Taboo Daddy

by Crowne, K. C.

  “Tess can order for all of us,” Noah said absently, handing her the phone. She curled up in an armchair and got to work adding things to the online cart.

  “So,” I said, settling on the couch, feeling a little awkward now that Tess had effectively dropped out of the conversation. “How have you been? Since I saw you last, I mean.”

  “What?” He looked up at me. “Oh. Fine, just fine.”

  I grimaced inwardly. I’d been afraid tonight might be weird. After all, we’d kissed the last time we’d seen each other, and then I had run out the door. Noah was certainly entitled to feel awkward about that. But I guess I’d hoped he hadn’t taken it to heart, and that hope had been bolstered by the fact that he’d invited me over tonight.

  Tess hopped off the chair and ran the phone over to her father, showing him what she’d chosen. He nodded, not giving the order much attention, and she grinned and placed it. Fifteen minutes, she signed.

  And then it was quiet.

  And it was awkward.

  Tess picked up a book from an end table and began reading. Noah fiddled with his watch. “Are you okay?” I asked him after a time.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Because you’re being kind of...well, kind of distant. Are you upset with me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I know I left in a hurry last time—”

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said dismissively. “Things are complicated between you and me. I understand that.”

  It was the first time that fundamental truth had been so simply articulated. It was almost like taking a first breath of air after being underwater for a long time. Things were complicated between the two of us. That was absolutely true. And not only that, but now I knew for sure that Noah saw it too. I wasn’t imagining the sexual tension. I wasn’t imagining the reluctance to give in on both our parts. We wanted each other. We wanted to stay away.

  It was complicated.

  It wasn’t just me.

  I could have hugged him, but I didn’t. I stayed in my place on the couch, watching him and wondering if he realized what a gift he’d given me with those simple words.

  Eventually, the food arrived, and the mood loosened somewhat. Tess arranged the food on plates and the three of us went to the kitchen and moved from place to place, sampling as we went. Between the three of us, we finished all the food Tess had ordered.

  When it was done, Noah brought out a massive cupcake with pink frosting and confetti sprinkles. He cut this into thirds and raised his section as if it were a wine glass. “To Tess,” he said, signing with his free hand. “May she do well at her new school.”

  “And have fun,” I added, signing and happy, which was as close as I could get. I picked up my own wedge of cupcake. “Cheers.”

  The three of us devoured our dessert as ravenously as we’d eaten the sushi. When we were finished, Tess hugged her father and asked to be excused to her room. He granted her request.

  Bye, Jenna, she signed.

  Bye, Tess, I replied. “Congratulations again,” I added, relying on Noah to translate the last part.

  “She’s awfully tired,” Noah said as Tess disappeared up the stairs. “She wouldn’t say so in front of you, but I’m sure she’s going to sleep. And she needs it. She’s been studying so hard for the entrance exam. She’s been really stressed out about it.”

  “It’ll be good for her to get a fresh start,” I said. “After everything she’s been through. To be around kids who don’t know her for her personal tragedy, but who can just get to know her for who she is. I think you’re making the right choice in transferring her.”

  Noah nodded. “I hope you’re right about that.”

  “I think so.”

  After a pause, he murmured, “Jenna?”

  “Yeah?”

  He took a deep breath. “I think you should move back in with us.”

  “What?” I scoffed. “Noah. Come on.”

  “I worry about you,” he said. “I’d feel better if you were here.”

  “I’m perfectly safe at Sara’s.”

  “I don’t know that you are. That’s the thing.”

  “You can’t possibly think that whoever broke into my place would go to Sara’s.”

  “No, it’s not that. I just...my security is really good.”

  “You know why I left.”

  “I don’t, actually, because you never had a conversation with me about it.”

  “I told you it was too hard for me to be around you with our relationship so undefined. You said it yourself, Noah. It’s complicated.”

  “Is that why you’re picking a fight with me now?”

  “I am not picking a fight!” I cried. I sucked in a breath. “This was a bad idea, I shouldn’t have come, I should—” I turned to go.

  He caught me by the wrist. I looked back.

  “I think you like it complicated,” he said, eyes blazing.

  My stomach dropped.

  * * *

  I had no idea afterward how we even made it to his bedroom. If it hadn’t been for Tess, we probably would have ended up naked right there on the kitchen floor.

  Somehow, though, I was in his bedroom, and he was locking the door behind me. Our arms tangled as we struggled to rip away each other’s clothes. Sex with Noah had seemed so deliberate on his part. He’d removed my clothes carefully, as though it was an art. He had stripped away his own clothes like a model, as if performing a move he had practiced to perfection.

  Today it was messy and rushed, and we didn’t care. We couldn’t get naked quickly enough.

  There was no standing back and regarding the beauty of each other’s bodies. The minute I saw his bare skin, I pressed myself against it, touching him everywhere I could reach, inhaling the scent of him. I felt drugged.

  He lifted me in his arms and entered me quickly, backing me up against the cool plaster of the wall. I felt light as a feather, suspended between the hard wall and his hard body, his hands under my thighs as he thrust into me. I went limp against him, unable to do more than squeeze him with arms and legs and encourage him to go deeper, faster, harder.

