Yours to Please, Daddy

Chapter Five: Drawing Lines

Victor

The moment I come into the house, already loosening my tie, I smell garlic.

I set my keys down on the entryway console and follow the smell toward the kitchen, half expecting to find the housekeeper still here this late.

It's not the housekeeper.

It's Phoenix, one day into living under my roof, standing at my stove in my shirt like she's lived here for years instead of hours.

Her hair is wet, like she just got out of the shower, dripping onto the collar of the shirt, the white one from Tuesday. The fabric clings to her in places it has no business clinging, too short, barely covering her ass. Bare legs underneath, damp at the backs of her knees where the towel didn't finish the job.

I forget, for one full second, every reason it's wrong to look at her like this.

Then I remember all of them at once.

She turns before I say anything, and there it is, the same bright smile from my office that does things to me I can't name.

"Phoenix…"

"Victor. You're home."

Jesus, hearing my name on her lips without Uncle attached to it awakens something deep in my chest. Like a part of me is throbbing and blooming to life, and not just my c**k.

I try to remind myself how young she still is to me, that I watched her grow up in her father's house. I shouldn't be thinking about bending her over the counter, her ass sticking out…

I bite the inside of my cheek to tame the filthy fantasy playing out in my head.

"I'm making us dinner." She says it warm, easy, like this is a thing we already do.

Us.

One word, and suddenly I'm hearing something I'm not sure she meant to say. An us. As if we're already a thing. As if coming home to her, finding her in my kitchen, having dinner together, is normal.

"What are you doing in my shirt."

She glances down at herself, entirely unbothered, and turns the heat down under the pan. "Mine needed washing. I put a load in earlier. This was just sitting on the chair."

"Nothing in this house is just sitting for you to take."

The shirt is thin enough where it's wet that it plasters to her, the shape of her breasts clear through the fabric, her n*****s drawn tight and hard, almost visible. The sight makes me swallow before I can stop myself.

I'm a filthy bastard, because my first instinct is to rip my shirt off of her and lick every drop of water off her skin.

I drag my eyes back to her face. Too late. She already caught it.

"Jesus, Victor." She laughs, low, and turns her body slightly, not shy about it, not hiding anything. "It's a shirt. You need to loosen up."

I don't move any closer. I can't. I keep my feet planted where I am, because closing the distance between us means there's nothing left to stop me once I get there.

"Take it off," I almost growl.

Her eyebrows go up. "Excuse me?"

"The shirt. Go take it off and put on something of your own."

"I don't have anything clean. That's the whole point of the laundry, genius." She turns back to the stove, entirely too pleased with herself, hips shifting as she stirs, the hem riding up another inch I have no business tracking. "Relax. I'll give it back. Smelling like me, probably."

Every word out of her mouth is a small, deliberate provocation, and she knows exactly what she's doing, and the worst part is how much I want to answer it the way every nerve in my body is telling me to.

Bend her over this counter.

Pull that shirt up over the curve I've been failing not to stare at since I walked in.

Show her precisely how uptight I can be with my hand against that perfect ass until she understands whose house this is.

I cross my arms instead. "I don't like people touching my things."

"I'm not people." She says it lightly, stirring without even looking at me. "I'm Phoenix."

I hold her gaze for a moment. "Then Phoenix should learn where my boundaries are. You are not special."

That gets her attention. She looks up at me, her lips curving.

"Your things stay yours," I continue. "My clothes. My office. My personal space. You don't touch them unless you have my permission."

She raises a brow. "That's a lot of rules."

"It's one." My voice stays calm. "Stay out of my things."

She studies me for a second, then sets the spoon down and turns fully to face me, arms crossing under her chest in a way that does absolutely nothing to help my concentration.

"And if I don't?"

"What did you say, Kid?"

"If I touch your things again." She tilts her head, that same defiant edge shining through her eyes, mesmerizing and entirely too pleased with itself. "What happens then?"

Christ. I want to f**k her into submission right here against the counter until that mouth stops running. I want to bend her over it and spank that round ass until it reddens under my palm, until she's not smirking anymore, until the only word she remembers how to say is my name.

None of that leaves my mouth.

"Then you'll find out," I say instead, low, and I watch it land somewhere in her, a flicker she doesn't fully manage to hide.

"Is that a threat, Mr. Crowe?"

"It's a warning."

"Feels like a threat." She steps closer instead of away, which is exactly the kind of thing she does now, the kind of thing that tells me she has never once in her life been afraid of consequences. "You throw a lot of warnings around for a man who hasn't actually done anything yet."

"Careful."

"Or what?"

The kitchen is too small suddenly, or I'm standing too close to the counter, or she's standing too close to me, I can't tell anymore which one of us moved.

"Phoenix."

"Victor."

She says my name back at me like a dare, like she's daring me to do something about the fact that she's standing in my kitchen in my shirt with her n*****s visible through wet cotton and absolutely no intention of backing down.

I take a step back instead. Physical distance, because it's the only kind I still have any control over.

"Eat your dinner," I say, and turn to walk away before I do something we can't undo tonight. "We'll discuss boundaries when I'm calmer."

"You keep saying that." Her voice follows me out of the kitchen, amused, unbothered, entirely too satisfied with herself. "When exactly does calmer happen, Victor?"

I don't answer her.

I don't trust what I'd say if I did.