by Maren Smith
“Whoa,” he breathed, his throat so tight that he could barely get it out. “Now hang on…”
“When they’re good girls, you like to give them lots of orgasms,” she continued, the track of two tears wending down each side of her face. “And when they’re bad girls, you don’t let them come at all.”
He held up his hand, but she just kept going, and everything she was saying was resonating through him like the shooting sparks of a downed power line.
“You ignore their pussy and make them choke on your cock or take it in the ass. You spank their bottoms, your implement of choice being the belt you wear because you like to watch their expressions change from defiance to dread every time you take it off. You like all of those things because I conjured you, and those are all the things I want my Daddy Dom to do when he’s taking care of me. But how can I ever let you do any of that to me now?” she cried. “I’ll never know if you’re doing it because you want to or because it’s my will!”
Branch opened his mouth, but his ‘Lady, I only just met you’ died unrepeated on his lips. He stared at the teddy bear she was hugging to her chest, burying her tears in the fuzzy softness of the back of its head.
“10:36,” he said slowly, this whole surreal conversation taking a slightly less paranormal turn as he began turning all Aubrey had told him over in his head. He fixed in on the bear as sudden understanding began its wending creep through him. “Aubrey, honey?”
“Yes?” Using the bear to scrub the tears off her face, she raised her head.
“Putting everything else aside for right now,” he offered cautiously, “is that a Build-A-Bear?”
“Yes, why?” Sniffling, Aubrey looked down at the plushy in her lap.
“Is it a brand-new Build-A-Bear? As in, just bought this morning at, maybe, 10:36?”
She held the bear aloft. “Looks just like you, doesn’t it?” she asked, a little sadly. “It’s what I used to conjure you. In my defense, though, I might have been thinking about all the things I wanted in a Daddy Dom, but I swear I only thought I was making a stuffy.”
Stiff leather creaking, Branch sat back. Smiling and shaking his head, he laughed, but he wasn't feeling all that amused. “Christ on a cracker. I should have known.”
“Known, what?” It was her turn to look at him like he was crazy.
“About five minutes after you bought your bear, I got a phone call from my Grams, saying she was calling in a favor. Saying she has a friend up in Lincoln, Nebraska, who has a daughter who needs a date for her birthday.” Tipping his head, Branch sighed. “I seem to recall saying no a couple times, but—” He shrugged. “—here I am.” He looked at her. “Honey, you didn’t conjure me. You bought a bear from my Grams.”
“I never told her I was going to Nebraska.” Her brows beetled, but her tears did slow. “I never told her about my birthday, either.”
“Yeah,” he chuckled. “I never told her it was me who shaved her cat and dyed it purple. Sometimes she just knows things.”
“You… shaved your grandmother’s cat?”
“I was nine,” he said defensively, “and the cat was mean.”
“If I didn’t conjure you, then how did I know all that stuff about you?” She mulled that over, but didn’t seem at all convinced.
Branch had been hoping she wouldn’t ask. He drew a deep breath, bracing his arms against the wheel as he grudgingly admitted. “That was Grams. Sometimes she reads you, and sometimes she pops in a little extra. I call it manipulative as hell, but she calls it a gentle nudge in the right direction.”
“Oh, my God.” She covered her mouth with her hands, and he could see it in her eyes. All those intimate little things she’d said. Things about his sexuality. Things about hers. Littles in pigtails. Choking on Daddy’s cock… taking it in the ass… not allowed to come because she’d been ‘bad’.
Leather creaked as Branch shifted again. This time it wasn’t because he was uncomfortable. Well, actually… yeah, he was starting to get there. Molten ribbons of interest were waking up in the pit of his belly as he indulged the image her words had painted in his mind.
“It’s okay,” he told her and shifted back into first gear. “God made manacles for a reason. Hell, who doesn’t want those things from time to time.”
