by Olivia Fox
The Bitter Betty in me demanded attention and uttered her silent warning. You’re gonna get attached if you’re not careful. Send him away now! Better safe than sorry.
I forced the words past my lips. “Hey, I realize you have things to do. I shouldn’t keep you here all day.”
“A) What are you talking about? B) I enjoy being with you. And C) We recently finished making love so it’s kind of a weird time to kick me out.
Made love. He called it making love. All along, I had been referring to it as a hookup. Did it mean anything his saying that?
I stared at the mountain of clean, unfolded clothes on my chair. I usually just tossed them there and pulled outfits out as needed; getting them to my chest of drawers and walk-in closet seemed like the longest mile and took forever. I hated folding and putting away clothes. And doing dishes. And cleaning house.
Pay attention, Scarlett. Your thoughts are more drifty than The Pooh Sticks headed downstream. And he sounded earnest, almost as if he meant what he said.
“I’m sorry, I’m a little rusty. In fact, before being with you, I’d have said there weren’t enough WD40 on the planet to get my motor running. You seem a little extreme about wanting to pamper me. As if watching over me is a matter of life or death or something.”
“Oh, Scarlett, you have no idea.”
I climbed under the covers and pulled them up to my chest, surprising myself with how much more I wanted to learn about him. “Well, why don’t you try to explain it to me?”
While he gathered his thoughts, I looked across his swollen pecs to admire him from two sides. Across his body I appreciated his dark brown and silver sprinkled chest hair, which dusted his swollen pecs. I also watched him from the other side, framed in my stand-up mirror. As he gestured and spoke, I admired his bulging biceps. All of this made my insides dance. If Aiden were a horse, I’d rate him first class in the show halter class as judged on the following factors:
1.Balance and Quality (definitely) 2. Structural Correctness (oh yeah) 3. Breed and Sex Character (top notch) 4. Muscling (aplenty)
“It’s probably too soon to say this, but that wasn’t mere sex for me. Contrary to what you might have heard, not all guys are in it for the bootie call alone.” He ran his fingers back through his hair, a gesture I found alluring. “I’m an old fashioned guy which means, emotion has to be there. I wouldn’t bed you without being as fond of your mind and spirit as I am of your bangin’ bod. Although trust me, the way your pussy stroked my cock is not something I’ll soon get out of my mind. You’ve got magic between your legs.” To make his point, he traced his fingers over my folds, and desire pooled once again in my stomach.
Try as I might, the words to respond didn’t leave my mouth. I held my stomach and bounced my feet to a silent beat. He freaked me out a little. We just met, and we were already having the “defining the relationship” talk. I gave into temptation, telling myself it had been too long since I’d had a good roll in the hay and I deserved a reward after what I had lived through with Darwood. I enjoyed the experience more than I should for a straightforward “hookup” with Aiden, but relationship ready I was not.
His next words relieved me a little.
“I don’t expect you to think like I do, but in all fairness, from now on you should grasp some things about me.”
“Things?” Great, Scarlett, real intelligent.
“Things.” He sat up and got under the covers with me, rubbing the tops of his thighs with his palms. “I’m forty-five years old, Scarlett, old enough to comprehend what makes me tick, and it’s only fair that I share certain details with you because I want us to continue what we’ve started. At this point, it’s not fair to withhold them because I’m enchanted with you.”
Jesus, his age meant that he got his B.S. degree about the time I graduated from the eighth grade. Something about that was so hot and spoke to my suddenly insatiable lady bits.
“I’m seasoned enough to have some experience under my belt.”
I’ll say, my inner trollop nodded her enthusiasm.
“My particular form of affection is not for every woman, but you are putting off a strong vibe that it might work between us. For relationships to sizzle, they need contrast. Polarity. In my book, that means domination and surrender, me and you.”
Oh great. Just what I needed, some kinky as fuck dude taking a fancy to me. A small-town Christian Grey.
