I shivered.Yes, Daddy.
Biting my lip hard, I started to stroke myself and eyed the box in the open closet where my favorite dildo hid. I smiled. This was better than wallowing in my most recent breakup. It was going to be a long night.
3
Dare
There wasn’ta soul I would tell I liked watching this. The room was dark except for the eerie glow from the iPad screen. I glanced furtively at my bedroom door as I adjusted my headphones and clicked on the noise-canceling function, but then I flipped the little button back off again. I wanted to be able to tell if Zayden was calling for me.
He was still in the post-breakup umbrella and might decide at any random second he absolutely needed to paint the living room orange with teal trim, or he needed me to go get the ingredients for a lasagnastat. The anticipated breakdown hadn’t arrived, and I was on edge with dread. He was like clockwork about this type of thing after a man left.
Why hadn’t the bad mood arrived?
Was it because he already had a date set up? I glared at the door and wished I could read Z’s mind. Nicky wasnice, I wouldn’t deny it. The sticking point in this situation was that Nicky had shitty taste in men for himself—according to Zayden, he was never with the same guy longer than a week—and I had doubts he’d do any better for my Z. Shaking my head, I tried not to get angry about the blind date all over again. If Z wanted to go out with someone older than him, so be it, but I had a feeling I’d want to smash the guy’s face in.
I couldn’t stop myself from getting protective on Z’s behalf. He’d been hurt too often. My cheeks heated as I checked for any signs of distress one more time, lifting my headphones to be certain Z wasn’t being distraught at a volume I should interpret as a not-so-silent request to come help him. When all was relatively quiet, I hit Play.
The theme music forMy Little Pony: Friendship is Magicblared in my ears, and I dragged my pillow down as I lay flat on my front across the bed to watch. I’d discovered I loved this ridiculous kids’ show by accident in a doctor’s office waiting room. I’d been hooked by a two-parter as I waited to find out if I had an ear infection or not, and when I’d realized I could watch the second episode on Netflix…. Well, that had been the beginning of the end. I’d watched them all. Twice. Now it was a comfort show for me. The ponies all sort of reminded me of Z, anyway, because they were cute, for one, and they were all open and friendly. The bad guys were clearly evil, the good guys always won, and everyone was happy at the end of a story arc. The mindless goodwill let me drift in and out and think about things because the plot wasn’t overly involved, either. Tonight I couldn’t help but run my usual comparison of Z to every pony.
I snickered to myself.Everypony is like Z.
He would one-hundred-percent for sure laugh his ass off if he ever caught me watching this. I tensed when I thought I heard something in the hallway, but after lifting my headphones away from my ears, I decided I’d imagined it. Not long later, midway through a musical number, the scent of something acrid caught in my nose—smoke.
Pausing the episode with a frown, I shot to my feet and stared at the door. I didn’t think Z had left his room, so it was weird. Sometimes something got baked onto a stove burner…. The longer I stood thinking, the worse the smell grew. Swearing, I tossed my headphones on the bed and raced out into the hallway. Gray smoke drifted near the ceiling.
“Stupid smoke detector,” I growled at the useless thing stuck on the ceiling between the bedroom doors, then ran forward along the hall. “I make one grilled cheese and you’re blaring. What the fuck!” I hustled downstairs to the main floor of the townhouse.
Z’s vanillagoddamnedcandle, which he’d left burning in the center of the kitchen table, had somehow cracked the glass container, probably from too much heat. The wax had oozed out over the tabletop, and now a puddle was blazing around the container. The actual table wasn’t exactly on fire, but the laminate around the candle curled and turned black as I watched. Flames danced across wax, and I coughed on the horrible smell of burning plastic.
Jumping into action, I rushed to the kitchen, grabbed two dish towels hanging on the oven handle, and used them to smother the fire by dropping them onto the flaming wax. I patted down the towels, just to make sure the fire was out. Shocked, I pulled my hands back as my fingertips ached and stung. A thin sheen of oily, sweet-smelling wax was stuck to the ends of each finger. I rushed to the sink and turned on the cold water, thrusting my hands under the flow. As my pain and panic ebbed, my anger boiled. I didn’t get mad at Z often because he was a lover, not a fighter, but we’d had it out in the past over his fucking candles.
