Page 2 of Soothed By Daddy
I started the water for my bubble bath. My meeting with my boss had been scheduled pretty late in the day, so it was already dark outside. I decided to be fancy and turn on the candles scattered around my bathroom. I never used real ones because I was worried about forgetting to blow them out, but the flickering LED kind were good enough to feel semi-real. With the water going full blast, steam curled toward the ceiling as I dumped in half a bottle of bubble bath because more was always better. I scrounged around under the sink until I found my toys. It felt like forever since I had played with them.
On my own, my little self wasn’t very tiny. I was fully capable of turning on cartoons, movies, and getting food and bottles. But when someone was with me, I could be as small as I wanted to be, which meant bottles. With a bottle, the noises of the world went quiet. I couldn’t even imagine how much better it would be directly from the chest. Ten times better? A hundred times? Likely more.
It had been so long since I had someone else as a caretaker. My last boyfriend had loved the idea of a little, but not the reality. He fixed that by downloading hookup sites and finding someone more suited to his needs. So basically any guy except me. Ugh, it didn’t matter anymore, but I wished I hadn’t wasted so much time turning myself into a pretzel for him.
With the tub full and my toys floating, I sank into the bath. The water wrapped around me like a warm, steaming blanket, and my plan to play with my long-neglected toys was quickly forgotten.
Sigh.
Maybe it was time to download another dating app. It had been over six months since What’s-His-Name and I broke up. Puttering around the house, getting it into shape, occupied my time but didn’t make it any less lonely. I missed having someone around and didn’t love the idea of spending the rest of my life renovating my Victorian alone. Unfortunately for me, Cyrus had shown exactly zero interest in getting to know me better, or even getting to know me at all. Other than the occasional nod, I was barely acknowledged.
The warmth of the water seeped into my muscles, and I didn’t move a single inch until the water cooled to room temperature. When I finally climbed out, all the bubbles had dissipated, and that fleeting thought of getting in a bit of work tonight was gone too.
I’d hoped the hot water would relax my muscles, but it seemed to do the opposite. Every part of my body—back, thighs, shoulders, even my toes—felt pain. I managed to awkwardly climb out of the bathtub and dry myself off, but even drying my back brought tears to my eyes.
I didn’t realize how long it had been since I’d done any manual work on the house, but I’d regret it tonight. And likely for a week after. It was impossible for me to slip on my pants because I couldn’t hold my balance long enough. Instead, I shuffled into my bedroom, where I could lean against the bed for balance while I put on my volcano-print training pants and my favorite dinosaur onesie with the stuffed tail. Even that movement left me in agony.
The walk from my bedroom to the kitchen felt endless, but I trudged on anyway. If I focused, I could walk straight throughsheer force of will, but each step reminded me that my ability was slipping away quickly. By the time I reached the fridge, tears threatened to spill over. All I wanted was my milk, warmed in a bottle, and a soft place to lie down. I could finally shut off my mind and sink into the little space I rarely had the time to visit lately.
I pulled the milk from the fridge and set it on the counter. It probably didn’t matter, but I liked the taste better when I warmed it in the container first and then poured it into the bottle. It might have been my imagination, but I thought the heat stayed better in the original container. From the tap, I filled a pot with water and set it on the stove to start heating so I could put the milk container in it. I stood on my tiptoes, fingers brushing my bottle. Just me, my milk, and?—
Crash.The sound of shattering glass ricocheted through the kitchen.
Horror took over when the situation sank in. When I reached to get the bottle, I knocked the chestmilk onto the floor. The fiddly cap hadn’t stayed on, and now my milk—the milk I’d dreamed about—was all over my kitchen floor.
“No, no, no.” The tears caused by my battered muscles returned with a vengeance at tonight’s catastrophe.
It wasn’t fair.
I sniffled a few times in an attempt to keep them under control, but it was a losing battle. Salty tears left a wet path down my cheeks, and I furiously wiped them away. What started quietly morphed into shoulder-wracking sobs. When I looked down at the mess on my floor, a fresh round escaped me.
The treat needed to be cleaned up, but I didn’t have it in me to get on my hands and knees to make it happen.
2
CYRUS
Tonight I wanted four things—beer, a pump session, a hot shower, and my bed. If I combined the beer and the shower, the time could be cut in half. I was fucking exhausted from working concrete all day.
Right as I slid my key into the front door of the shared Victorian I rented an apartment in, I heard some kind of wailing.What the hell was that? Oddly, it sounded like it came from inside.
Once I got inside the shared foyer, the noise became more clear. Someone was sobbing like their heart was broken. It felt rude to stand there listening to what had to be something terrible, and either not move on to my apartment or try to help.Fuuuuuuck.
What if George was hurt?
My landlord was cute as hell. Unfortunately, the one lesson I learned in my last relationship was don’t shit where you eat. Well, that, and it was best if I avoided relationships like the plague because I wasn’t good at them. Hookups worked fine for any itches that needed scratching. Another cry drew myattention. Common sense told me to head for my door, but my knuckles rapped on George’s instead.
“George?” I called. “Open the door.” I used my foreman voice. The one I used on the job site when I wanted the guys to get their shit handled, and it seemed to work on landlords too. I heard some shuffling from inside that moved closer to the door. The lock clicked, and in the dark interior, George’s face appeared through the open door.
Holy crap. Tears streamed from his red-rimmed eyes, and damp hair clung around his face like he’d just stepped from the shower. For whatever reason, he was dressed in a zipped dinosaur costume.What the hell?It was green fleece, complete with a stuffed tail and yellow spines going up its back. It was the wrong season for Halloween, but I guess he could’ve been a fan.
“Did you need something?” George croaked.
“I could hear you from outside the house. You alright?” He wasn’t much shorter than me, but he seemed smaller in his outfit.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I had an accident.”
I gave him a quick once-over, looking for blood but nothing jumped out as an injury. “Where are you hurt?” It had sounded like he struggled to walk to the door. “Did you hurt your legs or your back?”
