Daddy's Little Librarian Page 5

  She wasn’t. She definitely wasn’t.

  One of them really ought to be armed, and if Kurt couldn’t do it, then that only left her.

  Her home didn’t have a fireplace, so there were no iron pokers, and she was too scared to go as far as the kitchen. The garage was even further, but the bathroom was right by the bottom of the stairs. Gathering the shreds of her courage, she grabbed the only thing she could think of—an aerosol can from under the sink. Without any lights to see by, she didn’t know what she had. Probably sink cleaner. By the time she was back out and at the base of the stairs, her nerves were jittery. To the point that when she heard an ominous creak from the hallway above, she almost dropped her can.

  She braced herself. With the coolness of the can tucked up in her palm, one finger on the trigger, she got ready. What she was ready for, she wasn’t quite sure. She liked to think she might be brave enough to charge upstairs in defense of her bodyguard, should he yell out, but she felt every bit as likely to scream and run away.

  There it was again. Another footstep, another creak approaching the top of the staircase.

  Kurt wouldn’t be coming back unless he knew there was no one upstairs; if there was no one upstairs, he wouldn’t be sneaking. It was Gopher, her brain supplied. It had to be.

  Swallowing past the lump in her throat, she raised the aerosol spray. Her hand was shaking, but she didn’t back down. She’d done a lot of backing down these last few months, but she wasn’t alone anymore. It wasn’t like before. Someone believed her now.

  The footsteps picked up, starting down the first flight of stairs. There was only the minute space of the landing and the corner between herself and her tormenter now. Cold panic tickled through her.

  Oh God… Oh God…

  A huge shadowy shape lurched around the hallway corner, and Scotti waylaid her intruder with a scream of warbling hysteria. It was only after she’d completely emptied her aerosol can directly into his face, did she realize that shadow was much too big to ever have been Gopher.

  The manly bellow that followed wasn’t Gopher’s, either.

  “Agh!” Kurt yelled, tripping on the stairs as he vaulted backwards. He fell, spitting and swiping at his eyes, shouting, “What the hell is wrong with you, woman!”

  Running to the light switch at the bottom of the stairs, she quickly flicked it on. Sure enough, Kurt was on the ground, grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes and swearing.

  “Oh, Kurt, I’m so sorry!”

  A loud thump hit the small, decorative roof on the east side of the house, over the study window and underneath her bedroom, and crashed into the bushes on that side of the house. When brush rustled near the door, she panicked all over again.

  Running to the door, she slammed and locked it without ever catching sight of Gopher. Kurt was still wheezing and rocking on the stairs when she reluctantly came back to the stairs. She winced as he coughed, scrubbing at his red eyes.

  “What the hell did you use on me?” he demanded.

  Looking down at the label in her hand, Scotti sheepishly told him, “Feminine hygiene spray. Hypo-Allergenic. With aloe.”

  She supposed she ought to be glad it wasn’t sink cleaner. She could have blinded him.

  Peeling open red-rimmed eyes, he glared at her.

  “Floral, um… fresh?” Scotti said, though she knew that wouldn’t make a difference. Biting her bottom lip, she guiltily tucked the spray can behind her back.

  He got up off the floor, looking mad as hell. It made her flinch when he pointed at her with a very big, very angry finger. “That’s one,” he growled and stalked past her into the bathroom to wash his face.

  Feeling awful, Scotti stood on the stairs where he left her. One what, she wondered as she watched him go, but she kept the question behind locked teeth. Maybe later, when he’d had a chance to calm down, and if nothing else happened to keep him this upset, then maybe she’d dredge up enough courage to ask.

  Chapter Six

  “Where are you going?” Kurt called from the kitchen where he was installing fresh, functioning locks on all the windows.

