Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EMMETT
When Miles or Cosimo needed something directly from him, life was easy. But when it settled into a routine, Emmett started to feel a little…sideways. He wasn’t unhappy by any means, but that was when the doubt crept in.
Did they actually need him? Was he allowed to want what he wanted all the time? Miles had settled in over the last week like he had always been there, and while Emmett was beyond happy with it, he was struggling.
Miles had said he’d move into the main house, but he hadn’t given an indication that this was what he wanted for good.
Emmett was scared to get attached—scared to let himself have this fully if it was going to be ripped away from him the moment Miles’s friend got back into town and offered him a place to stay.
So he pulled back. Not a lot, but a little. He kept the Daddy dynamic for the bedroom only—and only on nights when it was obvious that Miles needed something. Cosimo was also a bit more needy than usual, but Emmett chalked that up to him missing out on his long week of being able to let go.
Now that Emmett had given him a few nights, he was starting to ask for it less and less.
That, he was used to. But with Miles there?
“You okay?”
Emmett jumped and turned around. Miles was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, freshly showered and dressed, shoes in his hand. “Yes. You look nice.”
Miles swallowed thickly. “Yeah? I mean, I know doctors don’t usually care what you look like, but?—”
“What doctor?” Emmett blurted before he remembered he was meant to be taking Miles to the audiologist. Cosimo had used his connections to get Miles an appointment. They’d gotten his records and everything, so all they had to do was fit him and order the devices.
But Emmett had been so caught up in his own head all week, he’d forgotten.
“The…” Miles gestured to his processor. “Oh god, I’m so sorry. I thought you were—but of course I can call a cab or…there’s a bus, right?”
Emmett shot to his feet and walked over, taking Miles by the face.
He cradled him gently and met his gaze. “Stop. My head has been kind of messy this morning. Of course, I’m taking you.
” He leaned in and took a kiss, letting it linger until some of the tension drained from Miles’s body.
“Every now and then I can get forgetful. Thank you for reminding me.”
Miles offered a smile that didn’t look like his usual one. “I know this is a lot. It’s a lot of money, and time, and?—”
“No,” Emmett said sternly as he dropped his hands to Miles’s shoulder. “This is not a lot. You are not a lot. You are just right.”
“Like baby bear,” he muttered.
Emmett blinked, then burst into laughter and yanked Miles in again for another kiss. “Yes. My perfect little baby bear.”
“Please don’t start calling me that,” Miles muttered.
Emmett chuckled harder but nodded. “Alright. That’s not very sexy anyway.” Stepping back, he checked his phone and sighed. There wasn’t enough time to play with him the way he wanted to. “Let me throw something besides pajamas on, and then we can head out.”
“Okay.”
Emmett still felt that gap between them, and he wasn’t having it. He lifted a brow at Miles. “Okay? Is that how you answer me?”
Miles’s cheeks reddened, and he licked his lips. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Good boy,” Emmett praised.
Miles’s shoulders straightened a little as he backed up, then seemed to change his mind and walked in, dropping his shoes at his side. “Can I help you get dressed?”
That was…new. And different. And fuck, Emmett liked the thought of it. “Absolutely. Why don’t you go into my closet and pick out what shirt you’d like me to wear today.”
Miles nodded and walked over to the door, pulling it open. “Oh my god, it’s huge.”
Emmett laughed. “Yeah. Cosimo had one request when we bought this house, and it was to make sure we could fit a small apartment in his closet. Everything on the left and back walls are his.”
Looking over his shoulder, Miles rolled his eyes. “He’s such a princess.”
“Yes.” Emmett grabbed a pair of jeans out of his dresser, then stalked over and cupped his hand around Miles’s crotch. Oh. Yes. He was hard. He rubbed his heel along Miles’s length. “You like the idea of Cosimo being our princess.”
Sucking in a breath, Miles let it out with a groan and nodded. “Yeah. Yes.”
“Yes…?”
“Daddy. Yes, Daddy,” Miles got out as Emmett began to rub him faster.
Shit, maybe he could do this. He could make time. Turning Miles and pressing him against the open door, Emmett got his zipper down and his cock out. “You think you can come without making a mess, sweetness?”
