Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31
ESME
I’d been planning to fill the shelves with the toys I’d been purchasing, but plans had changed rapidly when I’d arrived home the day before and I was now flying by the seat of my pants.
I’d spent the morning bringing in bags and putting them in the closet in the back of the room. There were nowhere near as many toys here as Larson had at his house, but we had plenty of time to add more. Preferably many, many years if I had anything to do with it.
Opening the closet, I gestured to the packages. “Well, I don’t know where you want to put these things.”
Jake’s eyes widened in surprise and he vibrated with energy. “What are they?” he asked, already reaching for the first bag.
“Let’s get everything out of the closet and we can figure it out.”
Jake helped me grab bags and carry them over to the table in the middle of the room, then promptly dropped them on it. It was larger than a coffee table, but not the size of a dining room table. My designer had been intensely perplexed about the large table I’d asked for but had come through with the perfect one, exactly big enough to fit Jake and his friends if they wanted to sit around it and color or build blocks on it.
“You didn’t have to do this. You know that, right?” Jake looked over at me from his position on the floor. His voice was all adult and it was a weird contrast with the diaper around his waist, the pacifier clipped to his shirt, and Elle still in his hand.
“I know I didn’t. You deserve this, and I wanted to be… Scratch that, want to be the person to give that to you.”
Jake bit his lip while he thought hard about whatever it was he wanted to say. “I know you made a lot of money as a hockey player and I don’t make nearly as much as a police officer, but I have savings and I can buy things for myself.”
I blinked in surprise at his words. “This was never about you not being able to afford it. It was learning you don’t play outside of your time with your friends. I wanted to give you someplace to unwind between those times.”
His mouth curved upward and a smile twitched on his lips. “Thanks. I appreciate that.” He leaned over, pressing his weight against my side. “It just feels weird when I’m alone.”
I kissed the side of his head, his hair still messy with bedhead, and felt a smile growing on my own face and a now-familiar flutter in my chest at Jake’s closeness. I turned the conversation back to the toys. There was time for serious conversations later. Right now the last thing I wanted to do was pull him from his headspace. “Then let’s see what you have in here and you can help me find homes for everything.”
Jake turned his attention back to the table but didn’t scoot away from me. He remained pressed to me from shoulder to hip as we started unboxing toys. Thanks to help from his group of friends as well as what I’d known about Jake already, I’d been fairly confident in most of my purchases. There were a few impulse buys I’d made on my own, mostly soft blankets and plush animals but also a few more magnetic toys similar to the one I’d already given him but with different animals.
Once we really got into the bags, it didn’t take long for Jake to find the mindset he’d been in when I’d opened the closet door. Chloe came in and tried to eat a few of the boxes and managed to get her head stuck in a bucket of blocks when she dumped it over on herself.
Jake roared with laughter while I chased Chloe around the room as she bonked into things. I finally wrangled her and got the bucket off, after which she did an awkward buck thing and squealed. “If you’d have just let the handle go, it would have fallen off on its own,” I said and she promptly returned to Jake’s side to see what else she could get into.
We spent almost as much time pushing Chloe away and eventually Stank when he’d decided he’d snubbed me enough to come check out what we were doing.
Jake continued to unbox the dinosaur toy he was working on. We’d gotten into a good routine where we’d get a toy unboxed and Jake would go find a place to put it on the shelf, and it worked well until Jake opened up a dinosaur puzzle. It had been one of my impulse buys and I hadn’t been sure if he’d like it or not. It was barely out of the bag before Jake opened the box and poured the pieces onto the table.
I decided he’d had enough unboxing and set to work cleaning up the mess as Jake built his puzzle. It was only one hundred and fifty pieces, so I didn’t expect it to take him a long time, though enough that I’d be able to make a snack for him and maybe get his cup refilled. I checked on him every time I came back from throwing things away and after starting a load of laundry, but each time Jake hadn’t moved. Stank and Chloe had taken an immediate liking to him and were asleep on the couch above his head before the room was fully cleaned up.
Jake had his pacifier in his mouth and didn’t let go of his blanket as he built the puzzle. He was already done with the border and was working on the big blue dinosaur when I started making a snack while also managing to check my phone for texts from the guys. They’d been blowing up my phone all morning checking on Jake. After I’d told them about his townhouse fiasco the night before, I'd started getting texts almost hourly. First, it had been to check up on Jake, and then it had been to see how I was doing with a little. And now they were asking if we needed any groceries since I'd been out of town for ten days.
Calling them my friends still felt strange. They were Jake’s friends first, but the group was complex in its own way. Sure, they were all friends and they all often went out together as a group. Yet the Daddies had their own active text group and the boys had a separate text group. Sometimes the groups got mixed up, sometimes the conversations overlapped, and sometimes they just gave up and used a huge group chat with all of them included.
That was really a long-winded way of saying I was pretty confident I could call the Daddies as well as their boys my friends, but instead I still usually referred to them as the guys . At least in my head.
With a small snack made for us, I headed back into the playroom and found Jake on the couch petting Stank and Chloe. His puzzle was built and he wasn’t looking quite as little as he had when I’d left. I couldn’t pinpoint how I knew without him saying anything or looking my way, but it was something in his posture.
