Under Daddy's Protection

by Serafine Laveaux

  “Why was the king so sad?”

  “Because he knew he would have to make a choice between living in his castle or keeping his little princess safe.”

  “But why?”

  Cautiously Gage emerged from the hallway to find an older woman sitting on the sofa with his kitten in her lap. She was tall and slender, with dark bronze skin and nearly white hair neatly tucked into a stylish braid. Her sharp gaze studied Gage like a wary panther, ready to pounce if he made any sudden moves.

  “Because the king had done a lot of bad things in his life, and that meant a lot of bad people didn’t like him. It wasn’t safe for the princess to be with him.”

  “Couldn’t he just hide her?”

  Holding his hands slightly away from his sides, palms facing her, Gage moved slowly to the dining table and took a seat.

  “Daddy’s home!” Nikki cried, and to Gage’s great relief the woman let her run to him. “Look who’s here!”

  “Eleanor,” he said quietly.

  “Gage.”

  Her face was unreadable, and Gage felt a coldness sink into his bones. Agents never paid contractors visits. It simply wasn’t done. Whatever reason she had for being there, it certainly wasn’t a social call. “Nikki, I need you to go to your room now.”

  “But I wanna hear the rest of the story!”

  “Nikki, now!” He didn’t mean to snap at her but a sense of panic was beginning to rise. Regardless of why Eleanor had come to see him, if it hadn’t been about Nikki before, it damn sure would be now. As Ricky used to say to Lucy, he had some ‘splainin’ to do.

  Eleanor watched as Nikki sulked off to her room, then turned her attention back to Gage. “What have you done?” she asked, raising an eyebrow as she shook her head.

  “When did you know?”

  She gave an unladylike snort. “I knew something was up the day you asked about that happy hour job,” she told him, crossing her legs and settling back against the sofa. “We’ve been together a long time, D.C. Gage. You think I don’t know you by now?”

  “You don’t know me,” he scoffed.

  “Bullshit,” she snapped back. “I know you’re still a good man even after all these years. You only take jobs where the target is a piece of garbage that the world is better off without. That little girl? There isn’t a payday out there big enough for you to take that job. I knew you were up to something the minute you asked me about it, and sure enough I wasn’t here half an hour before my proof walked right through that door.”

  “Then why are you here,” he asked. “Did you come to finish the job?”

  Exasperated, she threw her hands up in the air. “Do you have any idea the mess you’ve made? What do you think is going to happen when you take her back to Miami? You going to keep her hidden in your house for the rest of her life?”

  “I’m working on that,” he hedged. He didn’t have a plan in place yet but he would. All he needed was the report from Stitch and then he would know what to do. “I just need a little more time.”

  Eleanor closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “You damn fool. You love her, don’t you.”

  “Yes,” he replied. It wasn’t even a question he had to think about, not anymore. “And I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”

  “Well, ok then.” She reached down and picked up a black leather briefcase, holding a hand up when Gage started to stand up. “Easy there, I’m reaching for some paper, not a pistol.” After sifting through the paperwork inside, she pulled out one sheet and handed it to Gage.

  “What’s this?” he asked, taking it from her cautiously.

  “It’s your Get Out Of Hell free card. You may thank me now.”

  It was a Switchboard contract, dated the day Gage had gone to Nikki’s condo and showing that his personal protection services had been retained by Nikita Koshka for two weeks for fifty thousand dollars. Paid in full.

  “I don’t understand. You did this?” He read it again. Eleanor was right. It was a Get Out Of Hell free card. If anyone at the agency ever learned what went down at Nikki’s home that Saturday morning, he would be off the hook. Except... “But this puts you in the crosshairs.”

  She nodded. “Clerical error. My mistake. Didn’t see there was another one of our contractors assigned to the job. Won’t happen again.”

  “Why?” Gage asked softly. “You put your neck on the line for me. Why?”

