Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
ESME
My phone screen lit up on my end table and brought me out of my thoughts long enough to realize it wasn’t just dark, it was late in the evening and I didn’t think I’d moved since sitting down after dinner. I reached for my phone, wincing as my back popped and attempted to realign itself after being hunched over for so long.
Easton
You good? You left work early today. Link said you looked really stressed.
Despite not having gotten to know him while we’d played on the same team, I was working on a friendship with Easton, or at least a working relationship. He’d been nice to me since I’d arrived in Nashville, and I didn’t think he held any ill will toward me for the way I’d more or less ignored him throughout his time with the Bulldogs.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. I must have looked bad if Lincoln had noticed I was off. Hell, I hadn't even noticed him as I'd left the building, so I’d clearly been way in my head.
Just confused.
Fuck, that wasn’t what I’d meant to send.
Easton
That doesn’t sound good. Want to talk about it?
I appreciated his concern. It was nice to have someone check up on me because I had looked off earlier in the day. I hated to admit Cass might have been right about Nashville being a good place for me to land. It had already proven to be night and day different from Boston, and this text was just another data point in a long list of other data points.
I’m fine. Really. I was just stressed and my mind wasn’t on work this afternoon.
Easton
Ahhh, I get that. You know how to find me if you need help working shit out, even if it’s not about work. I’m actually a good listener.
I had to fight the urge to scoff and roll my eyes. There was no way he was going to be able to help me with my current issues. And even if he could, I didn’t know how to ask the questions or how to broach the subject, not to mention how incredibly awkward the entire thing would be. Instead of saying any of the things running through my head, I settled on a short acknowledgement.
Thanks.
Now that we were texting, Easton must have decided it was an invitation to continue because another text came across.
Easton
How’s Nashville treating you?
It was a hard question to answer, so I settled on the closest thing to the truth without either oversharing about my history with Jake, my current feelings toward him, and what I’d overheard at lunch or dismissing the question completely.
It’s a change. Chloe loves it, and I’m slightly worried my landlady is going to demand custody of her when I move.
Easton
Who’s Chloe?
I grinned. In my mind, I could see Easton’s confusion. No one ever believed me when I told them about Chloe.
She’s my capybara.
Easton
Ha! No, seriously, who is Chloe? I never heard you talk about her when I was in Boston.
That’s because I only got her last year.
I attached a picture I’d taken of Chloe and Stank both sound asleep on the couch.
My phone rang in my hand, Easton’s name appearing on the screen. He didn’t wait for me to say hello before he yelled in my ear. “Oh my god! You have a capybara! That is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. Just wait until the guys find out. You’re going to have to do a show and tell at some point!”
He was still gushing about Chloe and when he could meet her when he cut himself off with another question. “Wait, how did you get a capybara?”
“The vet. I took Stank in one day and they had a capybara who had been rescued. All her siblings got adopted but her. I don’t know why. I took one look at her and fell in love. She came home with me after the next road trip. Of course, she was a lot smaller back then.”
I flipped to the beginning of my album of Chloe and sent Easton a few photos of the little rodent I’d adopted so he could compare them to what she looked like now.
His second yell was louder than his first and was accompanied by a squeal and a second voice, which I assumed was Lincoln, oohing and aahing over the photos. “Oh. My. God! She was so tiny! No wonder you fell in love with her.”
“She really was cute. She still is. Except she’s not tiny anymore, despite what she thinks. She and Stank try to sleep on my chest and I swear I’m going to suffocate.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Stank? Is that the cat?” Easton was actually giggling.
“Yeah. He looks like a skunk.”
Easton’s laugh sounded loudly. “I had no idea you were an animal lover!”
Outwardly, I laughed. Inwardly, I cringed. “There’s a lot people don’t know about me.”
“Well, it doesn’t have to stay that way. Especially around here. Both teams. All the staff. Everyone is supportive.”
He said the words casually like it was the most natural thing in the world for a hockey team to be open and supportive. “Thanks. That’s good to know.”
After talking with Easton, I forced myself to get up to brush my teeth, feed Chloe and Stank a bedtime snack, and even shower before climbing into bed to return to my research.
This time I was focused on what a littles night was, and the searches quickly proved to be more futile than my original searches for littles.
There were a lot of search results about Mommy and Me events around Nashville. After my earlier research, the meaning of littles was much different in my brain, but unfortunately the technical meaning was the same and I needed to figure out a way to adjust my search terms in order to find what I was looking for.
Being so new to Daddies, littles, and the entire lifestyle, it took me more attempts than I cared to admit before I started landing on non-vanilla results. It was nearly eleven when I had an idea and tapped BDSM Nashville into my search bar. The two words together were enough for me to finally understand what the two had been talking about at lunch.
Sitting in my bed with Chloe and Stank pressed up against me, I spent hours researching what I’d just discovered. Somewhere around one in the morning, I had my aha moment and realized I wasn’t turned off by Daddies or littles. I had no interest in being a little—the idea of giving up control was enough to give me hives and I didn’t want to wear cute clothing or play with toys. Yet I could understand why littles would be drawn to that.
The thoughts eventually led to a dream-filled sleep filled with images of littles and Daddies. As the night went on, the faceless men and women of my early dreams began to take a familiar form. By the end, the little I was dreaming about was a very specific police officer with a bright smile, twinkling eyes, muscles that rippled beneath his shirt sleeves, and an ass that hugged my cock better than my fleshlight.
When my alarm rang, I was dreaming of a rosy-cheeked Jake wearing bright pajamas while kneeling on the floor in front of me and playing with toys. He stopped suddenly and announced he was tired, quickly crawling between my legs, taking my cock in his mouth, and sucking it down.
