Chapter Twenty-One
In the morning, Lilith woke up being practically smothered in Vance’s pelt of chest hair. They were in bed and he was wrapped around her like a cage made out of flesh and bone. So warm, so safe.
The clock said nine, but it was grey outside so it must still be cloudy if not raining. She didn’t hear any thunder, though, or see flashes of lightning. The thought of it made her shiver and Vance reacted by squeezing her tight, nuzzling the top of her head while his sleepy voice rumbled in his chest.
“You awake, Lil?”
“Mm-hmm,” she confirmed, nodding into his chest.
“How you feeling? I waited until the storm passed to get you back to bed, promise.”
Embarrassment made her face burn because oh right, she’d had a meltdown last night. When it was daytime and/or she was at work she could usually keep her freak-outs under control. Well, enough that she could just be losing her shit internally and have a nervous breakdown once she was alone.
“Fine,” she muttered into the hollow of his throat.
If she thought she was going to get away with that one word answer, she was mistaken. Vance peeled away from her and used that big, blunt thumb of his to tip her chin up.
“Can you tell me what that was all about last night?”
“No,” she tried, and pushed away from him, scrambling to the other side of the bed.
She didn’t talk to people about her terror of thunder and lightning storms. If someone happened to catch her panicking, she told them it was a phobia. Irrational, unfounded. Let them think she was cracked instead of deeply emotionally scarred.
The sheets on this side weren’t warmed from their body heat, and it was cold over here even though Vance had dressed her in a long-sleeve onesie over a thick diaper, and fuzzy socks when he’d put her to bed last night.
Vance raised a brow and sat up, propping himself against the tall wooden headboard. “Where do you think you’re going, little girl?”
The need to get the hell out of here crashed over her. She’d been here too long, let herself get too comfortable and she should know that as dreamy and kind as Vance seemed, this was a dream she’d wake up from sooner or later, and reality would be much uglier. All she had to do was think of Carey to remember that.
“To the bathroom, putting on grown-up clothes, making myself breakfast, and then getting onto my computer to look for a job.”
Those thick blond brows of his twitched and she flinched internally. When Vance was here she only used the potty to go number two, otherwise he liked changing her diaper. He also liked dressing her in little clothes if they weren’t leaving the cabin, and he almost always cooked for the rest of the weekend after she’d made Friday night dinner.
She hadn’t exactly meant to, but she’d basically told her daddy to fuck off by rejecting the ways he cared for her and that truthfully she loved. That was really mean and she should apologize, but she also didn’t like her hot mess pie of vulnerability flung in her face the morning after she’d had a breakdown. She hadn’t meant for him to see that—was it really too much to ask that he pretend it had never happened? But Vance would never go for that. Never ever in a million zillion years.
“Oh, I don’t think so. You had a really rough night and that was after we went hard during playtime. I don’t know how long you were in the bathroom before I came in, but I do know it took over an hour to get you settled down and even after you fell back asleep it seemed like you were having bad dreams. You need to rest today.”
“No, I need to look for a job today.”
Vance studied her and she felt her insides turning to jelly. Those burly forearms crossed over his barrel chest and those sternly assessing eyes were going to turn her into a needy puddle if she wasn’t careful.
“You’ll be doing no such thing. Daddy says you’re spending the day in bed and I have no qualms about tying you up to make that happen.”
The thought of Vance forcibly keeping her in bed made her wet between her legs. Not to mention her heart feel like it might overflow. He would do that? For her?
“Is that what I need to do, lil bit? You need to fight me first? Because this is happening whether you like it or not.”
A crackle of arousal ran between her breasts and her cunt.Yes, god yes. Not just because she liked to fight sometimes—such a rush—but also being forced meant that none of this was her idea.
Sure she owned a lot of her desires—she liked being a little with her binkies and Flaps and her cute clothes. She wasn’t ashamed of being a masochist and finding all sorts of pain arousing as all get out. But there was still something deeply uncomfortable about wanting to be cared for. Completely mortifying about how much she liked him calling her “lil bit.”
She’d been on her own since she was eighteen, she couldn’t ask her sister for anything because Carey had nothing to give, and people seemed to assume that because she liked black and skulls and bats that she was angry and emo and as prickly as her spiked collars. She was tough, she was dark, she was poisonous, and none of that left room to be cooed at and coddled.
But if hemadeher? Like some sort of imprisoned heroine in a gothic romance? Forced by a dastardly and wicked man to submit to his will? Oh noes, that would be terrrrible.
Okay so Vance was about as far from dark and dangerous as a man could get. More like a fluffy blond bear who gave the best hugs and snuggles in the whole world. But she had no doubts that he was on top of his bondage game. And if it was his choice to hold her captive and have to tend to her because he was physically preventing her from meeting her own needs then she didn’t have to worry about asking for too much. She wasn’t asking, she was beingtold.
Of course there was the whole matter of being able to make it stop whenever she felt like it, but that part was easy to shrug off, bury underneath a game that could feel extraordinarily real. Especially with someone as big and strong as Vance. But that tiny safety valve in the corner made it fun and thrilling instead of a sickening sense of terror like she’d felt when Chester had demanded the use of her body in exchange for her job. Fucker.