Chapter Three
Aubrey blew heated breath on her hands, rubbing briskly while she waited in the truck for any sign of Branch coming back through the swirling snow. Technically, it was no longer blizzard conditions. According to the radio, it had been downgraded to a simple storm, but it was still freaking cold out there. In the brief ten or so minutes since Branch had zipped into the hotel lobby to see if that blinking No Vacancy sign was telling the truth, the temperature had dropped from toasty to half-past frozen.
She hoped they had a room. This was the third place they’d stopped. Either there was a convention—unlikely—in the incredibly small town of Concordia or this was where everyone had stopped to wait out the weather.
She craned to catch a glimpse of Branch through the hotel lobby window, but she could barely see anything through the narrow gap in the snow building on the driver’s window. Already the windshield was blanketed and still, the fat flakes were falling. Back in her own car when she’d had a temperature gauge to check, it had been sixteen-degrees. If it was higher than twelve-degrees now, she’d eat her own fingers. At least they’d be warm.
A shadow crossed the gap in the snowed-over window. The truck rocked as Branch yanked the door open and jumped in.
“Je-sus!” he growled. “It’s cold out there!”
Fumbling to get the key back into the ignition, he cranked the heat up, full blast. They dove to get their hands into the gush of hot air from opposite heater vents.
“Did they have a room?” Aubrey asked, rubbing her hands in relief.
“Good news or bad news?” he countered cheerfully.
“Oh God…” Aubrey groaned, tsked, and then made her choice. Whenever news was offered like this, it was almost never really good. “Bad news. Hit me with that first.”
“Why, yes, they do have a room.”
She blinked at him. “I asked for the bad news first.”
His grin said “wait for it”. “Single queen. Plus, they were down a cleaning lady, so nothing’s been touched since it was last used.”
“Please, dear God, let the good news involve the hotel giving us clean sheets and letting us change the bed ourselves.”
He brightened. “Yes. That was the first thing I asked.”
“Do they have any extra blankets?”
“And that was the second thing. No, they don’t. They ran out of those about two hours ago.”
“Okay,” she hedged. “What’s the good news?”
“Guess whose conjured Daddy got the last room in town? Be a good girl, and I won’t make you sleep on the floor.”
Clapping both hands over her face again, Aubrey groaned. Unfortunately, she was way too practical and way too cold to want to argue. “Sounds great.”
“Yes, it does.” Putting the truck in gear, he pulled around the side of the hotel and parked as near to the door as the twenty-some other vehicles which were already there would allow. “Grab your stuff.”
Aubrey grabbed her bear first, then her duffel bag and purse from the backseat of the extended cab. He had a duffel bag, albeit his was twice the size of hers. They half-walked, half-slid to the rear door, finding traction by stepping on the new-fallen snow, sinking almost knee-deep. Underneath, however, everything was ice, and some spots were slick.
A rush of warm air enveloped them when he opened the door, holding it while she entered first and then taking the lead as they walked down the Lost-in-the-70s-style hall. Their room was right under the stairs and across the hall from the ice and pop machines, but Aubrey wasn’t about to complain. At least, they had a room. Besides, the worst hotel stays always made the best stories.
It was a trucker hotel. From the outside, under almost two feet of snow, it had been hard to tell; not from the inside. Everything looked old. Someone, somewhere in the last thirty years had tried to update. Even with new carpet and a paint job which was perhaps only a year old, the architecture dated the place as did the tiny box of a room. So did the heating unit. Rather than thermostats on the wall, the room had been supplied with a huge, clunky beige machine which sat under the window. It rattled when Branch switched it on, but put out a gust of hot air.
“Do you need the bathroom?” he asked, dropping his duffel on the foot of the bed.
She slept on a queen-size at home. Up until this moment, she had no idea how small they could be.
“Aubrey?”
Still hovering in the alcove where she’d hung her coat, she managed a smile. “I’m okay.”
“Good. I call it.” He slipped past her into a bathroom so small he had to step between the tub and toilet to shut the door.