The alarm blaring in my ear sent Stank, Chloe, and me jumping and my hand flailing about until I found my phone and silenced it. I groaned as I flopped back down and pinched my hard cock between my body and the bed. As I adjusted to a more comfortable position, with a pillow beneath me, the dream came back to me, and my hips began to grind into the bedding.
I would’ve been able to bring myself to a quick orgasm by rutting against the bed and a pillow if not for Chloe taking my movements as a sign I was awake and ready to play and beginning to press her snout to my cheek and neck. No amount of shooing or pushing her away deterred her, and before long Stank was right there with her.
“You two are total buzzkills,” I said to them as I rolled out of bed and headed toward the bathroom. The erection I was sporting wasn’t going to go away on its own, and my pets weren’t going to allow me to take care of it in the comfort of my bed.
The most logical solution was the confines of my shower, which had a full glass door Chloe couldn’t open. As soon as I stepped in, the warm water hit my tired muscles and lulled me back to thoughts of my dream. I was just tired enough to not question who I was thinking about as my hand wrapped around my cock and began to stroke myself slowly.
Jake’s red lips and the light graze of his beard against my inner thigh were enough to have me bucking into my hand within seconds. What had happened to my clothes in the dream didn’t matter. The fact I’d been sitting in the room bare-ass naked hadn’t been weird then, and it certainly wasn’t while I was showering.
The dream had been so vivid, I was able to pick up right where I’d left off when my alarm rang. Little breaths against my hard cock as Jake sucked and slurped his way to a peaceful sleep. The feel of my cock as it swelled in his mouth after a particularly vigorous suck on his part. My orgasm was close enough I knew it was inevitable, but my brain refused to give up the fantasy.
He sucked a few more times, settling into a steady rhythm as he slept, still kneeling in front of me. My spine tingled and my balls drew close to my body. My orgasm was imminent, yet he never released my cock. I came with a shout of his name, fantasy and reality warring with one another as spasm after spasm shook my body. I was powerless to do anything more than ride out the sensations.
Jake blinked sleepy eyes at me as he swallowed what I’d shot into his mouth, a few dribbles of cum trickling down his chin. “So good, Daddy.”
The words were what finally snapped me back to the present, my heart pounding and my knees weak from the force of my orgasm. I gasped, trying to wrap my head around what had been real and what had been a dream and why I’d even been thinking about Jake in the first place.
Bits and pieces of research returned as the panic subsided. As I soaped my body, I remembered more of my dreams, most of them with nameless and faceless people. A man here, a woman there. Yet the image my brain had settled on—the one I’d had a powerful orgasm to—had been Jake Robinson. A strong man with an affinity for dinosaurs.
Who was going to a littles night at a kink club on Saturday.
I rinsed my hair, trying to remember what day it was. Thursday, at least I was pretty sure it was Thursday. That meant in two days he and his friends were going back to PenAlety Box for dinner, then heading to DASH, a local kink club, for the night to play.
I chuckled to myself as I made coffee. I’d always thought kink clubs were where people went to have intense sex with paddles, whips, and more. From what I’d learned since finding DASH’s website, a lot more than pain play and sex happened there. It was a safe space for many littles, middles, Daddies, Doms, pets, and more.
I had two days to figure out… what? I had no idea what , but something. Maybe to forget all about the dreams from the night before? If I were a wise man, that was exactly what I’d do. Unfortunately, I’d played hockey for too many years to ever be accused of something like being wise.
With the coffee made, animals fed, and a breakfast smoothie in my stomach, I was out of time to think about Jake and the dreams since I was running late. In less than a half hour I had to be at the arena for a staff meeting before the day really started.
Even knowing all that, I wasn’t able to push the thought of Jake between my legs fully out of my head. It didn't matter that they were the most inappropriate thoughts I could have—Jake’s soft lips, dusty blond hair, and sleepy moans and hums followed me all the way to the arena.
I whipped into my assigned spot ten minutes before the meeting was due to start and still needed to get up to my office, grab some things from my desk, and be in the conference room. I forced myself to hear and see nothing as I jogged toward the service elevator, jabbed the button for the executive level, and focused everything I had in me on getting to the conference room on time.
I had the things I needed in my bag and was turning to head out of the door when raised voices from the office next to mine made me stop moving.
“Oh my gosh! That duck is so cute!” I was pretty sure that had been Jake.
“Trade? Wait, what did you get? As long as it’s not the monkey. The monkeys are creepy.” The second voice sounded only vaguely familiar, though I didn’t know why.
“No monkey. It’s a red panda. We can trade?” The first voice was definitely Jake’s. At least I was almost positive. No matter who was speaking, he was way more excited about a possible trade of animals than seemed reasonable for an adult.
My feet were rooted in their spot and I didn’t know if I was breathing as I listened.
A sigh came from a third person. “Guys, leave Jake alone. He’s got work to do and we have a meeting to get to with St. Claire this morning.” Finally, there was a voice I recognized, though it took me a few seconds to place it as Seth Johnson’s. “Or maybe St. Claire can wait… that’s way too cute. Is that seriously a hedgehog with mushrooms growing from it? I want one!”
A smack echoed in the room. Then Seth’s voice came again. “Larson, dude, you’ve been holding out on me!”
A groan came from a fourth person—and seriously, how many people were in Jake’s office? “You do not need a hedgehog. What would we do with a hedgehog anyway?”
These aren ’ t real animals… at least I hoped they weren’t.
I finally shook my head. I wasn’t going to find anything out standing in my office, and the longer I stood there, the weirder the conversation next door became.