Page 11 of Bosshole Daddy

Something shifted in his expression, a crack in the marble facade that let me glimpse the fire beneath. His hand left the railing to cup my face, thumb still painting impossible patterns on my lip.

"You do belong somewhere." The words were quiet but carried the weight of a vow. "You belong to me. Have since the moment you walked into my office clutching that folder like a shield, trying so hard to be what you thought I wanted."

My knees went weak at the possession in his voice, at the implication that this had been inevitable from the start. I gripped his jacket for balance, fingers curling into expensive fabric.

"I don't understand what you want from me," I said, echoing my words from nights ago in his office. But now they carried different weight, different meaning. Because I was beginning to understand, and the knowledge thrilled and terrified me in equal measure.

His eyes darkened further, storm clouds gathering before lightning strikes. "You do understand. And I want you to say it."

I knew what he wanted. Knew it from the tension in his body, the way his fingers had gone still against my face, the hunger barely leashed in his gaze. But knowing and doing were different things, and the words stuck in my throat like honey.

"Say it," he repeated, and now his voice carried that edge of command that had ordered executives and expectations with equal efficiency. "Just for me. Say, 'I want you, Daddy.'"

The words hit me like electricity, lighting up every nerve ending I possessed.

Daddy.

He wanted me to call him Daddy.

He waited, patient as a hunter, while I struggled with the magnitude of what he was asking. Not just words. Not just play. An admission. A surrender. A step off a cliff I'd never be able to climb back up.

"I—" My voice cracked, and I swallowed hard. His thumb resumed its torture of my lower lip, encouraging and demanding in equal measure. The city noise faded away, leaving just us in this bubble of possibility and danger.

"Good girls do as they're told," he murmured, and that title—good girl—sent a fresh wave of heat through me. "And you want to be good for me, don't you, little one?"

I did.

God help me, I wanted it more than my next breath. Wanted to be good for him, to please him, to see that savage satisfaction flash through his eyes again. The need was overwhelming, washing away inhibitions and social conditioning and every wall I'd built to protect myself.

"I—I want," I whispered, the word barely audible over the blood rushing in my ears. Then, because he was waiting, because I was drowning, because I'd already fallen off this cliff the moment he'd called me little one in the dark of his office: "I want you . . . Daddy."

The change in him was instantaneous. A growl rumbled from his chest, primal and satisfied, and his hand slid into my hair, gripping the carefully pinned strands. "Good girl," he praised, and I nearly came apart at the approval in his voice.

Then his mouth crashed down on mine, and the world exploded.

This wasn't a kiss. It was a claiming. A conquest. A brand seared into my soul with lips and teeth and tongue.

He kissed me like he was starving and I was the only meal left in the world.

Like he wanted to crawl inside my skin and take up residence.

Like he was marking me as his in a way that no title or ring or public declaration ever could.

His tongue swept into my mouth, demanding and receiving immediate surrender.

I opened for him helplessly, a moan escaping that he swallowed like tribute.

The hand in my hair tightened, angling my head for deeper access, while his other arm banded around my waist, crushing me against him until I couldn't tell where he ended and I began.

I kissed him back with desperation I didn't know I possessed.

My hands fisted in his jacket, pulling him closer, needing more.

More pressure, more heat, more of this feeling like I was being consumed and reborn in the same breath.

Every stroke of his tongue sent lightning through my veins.

Every nip of his teeth made me whimper into his mouth.

Every growl of approval made me melt further into his demanding embrace.

He walked me backward until my spine hit the stone railing, then pressed against me until I was trapped between cold stone and burning man.

The contrast made me gasp, and he took advantage, deepening the kiss until I was nothing but sensation and need.

His thigh pressed between mine, and I rode it shamelessly, seeking friction against the ache he'd created.

"That's it," he encouraged against my lips, voice wrecked. "Take what you need, little one. Show Daddy how good you can be."

The title in his voice, the permission, the praise—it all combined into perfect storm that had me shaking in his arms. I was making sounds I'd never made before, desperate little mewls and pleas that he captured with his mouth like prizes.

The world had narrowed to this—his mouth on mine, his hands holding me steady, his thigh pressing exactly where I needed it.

When he finally pulled back, I could barely stand. My lips felt swollen, thoroughly used. My carefully pinned hair had come partially undone, strands sticking to my lipstick. I knew I looked wrecked, claimed, thoroughly debauched by a kiss alone.

He looked barely better. His bow tie hung crooked, jacket bearing the wrinkles of my desperate grip.

His hair stood in wild directions from my fingers—when had I put them there?

—and his eyes were nearly black with desire.

But it was the satisfaction in his expression that undid me.

Like he'd been waiting for this moment since I'd first stuttered through my interview.

His thumb traced my lower lip, now swollen from his attention, and his eyes tracked the movement with possessive satisfaction.

"Beautiful," he murmured, voice still rough.

"My perfect little one, all flushed and needy.

Is this what you've been hiding under all that propriety? This desperate need to be claimed?"

I couldn't form words, could barely form thoughts. Everything had shifted, rearranged, reformed around this new reality where I called him Daddy and he kissed me like he owned me and I wanted nothing more than to let him.

"Answer me," he commanded softly, thumb still painting patterns on my sensitized lip.

"Yes," I breathed, past pretense and performance and into pure truth. "Yes, Daddy."

His eyes flashed with that savage satisfaction again, and he made a low, pleased sound that vibrated through me.

"Good girl. My good, honest girl." He straightened my hair with gentle fingers, a tender contrast to the violence of our kiss.

"Remember that feeling. Remember what it's like to stop pretending and just be mine. "

Mine. The word should have scared me. Should have sent me running back to my careful, small life where I controlled the boundaries and protected my heart. Instead, it settled into my bones like coming home.

Because I was his. Had been since that first "little one," maybe since that first impossible coffee order.

The kiss had just been confirmation of what my body already knew—I belonged to Damian Stone in ways that had nothing to do with employment contracts and everything to do with the darkest, most honest parts of my soul.

“Now,” he said, “shall we head back in?”

*

We returned to the gala for exactly thirteen minutes.

Long enough to make our excuses, to weather a few more knowing looks, to maintain the facade that we were just another couple leaving early because we couldn't keep our hands off each other.

The truth of it made my face burn as Damian guided me through goodbyes with his hand possessively on my lower back, his thumb tracing maddening circles through silk.

The car ride back to my apartment stretched endless and silent.

We sat on opposite sides of the back seat, the middle space between us feeling like an ocean.

But I was hyperaware of him—the way his hands clenched and unclenched on his thighs, the way his jaw stayed tight with some internal struggle, the way his eyes kept finding me in the darkness before darting away.

I pressed my fingers to my lips, still feeling the phantom pressure of his mouth, still tasting him under the mint the driver had wordlessly offered.

My hair remained partially undone, and I could feel his gaze tracking the loose strands against my neck.

The silence was loaded, heavy with everything we'd done and everything we hadn't said.

When the car pulled up outside my building, my heart started racing again. Would he follow me up? Would he kiss me again? Would he push me against my apartment door and finish what we'd started on that balcony?