Chapter 5
CALLUM
Despite the unexpected distraction of finding Dashiell this morning, I’d managed to stay focused on the meetings I’d flown into town for and had made significant progress on the deal we were putting together today.
Normally, that would have given me a lot of satisfaction, but tonight, all I could focus on was the boy I’d left in New York.
I set aside the contract I’d been staring blankly at for the last fifteen minutes and checked my phone again. Andrea had given me Dashiell’s phone number, and I’d sent him a message once I was done working for the day, asking him to call me once he was back at my apartment tonight.
He’d replied that he would—a simple, yes, sir—but he should have been home by now, and he still hadn’t.
I frowned, then tapped out a quick message to Paul, getting a prompt reply back.
Yes, sir. I delivered him back to your apartment twenty minutes ago.
I drummed my fingers on the arm of my chair, then slipped my earbuds in and surged to my feet, hitting the call button under Dashiell’s contact information.
He answered on the second ring, sounding groggy. “H’lo?”
The restless energy that had plagued me all night as I waited to hear from him settled down as soon as I heard his voice.
“Did you fall asleep?” I asked, smiling.
“Wha—oh no! Um, I mean, yes? I’m so sorry, Callu—um, I mean, sir. Should I be calling you Mr. Moore? That’s what, um, what Andrea and Paul call you, and they work for you, too?”
I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror, startled to see a wide grin on my face.
“No,” I answered the boy. “You don’t need to call me Mr. Moore.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I closed my eyes, easily picturing the way his cheeks had no doubt pinkened up. “How was work for you tonight, sweetheart?”
“Um, it was fine? Not… not quite as exciting as that time you were there,” the cautiously playful tone in his voice made my cock swell, and I pressed a hand against it to keep it in check.
“I should hope not,” I said, a little growly. “My nephew was being completely inappropriate with you.”
He paused for a moment. Then, quietly, “I didn’t mind. He did apologize after you left, you know, and I… I thought of you, afterward.”
My mind filled with several scenarios under which he might have been thinking about me after we’d first met, all of them involving my cock, and the eager look of wide-eyed wonder he’d given it when he’d realized I was hard for him.
The little hitch in his breath made me think I wasn’t far off, and if I were with him right now, I was sure I’d be able to tell by the deliciously expressive way his face tended to give away his feelings.
“Dashiell, please switch to video,” I said, the husky timbre of my voice too revealing, but impossible to take back.
“Oh, can this phone do that?” I heard him fumbling about for a moment, then my screen lit up with the permission bar.
I tapped it, and Dashiell’s face appeared. He was as beautiful as I remembered, but along with what the sight of him did to my libido, a wave of unexpected tenderness came over me. “You’re tired.”
He gave me a sleepy smile. “Sorry, I think I did doze off when I got back. I just sat down for a minute, and I know we have to go over my, um, my house-sitting duties? I meant to call you, but—”
“It’s okay, pretty baby,” I cut in, then looked more closely at the small screen. “Are you in my bedroom?”
The soft look of drowsiness fled in an instant as his eyes widened with horror, and the video became choppy as he scrambled off what most definitely looked like my bed.
“I’m sorry! I… I wasn’t sure where you wanted me to sleep.
I mean, obviously not here, but Andrea didn’t tell me, and I…
” The video finally stilled, his phone held too close to his face for me to make out where he was now as he swallowed hard, looking miserable.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered again. “I know it was wrong. I have no excuse. I just, you’re gone, and it…
I shouldn’t have. Do you… do you want me to leave? ”
“No,” I said, the word coming out harshly enough that he jumped.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, willing my heart rate to slow down after the surge of adrenaline that had hit me at the idea of him leaving.
“You agreed to stay. I would like you to stay. As you’ve seen, there are a couple of guest rooms available. You’re welcome to either one, but—”
I definitely couldn’t offer him my bed. My conscience was clear about that.
My mouth gave my conscience the finger and went on about its business anyway.
“—if you’d like to stay in my room, that would make me very happy, sweetheart,” I finished, which was just as inappropriate as what I’d ripped into my nephew for, if not more so, but also undeniably true.
“It would?” Dashiell asked, sounding just as delightfully breathless and eager as when we’d first met. “You don’t mind?”
“Is that where you’d like to be?”