Pigtails…
Little Mermaid underwear peeking out from under equally ruffled and short, sexy skirts. Or better yet, Little Mermaid panties dropped halfway down her thighs, leaving her hot pink bottom fully vulnerable to the discipline dispensed by a stern, but loving hand.
It was disturbing the things his Gram picked up on. When he got home, he really needed to remember to have the conversation again about not sharing what was private to him with Little strangers who came into her shop. It probably wouldn’t do any good. It hadn’t the last two times they’d had that talk, but one could always hope.
Chapter Three
Aubrey blew heated breath on her hands, rubbing briskly while she waited in the truck for any sign of Branch coming back through the swirling snow. Technically, it was no longer blizzard conditions. According to the radio, it had been downgraded to a simple storm, but it was still freaking cold out there. In the brief ten or so minutes since Branch had zipped into the hotel lobby to see if that blinking No Vacancy sign was telling the truth, the temperature had dropped from toasty to half-past frozen.
She hoped they had a room. This was the third place they’d stopped. Either there was a convention—unlikely—in the incredibly small town of Concordia or this was where everyone had stopped to wait out the weather.
She craned to catch a glimpse of Branch through the hotel lobby window, but she could barely see anything through the narrow gap in the snow building on the driver’s window. Already the windshield was blanketed and still, the fat flakes were falling. Back in her own car when she’d had a temperature gauge to check, it had been sixteen-degrees. If it was higher than twelve-degrees now, she’d eat her own fingers. At least they’d be warm.
A shadow crossed the gap in the snowed-over window. The truck rocked as Branch yanked the door open and jumped in.
“Je-sus!” he growled. “It’s cold out there!”
Fumbling to get the key back into the ignition, he cranked the heat up, full blast. They dove to get their hands into the gush of hot air from opposite heater vents.
“Did they have a room?” Aubrey asked, rubbing her hands in relief.
“Good news or bad news?” he countered cheerfully.
“Oh god…” Aubrey groaned, tsked, and then made her choice. Whenever news was offered like this, it was almost never really good. “Bad news. Hit me with that first.”
“Why, yes, they do have a room.”
She blinked at him. “I asked for the bad news first.”
His grin said ‘wait for it’. “Single queen. Plus, they were down a cleaning lady, so nothing’s been touched since it was last used.”
“Please, dear God, let the good news involve the hotel giving us clean sheets and letting us change the bed ourselves.”
He brightened. “Yes. That was the first thing I asked.”
“Do they have any extra blankets?”
“And that was the second thing. No, they don’t. They ran out of those about two hours ago.”
“Okay,” she hedged. “What’s the good news?”
“Guess whose conjured Daddy got the last room in town? Be a good girl, and I won’t make you sleep on the floor.”
Clapping both hands over her face again, Aubrey groaned. Unfortunately, she was way too practical and way too cold to want to argue. “Sounds great.”
“Yes, it does.” Putting the truck in gear, he pulled around the side of the hotel and parked as near to the door as the twenty-some other vehicles which were already there would allow. “Grab your stuff.”
Aubrey grabbed her bear first, then her duffel bag and purse from the backseat of the extended cab. He had a duffel bag, albeit his was twice the size of hers. They half-walked, half-
A rush of warm air enveloped them when he opened the door, holding it while she entered first and then taking the lead as they walked down the Lost-in-the-70s-style hall. Their room was right under the stairs and across the hall from the ice and pop machines, but Aubrey wasn’t about to complain. At least, they had a room. Besides, the worst hotel stays always made the best stories.
It was a trucker hotel. From the outside, under almost two feet of snow, it had been hard to tell; not from the inside. Everything looked old. Someone, somewhere in the last thirty years had tried to update. Even with new carpet and a paint job which was perhaps only a year old, the architecture dated the place as did the tiny box of a room. So did the heating unit. Rather than thermostats on the wall, the room had been supplied with a huge, clunky beige machine which sat under the window. It rattled when Branch switched it on but put out a gust of hot air.
“Do you need the bathroom?” he asked, dropping his duffel on the foot of the bed.
