Chapter Twenty-Two
Mmm, this teddy bear is warm. And it smells good.
I burrow my face into the soft cotton I’m clinging to and breathe in deeply.
The teddy bear jiggles a bit, and a deep, rumbly chuckle sounds out just above my head.
I crack an eye open to investigate, and a bleary, familiar shape starts to take focus. Sexy beard, sweet smile, kind eyes…Kristian. In seconds, my brain catches me up on tonight’s events and I wince, groaning with embarrassment.
“Shit,” I mutter, making the Daddy cradling me gently laugh again.
“I guess someone’s not quite as Little anymore, huh?”
“Oh, God,” I make no move to scramble up, choosing, instead, to press my face back into his chest again. “I can’t believe I did any of that. Fuck.”
One of his big hands rubs down my back soothingly, and he doesn’t make any moves to try and force me up or to look at him. But he does talk. “It was a surprise finding you regressed so deeply. How are you feeling now?”
I pause to give the question the proper consideration it deserves.
How do I feel?
Aside from embarrassed that I lost control —not only of my bladder, but of my headspace— I feel…
lighter. The tension in my jaw is gone, and my shoulders don’t feel permanently affixed to my earlobes, either.
Instead, my bones feel almost like Jell-O, but in a good way.
I don’t feel one wrong word away from screaming anymore.
I guess I did need to be Little for a while.
Or maybe I just needed a proper cuddle.
Maybe both.
And then I register other sensations. Like the diaper I’m still wearing, snug and blessedly dry, and I’m back to embarrassed all over again.
Which is dumb, right? Why does wearing a diaper embarrass me in a bad way, but my favorite kink involves deliberately wetting my pants and enjoying the humiliation?
Instead of answering him, I take the coward’s way out and ask, “How long was I out for?”
“Not long.” His arm moves, presumably allowing him to check his watch. “Maybe half an hour.”
Wow. I feel more rested than that.
Quietly, I murmur, “Thanks.”
Kris hums in acknowledgment, but he doesn’t let his previous question drop. “How are you feeling?”
“Better, mostly. Refreshed.” I sigh, adding, “And really fucking embarrassed.”
Instead of reminding me that I usually like feeling that way, he squeezes me tightly against him.
“I’m not surprised. Tonight was a lot for you, I’m sure.
” I nod, and I get another little squeeze from him.
“Did I overstep? We didn’t really get to negotiate anything, and I know you’re not usually super little like that, so please tell me if anything I said or did made you uncomfortable. ”
“Anything you said or did?” I ask, the idea of it so laughable and shocking that I finally pull away from his warm, cuddly body to stare up at him incredulously. “You were the perfect Daddy.” Under my breath, I tack on a muttered, “As always.”
I’m still not entirely sure how he got here.
Here, as in The Grove, I mean. It feels like a cosmic joke that I have been cursing myself for running away from the first Daddy to really get me…
only to find him right under my nose again.
The very thought that he’s been living in the same city as me for gods-only-know how long…
Jesus.
Way to taunt me, universe.
It’s unfair. Unfair that he’s so amazing, and kind, and sweet, and into the same kinks as me. Unfair that he’s right here, giving me another taste of something I can’t let myself want. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve him.
As it is, my friendship with Anson and his circle is probably over now, too, seeing as I have once again proven that I’m too annoying and high maintenance.
Anson will probably think I’m a diva for yelling at his Daddy, too…
and I can’t say he’d be wrong. Drake just wanted to help me, after all.
Instead, they’ll probably think I was too proud to let him, or too bitchy, or too… something.
And that’s without going into the fact that I had zero control over my headspace earlier tonight. Who the fuck does that even happen to? I’m an adult, for fuck’s sake. I should be able to control when I want to regress. I should certainly be able to control my bladder in bigger headspaces, too.
So, yeah. I’m a hot mess, and I’m better off on my own in all ways. I can’t allow myself to want a Daddy of my own, or even friends. I ruin everything for other people.
