She gives him a cryptic look, one that suggests she is hiding a secret she's not ready to share with him yet and he bites his tongue to keep himself from demanding to know it. He's supposed to give her space. "Thank you, Daddy," she teases, leaning up to press a kiss directly onto his lips.
He tries not to let it get to him. One of these days, he knows he's going to have to tell her to stop testing boundaries, stepping past that invisible line in the sand and see how he would react. There is no line. He would give her the world.
She climbs into the seat of the car and caresses the steering wheel, smiling brightly at him. "It's beautiful," she says.
He's too busy looking at her to see the car at all. "Look at you," he says, taking a picture of her in the seat of the car so he can distract himself from how good she looks. "All grown up."
She grins at him, carefree and ecstatic. They had just reached home from a very delicious and possibly overpriced dinner. The waitress had mistaken her for his wife and instead of upsetting her, she had a peculiar look on her face that he didn't quite comprehend.
They rest early that night. He's had a long day at work and she's just finished all her exams, so she's exhausted.
When it comes time for him to head to bed, she surprises him by following him up to his room and climbing into the bed with him. He tries not to think about how well she fits against him, all curled up and perfect.
It should worry him that this has turned into their new normal. Having her in his arms like this feels right. He closes his eyes-
"Do you think there's something wrong with me?" she whispers in the dark.
He startles. He had been close to falling asleep when her soft voice woke him. "Baby?" he asks without thinking and tenses.
She doesn't seem to mind, nuzzling up to him with a happy little sound. She's turns around some time when he was drowsing so that she's pressing her breasts to his chest, blinking up at him, the perfect picture of innocence. Surely she's doing this on purpose. "Do you think there's something wrong with me, Daddy?" she clarifies.
"There's nothing wrong with you," he says automatically, arms tightening around her torso without thinking. It presses her even closer and he regrets doing it, immediately loosening his hold on her.
"There must be," she insists.
"What makes you think there's something wrong with you, baby?" he asks.
"Nobody wants to have sex with me," she says.
He sees red. He swears under his breath and shuts his eyes for a moment, trying to push away the thoughts of her and sex with someone else. "That can't be true," he says.
"It is," she sighs, like she's resigned herself to never having sex with anyone. "They have these parties in uni where everyone just sorts of have sex with everyone and I'm never invited."
Because he would kill anyone who thinks they could touch her without taking full responsibility. She sounds just a little bit disappointed and he tries to think about it from her perspective. "What about Sam?" he asks and flinches when her scent sours with disappointment.
"I never really clicked with him," she says. "He didn't make me feel safe. Not like you," she adds that last bit softly. Then, like a light-bulb going off in her brain, she asks, "Would you have sex with me?"
He feels as though all the blood in his body has gone to his cock. His wolf howls with joy. Yes, yes, yes. Mate. Claim. He chokes those back. "That's not- You can't ask that, darling," he says. He shouldn't have let her sleep in his bed the past few days. And he had been doing such a good job raising her prior to this too. He must have fucked up at some point, done something wrong to make her ask something so perverse.
"Why not?" she asks, looking completely innocent, clearly expecting him to answer.
"It's not- It's not something you do with family. Surely you know that," he says. She's studying to be a doctor. She's the top of her year. There is no way she doesn't know.
"You're not related to me by blood," she says softly, eyes wide, hopeful. "I'm adopted, Will," she reasons like he's the one being unreasonable.
A better man would tell her that it doesn't matter if they're related by blood. He practically raised her and he's in a position of power. He would be taking advantage of her.
"You've taught me everything else I know. Why not this?" she persists.
"This is different," he says.
"Please," she leans up until her breath fans his chin. She looks so perfect like this, offering herself up to him like some sort of virgin sacrifice- exactly like a virgin sacrifice.
He presses her back, hating himself.
He doesn't expect her to surge forward, refusing to be pushed aside so easily. He doesn't expect her to throw herself on him, pinning him down with the weight of her body, legs straddling his hips, the shirt she's wearing hiking up to her waist and showing him what he has been suspecting for the past several days. She's wearing nothing underneath.
His hands grasp her hips almost instinctively, worried that she would fall of he lets go. They used to play like this, when she was much, much younger. There's nothing innocent about the way she's leaning against his cock, her opening wet with arousal even though he hasn't done anything at all.