Raspberry Girl (4)

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There’s a splitting headache pounding behind your eyes. 

It’s the only thing you can focus on for the first five minutes of being awake, reconciling it with queasiness, the ache of your joints. You feel like you drank an entire vat of vodka. 

Jesus. How did you even get ho-

Oh god. 

Oh my god. 

Fragments of last night come rushing back, shattered clips out of order and full of nonsense, things that make no sense. Improbable things. 

Captain Riley dressing you in his t-shirt. 

Captain Riley holding your chin while he brushes your teeth. 

Captain Riley wiping your make up off.

Captain Riley putting you in bed. 

With him. Putting you in bed, with him. 

The fabric of your dress, black with little blue and purple flowers, catches your eye. It’s sitting neatly on top of a dresser with your bra, your shoes just below, placed side by side, and the world crashes down around you. It shifts and shudders, reality roaring into focus. 

This is his room. His house. His bed. 

Your stomach turns, nausea swelling into a wave that washes over you, forcing you from the bed to the bathroom on stumbling, heavy legs, snatching your clothes on the way, throwing them to the ground as you lean over the toilet and lose what’s in your stomach, bile and water, the burn pulling tears from your eyes. 

What did you do?

Shame rips through you like a knife, stabbing you between the ribs hard enough to make you ache. Humiliation, that’s what this is. You’re humiliated. Humiliated that you drank so much he had to take you home from the bar. Humiliated you couldn’t brush your own teeth or wash your face or change your clothes or put yourself in bed, humiliated you turned into an irresponsible, drunken mess. A burden. 

You’re in his house, his room, his bed, your secret fantasies crumbled away into one big nightmare. 

He’ll never look at you the same way again. 

You know what will happen now, of course. He’ll stop coming by the shop, or if he doesn’t, he’ll just stick to polite conversation. He won’t text you, and anything you send will be responded to with clipped, brief responses.

It always ends this way for one reason or another, but this, blacking out and making a fool of yourself, is certainly a first. 

A first you had with Captain Riley. The man you’ve spent every waking minute thinking about for months. 

Dumb. So dumb. 

You turn the sink on. Rinse and spit. Wash your hands. Splash your face with cold water, and then do it again, letting it mix with your tears, trying to use the shock of the temperature to slow your spiraling anxiety, your descent into madness.  

The fabric of your dress on your skin and the sight of his t-shirt crumpled on the ground, still warm from your body, nearly drives you to hysteria. 

You ruined it. 

Knuckles knock against the bathroom door, and then he’s calling your name. 

Your heart drops. 

The bathroom window is too small to crawl out of, but you did see a pretty big one in his bedroom. Maybe… 

“Open the door sweetheart.” You can do this. Just rip the bandaid off. Get it over with. You pull it wide, momentarily blindsided by what’s on the other side, Captain Riley in a pair of sweatpants and a white t-shirt, steam rising from a mug in his hand. A normal sized mug that for some reason, looks like a child’s toy. His gives you a once over before trapping you in his gaze, so deadly serious it keeps you rooted to the floor as he deposits the mug on the sink and pulls you close, warm palm settling on the side of your neck. “Were you sick?” 

“No.” You croak, the lie is blatantly obvious based on the smell in the bathroom alone. His eyes narrow. 

“Try again.” You can’t force yourself to say it, so you nod miserably. “Oh baby,” He tugs you into his arms, cupping the back of your head into his chest. “Why didn’t you call for me?” Jesus. Christ. He pities you. 

Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.

He’s being so nice, it makes it all worse. Makes the ache spread all the way to your heart where it pounds so loud you’re sure he can feel it. ‘U-uh, I… I…” 

The severity of it all hits you like a truck, hard enough to make your knees weak, and you force yourself to step back, leave the warmth and safety of his arms, his body, his smell, his… everything, before you try to disappear in it. Burrow yourself inside him, seek permanent refuge from the storm. Hide behind him like a child running from a monster. 

