by Lena Little
He leans in any way. “You touch me you’re holding me against my will, kidnapping me,” I add, and that catches a nerve as his hands pull back and I watch as his head looks behind me toward Carter for instructions.
I don’t wait around, making a mad dash for the door and hustling to the gate where I run as fast as I can to the bus station.
My bus isn’t there and I wait and wait, which gives me time to think and the tears to flow.
Part of me wonders if I’m overacting, but I’m not about to turn around and go back to find out. As a matter of fact, the best part about Carter was he was helping me put my past where it belongs…in the past. And then with one ill-timed move, he brought it all back with a vengeance.
Just when I thought I met a man, a real man who understood me, he went and showed me he’s as clueless as can be. I can’t be mad at him though. I’ve got my own emotional wounds, my own baggage to carry, and I can’t expect him to understand.
Maybe he thought he could connect with me by playing the orphan card, but I’m not a victim. I’ve never thought of myself that way and never will. Heck, if he was as good at reading people as a CEO should be he should realize that my feistiness and sharp tongue are exactly because I don’t want to be a product of my past. I only want the future, which as it suddenly stands, doesn’t include him one bit.
As soon as my bus arrives I head to the back corner, forgetting that once we turn off The 405 and get to my side street it’s not paved, which means I’ll be bumping my head on the ceiling as the bus driver tries to keep up speed so he doesn’t get stuck in the many potholes on my street.
Maybe Carter should be the one on this bus so this ride could knock some sense in his thick skull. Or maybe I need to quit reading Lena Little books on my Kindle, because I’m always wishing I could meet an older Daddy dom, or at least slight dom, who understands me better than I understand myself…so we could ride off into the sunset happily ever after.
I guess that’s why I read her books. Because it’s only fantasy…right?
Clearly I was fooled into thinking it could happen to me. Well, I’m not going to be fooled again. I’m not going to put myself out there. Not going to make myself vulnerable. Nope. No thanks.
I’m going to crawl up in my shell with my Kindle and just read about what happens to other people, not me, and do my work until I have enough money to make my own future with my own life. I don’t need some guy.
As the bus gets stuck in mid-morning traffic, then again when isn’t there traffic in Southern California, my mind drifts back to just over a month ago when I was finishing high school, thinking this was finally behind me.
Johnny Ellis, as All-American as his name, the captain of the football team always calling me that damn word. “Scab.” He loved to make fun of me for being so rail-thin, saying that I was so dehydrated looking that I probably didn’t have an actual vagina, but in fact just a scab down there. The other kids ate it up, and with a social media following that was the biggest in the school, offers to play football at all the top colleges, and half the cheerleading team bragging about being with him, I really didn’t have the firepower to get into a battle with him.
So I just tucked my tail between my legs and took it…for three damn years. He was a year behind me in class, but even so, he was nearly as big as Carter, which explains all his sports success and the fact he was coddled by all the teachers.
“This is your stop right?” I hear the words but they don’t register. “Miss?”
My eyes blink a few times rapidly and I shake my head from side to side, snapping back to the present moment. “Yeah, here. Thanks,” I say darting from my seat and out the door to my two hundred and forty-eight square foot apartment on the first floor of a neighborhood that even the police don’t want any part of. Just because Southern California is glamorous, filled with hard bodies and celebrities that make fortunes that rival some countries, doesn’t mean everybody lives like they stepped out a rerun of Baywatch, or whatever that show was called that made nearly every women in America self-conscious of the way she looks in the days before I was even born.
Once I manage to get my key to properly slide in the door and wiggle it just right so it opens, I pull out the single piece of furniture I have, a wooden chair, and bury my hands in my face.
Seconds later I’m crying and then I’m laughing hysterically as I look at the blow-up camping mattress I sleep on that I bought on clearance from Walmart for $14.99. It was the only kid’s mattress they had, and thankfully I’m not much bigger. Saved me ten bucks.
I laugh more at my luck, or lack thereof, and wish I had someone to call to spill all this too. Then I realize the only person I really talk to these days is Sandy, and then again she’s my work friend, so I don’t even have her actual phone number. Do I even have any friends? Maybe not.
Then again Carter was supposed to be my everything. He was the older man who could guide me through tough situations in life, not willingly create them, and put me through them for no reason.
Maybe I am just a kid after all. Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t know what the heck is going on. Was he testing me like he’s seemed to do before, or was I just overreacting? Then again, why should I even need to consider things like that? Why would the man I love be playing head games with me to supposedly make me stronger?
The man I love.
Damn, I hate that thought right now mostly because I know it’s true.
The question is are his feelings true, or is this all just some age play game to him?
If there’s one thing about introverts who love to read they’re usually very observant because they don’t waste any unnecessary time talking or trying to show off, unlike a certain someone I know who has his name in big letters on the building that he owns downtown. Yeah, I’m thinking of you Carter Cross.
