Chapter 7
CALLUM
“Is there a problem with your meal, Mr. Moore?”
I unclenched my jaw, trying and most likely failing to smooth out the frown on my face as I set my phone down and looked up at the ma?tre d’.
“No,” I said, my voice terse as I stood. “Please charge it to my room.”
His eyes flickered down to my plate. “It appears that you haven’t touched your food, sir. If it’s not to your liking—”
“It’s fine,” I said, managing a tight smile. I gave him an abrupt nod, then snatched up my phone and headed for the bank of elevators, hitting the call button for my personal assistant back in New York.
“Mr. Moore,” Andrea said, answering on the first ring. “What can I do for—”
“Why do I have a notice from HR that Dashiell Davis is no longer employed with us?” I asked, cutting her off.
“Ahh, let me look into that.” To her credit, it only took her a moment to find me an answer. “Oh, I see, sir. He withdrew his application.”
“He what?”
She was silent for a moment, then she cleared her throat. “It’s a simple one page document, sir. There’s no reason indicated, but it’s definitely his signature. I recognize it from going through all the original paperwork with him, sir.”
“Dashiell hasn’t mentioned anything to me about any problems,” I said tightly.
And while Jackie had been maddeningly close-lipped about helping to “sort things out” with my boy, I also trusted the little shit, even when he was driving me crazy.
And since he’d promised me that he was taking care of everything, I had assumed that was true.
“Well,” Andrea said slowly, sounding uncertain. “I know he’s still been staying at your apartment…”
“Yes, I know.”
In my bed, where I’d barely been able to refrain from asking him if he was making a mess each night, “thinking” of me.
I’d avoided letting our conversations become too explicit in the four days since I’d left him in New York, though.
Partly because the thought of scaring the boy off before I could be there to move things forward in person was unacceptable.
I simply couldn’t take the chance. But also because our nightly phone calls had become a study in the most delicious edging, and the joy of flustering him—and the sweet, needy responsiveness he showed to even the smallest sign of praise—had become a bit like a drug to me. Utterly addictive.
Speaking to him each night had become the thing I looked forward to the most. He was every bit the sweet, pretty little thing Jackie had teased me about craving, and it brought out a side of me I honestly hadn’t known I possessed.
More than once, I’d been tempted to blow off the final meetings I had scheduled for tomorrow and fly back early, and after he’d finally opened up to me about the circumstances I’d found him in, I’d only wanted to take care of him more.
But not once had he given me any hint that he wasn’t happy with the way I was doing that, and while I’d be more than happy to spoil the shit out of him just because I could, I wanted him to have the security of knowing he had some income of his own—above and beyond the little bit he made at La Vigneta—along with a roof over his head.
Had something happened? Had something changed? Or had I misread everything, right from the beginning?
The idea gutted me.
“Would you like me to check in on him?” Andrea asked cautiously.
“No,” I said briskly. “I’ll take care of it.”
I ended the call and did what I should have as soon as I’d gotten the notice—called Dashiell. I hadn’t wanted to worry him if it was just a clerical error, but it clearly wasn’t, and I needed to know why.
No, I needed to know what I had to do to fix it, because Jackie was right, about everything.
I wanted the boy. I wanted to keep him.
It took him three rings to answer, and when he did—with a video call, the way he knew I liked—he was flushed and beautiful and a little bit breathless, as if he’d run for the phone. “Callum?”
My jaw clenched. He sounded just as eager as always, and if I lost that, lost him, I wouldn’t be able to stand it.
The boy’s face fell as soon as he saw mine. “What’s… what’s wrong?”
“I heard that you declined my job offer,” I said, my voice stiff and formal and an ache in my gut that I’d never felt before.
“Oh,” Dashiell said, sinking down onto the bed behind him. “They told you that already?”
“They did. But they didn’t tell me why.”
He swallowed. “Um, because Jackie got me a different job? He said... he said it would be better.”
“Whatever it pays, I’ll double it.”
Dashiell’s eyes went wide. “Oh! No. It’s not, I didn’t mean it paid better.
I don’t want you to spend even more money on me!
Jackie just said, he said I shouldn’t work for you.
And he’s renting me his spare room now! The one that was his weight room?
So he helped me move the new clothes over there, and I’ll pay you back for them!
I know you said it was a business expense and it might take me a while, but since I’m not—”
“Dashiell,” I interrupted softly, the ache in my gut spreading throughout my entire torso, squeezing my chest like a vise, until I could barely breathe. “Don’t go.”
I hadn’t meant to say it. I’d never even bothered to ask when past lovers had decided to leave me—for being too controlling; too overbearing; too much, even though I’d always been holding back with each of them—and this boy wasn’t even that yet.
I’d barely touched him. Never tasted him.
Had denied I even wanted him the first time he’d caught my eye.
And yet the idea that he wouldn’t be there when I returned tomorrow was almost more than I could bear.
“Go? What?” He shook his head, looking stricken. “No. I’m not going anywhere. Unless… unless you want me to?”
“I don’t.”
The tight lines of worry that had suddenly appeared on his face smoothed out, and he gave me a bashful smile. “Okay. I don’t want to go, either.”
My heart started beating again, but I was more confused than ever, and it wasn’t a feeling I was used to.
Or liked.
“I don’t understand… sweetheart.” I hesitated to add the term of endearment that had been slipping so easily off my tongue all week. But he’d just said he didn’t want to go, and I couldn’t resist it.
“I’m still house sitting for you,” Dashiell said, his voice trembling a little. “But… but as a favor. Jackie said if I work for you, or… or stay here without having any other place to go, it would make an… an imbalance of power.”