  “I’ll be just a minute,” she called back, halfway up the stairs and heading toward her bedroom. Once there, she closed the door as softly as she knew how, collected Bat Bear from amongst her friends on the dresser, and then put herself in the closet. She didn’t turn on the light. There was no way to keep Bat Bear from knowing what was happening, but she didn’t need to see it. Nobody needed to see it. That was why she crawled all the way into the back corner of her closet to sit cross-legged behind the shielding skirt of two long winter coats, several full-length dresses and her old graduation gown. Hugging Bat Bear to her chest, she buried her face into the popcorn-smelling back of her head, and did her best to cry in a way no one who wasn’t supposed to know would hear.

  She just needed a minute, she told herself. Then she’d go back downstairs and pretend that dealing with this didn’t scare her or bother her at all. Just one, short, tiny minute.

  She never got it.

  With her face buried against her stuffie, she never saw the cracks around the closet door light up, but there was no missing the boom of Kurt’s low voice snapping out, “Answer me right now, where are you?”

  Scotti yelped, she startled so bad. She clapped her hand over her mouth, but the damage was already done. In the next instant, the closet door swung open and there was Kurt. Hiding behind her dresses, she couldn’t see him, but she knew he’d have no problem seeing her. Or, at least, the cross of her legs and half of Bat Bear being strangled in her arms.

  Hangers scraped on the bar overhead and the coats and dresses parted, spilling her in light. Kurt looked at her.

  Great, now she wasn’t just sad, she felt stupid too.

  “It’s not what you think,” she said, sniffling and swiping her eyes dry on her wrist.

  Lowering himself to squat in the closet doorway, he folded his hands between his knees. He really was a big man. He practically radiated calm and patience. Like even when he was picking her front door lock and patience had been the last thing he’d been feeling. She couldn’t read his expression now, but at least he wasn’t yelling at her. Nor was he laughing.

  “I didn’t want you to see the bed yet,” he finally said.

  Oh. She tsked, touched by that kind of sweetness, especially coming from someone she’d sprayed in the face with feminine hygiene product. “Oh, that.” She waved that aside with her hand. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “You already knew,” he guessed.

  “Yeah, I was, um… under it at the time.” She rolled her eyes in an attempt to help them stop watering. “It’s okay. I’ll duct tape it in a minute.”

  He looked from her, to the bed, and then back to her again. With all the expression of a marble statue, he stood up and held out his hand.

  Insides tightening, she reluctantly passed Bat Bear over, but he didn’t take it away from her. Instead, he took hold of her wrist and pulled her up out of her closet and to her feet. She didn’t know he was going to hug her until his arm came up around her, steering her into his chest before she could slip past him and leave.

  His strong arms wrapped her the same way she did Bat Bear, and she was completely unprepared to withstand it. Hugs like this were rare for her. She’d only ever had it one time before, and that was with Gopher, back when he first asked if she’d like him to be her Daddy-Dom. After several munches with her local dungeon group (the first that she’d managed to work up courage enough to attend), followed by a handful of private ‘dates’ over coffee in a public coffeeshop, she’d been just starry-eyed enough to say yes. He’d said everything right. He’d been gentle, and kind, and they seemed to match on so many levels. But look how that had ended—she’d had the best Daddy in the world… for the first few months; she’d had the Daddy from hell ever since.

  But, even when he was Hell Daddy, sometimes Gopher would hug her.

  It had been a long time since any of his hugs
had felt like this. Kurt was bigger than Gopher. His arms were burlier, and they hugged her as if his embrace were all that were holding her together.

  Maybe it was, because without any ready defenses to throw up between them, she could tell herself all she wanted that there was nothing in this hug. That bodyguards hugged their charges all the time. That Kurt was just being kind, and sympathetic, and friendly, but her inner Little still triggered. And triggered hard.

  She clung to Bat Bear just so she wouldn’t grab Kurt and cling to him instead.

  When he asked, “Are you okay,” into the top of her hair, she nodded immediately, but she wasn’t. That she had lied could not have been more apparent when, within seconds of it, she then burst into tears and ugly cried all over his shirt.

