Being Their Baby (23 page)

“Yes, Mommy, I was a whiny little girl this morning?” Liz prompted firmly.

Sophie lowered her eyes. “Yes, Mommy, I was a whiny little girl this morning.” Liz saw a tic in Sophie’s jaw, a sign that Sophie was holding back something.

“You know your mommy loves her little girl more than anything in the world?” Liz asked more softly. “Sometimes, I’m going to go on dates with Daddy and leave you home. It doesn’t mean that I love you any less.” Sophie’s shoulders hunched with disagreement. “Do you love me any less when you go places with Daddy and Uncle Josh without me?” she asked.

Sophie shook her head. “No,” she murmured.

“And do you love Uncle Josh or Daddy any less when it’s just you and me?” Liz asked patiently.

Sophie shook her head again.

“Now, Mommy loves to spoil her baby,” she cooed, “but she also loves to spoil Daddy and Uncle Josh. It’s been a long time since I got to see Charlie in a tux. Besides, you’re only eighteen. I didn’t go to my first black-tie event until I was twenty-four.”

Sophie turned, looking completely exasperated. “But twenty-four is
forever
from now!”

Liz sighed, trying to rally her patience as she reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m just saying you have plenty of time ahead of you to go to things like this. There’s no rush,” she explained.

Sophie, still tensed and angry, couldn’t really be talked to. She’d seen the invitation to the event two weeks before and had been trying to get an invite ever since. She’d begged so much that Liz had nearly caved, until Charlie put his foot down. One of the entertainers at the event was a comedian Charlie considered to be beyond foul, and nothing for his baby girl to listen to, even if having a third friend come wouldn’t be considered odd by Liz’s colleagues.

Liz shook her head, resigned that Sophie was on-edge and wouldn’t probably be right until it was all over.

As Liz was sitting down with her coffee, Charlie came into the room, trying to tie his tie. Liz looked up just to see Sophie cower toward the wall. Liz, after all, gave her plenty of spankings, but Liz wasn’t known as the disciplinarian. Charlie was—he just made up for it by coddling Sophie more than he had any other “little girl” before her.

He hadn’t noticed Sophie in the corner yet, since he was concentrating on what he was doing. “Need help?” Liz asked, putting down her coffee. She stood up, walked over to Charlie, and took both ends of his tie out of his hands.

“Sure,” he grumbled, looking up at the ceiling and putting his hands to his sides. “I’ve only done this ten thousand times in my life.”

“Frustrated about something?” she guessed, easily doing his knot for him and tightening it to his collar. Then she carefully folded the collar over the tie and straightened his jacket.

“I hate this season. You know what I heard? That Jeff Thompson’s only going to be chosen in the third round. He’ll probably go to Cleveland and that’ll be that…”

She sighed, rolled her eyes, and went back to her seat with an exasperated groan of, “Oh, Charlie!”

“I’m just saying that nobody kills a quarterback’s career or spirits better than Cleveland. Do you know how many they’ve gone through in the last three years?” He went to the coffee machine and continued like Liz was participating, and even interested, in the conversation, “Thirteen! That’s obscene! What’s wrong with those people? I don’t even know who to get mad at since they go through GMs, coaches, and advisors like most people go through toilet paper.” By now, Liz was actually quite distracted by the catalogue she was flipping through. “This job isn’t good for my blood pressure.”

He didn’t notice Sophie until he sat down and saw that he was sitting next to a bowl of soggy Froot Loops, and then the corner was the first place he looked. “Sophia Lynn! What in God’s name are you doing in the corner? It’s eight o’clock in the morning!”

She didn’t answer, just leaned into the corner more.

“Sophia needs to realize that it’s not a good idea to try to manipulate me with a bad attitude.” Liz shook her head. “Nobody ever tries to manipulate me with a
good
one. Nobody ever thinks of doing extra chores, studying harder, or complimenting my shoes. It’s like the walls of this house suck out little girls’ good sense. I’m not saying it would work, but it couldn’t hurt.”

“I wasn’t giving you a bad attitude!” Sophie argued from the corner. “It’s just not
fair
! It’s
not
!” She stomped her foot to punctuate “not,” and her panties fell down to her ankles. Looking embarrassed from behind, her toes pigeoned.

“Sophie, come here,” Charlie ordered.

