Nick

She’s bursting to tell me where we’re headed, clutching her phone so tightly as she relays the directions from the navigation software. Her voice bubbles with excitement. A surprise, she insists.

I can’t remember a time someone gave me a surprise like this. Not even Louisa. Louisa was sweet and vivacious, but she wasn’t thoughtful. I enjoyed spoiling Louisa, just as I enjoy spoiling my little Laine, but the creature in the seat beside me is turning out to be a very different girl altogether.

“Don’t I get a clue?” I ask.

Her hair shimmers as she shakes her head. “No. You’ll like it, though. At least I hope you will.”

I’m already liking it. Being with her is enjoyment enough all on its own.

I keep my eyes on the road, none the wiser of our destination as I take the roads she points out.

“Not far,” she says. “Take a right, up here.”

And that’s when I see it. A brown tourist sign on the roadside. Butterfly Zoo.

“Crap.” She groans. “I didn’t know that would be there. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

But it is a surprise. It’s such a surprise I’m lost for words. I was just a boy when I last took my net and disappeared into the countryside to indulge my fascination with butterflies.

Now I only admire them dead. So many lifeless specimens, pinned and mounted in frames on my wall.

The excitement in my stomach is boyish and unfamiliar. An innocence long since forgotten. Buried, with the rest of my life.

“You do want to go, right?” she asks. “You do still like them?”

“I love them,” I tell her, and my heart pounds with the thrill as we pull into the car park.

I park up in a space and turn off the engine, then sit, staring in wonder at the bright painted wings over the entrance doors.

I want to tell her how strange I feel inside, how her thoughtfulness has moved me to nothing but stunted silence, but it’s all I can do to smile and take her hand in mine.

Her fingers squeeze. “They’ve got over two hundred species here. Some rare ones, too. I looked it up online.”

“This is really something, Laine,” I tell her.

“So, let’s go,” she says. “Show me some butterflies. I can’t wait to see.”

Neither can I.

We check in at the entrance, and as I pay the fee I ramble on to the attendant with an enthusiasm so alien. I hand Laine the complimentary spotter pamphlet with a smile.

I won’t need it. I know so many by heart.

The place isn’t busy, not on a cold December morning. The crowds are sparse, even though the glass ceilings bathe us in beautiful warm sunlight. We enter the main butterfly dome unhindered by queues.

A mass of exotic plants. Colour and life and beating wings. Thousands upon thousands of butterflies that overload my senses. I gawp, like an imbecile, so taken by the sight that my breath catches in my throat.

“This is amazing!” she says, and it’s all I can do to nod.

An emerald and black butterfly takes lazy flight in front of us, its wings big and shimmering with metallic beauty. Laine frantically thumbs through the spotter guide, but I still her with a squeeze of my hand on her shoulder.

“Papilio blumei,” I tell her. “Found only on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. It’s a peacock, otherwise known as a green swallowtail.”

“It’s beautiful,” she says, and her eyes follow it all the way out of sight.

“I’ve got one on the wall.”

“I’ve seen it.” She smiles. “But it’s so much more beautiful when it’s flying, don’t you think?”

I’m sure there’s no deeper meaning intended behind her words, but I feel it nonetheless.

“Yes, Laine. It’s so much more beautiful alive.”

“I feel alive,” she tells me.

“Me too, sweetheart. Me too.”

I wander amongst the plants, leading Laine so gently along the paths marked out. So many butterflies, and I tell her about them all. I tell her their Latin names and where they’re from. I tell her if they’re endangered, and what sizes they grow to.

She listens in wonder, hanging onto every word I say. I think she may love them nearly as much as I do.

Her steps are light and bouncy, her gasps genuine. “That one!” she squeals, pointing up ahead. “It’s so beautiful!”

And it is.

Of course it is.

The Maculinea Arion is the largest and rarest of the blue English butterflies. Little, blue-eyed Laine reminds me of one – so beautiful in her fragility. So graceful and delicate. Such a rare delight. I tell her so, and her smile melts my heart.

“That’s really nice.”

“And really true, sweetheart.”

The Arion flutters close, and my breath hitches, the thrill palpable. I see the butterfly’s path, see so clearly that it’s going to land. It couldn’t be more perfect, and it makes me shiver. Fate, she would say, and I’m beginning to believe her. I step away and take out my phone, just quickly enough to call up my camera app.

The butterfly dithers around her head before it lands, perches and flaps its wings once, twice, three times before it rests, so blue against Laine’s pale blonde hair. I watch my beautiful girl crowned by the beautiful butterfly, my heart full to bursting as so many others flutter around us.

Her shock is divine, her expression of wonder so beautifully innocent, and I know it for certain. Laine will love butterflies as much as I do. I can see it in her eyes.

I capture the moment and I know it’s one I will savour forever.

* * *

Talk is so easy on the way home. Laine flicks through the spotter pamphlet as though it’s a treasured possession, reading me out the names in Latin to make sure she has the pronunciation right. Her sweet voice makes them ethereal. Magical.

