I’m practically buzzing with Mason for the rest of the day, but I don’t get a chance to see him. Something comes up with the Chinese deal, so he only uses me to grab him some food and drinks, but otherwise I have the afternoon to myself.

The next morning I come in bright and early, practically giddy with excitement. Rogers gives me an odd smile as I greet him with a huge grin. “Good morning, Rogers,” I say. “You’re looking well today.”

“Good morning, Hazel,” he answers. “You’re early.”

“I’m in good spirits.”

He laughs a little. “Nice to hear. Mr. Ward has been very pleased with your service so far.”

“I’ve been very pleased to serve Mr. Ward.” I can barely contain myself. I wonder if Rogers has any clue what I mean by that.

If he does, he doesn’t show it. “Very good, very good. Well, get yourself settled and then head inside.”

“Of course.”

I’m floating on air, skipping along like a little girl. I probably should tone it down but I can’t help myself.

I haven’t felt this way in a long time, if ever. I’ve had crushes and boyfriends and even a short-lived fuck buddy, but I never felt like this about any of them. They were fine and made me smile, but not like this.

None of them were like Mason. He’s something different, something special. I don’t know what I’m getting myself into, but I don’t think I care.

I keep thinking about getting on my knees and calling him Daddy. There’s a darkness inside of him, a dark patch of silence that I can’t quite understand. I suspect he doesn’t want me to understand it, or at least he didn’t at first.

I don’t know what he’ll want now. I crossed a threshold yesterday, moved over into something I don’t really understand just yet. There’s more to whatever happened than just sex. It’s like he needed that to allow himself a chance to open up to me.

I’ll call him Daddy a thousand times more if he can keep making me feel the way I felt yesterday. And the way I feel right now.

I get myself settled, use the bathroom to fix my hair and straighten myself up, and finally grab the tray from Rogers. “Good luck,” he says with a wink as I head into the office.

For a second, I think he knows something, but no way. The door closes behind me as I head over to my spot to wait for Mason, wondering all the while what Rogers may or may not know.

Mason doesn’t keep me waiting very long. Five minutes after I take my position, Mason comes walking down the hall. When he appears in the office, I can’t stop the smile from spreading across my face.

“Good morning, Daddy,” I say.

He stops where he’s standing to look at me. My heart beats hard and for a second, his face is blank.

But slowly, a smile spread across his lips. “Good morning, Hazel. You can put that down.”

I put the tray in the usual spot and pour him a cup as he sits down. “Do you want some?” he asks me.

I hesitate. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

He buzzes Rogers and asks for a second mug. Rogers brings it in without comment and leaves as I sit down in the chair in front of Mason’s desk. He pours me some coffee and we sip it together in silence for a moment.

“Yesterday, I promised you something,” he says softly, breaking the silence.

I cock my head. “What did you promise?”

“I said I’d tell you about myself. Tell you the truth. Do you still want to hear it?”

I nod. “I really do.”

He takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out. “The Ward family has always had money,” he says softly. I knew that already, since of course I did some research on him, but that’s about all I know. There were references to a wife that died mysteriously, but there’s not much about her, either. It’s like his whole life has been scrubbed off the Internet, nearly wiped clean.

“Our fortune was made in the early days of America. My great-great-great grandfather was named Wyatt. He was a banker back in Germany, but in America, he was a predatory loan shark.”

I bite my lip. “They had those?”

“Of course. If your crop failed one year, and you didn’t have enough money or food to feed your family, what did you do?”

“Went to your ancestor,” I say softly.

“Exactly. Wyatt would lend them the money at exorbitant interest and break their knees if they didn’t pay up. He was well ahead of his time in that regard, and slowly he amassed a fortune, which he passed down to his eldest son.

“That son went into banking, a more legitimate pursuit, and turned that original inherited fortune into an even larger one. So on and so forth, the money has been passed down through my family, until it reached me. I took over our current iteration, Ward Investing, but I come from a long line of blood-sucking money movers.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Blood sucking?”

“Blood money is probably a better term for it,” he says, leaning back and sipping his coffee. “Wyatt profited off the blood of people that were desperate. He was a scumbag, a bastard, but he was very successful. And in America, success is all that ever matters.”

“But your other ancestors got into banking. They weren’t out breaking knees or whatever.”

“No, they weren’t, but it’s the same thing. Maybe they didn’t kill you if you couldn’t pay, but they’d ruin your life in other ways. They’d take your your property, they’d ruin your credit, starve you out.” He sighs a little, looking out the window. “Ward Investing doesn’t actively starve anyone anymore, but we’re still built on blood money, don’t you ever forget it.”

I can see how haunted he is by his past and his present. It’s clearly digging at him, and I wonder if it’s part of why he locked himself up in this tower.

“What I don’t get is, if you hate it so much, why are you doing it?”

He shakes his head. “That’s a good question. I just don’t know the answer to it. Maybe because I don’t know any other way, or maybe because I’m as rotten as all the Wards that came before me.”

“You’re not rotten,” I say softly.

His eyes light on mine, fire and brimstone. “You don’t know that.”

“I don’t think you are, at least.”