Well, she wasn’t going to sleep in the hallway, and she sure didn’t want to sleep in the truck. Never in her life though, had she shared a hotel room, much less a bed with a stranger. Approaching the small and getting-smaller-by-the-step queen, she wedged herself in between the bed frame and the wall to set her bear on the nightstand and her bag on the floor. Hands on her knees, she sat, bouncing twice to test the softness of the mattress. The springs weren’t new, but she almost preferred sagging in a few spots to hard as a brick.
“Have you checked for bedbugs?” he asked when he came out of the bathroom.
Aubrey jumped up off the bed, brushing at the sudden crawling she could feel on her butt with alternating hands. “N-no, I didn’t think…”
Thumbing for her to move, Branch took the bed apart, tossing the coverings to the floor in layers. Leaving him to crawl the seams of the mattress, Aubrey grabbed her duffel and slipped into the bathroom. She killed time and the crawling sensation by taking a shower. The sluice of hot water pouring down her body, into the bottom of the lime green, 70s-era tub, helped her relax.
She’d really made a fool of herself today. Not only had she told a perfect stranger about her deepest, darkest, sexual secrets, but she’d told him he was her magically created Daddy. He could have made things really awkward for her in the following hours while they had been stuck in his truck together. He hadn’t though. Truth be told, he’d been kind of sweet.
If she’d picked herself up at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere only to be emotionally unloaded on like that, she honestly didn’t think she’d have kept going the way he had. She might not have left herself standing on the roadside in the middle of a blizzard, but she absolutely would have left herself at the first open gas station she’d come across. They’d passed a couple of them as they’d crawled from one crowded hotel to another through Concordia, and yet, here they were, still together. Thankfully, they hadn’t had to continue to Belleville.
There might have been a hotel further up the road with two beds, a part of her whispered. What are you going to do with this man in one bed? She was going to deal, that’s what she was going to do.
She did everything she could think of to waste time in the vain hope that he might, maybe, be asleep before she got out. The hotel soap was abrasive and the water was hard, but that’s what she carried lotion for, right? She shaved her legs, then instantly regretted it. Spiky legs could only be an asset in a situation like this. She lotioned from toes to top and instantly regretted that, too. Not only was she now baby-soft and smooth feeling, but she also smelled good. “Naked in the Woods” good. Of all the scents to bring with her today why did she have to pack that one?
As if he would know what that smell was, her brain scoffed. Relax already.
She was trying. She shuffled through what few clothes she’d brought in search of something she could wear to sleep in instead of the sheer pink baby doll nightie she’d packed. Nighttime was her Little time. Yes, she’d planned to stay in her parents’ house, but she always went to bed hours after they did. She knew from experience, she was destined to have at least three hours of Little time, locked in the safe haven of her old bedroom. Her coloring books spread out around her, and YouTube dinosaur documentaries playing on TV, all while dressed in a nightie so sheer it left nothing to the imagination. No way could she wear that nightie tonight. That left her with two pairs of jeans, a super-soft, thigh-length purple sweater, the little black dress she’d planned to wear if they went out for her birthday, and a t-shirt that said, “Get your safeword ready” with a picture of a pair of handcuffs. Her mother had sent her that shirt. She’d seen the handcuffs and thought it had something to do with law enforcement.
No way in hell was she going to wear that t-shirt in front of Branch. Heat burned all the way to her toes at the thought. No way could she sleep in jeans, either. Which meant she was going to have to wear her sweater or that little black dress to bed and what would he think about that? What if he got ideas? What if she wanted him to get ideas? The heat deep inside her flared hotter, particularly in the tips of her tightening nipples. She touched one, tweaking the budded flesh before she could stop. The zing of that tweak zipped straight through the middle of her to zap her between her legs. Heat followed, flaring pure want in the most insidious place. She almost touched there, too, before she caught herself.
