Santa’s Milk and Cookies (The Lactin Brotherhood #26)

Chapter 1 Dakota

DAKOTA

I should have known today was gonna be a shit show when my foot slid out from under me on the icy sidewalk, and I landed on my ass in front of half the morning foot traffic on First Street.

My jeans soaked up at least a gallon of slush, but the worst part was that I'd dropped my jar of overnight oats, and it splattered at my feet like I had projectile-vomited my breakfast. Blueberries and chia seeds were everywhere.

The glass landed just right and was broken in five clean pieces, so I piled them in my hand and hoped the rain and snow would take care of the rest. Dropping food wasn't littering, was it? I hoped not, because I didn’t have time to try to mop up the mess.

If I didn't haul ass, I was gonna be late. .. Again.

The rest of my walk to the office was miserable because of the frozen denim grinding into my crack, but it was only my second week at this job, and there was no way I had time to go home and change.

The last thing I needed was to be fired this close to Christmas.

It was hardly the ideal time to find a new job.

I just had to suck it up and pretend I meant to coat my body in goo on my way to work. Would people notice? Sure. But I wasn’t worried about co-workers. I was worried about my boss, and he would 100% notice me being an hour late long before they noticed wet clothing.

I was so wrong. The first face I saw when I walked into the office was Gregg's.

My boss was nice enough, but he couldn't hide his horror when he glanced at my pants and probably assumed I'd peed myself. If he had even an ounce of Daddy instinct in him, maybe he’d have felt some compassion and let me go change.

But he just made a show of glancing at his watch and sighed heavily.

"Cutting it close, Dakota."

"Yeah." I waved to my wet pants. "Had a bit of an accident."

His jaw dropped, and his look of disgust grew exponentially.

"No, not like that. I slipped and landed in a puddle of slush." I turned and showed that my backside looked even worse than my front. "I'm soaked through."

"Well, put some napkins on your chair before you sit so it doesn't get ruined." So much for caring about his employees. The guy's first thought was company furniture.

"Yeah, of course."

Before stopping at my desk, I swung through the break room and grabbed a handful of napkins. Certainly wouldn't want the chair to be wet... Heaven forbid the furniture suffered the way my ass currently was. As if the paper towels were going to do a single thing to help.

I laid the thin paper across my seat and finally settled in to work.

My new job was fine, and the days usually flew by, but I was in for a miserable nine hours. Not only was I freezing from sitting in wet jeans, but I was starving, feeling uncared for, and embarrassed. All I wanted was to go home and curl up with a warm bottle of milk.

And that was yet another problem.

I had no access to the milk I needed to sleep.

I couldn't relax without a full tummy of the real stuff. Having easy access to fresh chest milk at my old place had spoiled me, and since moving, I'd been unable to get on a delivery schedule with any of the members of the Lactin Brotherhood. It didn’t matter how much I was willing to pay, it wasn’t available, and it sucked.

Demand for the milk I needed was high, and they said I could be on the waitlist for months. Just thinking about having to wait months made me itchy, so I tried very hard not to focus on that. Every time I did, it made it a thousand times worse.

All that mattered was getting through the day with my job intact and without getting sick. That shouldn’t be as difficult as it was, but such was my life… especially lately.

I squirmed in my chair and attempted to concentrate on the spreadsheet in front of me.

The numbers blurred together, and I blinked hard to refocus.

This wasn't how things were supposed to be. When I moved here, I’d thought everything would fall into place.

New city, new job, new me. Life was going to be grand.

But so far, the only "new" thing was how terrible I felt without my routine. And the only thing grand was the mess I made of my breakfast this morning.

Back home, I knew exactly how my days would go. Work, then a warm bottle, maybe a bubble bath, and then I’d fall asleep surrounded by my plushies. Arlo had understood what I needed, even if he wasn't my Daddy. He was just my roommate who happened to lactate and didn't mind sharing.

I never had to explain that sometimes I needed to feel small and safe to function like an adult the rest of the time. He just... got it. He got me. I missed him.

Here, I felt like I was keeping a dirty secret. I couldn't exactly put "seeking human milk for adult consumption" on my new-employee questionnaire. But if there was any way that would work, I totally would have tried it. Because right now? What I was doing wasn’t working.

