by Frost, E J
She nods. “I wish the floor would open and swallow me up.”
I could tell how uncomfortable she was, particularly when I left her to socialize at the Ladies Lunch, my poor girl. “Daddy can help. Would you like me to help?”
“Yes, please, Daddy.”
“Do you want to participate when we’re in big groups, or would you rather be quiet?”
“I’d rather be quiet. I’m afraid of saying something wrong.”
I kiss her forehead. “I’m not afraid of you saying something wrong, but if you’d rather be quiet, when we’re in bigger groups, you’ll put your wrists behind your back and Daddy will hold you like I did last night. Daddy likes holding his girl like that very much. You’ll go down into a trance and be calm and peaceful. When we’re in smaller groups, Daddy will bring you back up and you’ll feel relaxed and be able to enjoy yourself. Does that sound good?”
“Yes, Daddy.” She smiles shyly and shifts under me, reminding me that she’s bearing most of my weight as I lie on her, and that my cock is still locked inside her.
“That’s my girl.” Lying in her feels so good. I could bring her to orgasm again. I can’t get hard so soon, but I could stay in her while I stimulate her with my fingers or a toy. So tempting.
No, duty calls; the clock is ticking down to my first interview of the day and I want to have breakfast with Emily before that. Reluctantly, I withdraw from her.
She begins to pout when she feels me move away and I slide back over her to nip her lower lip. “Sorry, baby doll. Time to get up. We’ll have a big play before lunch, okay?”
My offer makes her brighten. I give her another nip and a kiss to soothe it before I slide out of bed and gather up the sex toys. I leave the soft cuffs clipped to the headboard. We’re going to get a lot of use out of them, I can tell. She loves being restrained.
Emily rises more slowly, stretching. As she gathers up the towel she was lying on, she fingers her collar, toying with the pearl clasp. Her immediate attachment to her collar makes me smile.
“Baby doll, go into the bathroom and bend over the sink, and I’ll take Morris out.”
“Oh.” She drops her hand from her collar and reaches for her bum, as though she’s just remembered she’s still plugged. “Um, I can take it out. I don’t mind.”
“What Daddy puts in, Daddy takes out,” I remind her.
“I know, but it might be . . .” Her voice goes tiny. “Messy.”
“Does Daddy clean up his little girl’s messes?”
“Yes.” She twists the towel between her hands. “It might be gross messy. Really. I came a lot, and I didn’t do an enema.”
I finish putting the toys away, take the towel from her and toss it on the bed before taking her hands in mine. “I didn’t tell you to. Emmy, trust me.”
Her chin quivers. “I do trust you. I just don’t want you to be disgusted with me.”
I lean in and kiss her forehead. “There’s nothing disgusting about your body, baby. Not a thing. Daddy adores every inch of it. Inside and out. Go into the bathroom, bend over the sink, and wait for me.”
“Yes, Daddy.” When I release her hands, she holds them out to me. “Daddy, please?”
“Baby doll.” I gather her to me and cuddle her to my chest, skin to skin. I might have gotten up too abruptly. She said she doesn’t need much aftercare, and that might be true for lighter scenes. What she and I are doing is intense, and she needs cuddles and reassurance.
I hug and stroke her until she gives me a tight squeeze and pulls away. I let her go and watch her slip into the bathroom. She’s touching her collar again. Despite jumping the gun, I’m glad I’ve given it to her.
When I take it out, the plug’s not particularly messy and having the condom on it makes clean-up easy. If the idea of mess is going to upset her, though, I’ll start her on psyllium husk pills, because I absolutely cannot get enough of fucking her while she’s plugged.
The expressions that cross Emily’s face as I remove the plug and tidy up are priceless: consternation, relief, and, I think, loss. Like her attachment to her collar, her reluctance to lose the plug makes me smile. I want her to have positive associations with the plug, and after only three sessions with Morris, she’s already getting there.