Her reflection in the steam-fogged mirror looked both guilty and flushed. She tore her gaze from it long enough to crawl into her sweater, which wasn’t thick enough to hide how excited her nipples had become. Hopefully, he was asleep. Hopefully, the light would be out, and she could just jump into bed, rip the covers up over her, and pray there were no bedbugs (thanks a lot, Branch) so she could sleep.
What if he was waiting for her to help him put the bed back together again? Oh, God…
Hand on the bathroom doorknob, Aubrey held her breath. Bracing against all the scary, erotic unknowns lurking in the night ahead, she straightened her spine and ventured back out into the room.
Branch was not asleep, but he had remade the bed or, rather, he’d thrown the layers back on in their proper order. The bottom sheet looked to be tucked in, but the blankets weren’t. Management must have been by while she’d been hiding in the bathroom. There were two loosely bundled wads of sheets on the floor, just inside the front door, so at least they had clean sheets.
Branch had taken advantage of her long shower to change t-shirts. He was still in jeans, albeit a fresh pair. The old ones were draped over a chair in front of the heater so the wet ends of the legs could dry. His leather coat hung neatly in the closet beside hers. There was something so intimate and arousing in the way the big coat pressed hers up against the wall. How weird was it that she could feel that press in the low throb now tugging at her nipples? Suckling at them until the peaks tightened even harder. His duffel bag was on the floor in front of the dresser. The TV was on and Daddy—Branch, her brain corrected—lay propped up against the headboard. His long legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankles while he surfed through the available channels.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” he announced with a twist of a smile as soon as she came around the corner.
The abrupt oddness of his greeting was so unexpected, she forgot to be embarrassed.
“Uh…” Her mind floundered a moment. “Good news?”
“There’s more snow coming through the TV than there is outside, but Disney’s one of the clear ones. And guess what; they’re playing Moana.”
Her tummy twitched, torn in equal parts lust and Littlehood. “Bad news?”
Rolling his head to look at her, his crooked smile became even more crooked as he muted the sound on the TV. The moans and groaned encouragements of two people in the throes of love-making were unmistakable. They were next door, directly on the other side of the wall behind their headboard.
Aubrey’s face colored. She felt the overwhelming, sunburn-sting of pinkness sliding up her chest to scald her cheeks.
“It’s okay.” Patting the rumpled blankets beside him, Branch switched the sound back on. “If they get too loud, we’ll just turn the volume—”
The lights flickered once, then everything went off. If the people on the other side of the wall noticed the power outage, they were too deep into it to care. The lights, the rattling heating unit, the TV, and the noise-canceling cover of Moana’s opening song—everything abandoned them to near absolute darkness. Near absolute darkness, but not total. Outside, the glow of the snow became a light of its own. Were the window curtains not drawn, the whole room would have basked in the ghostly grayness that currently edged in around the ruffled pleats. A better source of light came from Branch’s cellphone when he flicked on the flashlight app.
“Oh,” Branch said with a chuckle, “that’s great.”
He raised his cellphone, sending the shadows of the rumpled bedding racing along the wall and shivers of absolute trepidation scrambling on needle fingers up her back. The black inside the closet was monstrously deep, and the shadows yawned out at her from underneath the untucked blankets.
She’d feel silly about it later, but her reaction was as involuntary as her panic was real. Locking her lips didn’t quite smother the squeal that erupted, and her bare feet barely touched the floor as she leapt for the safety of the bed.
Branch never missed a beat. He ripped the blankets back, and when she scrambled into the pocket between the newly exposed top and bottom sheets, he whipped them all the way up to her nose. That he never once laughed at her was something she would appreciate forever, especially when she clutched her own legs and shuddered.
“Want me to check under the bed?” he asked, completely serious with his offer.
Aubrey shook her head. She felt stupid enough as it was, but that didn’t automatically kill her unease or stop her shivers.
“I’m okay,” she lied, a little of her Big already creeping back into her tone. “How long do you think the lights will be out for?”
“No idea, princess. Hopefully, not long enough for the heat to bleed out of this room.” When he started to get up, the panic rippled through her all over again.
“Where are you going?”
