AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was worried because I knew I was a lot to deal with, and while Nico and Star didn't mind being friends with me, I'd been worried that being more would be too troublesome for them. I knew I had a tendency of getting overexcited about things, and I could never sit still—present situation excluding. I'd been worried they would get tired of dealing with me, which didn't make sense since they'd already been doing it for centuries now.
I was excited too, though. I'd always wished we could all be together, and I'd been so very jealous when I'd returned from a summoning to discover Nico and Star had been dating in my absence. They'd already broken up by the time I came back and gone back to being friends like nothing had happened, but now I wondered if they'd done that for my sake.
"So you want to trouble a whole city just so you can get Dakota to stay home?" Star asked, raising a brow at me, and I pouted up at him.
"Well, how else are we supposed to get closer to him? Two days a week just aren't enough," I grumbled, making Star chuckle.
"I can't argue with that. But unlike us, Dakota does need to work for money, you know."
"Why? We can take care of him. He owns the house anyway, right? We can use ours for food and bills and anything he wants."
"It's not that easy, Rykie. Especially not until he knows everything about us."
"Why not?" I asked, unable to understand what the big deal was.
"Because humans are weird," he said with a roll of his eyes. "Dakota won't accept money or anything from us other than what we owe him for rent. At least not until he knows everything."
"So once he knows, we can make him our sugar baby?" I asked, and Star started laughing. I didn't know what I'd said that was so funny, but I smiled anyway, enjoying the way Star's laugh sounded. He rarely laughed so freely, so I felt kinda proud.
"Just imagining the label 'Sugar baby' for Dakota," he said, shaking his head. "Damn, Ryk, the way your mind works sometimes."
"I wasn't wrong though, was I?"
"No, you weren't. Once we tell Dakota everything, you can ask him if he'd like to be our sugar baby, okay?" Star asked with a grin, and I wasn't sure if he was teasing me or if he truly meant it.
"Can you stop talking about sugar babies, please?" Nico said somewhere in the house. It sounded like he was in his bathroom.
"Oooh, should we talk about caretaking Daddies instead?" I said teasingly, and Star shook his head at me.
"Shut up!" Nico said in a grumpy voice, making me laugh.
"But seriously, we need to figure out some way of getting closer to Dakota. I kinda don't want to start dating until we're all on the same page. Is that stupid?" I asked, and Star shook his head, his warm fingers brushing against my cheek as he gazed down at me with a warm look in his eyes.
"Not at all. I feel the same," he assured me, and I smiled up at him.
"Me too," Nico chimed in. "There's a bigger distance between us and Dakota than it is between us, and I think it would only grow bigger if we got together before getting to know him. I think we need to get closer to Dakota before we think of dating."
"Maybe we should be blunt. Lay all our cards on the table for Dakota. Even if he can't sense the mate bond, he must be interested in us too, right?" Star asked, and I pursed my lips in thought.
Since we didn't get enough time to flirt—or rather, since I was too impatient to willingly draw it out—it would be a good idea to just ask Dakota out.
"I'm in if Nico is," I said, leaving it up to the most thoughtful one out of us. If Nico said something was a good idea, it absolutely was.
"I think that would be the best way to go," Nico said after a few moments, and a spark of excitement shot through me. We were really going to do this. We were going to ask Dakota out and start dating.
Turning on my side, I pressed my face into Star's stomach, feeling like I'd float away if I didn't anchor myself properly.
It was weird how quickly things could change so dramatically. Before Kym and Consort Reece's visit, we'd been planning to compete for Dakota's affection. If they hadn't come, would we have continued? Or would we have realized that the better option, the one that we actually wanted, was where all of us dated?
I could spend hours thinking about the what-ifs, but what would really happen was that we were going to ask Dakota out. After centuries of being friends with Nico and Star, I was going to finally get to go on a date with them and our wonderful human (room)mate.
"Don't fall asleep," Star warned, and I peeked up at him with a grin.
"I won't. But I bet if I did you wouldn't move at all," I mused, and he huffed.
"Of course I wouldn't. Sleep is sacred. But since I'd prefer not to be stuck here for the next few hours..."
"I promise I won't fall asleep," I assured him. I was too wired to sleep anyway. I hoped we'd ask Dakota out tonight itself because otherwise I wouldn't be able to catch any sleep at night either.
