Chapter 16 Daddy Dorian #2
“I don’t know yet,” Murry replied. “Everything in my life is kind of perfect right now, so wishing for something more seems kind of selfish, but I think it would be awesome to see other people’s hopes and dreams hanging there.”
“Well, I want to hang a wish,” Raleigh said.
“Really?” I said. “And what is it my pet wishes for?”
“Somebody to love Phoenix, ‘cause he’s awesome, and I know he’s lonely now that he hasn’t been hanging out with us as much as when we worked at the club,” Raleigh said, his innocent wish turning my heart to goo.
For someone to have grown up with so little to only have wishes for someone else, or no wishes at all, was a remarkable thing in this day and age.
I’d had pets in the past who truly believed that they deserved to be pampered no matter the cost, and I’d been guilty of indulging them.
It’s easy to get caught up in whirlwind moments, especially when the world is at your fingertips.
Living beneath the cameras' scrutiny, flashbulbs constantly going off around me, had been such a rush in my younger years. Those last few, though, before I’d stepped away to fully turn my attention to designing rather than modeling the clothes, I’d gone through a period of burnout.
“That’s a wonderful wish,” Murry said.
“It sure is,” I added.
I was on my second bucket of crab legs when it started to feel like there were eyes on me.
Maybe it was years of having eyes trained my way that clued me in that I was being watched, but I could feel it and turned, eyes skimming over the faces in the room, until I spotted the offender.
It took a moment to place the face and another to make up my mind what to do about it.
My pets hadn’t noticed yet, and I didn’t want their evening spoiled, so I’d have to be subtle and hope the asshole had enough home training not to make a scene in public, or things were about to get ugly.
“Excuse me,” I said as I wiped my lips and set my napkin on the table. “I need to use the restroom.”
I hoped there weren’t napkin bits stuck to my face as I crossed the room, but I wasn’t in the mood to fuck around with a wet wipe.
Younger me would have been worried about bad publicity and the wrong kind of photo winding up in a magazine.
Daddy me didn’t give two shits if I wound up splashed all over the evening news right now; Sean O’Leary needed to keep his eyes and thoughts off my pets.
He turned away the moment I stood and sat with his head bent over his plate when I reached his table, conversation going on all around us as I leaned to speak in his ear.
“Raleigh and Murry belong to me. If you know what’s good for you, you will never let me catch you staring at them again.”
His hands had gone still, knife and fork suspended over his plate as I straightened up and headed into the men’s room, half hoping he’d follow me in just so I could issue a harsher threat without witnesses.
But as expected, he was a coward, who was sitting in his seat, silently pushing a bite of food around on his plate when I stepped out of the bathroom.
The fucker actually cringed when I walked behind his chair on my return trip to my table, where Raleigh and Murry sat cheerfully cracking open crab legs and dunking them in butter.
Good, they’d missed the whole exchange, which meant they’d missed Sean being here in the first place.
“Da…err…Dorian,” Murry began as I picked up my crab cracker and prepared to dive back in. “Is it okay to call you Daddy in a place like this?”
He whispered the word, gaze darting about before he leaned closer to me to ask the question. It sucked that we lived in a world where we couldn’t just be ourselves without worrying about other people’s responses, but I appreciated his caution in the times we lived in.
“When we’re out like this, Dorian is just fine,” I explained.
“You know how I feel about ‘Mr.’—it makes me feel ancient, so I appreciate you not adding it. We know what we are to each other, and I know you aren’t being disrespectful when you say my name without adding an honorarium before it.
It’s just a show for the vanilla crowd, so don’t worry about it and enjoy your crab legs because I’m about to destroy the rest of this bucket. ”
He giggled at that, nodded, and happily dug back in, for half a second, before he realized that he hadn’t asked me the real question he’d had for me.
“Do you, um…” he paused and looked across the table at Raleigh.
“We were wondering if, um, well, we’re always at the loft, and now that we’re not dancing, we always sleep over…” Raleigh said, voice trailing off as the bridge of his nose turned pink.
“I’ve been waiting for you to bring the subject up,” I admitted. “That way I could suggest that you two just move into the loft with me so you’re not wasting money on an apartment you’re rarely in for an hour or two.”
I could see the relief on their faces when I made the offer, rather than waiting for them to hem and haw before they finally got around to asking if they could move in with me.
Like everything else in this relationship so far, the pair had a way of clearly letting me know when they were ready to take the next step.
“We’d love that,” Raleigh said, while Murry sat clutching a crab leg, nodding like a bobble head.
“Alright, then we’ll sit down and figure out what day will work best and get you all moved in,” I declared as I broke open another shell and plucked out a succulent bit of crab meat.
I must say, that crab tasted extra sweet a short time later when Sean and his party paraded by and the man kept his head turned so far away from us that he nearly walked right into the door no one held open for him.
The bang drew stares his way and a few uncomfortable snickers as he staggered backward, tugged his shirt flat, and yanked the door open before plunging out into the night.
Talk about karma smacking a well-deserving asshole right in the face and the perfect end to an already perfect evening.
Victory is mine! As Murry would say.
I just hoped our encounter put an end to things for good.