Page 15 of Daddy's Little Librarian
Lowering himself to squat in the closet doorway, he folded his hands between his knees. He really was a big man. He practically radiated calm and patience. Like even when he was picking her front door lock and patience had been the last thing he’d been feeling. She couldn’t read his expression now, but at least he wasn’t yelling at her. Nor was he laughing.
“I didn’t want you to see the bed yet,” he finally said.
Oh. She tsked, touched by that kind of sweetness, especially coming from someone she’d sprayed in the face with feminine hygiene product. “Oh, that.” She waved that aside with her hand. “Don’t worry about that.”
“You already knew,” he guessed.
“Yeah, I was, um… under it at the time.” She rolled her eyes in an attempt to help them stop watering. “It’s okay. I’ll duct tape it in a minute.”
He looked from her, to the bed, and then back to her again. With all the expression of a marble statue, he stood up and held out his hand.
Insides tightening, she reluctantly passed Bat Bear over, but he didn’t take it away from her. Instead, he took hold of her wrist and pulled her up out of her closet and to her feet. She didn’t know he was going to hug her until his arm came up around her, steering her into his chest before she could slip past him and leave.
His strong arms wrapped her the same way she did Bat Bear, and she was completely unprepared to withstand it. Hugs like this were rare for her. She’d only ever had it one time before, and that was with Gopher, back when he first asked if she’d like him to be her Daddy-Dom. After several munches with her local dungeon group (the first that she’d managed to work up courage enough to attend), followed by a handful of private ‘dates’ over coffee in a public coffeeshop, she’d been just starry-eyed enough to say yes. He’d said everything right. He’d been gentle, and kind, and they seemed to match on so many levels. But look how that had ended—she’d had the best Daddy in the world… for the first few months; she’d had the Daddy from hell ever since.
But, even when he was Hell Daddy, sometimes Gopher would hug her.
It had been a long time since any of his hugs had felt like this. Kurt was bigger than Gopher. His arms were burlier, and they hugged her as if his embrace were all that were holding her together.
Maybe it was, because without any ready defenses to throw up between them, she could tell herself all she wanted that there was nothing in this hug. That bodyguards hugged their charges all the time. That Kurt was just being kind, and sympathetic, and friendly, but her inner Little still triggered. And triggered hard.
She clung to Bat Bear just so she wouldn’t grab Kurt and cling to him instead.
When he asked, “Are you okay,” into the top of her hair, she nodded immediately, but she wasn’t. That she had lied could not have been more apparent when, within seconds of it, she then burst into tears and ugly cried all over his shirt.
She wouldn’t have blamed him for being uncomfortable, but if he was, he never showed it. He simply tightened his arms and held her close until the worst of the storm was over. Then with his hand on the back of her neck, he steered her out of her bedroom to the bathroom down the hall. Standing in front of the mirror with her bear still hugged in her arms, he wet a washcloth in cool water and quietly bathed the heat of her tears away. Her eyes felt raw, but the pass of the cloth eased both the heat and the hurt, and helped her feel a little more like normal by the time he was done.
A sad normal, but then sad was better than scared, and she’d been living in ‘scared normal’ for quite a while.
“Look at me,” Kurt said, rinsing the cloth one last time, wringing it out and hanging it up on the hand towel ring by the sink.
Scotti looked at his reflection in the mirror.
“Try again.” Hands on his hips now, he waited until she dutifully turned around and looked up at him directly. “Repeat after me: I’m safe now.”
She felt beyond ridiculous repeating such a thing. She wasn’t safe. Not now, maybe not ever again. After tonight, she could see Gopher hanging back long enough for what little money she had to pay Kurt to run out, and then Kurt would leave and she’d be right back to where she’d started. Only then it would get worse.
He might actually, possibly even kill her. And she had absolutely no way to stop him.
When she stayed silent, Kurt raised a warning eyebrow and in low warning tone, said again, “I’m safe now.”
“I’m safe now,” she echoed. Her stomach was so full of knots that had been trip-rope tight for so long now that she’d stopped feeling it. Until, in spite of herself, they relaxed. It was just a little bit, but the relief was overwhelming. Tears burning at her all over again, she stared locked on his eyes, soaking in all the reassurance she knew better than to ask for.
“Say, I live under new rules now,” Kurt commanded, softly, his tone as strong as sturdy iron girders.
“I live under new rules now.” The knots relaxed even more; pure relief flowed through her. She almost closed her eyes under that wave of raw, heartfelt release, but he stopped her.
“Look at me.”
He was her lifeline, and she knew the way she was staring at him must have reflected that to a pathetic degree. And yet he didn’t seem at all uncomfortable by that. He wasn’t retreating in the slightest. Instead, he advanced half a step, bending slightly over her and with nerve-shivering authority said, “Nothing of my life before today matters anymore…”
She repeated him.
“None of those rules and restrictions still matter…”
She said that too.
“Because my new Daddy says so,” Kurt said in stern emphasis, as if he knew but didn’t even care that those words shivered her all the way to her soul.
