Chapter 14 #2
Malcolm was never going to be able to show his face at Bo’s again. He dropped his head onto the table and covered it with his arms. “Oh my god. Marv said that?”
“Oh no, you’ve broken him,” CJ said, gently rubbing Malcolm’s back.
“Would you rather we not talk about this here? Because his questions will probably only get more invasive. We can go to your place if you’d be more comfortable.
I promise we just wanted to reach out and let you know we’re available to talk to. About anything.”
He slowly sat up, touched beyond words for a second. These guys barely knew him and yet were making more of an effort than any of the friends he’d made in college had when he’d dropped out. A couple had texted him a handful of times, but those had dried up quickly, and he was forgotten.
“Uh, well,” he said, tugging at his earlobe and dropping his eyes. “My place is kind of… small, and Emmett said he was hungry.”
A warm hand covered his, and he glanced up at CJ, who smiled at him in a soft, understanding way. “You don’t need to be embarrassed about where you live, but we can stay here, and Ollie will use his inside voice.”
“Totally,” Ollie said, getting up onto his knees and planting his forearms on the table to lean over it so he was closer to him and CJ.
He lowered his voice and said softly, “Babe, you never have to be embarrassed in front of me. I share a single room with the love of my life on the second floor of a motorcycle club’s clubhouse.
And before that, I lived above a friend’s garage in a tiny little studio.
That was my first time ever living on my own. ”
“I’ve never lived on my own,” Emmett added, his round cheeks flushed but he held Malcolm’s eyes. “I lived with my parents until about a year ago. Then I went from a roommate to my Da—boyfriend’s place.”
“I also used to share one room with my husband at the clubhouse,” CJ said, squeezing Malcolm’s hand before pulling away. “Though we did recently buy a house.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Which still seems crazy to me.”
“Yes, yes, we’re very proud of you,” Ollie said, stretching to pat CJ’s shoulder and then refocusing on Malcolm.
“I can tell,” CJ muttered, but he was still smiling, a small dimple flashing in his right cheek.
“So, is it a micro? Is that why you lied?” Ollie asked, head cocked so that some of his purple hair fell over his forehead. “Because we don’t body shame here, and I didn’t mean to make you feel like I would judge him if his dick wasn’t humongous.”
“Oh my god.” Malcolm’s face was on fire. He covered it with one of his hands.
Ollie resettled onto his side of the booth, looking genuinely confused. “What?”
Malcolm shook his head. “I just can’t believe I’m having this conversation, but here goes nothing. No, he doesn’t have a micro penis, but I’m not going to tell you how big it is,” he quickly added when Ollie’s mouth opened, and he slumped with disappointment. “But, um, yeah. It’s… large.”
Emmett snickered at his awkwardness, hiding behind his menu, and CJ chuckled too. The traitor.
“Fine,” Ollie said, dragging the word out. “Next question.”
“Wait, no. And I didn’t lie when you asked me last Saturday.” He glanced around before adding, “I didn’t see it for the first time until that night. How, um, how did you find out things between us had changed?”
“Six said that Bull was being quieter than normal, but he didn’t seem sad like he has the last few times he’d seen him.”
Malcolm’s stomach flipped, and he placed his hands over his midsection to hold it in place. He hated the idea that Bull had been sad, especially knowing that it was probably because of him. Because he had been developing feelings for Malcolm and thinking they would never be reciprocated.
“Wow,” CJ said, laying down his menu and pushing it back to the middle. “Says something when Six, of all people, notices that someone is quiet.”
Ollie ignored him except to flip him the bird. “So I texted Emmett—because Six wouldn’t just flat out ask Bull—and he asked his boyfriend, who is also at Marv’s, to ask Bull, and he confirmed you two were together.”
He was pretty sure he’d followed most of that.
“Is he your first guy?” Ollie asked brightly.
“You really don’t have any kind of filter, do you?” Dahlia said as she approached their table, and Malcolm sank farther down in his seat. At least it had been her and not Trisha covering this section.
“Yes, I do,” Ollie said, like he was repeating something he had said often. “It’s just not as strong as other people would like.”
Dahlia just laughed, took their orders, and left again. Three pairs of expectant eyes turned on Malcolm.
Swallowing, he nodded. “How did you know?”
Ollie shrugged. “Educated guess. At the clubhouse, you had mentioned a breakup with a woman and had seemed genuinely shocked when I asked you about Bull’s dick. How are you handling things?”
“Okay, I guess,” Malcolm said, rubbing his hands on his thighs. “The weirdest part has been how not weird it is, if that makes sense. It was like once I let myself actually think about the possibility, it just seemed so obvious and natural between us.”
He glanced up and found three smiling, nodding faces.
“We totally get that feeling,” Ollie said. Emmett nodded enthusiastically.
When he glanced at CJ, he grinned and said, “My love story is more of a slow burn than these two if you start from when we exchanged our first letters.”
Malcolm’s eyes popped wide. “Exchanged letters? Like, on paper and through the mail?”
