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At 3:48 pm, he’d told her never to come home again if she wasn’t going to answer him.
And five minutes ago, the final text. ‘Don’t you dare come crying to me & your mother when you get your stupid ass knocked up & on drugs. You are dead to us.’
Harsh, especially considering she still had him listed as ‘Daddy’ in her directory.
Ryan brought her into his arms, letting the phone drop to the desk beside them.
Aubrey’s slender form pressed into his, and that delicate body quaked with the sobs that shook her. She seemed to lose all vestiges of her maturity, resorting to seeking comfort in his arms like a bawling child.
Her slender little fingers curled and sunk into his back as she loosed her tears into his shirt, her dirty blonde hair masking what little of her face wasn’t pressed to his chest. She couldn’t bring herself to speak, just sobbed and cried so helplessly, like a child lost from her parents.
Though she very much was in some ways.
His broad, strong hand stroked through her blonde hair, her tresses entangled between his fingers and making his heart and his loins swell from such new, titillating sensations. Her slender body pressed to his, her scent filling his nostrils.
He let her cry until at last no more would come out of her sobs, and then he let her slump from his now-wet, blue shirt.
“Aubrey, it will be okay. Trust me.”
Her pale face was highlighted by red puffy eyelids as she looked up at him, seeming to have little more moisture within her dainty form to give up to her distress. Tears still stained her cheeks, rolling down to the top of her upper lip.
“I couldn’t respond,” she choked out, all that crying only seeming to accentuate her beauty, making her look more vulnerable, more needy of him. More pained. Just as he wanted her. “I was in class. And… I just needed a break from them… that’s why… why I came here,” she said, looking away, fighting off another sob as another tear threatened to roll past her lips, her fingers digging into his shirt deeper. “And I didn’t tell them where I was,” another sob cut her off, “because I was afraid they’d come for me.”
His thumb caught her tear, tracing over the bow of her mouth. He looked at her so seriously, so intently, and he knew how he could cure her. How she could work past all this pain and angst and find that inner peace.
He just didn’t know if she was ready.
But staring down at her puffy face, her trembling lips and quivering body, he knew he had to do something. And there was only one way he knew of that always made the pain more manageable.
“I can make this go away,” he said, his voice husky despite how calm and even it was.
Her long lashes curved upwards, so thick and dark, threaded together by some remnants of her glistening tears. She glanced aside, then back at him, her puffy eyes framing those bright emerald gems at the center.
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice broken by the sorrow th
at still lingered beneath despite her confusion.
She quivered before him, shaking like an inexperienced dancer on unsteady legs, her slender limbs buckling so that her knees banged together just above her stockings.
He stroked her still, caring and considerate. Perhaps that was why she regarded him with both caution and desire, because he reminded her of what she’d always longed for at home but was never able to receive. Comfort. Compassion.
He looked down upon her, his body strong and firm against her slender and shaky one. “Sometimes, feelings get a little overwhelming. Ever heard the expression 'bringing a hammer to your thumb to distract you from a missing limb?'”
His hands held her shoulders, supporting her frame. “I can help do something similar. Bring your pain into focus, into a manageable level, and you can deal with it one little piece at a time.”
Aubrey’s beautiful green eyes nervously strayed from his, but they flitted back again and again as she stood before him, unable to even stand upright and steady without his support. She looked so utterly lost, and he could read the conflict on her face as she bit down on her lower lip, letting her white teeth sink into that pale pink flesh.
“Like… with that… stuff… you pictured me with?” she said, her voice soft and airy, so very weak. A struggle for her to get her words out in that moment.
“That’s part of it.” His voice was so certain, but it wasn’t cold. He couldn’t be cold with her. It started out as a fantasy, a crush of having her. But she’d been in his home for nearly a month now, and in that time he’d seen into her soul. She was an open book, so obvious to his expert gaze, and she wasn’t soley a conquest any longer. She was Aubrey, and she needed him more than she knew.
“But when we play with those things, for real, you will have the real power. The power to stop it.” He paused, letting those words hang in the air and sink into her for a moment as he looked at her, squeezing her shoulders in his hands. “It takes some trust, though.”
She was so very delicate, like a porcelain doll in his strong arms. She sniffled, relinquished her hold on his shirt to wipe her sleeve over her cheek, moving away some of the drying tears.
“You don’t trust me?” she asked, clearly misinterpreting what he’d meant in her naïveté. Perhaps already she’d come to trust him so much, to see him as a charitable and kind man, that her trust in him was a foregone conclusion? That instead she worried of herself coming off as a foolish girl not yet worthy of his trust.
Oh, she was so sweet and tender, and he chuckled as he shook his head.