But it sucks to know that. And it sucks even more when I’m being teased by how awesome Kristian is as a Daddy.
Imagine having access to cuddles like this all the time…
I have to shake that thought off. It’s not a helpful one. Far from it.
Oblivious, Kris asks, “The perfect Daddy, huh? So there’s nothing you would have wanted me to do differently? Nothing you felt was missing from our impromptu scenes tonight?”
“Punishment.” The answer escapes me without permission, my grasp on my impulse control still not quite recovered from my deeper regression.
I feel Kristian tense up, but is tone is almost too nonchalant when he questions, “What for? You didn’t do anything to earn a punishment.”
“Not for tonight.” The guilt I’ve been carrying scrambles up from my churning belly and bursts out through my mouth, “I left the camp without telling you. Without saying goodbye. I owed you at least that much.”
He sighs. “I’m going to move you so I can look you in the eye for this, Benji. I’m not putting space between us for any other reason than that, okay?”
That’s what he says, sure, but I know that he’s probably just using it as an excuse to extricate himself from the cuddle.
I’m not regressed anymore, and I’m too much work to want anything more with, so of course he’s letting me go.
Literally and metaphorically. Still, he’s expecting an answer, so I nod.
I help him as he gently slides me off his lap and he shuffles to the second space on the couch, but he doesn’t let me avert my gaze for long. His strong index finger hooks under my chin and he uses his thumb to help move my face until I’m looking directly at him again.
“I said this while you were little, but it bears repeating,” he starts.
“You didn’t owe me anything. We played together at camp, and we had fun.
And, yes, I was thinking about asking you if you wanted to stay in touch, but we never agreed to anything outside of the couple of scenes we did together, so you didn’t do anything wrong. ”
Oh.
My heart sinks even more as I come to understand what he’s saying.
We never agreed to anything more.
It was fun.
We didn’t owe each other anything.
He probably didn’t even miss me.
Now I feel even more embarrassed. Here I’ve been pining after him, putting him on this pedestal in my head of being the Daddy That Got Away, and I was just a fun camp fling to him.
That’s just great.
But, really, what did I expect? I know how frustrating I can be. How high maintenance I am. How annoying. I know all of this, and I already knew that there was no chance that he would want to be my long-term, exclusive Daddy, but hearing the confirmation out of his own mouth really fucking hurts.
Swallowing around the sudden lump in my throat, I nod. “Okay.” The word comes out tight and warped.
Kris’s expression falls. “What? What did I say?”
“Nothing.” I fight to recover my equilibrium.
To find the version of me with the hard shell.
The haughty, sassy, bitchy version of me.
The one who doesn’t care that people think he’s a pain in the ass and too much to deal with.
I hope the tight smile I offer him is frosty as fuck.
“I get it. It was just a couple of fun scenes. I’ve been” —I flap my hand around, gesturing to the quiet room around us— “out of it. But I’m good now. ”
Confusion clouds his eyes while I talk, but then they widen and he grips my thigh. “Wait. No. I didn’t mean that that’s all the camp was to me. That that’s all you were. But—”
“No, I got it. I made a fool of myself thinking that I left and you were probably upset or…I don’t even know. But you weren’t, so—”
“Who said I wasn’t?”
“Uh, you just did.”
“No, I didn’t.”
I frown at him. “You said, and I quote, ‘We had fun’ and ‘we never agreed to more’.”
“Because we did, and we didn’t, but I also said that I wanted to ask you to keep in touch.
Let me be even more clear, Benjamin.” He stares hard at me, definitely giving me the impression that if I wasn’t before, I am now on my way to earning a punishment.
“I wanted to keep in touch, because I liked you and wanted to keep getting to know you and keep seeing where our Daddy/Boy dynamic might take us if we could line our schedules up, depending on where we both lived. Was I looking to be someone’s full-time Daddy when I was at that camp?
No. But then I met you, and now that’s all I want. ”