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

and holds his arms out so I can cuddle to his chest. “With the time change, you might be up in the middle of the night. If you wake up and can’t get back to sleep right away, wake me. I’ll help you count sheep.”

“Ta, Daddy.” If I wake him in the night, there might be counting, but I don’t think it will involve sheep. I wriggle, trying to find comfortable spots for my arms and legs. As I do, my elbow sinks into a groove in the mattress under the pillows. I lift myself off Logan to inspect it. “Look at this.”

“Hmm?” Logan feels his way along the depression. “That’s a good idea. Here.”

He arranges me so I’m tucked against him, his arm under my shoulders, my arm around his neck. The slot in the mattress makes it possible without ending up in the weird lobster positions I usually twist into to avoid my arm falling asleep. He slides his thigh between mine and I relax bonelessly against him.

“This is so nice.”

“Yeah.” He kisses my forehead. “Crap, Emmy, I forgot your bedtime story.”

“It’s okay, Daddy, I’m too tired.”

“Good girl. Close your eyes, sweetheart. Time for bowbies.”

I giggle softly. “What’s a bowbie?”

“Sleep for tired little girls. Mmm, it’s been a good day, hasn’t it, Emmy?”

When I agree around a yawn, he chuckles and says, “I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

“Me, too.” I haven’t seen my schedule yet, but I’m confident Logan will have given me free time, which is good because I’ve got a blog tour to do and although my PA does the posting for me, I like to visit the blogs and interact with the host and readers. I’m also confident Logan will have scheduled more playtime. Hopefully lots of playtime, but if he needs to work more than he did today, that’s okay, too. It’s not like there’s any shortage of entertainment on this boat.

I yawn again and snuggle deeper, letting myself drift into dreams of exploring dungeon after dungeon.

5

Emily falls asleep on my shoulder in less than five minutes. I thought she’d hit her wall. I didn’t want to drag her away from the scenes when she was clearly enjoying herself, little voyeur that she is. But there were purple shadows smudging her big eyes, and she was yawning every time she thought I wasn’t looking. We have nine more days aboard. Plenty of time to see and do everything without wearing her out on the first night.

We’ve also got a full day tomorrow. Emily hasn’t seen her schedule yet, because I left it in her cabin while she was at lunch and she hasn’t been in there for more than a few minutes since we boarded, but it’s a busy day. I tried to balance her free time and our playtime, but between the scene, her meet-up with Vashi, and a game I want to play before dinner, I’ve carved into her free time by several hours. I’ll have to make it up to her on Sunday. I don’t want her getting resentful of how much time I’m demanding from her.

Not that I’m sure she’d be resentful. The only thing she seemed unhappy about today was when I left her alone for the Ladies’ Lunch. The rest of the day she was content. More than content. She was skipping around all day, when she wasn’t impaled on my cock or the plug, like she didn’t have a care in the world. Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe I should stop worrying about turning her life upside-down and just bask in the happiness of a satisfied submissive.

It’s an unfamiliar feeling; Miranda was never satisfied. That’s what kept her coming back. Looking back, I can admit I used it as a crutch. She wouldn’t commit to me, so I made sure she always left me needy and wanting. And I got so used to it, that I did it with my other subs.

Emily’s opened my eyes to what a bad pattern that is. I don’t want Emily to go away from every interaction unsatisfied, not emotionally, anyway. I’ve met every one of her emotional needs today, even the ones I didn’t know she had, like that incredibly painful moment with her bunny. That’s why she’s such a happy girl.

Emily sighs and shifts on my shoulder and I take the opportunity to roll her over so I can spoon her. Her breathing stays deep and even, like when she tranced before dinner. That was unexpected. My bottoms have always needed extended scenes to hit subspace. Emily dropped into a waxy trance just from me manipulating the pressure points in her wrists. She said she hasn’t been hypnotized before, so it couldn’t be an implanted trigger. She’s just very hypnotizable.

Lots of trauma survivors are.

I already know there’s some deep trauma in Emily’s past. I assumed it was her divorce, but that just goes to show what you get when you assume. Tabula rasa. That’s the way I approach investigations; that’s got to be my motto in dealing with Emily, too. She’s not like my previous bottoms. Treating her the same way I treated them would be a mistake. She’s much more vulnerable than Mir or Luisa, the most extreme masochist I’ve been with. I love Emily’s vulnerability, but I have to be respectful of it, too. Push her too hard and I could break her trust irrevocably. It’s been broken before, I can tell. The fine, parallel scars on her thighs, the calorie-counting. Those are mechanisms for coping with a pain so deep, she has no other way of managing it.

I’m her Dom, not her therapist, but I know we’re going to have to deal with the source of her pain eventually. It’s not something I can ask her about. Not yet. Not while her trust is still tentative. But I’ll get us there, one baby step at a time. It’ll be worth the effort. I can already see the prize at the far side of the