No, the frail soul in his arms was as traumatized as they came.
Atticus had been vaguely disappointed when Lisha hadn’t ventured from the bedroom to see Jasper and Archie, but then, he hadn’t laid any money on her doing so. She seemed to believe people would recoil in disgust at the sight of her, yet she couldn’t be more wrong.
The Avalon crew were coddlers, cuddlers, and fixers.
It was the weirdest sensation, feeling the life drain out of someone who was still breathing. He knew he’d said something wrong to elicit the sob, but he couldn’t pinpoint what exactly. Whatever the trigger, it flipped a switch inside her that sent her spiraling into a dark funk.
Nudging her chin up with a fingertip, he eased back far enough to see her eyes and confirm what he suspected—the fiery spark that kept dying and reigniting was burned out yet again. That mischievousness he adored was nowhere to be found, locked away so it couldn’t be used against her.
With a sigh that was more of a growl, Atticus returned her onto the bed and found the shirt. It didn’t take him more than a minute or two to bundle her limp arms through the short sleeves and slip the shirt over her head. A little maneuvering and she was covered.
When he picked her up again, he doubted she was even aware of him.
Their first stop was the bathroom, where he set her down on the toilet and let her do her business while his back was turned. Her actions were automatic as she wiped herself dry and leaned forward to wash her hands and brush her teeth, then he scooped her up onto his hip as he flushed the unit.
Foregoing the wheelchair, Atticus carried her from the bedroom, still perched on his hip like a child, and walked down the hall, past his office, to the double doors at the end of the hallway. They hadn’t gotten to this part of the house during their tour yesterday, but he hoped it might be a pleasant surprise for her.
The doors opened into a room bigger than the kitchen. The carpet was plush, midnight blue, and broken up by thin tracks of lights to guide anyone moving around in the dark. There were a couple of sofas, some sleep chairs, even a chaise longue for anyone who wanted to stretch out and relax.
To his left, pinball and arcade machines lined the wall. A boy’s wet dream. A pool table was tucked in the far corner. The wall facing the doors sported a cinema-sized screen. On his right was an array of snack machines and his social bar. Not that he had many visitors.
Maybe he should think about correcting that.
Alicia could benefit from some company and friendly interaction.
Choosing one of the sleep chairs—a big, round, snuggly affair—he settled his precious armful into it, then moved across the room to the hidden cupboard tucked into the wall and picked out a couple of blankets and some uber-soft pillows.
Of course, he took his time tucking her in, plumping the cushions behind her. He might not have claimed her as his little, but he stole the pleasure of treating her as such anyway. She made it so easy for him to fall into his Daddy headspace, just by being who she was.
“What are you doing?” she asked slowly, almost slurring the words. Her eyes were dull, tracking his movements jerkily.
“We are having a peaceful Saturday morning. Friday was a clusterfuck, and we both need some time to just relax and breathe.” The bigger question was, what the fuck had he done with the remote for the entertainment system? “It’s easy to forget you’ve only been here since yesterday afternoon, princess.”
But for how much longer?
He saw the question flicker across her face before it vanished, and wished he had consent to spank her for the insecurity. Sometimes a few quick smacks on an upturned bottom got the point across faster than words.
“There’s bound to be an adjustment period, Alicia,” Atticus continued, scouring the few small side tables beside each seating arrangement, then spotting it on the end of the chaise longue. He retrieved it, powering up the system, then pressing it into her trembling hand. “I can sympathize with what you’ve been through, but I can’t claim to understand it, not when I don’t know everything. You need to let go of this fear that you’re disposable.”
Her fingers turned white-knuckled on the little plastic box. “What if I can’t?”
“I’ll just have to show you how indispensable you are.” It wouldn’t be a hardship, or difficult to do. “Are you going to give me a smile, pretty princess?”
Bless her, despite her heart not being in it at all, Alicia gave a good attempt at curving her lips into an unhappy smile. Hard to do when the corners were dragged down by the weight of her pain.