Sophie slowly turned and looked nervously over at Charlie, judging his mood. Obviously hoping it wasn’t too late to avoid a spanking, she walked over, trying to pull her panties up in a less-than-graceful movement.

“Don’t pull those up,” he lectured, pointing at her panties that were back at mid-thigh now. “Only good girls get to wear panties, don’t they?”

Sophie’s eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed. “I
am
a good girl!” she snapped. “You didn’t even hear my side!”

He sighed, grabbed around her waist, and effortlessly pulled her onto his lap. She pulled her skirt straight, trying to cover the front of herself as if anyone in the room would forget that her panties were around her knees. “I’ve heard your side for the last two weeks, Sophie, honey. If we gave into your tantrums, we would not be a good mommy or daddy, would we?”

It was her cue to say, “No,” of course. Sophie wasn’t stupid, unlike the others from her family. Liz had the misfortune to meet a few of them; Sophie’s stepfather had come into the office looking for her once, and since by then Sophie had quit her job to go a private high school nearby, Liz went to meet him instead. He was a stupid, mean sort of man who obviously thought he could pluck money from Sophie even though he’d kicked her out of his apartment.

Still, Liz didn’t worry about the future welfare of the country until Sophie’s mother came in the very next week, demanding Sophie’s contact information. The woman had raised the bar on stupid; if there was more of the population like her, America on the whole was doomed.

Sophie, on the other hand, had cogs in her brain that obviously still turned. She pressed her hand to her chest, apparently about to play the “innocent” card. “Daddy, you know I didn’t mean to throw any tantrums… I’m so sorry…” She turned to Liz and blinked innocently, but Liz merely crossed her arms in front of her chest. She had seen this act before. “I’m sorry, Mommy—I didn’t mean to make it seem like I was throwing tantrums! I was just…” And now the sad act; she hung her head. “I’m just really disappointed. I wanted to do something like that once in my life…”

This technique she was pulling worked well on Josh. Josh, although he was becoming more mature lately, and even threatened to give her spankings, seemed to be putty in her hands. Josh spoiled her, filled her with confidence and love, but unfortunately he let the girl talk her way out of everything.

Charlie, however, didn’t let his guard down. “This isn’t the Make-A-Wish Foundation. You’re not dying; you’ll go to something like this one day, and I don’t care if you did or did not realize that you can’t snap at us and stomp your feet everywhere just because you don’t get what you want. In case you’re not aware, that is what a tantrum is. Now, go get your red paddle.” He gave her a pat to instruct her off his lap and put out his hand flat. “Panties.”

She stood and clenched her hands stubbornly into fists. “Daddy, c’mon! It’s eight in the morning!”

“Eight-oh-five, actually,” he corrected casually. “I don’t like giving spankings before noon, but I’ll do it for you, Sophie, because that’s how much I love you.”

“I wish you’d stop loving me, then!” she snapped, once again stomping her foot angrily.

“Unfortunately for you,” he replied calmly, “it’s a force that cannot be stopped. Do you want me to go up with you and show you where the paddle is? Because it’s been a long time since I looked at your wall, and I
might
find something that will do a better job.”

The red paddle was the lightest of Sophie’s implements. It was made of leather, which Charlie liked because it didn’t bruise Sophie’s bottom but still left a good sting.

Elizabeth’s own favorite implement was still the hairbrush. In the dungeon, with Josh, she’d get creative. She’d spanked Josh with everything from fraternity paddles to tawses to canes to crops. It was all a game with him; he was her slave in the bedroom, but outside he wasn’t even submissive. Indeed, since the arrival of Sophie, he was acting more and more toppy outside, more responsible, and his language had even cleaned up.

That being said, he wanted to be taken to the dungeon about once a day. Being with a two-woman man when one of the women was a virgin was wearing Elizabeth a little thin, already. Not that she minded sex, and a lot of it, but with two men prowling around with sex drives of teenagers, she felt if she was home and not eating, then she was probably in the middle of a sexual scene with one of them. She felt so exhausted that she’d nearly given up her morning jogs.

Sophie frowned theatrically before shucking off and stepping out of her panties and slapping them into Charlie’s palm. She walked away, covering her bottom with one hand while the other pulled her skirt out from the waistband.