He hesitated, nibbling on his lip, and I could tell the sweet boy was nervous about saying the wrong thing.
“What did we talk about this morning, pretty baby?” I asked him gently. “Didn’t I tell you not to get in the habit of lying to me? I’d like to hear the truth, always.”
“Okay,” he whispered. “I… yes. I’d like to sleep in your bed. It...” He looked away for a second, his cheeks filling with that pretty pink color. “It smells like you.”
A hot surge of satisfaction shot through me, and for the first time in my life, I was sorely tempted to blow off work—and, in this case—a multi-million-dollar deal—for other pursuits.
I took a slow breath, forcing myself to be more rational.
Dashiell would still be waiting for me when I got back to New York at the end of the week, as would all the reasons I’d so carefully constructed to keep from doing something about that.
All the reasons I was completely ignoring at the moment.
“Good boy,” I murmured, earning me that little hitch in his breath again. “Thank you for being honest. Now tell me something else. You said you thought of me after we met. Will you be thinking of me when you’re in my bed tonight, the way you did before?”
His blush deepened so quickly that it almost could have been an app filter. “Um, I… I promise I won’t… do that.”
“You won’t think of me?” I teased him, my cock filling fast.
I shifted, adjusting myself as my pants became uncomfortably tight.
“Oh! Um, yes. I’ll… I’ll think of you. I can’t stop thinking of you. I just thought you meant… never mind.”
Oh, I most definitely did mean that. “Dashiell,” I growled, my cock jerking. “What did I say about not lying to me?”
“I didn’t! I wasn’t, I didn’t lie!”
No, technically, he hadn’t. But he was definitely withholding the truth, and I suspected that I knew what that truth was… and it was going to make it virtually impossible to keep my hands off him once I got back, no matter what my conscience tried to tell me.
I wanted this boy, and the knowledge that he wanted me, too, obliterated everything I’d told my nephew about why I couldn’t have him.
“Dashiell…” I started, squeezing my shaft through my pants to try and keep it under control.
“Yes?” he asked, then held his breath as he waited for me to go on, practically quivering.
I wanted to tell him not to make a mess without my permission. I wanted to warn him that I’d come home and spank him if he disobeyed me about that. I wanted to claim all his pleasure, to push him in ways I’d never felt free to do with a lover. I wanted the boy to be mine to push. I wanted—
I let out an explosive breath, forcibly reining in my thoughts before they got so far ahead of me that they ruined this thing. Right now, he was technically still off limits, and since I’d invited him into my home to work for me, I was already crossing all sorts of lines.
I wasn’t sure what to do about that, but I probably wasn’t going to sort it all out tonight.
“Sweetheart,” I finally said. “I want you to go to bed and get some sleep now. Can you do that for me?”
“Oh,” he said, wilting a little before my eyes, as if he’d been hoping for something different. “I guess so. That’s what you want?”
“Yes,” I said, finding, to my surprise, that I really meant it.
Did I also want to order him to climb into my bed right now, straddle my pillow, and let me watch while he rubbed himself off on it?
Did I want to be there in person to feed my cock into that pretty mouth of his?
Did I want to live out the pornographic scenario Jackie had planted in my head, where I taught this sweet, eager boy to ride my cock while he called me Daddy?
Very much so.
But for every one of those filthy fantasies, I also wanted to take care of him.
To know he was safe, protected, and secure.
To have him in my bed not just so I could fuck him or smell his cum on my sheets when I got home, but because it gave me a deep, primal sense of satisfaction to think of him there.
As if on cue, he yawned, quickly covering his mouth and giving me an embarrassed look. “Sorry.”
I smiled, stroking the phone like a sentimental fool as I remembered the soft feel of his skin under my fingers. “Go to sleep. We can talk more tomorrow.”
“About… um, about what you’d like me to do for you?” He flushed again, and I knew for sure the sweet boy was having some of the same dirty thoughts I was. “I mean, for the house sitting,” he added quickly, fooling neither of us.
I gave him an indulgent smile. “We can talk about that, too.”
But I also wanted to know everything else, everything about him. How he’d ended up in the state I’d found him in. What sorts of things made him smile. Why he wasn’t in school. Where the people in his life were who were supposed to care for him.
How I could become the one who got to do that from now on.