Page 21 of Learning Little Lizzie
“Unless you’d like to skip breakfast with Kylie in favor of eating soap, I suggest you stop right there, little girl.”
She had to physically bite her tongue to keep the rest of the words from slipping out as she handed over her phone.
“Thank you. What’s your passcode?”
“One-zero-one-five-zero-one.”
“Your birthday? Eliza, you should know better than that.”
She tried to tell herself she wasn’t pleased he knew her birthday. “What? It’s easy to remember.”
Shaking his head, he sighed as he tapped in the numbers. “We’ll discuss password safety at a later date. For now, I’m setting up your phone to be locked down while you are at school. You will be able to call and text me—I’m putting my number in your phone, under Daddy—but otherwise your phone will basically be a fancy paperweight until six every evening.”
“No! You can’t just cut me off from all my friends all day!”
“You see your friends plenty during the day, Eliza.”
Red. The word practically burned on her tongue, and she could feel the rising panic in her chest at the thought of being left out of all the group texts until the evening.
And still, she couldn’t bring herself to say the word. It was a sucky situation, but it was certainly nothing to safeword over. “This isn’t fair.”
To her surprise, he put the phone down and looked up. For a moment, it was like the air froze in her lungs when he pinned all that potent “Daddy” energy on her and only her. “Let’s talk about it, then. Why don’t you think it’s fair?”
“It’s just not.”
“Sweetheart, I can’t make a decision based on ‘It’s just not’. Is there a reason you feel you need your phone during the day?”
“Yes… but it doesn’t matter. You already made the rule.” And even if she hated it, she wasn’t going to be a whiny little baby about it.
“Rules can be flexible when they need to be. But only if you’re honest and upfront with me about your needs.”
“Oh.” Rolling that little bit of information over in her head, she nibbled at her thumbnail. If he was telling her to share her thoughts about the rule then it wasn’t really whining, right? “Um, well, it probably seems kinda silly but like, my friends and I talk all day in group chats and stuff. I’ll feel really left out and I might miss out on plans with them if I can’t text back right away.”
“Ah. That’s understandable and not silly at all.”
“Really?”
“Really. And thank you for being honest with me.” Still watching her, he tapped his fingers against the table. “Do you normally just text or is there an app you’ll need access to, as well?”
“There’s an app. Can I show you?”
“Of course.”
Rising from her chair, she rounded the table to lean over his shoulder. His cologne, something deep and earthy and utterly masculine, filled her senses and she nearly drooled on his crisp white shirt.
Dammit. She did not want to be attracted to him. But she’d always been a sucker for the strict Doms and it didn’t hurt that he was fucking gorgeous.
Pushing those thoughts to the back of her mind, she pointed to the app she and her friends used the most. “That one.”
“All right. You’ll be able to call and text me during the day, and use this app. Everything else, including games, will be turned off until the evening. Sound fair?”
Not really, but it was more fair than completely cutting her off from her friends, so she shrugged. “Sure.”
He tapped a few more buttons and handed her the phone back. “Go put your shoes on and I’ll drive you over to the main building. You should only be a few minutes late for breakfast with Kylie.”
Relief bubbled up inside her and she threw her arms around his neck and squeezed. “Thank you!”
She hurried back toward the foyer, then stopped and wrinkled her nose at the sneakers she’d kicked off beside her bookbag the night before. The white Converse would look super cute with her outfit. But she didn’t want cute. She wanted… sexy.
