She clutched at her hands. “I... I...”
He waited for her to finish, and when she got stuck, gently prodded, “How do you see tonight ending? What happens after we get the ice cream and go home.”
She had no idea, but she hoped it involved more kissing. “We have pie?”
“And after the pie, once we’ve cleaned up the kitchen again, what then?”
He’d definitely kiss her. For sure, she’d want to kiss him. “It’ll be late. Lily will go to sleep.”
“And so will Pops. What then?”
Her face flushed hotter. “Then we’ll, um… go to bed.”
“In one bed,” he pressed, “or two?”
She’d known what he was going to say even before he said it. She’d known because hearing it said out loud did not make her gut tighten the way it would have had she not already been thinking that very thing. One bed, or two?
She could feel his arms around her. She could feel the heat of his body boring into her. But what, with the baby sleeping in bed between them? Her crib was in the other house. There was no other place to put her. Two was cozy when intimacy was involved; three was definitely a crowd.
“I’m inclined to say one bed,” Brock added when she said nothing. “That’s why I need to know, yes or no, baby girl, because if you don’t tell Daddy what you want, there’s a very good chance that we’ll end up in one bed. If we do, the last thing I want is for you to regret it.”
She was already regretting it, already following that line of desirous thinking to its inevitable conclusion. For all that she could feel him in bed with her, for all that she ached to wrap her arms and legs around him, whispering ‘Daddy.... ooohhh Daddy...’ in his ear as he slid so full and deep inside her, she couldn’t imagine doing any of that with Lily in bed beside them. Unless she, what... put her on the floor while she romped about with a man she barely knew? Or left her child asleep without protection in her bed, while she and Brock fucked like horny teenagers in his, on a completely different floor of the house, as if there was no danger that Lily might roll off in her sleep? Or she could get down on the floor herself, while they both killed their knees trying to get relief from the relentless pull of their passions?
There was no good solution that didn’t end with Stace feeling selfish.
Her in-laws had been right. She was a horrible person, the sort that used others to get what she wanted, a horrible wife and an even more horrible mother. She turned her face to the window, feeling the cold outside slowly seeping through the glass to chill her skin. The heat of the tears she didn’t want to cry and yet which stubbornly leaked from her fast-blinking eyes, grew cold within seconds.
“Yes, or no,” Daddy coaxed her. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
She bit her bottom lip to stop its trembling before she did something pathetic, like let him know she was crying. That’s what horrible people did when they knew they weren’t about toget their way, wasn’t it? They cried, and made the other person feel bad.
What did she want, though?
She wanted to be held, Stace thought sadly. She wanted to be held by someone who thought so much of her as to call himself her Daddy, extending his protection and his concern, and most of all his attention to her no matter what. And maybe that meant he spanked her too, when he thought she needed and deserved it. And maybe that meant she wouldn’t always get to do things for herself, but was that really such a terrible thing to want?
“Do you think I’m selfish?” she asked.
“I’m sorry?” he countered, confused. ”Why would you say that? In what way?”
She rubbed her stomach, twisting her head even further away from him. She was breathing through her mouth now, so he wouldn’t hear her crying. She looked out at the magical blinking of all those Christmas lights, and the reindeer goat who was wandering out into the lawn now, eyeing the cars all lined up along the curb on both sides of the street. It was probably her imagination that made her think it was looking back at her, as if wondering when she was going to get out of the car and come to pet it, right on its fake little antlers.
The car rocked as suddenly Brock grabbed the lever under his seat and shoved it back as far as it would go.
“Come here,” he said, taking hold of her upper arm. “Look at me.”
She didn’t want to. Pulling a leg up into the seat with her, she took off her seat belt so she could turn her back all the way to him. “I’m okay,” she said, and yet that was when her body ruined the illusion by gasping in a huffy breath, forcing her to sniffle. He definitely knew she was crying.
His hand settled on her shoulder, trying to turn her all the way around. “Look at me.”
Stace shook her head, but his will was stronger, He pulled on her shoulder, his grip gentle and yet firm, and he didn’t stop until she turned around to face him. He didn’t stop then either. Moving his hand from her shoulder to under her arm, he pulled her over the gearshift, catching her leg to keep her coming until she was kneeling over his lap, the steering wheel brushing at her back and involuntary shivers dancing in her core when he caught the back of her head and gently forced her down onto his shoulder. He held her close, letting the dam of her tears break and his soft flannel shirt absorb the worst of it.
“Who said you’re a bad person?” Brock asked, rocking her as much as the confines of the vehicle’s front seat would allow. “Your ex? Because I’ve got to say, honey, if you’re crying right now over something he said, I’m sorely tempted to take you straight home, without ice cream and without looking at any more lights.”
“You don’t think it’s true?” she sniffled. “He wasn’t the only one who said it. His mom d-did too.”
“And where is he right now?”
Her breath hitching in her throat, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Prison.”
