Page 17 of Wild Daddy

"Our time out here on the mountain is going to be more of the same." I lower my face to hers, close enough our breaths mingle. "But you have to choose. Hide behind your notebook, or trust Daddy to show you what you're really capable of."

"I don't understand. I have achieved a lot in my short nineteen years."

I lower my voice, gentler now. "Yes, but out here, in the quiet, maybe you can finally hear your own voice instead of all the other ones in your head telling you who you should be."

The statement hits hard, and I see something crack in her expression. Something lonely she's been hiding behind all that academic achievement.

"What doyouwant, Marley Voss?" I ask quietly. "Not what your professors want. Not what your parents want. What do you actually want?"

She opens her mouth. Closes it. Nothing comes out.

"You’ve got a couple days to figure it out." I turn back toward the supplies, needing a distraction before I spread her open and fuck some sense into her. "But tonight, you're mine. And tomorrow, we'll see if you're brave enough to keep choosing you. And hopefully me. I’m your lifeline up here baby. It’s you, me and what we can do together."

The pressure is there now. The pressure of being cut off from everything she's used to define herself. Alone with a man who's already proven he can make her forget every rule she's ever lived by.

She’s standing on the edge of something wild, and all I can do is give her the space to jump.

Because once she does—there’s no going back.

Five

Marley

The silence in the cabin is different from any quiet I've ever experienced. No hum of electricity, no distant traffic, no neighbors in adjacent apartments. Just the crackle of the fire and the sound of Cade moving around the small space with the kind of easy confidence that comes from knowing exactly where everything belongs.

I sit on the edge of his bed—the only place to sit that isn't the floor—and watch him prepare lunch. Everything he does is methodical, purposeful. No wasted movements, no hesitation. It's like watching someone perform a dance they've done a thousand times.

"You're staring," he says without turning around.

Heat floods my cheeks. "I'm observing. For research purposes."

"Uh-huh." He glances over his shoulder with that slight smile I'm beginning to recognize. "What exactly are you researching?"

"The way you move. It's very...efficient." I tuck my legs up under me, trying to get comfortable on the narrow mattress."From an anthropological perspective, it suggests complete familiarity with your environment, which indicates—"

"Marley."

"What?"

"You're doing that thing again where you turn everything into data instead of just experiencing it. Like how good my ass looks in these jeans."

I open my mouth to argue, then close it. He's right. Even here, in this tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere, I'm defaulting to academic analysis instead of just...being present. Instead of admitting that I've been staring at his ass and wondering what it would feel like under my hands. How it would feel to touch him everywhere.

"I don't know how tonotanalyze things," I admit, squirming on the bed as my body starts that familiar ache that means I'm in trouble. "It's kind of my default setting."

"I’ve noticed." He turns back to whatever he's cooking, he’s chopping and throwing things in a sizzling pan and I catch the scent of something that makes my stomach growl despite my nervousness. And despite the fact that I'm getting wet just watching him move around his space like he owns everything in it. Which he does. Possibly including me. "We'll work on that."

Twenty minutes later, he sets two bowls on the small wooden table near the window and gestures for me to join him on the simple bench he's pulled in from outside. The stew smells amazing, but I find myself staring at it instead of eating.

"Something wrong with the food?" he asks.

"No, it smells really good." I stir the stew with my spoon, buying time. "I'm just not that hungry."

"When's the last time you ate?"

I think about it. "A granola bar this morning?"

"That’s not a meal." He shifts on the bench to face me, close enough that our thighs are touching. "Eat."

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