Daddy's Little Obsession

I drove four hours to tell him no.

That was the plan I built in the car, out loud, both hands tight on the wheel. I had a speech. I had run a department of nine people for six years. I signed off on budgets that made grown men sweat. I did not get folded up small by a man with a calm voice and a key to a house I had never seen.

The house was white and quiet and smelled like clean cotton when Soren opened the door.

“You’re late,” he said. Not a question. He looked at his watch and then at me, and something in my stomach dropped like the floor of an elevator.

“Traffic,” I said. My speech was already gone. I had practiced it for four hours and it left me at the threshold like it had somewhere better to be.

“Shoes off. Bag by the stairs.” He turned and walked in, sure I would follow.

I followed. That was the first thing my body did without asking me. My fingers were already at the heel of my shoe while my head was still saying we were here to set boundaries, to be clear, to keep this in the safe little box of a thing we had only ever typed to each other at midnight.

The front room had no clutter. One deep chair. A low shelf. A folded blanket the color of cream. Everything had a place, and I had the sudden cold thought that I had a place too, somewhere in here, already chosen for me before I arrived.

“Look at me,” Soren said.

I did.

“You drove here to argue.” His mouth moved like he might smile and decided I had not earned it. “I can see it on you. You’ve got it all lined up. So say it. I’ll wait.”

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came. My ears went hot. The whole careful structure I had carried up the steps, every reason this was too much, every line about being a serious woman with a serious life, it all turned to noise. Stop this, said a small fast voice far at the back of my skull, you can still pick up your bag, you’re a person who leaves rooms, you have left so many rooms. I stayed exactly where I was.

“That’s what I thought,” he said.

He crossed to me and took my chin in two fingers. Light. He tipped my face up like he was checking something he owned for damage. My breath went shallow and useless. There was a pull low in my belly, a tug behind the hips, and I hated it, the speed of it, the way it arrived before I gave it any permission at all.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

“I’m cold.”

“You’re not cold.” His thumb moved once along my jaw. “You drove four hours to be told what to do. You can lie to your office. You don’t lie in my house.”

My eyes stung. Not sad. I could not have named it if he put a knife to me. Some wire pulled tight between shame and want and I was wet already, just from his hand on my face and his voice taking my excuses apart one at a time.

“Upstairs,” he said. “There’s a room for you. Everything you need is in it. You’ll change into what’s laid out on the bed.”

“I’m not,” I started. My voice came out thin. “I read the messages. I know what you mean by that. I’m not doing that.”

He let go of my chin. He did not argue. He just looked at me with a patience that made my skin crawl and burn at the same time, the look of a man who has all night and knows you do not.

“Then leave,” he said.

I should have. God, the part of me that ran nine people stood up and screamed for the door. I want to be very clear that I knew the way out. I had counted the steps from the car.

I went upstairs.

The room was soft and dim and warm. A wide bed, white rails on the headboard, a lamp turned low. And laid out on the cover, smoothed flat by someone who cared how it looked, the things. I will not pretty them up. A thick white diaper, opened and waiting. A onesie, plain, no pattern, adult cut, snaps at the bottom. Nothing childish in it, nothing from a real nursery, just the blunt fact of what he meant to make of me tonight.

My hands started crying before my eyes did. They hovered over the bed. Pick it up, put it down, get in the car. The intrusive thought came in clear and ugly: this is the part you cannot take back, after this you will know it about yourself, you will carry it into every meeting for the rest of your life.

The door opened behind me. He had not knocked. Of course he had not knocked.

“You’re slow,” Soren said.

“I can’t.” It cracked in the middle.

“You can. You don’t want to be the kind of woman who can.” He stepped in and shut the door with a click that I felt in my teeth. “Different thing. Take the dress off.”

“Soren.”

“Daddy,” he said. Quiet. Not loud at all. The word landed in the room and changed the air in it. “In here that’s the name. You’ll get it wrong a few times. I’ll be patient the first night.”

I reached back and pulled my zipper down. I did it. The dress slid off my shoulders and pooled at my feet and I stood there in my bra and nothing else and felt his eyes go over me slow, top to bottom, the way you check work that has to be done right.

“Pretty,” he said, like a fact on a form. “Bra too.”

I took it off. My nipples were already hard and the cool air was not why and we both knew it. The flush went down my chest and I crossed my arms and he reached out and moved them back to my sides, gentle, firm, like folding a thing into its proper shape.

“No hiding,” he said. “Not from me. Lie down.”

I lay down on the bed, on top of the open diaper, because he tilted his head at it and I could not make my body refuse him. The padding was thick under the small of my back. My thighs would not stay still. I stared at the ceiling and my whole face was wet and my cunt was slick and aching and the two things were the same thing now, I could not pull them apart, the more ashamed I got the harder I throbbed.

He stood over me and started.

He did it like he had done it a hundred times. One hand under my knee, lifting, the other smoothing powder over me, slow strokes along the inside of my thigh, over the crease of my hip, light passes that were not trying to get me off and got me close anyway. My breath broke into pieces. I bit down on a sound.

“You don’t hold those back either,” he said. He drew the front of the diaper up between my legs and the pressure of it against me, snug, firm, deliberate, pulled a whimper right out of my throat that I would have died before making in any other room on earth.

“There she is,” he said softly, and tugged the tapes tight at each hip, one, then the other, so I felt held all the way around. “Feel that. That’s the last decision you have to make tonight. I make the rest.”

I shook on the bed. The relief of it was the worst part, the way something in my chest that had been clenched for years just let go, just handed itself over, kept and small and done arguing. I hated how good it was. The shame poured in right behind it and that only wound me tighter, hips lifting toward nothing, toward his hand, toward whatever he decided.

He pressed his palm flat over the front of the diaper, over me, and the padding pushed back against my clit and I cried out for real this time.

“You’re soaked through already,” he said, almost kind. “We haven’t started. Look at you. All that on the phone about being a serious woman.” He leaned down close to my ear. “Say what you are.”

“I don’t,” I gasped.

“You’ll learn the words. We’ve got all night and you’re not going anywhere.” His hand pressed again, a slow grind, and my back arched off the bed. “There are rules in this house. There’s a routine. You’ll be told when. You’ll be told how. And you’ll thank me out loud each time, in plain words, so you can hear yourself.”

“Please.” It came out before I chose it.

“Please what.”

I had no idea. I only knew I would say anything. My hands found the white rails above my head and gripped, knuckles white, hips rolling up into his palm, every smart thing I had ever been about myself burning off like fog.

“Good,” he said. He took his hand away. I made a sound I will not describe. He reached to the shelf by the bed and I heard a drawer slide, and a low hum start up, a sound I knew, a sound that turned my stomach to water.

“Knees up,” he said. “Spread them. Daddy’s going to teach you how you ask.”

And he pressed the humming thing against the front of the diaper, right where I needed it, and I broke open at the very first touch.