On second thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. Hear him out, Scarlett. Aiden didn’t give off pervert vibes; you feel safe with him.
I shuddered at the memory of my one failed attempt at using an online dating platform after Darwood, which landed me lunch with a deviant. A lunch I paid for. I met a guy, as prearranged after a few phone calls post introduction on Catch.com, in a safe place, a restaurant that he declared to be “too expensive” after I met him there and sat down at a window table. Something about him repulsed me on an instinctual level. An undisguised animosity rose off him in waves. He invited me to his house and told me he was a Dom and part of his scene would have me do his dishes and clean the house. Naked.
In high heels.
Hard to turn down—not.
That ended that, and I hadn’t jumped back on the online dating merry-go-round since.
Aiden wasn’t one bit repulsive or scary.
Aiden appealed to every girly part of me like pollen to a bee.
Scarlett
I stared across the room at the sock pile, this time not really seeing it. “Domination and surrender?” I whispered.
He rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip and said, “Yes.”
This was definitely going to require sustenance. I needed a diversion before tackling what promised to be a sobering topic. What, was I going to need to sign a contract? Did he have a red room? The questions were popping into my mind like whack-a-moles. Call me a coward, but I couldn’t deal with solemn subjects on an empty stomach.
So I stalled him a little, “Hey, do you mind if we have a bicnic while we discuss polarity and what not?” I asked him while tossing on a short robe and tying it at my middle.
“Bicnic?” He pulled on a pair of sweats, following my lead, and at that moment, I gave extra points for Sex Character and Muscling because the way the gray fabric hung off his hips was sinful.
“Yeah, it’s where I get a food tray and bring it back to bed to enjoy. A bed picnic. If we’re going to dive right into serious stuff, I need refreshments.” My stomach growled, making a long, alto-toned gurgle for emphasis.
“You sure you’re okay eating in bed? You don’t wanna go somewhere where the crumbs won’t matter?”
I hopped off the bed and sashayed to the kitchen, relishing Aiden followed closely behind. “Nope. I love bed picnics and I enjoy being in bed with you. Gonna enjoy it as much as I can before you head off into the sunset.”
His hand grasped mine, and he turned me around to face him, surprising me and throwing me off kilter. His size was intimidating; he had to be over six foot three, which dwarfed my foot shorter stature. And I knew for a fact that the dangly bits down below were as impressive in size.
My cheeks heated beneath his gaze at the memory of us—carnal, naked, and hungry.
“Don’t do that, Scarlett.” His command brooked no argument, none, and I loved his pure masculine confidence.
Hard to imagine that Aiden could ever snivel, like Darwood had done on his most recent visit.
“Don’t do what, Aiden?” I spoke the name like a caress. It had to be some remnant pheromones swirling in my body that made me so comfortable in front of him, laid bare in my unclothed self and full of some heady effeminate power that reveled in her ability to bewitch the man before her with a simple switch in the way she spoke his name.
“Say ‘Aiden’ like that again, and I’ll do anything for you. Rob banks even.”
I laughed and turned toward the kitchen, but this time found myself shoved against the wall.
“Don’t diminish what’s between us.
I get it. We just met.”
You met him less than a week ago, you hussy! Bitter Betty harangued.
Aiden lifted my chin, forcing me to look into his eyes. “We’re both grown-ups, and we’ve spent enough time together to know that this is real. You can’t reject this thing between us.”
And on that note, he lowered his mouth to mine, coaxing me with a kiss, and then took my lips in his teeth, biting down a little.
Good thing I was leaning against that damn wall, or I’d have melted to the floor in a puddle. Pulling away, he stared down at me for interminable seconds before swiping the bridge of my nose downwards with his knuckle and leading me to the kitchen. “Come on, sweet cheeks. Let’s go rustle up some grub.”
As I followed him back to the kitchen, I lifted my nose to pick up the spicy scent that trailed behind him. I wanted to be a dog like Toby and have every olfactory ounce of him filling my senses at once.
