Page 15 of Daddy's Little Patient

When he put his fork down and stood, she quickly stuffed half an egg into her mouth and chewed, but it was a sulky obedience. Eventually he decided cutting her some slack was the best thing to do for now and sat back down again.

“Check that brattitude,” he warned. “You are treading on very thin ice.”

After several long minutes, filled with nothing but the sound of utensils clicking on dishes and their chewing, Kelly muttered an unsatisfactory, “Sorry.”

He noted the lack of “Daddy” tacked onto the end of that, and that more than her mutinous expression told him everything he needed to know about how today was going to go. And he hated–hated–how the only thing he could do was continue finding new ways to distract her before she wound herself up to an explosion. The pouting and grumbling were annoying, but he knew how to deal with it. The breakdowns, inconsolable sobbing and shouting—he had no idea what to do about that, and Kelly refused to acknowledge any consolation unless it came in the form of a spanking. And not just any spanking, she wanted real pain so she could feel normal again. Relaxed.

Then maybe he could relax too. For a little while, anyway.

He sighed, knowing there was nothing he'd have done differently even if he had known just how unraveled she'd become just for having to rely on someone for daily help. That was the hardest for him to understand. He wasn’t just ‘someone’… or was he?

He'd been her boyfriend for years, and he'd known right from the start that she was skittish when it came to trust. Over the span of their time together, she’d kept her past private, and what few pieces she had let fall formed a pretty bleak picture. And he knew full well that he had only scratched the surface of some deep, deep childhood trauma.

But that was life, wasn't it? Bad things happen. To everyone, not just Kelly. But God, what she had been through. He'd give anything he had, everything he was, if only he could somehow flash back in time so he could have put his arms around the little girl Kelly had been and protect her from what the world and herparents had done. But that wasn’t how time or good intentions worked, and all Cole could do to help her now was navigate the present.

Rolling his head, he looked to the bathroom door, behind which the soft rustles of movement told him Kelly was getting ready for the day. She'd been in there for, what? Twenty minutes now? He checked his watch, then tucked his hands behind his head again, content to wait while he pre-planned how to keep her mentally occupied and in a good mood.

A heavy thunk from the opposite side of the bathroom door caught his attention. He lifted his head, staring at the door. Too soft to signify she'd fallen… had she dropped something instead?

"Kelly?" he called, trying to place the sound. Everything went silent in the bathroom, and with every one of his Daddy Dom senses tingling, he sat up.

"I'm fine!" Kelly called back.

"What was that?" Tossing back the blankets, he stood. "Are you okay?"

"Fine!" she repeated, her voice rising as things clattered, clunked and dropped behind the sanctity of the closed door.

And that was all the grace he intended to give her. Dressed only in the bottoms of his red checkered pajamas, he rounded the bed, headed right for the bathroom door. One didn't have to be the Daddy of a child to know that Littles in a quiet room were Littles getting into as much trouble as possible. Except it was the bathroom. Seriously, how much trouble could she possibly find in there—

He gripped the knob only to find the door locked.

His eyes widened, at first astonished that she would even dare to put a locked door between them, and then his temper spiked. "Open this door. Right now."

"One minute, please!" she called, her singsong voice shaking. If it was any indication, the rest of her was probably shaking too.As far as he was concerned, she'd better be. Shaking was a good indication that she knew she'd just gone too far. The fact that she'd lock the door meant she knew she was doing something he'd object to, and in this moment, although he didn't know what exactly she was doing, he did know she'd just found his hard limit.

"Open this door now," he ordered, but he was already reaching above the threshold to grab the tiny emergency screwdriver to stick in the pin hole on the door knob. The lock popped and he flung the door open just in time to see Kelly knock an entire basket full of fingernail polish on the floor as she tried to wrap her arm in a concealing towel.

She whipped around, her eyes wide as she took in the sight of him, filling up the doorway, and he took in the sight of his tin-snips on the bathroom counter amid all the colorful plastic shards of her newly destroyed right cast. The left was in the garbage can, stuffed under a mountain of freshly unrolled toilet paper. The entire roll, by the looks of it.

"What. The. Hell," he said flatly, disbelief dying fast beneath a rising surge of anger so hot his whole body burned.

Mouth opening and closing, Kelly stared at him, her eyes huge as she hugged the towels concealing her arms to her chest. "Da-Daddy..." she squeaked.

"Oh no," he told her. "No, no. Don't you even 'Daddy' me. Kelly, what did youdo?!"

Chapter Five

Cole launched out of the doorway, storming into the bathroom to grab her by the arm.

Kelly jumped, but his touch was surprisingly gentle as he unwound the towels to reveal the naked pinkness of her bare skin. Her wrist and hand looked perfectly normal apart from some mild swelling here and there, and a ton of ugly black stitches that closed the bright pink seams of each surgical cut.

A lot of healing had gone on in the few weeks she'd worn the casts, and the muscle atrophy showed in the thinness of her arms. The newly exposed surgical lines were a deep, dark pink and super sensitive from just the brush of bare air against her skin. And yet, the wounds themselves looked clean and were healing. She'd just thought she would be closer to "healed" than this. At least they didn't hurt.

Kelly wiggled her fingers as Cole gently turned her right arm, examining every part of it before reaching for her other arm and doing the same to it. Then he looked at her, and all she could see in his eyes were layers upon layers of disappointment andanger. Shoulders sinking, unable to hold his unblinking stare, she dropped her gaze to the floor.

"Why?" he demanded, harsh and abrupt.

Because she'd wanted to. Because for these last few weeks those two stupid things had put her through hell, every minute of every day. They'd made her useless, and weak, and all she felt was pathetic every time she had to ask Cole to help her meet her most basic needs. She'd gone from being a perfectly able-bodied person to needing someone to do everything for her—all the cooking, all the cleaning, all the dressing and undressing, and helping in and out of the bath, and on and off the toilet. She couldn't even wipe her own butt!

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