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I blink, dazed and a little dumb, but I can’t help smiling. “You… too.”

He laughs, a real one, and the sound rumbles through his chest into my ear. He cradles my face in his hands and kisses me again, deeper this time, and I melt into it.

When he finally pulls out, I whimper at the loss, but Adrien is quick to tuck me into his side, rubbing my back and whispering sweet nothings. He doesn’t seem to care about the mess, just rolls us both onto our sides and wraps a blanket around us. I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open.

“Daddy?” I mumble.

“Mmm?”

“Can we stay like this? For a little while?”

He hugs me tighter. “For as long as you want, baby. No one’s ever gonna take you from me. I promise.”

I drift to sleep with his arms around me and the steady thump of his heart anchoring me in a world that finally feels like home.

19

Adrien

I stand beside the bed longer than I have any reason to, looking down at the boy curled beneath my blankets, his face turned toward the pillow I was using less than an hour ago, one arm tucked beneath it and the other stretched across the empty space where my body had been.

God help me, he’s perfect. Fuck. I keep feeling that—what do they call it? Oh, yeah—cuteness aggression toward him. Like sometimes I just want to wrap my arms around him and squeeze until he pops.

Right now, his hair is a disaster, fluffy blond strands sticking in every direction from a night of sleep, his cheeks faintly pink, and his mouth ever so softly sucking on a pacifier. He has on a pink sweater that, quite honestly, looks like a dress on him, and adorable little mint-green panties with white-and-yellow polka dots.

It’s been almost a week since I fucked his tight, silky ass for the first time, and let me just say—he’s begged for it every day since, sometimes twice a day, and I’d be a liar if I said I’ve ever thought for a second about rejecting him.

The closest I’ve come to telling him no is when he tried to suck my cock three days ago. I could see the desperation in his eyes, the way his hands clutched the sheets and his lips, all puffy and damp, trembled around my tip. He made it maybe three inches before choking, his face going scarlet, tears spiking at the corners of his eyes.

There was just no way; his mouth is too fucking tiny, like abnormally small. And yeah, sure, I think of him as being small a lot, but the truth is, he’s not really. He’s five-ten. Thin, sure, but not actually small. His mouth just happens to be absurdly tiny.

It was so bad that the skin at the corners of his lips had started to split, tiny fissures that leaked blood onto my dick. He didn’t even notice until I pulled him off and made him open up. Then he sulked, eyes brimming with shame and a glimmer of tears, like he’d failed me. I told him it was okay, that it didn’t matter, but he shook his head, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and crawled into my lap for comfort.

Now whenever I’m hard, he nuzzles his face along my thigh, burrows in, and licks at the shaft, kitten-like and insistent, just little flicks of tongue and damp, open-mouthed kisses.

Maybe I can reward him with some designated time for that when I get back. I usually can only handle it for so long before I need to jack off or fuck him, but I know he’d do it all day if he could.

I hate leaving while he’s asleep, but I need to do this now. I’ve left him a note, explaining that Daddy has another “errand” and will be back as soon as it’s finished. I left him breakfast in the fridge, and lunch, even though I should be back before then.

By the time I lock up the house and pull out of the driveway, it’s close to six, and the sun is just peeking up over the horizon.

Steven Mercer lives an hour and twenty-three minutes away.

Pittsburgh slides by beyond the windshield in smears of sodium-yellow streetlights and dark storefronts while my mind moves between two completely incompatible images.

Kamden underneath me.

Steven standing over him at ten.

My phone starts vibrating in the cupholder around an hour into the drive.

It’s Mathias.

I answer through the Bluetooth in my car.

“Yeah?”

“You busy?”