Page 9 of Daddy, Take Me Away
“Don't you dare say you're sorry again,” he warned, fully intending to make good on his threat if she didn't stop.
She chewed her bottom lip, twisting and pulling at her own fingers while she struggled to formulate a reply.
Be mad, Hamish thought. Tell me I don't have the right before I take it.
But, she didn't. He couldn't find a trace of affront or disgruntlement anywhere on her all-too innocent face, just the twinge of hurt she was trying to hide, and–god help him–a tickle of curiosity in her stare. Was she wondering if he would follow through? Because he absolutely would. Or was she wondering if his spanking would hurt? He'd make sure of it. He didn't have much patience for brats. That wasn't the vibe he was getting from her, but that didn't mean he'd go easy on her if a good old-fashioned skelping was required.
And she was rapidly headed for that very thing. At this point he was just trying not to get pissed. Chloe had no business leaving the house all by herself, had no business vacationing outside of her home state, much less country, when she so obviously was incapable of keeping herself safe.
He could keep her safe.
Don't start, his brain piped up. He was already having trouble enough trying to keep her out of his head.
“You're soaked,” he needlessly pointed out. “Get back in the car. I'll be done in ten.”
Still worrying her fingers, she looked from the car to him again. “You're wet too.”
He stood up, wiping his hands on his back pockets before reaching for his belt buckle. With a shriek of panic, she bolted around the back of the car and jumped into the front passenger seat.
Rolling his shoulders, he waited long enough for her to shut the door, then hunkered back down again to remove the last two lugnuts. Fetching the spare from off the trunk door, he changed out the flat in record time, considering how hard it was raining.
Loading back up the car, he climbed in behind the steering wheel. “Buckle up,” he said, almost by rote as he clicked his seatbelt and started up the car.
Sure enough, she hadn't buckled herself in when he'd sent her to the car, but she was hurrying to do it now.
“Good lass,” he told her, already arguing in his head that his irrepressible interest in her wasn't to either of their best interests. He just couldn't seem to stop himself.
He wiped the rain off his face, rubbed his palm on his soaked jeans, doggedly determined not to look at her again, at least not until he got home, and promptly found himself breaking that silent vow with a sidelong glance. She was staring at her lap, still worrying her fingers, and didn't glance at him once. Not until, very softly, she asked, “Are you mad at me, Hamish?”
If he was his, he'd be pulling over right now, unbuckling her seatbelt even as he shoved his seat back as far as it would go, scooping her out of the passenger seat to pull her into his lap. He'd have hugged her, lectured her, laid down the rules just to see her nod her head in acceptance of him, his authority, his Daddyness over her.
He gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles whitened. He had no business saying what he had to her, not to mention any of the stern words that already were leaping to the tip of his tongue.
He locked his lips and bit them all back. “I've got no business being mad at you, do I?”
“But you… you said you were going to… to…”–her voice dropped to a whisper for the next word only– “s-spank me? That was just words, right?” She tried to laugh, as if waiting for his confirmation that he'd been joking, but her eyes were too wide to pull that off.
He gave her a look. “Try me.”
She visibly shivered, but try as he did in quick glances from the road, he couldn't find so much as a hint of recoil or spiking temper, which she had every right to have. They were strangers, having just met last night in the airport. She should be highly insulted, even a Little submissive had the right to be mad as hell over some asshole Dominant just assuming authority over her. That was a wannabe-Dom dick move, and he was a full-on supporter of any woman clocking a guy right in the mouth for doing what he'd just done to Chloe.
But he was not joking.
“I promise you, you endanger your safety one more time and I will give you the kind of skelping that'll do my grandfather proud. Nobody gets to hurt you, especially not you simply because you don't want to think about what you're doing. That's what Littles do. And if you're traveling or out in public, and alone, then you need to keep your wits about you. I've been on the verge of busting your butt four times since I met you. It hasn't even been twenty-four hours. If you were mine, little lass, you'd been sitting tenderly right now and contemplating the whupping you'd have coming the instant we got home.”
Her throat worked, swallowing hard enough for him to hear the gulp. “How do you know? That I… that I'm…”
“A Little in sore need of a Daddy to watch out for her?” he finished for her. “Trust me. When you're a diehard Daddy Dom, it's easy to spot. Bouncy excitement at the airport, carelessly talking to people you don't know, revealing too much of yourself, apple juice on the plane… too many ‘I'm sorries’.”
She cast her wide-eyed stare to her lap again. Her knuckles were just as white as his where she gripped her own fingers tight. “You're a Daddy?”
He was quiet, not liking how the conversation had just switched to focus on him. “I was,” he said cautiously. “Before I shipped out to the Middle East. Not so much after that.”
“Why not?”
He inhaled deeply. As much as he hated talking about it, there had always been a measure of honesty in his relationships–this wasn't a relationship, damn it–but since he expected complete honesty out of her, how could he give her anything less than the same courtesy?
“I've got PTSD,” he said shortly. “You didn't notice I almost clocked you one at the airport when you woke me up?”