“Good girl.” Because he was coming to understand she liked physical contact, he rewarded her with a long stroke over her head. “Why don’t you pick something for us to watch? I’ll be back in a minute.”
She let the pitiful try at a smile drop. “You don’t have to, if you have things to do. I’m used to being on my own.”
His tone firmed. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Her expression told him she didn’t believe him, but one thing he didn’t do was break a promise. Leaving her flicking miserably through the channels, he hurried to the kitchen, unwilling to give her too much alone time.
He collected his laptop and two glasses of juice from the kitchen, then went back to her. His jaw almost hit the carpet when he realized what she’d discovered. “Little girls aren’t allowed to watch porn on a Saturday morning, princess. It’s reserved for after your bedtime.” Damn it, she wasn’t his little. He didn’t have any right to give her orders.
But her response was so sweetly regressed, his cock rose to the challenge.
“Daddies watch dirty films?”
Oh, another time, another place, she would have been perfect for him. A shame, really, that there were so many factors working against them—she was his ward, she was troubled and needed careful handling, she was Boadicea’s goddamn baby sister.
There were trusts he could not break.
Setting the glasses of juice down on the table beside the sleep chair, Atticus wedged himself into the curve beside Alicia and stretched out his legs, with the laptop balanced on his thighs. Smoothly, he plucked the remote from her hand before she could click on—was that…oh yeah, that was a double anal vid. Not a cat in hell’s chance was she watching that. “Daddies watch whatever they like, princess. Little girls are innocent. They should stay that way until they’re old enough to understand stuff like that.”
“Oh, I understand,” she mumbled bitterly.
Atticus could only imagine. He hadn’t met Abraham McGee or the insane bitch he called his wife, but he had seen what they’d done to Bodie. If they were capable of doing that to one daughter who could fight back, he dreaded to think what they’d done to the daughter who couldn’t. “When someone is in little space,” he murmured to her as he hastily switched over to a different selection of programs, “they leave all that behind. For a while, anyhow. They go back to a better time, a happier time, and reclaim some of the joy of being a kid again. The thing is, I don’t think someone needs to identify as a little or a middle to be able to do that, Lisha. They just need the right stimuli.”
Testing a theory, Atticus pressed a few buttons until a big purple dinosaur filled the mammoth screen. He made himself comfortable and opened the laptop as Alicia gave him a disbelieving side glance. He just smiled and logged on, not saying a word about his choice of shows.
The rapid tap of his fingers over the keys was lost in the cheery singalongs on screen. He worked quickly, firing off emails with one eye on the woman beside him, and he noted it didn’t take long for her to lose some of her rigidity. Her features softened, her eyes glazed as the simplicity of the show tweaked the wiring in her brain.
A smile tugged his mouth when her hand curled around his arm and her head snuggled against his shoulder. He half-expected her to stick her thumb in her mouth for a self-comforting suck.
Barney moved on, replaced by an animatronic domestic dinosaur family. From the smile on Alicia’s face, it was mo
re suited to her tastes. So maybe not little, he mused. She was edging toward the middle mindset.
It was a relief that she’d calmed down. He hated seeing her in distress and, like any good Daddy, tears made him protective. Especially when he knew where they stemmed from.
When he gave her a glass of juice, she didn’t take it. She didn’t relinquish the grip on his arm—but her free hand slipped from beneath the blanket to latch on to his wrist as she drank, letting him have full control.
The lack of conversation didn’t bother him—this was valuable time, in his opinion. Quiet, contemplative. He didn’t hear the nonsense coming from the speakers, he was too busy listening to her body. Like the sleepy mmmn after she finished her juice. The gentle huffs of laughter that were barely audible, making him think she was scared to vocalize her enjoyment. The quiet squeak of the chair as she squirmed her way just a fraction closer to him.
