Page 28 of Daddy Bear Picnic

He shrugged. “I’m not sure, but they’re good.”

I watched as he ticked the two boxes he’d said he was going to. He was right about Jace’s pastries. They were great, but I enjoyed a lot of them. I ticked the box next to Wilde Ranch, and then searched my memory for the best tea. Smacking my lips a little, Elijah chuckled with a hand on my knee, he gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Why don’t you enter?” I asked.

“I do, not this one, but there’s an upcoming chili event in fall you’re going to be blown away by.” He gave me a wink. “Trust me. Oh, and yes, before you even ask, it comes with cornbread.”

Not like it needed to be said, but he really wasn’t kidding about how many events the told held. “What about a barbecue event?”

He nodded. “You missed the big one over the Fourth, people bring their grills and smokers here, everyone is making something, like a brisket or a whole pig. That’s one I get involved in. I make these amazing glazed ribs and this hot honey jam typa thing.”

My mouth already salivating. “Oh my god,” I mustered, fanning myself with the voting card.

“I’d have to take the bone out though for you, I wouldn’t want you choking,” he whispered, getting closer. “There’s only one bone I want my boy sucking on.”

I grabbed his knee this time and attempted to squeeze the same way he did for me, but it didn’t have the same effect. “You don’t tease me like that when there are people around.”

With one big kiss to my cheek, I felt the bright spotlight of eyes on us.

It was getting hotter now. “I think we should go try all the tea again,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’m—whoa.”

“You’re blushing,” he said. “You are the most adorablething. I have a different idea of what we could do, but involves you filling that card of a lot faster.”

“What?” I asked.

With his lips against my ear, he whispered. “Let’s go back to your place and I can show you how nice Daddy can be to his good little boy.”

I didn’t even see whose box I ticked, I just swished a line and folded the card. I knew how to follow orders, and I was a good boy.

12. ELIJAH

I was beginning to spend more time with Malcolm at his place, which wasn’t a bad thing in the grand scheme of our dynamic or relationship, but my brother was now beginning to ask if that meant we could change my room into another rentable unit for the bed and breakfast. Although I was still there most of the time for food services and occasional woodworking.

It was a warm afternoon of painting the outside of the house together, a nice, eggshell blue. The porch had been created and installed, finished with a light varnish that complimented the house well.

We took a break in the backyard where Malcolm had set a picnic blanket and anchored it in place at all four corners with his teddies. He wore paint-covered overalls that he’d turned into shorts—specifically, the type of shorts that his booty liked to eat whenever he sat down, so I spent a lot of time just watching his peach pull the fabric and his fingers forced to yank the jeans back out.

“I don’t think I could’ve done this without you,” he said, while I was still preoccupied on his ass, standing up and giving me a full showing of his asset.

“I’m sure you could.”

“No, I’m serious, I really couldn’t. But you know what I could do without you?”

Snapping out of my fix, I looked at him. “No. What can you do without me?”

He ran off inside, giggling to himself.

Of course, there were a lot of things he could do. And I didn’t know if he wanted me chasing after him, but I was in need of some active rest after all the up and down my arms had been doing with the paint roller on the house’s exterior.

“Close your eyes!” he called out from the backdoor.

“Don’t do anything you’ll regret,” I said. He’d playfully threatened to put paint on me more than once today while we disagreed on the best roller motion, was it best to paint up and down or left to right?

Under strained breath, I heard him coming closer until he was seemingly right in front of me. “Ok,” he sighed. “Open ‘em.”

The picnic basket. I’d assumed we were going to eat given the blanket, but I didn’t know he’d prepared the feat himself. I looked at it with a big smile, not even knowing what was inside yet, but it didn’t really matter, he’d prepared it himself.

“Whoa, I’m impressed, baby.”

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