And she didn’t want to tell him. She came off as a naïve idiot who’d fallen for a bunch of lies.
“Oh, I think I do. I’d very much like to know what forced you to leave your home with just a few hundred dollars and drive all the way across the country to a place you’ve never been before.”
She bit at her lip. “I’m feeling a bit tired…”
“What’s rule number one, little girl?”
“I’m not allowed to lie. Does that mean I have to tell you everything?”
He sighed, looking reluctant. “No. But I would like to know. It will help me to understand why you put your health and safety at risk like you did. Especially when you’re well enough for me to spank you for it.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You can’t spank me for it!”
Okay. It might have been going a step too far. After all, she hadn’t been his when she’d done that. She wasn’t truly his now. But by God, his hands itched to take her over his knee, bare her buttocks and spank her ass for taking such a risk. And he needed to ensure that she never took a risk like that again. So, if spanking her kept her safe in the future, then he was all for it.
“Can’t I?” He raised one eyebrow.
She gave him a worried look. “I didn’t even know you then. Therefore, I didn’t know the rules and can’t be held accountable for breaking them.”
“But you’re mine now.” Temporarily anyway. “And you must have known that driving for long hours like that was reckless and dangerous. What kind of Dom would I be if I didn’t ensure that didn’t happen again?”
Shaky ground, and he should probably back off. But he’d said it now and backing off wasn’t really his thing. It didn’t set a good precedent.
“Well, tell me,” he demanded before she could protest any further.
“It’s embarrassing,” she whispered.
“Ellie, what did I say about things between a little girl and her daddy?”
“This is different,” she insisted. “This isn’t a little girl thing.”
“Tell me, Ellie. I promise I’m not going to judge.”
She studied his face then cleared her throat. “When…when I graduated high school, I had plans to go to college. My parents, they had me when they were older. I think my mom was forty, my dad forty-five. They agreed to pay for college if I went to one close by and lived at home.” She shrugged. “I didn’t really want to stay home. But I also couldn’t pay for college myself. So, I did what they wanted. After a few weeks, I’d made some friends in one of my classes. Back then, I was good at making friends. They asked me to this party.”
She paused, licked her lips. “I got home at about three in the morning. I’d texted my parents to say I’d be late, but when I walked in, they were sitting in the living room waiting for me. They told me how much I’d worried and disappointed them. They made me feel so guilty for my behavior that I found myself agreeing to a curfew. Even though I was in college, I was living in their house so I thought that fair. But after a while, it got annoying. I was the only person at college with a curfew. I wanted more. I wanted some fun. So, after that first year, I told them I wanted to move out to live with my friends. I was hoping they’d be supportive.”
She paused, looked off into the distance. “That’s when Dad had a heart attack.”
“Baby, I’m sorry.” He grabbed her hand, squeezing it.
“I was so worried about him. My mom seemed so lost, like she didn’t know how to take care of him. So, I started doing more and more. They were retired by then and even though they weren’t that old they weren’t coping. So, I took over doing the grocery shopping, taking my dad to appointments, doing the housework. My schoolwork suffered until eventually I figured I better drop out for a while.”
“You had to drop out of college? Couldn’t you find someone to take care of them?” He frowned.
She grimaced. “They told me they didn’t have the money for that. Finally, my dad seemed to be feeling better. They were going out, doing things. I’d kept in touch with my friends, I decided to go back to college. I’d just re-enrolled when Mom found out she had cancer.”
“Jesus, what bad luck.”
“Sounds that way, doesn’t it?” she said with a bitter smile. “I had to take her to treatments and appointments, only she never wanted me to come in with her. She didn’t want to worry me, she said. I was basically doing everything by then. My dad wasn’t up to it because of the heart attack and they both needed me.”
“Was your mom okay?”
“What? Oh yeah, she was. Is. They both are. When I started to question why the treatments were going on so long and if she wanted me to speak to her doctor about a different specialist, she kept telling me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I was a college dropout so what did I know?”
“That wasn’t kind.” Her parents sounded like horrid people. How could they treat their own daughter like that? And Ellie was such a sweet, loving person.
“Our family was small. My parents were both only children like me so I wasn’t used to having family around. All we had was my mom’s Aunt Rose. She was a great lady. She’d visit a few times a year, she never had children and my mom was her only niece. She used to travel to exotic places and she’d bring me back these treasures. Most of them my mother threw out, said they were just clutter.” She looked down at her hands. “When she died about eight months ago, I was devastated. I never gave much thought about who she left her estate to.”