Page 95 of Just A Little Magic

The banquet crew had set up passports for the littles to getstamped by the DMs monitoring each station. At the end of the night, they could submit the stamped passport for a prize drawing. There were a few smaller prizes, but the grand finale was our popular prix fixe weekend brunch for four at Quill.

Saul had been right. He knew how to set up the party without my supervision. My sketches and design notes had been followed perfectly. The room had been transformed into a Gothic garden with carnivorous plants and grasping vines. Overhead, ghosts darted along the ceiling. The stations were marked with faux old-fashioned cemetery fencing and gravestones. The staff wore livery that matched the room.

People paid a fortune for club membership and expected to get their money’s worth out of it. We’d nailed the assignment. Even though I was still annoyed at them, I knew Jakob and Rory had worked equally as hard to make the party a success.

I’d purposefully not thought about what I would do when I saw them. What they’d done wasn’t okay, but my ego wasn’t their problem. If they’d known it had started the way it had, they wouldn’t have done it. If they’d thought I’d be upset about it at all, they wouldn’t have done it. Hindsight and the leftover blowjob endorphins had me realizing that maybe I had overreacted a tad.

A scintilla.

A smidge.

Bear squeezed my fingers when he noticed I was getting extra clingy. “Babe or Baby?” Damn, I loved this man.

“Babe, but fading fast. I need to find Rory and Jakob.” I looked around through a sea of unicorns, clowns—WTF, people, why would anyone pick a clown costume for a party full of littles?—and superheroes. There were so many guests already here that my scanning was slow going. Bear, on the other hand, had no such problems.

“They’re sitting on the couches at the back of the room.”

With my hand still in his, Bear made a path through the people for us. He was so large that people automatically moved out of his way. I was more than a little jealous because if it was just me, I’d still be trying to dodge around people halfway back.

Jakob and Rory were cuddled up in their Daddies’ laps but not talking or playing. They both looked so sad and upset. Their Daddies’ expressions weren’t much better. They spoke in low tones while rubbing their boys’ backs or thighs.

“Hi, Jakob. Hi, Rory.” When they looked at me warily, I added, “Could we go talk?”

They both jumped to their feet.

“Yes!” they said in unison.

I led them over to a deserted seating area. Our Daddies could see us, but it was too far away to be overheard. I smoothed my hands down my pants while I gathered my thoughts.

“Owen, is it okay if we go first?” Rory asked.

I nodded because that meant I could put off my part a little longer.

“We’re so sorry. As much as we wanted you and Barrett to get together, it was wrong of us to interfere. It wasn’t exactly a secret to us”—Jakob stopped to look at Rory, who nodded in agreement before he continued—“that you’re very private about who you date, the kind of Daddy you want, and being a little. It was wrong of us to interfere.”

“If you still want to be friends, we promise it won’t happen again. Please don’t be mad at Anders. He warned us it was a bad idea that would blow up in our faces. When we met Barrett to talk about it, Anders refused to go,” Jakob said.

And now it was my turn.

“I overreacted. We’re friends and love each other, and when I calmed down a little, I realized you two were onlytrying to help. I didn’t like it, but there wasn’t a reason for me to walk out all dramatic the way I did.” I paused for a breath. “One of the reasons I was really excited was that I thought someone had bid that high, and my ego took a hit.”

I wanted to be honest with them, even if I sounded silly about the whole thing. If nothing else, hiding my true feelings from my friends had become exhausting.

“Oh! Oh! Oh! This one we can fix!” Jakob and Rory bounced hard enough on the seat that their feet left the ground. Jakob was so excited that his words came out in one big jumble, “The next highest bidder was so bummed at losing out that he emailed us and asked us to see if you’d consider doing a consult for him anyway, even though he wasn’t the winning bid. He said he bid on the date to get the consult.”

Well, huh, that was cool. And ego soothing if I was honest with myself.

“Are we good?”

“We are sooooo good,” Rory shouted while throwing his arms around us both.

“Yay-yay-yay-yay-yay,” Jakob chanted. Naturally, we had to join in with him.

“Is Anders coming tonight?”

Rory shook his head. “No, the bossy boyfriend said he needed him to sit in a meeting tonight and take notes.”

“What? Who has a business meeting on Halloween?” I was dumbfounded by this one.

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