“I’m used to keeping everything to myself,” she whispers.
“Not anymore.” It’s getting hard to control my breathing. “Is that understood?”
“Yes, Daddy,” she whispers. As if she spoke without thinking, now she jerks back and blinks several times in a row. “I…I mean—”
I drop my mouth to her forehead. “You meant exactly what you said.” My lips trace down and find hers, drawing her into a slow kiss. “I was sent to boarding school as a child and rarely spoken to by my parents. Holidays passed and they didn’t arrive. Obviously, I haven’t had a hard life like you, but I know a little bit about being left behind. Set aside.”
“I’m sorry you know what it feels like,” she says, sincerity shining in her eyes.
Her compassion humbles me so thoroughly that it takes me a moment to respond. “Since we both know how awful it feels to be left behind, we’re going to agree here and now never to do that to each other. We won’t. Because we know how terrible it feels.” I coax her into a gentle kiss. “There’s also the important matter of me being sick at the thought of spending a single day without you, baby. You can safely trust I’m going nowhere.”
She searches my face, breathing, “I believe you.”
Such a simple show of trust and I want to roar my pride at the sky. “Good girl,” I manage, winded. “Go get changed.”
She nods, but quickly turns conflicted. “I just want to show the new caretaker one more thing—”
“You’ve been taking care of everyone long enough, angel. It’s time for you to be cared for.” I press the dress and coat into her hands. “I plan to do a very good job of it.”
Chapter Eight
Blessing
When I walk out of the back room in my dress and evening coat, Edison straightens abruptly from his lean against the kitchen counter. He drags a hand down his open mouth and shakes his head. “Dear God, I’m never going to get used to you.” He crosses the kitchen and takes my hand, bringing it to his lips where he plants a hot kiss on my knuckles. “I’m suddenly regretting our opera plans,” he says for my ears alone. “I’d bring you home and fuck you straight into tomorrow morning, but I’m trying not to be selfish.”
My response is a jumble of incoherent sounds so I simply snap my mouth shut.
Edison chuckles and leads me out the front door. “Bye children!” I call over my shoulder. “I’ll miss you terribly and I’ll see you soon!”
And then the front door opens and my life takes the shape of a fairytale.
There is a shiny red sleigh waiting outside the front door of the orphanage and it is massive. Two giant Clydesdale horses are harnessed to the front. A red-cheeked driver tips his hat to us. It’s like an oasis in the snow. I couldn’t have envisioned something so grand in my wildest fantasies. Before I can catch my breath, Edison is lifting me into the sleigh, which is laden with furry, cream-colored blankets and I sink into them with a giggle, all but disappearing from sight.
The sleigh dips with Edison’s weight and then I’m being fished out of the blanket quicksand and settled into his lap, my bottom right in the center of his lap, the backs of my thighs pressed down onto the strong fronts of his. I nuzzle my back into his chest and he tips my chin up so he can kiss me from above. It’s meant to be a sweet kiss, I think, but…
Lust digs its teeth into me.
It happens so fast, my head spins. The sleigh has begun to dash through the show and my heart mimics that fast pace, pounding in my chest. It’s not only lust that has me twisting in Edison’s lap and purring into deep tongue kisses, it’s…happiness.
I’ve been rescued.
All the years I’ve spent dreaming about a savior coming to the front door of the orphanage and ferrying me off to a safe, secure life…it has actually happened. Logically, I know I haven’t been adopted by Edison. He’s made me his wife. But the parallels between my hopeful dreams and his heroics are impossible to ignore. That line that my mind has already blurred between Edison and an adoptive father figure is growing blurrier and my body only seems to respond with feverish need. Maybe I should take a deep breath and straighten my thoughts in the correct direction, but that thick root between his thighs is growing, growing, drowning out every ounce of good behavior left inside of me.
The sleigh travels over a series of bumps and my butt bounces up and down in Edison’s lap, earning a low groan from his mouth. He breaks our kiss, tips his head back and sucks in a lungful of cold winter air. “If I keep kissing you like this, Blessing, we’ll never make it to the opera.” He curses, laughs without humor. “Even if I take you home, I’ll probably end up buried in you before we make it up the stairs, you’ve got me so hard and raw, baby.”