by Frost, E J
“True.”
“Do you want to add something?” she asks, her voice tiny and soft.
“No.”
She wiggles, snuggling in a little tighter. I reach down and tug her dress up so there’s nothing between us from waist down. Her warm, damp skin settles against mine. Dirty, delicious connection.
“When I heard you arguing with her on the cruise, I kind of got the impression that you didn’t want kids at all. You said you offered to get a vasectomy.”
“I did. I would have frozen my sperm first, but I didn’t ever want to be in the position I’m in now.”
She gives me a funny half-smile, like I’ve given her good news and bad news. “Are you sure you don’t want to add anything to our contract? I’d understand.”
“I’m sure.”
I have not one single doubt about our relationship. Lots of doubts about what’s going to happen with Miranda. But not one single doubt about Emmy and me.
Her smile loses its shadow. “It’s just that I might want kids. Maybe, you know, someday. Not right away.”
“Emmy, I haven’t wanted kids in any of my previous relationships. I was happy being Uncle Logan. And I very definitely didn’t want kids with Miranda. For reasons I can’t get into with you, she’s not someone I’d ever trust around children. I don’t feel that way with you. I’m not pushing you or putting any time-limits on it. Unlike Miranda, my biological clock is not ticking. But I’m open to it with you.”
She breathes out a long sigh of relief. “Okay, Daddy. Thank you for being so clear with me. Ta very much.”
“You’re welcome. I don’t know what I did wrong with Miranda. Probably a lot of things. But I know we weren’t communicating by the end. I had no idea how much this desire for a baby had turned her head inside out. That’s not going to happen with you and me. We’re going to talk and talk and keep talking.”
“Ta, Daddy.” A wide, happy smile. Above it, I see thoughts moving behind her big eyes, but they’re neither fears nor doubts. “You’re the only man I’ve been with who didn’t make me feel like I’m being too needy talking about our relationship. Ash would just disappear when I tried to talk to him. Like, for days. Matthew told me I should relax and go with the flow, and I try, I really do. But then I get scared and it’s easier to pull back and protect myself. But I know that’s the coward’s way out, and I’m trying to be super-brave for you.”
“Daddy’s proud of you, sweetheart.” I rub noses with her again. “It is easier to pull back and hide your feelings. It’s much less likely you’ll get hurt that way, isn’t it? But I won’t tolerate that from you. I’ve only ever demanded honesty, little girl. I give you honesty and I require it in return.”
She turns the big eyes on me, brimming with emotion. “Love you, Daddy. And I am a little threatened by Miranda. I mean, she was your subbie for a long time and now she might be carrying your baby. It’s a lot. But I promise to be honest with you and tell you if it’s getting on top of me.”
“Good.” I give her a deep kiss. “Because the only thing that’s allowed to get on top of you, little girl, is me.”
She giggles and we cuddle on the couch until I’m ready for another round, because I can’t seem to get enough of her today.
* * *
It’s after dinner, grilled white fish with lime and fresh basil from the garden, with the cat happily chomping away on the fish skins Emily’s put in his bowl, that I get back to Rick’s problem. He’s responded to my update by saying he’s approved my cost estimate but the firestorm is still driving a ton of traffic to his website, and Glory’s not happy with me doing anything that reduces traffic.
“All publicity is good publicity,” he quotes at the end of the email.
I start to type out an angry response but delete it. There’s no point getting into a pissing match with Rick or Glory. While I don’t believe all publicity is good publicity, I do believe the client is always right.
Well, usually right, and when he’s wrong, it’s impolitic to shove his nose in it.
Besides, Max has confirmed that he’s brought EvonneBringsTheTruth’s site down, and has a program running which automatically deletes posts or comments that combine Rick’s name with the word “rape” or the hashtag “RespectABitch.” That’s enough damage control for now, while I hunt down the woman behind the firestorm.
