CHAPTER20
Briana
Daddy heaven.
My mind didn’t really want to take it in. The image of Papa Georg’s stern but loving, utterly gorgeous face, of his golden hair and his ice blue eyes, filled my imagination, but what Daddy Trevor had just said made me shrink back a little from it.
If the data said that Papa Georg and I belonged together, that meant I would have to try to be good for him, didn’t it? But… but I had learned to see myself—to love myself, which strangely enough represented the most important thing my Advanced Guidance daddies had taught me, while turning me into a fuck toy—as a bad girl.
Do you even know him? Does he know you? Does he know that you don’t like to do good girl things like read books and shit?
“That’s a little scary, isn’t it, honey?” Daddy Trevor asked, gently stroking my shoulder.
I bit my lip and looked into his dark eyes. I nodded.
“But I bet it makes you want to see him.” He didn’t phrase it as a question. He knew me, and he had seen in my face and heard in my voice how I felt about Papa Georg—all the most important parts of me, anyway: my heart… and my body… my stupid brain could try to deny how I felt all it wanted.
It doesn’t matter whether you like the same silly movies. This thing goes way deeper than that.
I nodded again. Then my eyes went to the chair in the corner of my bedroom: a simple metal folding chair, just like the one in the old bunker… it probably was the one from the old bunker, too. It didn’t look like anything special, but it had a very special meaning in my life.
I felt my cheeks go scarlet because I knew how Papa Georg would use that chair, the same way my Lumberjack daddies had used it, many times. My spanking chair, where I learned my lesson. And…
My memory flashed back to the day Lieutenant Kresky had asked me to get him coffee, and had ended up telling me to get my paddle. I didn’t know for sure, because everything had gotten moved from the old bunker to this new one, but I felt pretty certain that the stitched leather paddle—really almost a punishment strap—sat on top of my foot locker, under my bed.
My gaze returned to Daddy Trevor, and I saw that he had narrowed his eyes as he took in my reactions. He had definitely seen the blush, I realized—but did he know why my cheeks had gone red?
Of course he did. He moved his hand from my shoulder to my cheek.
“You know you’ve got it coming, honey,” he said gently. “Don’t you?”
I felt my forehead crease very deeply, and then after a second’s hesitation I said, “Yes, Daddy.”
“Good girl,” Daddy Trevor said. “I’ll go get him.”
I had to stifle another plea not to be left alone with the man I loved, so fluttery did my tummy suddenly feel. Daddy Trevor left my quarters, and I scooted myself into the corner of the bed, my backside tightly wedged with the mattress below and a wall on either side. I let myself believe for the moment that I might be able to defend myself that way.
Daddy Trevor had left the door ajar, so I could see a little slice of the hallway. In that bit of a view I saw a shadow, and then I saw a hand reach out to knock on the door. My nose worked with fear as I tried to find the courage to say come in, but Papa Georg didn’t wait: he stepped into my quarters with a kind smile on his face.
That smile made me forget I had ruined everything, for a few seconds at least. I felt my own mouth curve upward in an irrepressible response. I whispered, “Papa?”
I didn’t know at first why I had spoken the special word—the most special in the world to me, after everything we’d gone through together—as a question. I could see that Papa Georg and no one else had come all the way here, out of hell, really, to find me.
“Yes, sweetheart,” he said in his deep patient voice. “Who did you think it would be?”
That made me giggle, and then I realized why I had added the question mark, and I told him.
“Because… I think because I want to make sure you want to be my papa?”
Again with the question, I realized, feeling the blush come back hot into my cheeks. I’m supposed to be a bad girl, I told myself. I sound like…
I sounded like a good girl.
Papa Georg took two steps forward. In my tiny quarters that brought him to the edge of my bed. He put out his arms.
Oh, no.
If I went toward him, went into that hug, I would leave behind the safety of my position in the corner, where he couldn’t get at my bottom without hauling me out from there. A bad girl would never do that, would she?
But… but it didn’t matter, did it? Because Papa Georg could do that without a second thought: he could pull me off the bed as I howled in protest, and put me over his knee and give me what I had coming. He could do that any time he wanted. My Lumberjack daddies would hear it, of course, and they would understand that a naughty girl was getting what she deserved.
And yet the idea of forsaking the opportunity to put up that fight seemed like a surrender.
Papa Georg’s smile faded as he saw my hesitation. I almost went toward him, almost accepted his hug, when I saw disappointment rising in his eyes. But when he folded his arms across his chest a second later and I knew my chance at that first hug had gone away, the sudden fear of what would happen now made me let out a little whimper and press myself even more firmly into the corner.
The disappointment had lasted only a second on my papa’s face. He replaced it with determination, and his smile returned—a very different kind of smile, though.
I bit my lip. Inside my mind, my brain screamed, Okay, you showed your bad girl side. Are you happy?
I studied Papa Georg’s face. My heart leapt—in fear, okay, yes, because I knew I was going to get it now. But also… with love… and contentment. Because what I saw on my papa’s face in place of his simple, kind smile from a moment before, ready to hug me and console me, seemed deeper and more real. It seemed bigger and fuller.
Joy. Those blue eyes, narrowed as he clearly considered how best to take me in hand, and the patient curve on his lips… they meant that by defying him, I had satisfied something even deeper inside him—even deeper inside me, too—than simple affection.
“I do want to be your papa, Briana,” he said softly but with the utmost deliberateness and the utmost seriousness. “And I think you know what that means.”