Page 1 of Daddy, Take Me Away
Daddy’s Little Tourist
By Maren Smith
Chapter One
It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, Chloe Hardt kept thinking. Over and over, she told herself it just wasn't a real vacation without something going wrong. She was actually lucky, that's what this was. She was getting her wrong thing out of the way right from the very start. Which meant, from here on out, it was nothing but smooth sailing!
Right?
Try though as she did to stay positive, she'd never been stranded at an airport before. At least it was an airport in the States. And technically, she wasn’t even stranded… yet. Just delayed. But as she stood at the check-in counter while the attendant searched the flight logs for another plane to take her where she was desperate to go, her anxiety worked overtime.
What if there weren't any more empty seats? What if she had to cancel her trip? Why, oh why hadn't she paid that extra fee for trip insurance? If she had to cancel now, her money would not be refunded. At least not in cash and definitely not within the next thirty days. She had no idea how she was going to eat until her next check. She doubted if her local grocery stores took big city airline vouchers.
“Got one,” the attendant finally cheered, and Chloe cheered with her.
“Woo-hoo!”
The attendant winced. “Sadly, there will be a slight delay.”
Chloe checked the time on her phone. She winced too. “How long?”
“Several hours. The plane doesn't leave until 4 am.”
Shoulders slumping, Chloe checked the time again, doing the math in her mind. “I'll miss my charter bus.” She sighed. This was definitely her vacation’s wrong thing. But hey, at least she was getting it out of the way right from the beginning. She brightened. “It's okay. They'll have taxis.”
The attendant grinned. “That's looking on the bright side.”
She booked the ticket, printed it out, and handed it over to Chloe. “Thanks for not yelling at me.”
“Thanks for helping me,” Chloe returned with a sympathetic smile. In that moment she was glad life had set her on the path of being an artist. She would hate having to work a job where she was yelled at all day long.
Leaving the counter, she checked her new gate and plane number and started walking. Two-hour layover or not, the new gate was already crowded, and so were the gates all around it. She circled the waiting area twice before settling for a bank of six seats, five of which were currently being used by one man laid out across them, sleeping. The empty seat was by his black-booted feet.
He was tall and broad, his t-shirt stretched taut across his chest, and so burly she could see the veins standing out against his muscular forearms. He was handsome, in a rude sort of way. After all, what else could he be called when he was using up so many seats in a space as crowded as this?
Careful not to wake him, she eased into the vacant seat, setting her carry-on between her feet. Settling in, she pulled out her phone, opened her kindle app and, wishing she had a coffee but unwilling to leave her seat to get one, picked a book from her carry-on bag to read while she waited.
It was the best kind of book. A co-write between Pepper North and Becca Paige Micheals, it was all about cupcakes and Daddy Doms who made the sweetlings in each book feel loved and complete. Something Chloe had always wanted to find for herself. Of course, one had to leave the studio in order to do that, and Chloe was a painter, far too driven to produce her next portrait to do that.
This long-awaited vacation was her getting out of the house, she reminded herself. She'd always wanted to go to Scotland, but born and raised in New Mexico, she'd never seriously thought she’d make it there. But with the sales she'd made in her first-ever gallery showing, she'd talked herself into finally just doing it.
So, did she book herself to stay in a castle and do all the sightseeing that tourists customarily came to Scotland to see? Nope. She'd been a recluse too long to want to spend her first real vacation around people. She'd made her reservation in a remote fishing village and an even more remote B&B located four miles out of town. Something guaranteed to keep her as far away from others as she could get.
She'd never find the Daddy of her dreams this way. But she would get a lot of work done, and that was the important thing, right?
Right, she told herself firmly.
Daddy Doms in books weren't as fulfilling, but it was what she had, and before she knew it, the cacophony of the airport and all its guests soon faded into the background as the story pulled her in. The Little in this book was sweet and the Daddy Dom patient, understanding, and yet stern in all the right ways. Chloe's heart pitter-pattered in excitement as she read through a scolding that set her nethers on slow-throbbing fire. Her face felt hot. Was she blushing? She hoped not, but even the possibility of that physical reaction exposing what kind of book she was reading… in public, where everyone could see her squirming deliciously in her seat… it didn't stop her from continuing to read, moving on to the spanking that followed with particular relish. She jumped when the booted feet on the seat beside her suddenly extended, bumping her in the thigh just as the Daddy Dom in the story was delivering that first glorious slap.
Chloe's bottom erupted in a wave of tickling awareness. She yelped, her brain furiously trying to convince her she'd just been swatted herself, and the guy stretched out along the seats lifted his sleepy head to look at her.
“Och,” he rumbled in a heavy Scottish brogue. “Sorry, lass.”
Startlement turned to instant fascination as she basked in the glow of his sexy accent.
“You're Scottish!”
He lifted his head again, studying her from behind a pair of the greenest eyes she'd ever seen.