He sighs and rubs his eyes. “That’s the story of my past, anyway. Each new link in the Ward family chain has grown the fortune bigger than what was left to him, like a steward guarding a fire, feeding it constantly to keep it burning. I’m the last Ward now and part of me wants to give every single cent I have away to people that actually deserve it instead of hoarding more and more.”

I frown a little bit. It seems so strange that he sounds so bitter about his money. I wish I had even a fraction of the money he does, and yet clearly that old cliché about money and happiness has some weight.

He has all the money in the world, but he isn’t happy with it.

“Did you always feel this way about your family?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “Not at all. For a long, long time I felt like the Ward family was important. I was raised to believe that since we have a lot of money, we’re better than other people. I bought that old bullshit.”

“You know better now?” I ask him, raising an eyebrow.

He nods fiercely. “I didn’t earn a single thing I have. Anyone could’ve done what I did if given the amount of money I was given. It’s absurd, that a single family would have all of this, but it’s the way things are.”

I didn’t expect this conversation to turn out like this. I mostly thought he’d tell me about his parents, his family, where he grew up, where he went to school, that sort of thing. The darkness is always there, I just didn’t expect to look directly into it this morning.

My giddy joy is slowly evaporating away. Not because I agree with what he’s saying. I actually don’t agree at all, but it’s hard to explain that to him. I don’t think he makes money on blood and it isn’t his fault that he was born rich, the same way it isn’t his fault that someone else was born poor.

It’s just the way things are. At the very least, he seems to be able to see the world for what it is.

He watches me for a long moment before raising an eyebrow. “Now, your turn.”

I smile a little. “My turn?”

“Come here.” He beckons me forward. I put my mug down and move around toward him. He pushes his keyboard back and pats the top of the desk. “Sit.”

I do what he says. I sit on the top of the desk, knees together. My skirt is shorter than usual today, almost borderline inappropriate. I thought he might like it.

He spreads my knees apart. I sit back on my hands and look down at him as my skirt slowly slides up my thighs, revealing the navy-blue panties I wore for him.

“Tell me where you’re from,” he says softly, kissing my inner thigh.

“Around here,” I say, biting my lip. “Grew up in the suburbs.”

“Normal childhood?”

“The usual. Pool parties, roller skating, that sort of thing.”

“Modern middle class living.” He stops at my pussy and slowly kisses me overtop of my panties. I can hear my heart in my ears. “Parents nice people?”

“Yes,” I manage. “Very nice. Religious.”

“Catholic?”

“Methodist.”

“Ah,” he says, smiling as he pushes my panties aside. “Hard working?”

“Very—oh, shit.” I moan as his mouth finds my clit. “That’s really distracting,” I say.

“Good. What did your parents do for work?”

He licks and strokes my pussy as I talk. “Ah, uh, my mom worked part-time, ah, as a stenographer for a judge. My father was a car salesman.”

I can feel him smile. “Talk about blood money.”

I groan and smile. “He believed in what he was doing, selling American-made cars.”

“I’m guessing you heard that speech more than once.”

“A million times.” I gasp as he slides two fingers inside of me and slowly strokes, looking up at my face.

“When did you know you wanted to paint?”

“Young,” I say. “I was young.”

“How young?”

“A little girl.”

“Why didn’t your parents approve?”

He starts to lick my clit as he strokes my pussy. “I don’t--- I don’t know,” I manage.

“Tell me,” he whispers.

Fucking hell, it feels so good. I can barely breathe. “Wasn’t real,” I manage. “Fake major. No money. Wouldn’t waste their, oh fuck, their time on it.”

I lean further back, down onto my elbows. He sucks and licks me faster as his fingers slide in and out of me, doing that amazing curl that touches my spot and drives me wild.

“You were always different, weren’t you?” he asks.

“Maybe,” I groan. “I didn’t fit in.”

“Boyfriends?”

“Some.”

“When did you first have sex?”

I groan as his mouth presses against me again. “Seventeen. My second ever boyfriend. We were in his basement, oh, fuck, for the first time.”

“And in college?” he asks. “Lots of boys?”

“Some,” I groan. “Fuck. Some.” I grab his hair with one hand, tensing, my whole body in ecstasy now. I can barely concentrate on his questions.

I think he can tell, because he doesn’t ask anymore. He sucks and licks me, fucking my pussy faster. I groan and grab his hair harder, losing myself to the pure pleasure of him. It feels so good I can barely control myself as my moans get louder, the pleasure peaking and peaking, higher and higher.

My whole world is pleasure as I come into his mouth. “Fuck, Daddy,” I moan, panting, twitching. “Oh, god, Daddy.”

He sucks and licks me through it before I slowly finish and he pulls back. I watch him lick his fingers clean before pushing my panties back into place and gently helping me off the desk.

“Good work today,” he says. “That will be all for now, Hazel.”

I nod, still breathing fast, spinning from the orgasm. I manage to take the tray with me as I leave the room.

Rogers takes it from me, and I think I might be imagining things, but I swear he winks. I hurry over to my seat and bury my nose in a book, barely able to control myself.

That was the strangest way I’ve ever had a man try and get to know me more. It was definitely my favorite, though.

My Daddy. My Dark Daddy. There has to be more to him, though. I can’t imagine he’s just some spoiled rich guy that hates his parents and his family. There’s more to his story that he didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask about.

He distracted me with that incredible mouth of his, but I’m determined to peel back the layers.