Page 103 of Dark King Daddy

“Come here.”

I stood. My knees were steady. My hands were not. I crossed the space between our chairs—three steps, no more—and stopped in front of him.

He guided me with his hands. His palms settled on my waist—firm, warm, the pressure deliberate without being forceful. He turned me slightly, positioned me beside his right knee, and drew me down.

I went across his lap.

The leather of the chair was cool against my cheek. My hands found the floor on the other side. My hips rested across his thigh, the silk of my trousers smooth against the wool of his. My feet touched the carpet on my toes.

His left hand held my waist. Steady. Certain. The pressure of his fingers spread across my hip, grounding me, keeping me in place without restraint. I could have stood. The pressure was not enough to stop me. It was enough to tell me he had me.

His right hand rested against my bottom.

He did not strike. He did not lift his hand. He placed it there — flat, palm down, the warmth of it pressing through the silk — and held it.

I stopped breathing.

The arousal hit me in a single, total wave. It moved through my body the way fire moves through a house—fast, thorough, leaving nothing untouched. I felt it in my stomach, in my thighs, in the deep aching center of me. His hand on my bottom, not striking, just resting, and the position—bent over his knee, held, my weight supported by his thigh, my face against the chair—the position was enough.

I wanted him to strike. I wanted him to tell me I was good. I wanted him to pull me up and kiss me and take me to bed and I wanted him to keep me here across his lap with his hand on me and I wanted all of it at once and the wanting was so large I could not speak.

His hand lifted. It returned to my waist.

“Stand,” he said.

I stood. My legs were not entirely steady. I turned to face him. He was looking up at me from the chair with the fire behind him, his ice-blue eyes dark and focused, and I could see what the demonstration had cost him. The discipline of not striking. The restraint of lifting his hand when everything in his body—and mine—wanted him to keep it there.

“Wanting it is not the same as consenting to it,” he said.

His voice was low. Rough at the edges. The composure was intact but the seams showed.

“Then let me be clear,” I said. “I consent.”

The fire held the silence. The room held us. The word consent sat between us, and it was not a legal term. It was not a line in a document. It was a woman telling a man she trusted him enough to put her across his knee and give her what she needed, and a man hearing her and understanding that the gift was not the act.

The gift was the truth.

When I say back down in the chair, I felt as though something had fundamentally shifted in me. Daniil slid the yes/no/maybe pages across the table.

The paper was warm from the fire. The columns were printed in clean type: Yes. Maybe. No. Beside each item, a space for notes. The list was thorough—organized by category, each item numbered, the language clinical enough to be safe and specific enough to be honest.

I picked up the pen.

The act of marking the page was different from speaking. Words could be taken back, softened, rephrased. Ink was permanent. Ink said: this is what I want, and I am willing to write it down.

I began.

Praise — yes. I wrote it and felt heat move through my chest. The word on the page looked small. It was not small.

Kneeling — yes.

Hair-pulling — yes. My pen hesitated over the word. I thought of his hand in my hair on the promenade, the grip that held me in place, the bolt of heat it had sent through my body. I wrote yes and did not look up.

Firm commands — yes.

Restraints — yes.

Blindfolds — yes.