Daddy Shark

by Maren Smith

  The coffee shop was neither empty nor crowded. Four of its many tables held guests—three hosted individual people working from laptops; the fourth had four old men playing cards for toothpicks. And then there was Britney, in the very back of the long, narrow shop, where a fake fireplace was lit up with lights that simulated cozy flames, and few comfortable couches lent the shop a homey vibe.

  Sitting on a couch, she hugged a large paper cup in both hands, still dressed as she’d been earlier. Which meant, she hadn’t gone home yet, so he’d probably caught her just as she was leaving for the day.

  She saw him right as he entered and stood up to make herself visible. As if his eyes hadn’t gravitated toward her before he even walked in the shop. He waved. She waved back with her coffee.

  Right. First things first.

  He could not have cared less about coffee, but he got in line behind a guy buying a latte and muffin because that would give him time to think how best to attack this. He’d been seventeen and barely acne-free the last time he’d asked a girl out. Her boyfriend at the time had walked up in time to tell him no, and the girl had giggled when he walked away. A few weeks later, he turned into an actual shark for the first time. After that, well, girls hadn’t been high on his list of priorities.

  Except for one other woman, one other time: Maggie Henson. The love of his life from age twenty-two to twenty-five.

  For three glorious years, he’d had what hindsight was pretty well convinced had been a one-sided love affair with a sixty-year-old woman he only ever saw and talked to on the bus. He’d be heading home from work. She’d be heading to. It started with a comment she’d made on a t-shirt he was wearing, which was really kind of pathetic on his part that he’d turn that into a romance. But that was pretty much the silent, stoic, sad story of his life. He wasn’t any good at all with people, because he didn’t fit anywhere. He barely qualified as human.

  God, he was a taller, burlier version of Jim the ‘Liquidman’ and if that didn’t make a fellow just want to quietly slink back out of this place, he didn’t know what would.

  Still, Maggie had been the first real person in his life to just talk to him. Well, apart from school teachers, but they didn’t count because they were paid to do that. Maggie wasn’t. To this day he had no idea why she suddenly switched seats to sit closer to him, and then just started talking. Maybe she thought he looked lonely.

  Maybe she was lonely too.

  Whatever her reasons, for three years they talked about everything from the weather, to billboard ads, to the architecture and history of the buildings they’d pass, and the books she’d bring with her to read. She was amazing. He’d really liked her. She’d been like a grandmother, a mother and a best friend all rolled into one, and he hadn’t known what any of that had felt like before he met her.

  And then, of course, she retired and stopped riding the bus. She’d also been married, but that was beside the point.

  It had also been a long time ago and, although he could kind of see why those memories would surface now, they didn’t have anything to do with the present.

  Muffin man moved on. Britney was once more sitting down, perched now on the edge of the couch, surreptitiously fussing with her clothes to make sure the coffee stain she’d finally noticed was hidden. She was nervous about this, and she was perfect. That ought to make him feel better, but it didn’t.

  “What can I get for you?” the kid behind the counter asked as Ommin stared uncomprehendingly at his list of options. Coffee was like a language of its own, and he’d been so focused on Britney that he’d failed to study for this particular test. The only thing he did notice was there wasn’t a single option that came with a shot of liquid courage.

  “Coffee,” he said, finally settling on his choice. “Black, no sugar.”

  It took several minutes to make a latte. It took less than twenty seconds to pour straight coffee into a cup, cap it and pass it across the counter. Caffeine was nobody’s liquid courage, but it would have to do. Armed as best as he could be, he headed toward the arranged sofas where Britney was waiting.

  “Hello again,” Britney greeted, her smile every bit as beautiful as he remembered.

  Because he was an idiot, and quite possibly besotted.

  “How was work?” he countered. Because he didn’t want to be an over-presumptuous creeper, he chose the couch directly across from her and sat.

