“Please don’t fire me, Mr Bennett, sir,” he whispers, a sob lingering at the end. Oh shit. “Please, please, please, Mr Bennett, s—” The rest of the ‘sir’ is swallowed by the saddest hiccup in history. Oh, for Christ’s sake. My stomach does a weird flip, and I swallow back a groan. Be professional, Easter. Be professional.
“Please get up, Mr Sable,” I bite out, but he just shakes his head furiously at me, brown locks spilling onto his forehead and into his teary eyes. His cheeks are wet, and I feel like pulling him from the floor and tugging him against my chest to shut up my traitorous heart. My dick seems to be on board with that idea because he perks up while the image of Benjamin wearing those damn bunny ears flashes through my mind.
“Please, please, please,” he chants, his gaze locking onto mine as fat tears spill down his cheeks and further down his chin and neck. “I thought you were in danger!” he blurts, his voice filled with genuine alarm, indignation blazing in his eyes. “I thought…”
“Danger?” I ask. “Why on earth did you think I was in danger?”
“Because,” he gulps, scrambling towards me on his knees until he’s right at my socked feet. “Because of the noise,” he whispers, licking his lips, his trembling fingers reaching for the hem of my pants.
“The noise?” I sigh, pinching the top of my nose, cum fingers be damned. He nods eagerly as his fingers squeeze around my woollen pants like I’m the last straw during a raging storm. And then he tells me. His account makes little sense at first as the words spill from his lips. Something about Waterloo and the Seventh Battalion. How he can’t remember what C-P-R stands for and that it sounded like I was dying, choking, drowning. When he’s done, he’s panting at my feet, and I have to admit that somehow I do see how he could think that I was…unwell… for lack of a better word.
He looks at me expectantly, tears glistening on the tips of his dark lashes. Something shifts inside me then, a softness building in my chest as it slowly spreads to the rest of my body. Until it has invaded every limb and every vessel. Every cell. Until I can’t stand it any longer—not a damn second longer—my body aching, needing, calling out for him.Bunny.MyBunny. He thought I was in danger. He wanted to save me. He… hecaresabout me. It’s evident in his eyes, in his words, in the submissive way he kneels at my feet, clinging desperately to my pants, that dirty tissue still clenched in his other small fist.
“Come here,” I rasp, giving in, because the alternative is unbearable. Who am I kidding, really? Scrambling from the floor and into a standing position, he sways on his feet, his fingers reaching for my chest, the tissue dropping to the floor. His wet eyelashes flutter, an unspoken plea hidden in the depths of his eyes. Wrapping my arms around him, he’s small and frail, quivering against my chest. I lift him easily off the floor, cradling him against me. His thighs widen on instinct as he lets me hold him, his slender legs locking around my waist. He weighs next to nothing. He’s like a shivering baby animal in my arms. My Bunny.
A broken sigh leaves his body as he buries his face against my neck, sniffing audibly.
“I’m so sorry,” he whimpers, his hands finding my neck, blunt nails digging into my skin, gliding through my hair, pulling at the strands. “I really did think that—”
“There, there,” I speak against the top of his head, the sweetness of his scent filling my lungs. I allow myself to breathe him in as I continue to comfort and reassure him that everything is truly fine. Because it is, isn’t it? For the first time in a long while, I feel calm, no longer at war with myself and the world. The storm has passed and holding my Bunny against me feels like walking out from a dark cave and into the brightness of the daylight. Scary, yet strangely freeing too.
He sniffles against my left ear, then sighs as he exhales languidly. I press another kiss against the crown of his head and he giggles softly as the tip of his tongue sneaks out and licks my earlobe. I laugh then. I can’t help it. I can’t help myself. I don’twantto help myself.
“You’re laughing,” he murmurs against my ear, his voice filled with wonder, and I can feel the smile on his lips. My chest puffs out. I decide then and there that I love his smile. It’s mine now. “I didn’t think you could,” he teases. “I thought you were from before laughter was invented.”
“Hey, I’m not that old, you little pest.” My fingers dig into his sides and I pinch him gently. He squirms and I adjust him in my arms.
“You can put me down now,” he breathes. The hell I can, and I tell him exactly just that.
“I’m never putting you down,” I grunt, squeezing him tighter against me, a left-over sob leaving his lips.
“Ne-ver?” he stammers, a world of hope in those two syllables. “Not even when you have to go…you know…” he giggles, his voice breathy and happy.
“Well, perhaps then,” I admit, a strange sensation of regret and loss running through my body at the thought of putting him down. There’s a moment of silence between us before he speaks again.
“Master?” The word hangs in the air around us, doing things to my insides like it did the last time, giving me purpose, giving me life.
“Yes, Bunny,” my voice comes out muffled by his hair.
“There is no Easter uniform, is there?” His voice is frail and vulnerable, his fingers digging into my sweater. I shake my head. “Those bunny ears were for me, weren’t they? Just for me?” I nod, swallowing, willing my tongue to function.
“They were. Theyare,” I say and then, because we already reached the point of no return when he saw me come with his name—myname for him—on my lips and then decided carrying my only employee in my arms was a good idea, I add, “Do you want to see the rest?”
His head whips back from my neck, his eyes wide open, his mouth slightly agape.
“There’s more?” he gasps, his eyes filling again, an ocean of muddy grey swimming before me. I laugh again, this time heartily and deeply. Uninhibited and carefree like I used to be in a faraway past… before I turned into a broody bastard.
“Of course, there’s more. So much more.” Like I said, the number of hits you get when you search forbunnyon Amazon…
Chapter Eight
Bunny
I’m convinced I must have gone to Bunny Heaven or something just like it. That when I entered Mr Bennett’s flat, bursting through his door, it was instead a portal to an alternate universe. Some weird rabbit’s hole sucking me into a world I hardly recognise. Mr Bennett is different too. After the initial shock of seeing me in the door to his bedroom, he hasn’t stopped smiling, nor has he stopped touching me. Petting me, actually. His usually cool blue eyes are warm and tender when he looks at me, his voice deep and gentle when he calls me by my name.Bunny.
“How did you know?” I ask, my voice filled with awe as I take in the accessories displayed on Mr Bennett’s sage-green duvet. I eventually convinced him it was okay for him to put me back down for now. I told him he could always sweep me back up into his strong arms whenever the urge to hold me or carry me strikes. He looked at me doubtfully, grunting something unintelligible, until I grasped his cheeks in my hands, cradling them carefully, while my eyes found his.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’I reassured him, and the wolf inside him seemed to relax, comforted by my words.