CJ nodded, his face turning wistful. “For nine months, Tank and I only communicated that way while he was in prison down in Louisiana.”
Malcolm wasn’t sure how to process that and didn’t want to offend his new friend. “That’s… cool. I’m happy for you two.”
Thankfully, Dahlia swooped past, depositing drinks in front of each of them, and then disappeared again. Once she was gone, Malcolm glanced around to make sure no one had been seated near them and then turned back to the others.
“So, um, you and Six…”
Ollie took a long drag of his lemonade, then set the glass down. “Are K-I-S-S-I-N-Ging,” he confirmed.
CJ laughed. “You guys definitely do more than kiss.”
“We definitely do.” Ollie sighed dreamily. “That man is a dick wizard.” Emmett made a sort of squeaking noise, and Ollie pinched his cheek like he was a small child doing something adorable. “God, I love when Rooster lets you out to play with us.”
Emmett brushed his hand away, looking pleased instead of insulted.
“Right,” Malcolm said, swallowing down his nerves. If he was going to ask anyone about this, Ollie was the person to do it. He’d been almost uncomfortably open about his and Six’s relationship since about five minutes after they’d met. “Um, so you, like… call him Daddy sometimes?”
It was possible he’d have heat stroke from embarrassment, and he couldn’t quite meet Ollie’s eyes after putting his question out there, but he still saw him turn to look at CJ and Emmett.
When he refocused on Malcolm, there was a guardedness to his expression that he wasn’t used to and seemed out of place on the gregarious man.
“I don’t just call him that. That’s who he is,” Ollie said carefully.
Malcolm had a hundred more questions, but he knew it wouldn’t be fair to expect these guys to answer everything he wanted to know and not share anything about himself.
He took a drink of water and then blurted out, “I really like it when Bull calls me baby boy, and sometimes I want to call him Daddy, but I don’t really know what that means, or what it can mean for us, or if it would just make everything weird when everything has been really, really good so far.”
His vision was a little blurry, and his heart was racing, but he’d said it. He’d said the thing that had been weighing on the back of his mind all week.
“It can mean anything you want it to mean,” CJ said.
He surprised Malcolm when he added, “I only call Tank Daddy in the bedroom.” He glanced at Emmett, eyebrows raised.
When he nodded, CJ said, “Emmett’s boyfriend is his Daddy all the time.
And then Ollie is somewhere in the middle.
It really just depends on what the two of you want and what you’re both comfortable with. ”
That totally made sense.
Except…
“How do I…” Malcolm said, chewing on the inside of his lip. “How do I bring up that I might want to try?”
He glanced around the table, and they were all smiling at him. Not in a mocking or mean way, but like they were proud of him for having the courage to talk to them about this. For some reason, that made his eyes start to burn, and he had to blink a few times to clear it away.
“You just say it,” Emmett said, his soft, sweet voice clear. “If you know in your heart that you can trust him, then that means you can share all the parts of yourself, even this one.”
“Come with me,” Ollie said abruptly, jumping up from the booth.
Malcolm watched him walk away, his strides purposeful, and then glanced at CJ and Emmett.
CJ just chuckled and waved a hand. “You better follow, or he’ll just come back and drag you after him.”
Right. Of course he would.
Malcolm hurried to catch up just as Ollie reached the restrooms. “What are we doing?”
“I want to show you something.”
“I’m not really interested in seeing anyone’s dick but Bull’s,” Malcolm said, unsure where else this could be leading.
Ollie snorted and led the way into the handicapped stall and started undoing his pants.
Malcolm began to back out, hands up. “Seriously, man?—”
“Quit being a baby,” Ollie said, laughing. “Get in here.”
Filled with trepidation, Malcolm stepped back into the stall and pulled the door shut behind him, sliding the lock home.
Ollie’s shorts rustled as they fell down his legs, but he didn’t see it, his eyes glued to a weird stain high up on the wall.
Did Sally or Bull know about it? What if it was mold or something?
“You have to actually look,” Ollie said, laughter clear in his voice.
Sighing, Malcolm dragged his eyes down the wall and then Ollie’s slender frame.
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but the metallic contraption around Ollie’s dick was nowhere near the list of things he could even come up with.
Like… it was in another zip code from the things Malcolm had been imagining.
“What is that?”
“A cock cage,” Ollie said, glancing down at himself with a soft smile. “Six asked me to wear it when we first got together. Before he asked, it wasn’t something I’d ever considered, but now I love it. I wear it whenever I can as a physical reminder that I’m his.”
Malcolm’s eyes were drawn down to a tattoo on the inside of his thigh. In black, stylized script, the words Property of arched above a pair of beautifully rendered black and gray wings. Underneath in bold letters, it simply said Daddy.
Licking his lips, he said softly, “You’re saying I should just talk to Bull.”
Ollie grabbed his shorts and pulled them up.
Once he was zipped and buttoned, he snagged Malcolm’s hands and squeezed his fingers.
Holding his eyes, he said, “I’m saying that you should not only talk to him but listen to him too.
Find your way forward together, and I bet he’ll make you happier than you could even imagine. ”