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After a few moments of struggling, she stepped back and stared at the pale blue wood in front of her, her stomach sinking as she came to the realization she’d been locked out of the house.
Fuck.
* * *
Naughty little girl.
Shaking his head at his phone, he watched MaryAnn fight with the door, watched as it gradually dawned on her that she was stuck.
If she’d asked him, he would have told her all the doors locked automatically from the inside. They could be opened at any time from within the house, but from the outside they could only be opened with the code.
His palm itched as he watched her run a frustrated hand through her hair. While she was, theoretically, perfectly safe in the fenced in backyard, she’d still broken one of his rules. And if she’d been his Little girl, that would mean a hot red bottom followed by several minutes in the corner to think about the choices she’d made.
But, he reminded himself with a pang of regret, she wasn’t his to punish, at least not that way. He had every intention of sitting her down with pen and paper so she could write out the rule she’d broken fifty times as promised. That was more to make sure the rule would imprint itself on her memory than it would be an actual punishment, though.
Writing lines as a punishment was much more effective when the naughty girl in question had a thick plug seated inside her bottom to remind her of how Daddy was going to take her after the lines were finished.
“Jesus, Mitchell, get a grip.”
Forcing the all-too-tempting thoughts to the back of his mind, he tucked his phone in his pocket and made his way to the back door. When he opened it, however, all those inappropriate thoughts came rushing back.
Cheeks pink from the cold, eyes wide, her mouth hanging slightly open, she looked the very picture of a Little girl caught doing something naughty.
“Oh. Um. Hi.”
“Hi. Having trouble getting back in the house?”
“Yes, sir.”
If she kept calling him that, he really was going to have a hard time resisting the urge to Daddy her. “Why are you outside?”
“I, um, just wanted some fresh air.”
Crossing his arms, he leaned against the door jamb and raised an eyebrow, not at all displeased when more color infused her cheeks and her breath hitched slightly. “What is Rule Four, MaryAnn?”
“That I’m supposed to ask permission before I go outside,” she parroted obediently. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think it would be a big deal. I just meant to step out for a minute and then the door shut behind me and it locked somehow and… I’m sorry. It was stupid. I’m stupid.”
“Rule Seven,” he managed to grind out from between clenched teeth. “You do not ever, under any circumstances, put yourself down. Come inside and we can talk about what happened.”
Stepping away from the doorway, he gestured for her to come inside. Head hanging down, she meekly did as she’d been told.
“Living room, please.” He was being as gentle as he knew how, even though his blood was boiling. The way she talked about herself, the way she reacted to things… that wasn’t from some brief relationship, no matter how much of a psychopath Nathaniel Cooke might have been. She was displaying all the signs of someone with deeply ingrained trauma, and he wanted nothing more than to wrap his hands around the throat of whoever had hurt her.
Doing his best to breathe through the anger, he followed her to the living room and pointed at the couch. “Sit.”
Obediently, she dropped down, her hands folded on her lap, squeezed together so hard the knuckles were turning white, just like when she’d had them wrapped around the steering wheel earlier.
Oh, baby. Who hurt you?
“Hey.” Perching on the coffee table in front of her, he took hold of her hands, gently prying them apart and massaging some of the tension from her fingers. “I’m not mad, MaryAnn. I just want to talk, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered, still not looking up at him.
“Can you walk me through your thought process that led to you going outside?”Without telling me, and without a coat, he added silently, not wanting to make her feel any worse than she obviously already did.
“I-I don’t know. It just happened.”
He didn’t believe that for a second. “Last I saw, you were headed back up to your room. What changed?”