  She wouldn’t have blamed him for being uncomfortable, but if he was, he never showed it. He simply tightened his arms and held her close until the worst of the storm was over. Then with his hand on the back of her neck, he steered her out of her bedroom to the bathroom down the hall. Standing in front of the mirror with her bear still hugged in her arms, he wet a washcloth in cool water and quietly bathed the heat of her tears away. Her eyes felt raw, but the pass of the cloth eased both the heat and the hurt, and helped her feel a little more like normal by the time he was done.

  A sad normal, but then sad was better than scared, and she’d been living in ‘scared normal’ for quite a while.

  “Look at me,” Kurt said, rinsing the cloth one last time, wringing it out and hanging it up on the hand towel ring by the sink.

  Scotti looked at his reflection in the mirror.

  “Try again.” Hands on his hips now, he waited until she dutifully turned around and looked up at him directly. “Repeat after me: I’m safe now.”

  She felt beyond ridiculous repeating such a thing. She wasn’t safe. Not now, maybe not ever again. After tonight, she could see Gopher hanging back long enough for what little money she had to pay Kurt to run out, and then Kurt would leave and she’d be right back to where she’d started. Only then it would get worse.

  He might actually, possibly even kill her. And she had absolutely no way to stop him.

  When she stayed silent, Kurt raised a warning eyebrow and in low warning tone, said again, “I’m safe now.”

  “I’m safe now,” she echoed. Her stomach was so full of knots that had been trip-rope tight for so long now that she’d stopped feeling it. Until, in spite of herself, they relaxed. It was just a little bit, but the relief was overwhelming. Tears burning at her all over again, she stared locked on his eyes, soaking in all the reassurance she knew better than to ask for.

  “Say, I live under new rules now,” Kurt commanded, softly, his tone as strong as sturdy iron girders.

  “I live under new rules now.” The knots relaxed even more; pure relief flowed through her. She almost closed her eyes under that wave of raw, heartfelt release, but he stopped her.

  “Look at me.”

  He was her lifeline, and she knew the way she was staring at him must have reflected that to a pathetic degree. And yet he didn’t seem at all uncomfortable by that. He wasn’t retreating in the slightest. Instead, he advanced half a step, bending slightly over her and with nerve-shivering authority said, “Nothing of my life before today matters anymore…”

  She repeated him.

  “None of those rules and restrictions still matter…”

  She said that too.

  “Because my new Daddy says so,” Kurt said in stern emphasis, as if he knew but didn’t even care that those words shivered her all the way to her soul.

  “B-because my new Daddy says so,” she whispered, every knot in her stomach tightening strangle tight in an instant before slowly melting away.

  “And my new Daddy,” Kurt told her firmly, “will keep. Me. Safe.”

  She swallowed hard. Her mouth felt weird, like it was someone else’s as she parroted that back to him.

  “Now, here are the rules.” He counted them off on his fingers. Like all the rest of him, even his fingers were huge. “Rule number one: You go nowhere without my knowledge and permission, is that understood?”

  She nodded.

  Arching both eyebrows, he waited, one finger still ticked.

  Fidgeting with the seams of Bat Bear’s costume, she hesitantly said, “Yes, I understand?”

  His eyebrows arched higher. She’d never had someone look at her with half this much severity, at least not without her panicking. “Yes, what?” he calmly demanded.

  Her heart fell into her stomach. Her already shallow, strangling breaths quickened, growing even more shallow. “Yes, Daddy,” she whispered.

  “Rule number two” —he added another finger— “all of your incoming house phone and cellphone privileges have been revoked. When either of your phones ring, I am the only one allowed to answer. You may make all the outgoing phone calls you like, so long as you aren’t placing phone calls to the rodent. From this day forward, if I find out you’ve called that man, there will be serious consequences. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Daddy.” Her knees buckled slightly. Her legs actually felt shaky and weak. She wanted to sit down right here on the floor at his feet.

  “Are you safe at work?”

  She nodded.

