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

my scalp, and it makes my hair gleam, even before I spritz on the Argan oil.

“Can I bring this brush with me?” I ask, holding it up to the phone.

“Only if you want to be paddled with it.”

I do. I tuck it into my suitcase and twirl around so he can see that I’m ready.

“Happy, baby?”

“Happy that I’ll see you in ten hours,” I say.

“Happy that I’ll be fucking you in ten hours and two minutes?”

I giggle. “That’s still inside the airport.”

“That’s right. I’ve got the handicapped bathroom all picked out.”

“Daddy!” I chide, but I love the idea he’s so hot for me he can’t even wait until we get back to the hotel. “I’ll be thinking about you the whole way.”

“Yeah? You want to wear something on the plane to help with that? There are more toys in the dresser.”

“I don’t need to wear anything on the plane, sir. I’ll be thinking about you anyway. I don’t want to come. I want to be so crazy when I get there that you can bend me over the sink in the bathroom and, um, put it in without any foreplay at all. I want you to be so rough with me, Daddy.”

“Fuck, you’re killing me, baby doll.” He moves the phone down his body to his groin. He’s put his pants back on, but I can see the bulge along his left thigh. “Look at that. How am I going to interview this fucking widow with that sticking out of my pants?”

I giggle. “You could console her in her widowhood.”

“Behave yourself, you and your dirty baby mind. Last thing I want to do is remind her of sex.” He moves the phone so I can see his face again. He hasn’t shaved and dark stubble frames his mouth, defines his sharp jaw. He rubs a hand over it. My skin aches to feel the bristle. “Word from the cruise company is that she wasn’t on the cruise with her husband.”

“That’s awkward,” I commiserate.

“Fucking understatement, baby doll. Not only has her husband died, but she may have found out he was having an affair and was into kink, all at the same time.”

“If she wasn’t on the cruise with him, how much is she going to know, sir?”

“No idea. I never assume anything going into an interview. Tabula rasa, do you know what that is, baby doll?”

“Uh-huh.” I nod. “Blank slate. Do you prepare questions or just go in and see what the person says and where it leads you?”

“Both.” Logan gives me a lopsided grin over the phone. “I start by seeing what the person says and where it leads. If they don’t cover my questions, then I’ll loop back to them. I usually learn more if I let them talk, though. Any cop will tell you that it’s the people who haven’t done anything wrong who are the most eager to justify themselves. If I just let them talk, they usually tell me what I want to know and more.”

I smile at him. “You’re a good listener, too, Daddy.”

“Yeah, but porn stars and guys with undescended testicles don’t unload their life stories on me. Guess I’m just not as approachable as you are, baby doll.” He sighs. “I’m going to have to go, Emmy. She’ll be here in a few minutes and I need to wash up. I know every hand you shake has had a dick in it, but shaking with the hand I whacked off with five minutes ago is probably pushing it.”

I giggle. “Probably, Daddy. I’ll sing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ while I wash the vibrator and think of you.”

“Good girl. Blow me a kiss, baby doll. I’ll see you soon, but not soon enough.”

I blow him ten kisses, which makes him smile, although he looks a little strained. Jet-lag maybe. He waves before the connection goes black.

Wondering what I can do to ease his jet-lag when I see him, other than kiss his feet, which he seemed to really like, I go to wash the vibrator.

For Olivia, who restored my faith.

Chapter One Logan

Widows are the worst part of my job.

Worse than the pain in a client’s eyes when I tell them it’s a family member who has fucked them over. Worse than the three times I’ve been shot at. It’s the uncomprehending grief of the recently widowed that always threatens to rip the heart out of my chest. Their loved one was there yesterday, or two days ago, or ten. Now they’re not. It makes no sense. After being there for years, sometimes decades, the person is simply gone, and the widow has to keep on living as though their world hasn’t just dived headfirst into an empty concrete pool.

Regina Black, or “Reggie” as she asks me to call her, is the same as every other widow I’ve met. She looks hollowed out by grief. Scoured by it. She’s still tan and put-together in a dark brown, linen skirt-suit. She goes through the motions of being okay. But it’s there in her empty eyes, the pallor under her tan.

I want to hug her. Stroke her artfully tousled, bottle-blonde hair. The way I would comfort my baby doll, or any submissive who came to me hurting and needy.

But Reggie Black’s a stranger, a stranger who’s threatening a lawsuit against my client. So, instead, I shake her hand and show her to the circular couch in the suite the cruise line has booked for me at the M Hollywood Hotel. I offer her bottled water, which she takes with a trembling hand.

As I watch her shake, my arms and chest ache. A dull physical pain. I’ve always felt this way around women who were hurting. Long before I realized I was a Dom. Way back when I was a kid.

As Reggie Black drinks her water, I remember racing down the hill by our house in Morecambe to pick up my little sister when she’d fallen