The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The First Collection by Frost, J (great novels .txt) 📕

will give her some pain relief and also break her down a little more.

“How can I expect Emily to be honest with me if I’m not honest with her? Truth is, I am scared,” I admit. “The running away thing scares the shit out of me. I nearly have a heart attack every time she does it. The idea of Emily squaring off with Rachel or Miranda also scares the shit out of me. What if one of them really hurt her? They’re each twice her size and she’s such a little pacifist that she won’t even let me kill spiders. To say nothing about the shit they say to her that takes me weeks to undo. The rules are designed to help her avoid confrontation and to give me some fucking peace of mind. She knows how to follow them. She did it perfectly when Pence was an asshole to her. She just needs to get past her insecurity about my previous relationships and she’ll be able to do it with my exes, too.”

Javier folds his hands over his knee. “And you think this punishment will get her there?”

“Would you stop undermining his damn scene?” Ten growls over his shoulder, still watching Emily like a hawk.

“It’s a legitimate question. I understand now how Logan’s constructing the scene but not why he’s giving Emily such extreme pain. This isn’t about rule-breaking. It’s about her insecurities undermining her submission. He’s pushing her towards a catharsis. Wouldn’t a spanking or flogging have gotten her there?”

I shake my head while watching my little girl rock.

“I know Emily seems delicate,” I tell Javier. “But she’s not. She has a steel core. It’s just wrapped in this dirty skin of disbelief. She’s able to sexualize a spanking or flogging. They don’t pierce that skin. I need to rip it away. That requires pain she can’t eroticize.”

Javier nods. “There you go,” he says, to Ten’s back. “He had a perfectly good answer.”

“Thanks,” I say drily.

“You’d wonder what was wrong if I didn’t question you,” Javier tells me.

“It’s part of his dubious charm,” Maude says. “Getting back to that refreshing honesty, Logan, where is this all going?”

I shoot her a frown. “What do you mean?”

“Why work so hard on getting beneath her insecurities?”

I feel my frown become a scowl. “I’m trying to clear away the obstacles to her happiness.”

“Her happiness matters to you?”

“Of course, it does. What kind of question is that?”

Maude waves her hand at my sweating, sobbing submissive. “You haven’t collared her.”

Here we go. Mother Maude.

“I’m going to. Give me a bloody chance.”

“She wears what you both call a memory chain, without a lock—”

“Maude, fuck’s sake. I bought a lock. I’m offering it to her for our three-month anniversary. She knows I am.”

Maude sniffs. “Did you buy her a ring, too?”

She’s worse than Lizbeth.

“I don’t need to.”

“So, this is just temporary.”

“No, it’s not temporary. Not that it’s any of your business. I have my mother’s ring, and, yes, I will be offering that to her on our three-month anniversary, too. Now, butt out.”

Maude sits back in satisfaction, crosses her legs, and taps her red-soled shoe in the air. “She might prefer a pink diamond.”

I’ve never heard of a pink diamond. “How the fuck do you know that?”

Javier snorts. “One of her insidious knitting interrogations. You know the one, where she sits there looking like the world’s most benevolent grandmother, while she pries out every secret of your heart?”

I’ve been on the receiving end of a couple of those. “When did this happen?”

“On the train back from San Diego,” Javier says. “I caught the tail end of it, but I missed the part about a pink diamond.”

I can have the stone in Mum’s ring replaced with a pink diamond if that’s what Emily wants. I love my little girl in pink.

“I did, however,” Javier continues. “Catch the part about eloping to Vegas.”

“What?” I whip my head back and forth between Javier and Maude. “She wants to get married in Vegas?”

Maude nods.

“By Elvis,” Javier says. I love the man like the very meddlesome uncle I don’t have, but I’m going to kick his teeth in if he doesn’t quit smirking at me like that. “Viva Las Vegas.”

“Sexy Elvis or fat Elvis?” I ask.

“I didn’t think to ask,” Maude admits.

“You’re an amateur, woman. Everyone knows that’s the crucial question,” Ten throws over his shoulder. “Logan, I’m not happy with her color.”

“Uh-huh.” I’ve been watching the blood drain from Emily’s cheeks. She’s not so pale yet that I’m worried about her, but it’s definitely time for some pain relief.

I check my phone as I rise. She’s only a few minutes off the half-way mark. More than good enough.

Chapter Fifteen Emily

I thought I understood pain. The gnawing pressure of a clamp. The burning kiss of a flogger’s tips. The white-hot shock of the cane’s cut. The breath-stealing slice of the tawse.

None of it prepared me to ride a wooden pony.

The pain comes in waves. Scalding. Icy. Scalding again. At first it was like a sunburn, taut and itching as my weight on the unyielding rail crushed the capillaries all the way from my pubic bone to my tail bone, interspersed with shockingly awful pinches as my skin caught and stretched. As the swelling grew, my groin went numb. That should have been a respite, but it wasn’t. It was the numbness of nerves fraying, and it was accompanied by the most unbearable pressure. My body keeps trying to flinch away from the pain, but I lock my muscles and hold each position, knowing that rocking back and forth will only make it worse, layer bruise on bruise. My muscles scream from the strain and that brings the pain back, beating through the numbness.

I was crying from the pain before Daddy lifted my headphones and redirected my thinking, which was muddy and muddled anyway. Sometimes pain gives me clarity, but not this pain. This pain is ugly, throbbing, cruel. There’s no purity in it. It reduces me instead of