But Mr. Cross, you’ve crossed me this time. Now let’s see if your love was the “cross your heart hope to die” kind or this housekeeper is going to be looking for a needle to stick in your eye since your eyes don’t seem to know what it looks like when you hurt someone you claim means more to you than anything.
10
Carter
Early the next morning
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and pull away from the curb next to Camila’s apartment where I stayed parked all night. I wasn’t about to intrude after what she said about kidnapping, but I wasn’t going to let her do anything drastic either…including running away from me. I can’t lose her. I won’t.
But she’s made it clear I made a mistake and I have to get to the bottom of it, figure out what it is, so I can correct it and make our relationship whole again. Maybe I took things too fast. How can you blame me? I just get so damn excited around her and all I want to do is spoil her and give her the world on a silver platter.
I look in my rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of my bloodshot eyes and my messed up hair. My five o’clock shadow is now a twenty-four hour shadow and I need to get some sleep, and check and see if what I asked for on the phone call last night to a longtime associate was taken care of.
Not only that I need to get home, to be prepared when Camila shows up today…if she shows up. As improbable as that sounds right now, something tells me she will. She’s not the type to quit what she started and neither am I. Being someone who sticks things through is also why I want my woman so damn bad. In this day and age of constant choices and options, often at the tap of a finger on a cell phone, the idea that two people can remain together forever, committed, is a feeling I want to experience. I already know I’m not giving her up, no matter what obstacles or misunderstandings come our way in life, and I’m pretty sure she feels the same way.
Or I’m just delusional from a lack of sleep.
I stop at my associate’s house and he shakes his head, lifts his eyebrows, and exhales hard. “Somehow I managed to finish.”
Taking a look at his work all I can do is thank him, shake his hand, and give him a generous tip before I’m on
my way. I don’t have time for anything else right now. Today is all about keeping what’s mine. Her. And I need to be ready.
Ready for what exactly? I know deep down inside there’s no point in even trying to act like a tough guy about it. I love her, and I have since the moment I laid eyes on her.
Now I need her eyes to see the lengths I’ll go to to make her mine. Forever.
11
Camila
I throw on the single baseball hat I own and leave my front door and the sunlight from the day almost blinds me. I’ve barely slept and I need to be back inside my tiny cave of an apartment, with the blinds drawn, but that’s not the type of girl I am.
I signed a contract that said I was his housekeeper, and I’m going to honor that contract until its expiration. After that is anybody’s guess.
And I can only guess how today is going to shape up.
After a bus ride that seems quicker than normal, probably due to my anxiety, I arrive close to his home, walking the final half a mile to his gate where the same security guy I yelled at yesterday looks at me as if nothing happened. I apologize but he just grunts something and motions with his hand toward the house.
I’m a bit thrown off by his behavior but continue forward anyway. Maybe Carter told him to just act like it didn’t happen, even though I was out of line…kinda.
Moving into the house I see Sandy who also greets me as if everything is completely normal. Now things are feeling surreal.
“You came,” a deep voice cloaks me from behind.
I steel myself before slowly turning on a heel to face him. “I signed a contract to be your housekeeper and I’m here to be exactly that.”
“About that contract,” he says, his clasped hands behind his back come forward to reveal that exact piece of paper, which he tears to shreds. “You’re not my housekeeper anymore. You’re free of those responsibilities.”
I freeze in my tracks. “What does that mean then?” My thoughts rush to what it means to not have a job right now. No money coming in is a death sentence, but Carter seems to have already anticipated all of that.
“I’ll give you a year’s salary, today if you no longer feel comfortable here,” he continues.
“I can sense an ‘or’ hiding in there somewhere.”
“Or, let me show you the other option.”
He offers me his hand and I just stare at it. “Before we go any further I just want to say I’m sorry about yesterday. I’m pretty sure I overreacted.”
“I’m sorry too, for not understanding what you need. For not living up to my responsibility as a Daddy.”
Sandy’s ears perk up and Carter quickly asks her to see what’s going on in the kitchen.
“What happened yesterday, little one?” he asks, his eyes filled with regret.
“That word, scab, it’s a product of my past and I thought you knew exactly why.”
He shakes his head and then brings his hand up behind it, rubbing his neck. “I’m sorry. I had no clue.” He pauses. “I do know about your past, but I didn’t get a chance to explain what scab meant.”
My eyes narrow. “You know about me being nicknamed scab by the other kids in high school?”
His head pulls back and then he shakes it from side to side. “I have no knowledge of that, I just know about your hardships growing up without parents, the same hardships I faced.”
I’m beyond frustrated and am starting to feel like this is all very cryptic. “Can you just tell me what this scab thing is all about?”
“It stands for Southern Californians Against Bullying. As an orphan, it’s almost a given you’re going to get some kind of bullying growing up. I did, and I’m willing to bet you did too. I wanted to start a foundation, together, and pledge half of my companies profits to help kids at risk in our communities.” He pauses. “I’ll admit the acronym was kind of a strange choice, but I was thinking we could use it in a way that says, ‘don’t be a scab and cross lines becoming a bully.’”
