I hold on to my patience by a thread. She’s shivering, dammit. “You would rather sleep in your car than come home with me?”
She nods.
My stomach sinks to my knees.
“Why?” I manage, already knowing the answer.
“Because you think I’m evil.”
“Open this door,” I demand, prepared to rip it off if necessary. “Forgive me for what I said. You are pure and everything good. I simply wasn’t prepared for the…power of my attraction to you. But I’m prepared now to ignore it.”
Liar.
I am saying these things to reassure her, but she only seems more upset. “Ignore it?”
“Yes,” I say, even as my cock is growing stiffer at the sight of her bare legs. She doesn’t need to know about that. I can put a leash on my attraction. I can. She is barely an adult and living on the street. I would be an absolute bastard to take advantage of her. “I have a spare room at my apartment. It’s warm. I have food. You have my word that I won’t lay a hand on you again.”
The promise sounds thin, but I’ll work on living with the hunger for her.
I’ll master it.
Right.
My breath is fogging the glass because I’m trying to get a better look up her skirt. What is it going to be like when she’s living in my home? Torture. But not knowing where she’s living or if she’s safe would be a hundred times worse.
She leans closer to the glass and I can’t help it, I can’t keep my gaze from devouring her perky tits where they spill out of her neckline. Braless. She obviously took off the white underthing to sleep. God help me. “If you give me the waitressing job,” she says through the glass. “I’ll come with you.”
This girl is going to cause absolute bedlam in the casino. But in that moment, I would give my life in exchange to have her warm in my apartment, eating a meal. Safe. “Very well, Sissy. But there will be rules.”
A few seconds tick by. Then she unlocks the rear passenger door. I waste zero time wrenching open the rusted metal barrier and scooping her off the back seat, marching around the back bumper of my SUV with my eyes resolutely ahead. Don’t look. Don’t you fucking look. Don’t acknowledge how good she feels in your arms.
“What kinds of rules?” she asks softly, her voice stroking my cock like a velvet fist.
“The kind that you don’t break. Such as, you do not go anywhere alone. You will only work in my section of the casino during my shifts.” I struggle to hold in the final rule because I have no business making it. None at all. But it won’t stay trapped inside of me. “And if I catch you talking to men, if it looks like you’re speaking about more than a drink order, so help me God, Sissy, I will…”
I open the passenger door of my SUV and settle her on the seat, jerking the seatbelt around her, my dick throbbing like a motherfucker. “You’ll what?” she murmurs. “Spank me?”
“No,” I rasp. “I’ll never do that again.”
“Oh.” Her eyes fall to her lap where she fidgets with her dress. “I see.”
I know I should leave it at that. No more spanking. End of story. But I can’t handle the note of dejection in her voice. “Why do you sound disappointed?”
She shakes her head, forces a smile. “It’s nothing.”
My forehead gravitates to hers naturally, pressing there. I’m not in control of my actions around this girl and that is terrifying. “Answer the question,” I say against her mouth.
Now she’s breathing faster, her inhales and exhales matching mine. “I like being spanked. By you.” She rolls her lips inward, wetting them. “But I don’t think I would like it from anyone else.”
“If you try and find out, we’re going to have a problem.”
“Oh. Does that mean I’m your girlfriend now?”
“Girlfriend?” The word sounds completely foreign coming from my mouth.
“Yes. If you don’t want me speaking to other men, that makes me your girlfriend. Right?”
“You can’t be my girlfriend, honey. You’re too young. And I don’t have a relationship with anyone but my maker. That’s how I live and it’s not going to change.”
“Oh.” She pouts a little, then pushes me away, crossing her arms and getting comfortable in the seat. “Then I guess you can’t make rules about who I speak with.”
Acid gurgles in my belly. “Excuse me?”
“I will accept the rules about only working during your shift and not going anywhere alone.” Her smile is nothing short of angelic. “But I do not accept the other one.”
“You will accept it.”
“No.”
“Sissy,” I growl. “Men are a danger to you.”
“I escaped one father. I don’t need another one.”
It’s a good thing I’m your Daddy, then. Isn’t it? Not your father.
Christ, I don’t know where these thoughts keep coming from. They are wrong. Twisted. I shouldn’t be filled with purpose at the thought of being her Daddy. That is for bored, wealthy men with loose principles. Not me. I’m supposed to be a righteous man.