9. Seth
CHAPTER 9
My birthday so far has been one for the books. It started out as a fun-filled morning and afternoon with my girls, exploring the science museum we hadn’t been to since before Luna was born. Watching her absorb all the exhibits with looks of fascination and wonder was worth every second of the two-hour drive each way. Now, we’re finishing up dinner at Doc’s house, where Astrid served the entire crew one of the best home-cooked meals I’ve ever had.
Even if I’m a meat-eater, and the food was all plant-based.
She made a point to tell my wife each dish’s list of naturally grown ingredients every time Twyla or I remarked on how delicious it was, razzing my woman about her undying love for fast food. Well, until Doc shut her down with a laser-focused glance that went from her eyes, to her throat, then back to her eyes. Her little gulp was adorable and so similar to a reaction my wife often has that it makes it obvious the two women are siblings, even while they don’t look very much alike.
At the head of the table is Doc in his usual spot, Astrid to his right, with Luna between her and Twyla, since our daughter is obsessed with her aunt. I’m sure it has a lot to do with the fact that Astrid is a professional makeup artist, and they play dress-up every day she’s here when Twyla and I are both at work. We would’ve hired a nanny or at least found a way to split our schedules so she could be with one of her parents at all times, but Astrid put her foot down the very first time she heard what we were considering for childcare. She had finished cosmetology school, now sets her own hours as a makeup artist, and was home “with no one but Scout-boy to keep me company while Neil is at work,” so she assigned herself the job of being her niece’s nanny.
I’m at the other head of the table—or maybe the ass, unless a table is considered double-headed, like a dildo—as the birthday boy, and to my right is Corbin, with Vi next to him. And finishing out the circle of who I consider my family are Clarice and Brian. At a small table off to the side are Corbin and Vi’s kiddos. We tried to get Luna to sit with them to eat, but she insisted she wanted to sit with her daddy for his birthday. Really, I think she just prefers to be around adults when given the choice. She’s a little sponge like I was at her age, scary-smart, just like both her parents, and although she loves to play with other children, when it comes to times when she’s not being active and has to sit still, it’s the big people she wants to sit with and listen to. Even when there are older kids she could hang out with, she’ll choose the adult table every time.
So up until now, conversation has been either PG or very coded—since she can already read, so the “spelling things out so she doesn’t know what we’re saying” phase didn’t last long. She’s on her last bite of cake though, so when she swallows, I call her name and tell her to come over to me.
When my little girl is by my side, I lean down and whisper in her ear, “All you kids are done eating now, baby. How about you go claim your spot on the couch for the movie they’re putting on?”
She leans around me to peek into the living room, and I look over my shoulder to see what she sees.
Fuck my life.
“It’s okay, Daddy. Scout is saving it for me,” she says, spinning on her heel to no doubt go back to her seat at the table, but I catch her tiny hand and tug her back to me.
I want to be careful here, because there’s no way I want my child to think I don’t want her presence. I will never make my baby feel rejected, no matter how desperately I may desire adult-only time. I’m a certified genius. I can figure out a way to get what I want while making sure my little one knows she’s always wanted, important, and is not in trouble if Mommy and Daddy need alone time together, as in without her. It’s a little more difficult to strategize when we’re in a group, because “it’s not alone time, since everybody else is here too, Daddy.”
While her mama can put her foot down and tell her to go play just “because I said so,” there’s something inside me that cannot for the life of me turn Luna away without giving her a reason that’s acceptable to her.
Maybe it’s the years I’ve now spent as a soft Dom, toeing the line of being a Daddy Dom for my submissive wife. My doll ranks very low on the masochism scale and needs the love, reassurance, and praise that comes with a DD/lg—Daddy Dom/little girl—relationship, but without any of the age regression on her part. And seven years ago, you couldn’t have paid me to believe I’d like anything about the DD role, especially if you told me you were taking away ninety-two percent of any type of sadism I could at least enjoy as a consolation prize.
Too much responsibility.
Too much pleasure lost by giving up my sadistic tendencies.
Too much touching, and kissing, and cuddling, and… ugh.
I was way too selfish for that shit.
But then came Twyla.
The twenty-four-year-old woman who’d never even been properly kissed.
