Page 9 of Sadie's Little Christmas

Chapter 3

Derek was seatedin his office, at his desk, getting no work done whatsoever. His thoughts were all over the place. Corralling them long enough to focus on the open bank statements and accounting ledger on his laptop was impossible. Even the laptop had given up on him and timed out a good twenty minutes ago. Instead of numbers, his gaze kept drifting from the colorful pipes, zipping aimless patterns across an otherwise black monitor screen to the corner where Sadie now stood, hugging her stuffie, her head slightly bowed as she studied the meeting of the walls.

He had to be crazy to consider taking her home with him. He knew that with the same degree of intensity, he knew he couldn’t put someone as volatile and out of control as she was with his other Littles, but he couldn’t send her away. She’d been in his office for only twenty minutes and in his life for less than an hour, but that was all the time it took for him to realize he was in trouble.

Given enough time to think, he could probably tally up the sheer number of Littles who had passed through his home, and not once had he ever been so drawn… so intrigued… sotemptedby one. When she’d been throwing that feral fit of temper, all he’d wanted to do was hold her—forcibly if he had to—until she wilted back into the sad, confused submissive he’d glimpsed when Nanny J had pulled her into her arms. He didn’t regret going through her bag. The way she was acting, he was positive he was going to find alcohol at best and at worse, drugs hidden inside. Nothing else he could think of went any distance at all toward explaining the way she’d reacted when little Mary picked up her abandoned duffel bag.

The stuffie didn’t exactly surprise him. He’d been around Littles for so long at this point, he wasn’t sure he’d know how to behave toward a woman who didn’t crave a special toy when she was at her most vulnerable emotionally. Whathadsurprised him was the way she’d grabbed it away from him, retreating into that huddled up ball of misery, clinging to it as if it was her only friend. He’d never seen anyone look smaller or more lost and forlorn in his life, especially with all those bruises mottling her pale skin.

Sadie breathed a soft, frustrated sigh through her nose. With her right foot, she scratched the back of her other shin, then put her foot flat on the floor again. Looking down at the stuffie in her arms, she turned the white kitten around so it could face the corner, too. Against his will, Derek gave in to the smile now tugging at his lips. Almost as quickly, he lost it again.

He couldnottake her home with him.

If the road to Hell truly was paved with good intentions, surely Hell was where he’d be bound the moment he took her—even temporarily and for her own good as he was so sternly trying to tell himself—as his own. It was so easy to see her standing in a corner of his suite—her and Spankles both—staring at the wall while they contemplated what they’d done and how he intended to deal with her.

Spankles would have to be content with sharing in his inevitable scolding, but it was Sadie alone who would go over his knee. Sadie’s little bottom, he would bare as he held her naughty hand pinned to her side and used his other to paint the pale mounds of her cringing bottom to a bright, hot pink.

He had a hairbrush on his nightstand and a slightly larger, heavier paddle in his closet for Littles, who needed something more than just his hand. He had his belt and a two-tongued strap called The Dragon, which, with every snapping bite it took, could make its victim jump and plead.

For that very rare submissive, whose occasional need for pain matched his own ache to deliver it, he also had his bullwhip. To date, though, he had yet to find a Little who could or would take that.

Sadie was not that Little, he told himself, tearing his hungry stare away from her lest he lost himself down that damning rabbit hole. She wasn’t here to be his plaything. She was here because of what had happened to her, because she’d had no safe place to go. Rawhide Ranch was the best place for her, and he was still every bit as determined now as he’d been when Jared Stark first called him. He would do everything he could to help her, and he would keep his hands to himself while he did it, even if it killed him.

His wristwatch beeped, signaling the end of the time he’d allotted for her to be in the corner.

“All right,” he announced, retreating into the comfortable headspace of Ranch Owner and general Daddy Dom. Daddy to every Little boy and girl here, not just Sadie, he told himself as she turned around. “Come and sit down.”

He busied himself clearing his files off his desk, so he wouldn’t sit there, watching her approach as if she were a prime piece of steak, and he hadn’t eaten in days. He put his accountingaway and pulled out a copy of the contract every Little who came to stay here was required to sign.

“I was going to do this in the privacy of your dorm room,” he said, fishing a pen out of a cup full of others just like it. “But that little stunt you pulled in the hallway has changed things up a bit, wouldn’t you say? Sit down.”

Sinking into one of the two chairs set out on the opposite side of his desk, she played with her kitty’s ears and studied the stapled papers he flipped around and slid across the desk for her to read. Dropping a pen on top of the short stack, he leaned back in his chairs and folded his hands in his lap.

“What is it?” she asked.

“An agreement. In these pages, you will find a list of our rules, which you will need to agree to. You’ll also find a list of consequences,”—a corner of his mouth quirked when she immediately picked through the pages to find the list—“for when you break those rules.”

“I have to initial them?” she asked, glancing up at him in surprise.

“Each and every one,” he confirmed. “So, we both know you have read and understand what is being said.”

She picked up the pen.

He stopped her. “Start at the beginning, please.”

Eyebrows crashing down in a disgruntled line, she made a soft growling sound in the back of her throat but flipped the contract back over to the very beginning.

“I’ll need to make a copy of your driver’s license if I may.”

She got up to get her wallet from the duffel bag he’d dropped just inside his office door back when they’d first arrived. Handing it to him when she came back, she sat down and without a word, began reading again.

Eighteen, he was happy to note, with a few months to spare. As he took her license out, he couldn’t help but note how emptyevery other pocket in her wallet was. No cash, no debit or credit cards, no change in the zipper purse, not even so much as a business card.

Hmm.

He had a small tabletop scanner-printer-fax combo on the filing cabinet behind his chair. When he swiveled around to make his copy, she flipped the first page.

“There will be a quiz on the contents of that contract over dinner tonight,” he said drily, and his smile broadened a bit when she growled her frustration again and grudgingly flipped the page back over.

---