Daddy PI: Book 1 of the Daddy PI Casefiles Frost, J (acx book reading txt) 📖

wanted to beg for everything. If she wanted a sandwich for lunch, she had to beg me for a tenner before she left for work. She had to earn it and sometimes I made her go without. Not because I was trying to starve her, but because she craved being denied from time to time. I know that sounds cruel and is probably hard to understand—”

Actually, I think I do understand. My online friend Posypony is an emotional masochist and it sounds like Logan’s former sub was, too. I honestly thought Posypony’s Dom was abusing her until she explained what she gets out of humiliation play. It’s the same thing I get out of bondage, rough sex, and physical pain. She says humiliation makes her fly, makes her free, and I totally understand desiring that feeling.

“She was an emotional masochist, wasn’t she?”

“Yes. That’s not you. I understand why humiliation play is a hard limit for you, given what you went through in high school. To be honest, humiliation play isn’t always a turn-on for me, either. I was able to give Luisa what she needed for a while, but over the long haul, we weren’t a good fit.”

“Is that why you broke up?”

“We didn’t break up so much as I helped her find a Dom who was a better fit. I asked around at Blunts and someone recommended him. We interviewed him together several times before he flew out to meet her. Emotional masochists are vulnerable to abuse and Luisa had been abused before. But her new Dom’s a good man, particularly for a bloody tantric vampire. Luisa moved to San Francisco to live with him last year and they’re getting married next spring, so I think it worked out pretty well.”

“Not for you, Daddy.” I cup his cheek and look into those dark eyes to see if there’s any lingering pain.

“Worked out great for me. If I’d still been topping Luisa, I wouldn’t have found my little girl.”

No pain. His eyes are clear and warm, smiling back at me. He believed giving up his lover to another man was the right thing then. He believes taking control of my money is the right thing now. My daddy will always do the right thing, even if he has to reshape his own boundaries to do it.

“Best Daddy ever,” I whisper, cuddling into his chest and pressing my cheek against his heart.

He chuckles and kisses the top of my head.

* * *

After we shower, Logan checks me all over again, rubs ointments into my sore places, and puts a teddy bear Band-Aid on my shoulder where he broke my skin. Seeing that he got me teddy bear Band-Aids makes me nearly melt through the floor.

He puts me in another of the dresses he’s brought. This one floats down to my thighs from wide ribbon straps over my shoulders. The bodice and kerchief hem are embroidered with pink and blue butterflies. I can’t help twirling around so the butterflies flutter and swirl. Logan watches me with an indulgent smile and offers me his arm so I can skip beside him as we take the elevator up to the very top of the ship where the restaurant is on the same level as the bridge.

The restaurant’s decorated like a traditional Japanese tea house. Sliding rice-paper screens create private rooms, where we eat, sitting on big cushions at a lacquered table. A waitress in a kimono slides open a screen and kneels next to our table. Logan orders for both of us: salmon, salmon and more salmon, spread across a sashimi platter, a sushi sampler, and a variety of hand rolls.

“Ta, Daddy,” I say, once the waitress closes the screen behind her. “I love salmon.”

“I remember.”

His grin, even more than him remembering my fish preference, lifts my heart. That night in L.A. was harder for him than it was for me. If he can smile about it now, I did my job as his bottom.

“Is there a reason you want me to have lots of Omega-Three tonight?”

“There might be, little girl. Depends on how defiant Princess Amber is.”

I prop my chin on my hands. “Princess Amber is the most defiant princess who ever lived. More defiant than Tamar of Georgia. More defiant than Princess Buttercup, even.”

“More defiant than Buttercup, huh?”

“Well, before she realizes the Dread Pirate Roberts is actually Wesley. She’s not so defiant after that. So maybe more like Tamar. She pretty much just killed everybody she didn’t like. When she decided she didn’t like her husband anymore, she exiled him to Constantinople.”

“Did she now?” Logan tips his head to the side. “Princess Tamar might not be the best role-model for you, little girl. Not if you want to get out of this scene alive. Is Princess Amber going to melt for the Black Knight after a flogging the way Buttercup does when she realizes Wesley has come back for her?”

“No way. Princess Amber never melts. Princess Amber is a Titantic-sinking iceberg.”

Logan laughs. I love his laugh. It makes me feel like my chest is full of fairy lights.

“A Titanic-sinking iceberg, huh? Well, we’ll see about that. I have a flogger with Princess Amber’s name on it. Might melt that iceberg.”

Yikes. And yum. Logan hasn’t flogged me yet, but I love-love-love a flogging. I mean, I hate it at first when I’m scared and it stings. But it gets me into subspace super-fast and once I’m there I love the thuddy-thump of a flogger more than anything.

“I have a dress for you to wear during the scene, my defiant little princess,” Logan tells me as the appetizers arrive and he starts popping open edamame pods. “No undies for this scene.”

“Okay, Daddy,” I say, after he feeds me a mouthful of beans and I chew ten times.

“The dress is designed to shred as I flog you so I don’t want you worrying about it tearing and getting ruined, because it’s going to be in tatters by the time I’m done with you.”

That