And just knowing I was her first everything made me want to be the very best at each physical pleasure and show of affection to be had. I wanted her to experience it all, to never look back after choosing me and ask herself if she made the wrong decision, if she missed out on touches and kisses and cuddles by picking someone who never bestowed those things on anyone he played with in the past.
And seeing and hearing and feeling how much pleasure she got from those touches, kisses, and cuddles, so responsive in a way I’d never experienced before, her reactions became an addiction for me. I began to crave her body’s natural response to my every little caress and stroke and gentle squeeze. Became ravenous for her sweet gasps and pretty moans more than the squeals of shock and the screams of begged-for pain I desired from everyone before her.
So much more that I don’t miss or even think about my former Sadist identity.
That’s not who I am anymore. I now identify as a soft Dom, and there are no regrets.
So, since that’s who I am, it would make sense that it carries over into my parenting style. I spend every moment making sure that my wife/sub feels loved, safe, and wanted above all others. Why would I not treat our child the same way? In a totally different way, of course, but with the same result—her feeling cherished like the gift she is and knowing her father will always do everything he possibly can to not let anything bad happen to her.
Or…
Maybe I’m just wrapped around her little finger and spoil her rotten because it physically hurts me when she’s sad.
Whatever the reason, my brain knows I probably shouldn’t worry so much about her feelings getting a little hurt, and it knows it’s a teaching moment I should jump on to make her understand adults just need time away from their kids, and it doesn’t mean we love them any less and has nothing to do with them. But my heart can’t take it when her sweet baby face expresses disappointment or any other negative emotion.
She looks too much like her mother, I swear. If she looked more like me, maybe I’d be totally different.
But probably not.
I look into her pretty eyes framed by the miniature version of her mom’s black plastic glasses and resort to manipulation. “For Daddy’s birthday, I want you to hang out on Uncle Neil and Auntie Astrid’s couch and cuddle up to Scout-boy, because he looks super lonely over there, keeping your spot saved all by himself. And I really, really want you to enjoy a movie with the kids. Can you give me this birthday present? It makes me sad when Scout looks all lonesome. Look at those poor little puppy-dog eyes.”
We both glance over at the Australian Shepherd, and since he heard his name, just like I knew he would be, he’s looking over at us expectantly.
“See? He’s waiting on you to come keep him company. He wants his favorite wittle human,” I pile it on.
Finally, she sighs, looks back up at me, then shakes her head while looking skyward, and says, “If that’s really what you want for your birthday, Daddy, I guess I’ll go over there. You promise you’ll be okay without me?”
My heart seizes in my chest while my jaw and fists clench. Luckily, I had let go of her and my hands are just resting on the table. I say through gritted teeth but my voice still steady, “I’ll be fine for one movie. But not a moment longer. I’ll need my Luna girl by my side after that.” I only tell her this because I know she’s going to be out like a light for the rest of the night within the first thirty minutes of the show. It happens every time she snuggles Scout.
“Okay, Daddy. Happy birthday,” she tells me, before going up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek and then skipping over to the couch, climbing up to bury herself in Scout’s fur.
Teeth still clenched, eyes going wild, nostrils flared, I turn to my wife, who’s holding back laughter, and we whisper-yell in unison, “Cuteness aggressiooon!”
After I let out a strangled growl while shaking my fists in the air, I say to the table, “I swear sometimes I just want to squeeze her until she pops or just… I don’t know… bite her. So fucking cute I can’t stand it.”
They all laugh, since they were with me the first time I tried to voice what I was feeling when this emotion came over me, before I knew it had a name, and Doc explained it’s a pretty common thing. This feeling of contained violence when one sees like… cute puppy videos or adorable babies that just makes them want to shake them. According to him, it’s just an “involuntary response to being overwhelmed with positive emotions.”
Twyla and I have had fun the past four years coming up with different scenarios.
“I just want to punt her like a football.”
“I’m gonna squeeze her until her head uncorks like a bottle of champagne.”
“I wanna take a chunk out of her fat little baby cheeks.”
Things I’m sure if one has never felt cuteness aggression before would make them call CPS if they heard the creative things that have come out of our mouths.
“So, now that you’ve used mind-fuckery on your own offspring, what’s the plan for the rest of the evening?” Brian asks with a smirk, and I very maturely stick my tongue out at him.
Twyla laughs softly. “I keep telling him he’s going to have to be stern with her at some point and that she’ll get over it, but he just tells me ‘that point is not today.’ So, until that day comes, I must wear the hat of the bad guy who has the audacity to flat-out tell her no.”
