Father Mine Read Online Free

went into the adjoining nursery. The door muffled the daughter’s whimpering as it slid shut.
    Z let himself slide down until his ass hit the floor. “Fuck.”
    He rubbed his skull trim back and forth, then let both hands hang off his knees. After a moment, he realized he was sitting as he had back in the cell, his back against the corner facing the door, his knees up, his naked body shivering.
    He looked at the slave bands around his wrists. The black was so dense in his skin, so solid, it was like the iron cuffs he’d once worn.
    After God only knew how long, the door to the nursery slid open and Bella came back with the young. Nalla was asleep again, but as Bella laid her out in the crib, it was with care, as if a bomb were about to go off at any moment.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said softly, rubbing his wrists.
    Bella put on a dressing gown and went to the door that led out into the hall. With her hand on the knob, she looked back at him, her eyes remote. “I can’t say this is okay anymore.”
    â€œI’m really sorry about the dreams—”
    â€œI’m talking about Nalla. I can’t say that your shunning her is all right . . . that I understand, that it’s going to get better and I’ll be patient. The fact is, she is your child as well as mine, and it kills me to see you pulling away from her. I know what you went through, and I don’t want to be callous, but . . . everything’s different for me now. I need to think in terms of what’s good for her, and having a father who won’t even touch her? That’s not it.”
    Z flexed open both his hands and stared at his palms, trying to imagine picking the young up.
    The slave bands seemed huge to him. Huge . . . and contagious.
    The word wasn’t won’t, he thought. It was can’t .
    The thing was if he did comfort Nalla and play with her and read to her, it would mean she had him for a father, and his legacy was nothing you wanted to saddle a young with. Bella’s born daughter deserved better than that.
    â€œI need you to decide what you want to do,” Bella said. “If you can’t be her father, I’m leaving you. I know that sounds harsh, but . . . I have to think of what’s best for her. I love you and I will always love you, but it’s not about me anymore.”
    For a moment, he didn’t think he’d heard right. Leaving him?
    Bella stepped out into the hall of statues. “I’m going to go grab something to eat. Don’t worry about her—I’ll be right back.”
    She closed the door behind her without a sound.
    Â 
    When night fell about two hours later, the way that door had shut so quietly was still banging around Z’s head.
    Standing in front of his closet full of black shirts and leathers and shitkickers, he sought his inner intentions, chasing them around the maze of his emotions.
    Sure, he wanted to overcome the head fuck with his daughter. Of course he did.
    It was just insurmountable: What had been done to him might have been in the past, but all he had to do was look at his wrists to see that he was still dirtied by it all—and he didn’t want that kind of shit anywhere near Nalla. He’d had the same problem with Bella in the beginning of their relationship, and had managed to get over it with his shellan, but the implications were more grave with the young: Z was the corporeal embodiment of the kind of cruelty that existed in the world. He didn’t want his daughter to know that such depths of depravity existed, much less expose her to their aftereffects.
    Fuck.
    What the hell was he going to do when she got to be old enough to look up into his face and ask him why he was scarred and how he’d gotten that way? What would he do when she wanted to know why he had black bands on his skin? What was her uncle Phury going to reply when she asked him why he was missing a leg?
    Z dragged on a shirt and a pair