I couldn't get to sleep. Insomnia is not usual for me, but occasionally it grasps me and shakes me awake and won't let go. The last time it was this bad was when my Dad died. Getting three or four hours of sleep a night when I regularly require nine makes me cranky and grumpy at best, which is not my usual persona at all.
I know I'm keeping you awake with my tossing and turning, which just makes me feel that much worse. Finally, I end up on my back, sighing in exasperation, close to tears of pure frustration.
I hear you roll towards me in the dark, yawning loudly then swallowing. "Still awake, Muffin?" The soft, tender words hurt almost more than your anger would.
Close enough to out and out sobbing, I nod my head vigorously - forgetting that you can't see it in the dark. I force a watery "huh-huh" out while hugging myself, praying that you don't want to hold or touch me, because then the dam will let loose and I'll embarrass myself again with a huge flood of tears.
Without another word, you slide down my body so that your mouth is at hip level, touching my knee in quiet command.
My leg flinches as tears spill down into my hair. "No," I say as softly as I can, hoping you won't hear it and somehow also won't notice that I'm not obeying. Fear at my own little rebellion drives the tears from my eyes.
This makes you sit up just a little, your hand both possessive and familiar on my thigh, as I worry and wait for the inevitable scolding - maybe even a spanking.
But I'm resigned to my fate, stuck in that eternal loop of bratty, fretful stubbornness.
"I know you're pretty strung out, hon, so I'm gonna give you another chance." Your voice is exquisitely neutral - neither condemning nor cajoling, merely stating.
I appreciate the second chance - they were almost never given - but I can't obey you. I simply can't. It's beyond me right now, despite the fact that everything in me has always wanted nothing more than to be your good little girl, even when I make the occasional mistake. I'm almost never blatantly trying to be bad; punishment is usually a sin of omission or miscalculation. I am not bratty by nature at all. I seek support and approval, which you gladly provide by the heaping bushel, not that it ever seems to be enough.
Discipline, too, is provide just that regularly, if and when you deem it necessary.
And you are just about to deem, since my legs remain where they are, tightly closed.
"Go get me your hairbrush," you say almost sadly, as if this is something you would rather not have to do, but you're too much my Daddy to relent. As if to illustrate the seriouness of your order, you move just a tad away, removing your warmth as an impetus for me to do as I am told.
My brush is a big wooden paddle brush - solid and hefty in the hand, and devastating even on a panty-protected butt. It's not the one I use in the morning to rearrange my curls because I have so much hair that the bristles don't get to the tangle underneath. But sometimes, when I'm deep into littlegirlspace, you sit me infront of you and brush my hair and it's positively mezmerizing for the both of us - quieting and calming and so perfectly Daddy/littlegirlish.
But that's not what's going to happen with the brush this time, I'd be willing to bet on it. Nothing anywhere near that pleasant. I am slow - much too slow, and I know it - slow to move, to get off the bed and cross the cool, rug-scattered hardwood floor to my pretty oak vanity. The brush is where it's always supposed to be - innocuously on display on a unique, mirrored oak tray you brought back from an antique shop one day.
I deliver it to you with my head down, lip pouted out, with an almost defiant air that cannot be good for the health of my rear. "C'mere." With the head of the brush, you pat the spot on the bed next to you that I just vacated. I climb over you and fall into place on my back as you turn on the touch lamp on the nightstand next to the bed. When you roll back over to me, all it takes is one bushy, raised eyebrow to get me to sigh exasperatedly and move onto my stomach, some safer amount of inches away from you.