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Nobody ever cares about what I want, and this sexy giant of a man could be seducing me right now—something I know we both want—and instead he’s taking the conversation to a safer space, and asking aboutmeand whatI want.Why I want it.
The tightness in my chest that is my constant companion eases a little.
“I saw your lake on Instagram,” I confess. “That’s how I ended up here. I went down the rabbit hole of someone else’s five-day hike on this mountain, and she looked happy and carefree. I wantedthat, so viscerally I could taste it. She had videos about the gear that she bought, and the food she packed, so I made careful notes and the next day I went shopping.”
“When was that?”
It’s Sunday now. “Thursday.”
“You didn’t let any time go to waste, huh?”
“I know, I should have thought it through more—”
“It wasn’t a criticism.” He catches my chin, lifting my face so we’re staring at each other. “Nothing wrong with being decisive. And it brought you to me.”
To Daddy.
The name sends a jolt of awareness up my spine. It makes me want to shift out of this sweet hold he has on my body and straddle him instead. Show him that his Goldilocks isn’t always bad.
But before I can, he glances up at the sky.
“I was going to put a second coat of paint on the windows, but it looks like it may rain now, so let’s go for a walk.”
A walk.
He tells me he wants me to be his little girl, and he’ll be my Daddy, and now we’re going for a walk.
I don’t protest as he stands me on my feet, though. And when he stands, too, and holds out his hand, I take it, weaving my fingers around his.
His palm is warm and firm, his fingers long and confident as he squeezes my hand.
I can feel a wave cresting, like at some point very soon we’re going to crash into each other and it’s going to be very grown-up and naughty. But maybe he is right that I need this softer, more innocent attention first.
I came up this mountain looking to discover something about myself, some clarity around my life, and to have a hard reset in my attitude. I expected to discover it myself through soul searching. Instead, I may have found it through a reclusive Navy SEAL with ginger-gold scruff on his jaw and a deeply perverted private fantasy of spanking trespassers.
Not really something you put on Instagram, but actually pretty fucking profound when I think about it. And as he leads me down another trail, this one deeper into the forest, I think about it long and hard.
CHAPTER9
JUSTIN
My pulse is pounding as I take her on one of my favorite hikes away from the cabin. It twists up a short rise, then flattens out along a ridge and ends in a meadow. By the height of summer it will be filled with wildflowers, but right now it’s just lush and green and quiet.
Beautiful, just like Goldilocks.
The Daddy you need.The Daddy you want.
I hardly recognized the words as I said them, but they felt right in the moment, and now that I’ve given voice to the fantasy—and she didn’t run away—it’s crackling inside me like a bonfire.
I cannot wait to make her tell me in explicit detail what kind of Daddy care shewants. Pin her down and touch her all over, tell her she’s pretty and smart and perfect just the way she is. Feed her confidence so she doesn’t wind up alone on another mountain in a few months…
I frown.
That’s a lot to tackle in four short days.
Top of the to-do list is to get her to trust me enough that we can keep in touch. Make sure she knows if she ever wants to do this again, I’m her man.
My frown deepens.