As the dinosaurs continued their adventures, Atticus pulled up an online clothing store and started browsing the selections. Alicia’s clothes were lining his trash can, too damaged by mold to be of any use at all, and while he was content to look at her in his shirts, the potential for his self-control to snap was far too great to risk.
Besides, she deserved a treat. Something new and bright and hers.
That was probably why he was on the verge of overloading his virtual shopping cart with items when Alicia stirred and asked, “Daddies wear dresses?”
Atticus chuckled, amusement rich in the sound. “I’m sure somewhere in the big, wide world, there are Daddies who wear dresses. This one? Not so much. I really don’t have the physique to pull something like this off,” he told her, tapping his finger on the screen to indicate a pretty poppy-themed sheath dress.
Her fingers squeezed his bicep. “No seams can contain this Daddy.”
Now he laughed. “Seam resistant, that’s me. What do you need, princess?”
“Nothing. Just being nosy.” She offered him a sleepy smile, her eyes heavy.
“What do you like to wear, Alicia? Do you have any favorite colors? Do you prefer jeans, skirts, yoga pants?” He pulled up the cart, ready to scroll through and remove anything she didn’t like. “Hoodies, cardigans, blouses?”
A glint of suspicion gleamed in the blue eyes now staring at him. “Why?”
“Because while you’re beautiful in my T-shirts, you are equally distracting.” Her tiny gasp of shock stroked his ego wonderfully. More importantly, he hoped it stroked hers. “Therefore, we are going to buy you some new clothes, so you feel the same way I see you.”
“I-I don’t have any money,” Alicia whispered. “I have nothing. I can’t pay for them.”
Atticus frowned. He wasn’t expecting her to pay for anything, even if she had cash tucked into some secret compartment in that tattered suitcase, but surely she’d gotten something from her parents’ will? No charges had been filed against her for the death of Abraham and Diane—it came down to self-defense, after all, but he’d had lawyers at the ready, prepared to squash anything the law brought down on her. “Did your parents not leave you anything, princess?”
She snorted derisively. “They didn’t have a will. As far as I’m aware, their crew came in and cleared the house of all the cash and drugs the police didn’t find. The house was leased, their bikes absorbed back into the crew, and there wasn’t exactly anything of sentimental value. Besides, I wouldn’t have taken anything from them. Tainted life, tainted money.”
“What about your disability money?” There was a gnawing sense of dread in his stomach. “They were using it for their own means, right? What about after they died? Where has the money been going in the months since then?”
She had the most adorable deer in the headlights look, he noted, but that wasn’t going to solve this dilemma. It wasn’t quite as adorable when the look turned to sheer terror. “I-I don’t know. The welfare office issued me a card, but I-I haven’t seen it since the day it came in the mail.”
Atticus closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled slowly. Thieving fuckers. “All right, Alicia, don’t panic. I’m going to email Braun and Connie to get the ball rolling on tracking down the card. I’m sure Braun has it under control.” Switching browsers, his fingers flew as he typed out the email to his friends. “There. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Braun is a financial wizard, and he has his finger on every dollar-sized pulse.”
She dropped her head onto his shoulder. “Thank you.”
“It’s never a problem. If I can help you, I will.” Cursing himself, he touched his lips to the crown of her head before hurriedly flicking back over to his impromptu shopping spree. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, take a look at these and see what you like. We can remove things, add things, swap them for different colors. Go a little wild, princess.”
It took some coaxing. Alicia was adamant she didn’t want him spending money on her, but as Daddy, he got the last word. Not that he used that finality to convince her—they weren’t in a dynamic…yet…and she had to learn that she could make choices and state her opinions without being pressured into keeping quiet by his dominance.
But in this case, she needed some goddamn new clothes.
The skirts and dresses he’d picked out were the first to get removed from the cart. Apparently, she found her legs to be abhorrent because they were thin and lacking muscle tone—which he thought was ridiculous. She had lovely legs and, yes, they could use some toning up, but in her current situation, that just wasn’t possible.