  But he didn’t increase the pace. He moved steadily, and it came to me that as out of control as I was feeling right now, as out of control as I could tell he was, Noah was still hanging on to a piece of his sanity. He hadn’t given himself over completely to the physical rush yet.

  And as soon as the thought occurred to me, I understood why.

  He wanted me to come first.

  He had always taken care of me, always made sure I was satisfied before worrying about himself. How could I have ever thought of this man as someone who might hurt me, who might not care for my heart? He was the most generous man I’d ever met.

  I felt utterly safe in his arms. In that moment, if he’d asked me again to move back into his house, I would have said yes without hesitating.

  I angled my hips and arched my back, working the pressure and friction to exactly where I wanted it, and a moment later I was seeing stars.

  When my vision cleared, I was on Noah’s bed, flat on my back. He’d entwined his fingers with mine and pinned my hands over my head. I felt weak and exhausted, as if I’d just completed a marathon. My body was so sensitive to his every move that if he hadn’t been holding me down, I thought I might not have been able to stay still.

  And his control had finally fractured. He thrust into me erratically, his breath coming in frantic gasps, his hands flexing and clenching in mine. It was amazing to watch him come apart like this. I wanted it to last forever, and I wanted to feel him cum right away.

  I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, finding a new angle that made me gasp in pleasure.

  “Oh, God,” he moaned quietly in my ear. I knew he was trying to keep the movement we made to a minimum so Tess wouldn’t pick up on any vibrations, and I could feel how much effort it took. I could feel every strain of every muscle in his perfectly sculpted body. “Jenna, what are
you doing to me?”

  “I want you to come,” I whispered in his ear, feeling hot and desperate and animal.

  And he did, his hips pistoning forward with such beautiful pressure that it drove me over the edge for a second time, and I felt the mattress fall away underneath me as I wrapped myself around him and lifted my body up to his.

  Chapter 27

  Noah

  Waking up next to Jenna would never not feel miraculous.

  Today, though, nobody’s house had been broken into, and that made it far and away better than the last time.

  I rolled over and kissed her cheek softly until she opened her eyes. She tipped her head toward me on the pillow and smiled. It was somewhat rueful, that smile. But it was a smile nonetheless, and I’d take that.

  “I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do to Sara,” she said.

  “Do you wish you hadn’t stayed?” I asked her.

  “No,” she said. “You know that, though. You know I can’t unwish any of what happened, even if I really should.”

  “Should you?”

  “How are you going to explain it to Tess?”

  “I mean, I’m not going to tell her.”

  “Very funny. I meant, how are you going to explain the fact that I’m still here?”

  “I’ll tell her you and I watched a movie last night and you decided to sleep over. We’ll say you slept in the guest room. That’s not a big deal.”

  “And you don’t think that will upset her?” Jenna asked.

  “Why would it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s complicated.” She gave me a little smirk.

  “Come on, let’s just sneak you into the guest room before she wakes up.”

  Jenna nodded, tugged on her jeans, and pulled her sweater over her head. I tied my bathrobe around my waist and peered out into the hall. “Coast is clear,” I said, waving her past me.

  Jenna stepped out of my room and into the hall—and stopped.

  She turned around, confusion and worry etched on her face. “Noah? Tess’s not in her room.”

  “What?” I looked at the clock. It was seven in the morning on a Sunday. “There’s no way she’s already up. That girl loves to sleep in.”

  “Well, her bedroom door is open, and she’s not in there.”

  I came out into the hall to see for myself, and when I saw the empty room, I felt an immediate stab of worry. “I guess she probably got up to make breakfast,” I hoped aloud, trying to wave my concern away.

  But Tess wasn’t in the kitchen, either, and when I called her cell phone she didn’t answer. Jenna and I walked through every room, looking for her with no luck.

  I had never once wished that my daughter wasn’t deaf. It was a part of her identity, and it had given her access to a language and culture she never would have experienced otherwise. But today, as I raced around the house frantically, I wished for the first time ever that I could scream her name and she could hear me.

  I checked rooms over and over. I was coming to an unavoidable conclusion, but I had to be wrong. I had to be.

  Finally, I could deny it no longer.

  Tess wasn’t in the house.

  “Is there anyone we can call?” Jenna asked, looking very pale. “Is there a friend whose house she might have gone to?”

  “She wouldn’t have gone anywhere without telling me first. No, this isn’t like her at all.”

  “I’ll call the police,” Jenna announced. “Get a glass of water. Sit down. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  “I can’t sit down. I have to—” to what? I’d have done anything, gone to the ends of the Earth, to make sure Tess was safe. But there was nothing I could do. I didn’t know where she was.

  Time seemed to move in fits and starts. I sat on a barstool at my kitchen counter, a glass of cold water sweating on my hand, Jenna talking to the police on the phone. Then she was standing in front of me, a hand on my arm. “They think she’s probably run away.”