She slept on a queen-size at home. Up until this moment, she had no idea how small they could be.
“Aubrey?”
Still hovering in the alcove where she’d hung her coat, she managed a smile. “I’m okay.”
“Good. I call it.” He slipped past her into a bathroom so small he had to step between the tub and toilet to shut the door.
Well, she wasn’t going to sleep in the hallway, and she sure didn’t want to sleep in the truck. Never in her life though, had she shared a hotel room, much less a bed with a stranger. Approaching the small and getting-smaller-by-the-step queen, she wedged herself in between the bed frame and the wall to set her bear on the nightstand and her bag on the floor. Hands on her knees, she sat, bouncing twice to test the softness of the mattress. The springs weren’t new, but she almost preferred sagging in a few spots to hard as a brick.
“Have you checked for bedbugs?” he asked when he came out of the bathroom.
Aubrey jumped up off the bed, brushing at the sudden crawling she could feel on her butt with alternating hands. “N-no, I didn’t think…”
Thumbing for her to move, Branch took the bed apart, tossing the coverings to the floor in layers. Leaving him to crawl the seams of the mattress, Aubrey grabbed her duffel and slipped into the bathroom. She killed time and the crawling sensation by taking a shower. The sluice of hot water pouring down her body, into the bottom of the lime green, 70s-era tub, helped her relax.
She’d really made a fool of herself today. Not only had she told a perfect stranger about her deepest, darkest, sexual secrets, but she’d told him he was her magically created Daddy. He could have made things really awkward for her in the following hours while they had been stuck in his truck together. He hadn’t though. Truth be told, he’d been kind of sweet.
If she’d picked herself up at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere only to be emotionally unloaded on like that, she honestly didn’t think she’d have kept going the way he had. She might not have left herself standing on the roadside in the middle of a blizzard, but she absolutely would have left herself at the first open gas station she’d come across. They’d passed a couple of them as they’d crawled from one crowded hotel to another through Concordia, and yet, here they were, still together. Thankfully, they hadn’t had to continue to Belleville.
There might have been a hotel further up the road with two beds, a part of her whispered. What are you going to do with this man in one bed? She was going to deal, that’s what she was going to do.
She did everything she could think of to waste time, in the vain hope that he might, maybe, be asleep before she got out. The hotel soap was abrasive and the water was hard, but that’s what she carried lotion for, right? She shaved her legs, then instantly regretted it. Spiky legs could only be an asset in a situation like this. She lotioned from toes to top and instantly regretted that, too. Not only was she now baby-soft and smooth feeling, but she also smelled good. ‘Naked in the Woods’ good. Of all the scents to bring with her today why did she have to pack that one?
As if he would know what that smell was, her brain scoffed. Relax already.
She was trying. She shuffled through what few clothes she’d brought in search of something she could wear to sleep in instead of the sheer pink baby doll nightie she’d packed. Nighttime was her Little time. Yes, she’d planned to stay in her parents’ house, but she always went to bed hours after they did. She knew from experience, she was destined to have at least three hours of Little time, locked in the safe haven of her old bedroom. Her coloring books spread out around her, and YouTube dinosaur documentaries playing on TV, all while dressed in a nightie so sheer it left nothing to the imagination. No way could she wear that nightie tonight. That left her with two pairs of jeans, a super-soft, thigh-length purple sweater, the little black dress she’d planned to wear if they went out for her birthday, and a t-shirt that said, ‘Get your safeword ready’ with a picture of a pair of handcuffs. Her mother had sent her that shirt. She’d seen the handcuffs and thought it had something to do with law enforcement.
No way in hell was she going to wear that t-shirt in front of Branch. Heat burned all the way to her toes at the thought. No way could she sleep in jeans, either. Which meant she was going to have to wear her sweater or that little black dress to bed and what would he think about that? What if he got ideas? What if she wanted him to get ideas? The heat deep inside her flared hotter, particularly in the tips of her tightening nipples. She touched one, tweaking the budded flesh before she could stop. The zing of that tweak zipped straight through the middle of her to zap her between her legs. Heat followed, flaring pure want in the most insidious place. She almost touched there, too, before she caught herself.