Miles swallowed heavily. “I’m…I don’t…”
“Hmm. Do you need help?”
“I think so.”
“Ask me, baby. Ask me for help very nicely.” He traced a touch over Miles’s lips.
“Please, Daddy. Please help me not make a mess. I want to come so badly, but I don’t want to mess up any of the nice things you bought me.”
Emmett groaned as he dropped to his knees, his dick throbbing in his too loose pajama pants.
But this wasn’t about him. He didn’t want this to be about him.
He’d already come enough in his life for a dozen men, and what he wanted more than that was to give the people he cared about—the people he loved or could love—everything.
Including this.
Opening his mouth, he fit the head of Miles’s cock just past his teeth, curling his tongue around it. He stared up, unable to take his eyes off Miles’s face as he took a breath, then swallowed him all the way down to the hilt.
“Oh my god oh my god,” Miles babbled. His head thudded back, and his eyes closed, his hips pushing forward just slightly. His fingers were flexing like he didn’t know what to do with them, so Emmett released his thighs and guided those hands to his hair. “Like this, Daddy?” Miles asked plaintively.
Emmett hummed and Miles’s dick kicked along his tongue, letting out a small stream of salty precome. He pulled back all the way, kissing the head, then down the shaft.
“I’m not going to last. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I want to be good, but I’m so close?—”
Emmett squeezed him hard enough to get him to stop babbling. “You are being good. You’re being so fucking good right now. So perfect. Look how hard you are for me. Look at you holding my hair and pressing yourself against the door like such a good fucking boy.”
Miles’s dick thickened even more.
“You are exactly what I want, baby. You are everything. And you can come whenever you’re ready to let go.”
Emmett had a feeling that would be in seconds, and he was proven right when the moment he slid his mouth all the way back on Miles’s dick, he shuddered and cried out and came.
Hot ropes hit the back of his tongue, and Emmett swallowed them all down, pulling off only when Miles started to whimper from the overstimulation.
He kissed the man’s dick before using his sleep shirt to wipe him clean, then he tucked him back into his boxers and zipped him up before climbing back to his feet. The room swayed a little from all the blood that had rushed to his lower half, but it only took a moment for him to right himself.
“Do you need…can I…” Miles mumbled, reaching for Emmett. “Daddy, let me help you.”
Emmett shook his head as he tipped Miles’s chin up and laid a kiss on his lips. “This was all I needed, precious. You’re enough for me.”
Miles shuddered in his grasp, then took a breath and looked up at him. “Am I?”
“Yes.” He could see the doubt in the younger man’s eyes.
He could see the fear of wanting, the fear of having, because having also meant the possibility of losing everything.
But Emmett wasn’t going to give up on this.
“Now, let’s get me dressed so we can start the day.
I’m sorry I forgot before, but it will not happen again. ”
Miles opened his mouth like he was going to argue, then seemed to change his mind. He nodded instead, then surged in to steal a kiss, and with a small laugh, broke away to do what he was told.
The audiologist went as well as Emmett had expected.
He’d done this more times than he could count.
It felt like he’d spent half of Selene’s early life sitting in an office waiting room, or just outside a sound booth, or in some small office with uncomfortable chairs and bizarre objects and plaster ear figurines scattered across various tables.
He remembered feeling waves of disappointment when the first appointments hadn’t gone like he’d expected. He’d gotten himself all psyched up about how the surgery was going to open a whole new world for Selene.
Then they’d turned them on, and she’d screamed. She’d thrown them across the room. She hated every second of it. She acted like she was in pain, and when she finally agreed to wear them, she could only tolerate them for short periods.
All of the specialists insisted that he force her—that he not give her the option to take them off.
That if she really was going to learn how to hear, she’d have to learn to get through the discomfort of it all first. It was that lack of fairytale experience that made him realize maybe he’d been listening to all the wrong people.
Yes, she liked them now. She had no regrets. She was not denied access to sign or to the Deaf community. She’d rejected all of those things on her own in her quest to be whatever her version of normal was.
But offices like this did not hold happy memories for him.
Except…Miles had looked excited. He’d clearly tried to hold himself back, but Emmett knew how big this was for him. How long he’d waited for this. How desperately he’d needed this and what it must have cost him to agree to Cosimo’s offer.
