My room is clean. Controlled. Everything in its place.
Unlike my head right now.
During the night, I woke up the maintenance staff and ordered them to paint the largest and best of the other bedrooms in her perfect yellow.
I told them to figure out how to make the color the same as Belle’s dress in Beauty and the Beast, then hung up.
I told myself it was about establishing authority, showing her I keep my promises, demonstrating that obedience gets rewarded. That I’m to be trusted.
The truth is, I wanted to see her face when she saw it. Wanted to watch those eyes light up. Wanted to be the one who gave her something joyful, even if it’s in the midst of a nightmare.
But what I wanted most was to hear her call me Daddy again.
I drain the half mug of still scalding black coffee, welcoming the burn as punishment for allowing emotions to surface that will only complicate things.
Routine and order must be maintained, so I make my way down the hall, descend the main curved stairs, my footsteps echoing in the arched plastered ceiling as the air around me seems to buzz.
When I reach the grand foyer, I’m surprised to hear Maria's voice echoing in the hallway. It’s definitely her. Having a conversation with someone and sounding…downright chipper.
I rub the sharp bite of pain in my jaw as I walk. I popped a gold crown from one of my molars last night, clenching my fucking teeth so hard.
I make a mental note to call in a favor from the dentist on the mainland to re-secure the evidence of my growing mania.
Things are upended here for others, clearly, because in all the fifteen years she’s been in my employ and the hundred or so wards we’ve had here, I’ve never heard Maria…chat.
Yet here she is, jabbering like a drunk on a barstool at 2 AM.
"Your mother, she doesn't cook for you?" Maria sounds horrified.
"My mother doesn't do anythingforme," Larissa responds, and her voice does things to me I hate. "She does thingstome andforher. There's a difference."
“That is not right,” Maria snaps back as I close the last four strides to the entryway to the kitchen and swallow, then Ifreeze as though some curse has stolen my power of movement, because she’s right there, sitting at the kitchen table.
Like the universe is announcing to me that I’m royally screwed, a skewer of Mediterranean light cuts straight across her upper body, illuminating her perky teenage tits, and I want to pop her fucking cherry right here in front of Maria and the cucumber she’s slicing.
I should announce myself, but I’m stuck, my dick at half-mast already.
I’ve had guns pointed at my head. Knives slicing open parts of me that took a hundred stitches to sew shut, and I’ve never once winced or broken a sweat.
But when Larissa flips her hair down over her shoulder, reaches toward the ceiling in a lazy, seductive stretch, her body covered only by the thin white linen dress I had couriered to the villa after I made a midnight call to the owner of the most exclusive boutique in Naples, my hard-on thickens like a teenage boy on the internet with no parental controls.
Am I a bastard for dressing her like a virginal doll for my own perverse pleasure?
Sure.
I’ve never had a type. But generally it’s women who are sent to me, and if the mood is right, I indulge. The typical version would have long, tan legs, blonde, and likely low IQ.
I love a smart woman, this I know, but not in my bed.
I’ll never touch a blonde again. I already know this deep in my marrow.
Larissa is braless as well. I had the dress delivered to Larissa’s room by one of the nurses on staff, with instructions to bathe, then wear the dress, and nothing else. I catch the deeper shade of her nipple’s flesh with the help of the line of sun that’s turning the white fabric nearly translucent.
The cascade of dark hair, still damp from her morning shower, rests over her left shoulder.
She takes the glass of juice Maria hands her and brings it to her sinfully pink lips, the curve of her neck extending when she swallows.
The dress sits low enough that I can see her collarbones. They stand out far too much, but I trace them with my eyes to that small hollow at the base of her throat. That small dip. That perfect, shadowed indentation where I salivate to press my tongue, taste her skin, feel her pulse flutter against my lips like a trapped bird.