“So, Jackson put this into your head,” I said grimly, the betrayal hurting just as much, but in a different way, as the thought of losing this boy.
“I don’t think I’m explaining it right,” Dashiell said in a small voice. “He said it was a good thing, if…” He shook his head, then, without completing that thought, whispered, “But you’re acting like it’s not.”
“It would be a good thing if… what, baby? All I want to do is take care of you.”
And, quite frankly, I didn’t like the idea of another man doing that for him, even if it was just Jackie.
“I like it when you do that,” Dashiell said with a tentative smile. “When you take care of me, I mean.”
“Then I don’t see the problem.”
Dashiell chewed on his lip for a minute, then blurted, “Do you… do you think you might want to do more than that, though? More than just, um, just making sure I have a place to stay?”
“Yes,” I said, a hot pulse of need going through me. It was the first time he’d come right out and asked me what my intentions were, although even now, I could just be reading what I wanted to hear into that question. I cleared my throat. “I want to have a physical relationship with you.”
His eyes went wide again, that delicious little hitch in his breath. “You mean sex, right?”
“I do.”
“Oh good,” he said with a wide, excited grin that released all the weight from my chest in an instant. “I want that, too! It’s why Jackie said I shouldn’t work for you. So, this way, when you tell me to do something—”
That little hitch was back, and his cheeks colored so prettily that I had to stifle a groan, barely able to refrain from demanding that he tell me in explicit detail exactly what kind of “something” he was imagining.
“—um, I can just do it, and you’ll know it’s not because I’m afraid of getting kicked out or losing my job or anything.”
That thought tamped down my libido. “Sweetheart, I would never…”
I let my voice trail off, thinking of everything he’d told me about his past, along with all the oversharing Jackie had done over the years about the kind of relationships people had in the BDSM community he was so enamored of.
The kind of relationship that I’d never allowed myself to imagine having before, but that, with this boy—who said things like “when you tell me to do something, I can just do it” with the same breathless eagerness that he’d described some of the ridiculously decadent frozen coffee drinks Jackie had apparently been feeding him all week—it felt temptingly inevitable.
“I didn’t think you would,” Dashiell said, looking down. “But Jackie still said it would be better this way.”
“He’s right,” I said, feeling a stab of guilt for doubting my nephew… but still not liking the idea of Dashiell being anywhere but in my bed. “Do you plan on staying at Jackie’s place when I get back?” I asked, doing my damnedest to keep my voice neutral.
“I’d rather stay here? You said you didn’t want me to go.”
“And you said you already moved all your clothes over there.”
His cheeks colored. “Not all of them. There are a lot. We can return some, though? Andrea had already had a bunch delivered that first day, but then Jackie took me shopping anyway, and…” He shook his head, looking adorably bewildered.
“We should definitely return some. But any that I keep, I really will pay you back for! I promise.”
“No.”
“But—”
I smiled, something I hadn’t thought I’d be able to do just a few minutes ago.
“Sweetheart, if Jackie was that opinionated about the ‘imbalance of power’ between us, then I’m sure he also told you that I can be an overbearing asshole, and I’m putting down my foot about this.
You said you’re still house sitting for me. ”
“Well, no one ever actually gave me any duties here, so really, I’m just… here.”
“Perfect.”
“But I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re doing all the things that matter to me.
You’re right where I want you. You’re sleeping in my bed.
You’re giving me something to look forward to coming home to.
” He blushed harder and harder with each word, and my cock responded, filling quickly as I watched my boy squirm.
“And since you’re doing me this favor as a gift, instead of as an employee,” I added softly, “I reserve the right to give you gifts in return.”
“Oh,” he said softly. Then, “But… it really is a lot of clothes.”
“And it would make me happy if you’d accept them. You do like making me happy, baby, don’t you? Even though you know you don’t have to?”
“I do,” he whispered. “It’s… it’s what I want to do all the time, if you just tell me how.”
My shaft pulsed, and I reached down to squeeze it through my pants, stifling another groan.
“You already do,” I said, my voice growing husky with the sudden surge in my arousal.
His tongue darted out, wetting those plush lips. “Is there, um, is there anything else I can do to make you happy?”
The breathless offer brought up all sorts of dirty fantasies, but since most of those would have to wait, I went with, “If you’re agreeing to keep the clothes, why don’t you show me some of your favorites?”
His eyes went wide. “Right now?”
“That’s right. You don’t have to keep them all if you truly don’t like them, but Jackie assured me there were at least a few items that were stunning on you. I’d love to see them.”
Actually, Jackie’s exact words had been “we picked up a few things that will make you fuck that boy into next week.” And then he’d refused to give me any more detail than that, the little shit.
Dashiell’s cheeks colored up. “Did Jackie tell you what they were?”
“No. Will you show me, pretty baby? Model your pretty things?”
“Um, okay,” he whispered after a long pause, his face turning even pinker. “But if I put them on, I might, um, sometimes I…” He swallowed, then, all in a hot rush, “Will you be mad if something happens while I’m wearing them?”
There was only one thing I could imagine “happening” that would get him this worked up.
“If you’re asking whether or not you can come in your pretty new clothes, baby,” I growled, my cock surging hard against my hand, “then the answer is no.” I paused. “Not without my permission.”
Dashiell froze. I’d never let myself say that to anyone.
I’d never demanded that kind of total ownership and complete control with a lover before.
But after that first moment of shock passed, his whole body softened, a blissed-out expression coming over his face and his nerves and anxiety dropped away right before my eyes.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I hadn’t overstepped. Not with him. He wanted me to be in control.
Quite possibly as much as I wanted to take it.