“Oh—” The word dissolved.
“You’re going to come for me,” he said, not a request. His fingers circled slowly and purposefully, exactly the way that made my knees buckle, and exactly the pace that meant he intended to take his time.
“Daddy,” I said, which was not a coherent sentence, but was apparently sufficient because he understood it completely.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Let go.”
I let go.
The orgasm rolled through me in long, deep waves, the kind that started somewhere in the base of my spine and radiated outward until I couldn’t feel where it ended and the rest of me began. I cried out into the duvet, and he held me through it, steady and immovable, his movements slowing but not stopping.
“Again,” he said against my shoulder.
“I can’t?—”
“You can.”
I could.
The second time came faster, built on the foundation of the first, and this one broke sudden and devastating, my inner walls clenching hard and my voice completely beyond my control. Hisgrip on my hip tightened and his own composure finally cracked, his breathing rougher now, his pace no longer entirely patient.
“Good girl,” he said, low and rough. “My good girl.”
Those three words and the third orgasm arrived together, and I came apart completely—sobbing, shaking, holding onto the bedspread because it was the only thing tethering me to anything—and felt him follow me over the edge with his forehead pressed to the back of my neck and his arms wrapped hard around me as if he intended to hold all my pieces together from the outside while I shattered from the inside.
For a long time, he stayed inside me.
Then he gently turned me and gathered me against his chest. I tucked my face into the crook of his neck and concentrated on breathing. His hand moved in slow strokes up and down my back. My bottom ached. My legs felt distant. I was warm and boneless and entirely without pride and I found, as I lay there listening to his heartbeat slow, that I did not mind that at all.
“There she is,” he said quietly, and I felt the smile in his voice. “There’s my good girl.”
I pressed a kiss to his jaw. He turned his head and kissed my forehead.
“I won’t do it again,” I said, after a while. “Tonight. I mean it.”
“I know you do,” he said.
“I really did think she deserved it.”
He laughed and tightened his arms around me.
“Sleep, little girl,” he said. “We’ll discuss your opinions on journalistic integrity in the morning.”
I smiled into his chest.
“Yes, Daddy,” I said, and closed my eyes.
* * *
I woke to the smell of coffee.
Not just any coffee, but the good kind, the kind that meant someone had used the proper grinder and the expensive beans from that small-batch roaster in the Village that Jaxon had a standing order with. I turned my face toward it before I was fully conscious, like a flower toward sunlight, which was deeply embarrassing and also entirely involuntary.
I opened my eyes.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed beside me, already dressed. He was wearing dark trousers, a charcoal button-down with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and holding a tray that contained a French press, two cups, a small plate of sliced fruit, and a dish of soft scrambled eggs with toast that was golden and perfect and still steaming.
I stared at him.