  “Because I don’t want you to end up like me,” she said quietly, standing up and gathering her purse and briefcase. “We gave it all up for this life, Gage. Family. Friends. People who loved us. And we said it was ok, didn’t we?” She came around the coffee table and stood next to him. “Except now I’m old and I know better. It’s too late for me, but maybe it isn’t for you if you’re willing to make the choice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean make the choice. The job or her. You can’t do both, not if you want her to be safe.”

  Gage didn’t know what to say. Guys like him didn’t just decide to quit. They knew too much. For guys like him, retirement didn’t come with a pension package and membership to the golf club. “They’re not going to let me walk away, you know that.”

  “Find a way, Gage,” she said, pointing at him for emphasis as she headed to the door. “Find a way. And you owe me fifty large. I paid for that out of my own pocket.”

  He escorted her to the elevator, thanking her again for what she’d done and promising to cover the expense as soon as he got back. Just before the doors began to close, something she said came back to him. Gage grabbed the door and pushed it open again. “Did you say, your proof walked through the door?”

  One perfectly arched eyebrow raised in response. “I did. Right through the door, arms full of shopping bags and a face covered in sticky candy.” Gage stepped back, letting go of the elevator doors, and as they began to close once more, she laughed and gave him a knowing wink. “Oh, Gage, I think she may be your hardest job yet.”

  * * *

  He found her sitting on her bed watching TV. There was no sign of any shopping bags, no doubt because she’d hidden them. “Where did you go this afternoon?” he demanded.

  The tears began almost immediately, a slow trickle at first that soon became torrential downpour.

  “Crying is not going to get you out of this,” he snapped. “Where did you go?”

  “Shopping,” she hitched through sobs. “I wasn’t alone! I found a girl to go with me.”

  “You went shopping. With a girl that you met where? Here at the hotel?”

  “Nooo,” she whimpered. “She was online. Local students take tourists around the city. It was free!”

  This was even worse than he’d imagined. Bad enough if she’d just gotten bored and snuck out for a bit, but if she arranged for a guide then obviously considerable thought went into her afternoon around town. “How long have you been planning this?”

  Nikki stared at the floor, twisting her hair around her finger as she avoided answering him. It didn’t matter. Her silence told him all he needed to know.

  “After all we’ve been through. I thought you understood how dangerous your situation is right now. I thought I could trust you.” Gage stood up and slowly pulled his belt from the loops as she watched. Her eyes bulged as he folded it once, wrapping one end around his hand just as his father used to do so many years ago. “Tell me, Nikki. Where’s the stuff you bought?”

  Reluctantly she pointed to her suitcase.

  “I don’t see any shopping bags. Why is that?”

  “I... I, um,” she bawled, sniffing loudly. “Hid them. Under the bed.”

  “You hid them.” He swung the belt to slap against the palm of his free hand, causing her to jump. “So you disobeyed me by sneaking out to go shopping, and then you planned to lie about what you’d done, am I right?”

  Miserably she nodded.

  Two more slaps against his palm, each one making Nikki flinch. That pleased him. He wanted her to anticipate the pu
nishment headed her way. If she thought the sound of his belt hitting his hand was loud, wait until she heard it connect with her bare bottom. “And how did you get the money to pay for the things you bought?”

  “From... from the envelope,” she admitted, wiping her nose on the back of her arm. “The one you left.”

  Another whack with the belt, this one making his palm sting. Gage thought it was almost time to give it a new spot to land. “So we can add stealing to your naughty list today.”

  “I didn’t steal it!” she protested. “You said I could use it for emergencies!”

  “Emergencies such as something happened to me and you were all alone in a foreign country. Running out of candy or wanting a new dress is not an emergency!” He’d had enough. “Playtime’s over, Kitten. Dress up, panties down, bend over the bed. Now.”

  * * *

  She thought she could handle any punishment he doled out. She’d even told herself it would be worth it.

  She was wrong.

