Chapter Twelve
Willem drummed his fingers on the table as he watched Eli work with the kids on their homework. Christmas was less than a week away now, and he still wasn’t sure what to get his boy.That is, if he still exists.Over the past few weeks, Willem was seeing less and less of the Little that had enchanted him from the beginning of his relationship with Eli. It was almost like being transported back to the first few weeks of their courtship when it took lots of time and patience on Willem’s part to allow the Little he’d sensed lurking inside of Elias to come forward.
“Unca, Daddy Will is doing it again,” Jeremy complained loudly.
“Doing what?” Eli looked up from the worksheet he’d been helping Raelynn with.
“Just staring off into space.” Jeremy climbed up onto the chair next to him. “You okay?” Little hands clamped onto his cheeks. “Does Unca need to poke you again?”
A reluctant smile tugged free of Willem. So that’s how his boy had explained the events after his blackout to the kids. “No. I don’t need to be poked…” His gaze met his boy’s across the table. “…at least not at the moment.”
The tips of Eli’s ears reddened before he returned to the worksheet in front of him. Willem immediately wondered if his lover was thinking of a different kind of poking. One where Willem held him down and fucked him raw – like he had just last night. Because while Willem wasn’t opposed to bottoming, his boy had expressed that he never had any desire to top him and begged constantly to feel his daddy’s dick in his ass. The tug of little fingers in his beard as Jeremy let go of his face, brought him back to the present, and what he’d been thinking about earlier. Christmas gifts.
“I was just thinking about Christmas. Santa will be coming soon, and I was wondering what a good littleboysand girl wanted from him.”
Eli stilled for a second, the only indication that he’d caught the not-so-subtle emphasis he’d placed on the word boys. Then he tugged on one of Raelynn’s braids. “You know, Daddy Will, you have a good point. How does Santa know what all the kids want for Christmas?”
“Tell him?” Jeremy replied, as he settled down on Willem’s lap.
Willem gave it some thought as he adjusted the boy to one thigh. “Well, I heard that there’s a Santa over at the mall in the next town over, but that’s an awful long drive…”
Eli shook his head. “And it would mean we’d have to go out in the cold.” He gave a mock shiver. “I’d rather stay inside where it’s safe and warm, than spend the two hours one way in the truck.”
“Daddy and Momma Audra took us last year,” Raelynn sounded almost sad. “And that Santa smelled funny, kind of like old gym socks. I don’t wanna go see him.”
Eli squeezed her shoulder in reassurance. “Then that’s settled. No trip to the mall. Cold and smelly will not do for our kids.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Maybe Daddy Will has another idea?” Eli tossed the ball back into his court.
“Hmmmm.” He rubbed his hand over his beard. “Well, it’s probably a little old-school, but back when I was a kid…”
“You were a kid?” Raelynn seemed aghast. “Were there covered wagons around?”
“Covered wagons?” Will almost burst out laughing. It was all he could do to keep a straight face. “I’ll have you know that I’m not that old, young lady. We had horses.” Willem sighed. And he thought he’d wanted to be a dad someday. What had he been thinking – to sign up for such abuse?
Raelynn nibbled on her lip. “Like the horses that go into cars?”
“Something like that.” Willem wasn’t quite sure how they’d gone from horses to cars.
“Well, Daddy had always said that his car had three hundred and twenty horses under the hood. I looked one day when he had the hood open. There weren’t any horses that I saw.”
“I think he was talking about horsepower, sweetie.” Eli was quick to reassure her. “That’s how they measure how powerful the engine is.”
“Ohhhhh…” she gave a rather slow nod. “I see. Like cups, quarts, and pints?”
“Kinda.” Eli grinned. “But what was your idea to reach Santa, Daddy Will, without requiring me to go out in the cold?”
“Like I was saying before I got sidetracked…when we wanted Santa to know what we wanted, we wrote him a letter.”
“Letter?” Raelynn chewed on the end of her pencil. “Like with paper, envelope, and a stamp?”
“Sorta. Nana William and Poppa would sit down at this very table with me and Aunt Nona and help us write out our list for Santa. We’d write it, Nana would fold it up nice and tight, then Poppa would take them and place them in the Christmas tree for Santa to find.”
“How…” she pursed her lips. “…old-fashioned, Daddy Will.”
Will sighed. “Well, I’ve been told I’m an old-fashioned Daddy, sweetheart.” He kept his gaze on his boy, hoping that Eli would look up at him, but the boy seemed to suddenly be preoccupied with grabbing clean sheets of paper out of one of his folders.
“Here we go.” Eli set a piece of paper in front of both kids. “So how do we start, Daddy Will?”
Willem gave him a pointed look. “Not everyone has a paper, Eli.”
