It’s so perfect. Exactly as I’ve dreamed. How have I known all along it would be like this between us? “Yes.” I drag my breasts side to side on the dressing table, desperate for friction, but it’s too smooth and I whine in frustration. “I promise I’ll be all better…” Daddy.
I clamp my lips together before the word can escape, but it burns in my throat, dying to be let out. What would he think of me if I called him that?
In the mirror, I watch Sebastian rear back with his hand, connecting with my right ass cheek with a precise swat—and it’s like I suddenly have twenty-twenty vision in a world that’s always been blurry. My mouth falls open and my hips tilt up shamelessly, as if my body has been waiting for this. There’s a ripple of completion traveling from my head, down to my toes.
Oh Lord. Again. Again.
I don’t have to beg out loud to get what I want. Sebastian simply gives it to me, harsh slap after harsh slap, wetness spreading in the folds of my sex and coasting down the insides of my legs. I can breathe. I can breathe for the first time.
On the fifth swat, Sebastian leans down, breathing heavily in my ear. “It upsets me to see you cry.”
There’s a twist in my chest at his honesty. “I’m sorry.”
“When you cry…I want to comfort you.” I catch his frown reflected in the mirror. “I also want to feel your tears sliding down my stomach.”
If he can be honest with me, I can do the same. I feel so free and myself right now, I don’t know if I have any other choice but to say the words bursting free of my mind. “You want comforting me to turn into…more. Even if it’s…wrong. Or if we pretend it’s wrong,” I whisper, my cheeks flaming. “You want to dry my tears and make more of them at the same time.”
“Yes.” His forehead falls to my shoulder, his voice raw and hoarse. “What are you doing to me? How the hell do you know this?”
I whisper my confession. “I’ve been dreaming about it since I…”
“Since you were a little girl,” he finishes in a growl. “Is that the way of it?”
I nod contritely, meeting his wolfish gaze through my lashes. “You can spank me more, Daddy. You can do anything. I won’t tell anyone.”
We make blistering eye contact in the mirror, his expression intense, mine vulnerable. Hopeful. Maybe even a little desperate, because I’ve been pining for this feeling since I can remember. Being at the mercy of a man. This man. My needs and wants and desires all tied to a string and wrapped around his big finger.
Sebastian opens his mouth to say something—
“Mr. Cove!” A male voice yells from the set. “We need you for the wrap-up interview.” Then quieter, “Do you know where he went?”
“Back there, I think,” someone answers. “Far corner.”
We move quickly and at the same time, pulling my panties and skirt back into place, his hands far steadier and more capable than mine. One look in the mirror tells me nothing can hide the fact that I was hovering on the edge of an orgasm. Just from being spanked. Whoever comes around that corner will know it, though, and Sebastian seems to realize it, too.
“I don’t want anyone to see you like this,” he says, his hand hovering over my hair for a second, then stroking it once, before his touch falls away. “Alice, I—”
Footsteps draw close.
Really close.
“Mr. Cove? You back here?”
With a biting curse, he spins away and intercepts the man just before he can invade our little corner of the backstage area. “Right. I’m here,” he snaps. “Let’s get this nonsense over with.”
Their footsteps fade. And then I’m alone.
The high I was experiencing a minute ago drops and shatters like a glass on concrete. Did I just…call Sebastian Cove…Daddy?
Did I just essentially confess that I want to be his little girl, like I’ve always dreamed?
He said he wanted it, too, in the heat of the moment, but as I understand it, men will say whatever it takes to get sex from a woman. I was so ready to give it to him, too. Maybe he was secretly laughing at me. There’s a reason I never get physical with the men I date. I’m afraid of being told I’m a freak.
Maybe I am a freak and Sebastian thinks so.
I look around in the darkness. The silence falls like a heavy drape and suddenly I’m freezing cold. Just another failed reality show contestant.
You should go.
He didn’t even say he was coming back. What am I going to do? Stand here and wait, hoping Sebastian motherloving Cove wants to return and satisfy my Daddy issues? Am I serious?
Before I can talk myself into doing something stupid and staying, waiting around like a lovesick puppy, I lunge for the emergency exit and blow the joint.
4
Sebastian
As soon as the absolute knob of a host finishes asking me the final interview question, I rip the microphone off my lapel and make for the backstage area. There is a rather unsettled feeling in my stomach and I’m not used to being anything but calm. Confident. As soon as I sat down for the interview, though, I got a terrible feeling that I shouldn’t have left Alice.
I was torn between two instincts.
Keep the other man from seeing her and getting my mouth on her gorgeous body. I reasoned that I could accomplish both, just not at the same time. After all, there needs to be an order to things. When I make my famous amaretto genoise, there is a step-by-step process to achieving the end result. I start by beating the egg yolks on medium speed and slowly adding the sugar, at a very precise rate. Order. Directions. Recipes. That’s how I live my life.
Alice has only been in my life for less than a day and already, I’m questioning my actions. Worrying I made the wrong decision when I’ve never once second guessed myself with a woman.
Alice isn’t just any woman, is she?
She’s the female I took one look at and needed to possess. Yet I had no idea the level of possessiveness I would reach when we met face to face backstage, in the dark, in the absence of cameras. Just breath, hands and the kind of honesty that threatens even now to steal my sanity.
You can spank me more, Daddy. You can do anything. I won’t tell anyone.
A low groan leaves me the farther I move into the darkness backstage. Most of the action has died down and I don’t like that. I don’t like the fact that I’ve been gone long enough for people to start leaving. If Alice isn’t where I left her, what the fuck am I going to do?
I never expected the types of things she said to me to make my dick so hard. To make me feel like I was standing in the exact right place, with the exact right woman, but her words opened up a door inside me and there’s hunger on the other side. There’s more than that. There’s…responsibility. Alice needs a man who will touch her, speak to her, treat her a certain way—and I need it to be me.
It will be me.
With anticipation tightening my gut, I turn the corner into the area where I left Alice…
Gone.
She’s gone.
A headache roars home, right between my eyes, and the moisture in my mouth evaporates. No.
Helplessness pours into my stomach like wet cement and I turn, kicking over a garment rack. “Fuck!”