Daddy’s Obsession

Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

The three days before the trip passed in a strange, suspended quiet.

Arcturus left early each morning and returned late. He did not come to her room. He did not touch her beyond the brief, proprietary brush of his hand against her lower back when he passed her in the hallway. Breakfast and dinner were the only constants—two meals a day where they sat across from each other in near silence while the staff moved around them like ghosts. He would ask if she had packed. She would say yes. He would nod, and that would be the end of it.

In the long hours between, Vivienne stayed in her sage-green room.

She tried to read.

The book was a paperback romance she had bought months ago and never finished—something about a brooding hero and a girl who should have known better. She made it halfway through the third act before the writing turned explicit. Detailed. Filthy. The heroine pinned beneath a man who called her his. The wet sounds. The broken moans. The way she came apart while telling herself it was wrong.

Vivienne’s face went hot.

She snapped the book shut and stared at the cover, pulse thudding in her throat. Unbidden, the memories rose: Arcturus’s hand cracking across her ass, the thick stretch of him pushing inside her for the first time, the way he had held her hips and f****d her until she sobbed. The heat of his c*m dripping out of her. The way he had pushed it back in with his fingers and told her that was where it belonged.

It was wrong.

It was so completely, unforgivably wrong.

She could have gone to the police. She could have told Rowena everything and let her friend drag her out of this house. She could have packed a bag and disappeared into London and never looked back.

She did none of those things.

Instead she set the book on the nightstand, face-down, and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes until the images faded. When she lowered them again, the room was the same. The plant by the window. The soft green walls. The half-packed suitcase waiting by the door.

Something darker was coming. She could feel it sitting in the air like a held breath.

She just didn’t know what shape it would take.

---

On the third morning the black Maybach took them to a private airfield outside the city.

Arcturus’s jet waited on the tarmac—sleek, white, the Callahan Holdings logo discreet near the tail. Vivienne had never been on a private plane. She had never left England at all. Every previous request to travel with university friends or Rowena had been shut down with a single look. Now she climbed the steps in a cream cashmere sweater and tailored trousers that had appeared in her closet the day before, expensive and soft against her skin. Arcturus followed in a dark open-collar shirt and black trousers, the picture of casual wealth.

Inside, the cabin was all cream leather and polished wood. A flight attendant offered champagne; Arcturus waved it away and ordered sparkling water for them both. Vivienne buckled into the seat across from him, hands folded tightly in her lap, and watched London fall away beneath the clouds.

Only when the seatbelt light chimed off did Arcturus speak.

“You’re quiet.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re excited.” It wasn’t a question. His dark eyes moved over her face. “You’ve never been out of the country. I’ve kept you in London your entire life. This is the first time I’ve allowed you further than the Highlands.”

Vivienne’s fingers twisted together.

“I didn’t think you’d noticed I wanted to go.”

“I notice everything about you.” He unbuckled, stood, and moved to the seat beside her without asking. The moment he sat, the cabin felt smaller. His thigh pressed along hers. “You’re allowed to be happy about it. I won’t punish you for smiling.”

A small, unwilling smile tugged at her mouth anyway. She turned toward the window so he wouldn’t see it properly.

Arcturus’s hand settled on her knee.

Vivienne went still.

His palm was warm even through the fabric of her trousers. He didn’t move higher. He simply rested there, thumb tracing an idle circle, while the jet hummed steadily through the sky.

“I’ve been thinking about how you sounded the other night,” he said casually. “When I had you on your knees. The way you moaned when I told you to bounce back on my cock.”

Heat flooded her face so fast it almost hurt.

“Daddy—”

“You went so quiet after you came the third time. Like I’d f****d the words right out of you.” His thumb stroked higher, slow and deliberate. “I wonder if you’ll be that quiet in Italy. Or if the villa walls are thick enough that I can make you scream.”

Vivienne’s breath stuttered. She stared hard at the clouds.

“That’s— we shouldn’t—”

“Shouldn’t what?” Arcturus leaned in until his mouth was near her ear. “Shouldn’t talk about how wet you got for your stepfather? Shouldn’t mention how you came all over my tongue and then again on my c**k like a perfect little slut?”

“Stop.” The word came out thinner than she wanted.

He smiled against her skin.

“Make me.”

Something in her snapped.

Vivienne turned fully toward him, green eyes flashing, the freckles across her nose standing out against the flush in her cheeks. For the first time in days her voice carried real heat.

“This is wrong,” she said. “All of it. You’re my stepfather. You raised me. You put me through school and fed me and— and now you’re talking about f*****g me like it’s normal. It isn’t. It will never be normal. I don’t care what happened the other night. I don’t care that I— that my body—” She broke off, breathing hard. “I have morals. I know the difference between right and wrong. And this is wrong.”

Arcturus watched her in silence for a long moment.

Then he laughed.

It was soft. Almost fond. And completely without mercy.

“Morals,” he repeated. “My fiery little heaven, quoting morals at me with my c*m still a memory between her legs.” He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger when she tried to look away. “You can call it wrong as many times as you want. You can flush and stammer and pretend you’re going to fight me. But when I put my hand between your thighs you still open them. When I tell you to come, you still come. That isn’t morals, Vivienne. That’s ownership. And you already know who owns you.”

“I didn’t ask to be owned.”

“No. You didn’t.” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “But you also didn’t run.”

The truth of it landed like a stone in her chest.

She had not run.

Arcturus released her chin and sat back, though his hand remained on her thigh, higher now.

“Once we’re in Italy,” he said, “we’re going to talk about exactly what this is. The rules. The expectations. What you are to me now. Until then…” His fingers squeezed once, possessive. “You’re going to sit there and let me look at you. And if I decide to tell you how pretty you looked with my c**k stretching that tight little cunt, you’re going to blush and take it. Understood?”

Vivienne’s pulse hammered in her throat. The fight was still burning under her skin—she could feel it—but the longer he stared at her the harder it became to hold on to.

“…Yes, Daddy.”

“Good girl.”

He turned his attention to the window as if the conversation were finished. His hand, however, stayed exactly where it was—warm and heavy on her thigh, thumb stroking absently, a quiet reminder that the discussion in Italy would not be a negotiation.

Vivienne stared at the clouds and tried to steady her breathing.

Below them the Alps were beginning to show through breaks in the white.

Somewhere ahead waited a cliffside villa, two weeks of isolation, and a conversation that would decide the rest of her life.

And still, shamefully, her skin burned where he touched her.