  “Tess wouldn’t run away.” I felt like my head was full of cotton.

  “She’s a twelve-year-old girl.”

  “She’s deaf and we only have each other. She wouldn’t run away from me.” I couldn’t think clearly. All I knew was that Tess wasn’t there, and that that meant something was wrong. “She wouldn’t just leave.”

  “She did run off that morning when I found her in the store,” she commented.

  My head jerked up, and I glared at her. “She didn’t run off, she skipped school. On the anniversary of her mother’s death.”

  Jenna’s eyes were wide, and she stammered. “I—I know, but I’m just saying…”

  “You don’t need to say anything,” I grouched, jumping up. “She’d never leave her phone here.”

  “It’s here?”

  “On the coffee table,” I said, pointing.

  She put her hands on her hips. “Yeah…she wouldn’t have left without it. No teenager would.”

  I wanted to remind her Tess wasn’t a teenager yet, but that seemed petty. I cleared my throat and rose, pacing through the living room. I could feel her eyes on me as I walked around the room. My mind was moving as fast as my feet. Where could she have gone? I jerked to a stop. LM. LM might be behind this. I looked at Jenna, wondering if I could get her to leave without being a total ass. I had to check my email.

  Jenna watched me with big eyes, fear in them. “Do you think she knew I stayed over?”

  An opportunity. “What are you talking about?”

  “She could have been trying to...I don’t know, tell us something.”

  “Like what?” I asked, my face scrunched up as if I thought she was asking dumb questions.

  “Like she isn’t okay with what’s going on between us.”

  “That’s crazy.” I couldn’t let her feel blame for Tess’s disappearance. “She wanted to invite you over.”

  “Maybe she didn’t realize how uncomfortable it would make her to have me here until I was here.” Jenna took a deep breath, and I could tell she was steadying herself to say something difficult. “Well, maybe she thinks I’m moving in on her mother’s place.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It was a ludicrous idea—no one could ever replace Tess’s mother. But at the same time, it made some sense. Maybe she found another woman’s presence in our lives threatening. No, Tess was too happy when Jenna was here. I felt like something more sinister may have happened, and I had to do something.

  Jenna seemed to take my silence for agreement. “I should go,” she announced. “I should let you deal with this. Give you space. I’m so sorry, Noah. I’m sorry I let things go as far as they did. If there’s anything I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to call.”

  I didn’t want her to leave. Physically, emotionally, I ached for the comfort I got when she was near. But I couldn’t seem to find the words, and she let herself out of the house without looking back.

  Tess…

  I walked to the coffee table and picked up her phone. The only missed calls were from me in the last few minutes, and she had no texts that weren’t from friends or from me. The weirdest part, no scariest part, was that she was gone but the phone was here.

  She would never run away and leave her phone behind.

  If she’d left voluntarily, she would have taken her phone with her, no question in my mind.

  My blood was freezing in my veins as terrible thoughts tried to push into my mind. I grabbed my laptop and opened my email, but there were no new messages.

  I had to search her room. Maybe I would find something up there. Some clue.

  I checked her closet first, looking for missing clothes or maybe a piece of luggage that was gone. Something that would indicate she’d packed a bag and planned not to be back for a while. It looked like all her clothes were still there, although I couldn’t be positive. Her Wonder Woman roller suitcase still sat in the closet, as did her purple and white backpack. Her favorite sneakers were on the mat by her bedroom door.

 
Her bed was unmade.

  Tess.

  I was so dazed, so utterly unglued, that it took me several minutes in my daughter’s room to notice the thing that didn’t belong—a yellow piece of legal paper, folded in half, on her otherwise clear desk.

  A note.

  I reached out and picked it up, flicked it open.

  The handwriting wasn’t my daughter’s.

  You should have complied. Think carefully before you go to the cops. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to your pretty little girl.

  It wasn’t signed.

  But I knew who it was from. Kepler. LM. Their organization. They had my daughter.

  I felt like I might explode. I crumpled the note in my fist, knowing I shouldn’t, knowing it was evidence and that I needed to show it to the police. I’ll go to the precinct right now, I thought, getting to my feet. Having a goal, a destination, a next step, cleared my head a little. I would show them this note, and they would see that she hadn’t run away from home. She’d been taken.

  If they hurt her, if they harm one hair on her head…

  I couldn’t even think about it. I refocused on the task at hand. Go to the precinct. Talk to the police. I would tell them everything I knew. I would turn over my emails. LM, whoever he really was, couldn’t possibly have believed I’d continue to stay quiet about everything I knew if my daughter was in danger.

  Unless…would they hurt her if I told the truth?

  Maybe she was only safe as long as I kept my silence.

  I felt as if I was about to fall off a cliff. What the hell was I going to do?

  I decided to go down and talk to the cops. I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit around here waiting for further instructions. I could decide how much to tell them when I got there. But they needed to know that she hadn’t run away. As things stood, they weren’t even going to look for her. They were planned to wait and see if she came home. Who knew what might happen to her before the Mob, or whoever they were, decided to show their cards?