Page 12 of More, Daddy
“I had all this pressure to want it to work, because Everly had gone through the trouble of the set up. But the pressure made me like her less, and I already didn’t like her very much,” he says, tracing the rim of his glass with one fingertip. He smiles at the surface of his beer—a total fucking simp move done by thoroughly fucked husbands around the world. I’m happy for the guy, but equally, would love to slap that fucking pint glass across the bar and stomp on it, too.
Not healthy, I know.
“Well,” I hedge, trying my best to not be an asshole to Hudson simply because he’s got his life figured out, which bugs me,andI really don’t want to be here, but I’m trying not to fall into an obsessive hole withDaddysGirlso soon. None of which is a reason to be a prick to my friends. “Admitting itout loud adds a level of pressure, too. Because I’ve told the world I’m trying to meet someone again, now I really don’t want to fail.”
Jake smiles and knocks his partially-drunk beer against mine. “I don’t care if you fail,” he says gleefully. “I’ll be your friend even if you’re single your whole life.” He finishes his beer. “Then you can’t say no to babysitting.”
I finish my beer, too. And while wiping my mouth with a damp paper napkin, the kinky husband brigade takes over.Okay, Dean isn’t married yet but the way he’s been all “aww shucks” when talking about Ms. Clara June Colt tells me all I need to know—he’s a damn goner.
“Speaking of Dolly,” Jake says, his voice dropping to that hushedI’m gonna talk about things that no one else in this bar should heartone of his. That tone I’ve come to know and despise, because that tone means secrets. Good, kinky, filthy secrets. Secrets that I am privy to but can take no place in sharing or bantering because I am single.
Not that I’d ever admitmy thingto them anyway.
My thing comes with shame. Jake and Hudson are fathers—they’d likely judge me for it. Their things are palatable. Easy, even.
Jake likes making leather whipping tools. He likes doling a little punishment with his pleasure. The world likes a man who knows how to inflict the right amount of pain with a healthy dose of pleasure. He’s a Christian Grey in a damn cowboy hat, so it seems.
And Hudson. If he doesn’t have stitches, a Band-Aid or a limp, I’d think something was wrong. Hudson and Dolly aren’t set on one kinky thing—they do all of them. I recall once last year when Hudson dislocated his shoulder from an “erotic moment gone awry.” I didn’t prod further because his pleasure is my personal reminder that I am alone, but anerotic moment gone awry that leads to a dislocated shoulder? Jesus Christ.
I am sick of being single.
Absolutely fucking over it.
“Those leather bindings she wanted—they’re done. In the truck,” Jake finishes, knocking his cowboy hat back with a closed fist. Then Hudson nods, and launches into a story about how he dipped rope into wax, hoping to create a soft barrier between the roughness of the fiber, and his own skin.
His own skin.
Dolly is tying Hudson’s ass up for some reason or another.
Is there a sinkhole full of kinksters in Bluebell that I just haven’t wandered into yet or what?
“Don’t give us that look,” Jake says, snapping me out of my jealous haze. It used to be a jealous haze. Now I’d say, since meetingDaddysGirl, it’s half envy, half impatience.
It’s not their fault I’m forcing myself to do normal things so I don’t get obsessed with the girl on the computer, but I am taking it out on them in the form of dead eyes and impatient sighs.
“What look?” I play dumb.
“The look of a guy who hasn’t found his own kinky counterpart,” Hudson winks and Dean lets out a little chuckle. I nod toward the football coach.
“Why aren’t you giving Deano a bad time, huh? He’s technically single.” I cast a glance toward my friend. “Sorry—I’m not taking the brunt of this by myself from these two old kinksters.”
Jake’s brows fall to a flat line, and he twists his lips in displeasure. “We’re the same age.”
“Two years,” I tell him. “You’re two years older than me.”
Hudson chuckles, and sips his last beer of the night. Healways stops at just two. And I’m sure there’s some sexual performance related to that number of beers, but I choose to not think about that now.
“What’s your thing?” Hudson asks, unaware that his question hits the spring-loaded trap door of complexity in my personal life. My thing is what destroyed my marriage. My thing is what keeps me single. My thing is whatDaddysGirlis into, too.
I lift a shoulder and let it fall. “I don’t have a thing.”
Jake laughs. Hudson smirks. Dean smiles.
“I don’t.”
I don’t know who says it, but someone says, “Everyone has a thing.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t,” I tell them, praying to John Wayne and Wyatt Earp themselves that no one takes note of the flush creeping up my neck. “I just want to meet a nice woman. Someone my age. Someone here in Bluebell, who likes sports and understands my passion for them. Who wants a family.”Who wants me to be her dirty daddy, and who wants to willingly hand herself over to me as my sweet, filthy girl. “Pretty simple stuff.”