I return the missed call. Oliver Rowe, film financier. According to Rick’s notes, he’s a friend of both Castillos, with a toe in each pond: movie making and finance. I haven’t heard of any of the films Rowe has financed, and I wonder if they’re art-house indies, or just vanilla porn films I haven’t come across.
Rowe’s eating when he takes the call and doesn’t stop noisily munching in my ear after I introduce myself and explain the purpose of my call. It sounds like he goes through an entire bag of potato chips while we speak.
“Oh, talent,” he says with a sniff when I ask him whether he knows Rick and remembers seeing him at the party. “No, I didn’t spend any time with the talent at that party. I was there for more important reasons.”
“What were those?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know? No, seriously, Pedro brought in two nice gentlemen from one of the Stans. Big beards, tattoos, heavy accents, dripping oil money. I was hoping one or both of them would drip some on me, but no such luck. It was a waste of a weekend, actually.”
“One of the Stans?”
“You know. Urzukastan. Bananaramastan. I can’t keep track, those little Balkan states reinvent themselves so often. Neither of them was as hot as Sebastian Stan, I do remember that, more’s the pity.”
I’m fairly sure the Balkan states do not include any ‘stans. But it’s been a few years since I studied geography at Heysham St. Peter’s.
“Okay, two foreign gentlemen. They came to the party. Did you have a meeting with them?”
“Meeting?” He snorts and crunches. “They were only interested in drinking vodka and eye-fucking the girls in bikinis. It wasn’t a meeting. It was foreplay. I think we talked shop for less than ten minutes. You know?” His voice shoots up an octave. “I remember something else. After I gave up on the Stans, I walked down to the pool and saw your friend getting his knob waxed. The girl had a gorgeous backside. Don’t remember her name, though.”
Pool Sex Girl, I think, but don’t say aloud. She’s a trail of breadcrumbs leading off in another direction, and while it’s tempting to follow it, I don’t think that trail holds any of the answers I’m looking for.
“Did you see Rick again that night?”
“Nooo.” He draws the word out and I can almost hear him straining to remember over the phone before he dissolves back into munching. “I don’t think so. I stayed by the pool for a while until I saw what was going on. The idiots were stuffing towels into the filter. Holy crap on a cracker, what a mess! You should ask Terri about it. She was beside herself, poor thing.”
I heard. “After you left the pool?”
“I went back into the house but there wasn’t anyone interesting at the bar and all the rooms were already taken. Early night, I tell you! I shouldn’t joke, though. That must have been when it was happening.”
“When what was happening?”
“Don’t you know? The Stans and a couple others got two girls drunk and pulled a train on them. So nineties frat party.” More munching. “You should speak to Terri about it. She has all the deets.”
Another trail of breadcrumbs. “Did you come across a girl named Laura or a guy named Damon at the party?”
“I don’t remember a Laura, but sure, I know Damon. He’s on the tech side, if you know what I mean.”
The tech side of what? “Sorry, I don’t.”
“Computers. IT. You know, the stuff with ones and zeros. Not the six-figure ones that I like, either. The boy codes or something. And I think he still lives in his mother’s basement. Well, her Manhattan high-rise, but still.”
“He’s here in New York? What’s his full name?�
�
“Damon Tiger. Now that sounds like a name that should be in front of the camera, doesn’t it? But I swear it’s his real name.”
Rowe doesn’t have Tiger’s number, but he directs me to the guy’s website, Tiger Tail Tech.
While I’m thanking Rowe and giving him my contact details in case he remembers anything else once he’s no longer distracted by his potato chips, I surf the Tiger Tail Tech website for contact information on my laptop. There’s only an online contact form, which isn’t ideal, but I fire off a request for Damon Tiger to contact me and give my cell and the house landline. I also email the website address to Max to see if he can work his magic on getting a physical address or phone number.
As I’m typing, I hear voices in the other room. My hair-trigger goes off. Literally. The small hairs on the back of my neck rise. Is there someone in the house? Gina, the housekeeper, came and went in her usual flurry of furniture polish and floor cleaner an hour ago, so it should just be me and Emily in the house. And Sable.