At least once a week he left a candle burning and went off to soak in the bathtub, or lounge in his room, or even go out to the hammock and read in our shared backyard. Today was the day I was provenrightbecause the fucking glass of the candle jar had cracked with the heat. The only thing that had saved us from a complete catastrophe was the fact the candle was almost entirely burned away when the break happened. If I hadn’t been here, he would be in a burning goddamned building.
And it wasn’t justushe was putting in danger. Our house was attached to neighbors on both sides. I gritted my teeth and peeled the wax off my fingers, my skin throbbing the whole while. I scooped up a dirty mug from the sink and filled it with water, going over to the table to douse the mess. I dumped more water on the table to make sure everything was out. Flinging the mug into the sink so hard it probably cracked, I took deep breaths, but nope, I was still furious. I glared at the smoke detector as I stomped upstairs and past it because we obviously needed a new one, and flung open Z’s bedroom door.
My mind promptly went into meltdown mode. My body flared hotter than the fire could have ever hoped to be. Z’s bed was in the far-right corner of the room, and a meteor hitting me on the head couldn’t have made me look away. First of all, he was on his back, and there were miles of thighs just spread right the hell open. A purple dildo was lodged in his ass. I tried to decide how big the toy was, but my brain didn’t donate enough cells to the effort as my groin tingled and tightened. I’d never really considered Z’s hole before this instant, but the toy made me draw direct comparisons to my cock.
Sweat shimmered on his soft skin. I didn’t hate the way he looked—quite the opposite. I sucked in a deep breath. Fuck, I knew he was beautiful, it was impossible to ignore how he was simplypretty, but it wasn’t fair that he looked good doing this, too. He parted his curvy lips, and his face was screwed up almost like he was in pain. Curls twisted out everywhere as he tossed his head back and forth, eyes squeezed shut. His back arched higher and his heels dug firmly against the bed. His hand flew on his shiny cock. Was that lube making him gleam or precum? We’d pissed together before, but he was clearly a grower.
And he was wearing some sort of clothing—or something—that made him look like he had a small, soft, rounded pregnant stomach. The air left my body like someone had punched me. Zayden opened his eyes, but he didn’t have a chance in hell of stopping once recognition hit. I’d been there before…he was done. He was so close, he was going to come no matter what happened. He tensed. Even though he gasped like he’d been caught robbing a bank and let go of his cock, cum sprayed from his slit and splashed on the… what? The cute little pregnant tummy? He whined and covered his face with both hands, but his cock sprayed twice more, and his hips rolled.
With a moan he grabbed the blankets that had been shoved to his side, probably because he’d gotten hotter and sweatier the closer he got to coming—I swallowed hard at the thought of how good he must have felt jerking off—and pulled them over his lower half. He let out a distraught little sound that broke me out of the strange paralysis that had settled over me.
“Holy heck, Dare. What, why didn’t you knock? We instituted the knock rule after you caught… someone fucking me.” He squeaked and pulled the blankets up over his head.
“His name was Jarod.” I let out a short laugh.
Z ripped down the blanket, and his expression transformed from bewildered to infuriated the longer I stood there nervously swinging the door back and forth because I still had my hand on the knob.
“Why did you come in without knocking?” He tucked his blankets closer and used them to attempt to hide the little belly. I swallowed and glanced around. I’d been angry. I tried to remember why.
“Uh….”
“And what is that weird smell?” He shifted until he had his arms wrapped around the pile of blankets he was obviously trying to use to shield himself from me, and I couldn’t explain why, exactly, but that sent hurt poking through my insides.
“Sorry,” I muttered and stepped into the hallway as I closed the door. Z didn’t curse much, but a string of profanities carried out from his bedroom loud and clear. My face was hot and my gut was warm. I went and made sure the goopy mess on the kitchen table hadn’t somehow reignited. It was still a gross pile of scorched, cheap laminated wood, singed dish towels, and gooey wax, all mixed up with broken glass. I went around and opened the kitchen and living room windows.
He had a toy in his ass when he came.My stomach trembled as I thought aboutthatparticular detail of what I’d witnessed. My semi was not going the fuck away.