“I’m s-sorry about last night, th-this,” your stomach is queasy again, and you can’t bring yourself to look at him. “I… that was… I don’t usually drink that much, I’m… I’m sorry.” The walls are closing in, a sob so heavy you could drown in it builds in your chest, and you sink into the stark reality of what he’s probably waiting to say. It’s time to go. Get out of his house. “I’ll just… I’ll go.” You move farther of the bathroom, and he follows. 

“You’ll st-” 

“I need to go to work later, so I sh-should probably go home and get some sleep.” You’re scrambling, looking for anything that might make sense, might justify you sprinting out of this house. It’s amazing how solid your voice is, truly an impressive feat on your part, treading water in survival mode and trying to preserve a shred of dignity. “I have work. A lot of prep work. To do… later.” The uber app lights up under a stroke of your thumb. 

“Sweetheart…” he’s got his hands out now, palms open like you’re a wild animal thrashing in a trap and he’s going to free you. “Everything’s okay. You didn’t do any-” 

“I’m fine.” Your voice cracks when you cut him off. You can’t listen to him be nice to you after this. “It’s fine. But um… I-I… really do need to go.” You can’t describe the look on his face. It’s like he’s holding onto something with a shred of control, muscles in his arms tense, jaw tight. It almost looks like anger, mixed with concern, his eyes bright and focused, all of it making the edge of your vision blurry. 

He’s got you pinned. It’s all you’ve wanted. 

But now you’re standing in front of him, a mess, ashamed, horrified. 

When he says your name it’s gentle, and patient, the underlying authority in it impossible to ignore, a leash drawing your eyes up from the floor. 

Your phone chimes. 

Uber. 

“That’s my ride,” you rasp, looking away and towards the door. There’s a long moment where you think he might not let you leave, a thought that’s not frightening at all, but unexpectedly comforting. If he didn’t let you leave… if he wanted you to stay… 

He takes a very long, very deep breath, the only noise existing between the two of you until he nods and crosses his arms in front of his chest. “I don’t want to push you too hard yet,” he pauses, scrutiny bringing his brows together in a barely there crease, “and I can’t box you in, can I?” It doesn’t seem like a question for you, just about you, one he’s asking himself, one you do not understand at all. The hangover is liquifying your brain, and nothing is making sense. 

“I, uh… I-” His thumb presses to your bottom lip, stealing words, thoughts, logic, everything from inside you. 

“I want you to get some rest when you get home. Take a shower, eat, and text me before you go into work.” 

“O-okay. I will.” He rewards you with a smile, a small, proud smile that hangs like a blue ribbon around your neck. A shiny trophy from a soccer-roos game, a first place prize at the science fair, and for once it doesn’t feel like you’re looking out into the crowd for smiling faces that aren’t there. 

That feeling is what keeps you warm all the way home, even in the nip of the brisk morning air. 

You should have gone home and slept, but you didn’t. You couldn’t. 

You went to work. 

You threw on a pair of throwaway clothes you keep in the office and tied an apron around your waist and disappeared into bakery. 

You buried yourself into whatever you could think of, four different types of cookie dough, brownie batter, massive batches of buttercream, nervous energy bubbling up in your chest and spilling out through your hands, forcing them to work, to make, again and again until you can’t possibly do anything else. 

The entire time, you ignore the world. Your headache, your stomach, the slow foot traffic out front. Weekends run on a skeleton crew and you’re never here anyway, so it’s not like anyone bothers you. 

It’s just you, an entire bag of fresh rosemary, and a mountain of flour. 

You could make rosemary focaccia every day and never get bored. It can be used for anything, eaten with anything, and- 

the dough can take a beating. 

It’s therapeutic, mixing and kneading it into pliable balls and then stretching them out onto sheet pans, chopping rosemary leaves into tiny little pieces so you can sprinkle them over the top with the olive oil. It’s easy to get lost in it, ignorant of the time slipping away, the shop out front closing, your phone rattling against the stainless steel tabletop across the room, the sun slowly sinking behind the skyline. 

