Page 27 of Daddies’ Dark Desires (Forbidden Fantasies #19)

HARPER

D ad didn’t even trust his best friends and partners with this? How far did it go? How could he believe that Grant, Trent, or Oliver might be working for a cartel undercover? Smuggling people and drugs?

What was he thinking?

When I ask to see it all, they hesitate again, but they promise to show me. I will hold them to that promise. They can be a hundred percent sure about that one. I’ve never let go of something once I get my teeth into it. Not in my entire life.

Not even when I hated every minute of it, like ballet. I broke my fucking toe before I let it beat me.

Now, I’ve sequestered myself away in the library at their place. It’s a decent-sized room made to seem somehow cozier and bigger than any of the other spaces in their house. Or building because these guys can’t do anything normally.

I’m pretty sure this building isn’t even zoned for residential, surrounded by offices and warehouses the way it is. But I bet that’s what they were going for. Out of the way. Out of sight and easy to sneak away from.

It’s the same thinking that had my parents purchasing one of the old manors that the rich used to own when servants lived on the premises. I’ve snuck through more than one secret passageway and old servants’ staircase as a child.

This place is more modern, but the deep browns are accented by brick here, and if I asked I’m sure one of them would light the fire for me. I bet this is the best place to spend a lazy day during the winter.

Setting myself up in a corner by the window, I settle a fresh notebook on the small wooden table. My other notebook has gone missing. My journal. And I have a feeling about whose sticky fingers lifted it.

For a time, I lose myself in the effort to write this out. Process all the information without them and without the bias of my limited personal space. When I’m in my room, I can only think of all the naughty things I’ve done there.

Or how trapped I feel when I’m stuck alone between those four walls.

My pen moves without much conscious thought, working through my first ideas. The bad ones. Until I come up with ideas on how to dig deeper. Which direction to look.

Until I let myself go down the same paths my father must have.

Dad always told me not to trust anyone. I’d been nine, and I got home from an intense fight with one of my best friends, Lindsay. She stole my Barbie and wouldn’t give it back. Told her mom I’d been trying to steal it.

So I tried to yank her ponytail out.

Lindsay’s mom lectured me the entire time we waited for Dad to pick me up. I shone in the short-lived moment when he told them both to retrieve the Barbie because he’d bought it himself. Marked it with a symbol on her foot.

The way he quietly dressed down Lindsay’s mom and my former best friend was the highlight of my young life.

Until he did the same to me on the drive home. “Never give all your trust to anyone, bug. Not even your best friend. Not unless you’ve got eyes on their six and the detonator in your back pocket.”

I didn’t get it then. I pictured blowing up all her toys in revenge, but it became much clearer when I grew into a teen. Lots of fake friends and backstabbing in a wealthy high school.

I got good at having my secret markings and symbols in place from the get-go.

The only time it hasn’t worked is with Oliver, Grant, and Trent.

An echo of that lesson lands in my chest like a brick.

What kind of clues did he leave for me to find? That only I would know to look for? I need my hands on those files. On everything they’ve uncovered. He had to leave something that would put these pieces together. Lead me down his train of thought.

It’s aggravating to wait. To have waited this whole time without access.

Still, I try to put everything I can remember down. The words left over on the redacted files. The details of the photo I found in the original file.

His last words to me: Don’t trust anyone. Not even his best friends, the three men taking care of me. Keeping me safe.

My instincts say they would never hurt me. But that might be my undeniable attraction to them. It wouldn’t be the first time my hormones got the better of me.

Is this why they haven’t actually found anything? Because they don’t want to?

But who else was he close with? Who else had access to the information they did? There’s only a few other people that Dad worked with in that capacity. That he would usually have in his confidence.

So, if he cut the guys out, and they didn’t do it, who else did he cut out? Who does that leave?

The scribbles in my notebook blur as my lids grow heavy, but I let my thoughts flee, to flow freeform. It needs the space to build connections without my direct interference.

I stare for a long time, tripping over words until I can’t see them anymore.

I drop into a restless peace before the world returns in a haze, but it doesn’t feel right.

Fear cascades down my neck, bunching up my shoulders. Yet, I’m just a fly on the wall, watching as my dad rifles through a desk—one that I’ve seen before but can’t seem to place—and when a man enters, his face is a blurred absence of features.

Fucking dreams.

The two of them spar verbally, throwing out phrases like keeping secrets and going behind our backs. Trafficking girls, peddling drugs, ruining our country…they all swirl in their mouths as I hover above them.

Then, the office blitzes, and we’re standing on a helipad. Rotors spin above my dad’s head, hair dancing across his forehead as his stern gaze narrows. Turns downward. Sad.

“It’s you. It’s been you this whole time. Why?”

Reality shakes, and my eyes fly open. Through my disorientation, I see Trent’s dark gaze and his perpetual frown.

Those big paws brace my cheek, petting my hair away from my face.

