He sat next to me and watched as I opened the box.
We both gasped. I lifted Tonya out and stared at her.
“She’s so pretty!”
“Oh wow,” Daddy breathed.
They had cleaned her, for one. She was still faded, but she hadn’t looked this vibrant in color for years and years. There was no trace of the injury, and they’d even put in more stuffing inside her or something, because I could stand her up again on my lap and she wouldn’t fall. Everything was just… perfect. Even her eyes were shinier than before.
I put her gently next to me on the couch, then turned to Daddy and hesitated for two seconds.
And then I launched myself at him, straddling his lap and kissing him with all the gratitude I had inside me. There was a lot of it.
Luukas
When I’d paid triple for Tonya’s repairs to be done as soon as possible, I hadn’t expected any of the results. Not how good she’d look, which was as new as she could, and definitely not the squirming boy on my lap who kissed me like our lives depended on it.
I got swept up by his taste. The strawberry was somehow intoxicating as fuck and the squirming didn’t really help with the fact that I was crazy attracted to him.
Before he could make either of us any harder, I pulled back and ignored his whine.
“You’ve had some of your strawberry lollipops today,” I panted out the words, placing a hand between us to keep him from pressing into me.
“Uh-huh!” He tried to lean back in, his pupils blown and his lips glistening and swollen from the frantic kissing.
“Hey, baby boy? Slow down a little.” I kept my tone calm and even, even though I didn’t really feel any of that.
He let out another disgruntled sound, then leaned back properly and frowned at me. “What?”
“Do you remember what we talked about the other night?”
I wasn’t expecting the change in his demeanor. Fire flashed in his eyes as he sneered at me. “I remember.” Then he promptly slid off my lap, grabbed Tonya, and glanced at me. “Thank you for having her fixed.”
He wasn’t in his little mode anymore, it was as if, somehow, I’d violently shaken him out of it. Without another word, he marched to his room and closed the door behind himself.
I rubbed a hand over my face and groaned.Fuck.
I was hard, of course I was, but the fact was that I didn’t feel like—actually, screw that. I wanted Bear. The attraction had been there from the beginning. I would’ve been blind if I hadn’t seen how gorgeous he was in this understated, geeky way.
I’d brought him home like a stray and I didn’t feel like it was okay to start a physical relationship when we weren’t really settled into the rest yet. What if the rest didn’t work after all? What if that side of us wasn’t completely compatible? Were we just supposed to play with others and have our relationship at home separate from that, intimacy included?
I groaned again. I wasn’t ready to confess that it was me who was scared as fuck. So I ignored myself and got up to see what there was in the kitchen. We needed dinner.
That night, Bear was clearly uncomfortable around me. He kept throwing me these looks that were embarrassed at times and almost oddly accusatory on others. I didn’t realize how much I’d messed up until at bedtime when Bear’s pillow and his stuffies were gone from my bedroom.
Of course, the next day after a poorly slept night, I had an important celebrity client coming in for a half day session that we’d continue the day after.
As I told this to Bear, he nodded. “I’ll have dinner ready to go when you come home, Sir.”
He was all business, too. There wasn’t a hint of Little in him as he served us breakfast. He cleared the table after we were done, and the only way I could tell he was a bit rattled about us not being on our usual terms was when he dropped a fork while carrying the dishes to the sink.
He grumbled under his breath and leaned down to pick it up.
My jaw dropped. How had I missed that he was wearing very short shorts? I swallowed hard and had to grab the island when I stumbled a little.
Bear turned to look at me and raised a brow.
“Uh, nice shorts?”