Just before noon, my phone buzzed with a message. I wasn't supposed to be on my phone during work hours, but I checked it out of habit, hoping for a notification from the Milkman app or some good news from the Lactin Brotherhood.

No such luck. Just some offer to switch internet providers. Switch today for BLAZING speeds at HALF the cost! Block and delete, thank you very much. At least Gregg didn’t walk by. Getting caught on my phone when it was something important was one thing, but for spam… no, thank you.

I sighed and checked the Lactin Brotherhood app again. My name was still on the waiting list with no estimated time for delivery. There were a few spam messages about "alternative milks for alternative lifestyles" that I scrolled past, and then I saw a new message from Arlo.

My old roommate had promised it wouldn't be hard to find a milk supplier in the city.

"They have whole bars for fresh milk," he'd told me during our last goodbye.

But since he was capable of supplying an entire frat house with his seemingly endless production, he didn't understand that most men had limits.

Some could only pump a few ounces per day.

How's the new place? Found milk yet?

I typed back quickly, trying not to sound too whiny and failing miserably. Terrible. No milk. Dying slowly. Send help.

I could imagine him rolling his eyes. Drama queen. Try the app I told you about. The good donors are there.

I didn't have the energy to tell him I'd tried every app, every forum, every sketchy Craigslist ad that didn't seem like it would end with my organs being harvested. I was desperate, not stupid. So I just reacted with a thumbs-up and put my phone away.

I didn't think going without milk would be almost painful, but I guess that was what withdrawals were like.

After two weeks without a reliable supply, I could barely function.

Sleep was theoretical, either too shallow or way too vivid.

My muscles felt weak. And every loud noise seemed like it was wired directly to my nervous system.

I tried all the workarounds, but cow milk, almond milk, oat milk, and soy milk were all terrible substitutes.

Even the black market freeze-dried stuff didn't hit the spot the way I needed, and my cravings were just getting worse.

I was tired all the time, headachy, and jumpy like I was going through a breakup with my own biology.

I was legally a grownup, but I was also a Little.

At least, I used to be before I moved. That side of me was kinda like a pet that needed daily walks.

When life was good, I could finish a workday, warm up a hot bottle, and let the soft fuzz wash over my brain until I fell asleep in a pile of plushies.

It was the only thing that cut through the static of adult life.

Without it, I felt like an exposed electric wire.

For many Littles, they had a favorite stuffie or binky that helped them slip into Little space or a Daddy who guided them there. For me it was milk, and I wished that wasn’t the case. Especially now.

"Morning, Dakota!"

I jumped in my seat, and the napkins beneath me crinkled like I'd sat on a pile of autumn leaves.

That was Mara, the office manager. She had an actual nameplate that read "Head of Vibes.

" I still hadn’t figured out if that was genius or a sign of bad things to come. I was siding with genius at the moment.

She was always smiling. At first I thought it was a fake customer-service type smile, one meant to keep the people around her comfortable. But the more I got to know her, the more I saw it was simply who she was.

I wanted to be happy like her when I grew up. "Good morning." It was anything but... but that was my problem, not hers.

"You look, uh..." She paused, hunting for a non-offensive way to describe my very offensive style. "Casual."

That was one way to put it. I forced a smile and pretended not to be bothered by her observation. "Went a round with a puddle of slush... and lost. Not looking for a rematch."

She was wearing a ridiculous holiday sweater with a pixelated Santa doing the floss dance. It was so horrible that it was great. “It happens to the best of us.”

I cocked my head and gave her a once-over. "And you look festive." It was the best compliment you could give her. According to my co-workers, she had sweaters for every single holiday, including ones I’d probably never heard of. I was looking forward to seeing what those were.

"I try." She grinned and did a curtsy. "Oh, make sure you sign up for the secret Santa program. We're locking it down today."

"Oh. No, I didn't..." I was about to explain I was new and not planning to participate, but she'd already dropped the sign-up sheet on my keyboard and was disappearing down the aisle. Worse than that, it was numbered. If I didn’t put it in, she would know instantly. Ugh.