, standing in groups, doing the social things I never seem to understand.
My heart is racing as her silence ends with, “No chance of you and her mom ever…?”
I shake my head. “No. Was never like that and she passed away. It’s just me and Hailey.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. I—” Horror and embarrassment send a shadow across her soft features.
“It’s okay. I’ve never been great with people, but with Hailey we’re muddling through this whole parenting thing together. She’s probably raising me more than I’m raising her. I want her to have this.” I wave my arm in an arc, but Summer blinks, looking unsure. “Nature. Adventure. She spent her first years in Chicago. The city never worked for me.”
Some part of me wants to tell her more, about the jagged and jaded parts. She’s too soft. Too pure. I don’t want her to carry around the broken parts of me. Or the reasons why I’m that way.
“You don’t like the city,” she says, and it’s not a question, so I don’t answer. “I grew up in New York until I was seven, then we moved to Detroit. That’s about as city as you get. I still go back to New York whenever I can. I love it there.” I see in the way her eyebrows rise, the way her lips stay open. I’m missing some cue here, but whatever it is, I’m lost. As much as my heart and my dick want to spend time with Summer, what I want will always be second to what Hailey needs.
“You should get to know her,” I say, wondering if such a perfect, sweet girl like her could ever understand the monsters inside of me and why they came to live there. “See you later.”
They don’t know I’m watching them.
The view from the camera in the living room of our cabin shows me the back of my daughter’s head, her blonde hair curling around her ears as she sits with Summer on the floor next to the wide back window, repeating lines of a silly made-up rhyme that has her giggling as much as talking.
The entire camp has cameras and audio equipment set up. The Adventure Network installed it all, wanting to get a realistic flavor of my life.
Side benefit I didn’t expect is I get to be a fucking voyeur. I’m the watcher instead of the watched, for once.
From my seat behind the monitors in the office in the main hall, I take it all in. Summer is a fucking natural with Hailey, making the whole thing into a game, and if I didn’t want to admit it to myself before, I’m beginning to understand what other people mean when they talk about how it feels to fall in love.
The falling part is spot on. Like falling down a sheer mountainside with no fucking helmet.
Still, all I can keep thinking is, she’s perfect.
She’s sweet and sassy and smart. With perfect hair. Perfect tits. Perfect ass. And don’t get me started on those lips.
Inside my head, there are not just visions of the filthy, monstrous things I want to do with her and to her.
But other things. Things I was sure would never mean anything to me.
Like waking up next to someone every morning. Making sure she eats and drinks and goes to the doctor and never uses her phone while she’s driving.
But that’s not the most shocking thing going on inside my head.
I can’t shake the feeling I want to give Hailey a sibling. Or ten. With this girl who is rocking my boat until I feel like I’m going to puke over the edge.
Fuck. I know she’s a city girl. I see the painted nails, the makeup, the beauty-salon smooth legs. I’m all wrong for her, but she’s my goddess and I would die a happy man if I just got to taste that pussy one time.
No fraternization with the staff.
Even if I’d recognized Summer the moment I saw her, I don’t think I would have been able to stop myself from being pulled into her orbit. I couldn’t have walked away.
My phone starts ringing, and I grab it without hesitating, grateful for the fucking distraction from the chaos inside my head and the fist squeezing at my heart.
It’s Ted.
I answer in my usual baseline irritated tone. “What?”
He chuckles, knowing me well enough to realize my surly demeanor is nothing personal. “Good to hear your voice too, dick . How are things going?”
I turn the volume back on and my balls seize up as Summer stumbles over her own made-up tongue twister. Six suckers sucking syrup surely sucks . Her laugh doesn’t help. I’d like to hear that laugh while she’s sucking my syrup.
“Fine. What do you need?”
“Look, I know you’ve got Hailey there and a million and one things to do… but the Adventure Network guy wants us to do a hike up the north logging road to the original camp cabin with some of the staff tomorrow, but no one’s been up there for about a month. Need to be sure it’s still standing and get it cleaned up a little. Never know if a bear’s been for a visit or who knows what. Can you get up there and make sure it’s ready while I manage the staff training here? You’re more the handle-the-shit-in-the-woods guy and I’m the handle-the-paperwork-and-the-humans guy.”
“I do not disagree with that,” I mutter, trying to catch my breath.
All other thought is dampened by Summer slowly pronouncing the word ‘suck’ over and over, sounding it out slowly like she’s been sent here by Satan to torture me.
Or tempt me.
“Great,” Ted says over the sound of voices in the background. “Wiley and I will take care of Hailey.”
“Fine. I’ll check it out.”
“You can go most of the way in your Jeep, the road is rougher now though, but you’ll make it. The last few hundred yards you’ll be on foot.”
Yeah, and I won’t be alone .