He slipped a couple of the dresses back into the cart when her attention was diverted on an old rerun of Fraggle Rock. Maybe she’d wear them, maybe she wouldn’t, but one day, he was determined to show her that a physical flaw meant nothing unless she let it knock her self-esteem.
Alicia’s cheeks bloomed with embarrassed color when they picked out underwear. Bras and panties for everyday use, and a couple of sets that he prayed she would wear and gain some self-confidence. Not racy, not overtly sexy, but underwear with a little more flash than she was used to.
By the end of the spree, she looked as though she was going to be sick at the sight of the total dollar amount, but Atticus was pleased. She’d hesitantly selected several pairs of jeans and some loose jogging pants, enough shirts that she could wear a clean one every day of the week, and some baggy hoodies which they’d argued over, then compromised on by swapping two baggy ones for two that would fit her more flatteringly.
Adding on boots, socks, and a cap to cover her head in case she went outside for a long period of time, she turned positively green.
Still, when he went to click the button to pay, she dug her fingertips into his arm.
“Wait, please, Atticus. I’m not—”
Ruthlessly, Atticus clicked on the button, and a payment confirmation popped onto the screen. Humming under his breath, he closed the laptop and set it aside. “All done. They should be here in a couple of days.” Just in time for her to contemplate meeting Connie again. He slipped his arm around Alicia’s shoulders, shushing the small gagging noises she made. “Don’t be so dramatic, princess. It’s only money, and today, it’s been well-spent. Now what do we say when someone buys us a gift?”
Shuddering with an exhale, Alicia studied him. Her lashes were wet with more tears he prayed wouldn’t fall, but she cut him off at the knees with her whispered, “Thank you, Daddy.”
Well fuck, he thought in alarm.
He’d crossed a fucking line Braun would no doubt dropkick his ass back over.
*
Eight hundred dollars.
Atticus had just bought her eight hundred dollars’ worth of clothes, and now she didn’t know what to do with herself. He hadn’t hesitated. Hadn’t even blinked at the total, which made her question whether he’d actually seen the exorbitant amount of money he’d just spent on her.
He called it a gift.
In all her life, Alicia had never been gifted anything, and she didn’t know how to deal with the emotions tumb
ling around inside her like rodeo clowns. Part of her wanted to throw her arms around him and hug him until they cramped. Another part viewed his nice gesture with suspicion, wondering what it might cost her further down the line.
Another fragment was rocking in mute disbelief, unable to understand his generosity.
The only thing her father had been generous with had been his fists, and then his cock.
She hadn’t meant to say Daddy. It just slipped out on the tail end of the you, but it felt oddly right. By his stunned expression, Atticus hadn’t expected it either, but she wasn’t experiencing a sense of shame in using the endearment.
Was it an endearment or a title in his world?
No matter. Alicia couldn’t recollect ever calling her father anything but Abraham or Sir, not that he deserved the honorific. He didn’t earn it, but she learned from a young age that keeping him pacified by any means was preferable to having his temper hammer down on her in the shape of his fists.
“Don’t feel that you have to call me that,” Atticus explained slowly, trying to keep his expression neutral, but she could see the effect it had on him. “I won’t shackle you into another environment when you’ve just found your freedom, Lisha. It’s not fair, and it’s not what I do. There’s time to discover what you want.”
All right, that was sensible. Sensible was good, sensible was…sensible. Crap, now she couldn’t get that damn word out of her head.
Thankful for him, grateful he’d ridden to her rescue and brought her home, she didn’t have the courage to push the issue. He’d awakened something in her—not fully, not yet—but nudged it into stirring. Something that needed love and cuddles and attention.
Since yesterday, Atticus had been feeding her tidbits of all three, and she couldn’t help but devour them all. They were addictive, the sugary sweetness she’d never had, and she was fucking hungry. She craved them so badly, she’d lick his fingers free of every last crumb.
When his phone rang, she came perilously close to smashing it.
Walk For Me: Club Avalon Book 4 Page 9