He only wished he could speed up the process. Eight weeks was so fucking long, and no amount of money could bribe them into moving faster. He was tested, measured, fitted, and then given his pick-up date.
And that was that. It was oddly anticlimactic, and the only good part was that they’d been able to fix the shoddy wires in Miles’s current processor which meant it was no longer going in and out. He was walking with a little spring in his step, and Emmett swore he felt like he could float.
“Happy?” he asked as he took Miles’s hand in his.
The younger man spun and looked at him. “I don’t know how to thank you. Like…how can I ever repay you for this?”
“This was a gift. The only thing that matters is that you’re happy. I—” The rest of his words were cut off when his phone began to buzz. His heart sank down to his feet when he saw his daughter’s name on the screen.
The call went to voicemail, and a second later, it started ringing through again.
Miles frowned. “Do you need to get that?”
He knew he couldn’t ignore her forever. His gaze roamed a moment, then spotted a little Lebanese place on the corner he and Cosimo ordered from sometimes. “Do me a favor? Go over there,” he pointed to the green sign, “and grab us a table for lunch. I’ll be right there after I take this.”
Miles nodded and smiled, but just before he walked off, Emmett seized his wrist and tugged him in, giving him a thorough, slightly messy kiss. “Oh,” Miles said, blinking as he stepped back. “What was that for?”
“Because I—” Love you , he nearly said. The words tripped around the tip of his tongue, desperate to be spoken.
But it was too soon. He still had no promises from Miles that this was going to last. “Because I wanted to, my sweet, perfect thing. Now go,” he said when his phone began to ring a third time. “I’ll be right there.”
He waited until Miles had crossed the street before he picked up the call. “We haven’t changed our minds about anything, so if you’re calling for that reason, you can forget it.” He knew that wasn’t the greeting she was expecting, but she didn’t care.
“He’s fucking living with you? What is wrong with you two?” Selene screeched. “You can’t just take him in. That’s so fucking weird. I mean, he doesn’t belong here. You know that, right? He’s a fucking poor orphan. Do you know how that makes you look? Do you know how that makes me look?”
“The only person who looks bad is the one who abused him,” Emmett said.
Selene was quiet for a long, long moment. Then she burst into laughter. “Is that what he said?”
“That’s what we saw,” Emmett clarified.
She scoffed. “I never laid a hand on him.”
“You emotionally tormented him, made him feel worthless, made him feel like your personal servant…”
“Oh my god, don’t be so dramatic.”
“You cheated on him. Repeatedly. You wanted him around because you thought he was another one of those sycophants who do everything you say.”
“Hey, people like what they like,” she sneered.
Emmett pressed a hand to his forehead. “What do you want, Selene?”
“I want to know why you’re choosing some fucking nobody over your own daughter.”
“Because that nobody isn’t a monster. I don’t know where we went wrong—or if we went wrong at all—but your father and I are both done. If you can’t reflect for even a second on the way you’ve treated people, then there’s nothing more we can do for you.”
She was quiet a long, long moment. “You know he’d come back to me, right? If I showed up and gave him the apology he’s always been desperate for. He’d come running .”
Emmett sucked in a breath to tell her that Miles was stronger than that, but she ended the call. He stared down at the phone screen, fear threatening to burst to life in his chest.
He wouldn’t believe her. She was wrong. Miles knew his worth now. He knew he deserved so much more than she’d ever given him.
With a breath, he crossed the street and found Miles waiting for him at an outdoor table. The way Miles smiled settled something in his chest. He walked over and leaned down, kissing Miles as desperately as he had before he’d sent him away.
“Another one?” Miles asked.
Emmett shrugged and sat, keeping hold of his gaze. “Can’t help it. I want to kiss you every second I’m with you.”
Miles ducked his head, blushing. “I feel the same way.”
“Yeah?”
Miles looked up like he was able to hear the fragility in Emmett’s voice. “Yes. I’m happy. I need you to know I’m happy.”
Emmett couldn’t stop his smile. Yeah. Selene wasn’t right. Miles wasn’t going anywhere. He was theirs.