He leans me back, and that dark grumble of his is back, but I’m too out of it to be a brat about it.

“What on earth are you wearing, Harper?”

It’s one of my skimpier outfits. The ones that got me in trouble. That Grant set rules over. Today, though, I needed that small rebellion. Especially after everything they’ve been keeping from me.

After all this shuffling around and locking me down. Making me think I’m not good at my job. That I’m not cut out for this when I clearly am.

Trent narrows his eyes at me like he can read my thoughts. His gaze betrays him, flashing over my open notebook and the scribbles there.

“Come on,” he barks, bending and hefting me over his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” I sink my nails into his back and enjoy the grunt it pulls out of him.

His hands squeeze the backs of my thighs. Heat fans across my center, low in my core, but the pang is deep, edges worn by my half-sleepy state.

My head droops, and I relax into his carry. There’s no fighting it.

His heavy footsteps echo in the stairwell as he takes me up. Soon, I’m plopped onto a bed, and a blanket surrounds me with warmth. The softness takes the rest of my fight to stay awake from me, and I fall back into spinning scenarios of what happened to my dad.

The places it throws us give me whiplash—the deck of a boat, a beach, in the back of a helicopter, halfway up a mountain in a lookout, in the office he kept at home.

The final bit has me falling into the twist of a real memory.

I’m seven, living in a world where nothing could ever get me. Not when I have my very own superhero as a dad. My bed still has the princess white canopy and too much fluff when Dad’s arms lift me from them.

I clutch his shoulders, but he purses his lips in a shushing motion. I know enough to keep quiet as he carries me down the hall and into the study. He touches a book near the fireplace, and it shifts, opening a gap large enough for the two of us to slip through before it slides back into place.

The space is dark, but our heartbeats are loud and the scent of gun oil and cedar fills the space. Cocooned in my dad’s arms, I’m in the safest place I could be.

I whisper into his shoulder, “Is someone coming to hurt us?”

I know that Daddy’s job is dangerous. Sometimes, he has to hurt people to keep others safe. No one’s ever tried to hurt me before. But I know strangers could. Ones that are bigger than me. If I’m by myself.

I try to never be alone.

“You should never ask that, bug.” Daddy tightens his hold on me. “You assume the answer is yes. And you prepare for how to survive it.”

A noise jerks me half off the mattress, reminiscent of that night when someone had broken into our house. I had learned the next day that Dad hid a weapon in every room. Multiple, really. Something within hand at all times.

He signed me up for martial arts that week, too. It’s one thing to have a weapon. It’s another to know how to use it.

He taught me everything he knew after that.

I spread my hands out across the bed, but it doesn’t feel like the one I’ve been staying in. The blanket is heavier, denser instead of the soft duvet I’m used to.

But I’m also alone. Didn’t Trent carry me to bed? Hadn’t he been grumbling about something? Maybe my little undies and oversized t-shirt. In fact, this one might be his. I’ve pilfered one from each of them at this point.

I turn my head as I acclimatize, seeing Trent in a chair across the room. He’s half in the dark, but I can feel his gaze on me. It has me stretching long, arms over head as I kick down the blanket.

Legs sliding out, I extend the line of my body as I get out of bed, using my very old ballet lessons to make myself longer.

My steps are soft against his hardwood floors, and I run my fingers through my hair as I walk to him. He doesn’t move a muscle until I’m between his knees.

Trent lets out a heavy breath as I slide against his one hip and turn his face toward mine. He’s so solid. Hot. Thick muscle wrapped in cotton.

Dropping my mouth to his has all that muscle tightening. His hand finds the back of my thigh. Another squeezes my waist. He pulls me closer. Kisses me back.

This time, the swipe of his tongue isn’t tentative. It’s restrained.

But I’m in the air, elevated against his chest as he stands with me in his grip.

I tighten my hold on his shoulders, fingers knotting in his hair. Trent is pulling back, but I won’t let him. Not yet. I suck his bottom lip into my mouth, biting him gently.

He groans, and it breaks us apart only barely. Pivoting, he’s pressing me into the wall, all of him against all of me. Trent makes me feel tiny.

I’m anything but.

But oh god. I shift and feel what he’s packing, hard against me. Cradled in the crook of my hip.

I want to get my hands on it. On him.

No clothes. Just skin and hair and heat.

It’s only a heartbeat before his mouth crushes back against mine, wrecking my mouth. His hard planes fit against my soft curves. Can he feel that?

Does it do the same things to him that it does to me?

Fuck, his hands are trembling as he caresses the side of my neck, cupping the back of my head. His breathing is as labored as mine.

And he touches me with such care. It wrenches my heart toward softer feelings.

“Say stop.” He practically growls the demand at me.

I reach up and drag another kiss out of him. I have no intention to stop.

Not when I’m so close to what I want.

Trent rolls his hips against mine before he resurfaces. “If you’re not careful…”

The implied threat lights me up. “What? You’re going to break me, Daddy?”