  When Gage had spanked her before it had been with his bare hand, and while it had stung like a bee it hadn’t been painful. The belt was an entirely different story. The flat leather concentrated the swing to a narrow swath of fire across her tender bottom. Even worse, the pain seemed to build with every passing second. Gage must have been aware of that fact too, because he allowed enough time between each strike for the burn in her cheek to reach a fevered pitch before adding the next layer onto it.

  “Tell me why you are being punished.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddeeeee!” she squalled, dancing from one foot to the other as if that would somehow ease the searing burn across her backside. Breathing rapidly, she tried to copy the breath technique she’d seen pregnant women do in movies when they went into labor, hoping it would help take her mind off the pain, but no sooner did she manage a few puff-puff-puffs than the belt lashed across her backside again and made her completely forget to breathe at all.

  “Tell me why you’re being punished,” he repeated as the belt whipped across her bottom again, this time cutting across the previous two lines that already felt like they were glowing. “And stand still or I’ll give you twice as many swats.”

  “Cuz I snuck oowwwwwt owwww!” Nikki tried to make herself relax but her muscles refused to listen, clenching tightly against the oncoming belt, which made it hurt that much more. To make matters worse, there was no predicting where the next one would land or how hard it might be. Gage was mixing things up, one easy swat with a long pause followed by two really hard ones back to back. Just trying to guess what might come next was exhausting.

  “And... and I lied owwww!” That one wasn’t so bad, barely a swat really. Nikki let her breath out in a sob of gratitude, but her relief was short-lived. The next one made up for it, slamming into her bottom with enough force to knock her forward against the bed. Nikki bit the bedspread and squeezed her eyes shut, promising she would never, ever be bad again, never lie, never sneak out, never disobey Gage again. Not out loud of course, she’d stopped being able to make any sense verbally after the last smack, but she meant every word of it.

  “Have you already forgotten the third reason?”

  Gage’s finger impatiently tapped the sorest spot on her backside, one that seemed to have served as the focal point for every lash she’d received. Nikki knew his finger would be replaced with the belt at any second but her mind was a blank, all memory pushed aside by the searing agony of her raw bottom. What was it she’d forgotten? She couldn’t remember! She snuck out, she hid the shopping bags. Shopping! The money! “I stole!” she shrieked just as the belt slammed into the very spot his finger had been tapping. It felt like a bomb went off, radiating white hot pain across her entire backside as she went limp, sprawled over the edge of the bed like a broken doll.

  Something plopped down on the bed beside her head. It wasn’t easy to see through her tears and swollen eyes but after staring at it for a moment Nikki realized it was the belt. Her punishment was over. Gage sat down next to her and gently rubbed her back while she cried into the bedspread.

  “I want you to promise that you’ll mind me, and mean it this time.”

  “I promise, Daddy,” she blubbered. “I’m ... I’m sorry.”

  “You know I love you, Kitten. I did this for your own good. Do you understand?”

  Talking was too difficult so she simply nodded, keeping her face pressed into the bedspread as she tried to regain control. There was nothing she could do about the pain, that would be a constant misery for days to come, but at least she could get a grip on the crying. And what did he say? He loved her? Nikki usually rolled her eyes when men said that, knowing how easily they told that lie in order to get sex, but this was different and not just because she’d already slept with him. When Gage said something, he meant it, and she could tell love wasn’t a word he used lightly. Hearing him say it to her almost made all the pain go away. Almost. Love or not, she was going to need some Percocet just to sit down for the next few days.

  He stayed with her for a good twenty minutes, rubbing her back and stroking her hair until at last she began to relax. “I think you need a nap now,” he told her, carefully easing her all the way onto the bed before removing her shoes and pulling the sheets out from under her. “You want to sleep on your tummy or your side?”

  “Side,” she whispered.

  Gage rolled her smoothly onto her side, tucking the pillow under her head before leaving the room. She could hear him rummaging around in the refrigerator. When he came back he had her stuffed bunny, a small glass of orange juice with a bendy straw, and a small bottle of Ibuprofen. Gage fished two pills from the bottle and held them in front of her face. “Open wide.”