  “Rule number three. I will take you to and from work. From the moment I leave until I return again, you will stay inside the building where there are witnesses who can protect you. If you leave for any reason without my knowledge and permission, there will be serious consequences. Do you understand?”

  She was going to cry again. All of a sudden, it was like being back in the men’s room at the library and he’d just accepted the job of being her bodyguard. She was so happy, her voice quavered. “Yes, Daddy.”

  “Rule number four. You do what I say when I say it. I do not tolerate arguing for argument’s sake, defiance or disobedience.”

  She had to swipe her eyes dry again. It was hard to talk, so she nodded. “O-okay.”

  “Break any of my rules in any way, and there will be consequences.”

  She nodded, hiccupping and sniffling.

  “Take a bath,” he told her. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He stalked out of the bathroom, stopping abruptly in the hallway when she followed him out. She almost ran into him, but jumped back half a step when he turned on her with a frown.

  “What did I just tell you?”

  “Take a bath?” she stammered, wide-eyed.

  “What’s rule number four?” He held up the appropriate number of reminding fingers.

  Scotti retreated another step, more stunned than scared. “I-I—”

  “You do what I saw when I say it.”

  “B-but…” She pointed through the bathroom in the direction of her bedroom. “I need clean clothes…”

  He went from holding up his hand to catching hold of the back of her neck. “Turn around.”

  He didn’t wait for compliance, but physically turned her until she was staring back at her own wide-eyed expression.

  “Hands on the sink,” he told her.

  This wasn’t happening. Holding Bat Bear by the arm, she braced herself against the edge of the counter. With the heat of one broad hand clamped on the back of her neck, she stared in growing disbelief as she watched his other arm swing back. It was all so surreal. Right up until the flat of his other hand came cracking down hard across the center of her skirt-clad backside. She was still in her professional librarian business attire. That business attire did absolutely nothing to soften the force with which he spanked her.

  He only swatted her once.

  It startled the hell out of her, and stung like a fury.

  Her mouth rounded in both shock and admiration. Her new Daddy had a really hard, spanking hand.

  When he let go of the back of her neck and physically turned her around to face him again, he had her full and complete attention. “Did I tell you to go get your clothes?”

  “No, Dad
dy.” Don’t rub your bottom, she told herself fiercely. Don’t rub, but already her hands were back behind her, cupping her butt with Bat Bear’s solicitous help.

  “What did I tell you to do?” he reminded.

  “Take a bath.”

  “Are you going to keep arguing with me?”

  “No, Daddy.”

  “Then what should you be doing right now?”

  She immediately kicked off her comfortable flats and dove for the tub to insert the plug and turn the water on.

  He watched, hands on his hips once more. “What’s your bear’s name?”

  “Bat Bear,” she said, whipping off her dress belt and then her bracelet, and then floundering because those were all the safe things she had to remove. After that, some part of her was getting intimately uncovered with her new Daddy standing right there, watching her.

  “Put Bat Bear on the counter,” he said. “She doesn’t need a bath right now, and you don’t want to ruin her.”

  Right. Rattled as she was, she just wasn’t thinking. She slipped past him to put Bat Bear down, and when she turned, he’d already walked out of the room. He’d even closed the door to the barest of cracks, giving her privacy. Feeling almost as weirdly titillated as she was unnerved, she shucked out of her clothes in record time and hopped into the bath, yanking the plastic fish-tank curtain so it stretched from wall to tiled wall. She sat down with the hot water still running and hugged her knees to her chest.

  A few minutes later, he returned long enough to lay a clean towel, clean underwear and her pink bunny footie pajamas with ‘It’s Night Night Time’ in bright purple and silver glitter across the butt. She had half a dozen perfectly grownup nightshirts folded in her dresser, right next to where those pajamas had been.

  They were her Littlest pajamas. They even had a butt flap.

  Easy to take down. Easy to spank her through without taking the whole thing off.

  She couldn’t handle this. Lying back in the tub, Scotti sank into bathwater that came up to her ears.

  Holy shit. She had a new Daddy.