The silence stretched between us as he sat me at the table and proceeded to make us grilled cheese sandwiches, each of us lost in our own thoughts. When he was finished, just as wordlessly, he took me by the hand and led me back to the bedroom, holding our food in his other hand.
It wasn’t until I was seated across from him on the bed that he broke the silence. “It’s time to finish our talk, little girl.”
“What’s so god-awful important that you have to have a ‘talk’ after knowing me hardly at all? You’re freaking me out a little.” I took a huge bite of my grilled cheese sandwich and chewed. “Think about it, this is my first dating escapade since my divorce. Don’t you think that’s scary enough without you getting all serious on me?”
“Look, under normal circumstances, there wouldn’t be a need yet. But the fact is, I’ve gone further with you than I would with any woman without first having this conversation.”
“Okay….” I was feeling freaked, and my eyes narrowed at the unwanted vision of Aiden with another female. It was no secret he’d been with other women before me, but the thought left a bitter taste in my mouth, like swallowing a pill with no water.
“Look, there’s no beating around the bush. I want to be your daddy, Scarlett.”
Scarlett
On that note, I dropped my grilled cheese sandwich on the bicnic tray in front of me and stared at him, stunned.
Dammit. Deviant, after all. All of this was too good to be true. If there was one thing I was not interested in, it was helping some dude play out his sick incest fantasies.
Not today.
“Hey. What? What’s going on up there?” He tapped my temple, and I shrank away from his touch.
You’ve done it again, Scarlett. You need to make peace with the fact that your picker is way off.
“Scarlett, please. Before making assumptions, will you please just listen?”
I pressed my hands to my stomach. If I were getting rid of the most interesting guy to come my way, as in ever, then I would hear out his little fetishes to make an educated rejection of said animal Dr. Dreamy.
“It’s not what you think. I’ve known I was a Daddy Dom since I was in my late twenties. Being a daddy has nothing to do with incest or pedophilia. It means playing the role of advisor, protector, disciplinarian, and biggest supporter.”
I turned to face Aiden, straight on, and leaned in while listening and watching his lips as he spoke.
“There’s a reason the role appeals to me, Scarlett. Fucked up or not, it’s linked to a part of my past that shaped me to be this way. It’s the same source that made me kick in to fight-or-flight mode when I saw you lying unconscious on the hay with a goose egg on your forehead.” He closed his eyes and shook his head from side to side. The impact my head wound had on his well-being touched me.
“What is it, Aiden? Tell me.” I rose to put the bicnic tray on a side table and joined him on the mattress again. Pressing close to transfer some comfort to him, to pull him out of his memories that seemed to have the ability to suck him back in time, away from the here and now.
“I need to fulfill the role of protector and safekeeper of any female I am involved with because I couldn’t protect her.”
Scarlett
“It’s not an easy story to hear, Scarlett, but it’s part of who I am,” he bit his bottom lip before going on.
“I’m here,” I placed my hand on his arm, “if you want to tell me, I do want to learn about your past.”
His shoulders hunched forward and his eyes became glassy as he inhaled and expelled a deep sigh, “35 years ago, and I still remember everything about that night. It was late, I slept, and he came into my room to wake me up. At the time, he had recently moved out of our house because he and my mom were estranged.”
Aiden picked up my hand and kissed it, again and again reverently before pulling himself back to his tale and saying, “He was so sick. He took me into the living room where he beat my mother for the last time, shoving me back every time I tried to save her, and I watched her take her last breaths on our living room floor.”
It struck me that Aiden told this story almost clinically, although the memories had to still be painful for him. My heart ached for this man and my arms longed to hold him against me, so much suffering for a child to experience.
