Page 20 of Daddy's Little Librarian
“Where did you meet him?”
She voluntarily stuffed the last three carrots in her mouth and stared at her plate while she chewed, probably so she wouldn’t have to answer him.
“That’s okay. I can wait.” He ate a grape.
Her face turned a slow, hot shade of red. Halfway done with her carrots, she tried to add a bite of sandwich.
“When Daddy asks a question, he expects an answer,” Kurt warned.
She blushed even brighter, but reluctantly put the sandwich down and swallowed what was left in her mouth. “D-do you know what a munch is?”
“Yes, I do.” He didn’t at all like that answer, and he especially didn’t like the mental image it came with. He could easily see her walking into one of those dungeon meal-meetings, where old and seasoned members met with newbies for the sole purpose of inviting them to play. Often newbies were called what they were: fresh-meat. Scotti in her business-casual librarian’s clothes and Bat Bear dangling from her hand by its arm… that was mouthwatering fresh-meat, right there. Put a pair of pigtails in her hair, and he could easily picture all kinds of Doms vying one another to be the first to break her in.
And the Dom who won had been a fucking Gopher.
“You’re not going back there,” he said, finishing the rest of his grapes. “In fact, you and I are going to have a sit-down regarding dungeon safety rules, and until that happens, you’re not going to go back to any meeting, munch, or dungeon-oriented coffee get-together, I don’t care how public it is. Not until I am confident that you can keep yourself safe.”
Like he had a right to make such a sweeping decree on what she did with her life.
She called him on it, too. “Now, wait a minute—” she said, sitting up a little straighter on her stool.
“No,” he cut her off. Not because he had the right, but because all he had in his head now was the mental image of her standing in front of a bunch of salivating Daddy-wolves. Only now her librarian’s outfit was that of a schoolgirl, with her long blonde hair done up in ribbons and pigtails, and Bat Bear still dangling at her side as she twiddled her fingers and shyly introduced herself, saying, “Hi, I’m Fresh-meat.”
Hell, no.
“Oh, hell, fucking no,” he said, hotly. “You continued to date a man even after you found out his name was Squirrel—”
“Gopher.”
“I am making a point,” he told her. “And that point is, your decision-making process—if you even have one, considering you made him your Daddy—is suspect. If I find out you’ve gone back before we’ve had that talk, I don’t care if I’m your bodyguard then or not, I will bust your butt so hard, you won’t sit for a week. A month. A month of damn Sundays, do you understand me?”
She frowned. She also squirmed on her stool, that single swat he’d given her in the bathroom no doubt giving her an inkling of what he’d just threatened her with.
“If I’d known you were going to be this bossy, I’d have found another bodyguard,” she grumbled.
“No one else would take the job,” he reminded. “You’re stuck with the bossy, hard-up convict who busts ass. If you think for a second, I’ve got any problem busting yours again tonight, I seriously suggest you think again.”
She cast the frown she meant for him at her plate. He let her keep her mutinous thoughts to herself, and they finished the rest of their supper in absolute silence.
Chapter Eight
It was the strangest and yet the most comforting thing in the world to be lying in her bed with a brand-new Daddy she’d only just met stretched on a pallet of blankets on the floor near her feet. Her bedroom door was wide open. She could see the bright colors of her Disney princess nightlight splashed up on the walls and ceiling of the hallway. That was comforting. But there was also this big ol’ yawning darkness down by the stairs leading out into the rest of the house, and the last time she’d been lying here, staring down that hallway, Gopher had been walking up it with his knife in his hand.
Lying on her side, Scotti drew her knees to her chest. She picked at the edge of the duct tape holding her blanket together. After asking whether she had the money for it, Kurt had told her tomorrow they would stop at the store to buy a replacement. Honestly, though, she wasn’t in a hurry. She really liked this blanket. It was soft and warm, even in winter, and the perfect blend of stark black and pale pink blossoms, just like the blossoms on an ornamental Chinese cherry tree. She liked pink. Pink was her favorite. She liked flowers too. Pick after nervous pick, she shredded the edge of the duct tape.
Quiet though she thought she was being, with a heavy sigh, Kurt said, “Do you want your Bat Bear?”
“No stuffies in bed,” she said automatically. “Beds are for other things.”
She could have bit her tongue, but the damage was already done. Already Kurt was sitting up far enough to look at her over the foot of her bed. The dim light of the nightlight had no problem illuminating his irritation.
“Is that the Gerbil’s rule?”
She worried the edge of the fast-shredding duct tape, although not for the same reason as before. “Yes.”
“Who’s the Daddy in this house right now?”
“You are,” she said, soft as a whisper. Soft or not, her stomach did crazy acrobatics when she said it. Complete with a flush of warm heat that lit up her insides and flowed, like a river of warm, slow chocolate, down into parts of her that wouldn’t at all have minded being eaten. Her thighs tensed, and then tensed again when Kurt got up off the floor. He didn’t need any extra light to locate Bat Bear from amongst the other stuffies she had stacked up on her dresser. When he held it out to her, she took it and hugged it to her chest.