You push the world away until a heavy knock sounds from the back door. 

Captain Riley is standing on the other side. He looks over your shoulder, a sweeping inspection revealing the facts of the matter, a truth that has your stomach sinking like a stone to the bottom of the sea. 

You went back on your word. 

“Hi.”  

“You didn’t go home.” You gulp. 

“No.”  He turns you around and steers you back inside. 

“You didn’t listen.” He hoists you up onto a stool at the end of your workbench.“Sit, and do not move.” 

“I-” Fingers hook under your knee, pulling it against his thigh so you’re partially spread around him, and the contact is like a drink of water in a drought A washed out memory forces its way to the forefront of your mind. Did you know you’re so big?  “A-are you mad?” Your voice is tinny, steeped in anxiety, and his eyes soften. 

“No baby, I’m not mad. You’re learning, you’ll make mistakes.” 

“I will?” He nods. 

“My instincts are never wrong, I see that now. You didn’t run off because you were uncomfortable. You ran because you were embarrassed, and that’s my fault.” He murmurs, wiping at something crusted on your cheeks. Batter. Dough. You don’t know, all you can focus on is the rhythmic rub of his palm skating up and down your leg, squeezing the flesh at your hip before traveling back down to your knee. It’s like watching a pocket watch swing in front of your face, hypnosis taking over your thoughts until the only thing left is him. “I shouldn’t have let you leave this morning but I didn’t want to box you into a corner.” There’s a bowl of raspberry filling to your left, and he swipes his thumb through it, holding the red, pulpy sweetness to your lips. “Open your mouth,” tart sugar swipes across your tongue from tooth to tooth, and he holds you open, tips your head back. You’re holding your breath, hanging on the edge of cliff, dangling, wondering if the rope will be cut, if the rug will be pulled out beneath you, scrambling to put something, anything together to make this make sense. It’s rattling through your bones, twisting you up into knots… all of it going quiet when his mouth finds yours. Tasting. Taking. Holding your head between his hands and breathing new life into you, tongue against tongue, raspberry swirl staining you both, dying your mouths so red it could be blood. Heat turns molten and you throb, thighs trying to close instinctively, seeking contact, pressure, an alleviation to the mounting ache blooming between them. 

He pulls away and chuckles, thumb retaking its place in your mouth as he watches, studies. “My sweet girl.” You make a noise, a squeak, a little whine of pleasure. That’s you. His sweet girl. His. It makes you happier than you know how to explain. 

And then he says something that knocks the wind out of you. 

“You’re daddy’s girl, baby.” He lets it linger in the air, waiting for something, a reaction, but nothing comes except more agony between your legs, and a strange feeling of relief. “You’re mine, and I’m going to take care of you, every little piece of you, even the ones you try to hide.” Your eyes burn with tears and he wipes them away with his free hand. You wonder if you’re supposed to be disgusted, if you’re supposed to feel shame, discomfort, but none of those things are there. Only desire, relief, longing, peace. Hope. 

He wants you. He cares about you. He sees you.

Daddy’s girl. 

“Do you want that?” You nod and pull on his thumb like you’re trying to take more, and he huffs an exhale of a laugh. “Look at you, sucking on my thumb already.” He pops it free to cup your cheek, and you mourn the empty space between your teeth, leaning forward for more. More, more more- “I need the words.” 

“Yes, I want it.” Your voice doesn’t shake. You don’t stutter. It’s the strongest you’ve ever sounded. He presses his lips to yours, lingering in the kiss before holding your face in both hands, tipping your head back, bringing your eyes directly to his.

“Yes who?” You lick your lips. 

“Yes, daddy.” When you say it, it doesn’t sound foreign, or weird, or sinful. It’s right. For once in your life, your words don’t feel clumsy or stupid or mixed up. They just are. What you want to say, what you meant to say. 

“Yes, daddy. I want it.”