She says it with a doting smile on her face as she looks at me, but something about the statement she made doesn’t sit well with me. I never looked at it that way, even though I do recall her mentioning how we play good-cop/bad-cop when it comes to our daughter.
It makes me ask myself… have I ever taken the time to consider how my too-gentle parenting affects Twyla and her relationship with our daughter? If I were firmer with Luna, would Twyla feel less like she must always be the disciplinarian?
As my friends carry on the conversation, I wonder…
I wonder if forcing her into that position has been even more stressful for her than it is for other women, since that is in no way her personality. While she’s an incredible mother who has adapted easily—or at least what I thought was easily until this revelation—being forceful and in charge doesn’t come naturally to my tender and quiet-natured wife. So, having to make herself be the “bad cop” toward her own little girl has to… suck. Like, a lot.
Fuck, why am I just now…?
Back in the day—and in what’s now considered a twenty-four seven dynamic within the BDSM community known as a ’50s household—the wife stayed home with the children, and when they misbehaved to a certain point, all she’d have to say is “just wait until your father gets home.” And that was it. She didn’t have to be the bad guy. She didn’t have to be the disciplinarian. She got to be the nurturer, because she’d just tell Daddy what the kids were doing while he was at work or whatever, that they weren’t listening to her, and it was his job to straighten their asses out.
I just realized… I’m the fucking housewife of our family.
Only, I’m not doing all the other things that were expected of a stay-at-home mom. I’m not the one who keeps the house clean, does all the laundry and shopping, and has a meal ready for my partner to come home to every day. So not only does Twyla do all those things—happily, since she truly revels in her role as a service sub—but she also manages a shop that still to this day makes her uncomfortable. Which she does only because I told her I’d like her to—secretly because I thought it would be good for her to get out of the house, when she seemed like she was slightly losing it being cooped up at home with the baby all the time. Plus, she has to be the “mean parent,” which goes against… every fiber of my sweet, innocent, and loving wife’s being.
I feel like I’ve been sucker-punched in the balls.
I don’t hear anything that’s being said in the conversation around me. I’m too ashamed of myself and of the fact that it took me this long to see all this. To see all the stress I’ve piled onto Twyla’s shoulders and hadn’t noticed. All the recent anxiety issues she’s been having that I figured was normal for any mother of a four-year-old. And her tanking self-esteem.
It’s because I’ve made her be someone she isn’t.
I might’ve changed after meeting and falling in love with Twyla—my past trauma that made me into the sadist I once was so wholly healed that those desires are damn near nonexistent—and be a hundred percent happy about that growth and change. But I recognize I’m still me. I’m the same person I’ve always been, my personality and values and morals still intact.
But that’s not the case for Twyla. I’ve forced her to change at her core level.
And when someone is forced to act against their very nature, of course they’re going to feel shitty about themselves, because they’re doing tasks and jobs that don’t come easily to them. It’s hard for them to thrive. It’s like taking a cactus, sticking it in a pond, and expecting it to do anything other than what a cactus is going to do—fucking melt. It’s just not gonna happen, because it’s not built to handle all that water.
And that’s what I’ve done to my precious wife.
This epiphany, in addition to the conversation I overheard between her and Clarice, are making me question just how good of a Dom I truly am. Our friend was absolutely right when she told Twyla it’s my duty to assess what’s going on when a scene has to be stopped. I should have done it each and every time she froze, had a discussion with her right then and there about what she was feeling, figured out what I specifically said or did that set off her fear instinct, so I could either avoid it in the future or help her overcome it. That’s what a good Dom would do. Instead, I allowed my emotions attached to my wife to get in the way of properly caring for my sub.
Again, I can’t fucking stand to see either of my girls upset.
And when my doll freezes, she doesn’t just turn into a cute little statue. There is a look of absolute fear that fills those beautiful eyes of hers. And for that look to be aimed at me?
Intolerable.
Nope. Can’t do it.
So, I bundle her up like a baby, and I cuddle and rock her, and I coo sweet nothings and praise into her hair until she’s relaxed and blissfully floating off to little space.
