Ruining Me

Raven

His hand closed over my wrist and guided it gently away. Then his fingers were there instead, and the difference was immediate — the difference between trying to tickle yourself and someone else doing it. He found my clit with easy, unhurried pressure and I gasped so hard I almost choked on it.

  “There she is,” he murmured.

  “Daddy.”

  “I’ve got you.” He worked in slow, deliberate circles and I grabbed a fistful of sheet with my free hand. “You feel that?”

  “Yes… God… yes—”

  “Good girl.”

  My hips rolled up into his hand without my permission and he let them, adjusting the pressure, reading me in a way I couldn’t read myself. I was already trembling.

  “You’re so wet,” he said softly, almost to himself. “You’ve been like this all morning, haven’t you? Waking up like this every day and not knowing what to do about it.”

  “Every day,” I admitted, and it came out like a confession.

  “That’s okay.” His finger pressed down just slightly and I whimpered. “Daddy’s here now.”

  When he slid one finger inside me I cried out. He went slowly, carefully, giving me time to adjust, and then began to thrust, and every thought I had ever had dissolved completely. He added a second finger and curled them, finding something deep that made my back arch clean off the mattress.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  I forced my eyes open and found him watching my face with an intensity that should have embarrassed me but only made it worse — made the heat coil tighter and faster.

  “You’re doing so well,” he murmured. “My sweet girl. You feel so good. You have no idea.”

  “I can’t…” I was gasping. “I can’t — daddy, I don’t know what’s happening.”

  “Yes, you do.” His thumb found my clit again while his fingers kept fucking me deep and I shattered.

  It crashed through me in waves, one after another, and I heard myself making sounds I’d never made before… high and desperate and completely beyond my control. My thighs clamped around his hand and he worked me through every second of it, whispering soft things I couldn’t fully hear over the rush of blood in my ears.

  When it finally ebbed I went completely limp.

  He withdrew his fingers slowly and I looked down at his hand, glistening, dripping, my wetness coating him all the way to his knuckles and running in a slow trail down his wrist.

  He looked at it too.

  Neither of us spoke for a long moment.

“Daddy,” I finally said. “I’m sorry I made you do it.”

His hand stilled and Something moved across his face that I couldn’t fully name. Not guilt, not tenderness, maybe a little of both somewhere in the complicated space between the two.

“Don’t apologize for that.” His voice came out rough in a way I had never heard from him before. Like something had been worn down to its last layer. “You needed it. And there is nothing—” He stopped. Started again. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You know that.”

I did know that. I had always known that. Roman Bellerie was many things to many people; ruthless to his rivals, commanding to his employees, untouchable to the world. But to me, he had only ever been one thing. Safe.

The best father anyone could ask for. The kind who showed up. Who stayed. Who held me through nightmares and sat beside me at my mother’s grave and never once made me feel like I was too much or not enough.

Which made what just happened in this bed either the most natural thing in the world or the most catastrophic.

I hadn’t decided yet which one.

  He stood, and without another word, walked out of my room and closed the door behind him so carefully it didn’t make a sound. Like he was afraid of himself.

  Three days later, he told me he’d enrolled me at King’s College London.

  I didn’t argue. I think some part of me understood. He sat across from me at the kitchen table with his hands folded and his eyes steady and said, if you stay close to me right now, I will ruin you. He said it plainly, the way Roman said everything — like a man who had already made peace with a decision that was costing him something.

  I packed in a week. He put me on the plane himself, kissed my forehead at the gate, and told me to call when I landed.

  I did. And we never spoke about that morning again.

  That was three years ago.

  I shift in my seat and press my temple against the cold window of the plane, watching the Atlantic stretch dark and endless thirty thousand feet below. Boston is six hours away and I haven’t slept since Heathrow.

  Three years I haven’t been home, and today, finally, I was going home to attend Roman Bellerie’s wedding to another woman.

Three years of phone calls and I’m finally going to see the man who affects me in so many ways, except he belongs to another woman now.

The last time we spoke was on Tuesday evenings asking if I’d eaten, if my grades were holding, and if I’d made friends. Me lying and saying yes to all three. Three years of learning how to miss someone you’re not supposed to miss the way I miss him. Three years of building a version of myself that doesn’t need Roman Bellerie.

And then his assistant called, not even him, his assistant — to confirm my flight details for the wedding.

The wedding.