  Nikki opened her mouth so he could give them to her, then waited for him to get the straw angled so she could take a long sip of the orange juice. It was cold and sweet, and she continued sucking it down even after she’d swallowed the pills.

  “Those should help you sleep a little easier,” he assured her as he tucked the stuffed bunny under her arm and carefully pulled the sheet up over her. “And so will Mr. Bun.”

  Sleep came easily. The sugar high from earlier had worn off, and the excitement of her shopping and sightseeing trip with Miyu would have been enough to cause her to crash. When coupled with the worst spanking of her life, it was no surprise she was out like a light just minutes after Gage tucked her into bed. By the time she woke up again the sun was setting and her tummy had begun to rumble loud enough to hear in the next room. Gingerly she eased out of bed and turned to examine her backside in the large mirror above the dresser.

  Her bottom was a horror show of angry red welts, each one giving testimony to the punishment she’d earned. Cautiously she caressed one with her finger, wincing slightly as she did so. Being severely spanked for misbehaving had been an odd fantasy for her for many years. Now she knew what it was really like. The swollen, angry flesh hurt to touch but she felt an unexpected sense of pleasure just looking at it. Imagining what she must have looked like bent over the bed as Gage spanked her bare ass, she slipped a finger between the damp folds of her pussy and teased her clit. A soft moan escaped as nerve endings lit up in response. Nikki had no clue how she could be so aroused when she was in such pain at the same time, but there was no ignoring the ache welling up between her thighs or the slick juices that now coated her finger.

  She found him sitting on the sofa staring at a piece of paper. Sitting down next to him, she rested her head on his shoulder, snuggling against him when he leaned back and put his arm around her. Before she could lose her nerve she leaned forward and kissed him, sweetly at first then with growing heat as his lips parted to allow her eager tongue access. Smoothly he pulled her across his lap, careful not to touch her bruised bottom as he settled her on top of the growing bulge that threatened to break through his zipper. “Daddy,” she whispered huskily as his fingers found her nipples and began to massage them. “Daddy, I’m sorry I was bad.”

  H
is only reaction was replace his fingers with his mouth, hungrily wrapping his tongue around one quickly tightening nipple.

  “I was really bad,” she gasped as he caressed her sensitive sides, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “Aren’t you still mad at me?”

  His answer was to devour her nipple in his mouth as his hand made its way down her side and across her tummy toward the eager divide between her thighs.

  “Don’t you want me to show you how sorry I am?” This wasn’t going at all how she’d imagined. In the books the girl never had to ask because the guy just knew. He would tie the girl up and take her however he please. He would make her come, even when she begged him to stop, and he would fuck her until she nearly passed out from pleasure. Best of all he would make her do all the things she’d secretly wanted but was too embarrassed to ask for. Maybe even things she’d never imagined. But this wasn’t a book, or a free story online, or even a badly written movie. None of her words were coming out right, her face was turning beet red, and Gage had stopped sucking her nipples and was now just staring at her while she stuttered and stammered about like an idiot.

  She was about to tell him never mind, kiss him on the mouth and have what would no doubt be mind-blowing sex if the other night were any indication, when a sly smile turned up the corners of his mouth.

  “Stand up and take off your clothes.”

  * * *

  Any doubts he’d had about Nikki’s desire to be completely possessed by him vanished when she obediently rose from the sofa and took off her robe, turning slowly in a circle so he could feast his eyes on every inch of her. She was beautiful, he’d always thought so, but now she was positively jaw dropping, squirming with desire before him as she carefully removed her dress and bra. The red marks across her backside excited him. She’d certainly earned them, but it pleased him that she hadn’t tried to run away from her punishment. Instead she’d submitted to it, and him, completely, and the fiery welts across her ass were proof she was his to do with as he pleased. Within limits of course—he wasn’t a monster—but the possibilities made his mouth water.