“Oh.” A soft sigh slips past my lips as I turn in circles, taking everything in. “It’s… beautiful.”
“Yes. It is.”
I glance over, and my breath catches in my throat. Because he isn’t looking around the room as he says it.
He’s looking straight at me.
For a long moment, our gazes stay locked, and I wonder vaguely if he can hear how hard my heart is pounding. Because it sounds like a herd of elephants to me, stampeding through my veins.
Then he clears his throat and turns away and the moment is gone. “Feel free to look around. There are snacks in the mini fridge, but remember what I said about alcohol.”
“Those snacks are like a hundred dollars for a candy bar.”
“And?”
“AndI can’t afford that.”
Again he raises that goddamn eyebrow. “Who said anything about you paying? You’re here as my assistant, which means it’s my responsibility to care for you.”
There’s something about the way he says “care for you” that feels so much deeper than just a conversation about candy bars and nuts. But before I can quiz him on it, someone knocks at the door and he turns away to let the bellhop in with our bags.
He presses a bill into the bellhop’s hand, sending him on his way before he turns back to me. “We should get ready for the reception tonight. Do you need a bath?”
Embarrassment heats my cheeks, even though it’s only the two of us in this room. “I need a shower, yes.”
The corners of his lips dip down, and for a second I’m certain he’s going to press the issue. I can already hear his voice in my head, insisting that Little girls don’t take showers.
But then he nods, once, and a heaviness settles in my gut. “All right. Shower and change. Be ready to go in an hour.”
It isn’t until I’m in the shower, letting the steaming water run over my hair that I recognize the feeling in my stomach as disappointment.
Which is ridiculous. I amnotdisappointed that my boss, a man with ice in his veins, doesn’t want to give me a bath like a proper Daddy.
Am I?
Donovan
There is nothing I hate more in the world than small talk.
Unless, as I am learning, it’s making small talk while my Little girl flashes her bright smile at every man in the room.They’re watching her, a curiosity I recognize all too well in their eyes, as she regales them with some story from her time in the emergency room at her hometown hospital in the middle of nowhere. Her voice carries, especially when she’s happy, and right now she’s far happier than she has any right to be without me by her side.
What would they think, I wonder, if they knew she was wearing a diaper beneath her pretty blue dress? A diaper I put on her, after threatening to put a plug in her welted bottom if she insisted on wearing the Big girl panties she’d packed instead.
Part of me, the darkest, most vile part, is tempted to show them. To bend her over and flip up her dress so everyone can see what a Little girl she actually is before I rip the diaper from her and spank her bottom red right here in the middle of the party for daring to so much aslookat another man.
But we’re not on the island, so there are rules. Etiquette. Social niceties that threaten to strangle me as I sip at my scotch and pretend to listen to the conversation around me.
That conversation falls away as I watch one of the other doctors—one I don’t recognize—approach my Little girl, a glass of wine in his hand. And instead of brushing him off and making her apologies, she accepts the glass.
And sips.
“Excuse me. I need to take care of something.”
Without bothering to wait for a response from my colleagues, I step away from the table, my gaze locked on my naughty girl as she continues drinking and laughing with her entourage. Several people try to stop me, to get my attention, but I ignore every one of them as I snake my way through the crowd.
“Gentlemen.” I greet the men surrounding her with a smile, and judging by the way their eyes widen, the violence bubbling in my veins comes through loud and clear. “Apologies forinterrupting your evening, but I need to steal my assistant for a bit. If you’ll excuse us.”
Again without waiting for anyone to respond, I pluck the glass of wine from my Little girl’s hand and pass it off to one of the men. Beside me, Camilla smiles, far more apologetically than I managed to.