“She wearing you down?” Charlie asked with a grin, nodding toward the upstairs where Sophie had disappeared.

Liz gave a small laugh, and waved her hand dismissively. “Sophie? No. She’s a sweetie, really. She’s just being pouty this morning.
You and Josh
are wearing me down. Sometimes I walk around and I’m feeling
hunted
.” When she put her coffee down, she looked up and saw his most predatory look. She frowned. “Stop it.”

He laughed. “Stop being sexy and I’ll stop chasing your skirt,” he replied huskily, reaching across the table and taking her hand away from her coffee mug, bringing it up to his lips. “You’re a goddess. Really, you can’t blame us for noticing.” He gave her a squeeze and let go, then contemplated Sophie’s panties thoughtfully. “I never get sick of her naughtiness,” he admitted, pocketing them.

She raised an eyebrow. “That’s good, because I think she’s just getting started. The more she understands that we’re not going to kick her to the curb, the naughtier she gets.” The side of her lips twitched up. She looked at the ceiling, hearing Sophie’s racket upstairs as drawers were being opened and closed angrily. “Were we ever that age?” she asked, trying to think of what it was like at eighteen. It was only fourteen years ago, but it might as well have been forever. Before college changed her, before she fell in love with the law, before she was even interested in being a domme, before she’d even had sex with Josh.

“Yeah—remember, I bought that pickup just so we could throw pillows in the back and hump like rabbits in the starlight?”

“No, you bought that pickup so you could hump
Joannie Thompson
like a rabbit under the stars, and then you walked in on her in the janitor’s closet with that one guy…”

“Right, right. But then I came crying to you about it and you gave me pity sex in the back of the truck.” He grinned maniacally at the memory. “Dirty,
crazy
pity sex. Then it rained on us… and we kept at it!” He laughed, then furrowed his brow and rubbed his neck. “Eighteen-year-olds are very sexual creatures,” he mused.

“So are thirty-two-year-olds, apparently,” she hummed. She listened to a lot more angry stomping overhead before she looked at Charlie, assessing him. “When do you think Sophie will be ready for sex, do you think?”

As if Charlie had been pressed with a very deep question, he rubbed his chin with his fingers. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t get aroused by Sophie; as far as Liz was concerned, the man had lived in a state of perpetual arousal since Sophie had moved in. Sophie was his dream submissive, and lit a fire under him that he had to try to fit into his trousers every day.

That being said, he was in so much authority over her, he didn’t want to do anything with her that she might regret. Liz feared he was waiting until Josh did the honors first. In the past, Liz would have suspected that Josh would have taken a girl’s virginity as soon as he was able, but Josh hadn’t yet, and Sophie had been with them for over five months already.

It was so odd, since Josh was practically love-struck by Sophie, but Liz was beginning to wonder if Josh ever would. And Liz? Well, Liz couldn’t do it without some more serious toys, and she couldn’t help feeling that it would be so sad, after all this time, that Sophie would lose her hymen to plastic.

“I don’t know,” Charlie admitted, then picked up his coffee mug. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

Liz gave him a blank stare until he added, “Well, spanking isn’t hurting. Not like that. And you know it. Once she loses her virginity, she can’t get it back. And what if tomorrow she decides that she doesn’t want to be with us anymore? I don’t want her to regret—”

“She’s been with us for nearly half a year. She’s more comfortable with us than ever. I don’t think she’s even contemplated leaving for months; this is her home, and she loves us. You can tell.” She pressed her lips together. “Did you and Josh have an arrangement about it or anything?”

“No,” Charlie said. “I mean, he used to joke about calling ‘shotgun’ and all that, but he hasn’t made any jokes like that in a long while. You know how he feels about Sophie.”

“Big pile of mush?” she replied, lifting her eyebrows.

He nodded. “Yep. He’s turned into that. Half the time I wonder if he’s gonna start spouting poetry. If he wasn’t still having sex with you, I’d be worried that he’d get really possessive of her. She’s less subby around Josh; they have more of a relationship that you could call ‘normal’ in public. It should be him who moves before I do, but I don’t know what he’s waiting for. Unless he’s waiting for her to be done with high school? Who knows!”

They stopped talking when they heard Sophie leave her bedroom and stomp to the stairs, down each one, and into the kitchen, muttering something about life being unfair and how everyone was “riding her ass” these days.