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“Paula the pufferfish.” Saoirse cracked open one eye.
“Not Allan?”
“Definitely not Allan. Allan’s not a fish name. Also, I’m concerned about gender distribution in your storytelling. Too many boy fish.”
Sutter chuckled. “Okay. The mermaid found Paula the baby pufferfish was missing. The sun had gone down and the ocean was getting dark. The mermaid knew it was dangerous to be out in the open ocean after dark. Sharks would be hunting; eels would be snapping. But the mermaid couldn’t abandon her friend Paula. Leaving Donald to protect the nursery, the mermaid took up the only weapon she had, the sharp end of a rib from a long-dead whale and ventured out into the dark ocean.”
Saoirse shivered and clutched at her pillow, wishing she had Frances to cuddle with.
“You okay, darlin’? This isn’t too scary for a bedtime story, is it?”
She shook her head.
The couch scrunched as Sutter moved. His fingers brushed hers. She wrapped her hands around his and tucked their joined hands under her cheek.
“Better?” he asked, his deep voice gentle.
“Yes.”
“Good girl. Now just relax. The mermaid took her whale rib and went back to where the baby fish had played all day. It was a coral playground and at night, all the corals were out, waving their fronds in the water. It was magical but also a little scary because it looked so different from the daytime. The mermaid was alert as she swam carefully through the corals. Very softly, she began singing, hoping Paula might hear her. And sure enough, after a few minutes, the mermaid heard the baby pufferfish calling her. She swam all the way through the corals, to the far end where the baby fish didn’t usually go. And there she found Paula trapped under a coral spine that had broken and fallen over, making a little bridge the pufferfish had tried to swim under and gotten stuck. The mermaid quickly freed her friend and tucked the pufferfish under her arm. The mermaid turned and began swimming back toward the nursery.
“But other creatures had heard the mermaid’s singing, and Murphy the moray eel came snapping out of his cave as the mermaid swam past. Murphy’s hooked beak caught the mermaid’s arm as she tried to swim away. The mermaid stabbed at Murphy with the whale rib but the eel wriggled away. Murphy began dragging the mermaid into his deep, dark cave. Then Paula, the brave little pufferfish, slipped out from under the mermaid’s arm. She swam into Murphy’s mouth as he tried to hold on to the mermaid and as soon as she was inside his jaws, she inflated herself like a balloon. Paula’s sharp spines stabbed into the soft parts of Murphy’s mouth. The eel shrieked in pain and let go of the mermaid’s arm. Paula quickly blew out and, deflated, swam between the eel’s jaws. The mermaid grabbed her friend and swam away as fast as she could, back to the nursery where Donald healed her arm with his magic dolphin tears. Paula slept safely with the other baby fish and never wandered too far from the school again.”
Saoirse sighed happily. “I like that story. Paula was so brave even though she was very little.”
“She was. She saved the mermaid and herself.”
“Thank you, Sutter.”
“You’re welcome, darlin’. Go to sleep now. You can hold my hand until you fall asleep if you like.”
“I would,” Saoirse whispered, drifting. “Good night, Sutter.”
“Good night, darlin’.”
Chapter 5
Sutter couldn’t remember feeling so adrift.
He’d dropped Saoirse back at the main resort building in time for her morning session, after making her the ham and cheese omelet that had fueled him through college and B-school for breakfast. Watching her walk through the front doors, even when she stopped before she ducked inside, turned, and gave him a shy wave, caused a painful tugging in his chest.
He didn’t want to let her go.
Their first date hadn’t been anything that would have impressed his friends. He’d been a Beta Theta Pi in college. He’d heard enough misogynistic bullshit about his brothers’ dating “conquests” to last him several lifetimes. They’d never understood how Sutter felt about the women he’d dated. How his urge to nurture and protect them was much stronger than his desire to get them into bed. Some of the women he’d dated hadn’t understood, either. Even Brionna had occasionally chafed against Sutter’s pace.
In hindsight, Sutter was more than happy he’d waited.
I want my first time to be with my Little.
He wasn’t thinking of Saoirse ashisLittle. Not yet. They were both just starting to explore their inner Little and Daddy. But the potential was there. Sutter could feel it. A huge, overwhelming, life-changing kind of potential. And watching Saoirse go, after a date that held all that promise, left Sutter feeling all kinds of wrong.
He returned to his ranch, saddled Stickley, the horse he’d had for so long the whiskers around Stickley’s muzzle had all gone white and spent the day riding. The activity calmed him and let him think as the horse followed trails they’d ridden hundreds of times.
As doubts began to creep in, Sutter turned Stickley back home.
His reprieve was coming to an end. Five years. That’s what he’d bargained for. Five years to get his degrees. A summer to escape his family’s legacy. To finally settle what he had to do in his own mind. He was expected in London in a few days for the ribbon-cutting ceremony on his family’s new club, Winter’s Sin. The club was to be the flagship in the melding of the two sides of the family business: wine-making and exclusive nightclubs catering to the kinky elite.
Montana was an escape. His father had bought the ranch in the 1990s when land was still cheap and built the house with his own hands. His mother had used it as a hideaway the first year of Sutter’s life, when everything was still hanging on a thread after his father’s apparent suicide. The family still used it at holidays, to get away from the pressures of New York, L.A., and London.
