Father (Blood Brotherhood 1)

They split up and go in the directions I have indicated.

“So far, so good,” I say to Crichton. “How were they in the car?”

“Boisterous, sir. Until they fell asleep. Rather like puppies.”

I lift a brow at him. Is that a note of affection in his tone? I can’t imagine they have evoked it themselves. Again, it is the memory of Ivy softening us toward her issue.

“I get the turret!” Nina comes running down the stairs far too quickly. “It’s an octagonal turret. And there’s bookshelves all around it! And the bed is round. And…”

I listen impatiently while she describes my house to me. She sounds far too happy for my liking. She's not here for an enchanted vacation. She's here to atone for her sins.

“You scowl a lot," she observes. “You’ll get frown lines. And that would be a pity because you have great skin for a man your age. What are you, forty? I bet you're older than forty. I bet you’re forty-five, but you could easily pass for thirty-eight. Maybe even thirty-two, in the right light.”

I think she’s trying to compliment me, but there’s a certain intensity in her gaze, because she is not just looking at me. She's inspecting me. She’s taking what she might imagine to be a complete inventory of a quiet English priest with thick spectacles and dark hair a little too long and a little too messy to be stylish.

Her brother has disappeared into his allotted room and does not seem nearly so inclined to emerge. It does not have the benefit of being in the turret. It is the room next to my own, as I suspected the male will be more troublesome than the female. I may have gotten that backward.

“While you are here, you will remain indoors and try not to break any laws. Understand?”

“Yes, Father.”

I made a mistake telling her to call me Father. The way the word curls off her wicked little tongue is positively sinful. I feel myself stir in response, my hardness demanding her softness. I may be a man of the cloth, but I am not bound by requirements of chastity. I am no stranger to the soft, hot interior of a sweet girl. My instincts tell me to reach out, grasp that fiery mane, push her to her knees and occupy her mouth in a far more productive way.

“Go to your room,” I tell her, strained. She is only twenty years of age. Far too young for me, and infinitely too innocent. She is not considered old enough to drink in her country of birth, and yet here she is facing charges for importing several kilos of illegal drugs. I don’t need her to tell me it was not her idea. I have read the reports, and more importantly, I have met her and Jonah. I doubt she knew anything of his idiotic plan until it was too late.

“Back to my room? Already?” She is pouting in a way some might find adorable. I could find it adorable too, if I was not battling the urge to carry her off to my office, bend her over my desk, and fuck her until she screamed. That would only be the beginning of her debasement, the most pedestrian and comprehensible part. When I look at her, something brutal and dark rises inside me. Something that should not be there.

“In this house, when you are told to do something, you will do it. If not, I am prepared to give you the discipline you obviously lack. Understand?”

“Yes, daddy. I mean, Father.”

She has the nerve to laugh, though I can imagine it may be nerves making her mirthful.

We have shared space for almost no time at all and yet there is electricity between us, a charge I know to be dangerous. Sexual desire is nothing to be ashamed of, or afraid of. It is what underlies that desire that concerns me, a twisted, dark thing that has no place in the life of this innocent.

“Go to your room.”

She smiles at me. Why is she smiling? She should be pouting, fretting, being offended, demanding her rights as a grown woman, something, anything other than this damned amusement that makes my palms tingle with the need to touch her.

“Okay,” she says. “I’m going. You don’t have to scowl at me. I’m very grateful to you for getting us out of jail. We’re lucky.”

She thinks she is lucky. She has no idea.

“Take their meals to them in their rooms tonight, Crichton,” I say. “Tomorrow they can have run of the house, but not any rooms with locked doors. Make that clear to them. I will not have my ancestral home turned into a…” Words fail me for the moment. “I do not want them poking their noses where they do not belong.”