“Sorry, Daddy,” he whispered, freezing in place.
I ran a hand down his back, cupping his ass. “Nothing to be sorry about, sweet boy. But we should get more sleep.”
Or, my cock insisted, fuck again. But?—
“I… I have to pee?”
I grinned in the near-dark. “Is that a question?” I teased, leaning in to steal a slightly sour and utterly addicting kiss from his warm mouth.
He giggled. Goddamn adorable. Then squirmed. But then, as if all the light had been sucked out of the sun, he suddenly went still again. “It’s morning.”
“Barely,” I said, holding him tighter as my heart started to race, already suspecting where he was going with this. I cleared my throat. “Do you have to get home?”
He’d said he was mine, dammit. Now that his paid time was, I assumed, up, I wanted to press him to confirm it, no matter how goddamn crazy it sounded in the almost-light of day.
I still meant it. I would still move heaven and goddamn earth to make it happen. But the boy had to have a life, people, responsibilities. I needed to know what those were and what he truly wanted in order to figure out how to take care of him properly and make this into something permanent, but that didn’t mean I was a goddamn caveman who couldn’t acknowledge that he—fucking hell—probablydidneed to leave me, temporarily at least, now that the night was over.
Instead of answering, though, he went even more still, if such a thing was possible, seeming to shrink in on himself as his breath hitched and stuttered and then broke.
“Baby,” I said sharply, rolling over and pinning him under me. I couldn’t see him well enough, godfuckingdamnit, but I also wasn’t going to fuck around with taking time to turn on a light. “Talk to me.”
If his home life wasn’t safe—and I didn’t want to make blanket assumptions about sex workers, but all signs already pointed to someone having mistreated him in the past—thenfuckhim going back home. Or at least not without me right there with him, making sure nothing, fuckingnothing, ever hurt him again.
“I… I don’t have to get home,” he finally whispered, his whole body trembling underneath me, but not in the sexy way I’d become addicted to. “I don’t, um, I don’t really have one?”
“What?” I said, something inside my chest breaking a little. “What does that mean, baby?”
He sniffled. Oh hell. He was crying again, slow and quiet and almost without any sound, and it hurt something inside me that anyone else who knew me, anyone but Marcus, at least, would probably have sworn I didn’t even have.
“Jack,” I said as gently as I could, propping myself on my elbows so I didn’t crush him and cupping his face. Brushing the tears off his cheeks. Leaning in to kiss him until the tears finally stopped and he was clinging to me again, exactly as he should. “Sweetheart, talk to me. I’m your Daddy. It’s my job to fix whatever is making you cry, but I can’t do that unless I understand.”
“You’re… You’re still my Daddy?” he asked, holding me so tightly he might leave a mark.
Let him. Whatever he needed.
“I want to be,” I said carefully, reminding myself not to get pushier than that, no matter how much my instincts were driving me to answer with a hell-fucking-yes. For all that it felt like lightning had just struck me, a normal person—one who hadn’t been repressed and yearning his whole damn life and who was now finally,fina-fucking-ly, free—might find my conviction that Jack was it for me, mine in all the ways that counted despite me still having no fucking clue about his life outside this room, a bit… much. Then again, I wasn’t at all sure that the way Jack had melted so perfectly in my arms, the way he truly was my perfect, needy boy, necessarily qualified him as any more “normal” than me, so I went ahead and added, “I meant everything I said to you last night, sweetheart. I’m sure there will be details to work out, but I… already care. Let me keep you.”
“Please don’t be lying,” he whispered, his face hidden in the crook of my neck as his body trembled against me.
The room had brightened a bit now, giving me just enough light to see the color of those beautiful liquid-silver eyes of his when I tipped his head back and made him look at me. “Jack. John Patrick Healy. Sweetheart. I’m not lying. I want you to be my boy. Please stay with me and let me take care of you. Not just this morning, butalways. Let me?—”
Could I say it after just one night, or would that scare the sweet boy away?
Fuck it. I’d spent too many years hiding the truth. Too soon or not, I wasn’t going to do it with this one.
“—let me love you, baby. Let me be the one who’s always there for you, who takes charge so you don’t have to, who gives you everything you need. Let me be your Daddy, sweet boy. I’ve been waiting for you my whole damn life.”
Those pretty eyes of his got as big as saucers, but then the sun came out, Jack’s smile almost blinding in the dim morning light. “You remembered my name.”
I laughed, the relief that surged through me enough to have brought me to my knees if I’d been standing. That smile was a yes. My boy was going to sayyes. “I remember everything about you, baby, and I always will.”
He ducked his head for a moment, then looked up at me through his lashes, his smile shy this time. Kryptonite. “I… I still don’t know yours?”
“It’s Damien,” I told him. “Damien Walker. And Jack?”
“Yes, Daddy Damien?”
Oh hell,thatsmile? He had my heart. All of it. There was no going back now, and I suspected there never had been, not from the moment he’d first shown up at my door. “You do have a home now, sweetheart. It’s me. It willalwaysbe me, if that’s what you want.”
