Page 35 of Ruthless Daddy
I let the silence build until it was almost too much.
Then, “What I’m about to say—” I stopped, started over. “This isn’t a pickup line, or a game, or an excuse to get something from you. I need you to hear me all the way through before you decide.”
She nodded, once.
I took a breath.
“Do you know what a Daddy Dom is?” I asked.
She made a face like she wanted to laugh, but didn’t. “Sure. That’s the thing where a man acts like your dad and spanks you when you’re bad, right?”
There was a raw edge to it, the kind of humor that had been weaponized to defend against a lifetime of men saying things they shouldn’t. I let her have it. “Close,” I said. “But not quite.”
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Enlighten me.”
I spoke slow, careful, like I was translating from another language.
“There’s two pieces to it. The first is structure—rules, routines, someone paying attention to how you live your life and making sure you’re okay. That’s the Daddy part. The man gives you boundaries, takes responsibility, notices when you’re tired or hungry or about to burn out. He doesn’t punish because he likes it—he does it because he cares.”
She didn’t say anything.
“The second part is what most people know about. Sex. Discipline. Power. But that’s not the core of it. The core is the care. The rest grows out of that, if you want it. Some people do this with no sex at all. For some, it’s just a way to feel safe. For others—” I stopped, searching for the word, “it’s the way they feel most themselves.”
She didn’t laugh, or roll her eyes. She just listened, stone still, hands locked together between her knees.
I watched her profile, the clean line of her jaw, the way her lips pressed together like she was biting back a comment. Her hands were laced so tight between her knees that her knuckles were white, and I could see every muscle in her forearms pulled taut. She didn’t break the silence, didn’t make it easier for me, and I respected her for it.
I went on, even though every word felt like walking blind along the edge of a roof. “There are women in my family who live this way. Men, too, of course.” I kept my voice level, almost clinical, the only way I could get it out. I didn’t mention the Carusos by name—old code, don’t out people who trusted you with their damage. “You’d never know unless you looked, but this? It’s not just a thing for weirdos on the internet. There’s real people, real couples, who do this because it works for them. They build their whole lives on it. I’m telling you because I want you to have the truth.”
The wind picked up. It blew a dusting of ice crystals across the path, glittering in the soft gold of the morning that barelytouched anything but the rooftops. Angela squinted into the wind, and I saw something move in her jaw, an almost-flinch, like she’d just realized she was in a place with no exits. She had to know what she was to me. She had to know I’d been holding all of this in since the first minute I met her, and probably longer.
“I don’t want to take anything from you you don’t want to give,” I said, and made myself keep eye contact with the frozen fountain, not her. “Not your body, not your time, not your trust. If you decide this isn’t for you, or if you just want to be left alone, I will do exactly that. I will keep you safe, I will make sure you have what you need, and I will never touch you again.”
She turned toward me then, not all the way, just enough that I could see her eyes. They were wide and flat, unreadable, a technician’s eyes in an autopsy room. She took me apart, cataloged every word, every movement, like she was storing it in the part of her brain that never forgot anything. Her face didn’t change, but her hands unclenched a little. She let them rest on her thighs, fingers splayed, as if to steady herself.
“You’re telling me you want to be my . . . daddy?” Her voice was so even it might have been a joke, but it wasn’t.
“I want you to be my Little. Only if you want it. Only if it would help. It’s who I am. It’s who I have to be.” I expected to feel shame laying it out like that, but I didn’t. I felt lighter. Like the part of me that always braced for a lie had finally stood down.
She made a noise then, deep in the throat, half-laugh and half-sob, and it vanished into the wind before it could coalesce into anything bigger. She looked away, at the river, and the muscles in her face worked as she put her own feelings through the shredder.
I waited. I let her have the space. A seagull landed on the rim of the fountain, squawked once, then flared away, leavingnothing but a webbed print in the slush. I traced the movement, kept my eyes on the horizon, let her have her silence.
She said, “What would that look like? In your head, what would it be?” There was something in her voice, a surgical precision, as if she was interrogating a suspect, not agreeing to anything. But it was something. A first step.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “I’d make sure you ate. I’d make sure you slept. I’d give you rules, but not just for my convenience—rules that kept you safe, rules you could push against if you needed to, but that were real, that meant something. I’d pay attention when nobody else did. And if you needed discipline, I’d give it, but never as punishment—only as a way to help you reset.”
She was quiet. Her jaw worked, once, and I could see the shadow of something—anger, maybe, or relief, or both—move across her face. She held onto her own knees like they anchored her to the planet.
I said, “And if you ever wanted it to stop, you could end it at any time. No anger, no guilt. Just done.”
We sat in silence. The wind gusted, louder now, and I could see the red coming up in her cheeks, not from cold but from the force of keeping herself under control. I wanted to take her hand, but I knew better. She’d either flinch or fold, and I didn’t want to gamble. So I just let it hang in the air between us.
She said, softer now, “You want to take care of me?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I do.” I paused, forced myself to keep the next part clean. “Not because I think you can’t take care of yourself. Nothing like that. I feel like you shouldn’t have to do it alone. If you don’t want to, I mean.”
Another long pause. She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve, then redirected, sharp as a blade, “What about you? What does it give you?”