  There were three couches total, arranged in a ‘U’ shape around the fake fireplace, with a glass coffee table positioned in between and all of them drawn in so close together that the only distance between sofa arms was what little space was required for someone to pass between them. It was very cozy. One had to be careful not to kick the coffee table as one was trying to sit down. And heaven help him, but big as he was, if there had been anyone else sitting back here, he’d have probably stepped on them.

  But once he was seated, this meager distance became a veritable Grand Canyon, yawning out between them. He immediately regretted not sitting closer.

  “It was good.” She smiled. She also got up from where she was, walked around the coffee table, and promptly sat down sideways on the couch to face him, one leg drawn up underneath her and coffee held in her lap. She was so close now, her drawn-up foot almost touched his knee. His skin there tingled as if she actually had. He wondered if she felt something similar, because that touch of pink rose back into her cheeks as she bit her bottom lip, and suddenly focused on picking at her coffee cup lid, she added, “It was really good, actually. The part there at the end, especially.”

  He tried to remember what he might have said at the tail end of the interview, but then realized she must have meant when she’d touched his scaly hand after letting those little girls touch his cheek. His belly tightened. Getting an erection here was the last thing he wanted, but sitting this close beside her all but guaranteed it happened.

  She’d changed her seat, pretty well removing the creeper aspect, so he shifted in his, turning sideways on the couch so he could face her as well.

  “That part was good for me too,” he told her.

  Her laugh was soft and breathy, full of both excitement and disbelief. “I never in a million years would have thought you were on FetLife.”

  Oh. That part.

  Ommin quickly readjusted himself into the correct conversation. “Right. Well…”

  “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve searched the local area, looking for someone who wasn’t weird.”

  That she hadn’t put him in with the weird ones was something he would love her for forever.

  She shook her head. “How did I not see you? Not once in all those searches?”

  “My account’s new,” Ommin told her. “In fact…” he cleared this throat, knowing he was probably going to ruin everything right here, but he was not a dishonest person by nature. The last thing he wanted was to base the future of this entirely hypothetical relationship with Britney on a whale of a lie. “I only just made it today.”

  “And you pulled me up right away,” she guessed. “Probably because our preferences matched so closely.”

  A minnow of a lie, on the other hand…

  “Yes, they do,” he agreed. “Kind of amazing, really.”

  She huffed, another breathy laugh of disbelief, then pulled herself together. “Okay, so,”—making herself comfortable, she pulled a square of folded notebook paper out of her pocket and quickly spread it out flat against her leg. She’d made another list—“tell me about yourself. You know…”

  When she hesitated, her blush deepening, he finished her sentence for her, “The Daddy parts?”

  “I found out a lot about the Ommin parts today,” she shyly answered. “I already know I like those parts. Although, to be honest, I’ve read your profile… um, probably four or five times already. I kind of like those parts too.”

  “I did the same with yours,” he admitted. He had to reach, but only a little, to put his coffee on the table. Then slowly, deliberate
ly, he took her folded sheet of paper away from her. He read the list of questions quietly. “I like your penmanship. Mine scrawls worse than any doctor you’ve ever been to.”

  He checked; yup, still blushing.

  “What kind of Daddy do I consider myself?” he read, starting with the first question. His mind went immediately to the books he’d found on Google, but if he had any hope at all of building any kind of relationship with Britney, he couldn’t do it while following storybook plot lines. At some point, he had to be himself.

  So. What kind of Daddy was Ommin ‘the Sharkman’ Jones?

  “I’m the kind who jumps into the ocean to rescue people I don’t know,” he finally said. “I imagine that would make me the kind who wants to nurture and take care of my little girl.”

  She cuddled into the couch to listen, the set of her shoulders relaxing.

  “I noticed the stain on your shirt.”

  She immediately touched her chest, giving her suit jacket a self-conscious tug. “What would you do about it?” Her eyebrows twitched together, the bridge of her nose crinkling just a bit. It was almost a cringe, as if she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know.

  Possibly making this a make or break question, which in turn made Ommin wonder if this was something one of those storybook Daddies might punish for. He honestly couldn’t see himself doing that.