Damn, I knew he looked like a Jellicle Cat.
I rise and move silently to the doorway. Listening, I catch the cadence and timbre of the voice. It’s Vashi, the submissive of my friend Niall’s trio. Emily must be on a video call to her.
I move back to my desk and finish going through my emails. Hoping to catch at least one of them, I try the people on Rick’s list that I haven’t reached yet. But no one answers. It is Friday night. I leave more voicemails, before I lock away my laptop and join Emily in the kitchen.
She’s sitting in the breakfast nook, the French doors still open to the twilit garden and evening breeze, with her tablet propped up on the table. The cat’s on Emily’s lap, one white-tipped paw reaching up to bat at the tablet, his rusty purr filling the air.
I drop a kiss on the top of Emily’s head as I move past her to the fridge. There’s a big jug of filtered water with lime wedges next to the iced coffee. I fill two glasses and take them to the table.
“Hello, Master Logan,” Vashi greets me when I sit down.
I tip my head so I’m in frame and smile into the tablet’s camera. Vashi smiles back, white teeth flashing. I’ve never seen her in anything but a sari, and although I can only see her head and torso, it looks like she’s wearing one today: midnight-blue and gold, with her hair draped over one shoulder like a black silk scarf.
“Hello, Vashi. How are you and your masters?”
“We are all very well, thank you, Master Logan. Master Niall sends his apologies. He was called out to a site but he says he will call you tomorrow.”
“No problem,” I say easily, but my shoulders tighten. I was looking forward to talking with Niall. The whole brother from another mother thing is asinine, and I’d never say it to him, because he’d never stop taking the piss out of me if I did, but he is. Getting to know Niall on the cruise was the second-best part of it, after falling for Emily. He had my back in a way no one else could have after I was injured, and since coming back from San Diego, we’ve talked every few days. I’m looking forward to seeing him when he and his submissives come to New York next month, even more than I’m anticipating Thanksgiving with Lizbeth and my nieces, and that’s saying something.
I haven’t told him about the medical bills, but I was going to tonight. I’ve got to get it off my chest before I explode. I’m not going to ask for his help financially, although he’ll probably offer, but I know he’s not that liquid. All his money is tied up in his construction business and the house that he’s in the middle of building in San Clemente. So much so that he maxed out his credit cards getting flights to San Diego from Mexico when I was injured. I paid him back half, which was all he’d accept. But I know he’ll offer something crazy like taking out a line of credit through his company. I don’t want that. I just want him to tell me I’m doing the right thing selling the house before the fucking debt collectors knock on the door. And if I’m not, maybe he’ll have another idea. Because I’m all out.
I also want to talk through the branding scene I have planned for Emily. Although I told her I needed her pain before I gave her a Lazy Baby Day, the truth is the branding is a reward for her, too. Only another sadist like Niall can understand how giving my bottom such intense pain could be a reward. Niall constructs scenes the same way I do, building from the psychological outwards to the physical. He’ll understand the connection I’m cementing with the brand, as well as my need to mark Emily, and her need to be marked. He also has a bottom who has some of the same self-worth issues as Emily, although you’d never know it from meeting Shaan, so he’ll have ideas about how I can work that into the scene.
Since Niall’s not around, I rise and leave the girls to their chat, which is moving rapidly back and forth between Emily’s kitty and a book they’re reading. I kiss Emily on the top of her head again, run my fingertips between the cat’s ears and head out into the yard.
I scuff through the grass, which is getting a little long, to the old apple tree. My mother made hard cider every year from its dull, green-gold apples. Emily’s researched it and told me it’s a Golden Russet apple tree, which, evidently, has some historical significance. For me, the tree is full of memories.
My first kiss was stolen behind the tree’s concealing trunk. Kathleen Sweeney. At our Memorial Day barbeque when I was twelve. Her braces cut my lip; I spent the rest of the day tasting blood and mustard from the hot dog she’d been eating. Reeling with the belief that I’d suddenly, somehow, become a man because of that first kiss.
