Page 111 of Hunt Me, Daddy

I filed that away.

I filed it in the folder I had created for things about Kit that were going to require extended future attention.

That folder was getting large.

Afterward, I kept her right where she was because she needed a moment and I was not going to pretend otherwise by moving her too soon, and I also needed a moment, and I was not going to pretend otherwise either.

My hand rested on her lower back. She was still breathing hard. Her backside radiated heat against the air, deeply flushed, the kind of red that would turn to pink by morning and be gone by the next day but would sit with her in every chair until then. The thought of that produced a warmth in my chest that was entirely inappropriate and entirely real.

I had put that there.

She had earned it, I had put it there, she was over my knee with her face in the cushion and her body spent, and the thing I felt was not triumph.

It was quieter than that.

It was a feeling that sat right in my ribs rather than my head.

I drew her panties back up with care, smoothing the fabric over skin that made her hiss at the contact. Then her leggings, slowly, working around the heat of her. She did not help, which I suspected was partly because she was still catching her breath and partly because allowing me to dress her was its own kind of concession and she was not ready to examine it yet.

I helped her sit up.

She moved stiffly, too fast at first, then stopped when the fact that sitting hurt registered across her face.

Good.

She should remember.

“You actually spanked me,” she said.

Her voice was unsteady, which she was working very hard to hide by phrasing it as an accusation.

“Yes. But you and I both know you earned it, didn’t you, little girl?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, Daddy,” she whispered, biting her lip nervously.

“There’s my good girl.”

She looked at me. Her eyes were still wet at the edges, her face flushed, her mouth set in the specific pout of a woman who was furious and embarrassed and not entirely certain those were the only things she was feeling.

“I’m still mad.”

“I know.”

The two words came quietly, without the usual architecture of self-defense around them. I looked at her. She did not look away.

“I hate that you keep knowing things,” she muttered.

I lifted my hand and brushed one damp strand of hair from her cheek.

She stayed still.

“You were very brave,solnyshko,” I said.

“That is such a weird thing to say after spanking someone that hard,” she said, her lower lip pushing out in a delicious pout.