  “I’d put your shirt in the laundry, find you a clean one to wear, and ask you how your day was,” Ommin said honestly, and it was so hard to say that without imagining her sitting on her bed in nothing but a cute pair of panties, and hugging a stuffie as he dug into her closet. “A spill is an accident. Unless there’s a reason for you not to drink coffee, I wouldn’t spank for that. I guess I’m the kind of Daddy who saves my spankings for those times that really deserve it.”

  Was it his imagination, or did she just shiver?

  “Your turn,” he said. “What kind of Little are you?”

  “Oh, um…” She looked up, biting her bottom lip as she considered it. “I’m the good kind, I guess, or maybe I should say I’m the easy kind. You know, not as naughty as I’d like to be. I don’t really like getting into trouble. Sometimes I get sassy, but I’m not really a brat. I don’t like to push like that.”

  “Not as naughty as you’d like to be?”

  She blushed all over again. “Yes, you know. So I, um… can get, um…”

  “Spanked?” He liked that she had trouble with the word. He really liked that saying it to him seemed to make her shy.

  She dropped her gaze to her lap. She almost dropped her coffee too. “Oops!” Laughing to cover her nervousness, she licked a drop of splashed mocha off her thumb. “Sorry.”

  Taking the coffee away from her, he put it on the table next to his own. Then he sat back on the couch and waited to see if she’d answer him.

  Eventually, she nodded. “Yes, I like it.”

  “Good girls get spankings too.” He knew because he’d read it in the blurbs of at least three different Daddy-Dom books, which probably meant it was a thing.

  She looked at his hand when he said that. After a moment, he held it up so she could better see it. She shivered all over again and then shyly held her own hand up to it. Her palm was very tiny against his. That minute caress of her skin on his electrified him all over again.

  “You don’t ever have to be afraid of this hand,” he told her. “Even if you’ve been naughty.”

  He felt a little silly saying that word, right up until he saw her shiver again. Her cheeks flushed, turning bright pink. She bit her bottom lip.

  “What kind of things do you like to do as a Daddy?” It felt almost as if she’d caressed him as she took her hand away.

  He felt the loss of her touch keenly.

  “How do you mean?”

  “On an average day,” she clarified. “Like, a normal everyday sort of thing, what do you like to do as a Daddy?”

  “Are you asking, what my idealized Daddy-Little day would be like?”

  She nodded, her eyes shining. She looked happy, raptly attentive on whatever he was about to say.

  He’d kind of like to know what he was going to say too. Feeling a little like he should have studied harder for this test as well, he folded his big hands in his lap. “Well, hypothetically, ideally, I’d live with my baby girl, so… I’d wake up, get coffee going and make breakfast. Make lunches too, if I’m at home. I’m good in the kitchen. I like cooking.”

  If a man couldn’t go outside, he’d better have some kind of indoor hobby to keep him occupied. Not only was cooking a good hobby, but it kept a guy from having to eat frozen pizzas five nights out of seven.

  “Would I pick out your clothes?” he mused out loud, then shrugged. “We’d have to see if that’s something you want, or if picking your own Little ensembles is something you use to express that side of your creativity.”

  “I like to color,” she said, and it wasn’t until she did that he realized what he’d actually said.

  He’d said ‘you,’ as in Britney. Specifically. As if they were a thing and a foregone conclusion.

  She’d noticed too. Her eyes were sparkling, alive with excitement. The flush of all her previous embarrassments never seemed to fully fade away. It was right there, softening the paleness of her face.

  “Are you warm?” he asked, gesturing at her suit jacket. “You can take that off.”

  “I spilled something earlier,” she hedged, but he didn’t care.

  “I know. But I’m not going to think any less of you for that, and no one else in here has an opinion that should matter. Not when it comes to you being comfortable.”

  Her breathing had quickened just a bit. She wasn’t panting, but the rise and fall of her chest betrayed the swift shallowness of her breaths. “Actually, I was thinking maybe I should g-go home now.”

