He inhaled sharply. “Fuck...”
I rolled my tongue along the underside and tightened my cheeks, thinking of his cock. Big and thick and solid. One thing I knew for certain. Now that I’d had a taste, I would never be satisfied until I gorged myself on him.
There was no coming back from what we’d done.
“Jetty, if we do this, we can’t tell anyone. Not your mother, not your friends.”
I released his finger with a wet pop. “I would never tell Mom about us. And as for my friends, I’ll just tell them I hooked up with some guy I met this summer.”
“Maybe that’s what you should do.” He pursed his lips, like the words tasted sour. “You deserve to meet a nice, normal guy. Someone you can kiss and hold hands with in public.”
“Who says we can’t hold hands?”
I twined my fingers with his. He studied our joined hands.
“Sweetheart, to the rest of the world, you’re still my daughter.”
“And dads and daughters hold hands all the time.” I understood why he’d want to keep my mom in the dark, at least for a while; she was hardly his biggest fan. But all this secrecy seemed like an unnecessary hassle. I was an adult now. Even if she found out, there was nothing she could do about it. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just tell everyone the truth?”
His expression darkened. “No, it wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
He aimed his gaze somewhere far away. “If it got out that you and I were a couple, there’d be a media frenzy long after we set the record straight. I don’t care if they come after me, but I won’t have them putting you under a spotlight.”
Something in his stare made me think he wasn’t telling the whole truth.
“Daddy, I don’t care about—”
“I care,” he said firmly. “I love you, but I can’t have you stirring up bad publicity for me.”
His words hit like a slap. Yet, judging by the glint of pain in his eyes, they’d hurt him just as badly. Mason was a high-profile artist, but even this new rich and famous version of him didn’t strike me as the type to give two shits about what was written on his Wikipedia page. This wasn’t about avoiding bad publicity.
It was about keeping a secret.
And I could think of only one reason he wouldn’t want the truth about us to come out.
“You don’t want my real father to find me,” I said.
He sighed heavily, the hardness in his gaze softening.
“There she is, my clever girl.”
We were right back where we’d started the day before, only this time, I didn’t know how to feel. Annoyed, betrayed, resentful? Sure. Baffled that someone could love me so much and still manage to lie to my face? It was hardly the first time.
“You said you didn’t know who my real father was.”
“I don’t.” He kneaded the back of my neck. “Not for sure.”
“But you must have some idea.” I took his face in both my hands and forced him to look at me. Goddamn, the man was almost offensively handsome up close. “Is my real father looking for me?”
Silence was his answer. It was my turn to look away.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
I begged to differ. He kissed my palms, one and then the other.