“No buts, princess,” he said as another ringing slap came down on her backside and she squeaked out an “ow.” “You said you’d follow my rules and accept the consequences when you don’t. Is that true?”
“Yes, Daddy,” she conceded miserably.
“Good. Now let’s get you into the bath.”
* * *
Through another door in the nursery there was a bathroom, this one with a big tub and a double-sized shower stall with a massage table folded up next to the wall.
Arthur started water in the tub and then took her by the wrist and steered her to an empty corner of the bathroom before cuffing the back of her neck with his hand and pushing her nose almost to the wall. Her shorts and panties were still pushed down below her butt cheeks, and her face flamed.
He was putting her in the corner.
It was humiliating because he was treating her like a little kid but also because she was so wet between her legs she thought she might die if she didn’t get some relief. And her daddy seemed intent on not letting her have it. That was mean.
“You’re going to stand here and think about what you’ve done while I fill up the tub. And don’t you dare try to touch yourself while you’ve got your nose in the corner, you dirty little girl. If you do and you require more correction, we won’t make it to church and I’ll have to explain to Father Gideon why.”
Oh, fuck. Not only would she get punished again, but he’d tell thepriestwhy he hadn’t been at services? That was the most mortifying thing she could possibly imagine and she wanted to melt into a puddle of goo and slip down through the drain in the middle of the floor.
If Saoirse had thought her face was hot before, there must have been a nuclear explosion happening on her cheeks now. And his language!Dirty, naughty—these were shameful words that went straight to her cunt, turning her on even as she was mortified.
She couldn’t stop thinking about how her ass was exposed, how it burned and ached and felt swollen and hot. Which turned her on. That didn’t make it easy to stand here and think about what she’d done. At least not the way she suspected Arthur meant.
He wanted her to feel sorry for having touched herself. The only thing she was sorry about was that she’d gotten caught—especially before she had a chance to get off. Because now she was horny and sore and she was guessing Arthur wasn’t going to let her come before church. Dammit.
By the time he came to collect her from the corner, she was miserable. But a little soothed when she saw there were bubbles in the tub along with a few toys—a rubber duck, a mermaid, a seahorse, and a jellyfish.
“It’s bath time, little girl. In you get.”
Arthur handed her into the tub and Saoirse only sucked on her teeth when her sore bottom hit the hot water. Once she was in, though, it felt good. And she couldn’t help but reach for the toys and start to play with them. The mermaid and the seahorse were her favorite, and she started to make up a story about them in her head, moving them around in the bubbles and whispering the tale under her breath.
She was always doing that—giving inanimate objects personalities and voices and having them go on adventures. When she was little, she’d say them out loud until people started making fun of her for playing with salt and pepper shakers, making crayons talk to each other. She'd kept all that to herself for almost twenty years and even though she thought Arthur wouldn’t be cruel about it, she didn’t want to offer up yet another vulnerable spot for him to poke at.
It would be bad enough when she finally worked up the nerve to talk to him about law school. Maybe she wouldn’t. She couldn’t stand the idea that he’d be as dismissive and callous as everyone else had been.
“Hey, princess?”
“Yeah, Daddy?”
She looked up at Arthur who was squeezing some shower gel into one of those bath poufs. This one was pink with a purple hippo face on it. Her name was obviously Hyacinth the Hippo.
“Can you tell me a story about your creatures while I get you all nice and squeaky clean?”
Saoirse swallowed, her brow crinkling. Was Arthur making fun of her? But if this was all an elaborate ruse to make her act a fool, it was a lot of effort to go to. And the way he smiled at her—so kind and with those smile lines around his eyes and his mouth—that didn’t seem fake at all.
“Really?”
“Of course. You’ve always been so creative and funny.”
Oh. Well in that case…
And that was how Milly the mermaid and Sebastian the seahorse started their adventures while her daddy scrubbed her down and rinsed her off, washed her hair and had her close her eyes and tip back her head so he could get the suds out without getting water in her eyes.
When Arthur was satisfied that she was clean, he wrapped her up in a fluffy robe and chafed her legs with a towel to dry her off before he brought her into the nursery and sat her on the edge of the changing table.