But also kind of wonderful.
“And maybe something with cherries?” he asked the person on the other end of the line while he shot me a smoldering look that made my heart stop beating for way too long to be healthy. “A tart? I think that’s exactly what we need, since we’ve already got something sweet in the room.”
Me.
He meant me.
He winked at me as he thanked the person who’d taken the order, and for the first time in my entire life, I wondered what it would be like to fall for someone besides Jules. Or maybe… maybe I already was?
Daddy hung up the phone and pinned me with another one of those super-hot looks of his, and I yanked my hands out of my pockets and thrust them behind my back, clasping them together like I’d been called in front of the headmaster at school.
Oh, God.
This was it. He was going to rip my clothes off and ravish my body like one of the men in my books. And then…
I didn’t know. But maybe he wasn’t going to ravish me? I wasn’t even sure what that might have looked like in the real world as opposed to on the pages of a romance novel. I kind of thought I wanted to find out, though… but the idea also terrified me without Jules here to make sure I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
But Daddy was definitely looking at me like he wanted to dosomething.
Something good.
Or maybe wonderfully bad?
I wasn’t sure I knew the difference anymore. Iwassure that I was about to expire if I didn’t start breathing again, though. But with Daddy looking at me like that?
Wait, why was he just looking? Did he notwantto ravish me? Had he changed his mind? Was I not enough to bother with, without Jules here, too? He was smiling, so I didn’t think he wanted me to leave, but he also didn’t make any sudden moves to ravish me or spank me or hogtie me or whatever it was they’d done in that porno Jules had tried to make me watch back when the subject of Daddies had first come up.
“Do you want to get comfortable?” Daddy finally asked, his voice sounding even lower and his hot American accent even thicker now that we were the only two people in the room. “Maybe take off your shoes and stay a while?”
He was teasing. I knew he was. But all I felt was dumb for not remembering to do it already. Dumb and awkward and out of place.
I swallowed hard, my palms sweating.
I didn’t belong here.
Daddy’s eyebrows drew together. “Isaac?” he said, making me want to throw myself in his arms for some reason, even though he was exactly the person I didn’t want to look so dumb and awkward and out of place around.
“I-I’m good,” I lied, scrambling to hurry up and get my shoes off like he’d said. “Fine. Comfortable, I mean. Just… I’m brilliant.”
And… wow. So, talking was evidently out of the question. Along with managing something simple, like shoes, which were apparently beyond me now and I really, really just wanted Jules to finish taking off his Diva makeup and come back to rescue me before I hyperventilated or landed on my arse.
Shoot. Too late on both counts. Somehow, my laces had tangled, and I was going down.
But then Daddy was there.
“I’ve got you,” he said, smiling as he righted me, but not like he wasn’t trying to laugh at me. Like… like he was happy I’d needed him to?
Which didn’t make sense.
Nor did it make any sense that he was now kneeling in front of me, his big hands steadying my suddenly shaky legs as he untangled my disobedient laces and lifted each of my feet, slipping my shoes off and setting them aside.
He kept one hand on my hip and looked up at me. “I told you, little lamb. Anything you need. Daddy’s got you.”
I swallowed. Then nodded, but mostly because he seemed to be waiting for me to give him some kind of acknowledgement. I was having trouble thinking about anything, though, because it wasn’tbetterthan Jules swooping to my rescue, but it was just as good. A different kind of good.
Also? I didn’t feel out of place anymore. Not if Daddy had me. And it was probably silly since this was nothing more than a weekend hook-up for him, no matter how nice he was being, or how elegant our surroundings, but still… it felt real. It felt like hemeantit.
I wanted him to.