Her reflection in the steam-fogged mirror looked both guilty and flushed. She tore her gaze from it long enough to crawl into her sweater, which wasn’t thick enough to hide how excited her nipples had become. Hopefully, he was asleep. Hopefully, the light would be out, and she could just jump into bed, rip the covers up over her, and pray there were no bedbugs (thanks a lot, Branch) so she could sleep.
What if he was waiting for her to help him put the bed back together again? Oh, God…
Hand on the bathroom doorknob, Aubrey held her breath. Bracing against all the scary, erotic unknowns lurking in the night ahead, she straightened her spine and ventured back out into the room.
Branch was not asleep, but he had remade the bed or, rather, he’d thrown the layers back on in their proper order. The bottom sheet looked to be tucked in, but the blankets weren’t. Management must have been by while she’d been hiding in the bathroom. There were two loosely bundled wads of sheets on the floor, just inside the front door, so at least they had clean sheets.
Branch had taken advantage of her long shower to change t-shirts. He was still in jeans, albeit a fresh pair. The old ones were draped over a chair in front of the heater so the wet ends of the legs could dry. His leather coat hung neatly in the closet beside hers. There was something so intimate and arousing in the way the big coat pressed hers up against the wall. How weird was it that she could feel that press in the low throb now tugging at her nipples? Suckling at them until the peaks tightened even harder. His duffel bag was on the floor in front of the dresser. The TV was on and Daddy—Branch, her brain corrected—lay propped up against the headboard. His long legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankles while he surfed through the available channels.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” he announced with a twist of a smile as soon as she came around the corner.
The abrupt oddness of his greeting was so unexpected she forgot to be embarrassed.
“Uh…” Her mind floundered a moment. “Good news?”
“There’s more snow coming through the TV than there is outside, but Disney’s one of the clear ones. And guess what; they’re playing Moana.”
Her tummy twitched, torn in equal parts lust and Littlehood. “Bad news?”
Rolling his head to look at her, his crooked smile became even more crooked as he muted the sound on the TV. The moans and groaned encouragements of two people in the throes of love-making were unmistakable. They were next door, directly on the other side of the wall behind their headboard.
Aubrey’s face colored. She felt the overwhelming, sunburn-sting of pinkness sliding up her chest to scald her cheeks.
“It’s okay.” Patting the rumpled blankets beside him, Branch switched the sound back on. “If they get too loud, we’ll just turn the volume—”
The lights flickered once, then everything went off. If the people on the other side of the wall noticed the power outage, they were too deep into it to care. The lights, the rattling heating unit, the TV, and the noise-canceling cover of Moana’s opening song—everything abandoned them to near absolute darkness. Near absolute darkness, but not total. Outside, the glow of the snow became a light of its own. Were the window curtains not drawn, the whole room would have basked in the ghostly grayness that currently edged in around the ruffled pleats. A better source of light came from Branch’s cellphone when he flicked on the flashlight app.
“Oh,” Branch said with a chuckle, “that’s great.”
He raised his cellphone, sending the shadows of the rumpled bedding racing along the wall and shivers of absolute trepidation scrambling on needle fingers up her back. The black inside the closet was monstrously deep, and the shadows yawned out at her from underneath the untucked blankets.
She’d feel silly about it later, but her reaction was as involuntary as her panic was real. Locking her lips didn’t quite smother the squeal that erupted, and her bare feet barely touched the floor as she leapt for the safety of the bed.
Branch never missed a beat. He ripped the blankets back, and when she scrambled into the pocket between the newly exposed top and bottom sheets, he whipped them all the way up to her nose. That he never once laughed at her was something she would appreciate forever, especially when she clutched her own legs and shuddered.
-->