“Hey. You want a drink?” I picked up Stank and moved him to my lap, then offered Jake his cup and set the snack plate between us.
Jake took it without hesitation but didn’t put it to his lips. “I know I’ve asked something similar to this before, but are you really okay with this? I know for a fact our relationship is going to get out at work and everyone is going to know and we’re going to be locker room talk. And with your job, someone is going to find out and it’s going to be national news. Kind of like that trainer who came out in Washington. No one knew of him before—then everyone was talking about him.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And then everyone stopped and it’s been a nonissue. Like how when Seth came out before the draft and everyone thought he was going to ruin his career by coming out as gay. Then he got signed in the first round. Then no one thought he’d amount to anything and he’s now a household name in sports but his sexuality is rarely discussed. Or like how I left Boston because of a homophobic team who wouldn’t stand for me to stay in the closet and be on the team?”
Jake nodded, not understanding what I was trying to say. It probably wasn’t his fault—I was making very little sense to myself. “It’s going to be news, I get it. But it’s going to be news for a blip of time.” I lifted my shoulder. “We’re going into the All-Star game break in February. That’s all anyone will talk about if we come out or are found out before then. After the All-Star break, we’re into the final push of the season, getting to playoff hockey time. No one will give more than a passing glance our way, especially with the Grizzlies as a shoo-in for the playoffs and the Parliament having a snowball's chance of making it to the wild card spot.”
Beside me, Jake blinked at me. There was hope sparking in his gaze, and I knew I needed to get this right. “What I’m failing miserably at saying is, yes, I understand we’re going to make the news, but I’m not worried. It’s not some huge scandal. It’s a relationship. Yes, I’m going to need to come out, and I know I haven’t done that publicly yet… hell, I haven’t done it very often privately either, but it’s getting easier each time I do. As for am I okay with this? If I wasn’t okay with it, would we be here now?” I used my hand to gesture around the room. “Do you really think we’d be having this morning if I wasn’t okay with it?”
I placed his hand on my crotch and let him feel how hard I was under my slacks. I was seriously rethinking the outfit I’d put on. It looked great and it was comfortable until I got hard in my pants. “Jake, I like you. I like this. You’ve been an itch I haven’t been able to get out of my system since the summer. I thought about you every day after we hooked up, then thought about you more when you wrote me a damned speeding ticket. And I’ve thought about you almost nonstop since I started working at the arena. Nothing you’ve thrown my way or told me has scared me off. If anything, it’s drawn me closer to you.”
Jake gasped when my dick twitched in my pants as I finished talking. My dick really, really liked him. And it had been nearly impossible to remember it hadn’t been the right time ever since I’d had him draped over my lap the night before.
“I also know you’re funny and you draw me to you like a magnet. You and your friends are silly and goofy and you have a prehistoric parade on your desk at work and your friends are always bringing you new additions.”
My words had him smiling. “You have to watch out for them. The guys get a little carried away.”
“You don’t say? I think I figured that out when a dino-dildo tried to take me out at Canyon’s.”
Jake laughed so hard he snorted and slapped his hand over his face in an attempt to stifle it. The action only amplified the next snort and he ended up in a laughing fit I worried would crack a rib. By the time he pulled himself together, Stank had gotten up, stretched, and jumped down, annoyed to have his nap cut short. Tears were still pooling in Jake’s eyes and streaming down his face. “If that surprises you, wait until you see the dickiduous forests they made a few years ago.”
I blinked. Then blinked again. “The what? Scratch that. I don’t want to know. I’ll take your word for it. But what I’m trying to say is I know there are layers to you. You’re not just a little. You’re not just a police officer. You’re not just a submissive, or a boy, or my colleague. And I want you to know that I’m here for all the parts of you.”
Jake sobered and gave me a smile. “Yeah. That. All of it.”
“Do you still have concerns? Because I already know you have an amazing laugh and you’re fun to be around. I know you like Chloe and Stank, and you blush easily.” On cue, Jake blushed. “Just like that. But I also know you’re sexy, smart, have a gorgeous dick, and the most perfect ass I’ve ever been inside.”
Jake’s head dipped and he looked at his crotch. Even beneath a thick diaper and his pajama pants, the outline of his hard cock was visible.
Chloe lifted an eye when I reached over to run my finger along Jake’s length. When he moaned and wiggled in his spot, Chloe got up and headed for the door to the backyard with Stank following her lead.
The two hadn’t been outside since arriving at the house, but clearly the wide-open space and pond out back were enough to have Chloe curious. Standing to let them out, I placed a kiss on Jake’s lips. “Hold that thought.”
It was chilly but thankfully warmer than the day before and Chloe would be fine outside for a little bit. I’d had a pond specialist out to place heaters in the pond to keep it a safe swimming temp for her. She was going to be beyond excited to be able to swim again. And I knew Stank well enough to know he wouldn’t leave the porch. He liked the breeze and being outside but hated grass, so he’d be safe while I took care of Jake and myself.
With the two outside and Chloe doing an awkward run straight for the water, I shut the door and turned to find Jake hadn’t moved.
Oh, the things I wanted to do to him.