“Exactly! Mr. G lured you here, and now he doesn’t even want you to leave the room without him!” Then he leaned in close to Rene and hissed, “We need a secret code word. A safeword! In case you need to get away from him. Maybe a hand signal? Do you know any ASL?”
“I can hear you,” I said dryly.
“Then stop listening in!”
“I don’t know any sign language,” Rene said, his lips curving up. “Sorry.”
“Morse code?” Sam whispered un-quietly, holding his fingers up in a cross-shape toward me, like he was warding off a vampire. “Swahili? Those finger signs baseball players use when they want to play with each other’s balls?”
I laughed.
“Um, no?” Rene said apologetically.
Sam sighed, long and loudly.
“Are you always this dramatic, Sam?” Rene asked, his eyes sparkling so damn beautifully that it took my breath away.
Sam threw his hands up. “Yes!”
“Okay,” Rene said. “Just checking.” Then he bit his lip, his cheeks creasing like he was holding back a smile.
Sam rolled his eyes, then huffed out a breath, and then, after a minute, started giggling fiercely. Rene finally quit fighting it and joined in, which lifted my heart, and then Sam noticed me grinning down at the two of them and flapped his hand at me like he was still trying to shoo me away but simply couldn’t get enough breath to do it.
“Sorry, Sam, I’m here to stay.” I winked, adding, “And in case you were wondering, garlic won’t work on me, either.”
“Fine, fine,fine,” he said once he finally caught his breath. He clutched onto the sleeve of Rene’s robe. “I suppose your Stockholm Daddy can come to breakfast, too. But Rene?”
“Yes?”
Sam yanked him closer,but he was still—possibly always?—incapable of whispering at anything less than full volume. “If you need me to rescue you, your safeword is platypus.”
10
Rene
I was prettysure Sam had put a waffle on his plate, but it was hard to see underneath the mountain of whipped cream, strawberries, chocolate sauce, and… were those gummy bears?
I looked down at my own plate—scrambled eggs, a piece of toast, and a small piece of melon—and felt a sinking sensation in my stomach.
I’d never liked a lot of sweets, but most of the Littles in the room had their plates loaded with them. Well, not the ones with Daddies sitting next to them. Those ones had more reasonable meals. But that wasn’t the only difference between me and the rest of them.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Edward asked, leaning close to murmur the question into my ear.
“Nothing,” I said quickly, forking up a bite of eggs and putting it in my mouth quickly.
It had made me feel all warm and syrupy inside when he’d put off his business meeting to come to breakfast with me, and I didn’t want to ruin it by being… well, by being as awkward as I was.
Somehow, when I’d been reading through the blogs online about what it meant to be Little, it had all sounded easier. Like something I wouldn’t have to try at, but could just let go and do. The idea of a Daddy to take charge once in a while—to beallthe way in charge, to take all the responsibility off my shoulders completely—had sounded heavenly. And even though I didn’t have any interest in wearing diapers or sucking on a bottle or that kind of thing, Ididrely on Teddy, so I’d thought…
Well, I’d thought maybe I’d found the place I could fit in the world.
Clearly, I’d been wrong.
It was beyond obvious as I took in the excited chatter and happy faces and vibrant energy overflowing the breakfast room that Ididn’tfit here. Sam had been true to his word and introduced me to more people than I could keep track of before we’d gotten our food, and every single one of the Littles I’d met had been excited and welcoming and bubbling over with joy about getting together to play later and all the activities planned for the weekend.
But I was pretty sure I didn’t even knowhowto play, and I still hadn’t heard from Daryl about which activities he expected me to attend.
“Rene,” Edward said quietly, his big hand landing on my back and rubbing slow circles there. “Talk to me, beautiful. I can’t help if I don’t understand. I’m not familiar with this kind of role-playing, but I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be something you enjoy.”