“It’s okay. I’m not leaving.” He stretched far enough to snag the shoulder strap of his duffel bag, hauling it up onto the bed. Digging through the side pocket, he withdrew a charging battery and cord. “Here we go.” Plugging his phone into the portable charger, he dropped the duffel back on the floor before settling himself once more on the bed. “Perpetual light. Sadly, what I don’t have is anything to keep us entertained. Not even a deck of cards.”
He still wasn’t laughing at her. Aubrey relaxed a little more.
“I have some coloring books,” she offered.
“No, princess.” Stretching his long legs out across the bed again, he crossed his ankles and folded his hands behind his head. “The light’s enough to keep monsters at bay, but not enough to see by. You’ll go blind.”
His tone was all cheerful nurturing and implied strictness. The combination leeched the lingering stiffness from her spine.
“I don’t think I’ll really go blind,” she hedged. “My books have really thick, black lines. It’s easy to stay inside them, even with markers.”
“What are we going to do then?” The Little in her was too thrilled by that look to rebel.
“Wait a few minutes to see if the power comes back on. If not, I guess we’re going to bed a little early tonight.”
Aubrey eased back against the headboard. Side-by-side, they stared across the empty room, the only sounds were the enthusiastic moans from the room behind them.
“Give it about ten minutes.” Branch checked his wristwatch. “These things either come back on within ten minutes or they’re out for a long time.”
If it was out longer than ten minutes, the room was going to get cold. With outside temperatures in the teens, it might get colder than the bed’s single blanket and thin comforter could counter. Biting her bottom lip, Aubrey nestled down under the blanket and tried to plot out exactly what she would do if the power did stay out. There was one bed and one set of blankets that was it. Yes, there was a chair by the window, but she already knew she wasn’t going to make him sleep on it any more than she would volunteer to sleep there.
They were grownups. This wasn’t the fifteenth century. They didn’t need a chaperone or a line of swords to halve the mattress; the queen-sized bed wasn’t big enough for that, anyway. It wasn’t like they had to answer to anyone or convince people they had or hadn’t been good all night. They didn’t have to tell anyone at all. Nobody in the world had to know about this.
She would know though. Her skin was tingling everywhere because of what she knew.
The steady knocking on the wall at her back quickened its pace. She could feel the vibrations through the headboard. Branch could too, she could tell by the way he was smiling. It was more of a wince as though he wanted to apologize, even though it wasn’t his fault.
“Hey,” he said brightly. “How about a game?”
Anything beat sitting in the dark, being serenaded by the amorous couple next door.
“What kind of game?”
“How about ‘Truth or Dare’? Ever play that before?”
“Yeah,” she scoffed. “At a slumber party once. I think I was twelve.”
“Then you know the rules. Ours will be a more adult version, just FYI.”
Her body tingled. Clearing her throat, she shifted where she sat. “Okay.”
“I’ll go first. Truth or Dare?”
Aubrey licked her lips. Just the mystery of what he might ask if she said “dare” made her thighs clench under the covers. “Truth.”
“What made you bring the bear in?” he asked, leveling a crooked smile at her.
Of all the unlikely questions she expected him to ask, she’d never considered that one. She looked at Potentially Demonic Bear sitting on the tiny nightstand on her side of the bed. “Well… I figure I have a fifty-fifty chance of him coming to life in the middle of the night, wreaking havoc against anyone who gets in the way of him obtaining a new body.”
“A, that’s the plot of Chucky and B, if you seriously thought that, why would you bring him in with you?”
“If he’s going to come alive in the night, do you really want his most recent gripe to be against the two people who left his fuzzy butt in a freezing cold truck?”
He laughed. “No more scary movies for you.”
She loved that he was getting all Daddy-strict on her.
“Your turn,” he said.
“Truth,” she told him.
“No, see. That’s not how it works. You’re supposed to ask—”
“I know.” But if he said dare, who would she banish to the closet with him for five minutes of serious snogging time? She was the only one here! And there were monsters in the closet. She’d seen that Chiller Channel original. It didn’t end well.