I reach up a hand and wipe the tears from my eyes. “For a business genius that sounds like some of the most confusing marketing I’ve ever heard.”
“The name can change, especially now that I know that it hits a sore spot with you. That was the last thing I wanted.”
“I know, but what do you want then?”
“You, beautiful. I want you.”
Reaching in his pocket he pulls out a sparkling, what appears to be diamond hair clip. “What’s that?”
“A gift, for my little girl.”
I bust out laughing.
“What’s so funny. You don’t like it? At least try it on first.”
I remove the hat from my head, but my hair doesn’t flow down well past my shoulders as usual.
“Your…” his mouth falls open.
“It will grow back. Plus it was for a good cause.”
He says nothing, just staring at me and my now very short hair, not even reaching my shoulders.
“A girl I used to live with was pulling her hair out from all the stress and what she didn’t pull out the anxiety she had from feeling alone in the world was taking from her. She’s only seven. I…cut my hair to donate to her. I always saw a bit of myself in her and I want her to have hair in school, not to be teased by other kids during a very challenging time in her life, like I was.” I pause. “But her head is small so the rest I was able to sell for a bit of money.” I reach in my pocket and pull out a couple of tubes of super glue. “For that penis, I broke off your statue.”
Now it’s Carter’s turn to lose it. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I traded the sculpture for the hair clips and you traded your hair for the super glue. Perfect, angel. We’re perfect for each other.”
“I don’t look ugly with super short hair?”
“You look perfect and I hope this,” he says, holding his arms out wide. “Looks like home to you, because I’m never letting you leave again.”
“Good, because I don’t want to. I want to be here in your arms, always, Daddy. Holding your hand as you guide me through this crazy little thing called life.”
The tears start flowing even harder now.
“And when I hold your hand I want us both to be reminded who you belong to. My jeweler doesn’t just make hair clips. He also makes these,” he adds, taking a knee and reaching into his pocket as he removes a tiny, felt, black box.
His voice somehow finds an octave even deeper than normal, as he looks up at me with possessive eyes, pupils dilating as his eyes narrow. “It doesn’t matter if you have hair or not. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been or what you’ve been through, only where we’re going…together. I love you exactly the way you are, and I’m going to be the only man who knows what you look like under those clothes. The only man to run his hands along the small of your back. And the only man to stand in the hospital delivery room, squeezing your hand tight as you give birth to our children…over and over again. I’m not taking no for an answer and I’m not letting you run out of here again. You’re mine Camila Dubois, and now you know it with one hundred percent certainty if you didn’t already before. And the whole world knows it too,” he says, sliding the ring on my finger.
Standing he picks me up in his arms and twirls me around before claiming my lips passionately.
“You didn’t even give me the chance to say yes,” I tease.
“Daddy knows what’s best for you, little girl.”
“You sure do, Daddy. And now I’m yours and only yours.”
“You always were.”
“So I’m not your housekeeper anymore?” I tease.
“You’re exactly what you’ve always been all along. My everything. I love you, my princess, and soon to be my queen.”
“I love you too, Daddy.”
He kisses me again and I feel my body elevating as I look down over my shoulder and see he’s carrying me up the stairs to the master bedroom no doubt.
I’ve been a bad girl running away from my Daddy, and I expect to be punished.
I just wonder who’s going to enjoy it more. Then again I already know the answer. We both will equally, just like our love.
We’ve found the one person in the world who completes us, who understands what makes us tick, and who will support each other in all times, thick and thin.
And I know my Daddy is going to put those thick paws of his on my backside to remind me to be a good little girl.
But then again, being bad has its rewards. I know I’ll be good for my Daddy, but I’ll be sure to act up from time to time too, because I know he won’t tolerate my bratty behavior, and watching a man stand up for what he believes in and never waiver, is what makes me fall to my knees at his feet.
Daddy’s brought me to heel, and by giving up some of my feistiness I gain everything.
Scratch that. I’m staying just as feisty, always.
“Are you going to give me a spanking, Daddy,” I say as he tosses me on the bed and makes quick work of getting out of his clothes.
“Baby girl, I’m going to give you everything. Always,” he says, moving closer to the bed before he yanks my clothes off.
I smirk, knowing he was right all along. Daddy does know how to handle a spoiled little girl. And now, with this ring on my finger, it’s crystal clear I’m going to be his little girl for life.
“I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you, angel.”
Epilogue
Carter
Three months later
Taking one-half of the oversized scissors and making sure my wife has the other, we cut the ribbon to our new center, the Carter and Camila Cross Kids Care Foundation. I loved the name that Camila came up with, and still shake my head at my terrible first attempt. But that doesn’t matter now. All that matters is that my first attempt at love will be my only attempt because it requires no trying at all. Loving my woman comes naturally and to know with absolute certainty that we’re mated for life is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.