I invite her into the shower and claim Daddy’s privilege in washing her, which is partly an excuse to examine her all over. The marks from her spanking are healing well and the silicone paddle hasn’t left any bruises, just a fading heat. It’s also partly an opportunity to tease her. She leaves the shower pink from more than the scrubbing, and I make a mental note to put the Ben Wa balls back in her after breakfast to keep her on that happy edge.
After I towel her off, I teach her a morning ritual. As I open a bottle of lotion, I think of Mir. She loved rituals. We had several for every time of day. I numbered them for her; when we were apart and she’d performed a ritual, she’d text me the number. One of the ways I knew we were really done was when those texts stopped.
I shake myself out of that memory. I’ll create new rituals with Emily. She’s eager to learn. I can see her memorizing each step of the ritual: how I position her, where I start with the lotion, the circular motions of fingertip and palm I use to rub it in, how I smooth the cream into her breasts and throat last, holding her against my chest and humming my appreciation as she arches against me. Touching her makes my blood thrum in my ears and my cock distend, even though I just had a magnificent orgasm. Emily makes me feel like a horny teenager again.
After I teach her the lotion ritual, I take her into her bedroom and help her unpack, which she hasn’t had a chance to do since we boarded. Directing her where to put her things and hanging up her dresses on the pretense that she’s too little to do it herself, lets me see the wardrobe she’s brought. Her clothes are a mix: casual tees and shorts, several very nice dresses that she clearly brought for the formal dinners aboard, and a few, special, little girl pieces like a pink, panda onesie with the most fucking adorable back-flap that I make a mental note to put her in sooner rather than later. There are no more surprises like her bunny, but she has brought a Hibachi vibrator that nearly takes my arm off when I plug it in to test it. I chuckle and confiscate it before I dress her in a soft denim skirt and PowerPuff Girls tee that says, “Don’t Call Me Princess” in sparkly pink letters. She asks to wear a pair of pink and white thigh highs and seeing her in them gives me a semi-stiffy. Anticipating how sweet her little breasts will look in the soft cotton shirt, and how her nipples will react to the air-conditioning, I allow her panties but no bra. Then I leave her to do her hair while I dress.
Since I’m doing interviews this morning and Emily’s crazy for the headmaster look, I pull on a white, cotton button-down and a dark blue waistcoat. Since it’s Saturday, I leave off the tie and put on jeans and hope I don’t need to leave the fake cold for more than a minute, or I’m going to broil under the Baja sun.
Emily comes through the open door between our rooms while I’m rolling up my shirtsleeves, which reminds me to set a rule about the door. “Emmy, when the door is open, you can come into Daddy’s cabin without asking, whenever you want. When the door is closed, you’ll knock and wait for me to tell you that you can come in. You can close the door whenever you want, but you may not slam it for any reason. Slamming doors is disrespectful.”
She nods, her dark curls bouncing around her shoulders. She’s curled her hair, or maybe it’s just curlier in the heat, and it’s a rich tumble of chestnut waves that my hands itch to touch. I beckon and she comes to me in a rush. Cuddling her to my chest, I run my hands through her hair, which feels just as soft and silky as it looks.
“You’re beautiful, baby,” I whisper in her ear and she shivers against me, hugging me tight. “This hair. Mmm. I could play with it all day. Tonight, you’ll show me how you brush it and then Daddy will brush your hair before bed every night.”
She shivers again. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Did you look at your schedule befo
re you came in here?” I ask, continuing to run my fingers through her hair.
“No, Daddy, I forgot.”
“Mmm.” I kiss her on the forehead. “Go get your schedule and your phone and we’ll go over it at breakfast.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
I play with her hair for another moment before I release her with a swat on the ass for her lack of focus. She skips back to her room.
I pick up my watch. It’s always the last thing I put on when I dress. My own ritual and, like so many others, bound up in Mir. She gave me the watch on our second anniversary. She used to put it on last as the “finishing touch” of dressing her Master.
I put the watch back in the dresser drawer before I lock it.
