Every now and then, she would look up and watch other Littles or couples interact but would go right back to playing by herself. The noise of the Littles behind her made her feel as though she was in daycare, waiting to be picked up by her perfect Daddy.

Yeah, right. Like that would ever happen.

She imagined that perfect Daddy would watch her from outside the door with a smile on his face before he came in to take her home. It was probably weird that she liked the idea of a Daddy watching her but whatever. She was weird. All her life, her parents had made her feel weird. They even told her she was weird once. It had hurt her feelings, but it wasn’t like they were around enough for her to have a close relationship with them anyway.

“Can I play with you?”

Ruby looked over to find another Little sitting next to her with a hopeful look in her eye. But she wasn’t falling for it. Nope. No friends.

“No,” she said before turning back to the dollhouse.

“Why not? The house is big enough for both of us to play with. We could play together,” the Little replied.

Ruby ignored her and continued to play with the toys. After a short moment, the Little next to her started pulling toys out of the basket and moved over to the side of the house a bit further from Ruby, and started playing in the rooms on that side.

Furrowing her eyebrows, she glared at the woman. “I said you couldn’t play!”

The woman looked up with wide, green eyes.

“The rules say we all have to share the toys here,” the woman said softly.

“No! I’m not sharing. I said no. Go away!” she said loudly.

The room went almost silent and within seconds, a tall man and a matronly-looking woman were standing beside them.

“What’s going on here, Maddie?” the man asked.

The woman looked up at the man with tears in her eyes. “I asked if I could play with her and she said no, so I moved over to this side of the house to play and now she’s mad because she doesn’t want me to play with the house.”

The man, who was quite handsome, looked over at Ruby and studied her for a moment before looking back at the woman.

“Young lady, you must share all of the toys in here,” the matronly woman said firmly.

Ruby was pretty sure the woman was a Mommy, but she was wearing a button on her blouse that said ‘Room Monitor’.

Glaring up at the woman and the man, Ruby crossed her arms over her chest and huffed.

“I don’t want to share. I was here first,” she replied.

“Come on, sweetie, let’s go find something else to play with for right now. You can come back to the dollhouse later,” the man said to the Little.

“Yeah, go away,” Ruby muttered.

“Excuse me?” a deep voice interrupted.

Her head snapped back, and her gaze landed on a pair of stern gray eyes staring back at her. His eyes were mesmerizing but the expression on his face made her bottom tingle.

Uh-oh.

2

JACE

Jace sat behind his desk and scanned the three large screens that hung on the walls of the office he shared with his partner and best friend, Zane.

After one of their friends’ Littles was attacked outside of the club by a fake Daddy a few months prior, as well as an incident with a different creep in the bar a couple of months before that, Jace and Zane decided they needed to make the club a safer place for everyone, most importantly, vulnerable Littles and subs.

Now the club was even busier than usual for a Saturday night. It had been busier ever since they’d reopened after closing down for a month to make some changes. The month they’d closed down had been spent reviewing their memberships, interviewing all members who identified as a Top, whether they were a Daddy, Mommy, Dom, Domme, or anything else they identified as.