  Ommin startled. Go home? His brain scrambled back over what he’d just said, searching for which had been the wrong thing. Maybe he shouldn’t have been honest with her. Maybe he should have taken a day to download a story or two, so he’d have better known what to say. Maybe if he knew better what a Daddy Dom ought to do, then he could be that and less like himself, and gradually ease her into getting to know the real Ommin Jones.

  “Of course.” He tried to hide his disappointment. He also stood up, offering his hand to help her. She took it too, her fingers damn near tiny compared to his. And he still tingled, even knowing she was about to walk out and he’d probably never see her again. “Well, thank you for coming to meet me.”

  He wished he knew what he’d said wrong, or what it was about him that she didn’t like.

  And yet, staring up at him, a little smile softly curving the corners of her lips, she didn’t immediately leave. Instead, she haltingly offered, “W-would you like to come home with me? I mean”—she hesitated—“we spent a good portion of the day together, so… it’s not like this is our first, you know… date. Right?”

  Oh.

  Oh shit. She wasn’t going home because he’d flubbed this.

  She was inviting him home with her because he’d anything but flubbed it.

  Oh.

  Oh shit.

  Yes, please!

  Chapter 4

  “No pressure,” Britney assured him, for the fourth time now as she jangled her way through her keyring until she found her housekey. She was nervous, Ommin knew because she’d been reassuring him almost constantly ever since she’d asked if he wanted to come home with her. Well, reassuring and asking more questions.

  Like, what was his favorite food to fix; the question she’d asked as they’d tossed their coffee cups in the trash before walking out of the coffee shop. (Beef tip stir-fry.)

  And, if he could do any activity with his Little, what would it be; which she’d asked as he walked her to her car. (Camping—he’d never been, but he’d always wanted to try it.)

  “You’ve never been camping?” She looked surprised.

  “Have you?” he countered.


  “All the time when I was a kid. You never went, even when you were little?”

  “I was never little,” he only half-joked. He’d pretty much always been the biggest kid in his age-group all the way through school.

  Snorting a soft laugh, she’d smacked his arm, and it had felt so easy and so natural to give her a smack on the bottom in return. Which had startled both of them. Him, because he’d never in his life smacked a woman. On the behind or anywhere else, for that matter. And her, because… well, he’d just swatted her. Her whole body stiffened with the shock of it, but her eyes—oh, how her eyes danced, all the way out to her car.

  “No assumptions,” she’d assured him, once he’d tucked her in behind the steering wheel and she found out he intended to follow her in a cab. “Come on, I’ll drive you.”

  Which turned out to be comfortable and intimate, and enabled her to keep asking him questions, like: What kinds of punishments did he use to discipline, guide, and/or seduce?

  Which was a very provocative question, because up until then, he hadn’t realized seduction was on the table.

  “No assumptions,” he echoed back at her, “but what exactly are we going to do when we get to your house?”

  “Talk,” she answered shyly. “Maybe a little more, but only if you want to. I mean, not sex,” she hurriedly added. “But maybe one or two other things would be okay. If you want to.”

  As far as first dates went, somehow he’d managed to hit the ball clear out of the ballpark. Which wasn’t at all the way his luck usually went, and he ended up sitting the rest of the short ride to her place in absolute silence, wondering exactly what form ‘other things’ that were ‘not sex’ might take.

  He didn’t have a condom. If he managed to get through this evening without flubbing up, he made a mental note to start carrying one.

  As it turned out, Britney lived smack in the middle of North Beach, in a historic suburb of San Francisco more popularly known as Little Italy. She had her own townhouse, which was impressive as hell, because with the beach mere blocks away, usually only the wealthy could afford the one million and up real estate prices here. Three stories tall and shaped like a pie-wedge, her townhouse dotted a row of six more at the tip of the corner where two equally historic streets branched into a Y. The turn-of-the-century architecture dated every building he could see with the same stamp that much of ‘old town’ San Francisco suffered. Nothing here was older than the reconstruction efforts born from the 1906 earthquake and fire.