“Listen to me,” I murmured. “I’m going to check you, okay? Just to make sure everything’s healing the way it should. Daddy’s not going to hurt you.”
Fear flickered behind the shame.
“Okay,” she nodded.
I moved like she was made of glass and I was the idiot who’d already cracked her once. Gently easing her knees apart, watching everything— every tiny flinch that felt like a knife across my own nerves.
She winced when I nudged her thighs apart. It still killed me. Every little sound might as well have been a gunshot.
If I could have taken the pain out of her, I would’ve done it without blinking.
Warm skin. Swollen muscles. No fresh blood.
From what I could see, there were no obvious external tears, no jagged edges, no split skin. Just tenderness everywhere, her body shoutingnewandfirstandmine.
“I don’t see any damage, baby,” I said, smoothing a hand up to her hip, my thumb circling slow. “You’re not bleeding anymore. It’s just what’s dried.”
Her eyes stayed glassy. Her jaw locked like she was bracing for a verdict.
“And if you had torn?” she asked quietly. “Would you tell me?”
I didn’t even consider lying. “I’d take you to the hospital. I wouldn’t risk you for anything.”
She swallowed that down and nodded, even as the humiliation sat there, raw and bleeding in a way the skin wasn’t.
I bent and brushed my kissed her hip, reverent. “It’s blood, sweetheart. That’s all it is. It’s proof of how new this is. Proof you let me into places no one else has ever been, that you bled for Daddy first. I will never be ashamed of that. Ever.”
The words landed. I saw them hit. Saw the way they warred with a lifetime of dynasty poison in her head. She still looked like she wanted to crawl out of her own skin and disappear under the floor.
She shifted a fraction and the sound she made— wrecked me. That was my line. Pain had gone from necessary to unacceptable.
That was enough.
“Stay here for me.” I kissed her hip, then her stomach, before I got up.
Leaving the bed felt wrong, like I was abandoning my post. But the bathroom was three strides away. I turned on the tub and kept the water warm, nothing too hot. The bottle of soak I’d packed sat exactly where I’d shoved it a weeks ago, obsessive kind of planning—just in caseshe let me have this. I added a capful, watched it cloud the water, imagined her there where I could hold her and fix as much of this as possible.
Soft, doctor-approved, skin-safe. Only the best for my girl. Instead I’d brought it. Of course I’d been preparing for her long before she knew. Now, I was extra grateful, because at the time, I hadn’t known she was a virgin.
When I came back, she had turned away from the door like if she didn’t see me, I wouldn’t have to see her like this. Like she was trying to spare me from her own pain.
“Hey.” I forced myself to be slow, dropping back down on one knee beside the bed, kneeling for her, where I belonged. “No. No, angel. Look at me.”
She turned reluctantly. “I hate this,” she choked. “I hate that it hurts. I hate that I’m crying. I hate that you’re being so nice.”
I touched her temple, “I’ll stop being nice, then. I’ll be cruel and sarcastic and make you beg for toast instead.”
A breath escaped her, broken halfway into a laugh. I pushed her hair gently back from her face, thumb catching another tear before it could fall.
“Please, baby. Let me take care of you. That’s all I want right now.”
“I feel stupid.”
“You’re not.”
“I feel…” Her mouth trembled. “Ruined.”
That word cut deeper than it had any right to. Ruined. Like what we’d done had broken her value instead of crowning it. Like giving herself to me had made herless.