“All right,” Branch said with a breathy chuckle. “I’ll take truth.”
Her heart fluttered, trying hard not to skip a beat. Aubrey scrubbed her suddenly damp palms against her blanket-covered legs. “Have you ever been a Daddy for real?”
“A Daddy-Dom? Yes. Twice before.”
Her heart skipped anyway. “Did you like it?”
His smile softened. So, did his eyes. “Very much.”
“What’s your favorite part?”
“Aren’t I only supposed to answer one question?” he countered pointedly. “I’ll answer this one, but then it’s my turn again.”
She really loved it when he gave her that semi-stern, mostly smiling, knowing look.
He rested his head against the wall, thinking quietly while the woman next door gasped out, “Yes! There! Right there! Oh, my God, oh!”
“Seriously, all the parts are good parts in my opinion.” He shot her a sideways look. “I like the nurturing parts, taking care of my babygirl, letting her know in those hundreds of tiny unspoken ways that I’ll always be there for her. I like the guidance, helping her make good decisions. Whether it’s how to avoid a potentially bad career move or a gentle reminder that she can’t sit down in the middle of the kitchen floor, eat half a bag of chocolate chips, and call that a nutritious breakfast.”
“I would never do that with chocolate chips.” She wrinkled her nose.
“I didn’t say you would.”
“Coffee-Nut M&Ms, on the other hand…”
Branch rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “And let’s not forget the discipline.”
“I don’t mind if we forget the discipline.” Aubrey was enjoying herself too much to be truly contrite, though she did attempt, at least, to look the part when he mock frowned at her.
“Uh huh.” He didn’t look convinced. “There are even parts of that that I enjoy. The scolding, the holding, taking a naughty girl’s pants and panties down to her knees before bending her over mine and painting her bottom such a brilliant shade of red that she can’t help but—”
“Uunnggghhh!” The scream from the other side of the wall was as mortifyingly well-timed as it was orgasmic, but instead of faltering to a stop, the pounding of the headboard quickened, yet again.
“Okay, that’s it.” Rolling out of bed, Branch clapped his hands and briskly rubbed. “How about we play a different game? This one is called, Let’s Shut Up the Neighbors. Do you remember the infamous diner scene in When Harry Met Sally?”
“Yes.” Her eyes got huge.
“How are your salad-eating skills?”
And just like that, all she could think about was having Branch Dalton’s orgasms. Her toes curled under the blanket.
“I love salads.” She could only hope that he didn’t hear the way her voice cracked and warbled in the middle.
His grin was pure evil as he rolled his shoulders, gave the legs of his jeans a tug, and hunkered down at the end of the bed to grab hold of the frame. “Get ready, baby, cause Daddy’s gonna make some music.”
When he shoved the entire bed, Aubrey’s startled squeak was far from an erotic moan. Even knowing what he intended, no one could have been prepared for how vigorously he slammed the frame against the wall. The headboard was mounted and didn’t move, but the frame hit with a solid thud that reverberated all the way through her. And Branch didn’t shove just once. Their neighbor’s bed was knocking strong and fast; Branch knocked back stronger and much faster. Her pussy tickled moisture, clenching in tight. Only belatedly did Aubrey remember she had a part in this. She moaned, panted, and fought back giggles enough for a wildly shouted, “Yes! Yes! God, yes!”
The sounds from the other room faltered and fell silent. With one final and mighty slam, Branch let go of the bed. He paused, eyebrow cocked while he waited to see if the neighbors rallied. The knocking started up again almost immediately, only now, it seemed more aggressive.
“You think so?” Branch growled at the wall.
His muscles flexed up his arms under his white t-shirt. Her yelp became a full-blown laugh of startled pleasure and surprise as he heaved the bed up off the floor. She provided the vocals in the wall-knocking music he played, the rhythm punctuated by his deep grunts and throaty moans.