Wonderful.

“Maybe you could teach me how to spot them in the wild,” she says. “It sounds fun.”

“Harder work than the zoo.” I smile to myself. “It’s a different kind of fun, Laine, but no less enjoyable.”

“I think I’d like it,” she tells me, and I do too.

A few weeks ago I’d have struggled to ever imagine myself trekking into the countryside with jars and nets, but not today. Today anything feels possible.

“Better than crosswords, right?” she asks.

That makes me laugh. “Yes, Laine, considerably better than crosswords.”

“Better than TV, too,” she says.

We stop for dinner at a fancy little restaurant on the outskirts of the city, and I stare at her as she scours the menu.

“I don’t know what to choose,” she admits. “I don’t know what half this stuff is.”

I slide my chair around to her side of the table and talk her through the options. Her hand rests on my knee under the tablecloth and squeezes, and she’s so close, so intoxicatingly close. I can smell her shampoo, and her, close enough to enjoy the flutter of her eyelashes as her eyes wander over the main courses.

“I think we should go with the winter roast,” I tell her.

She nods. “That sounds good to me.”

I move back to my own side of the table before I give our order to the waiter, and already I’m missing her touch.

“When did you know you first liked butterflies?” she asks, and it makes me smile to realise she’s still thinking about them.

“A school project,” I tell her. “Infant school, I must’ve been only five or six. A conservation assignment, British wildlife and its habitat. We went out into the meadow behind the school and I spotted a monarch fluttering from leaf to leaf. I was mesmerised by its colours. Once I started watching them I never stopped. My father bought me a net for my birthday, I didn’t even ask. It was a surprise.”

“That was nice of him, to encourage that.”

“He was a fair man. Stern, but fair,” I tell her.

“Stern,” she repeats with a smile, and I know exactly what she’s thinking.

She’s picturing my father’s belt on my backside, the severity of the punishment I received in his old study.

“As I said, stern but fair.” I pour her a mineral water from the jug on the table. “As I hope to be. That’s what I aim for, Laine, that same balance.”

“I haven’t seen you stern. Not yet.”

I hand her the glass. “You will, given time. When it’s necessary, sweetheart, only when it’s necessary.”

“I’ll always be good, Da-” Her voice falters, and I get it. She’s unsure how to address me in public. Daddy Nick sounds so fucking creepy.

Perverse and icky, as Laine would call it. Because it is. It is icky.

Dirty.

It’s fucking dirty.

But my cock’s already hard at the thought.

I don’t care who hears us in this place, and that’s a new feeling too, the disregard for appearances. My professional conduct is the only thing in recent years I’ve had to concern myself with, and that’s for my father’s legacy and the firm’s reputation rather than anything personal.

“It’s Daddy, sweetheart,” I tell her.

She looks uncertain, her cheeks flushing. “In public? I thought this was…”

“You thought it was at home only?” I raise an eyebrow. “Is that what you want?”

She shakes her head but she doesn’t seem entirely sure. “You said people wouldn’t understand… people like Kelly Anne…”

“And they wouldn’t. The complexity is too confusing.” I lean closer. “In this place I can be your daddy or your lover. Or both.” I smirk. “It depends how devilish you feel.”

I’m joking, but her eyes tell me she isn’t. They flash with dark amusement, and she wants it. I know she wants it.

Interesting.

My sweet little Laine is certainly interesting.

“I’ll call you Daddy,” she whispers.

* * *

Laine

I’m burning up as the waiter brings our meal. This is new ground, him being Daddy here, around people. It makes it seem so real and so tingly.

The waiter smiles as he places my plate in front of me, and I wonder if I should find a way to say it aloud. I wonder if that’s what Daddy Nick wants.

He doesn’t give me an opportunity to find a way. He does it for me.

“Doesn’t that look lovely, sweetheart?” he asks. The waiter looks at me, waits for a reaction with a smile.

My heart is racing. “Yes… it does, Daddy.”

Daddy Nick smiles so bright, and I feel like I’ve passed a test. I like it. I really like it.

“It looks really yummy, Daddy,” I say, trying it out some more. It comes so much easier than I thought it would.

I wonder how old the waiter thinks I am. Fifteen, maybe sixteen at most. Just the right age to have a daddy like Nick.

“Enjoy your meal,” the waiter says, and leaves us, just like that. As though it’s the most normal thing in the world, a little girl eating out with her daddy on a Saturday evening.

“Good girl,” Daddy Nick says, and I feel it in my tummy.

“I don’t look much like you,” I whisper.

“Then I guess you look like your mother.” His eyes twinkle so darkly, and I wonder if he’s hard. I wish I could find out.

Dinner tastes really good, but I hardly want to eat a thing. I have to force it down, but my thighs are doing that clenching thing they do, and I’m squirming on my seat, hoping Daddy Nick will take me again when we get home. Hoping he’ll do it fast and hard and make those horny grunts he makes when he loses control.

“Eat up,” he tells me. “You’ll need the energy when we get home.”

I eat every single bite.