“I can…”
“Absolutely not.” He told her. “Sometimes, Daddy is going to take care of you and give you what you need. Being able to provide for you is the only satisfaction I need. It doesn’t have to be reciprocal every time, baby. My pleasure came from watching you orgasm.”
He washed himself while she stood with her back against the tile wall and watched him with the warm, loose feeling still in her chest, and she thought about the anger she'd woken up with and the run and the conversation on the road and the way he'd saidI knowto every part of it.
She thought about the wordchosen. The word that had been sitting on her chest like something with weight since the night Rampage had told her about Delling. Delling had chosen her as a target, a victim.
But, Rampage had looked at her and chosen her as his.
The distinction settled in her somewhere deep and permanent. She was chosen. In the best possible way. Chosen to be his little girl.
He turned the water off. Reached past her for the towel on the rail, wrapped it around her before reaching for his own.
She watched him.
"You're staring," he said.
"Yes."
"Any particular reason."
"Several," she said. "All of them good."
He tucked the corner of her towel in at her chest and she put her hand flat over his and held it there for a moment.
"Thank you," she said.
"For the shower?"
"For knowing what I needed." She held his gaze. "I didn't ask for that."
"No," he said. "But I knew."
She looked at him.
"That's going to be a thing, isn't it," she said. "You just knowing."
"Probably," he said. “Daddies have a way of knowing what their girls need.”
She stood up on her toes and kissed him once, brief and warm.
"Good," she said.
She went to get dressed in the room next door and the anger was gone and the day outside the window was bright and clear and she felt clean. Completely and genuinely clean, inside and out.
She picked up her coloring book from the nightstand on her way back downstairs.
Some things, she thought, you needed a run for.
Some things you need your Daddy’s hands for.
She was starting to understand the difference.
The meeting prep happened at the kitchen table after breakfast, which Rampage cooked. She was increasingly impressed by his skills. He made eggs, toast, and cut fresh fruit that he'd apparently gone to some effort to buy because Makenzie had mentioned to him that Emily liked strawberries.
She noticed the strawberries and thanked him. They were the most delicious strawberries she’d ever eaten, and it had nothingto do with how sweet they were and everything to do with how sweet her Daddy was for going out of his way to get them for her.
"They're going to ask you to walk through the Facebook interactions from the beginning," Rampage was saying. "Everything. When you first noticed Delling, when he first commented on something, when he sent the first direct message about the listing. All of it."