It’s time for new rituals. Time to focus on being Emily’s Daddy. Time to put the past behind me. I’ve got my phone if I need to know the time. I pat my breast pocket, reassuring myself the phone’s there. As I move my arm, the fabric of my waistcoat brushes my bare wrist. That’s going to take some getting used to. Rubbing it, I go to get Emily.
Over breakfast, she notices my missing watch. I see her eyes flick to my wrist several times. Finally, when she’s finished her grapefruit and we’ve gone over her schedule for the day, she asks me about it.
“Sir, did something happen to your watch?”
“No, I won’t be wearing it anymore.”
I see the shock ripple through her eyes. Maybe she knows how much it cost. Mir certainly made sure I knew.
I reach across the table and take her hand. “It reminds me of someone else, baby doll. I don’t want to think about anyone but you.”
“Thank you, Sir.” She flushes and gives me a shy smile. “Ta very much.”
“I was thinking this morning that we should start establishing our own rituals, Emmy. The things I’ve done with my previous bottoms, and you’ve done with your previous tops, they’re not relevant to us. I want to build something special, something unique. Maybe brushing your hair before bed isn’t unique. Your other Doms might have done that with you, but we’ll make it part of our own bedtime ritual. Putting on your pajamas, brushing your hair, reading a bedtime story, and falling asleep in Daddy’s arms. That will be our ritual, just for us.”
Her rosebud mouth drops open and she stares at me.
“You don’t like the sound of that?”
She shakes her head, gulps, and her eyes fill. She grabs a napkin with her free hand and blots her eyes quickly. “No, Sir, I love the sound of that.”
The ease with which I’ve moved her to tears with a simple bedtime ritual touches me, but it also reminds me of how deeply vulnerable Emily is. Mir loved rituals and accepted even the weirdest ones with grace. But she never cried because I created a ritual just for her. She never cried at all except when I pushed her right to the edge of her pain threshold. I’ve seen more tears out of Emily in five days than I did out of Mir in five years.
Fuck it, enough.
I’ve been idolizing Mir, putting her on a pedestal, while I was miserable without her. Now I’m demonizing her because Emily’s made me realize how much I was missing. There’s no comparison between them and it’s time to stop thinking about Mir. I told Emily I don’t cut people out of my life, but maybe the truth is I’ve been clinging to Mir, or at least allowing her to stay attached to me, because I wasn’t ready to let go.
It’s time. Emily deserves my full attention, my undivided focus.
When I lift my head out of my thoughts, Emily’s brilliant smile is my immediate reward.
* * *
After putting the Ben Wa balls back in with the instruction to remove them when she changes into her gym clothes, I leave Emily, pink-cheeked and smiling, in her own cabin and shut the connecting door. I lean against the closed door, immediately feeling an empty ache in my chest and a coldness that has nothing to do with the air-conditioning blasting down on me.
I want Emily back in my arms. I want to continue the conversation we were having over breakfast about the scenes we saw last night and the scenes we’re going to do. I want to hear more of the little quips she kept making about my sexual prowess. I even want an explanation of what the hell a blog tour is, which she’s evidently doing during her free time this morning.
I haven’t craved my bottom’s company before. I’ve craved their bodies, their submission, but not their companionship. I want Emily’s constant attention, which I know is the one thing she can’t give me.
I take a deep breath and focus on the next thing: the interview with Dan Reyes. As I push away from the door, I hear music through it. A woman’s voice singing that she’s a wounded warrior. I listen for a minute. The music’s beautiful: soaring and falling, aching and needy. Emily music. It’s not a song or a singer I’m familiar with. Making a mental note to ask her to play it for me later, I move through my cabin to get ready for the interview.
Dan Reyes is an asshole. I understand the reasons behind his assholism, but it doesn’t make him less of an asshole.
He sits back on the couch across from me and crosses his arms over his chest. I know what will be out of his mouth next before he even opens it.
“Not a fucking chance,” he says.
Surprise, surprise.
“This already has the sanction of Ed Isaak,” I tell him.
