Page 198 of Merciless Daddy

“That’s right, Daddy. Consent can be rescinded at any moment.”

“If you refuse . . . I will take you anyway.”

“Daddy!”

“I am joking.”

“You are only partly joking.”

“I suppose we’ll never know.”

She chose her clothes without asking my opinion.

The dress was bright yellow, with thin straps and a skirt that moved around her knees in the wind. She wore a wide straw hat and flat sandals. Nothing expensive. Nothing armored. She looked like sunshine had learned how to sharpen its teeth.

When she came downstairs, I forgot the sentence I had prepared.

Yelena noticed.

“Oh,” she said. “That good?”

“Dangerously good.”

Her cheeks turned pink.

The sailboat waited at the private dock. Security followed in another vessel, far enough back that Yelena did not have to look at them unless she chose to.

Before we left, I held up sunscreen.

She stared at it.

“No chance.”

“You will burn. Remember Kiryl?”

“I will become golden, bronze, beautiful.”

“You will become painful.”

She sighed and held out her arms.

I rubbed sunscreen over her shoulders, her collarbones, her back. My hands moved slowly. Not because I wanted to turn it into anything. Because touch had become a language between us, and I wanted every word to mean care.

When I reached her thighs, she caught my wrist.

“That’s enough, Daddy. I don’t know if I could stop myself from . . . you know. And we have this date!”

“Of course.”

She took the bottle and did the rest herself.

The neighboring harbor was louder than our island. Boats crowded the water. White buildings climbed the hill above the docks. Music carried from somewhere inland. The market spread along the waterfront beneath striped awnings.

Flowers. Painted ceramics. Baskets of mangoes and limes. Handwoven bags. Silver jewelry. Old women selling spiced cakes. Men calling out prices in quick, warm voices.

Yelena stopped at the first stall and stared. Her face opened. Not carefully. Not with the old calculation.

She touched a painted bowl. Blue glaze. White waves around the rim.