God, he looked fantastic. His arms were ropes of corded muscle, bunching and rolling under his skin, while under hers, molten ribbons of desire were coiling and twisting, binding up all the key parts of her which suddenly ached and ached and ached to be touched. Laughing and gasping and crying out as if in the throes of the wildest pleasure, Aubrey flung out her arms, grabbing for stability and finding only pillows. Her back hit the wall. The extra knocking only added authenticity to the ludicrous Mattress Mamba going on in this room and probably the next one too. Afraid she might fall into the crack between the mattress and wall, she scrambled to climb up into the center of the rocking bed. It was only a short leap, both figuratively and literally, to go from bouncing on her knees to jumping on the bed.
“Give it to me, baby,” Daddy growled, all burning eyes and grinning, sexy beast as he dropped the bed to jump up on the mattress with her. How the bed didn’t break under their weight, she didn’t know, but it was the most fun she’d had in a long time. She grabbed his hands when he reached for her, and they leapt and bounced in circles, both of them fake moaning and groaning, and shouting in feigned orgasmic delight. It was a complete accident that they both accelerated their vocals, “cumming” at the same time.
She stepped wrong in the bedding and might have fallen, but Branch caught her about the waist. They fell together instead, bumping into the wall with the edge of the protruding headboard biting into her buttocks and his hands clutching at her hips. His fingers squeezed. His nostrils flared. Breathing in hard and deep, his gaze was locked on hers, burrowing into her with the same hungry intensity, the already hard bulge of his cock swelling until it was pressing into her lower abdomen, right above her mons, as solid as a fist.
Her fingers scratched the plaster wall. It was everything she could do to keep from reaching for him, cupping and rubbing him through his jeans. Her mouth watered. Her pussy throbbed, and all she could think about was getting on her knees, opening her mouth and begging Daddy to let her worship him. Worship him up and down, and with sweet, suckling kisses, bringing him to the brink of what he could take until she had drained him right to the very last salty drop.
His hand left the side of her hip, only to sharply smack back down again. He swatted the side of her ass, just once, but it sparked and sharpened every waking nerve inside her. Her back arched instinctively. Her breasts found his chest all on their own, her nipples luxuriating in the sensation as they scraped against him when she drew her shaky breath.
“Take it for Daddy,” he said. Did he even know he’d said it much too softly for anyone in the other room to hear? Her nipples tightened all over again. Her knees tried to buckle. “You’ll take it for Daddy, won’t you? Some parts might hurt just a little, but you’ll take it anyway because you know Daddy will make it feel very, very good before the end. Won’t you?”
Her heart pounded. Her pussy pounded. Her belly twisted and knotted, with every writhing pull, tugging all the way up through her chest until she could feel the pressure in the budding tips of each breast. The need to get down on her knees grew impossible to resist, but when she let her knees sag a little, his hand laid another stinging smack on the side of her bottom. Her whole body exalted at the stinging smart, and slow growing heat rose to scald the flesh he’d spanked.
Bright yellow flickered once through the room before the lights winked on and in that moment, the spell was… not broken, per se, but shaken. She was shaken too. Every part of her which had touched, been touched, and even now, was still pressed up against both him and the wall, trembled.
Reluctantly, Branch slipped an inch or two of distance between their hips. Her nipples still brushed his chest when they breathed, and his hands were still on her hips, scalding her flesh with the wanting of his touch. All too soon he took his hands away. Another few inches of space snuck in between them as he edged back. He didn’t want to go. That much was as clear as regret slipped in to color his smile. Just before he’d moved too far away, he caressed a stray wisp of hair out of her face. Tucking it behind her ear, his fingertips combed along her scalp to the nape of her neck, before combing upwards. He made a slow fist, capturing her hair in a grip she had wanted all her life to feel. If only his arms were around her, she’d have melted against him, but they weren’t. If she melted now, she’d fall. So, she didn’t. She stood on her own shaky legs, watching as he leaned in toward her, with a chest so tight and tense, she could barely make herself breathe.
Pressing the burning heat of his lips to her forehead, he kissed her.
Aubrey melted anyway.