“I’ll bust you to the Mexican po-po and you’ll spend the next three months in jail until you can find a gringo lawyer to bail your ass out. Nothing Mr. Isaak can do about that.”
Such an asshole.
“Brick isn’t illegal in Mexico yet. Or in the United States.”
Although it probably will be any day now.
“Tell that to the Mexicans. I guarantee they’ll give not one shit.”
“If you force me to get the Mexican police involved, I will, but your own people have been very specific about not wanting the authorities notified. I need to know the source of the brick that killed Bill Black. You’ve told me, repeatedly, he didn’t get it from one of the crew. If you’re right, that means he bought it at one of the ports and brought it back aboard with him, through your security. So did at least four other passengers. I need to understand how. If you can think of better way, other than for me to try to bring it through at Cabo, tell me. I’m open to suggestions.”
He shifts on the couch but doesn’t uncross his arms.
I don’t think any suggestions are going to be forthcoming.
“None of my guys are in on this,” he says finally.
“I’m not pointing any fingers. I’m trying to spare your company potentially monumental liability by finding the source of the brick and the avenue for getting it on the boat.”
“Through my guys.”
I spread my hands in what I hope is a conciliatory gesture. “Tell me how else the brick got on the boat.”
“Maybe the fuckers had it dropped off by fucking drone.”
So helpful.
“Right, I’ll look into your drone theory. In the meanwhile, I’d appreciate it if you’d provide me with the security rotas for the last two months.”
“No.”
I restrain the urge to belt him. “Or you can provide them to Mr. Isaak, and he can provide them to me. I don’t really care. I don’t need your cooperation. If you force me to roll over you, I will.”
“You think you can come in here and tell me how to do my fucking job—”
I cut him off before he works up to full spittle. “No, I don’t. I couldn’t do your job. I have very specific skills, and that’s why your people hired me. Provide me with the things I need to do my job and I’ll stay out of your way.”
He glares at me for a while, and when I don’t back down before his hard, blue glare, he shifts on the couch again. “Security rosters for the last two months. Anything else?”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk to anyone else about my investigation. There’s clearly a lot of discussion going on among the officers—”
“We’re a family on this ship,” he interrupts.
>
A very chatty family. He knew about my Cabo test before the interview even started, which I thought was need-to-know limited to the captain and Michael Lehmann.
“Sure, I get that. I served in the Navy for eight years. I understand wanting to protect your family. I also understand that one man’s dead and at least four others could be facing severe, long term, health consequences as a result of taking a drug while they were aboard. Mrs. Black’s lawsuit is just the first. Your employer’s insurance company is not happy and may not provide coverage if we can’t determine the source and distribution route of the drugs. If they refuse coverage and Mrs. Black or any of the other victims is successful with a lawsuit, Pink Pearl is out of business and you’re out of a job. So’s everyone else in your family.” I pause to let that sink in, in case Reyes didn’t fully appreciate the magnitude of this mess. “You don’t believe that they got the drug aboard? Great. Help me prove it by shutting down all the chatter. It’s only going to hurt your family in the long run.”
That seems to get through to him. His arms drop to his sides.
“This idea of yours.” He waves his hand, presumably indicating the Cabo test. “It hasn’t gone any further than me. I’ll make sure it doesn’t. But the more people you talk to, the more the word’s going to get around about what you’re doing.”
“I know. You’re the only security staff member I’m interviewing before Cabo. After that, I hope to have a very clear idea about the route and source of the drugs.”
“What are you going to tell the other people you’re interviewing? Who’re you talking to next, Jan Millek? He barely speaks English.”
So I’ve been told. Pink Pearl, like a lot of the cruise companies, recruits their wait and cleaning staff from Eastern Europe and the Philippines. The staff who had the most contact with Black speak limited English, so those interviews are going to be extra fun.
“I’m speaking to everyone who had direct contact with Black while he was aboard. Millek cleaned his room. I don’t have to tell anyone I’m interviewing anything.” I pause to let that sink in. “But if they ask, I’m a private health inspector investigating reports of food poisoning.”