While that’s great and all for that moment in time, it doesn’t solve anything. I’m still a Dom whose sub is experiencing something that should be addressed directly, because it’s my responsibility. It is my literal job, my duty, the true obligation of a Dominant who’s been given the gift of a submissive of their own, to not only take care of her physically and mentally, but also to never stop guiding her to improve and grow. Not for me but for herself. When I can be successful in that most important duty, then my reward will come—because when a service submissive understands their value and believes in themselves and their skills, their confidence will naturally lead them to want to please their Dom even more.
My old, selfish self would find that last part the sole reason to try to “fix” my sub, if I’d owned one back then. Now though, it’s an afterthought. My doll, my wife, and her being genuinely happy and thriving in her roles in our shared world is the only thing that truly matters to me.
And that means I need to fix the things I realize now that I fucked up. No excuses. It was all me. I’m the Dominant. She’s the sub who did her job of following my lead, like the good girl she is. I led her astray, and now, I’m gonna fucking bring her back to where she should’ve been all this time. Under the care of a Dom who is fucking worthy of her.
Side note, I should really warn Twyla that phone calls through the car’s speakers can be heard loud and clear from outside the vehicle. The cuteness aggression I felt toward my adorable wife when she held up her hand to let me know she was on the phone inside the car a few days ago rivaled all the times I’ve gotten it around Luna. The only thing that saved her from me going over there, pulling her out of the car, and squeezing her until she squealed was our daughter nailing me in the balls a few minutes later.
And—fuck my life—it occurs to me now, I could’ve easily used that as the perfect opportunity to teach Luna she shouldn’t hit boys there just for fun. But instead, I was more worried about making her feel bad that she hurt Daddy, so I played it off entirely, as if my soul hadn’t just yeeted itself from my body and left me seeing Tweety Bird for a while after. So convincing, in fact, that even Twyla didn’t sense the pain I was in—an exponential amount that caused me to miss the plan Clarice and she devised—and that woman is more in tune with me than a damn mind-reader.
Karma, I guess.
Additionally, I’m wondering if I’m doing more harm than good by handling my daughter with… well… kid gloves. What’s going to happen to her when she goes to school? She starts Kindergarten in only six more months. Children can be fucking assholes. I know that from lots and lots of experience. Experiences that continued all the way up through college—never mind the fact that I was almost a decade younger than all my peers. I might’ve been genius-level book smart, but I didn’t have the life experience or the upbringing to know how to recognize manipulative motherfuckers and defend myself against them.
Fuuuck, even I just used manipulation to get Luna to do what I wanted—no matter if it was done specifically to protect her, so she wouldn’t get her feelings hurt. Is that just making her more susceptible to it? Will her dad doing that to her, the one man in the entire world she’s supposed to be able to trust a hundred percent, make her think that’s normal and what people should do to one another? Will it make her weak against coercion when she’s older?
Am I doing Luna a disservice by not jumping on every teachable moment I can, to prepare her for life, how sometimes we have to do things just because we’re told, because they’re the rules, the law? That there are times when she won’t be allowed to justify her actions or talk her way into or out of things, even when she believes with her whole heart that she’s right? What will she go through when she gets into trouble for something I never took the time to teach her is actually a no-no?
And since I’m not doing that, it’s fallen on Twyla to try to do all of it, to essentially pick up my slack, on top of trying to be a type of parent she wouldn’t choose to be if given the opti?—
“Seth!”
My name being yelled in Doc’s “Dad voice”—the strong, authoritative tone that makes a kid’s ass clench with dread, which, come to think of it, I’ve never once even come close to using on my daughter—startles me out of my spiraling internal crisis. My ass, in fact, clenching with dread.
When I meet his eyes, his head nudges in the direction of his study. I nod, and we both stand, everyone’s stare darting back and forth between the two of us.
No one says a word. No one pokes fun or jokes about me “being in trouble.” They know better. They’ve all been in my exact spot. On multiple occasions. So they know what this feels like. They also know Doc takes his job as our leader extremely serious, and he wouldn’t call any one of us out like this unless he felt it important. Especially on one of our birthdays.
The only reaction besides quiet respect comes from my wife. She stands from her seat before I make it past her, places her small hand gently along my bearded jaw, and looks deep into my eyes with so much unconditional love that my chest fills with equal parts comfort and shame. I lean down and kiss the tip of her nose, using my pointer finger to guide her glasses back into place, and give her what I know is a reassuring smile.
All the while thinking, How could I have done this to the only woman I’ve ever loved?