“Experiencing something like that as an extremely young person changes you, Scarlett. It taught me things that most people don’t learn in an entire lifetime.” He ran his fingers up and down the skin on my forearm. “One of the things that I’ve discovered is that even with the horrible memories of what happened - I can keep the legacy of my mom alive, and honor it, by treating women the right way. Knowing the type of person my father was, taught me the kind of person that I needed to be.”
“Oh, Aiden.” I put my arms around him until he finished his story.
After his mother died, Aiden came to Briarville to live with his beloved aunt and uncle, his mother’s relatives, and helped out on the dairy they owned. “Out here in the country, with the animals as companions, in a place where safety and comfort were the norm - it healed me. I didn’t talk much for almost a year. Summer and Bird Dog never pressured me to speak.They gave me time to get better.”
Summer and Bird Dog had a good friend, Dr. Farley, a large animal vet who invited Aiden to tag along, taking him out on house calls. Vet school was a natural choice. But, he admitted, the guilt from not being able to save his mother would never go away.
It made an odd kind of sense that acting as a daddy—not blood related—someone who took care of his little princess, shielded her and keeping her safe, would help heal him even further. I was never aware that these kinds of relationships existed.
“Baby girl,” “kitten,” “little one,” and some other terms of affection Aiden said he would use with me sounded sweet. And lots of women called their boyfriend or husband “Daddy.” What of it?
We sat there a long while, my head on his shoulder, and it seemed so natural. “Aiden?”
“Yes, baby?”
I played with the hair on his arm, loving the haven I experienced in his arms. “What did you mean by ‘disciplinarian’?”
This caused him to growl, and the rumble in his chest behind me made a tingling sensation igniting in my core.
“That part, we may want to wait on. Most of the time, a daddy is the guardian of his little girl. However, sometimes his princess might be a little brat and need punishments.”
I held my breath and rubbed the decorative satin ribbon trim of the pillow between my legs. “Need?”
“To remind her to behave. To teach her that if she doesn’t listen, the consequences will sting, and to help her remember the things she needs to do to stay safe. That’s the dynamic I told you about. I have an exaggerated need to keep you safe because of my past. ”
He grabbed my hair and pulled me toward him, slowly ravishing my overly sensitive lips. He lifted me away from him, placing his hands around my neck in a stabilizing gesture, and his intentional turn of phrase was potent and overt. “To teach you the rules
of the game, Scarlett. To teach you that your daddy will care for you and your Dom is in charge.”
I was so inexperienced when it came to sex. It surprised me that his words had a direct effect on the bundle of nerves between my legs, which began pulsing in time with his thrusting tongue as he kissed me.
After a stimulating round of exploring each other’s bodies, I made polite excuses about having to be up early in the morning, thanked him for sharing his story, and kissed him like a fool before he left. I’d explore this Daddy Dom prospect when my mind had time to settle after hearing Aiden’s sad history. I had been with someone whose heart didn’t feel, and it left me worried about the soft-hearted feelings I began to have for Aiden. I watched him drive away in his pick up and worried that by caring for him this much I’d get hurt.
Scarlett
I’d promised myself a hookup. That’s all. And my lusty lady parts were having none of it, sending me minute-by-minute reminders they intended to go on strike by keeping every pair of panties I owned soaked beyond all functionality. My practical side took the podium and tried to talk some sense into the traitorous twat.
Look, you can’t open your legs for every Tom, Dick, and Harry that shows up in your barn, just because he treats you and your pussy like royalty. Sex with Darwood was like eating the food scraps I fed to the chickens, versus having the prime rib, mashed potatoes, green beans with butter, and fresh baked apple pie meal that Aiden laid on my table.
Allowing a man in my bed for the first time since becoming free of Dead Weight Darwood did not disappoint. Of course, if I were honest with myself, Aiden wasn’t just any man and sex with him was the best sex I’d ever had in my life. I was incapable of forgetting the image of his massive arms around me in bed, the way he carried me into the hospital and wouldn’t let me walk, the tasty scent of him, and the way he fed me pancakes.