I smile at the memory as I reach up and put my hand on the stump of a branch, broken by Lizbeth when she was nine as she tried to climb the tree. I bolted across the yard to catch her. I broke her fall, and my wrist. While I sat in the doctor’s office getting a cast, she wrapped her thin arms in a death-grip around my waist, shivering and sobbing quietly. She didn’t stop until I was able to put my freshly plastered arm around her, dry her eyes, and tell her I was okay.
I felt a hundred feet tall and got a hard-on that didn’t go away for two days.
Nothing has felt as good as taking care of my sister felt, not until I started topping Emily. Before Emily, I felt a shadow of that greatness. Sometimes strong, and sometimes nothing more than a ghost. Being with Emily brought those feelings back full force. So strongly, they resurrected all my guilt, too. What kind of big brother wants not just to protect his baby sister, but also to spank and fuck her? I had to exorcise that specter and taking it out on Emily did not feel good.
I glance back at my baby girl, sitting at the table, talking animatedly to her friend while dangling the little feather toy for the cat, who is batting at it with his white-tipped paws and purring so loudly I can hear him out in the garden, even over the traffic noises from the street.
Smitten cat.
Almost as smitten as me. I still can’t believe Emily fell for me after I took my guilt and anger out on her. But she’s right that it’s bonded us, maybe in a way nothing else could. I’ve let Emily in further, let her see more of me and my true feelings, than anyone I’ve been with.
Maybe that’s why my relationship with Miranda failed. I felt like I’d accomplished something when we hit the one-year mark. None of my other relationships came close to that mythical mark, and I’d begun to wonder if there was something wrong with me that scared women off after a few months.
But duration and depth aren’t the same thing. I was with Mir a long time, but I never let her in as deep as I’ve let Emily. I demanded trust from my bottoms, and I did my damnedest not to breach their trust, but I never gave it in return. I made them open their souls to me, but I didn’t trust them with my own demons.
Only my little girl, who seems fragile, but is made of platinum and Kevlar beneath her curls and big eyes and shy smiles.
Thinking about Emily conjures my imp. Her arms slide around my waist as she presses against my back. Her cheek rests between my shoulders.
“Hi, Daddy,” she murmurs.
“Hi, baby girl.”
I pat the broken branch. And give her the whole truth. “Lizbeth broke this branch when she was nine. I caught her as she fell and snapped my wrist. She clung to me and cried the whole time I was getting a cast on it and only stopped when I put my arms around her and told her it was okay. Best feeling I can remember.”
“Mmm.” Emily squeezes me, encouraging without judging.
“I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since. Looking for it every time I topped. I haven’t found it again. Not until I started topping you.”
She rubs her cheek between my shoulder-blades. “Do you think that’s because of what happened on our second date?”
“I think it’s because I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone.”
“Really? More than Miranda?” she breathes.
“Much more. First of all, Mir never gave me all of herself, so I couldn’t give her all of myself. Second, Miranda and Lizbeth hated each other on sight. If I’d told Miranda anything about my feelings about Lizbeth, she’d have used it against Lizbeth somehow.”
“I’d never do that, Daddy.”
“I know, sweetheart. I’m happy you and Lizbeth are friends, and I know that’s because you made a big effort with her. I appreciate it.”
Winning my sister over wasn’t an easy task. Lizbeth inherited whatever overprotective gene made me a Dom. Whenever she thinks my health or happiness are on the line, she goes into banty hen mode. Her face-offs over the years with my girlfriends, including Miranda, are the stuff of family legend and 9-1-1 calls. Lizabeth was wary with Emily at first, having seen so many women come and go in of my life, but my little girl brought her around, the way she does pretty much everyone she meets.
“Why does it make you sad?” Emily asks.
This is my opening. To tell her about the extent of my medical bills, and the debt collector’s threats, and selling the house. But that’s not what this moment is about.
“I never gave my bottoms my complete trust. I demanded everything and didn’t give it back. That makes me a lousy Dom.”
