Page 22 of Bosshole Daddy

The words came out measured, but I heard the fury underneath. Not at me—somehow I knew that with certainty—but at the man who'd planted these doubts with such calculated precision.

"Yes, I hired Rebecca for the Brennan deal. Yes, Melissa helped with the Scandinavian investors." Each admission felt like another nail in the coffin of what I'd thought we had, but his grip on my hands never wavered. "But Isla—"

My name on his lips made fresh tears spill over.

"I never touched them."

The words hung between us, simple and devastating. I searched his face for the lie, for the polished deception of a man who'd built an empire on knowing what people needed to hear. But all I found was raw honesty that looked almost painful for him to voice.

"Never kissed them. Never called them anything but Ms. Patterson and Ms. Brown. They were employees playing a role, nothing more."

His hands tightened on mine, grounding me as my world tilted and reorganized around this new information. Not lovers. Not predecessors in his bed and heart. Just employees with clear boundaries and contractual obligations and last names he'd never replaced with endearments.

"I built this room because I've been looking for something I couldn't name."

His voice had gone rough, sandpaper over silk. One hand released mine to gesture at the space around us—the crib, the carefully chosen stuffies, the LED window creating perpetual gentle daylight in this underground sanctuary.

"Someone who needed what I needed. A little one who could be mine completely."

The confession sounded like it was being dragged from somewhere deep, some hidden vault he'd never intended to open. This was Damian Stone stripped of his armor, kneeling on soft carpet in a nursery he'd built for a dream he'd never expected to find.

"I've had this fantasy for years, but I never—" He stopped, swallowed hard, that tell-tale muscle jumping in his jaw.

"The arrangement with Rebecca and Melissa was purely business.

Two public appearances each, generous severance, everyone walks away clean.

I never took them to galas where people I knew would see them.

Never fed them by hand in my kitchen. Never gave them rules or punishments or—"

His voice cracked on the next word, and my heart cracked with it.

"Never loved them."

The words fell between us like stones into still water, sending ripples through everything I thought I knew.

Because Damian Stone didn't do love. Everyone knew that.

The gossip blogs, the business magazines, even his own ex-fiancée had confirmed it.

Stone Cold, they'd called him. Emotionally unavailable. Incapable of real feeling.

But the man kneeling before me with shaking hands and fractured control looked anything but cold.

"What?" The word came out breathless, disbelieving.

"I love you," he said, steadier now but no less intense.

"Not as a convenient solution. Not as a temporary arrangement.

I love your stubbornness and your need to be held.

I love how you organize my chaos and still need your bunny to sleep.

I love that you call me Daddy like it's a prayer and submit to me like it's worship. "

My chest felt too small for my heart, for my lungs, for everything expanding inside me. "You love me?"

My voice broke on the words, cracking like ice under spring sun. Everything I'd believed for the last twenty minutes—Silas's poison, the LinkedIn profiles, the terrible logic of being temporary—fractured against this impossible declaration.

Damian shifted, and for one horrible moment I thought he was pulling away. Instead, he reached into his pocket, pulling out a small velvet box that made my heart stop. Actually stop. I was pretty sure I died for a second, soul leaving my body at the sight of that little black cube.

"I've been carrying this since Sunday," he admitted, flipping it open with fingers that weren't quite steady.

The ring caught the artificial light and threw it back in scattered rainbows.

A cushion-cut diamond surrounded by smaller stones, set in platinum that gleamed like moonlight.

Not trendy or flashy, not the kind of ring you'd see splashed across Instagram.

This was classic, elegant. Like something chosen for forever rather than show.

"Sunday," I repeated numbly. "That was—"

"The day after I fed you dinner. After I gave you the pacifier.

After I knew with absolute certainty that I couldn't let you go.

" His laugh was humorless, self-deprecating.

"I spent all day Sunday planning how to do this right.

Thought you needed time to adjust, to understand what we are.

I was going to wait until after Hartley.

Court you properly. Prove I wasn't just another domineering asshole looking for a convenient submissive. "

He shifted from kneeling to one knee, still holding my hands like I might disappear if he let go.

The classic proposal position made this real in a way that stole my breath.

This was happening. In a coffee shop booth with tear tracks on my cheeks and Silas's business card still mocking me from the table, Damian Stone was proposing.

"But Silas forced my hand," he continued, and anger flashed through his eyes again. "He wants to destroy what we have before you can see it's real. Before I can prove that you're not Rebecca or Melissa or any other woman who's passed through my life without leaving a mark."

The ring trembled between us, catching light like captured stars. I couldn't look away from it, from him, from this moment that felt too big for my body to contain.

"Isla James." My name on his lips sounded like a vow. "You are not convenient. You are not temporary. You are the missing piece I built that room for. The little one I've been searching for without knowing it. You're mine, and I'm yours, and I want the world to know it."

A sob escaped me, ugly and raw. Because I wanted to believe him. God, how I wanted to believe that I could be more than a useful arrangement, more than a prop for a business deal. But Silas's words still echoed—professional courtesy, two weeks maximum, enjoy it while it lasts.

"This isn't about Hartley," Damian said, reading my doubt with that uncanny perception. "Fuck the deal. I’ll call it off. I’ll bury the whole fucking company if it means I can have you.

This is about the fact that I can't imagine going back to a life where you don't call me Daddy.

Where I don't make you dinner. Where you don't exist in every space I inhabit. "

His voice dropped to that register that rewrote my DNA, but now it carried something beyond command. This was plea and promise and prayer all wrapped in rumbling bass.

"Marry me. Not for show. For real. Forever. Be my wife, my little one, my everything. Let me prove that what we have is the only real thing in my otherwise transactional life."

The words hung between us like suspended stars, waiting for me to either wish on them or watch them fall. The ring caught the light again, winking like it knew secrets about our future I hadn't learned yet.

"I'm scared," I admitted, the words scraping my throat raw. "What if I'm not enough? What if you realize I'm just a mess who needs her Daddy and her stuffies and—"

"Then you'll be my mess," he interrupted fiercely.

"My perfect, beautiful mess who trusts me enough to be little, who lets me care for her, who calls me Daddy like it's the sweetest word ever created.

" His eyes blazed with conviction. "Don't you understand?

Every single thing Silas tried to use against us is exactly why I love you. "

I breathed. I had to trust him.

I did trust him.

"Yes."

The word escaped before I could overthink it, surprising us both. But once it was out, I couldn't take it back. Didn't want to.

"Yes?" He searched my face like he was memorizing it, this moment, the exact shape of my surrender.

"Yes, Daddy," I whispered, and watched his control finally snap. "I'll marry you."