I rectified that yesterday (we now had white chocolate mocha, cinnamon, vanilla, toffeenut and the aforementioned salted caramel).
And he’d noticed.
Rounding that out, Thursday included Dad calling me and saying he was good on his own.
Which prompted a short conversation that he did not get impatient with (first shocker), that included me asking if everything was all right with him (he assured me it was). If he was taking care of his health (he assured me of that too, second shocker, because he sounded like he wasn’t lying). And if we were all right.
“It’s just that meeting your man made me realize I lean on you too much,” he’d said to that last (third shocker). “I love to see you, Hattie, but you’re a young woman. The last thing you need is to be spending every night with your father.”
He was right about that.
It was still a shock.
Thus Thursday also included me calling Mom to share not only this turn of events, but belatedly share that I was seeing someone, I really liked him, and it’d be good if we all found a time to sit down together.
She’d been wary of Dad, “He’s pulling his usual stuff, Hattie, don’t fall for it,” and ecstatic about Axl, “I can’t wait to meet him! We’ll fix a time!”
Though, the second seemed weird and forced. However, not forced in the fact she was excited I was seeing someone I really liked, but the fix-the-time part.
Which was something to think on, though not at that time push her about.
Because Mom had had a few years of being in what, at times, I worried was a concerning funk, but the last couple of years, she seemed to be moving on from it.
But she never didn’t want to see me.
I didn’t like that and put it on my mental agenda to give her time and deal with it later.
Thursday also included me talking all this through with Axl after he took me out for our second date, Mexican at Blue Bonnet.
Axl concurred with Mom about being wary of Dad, and since he’d never met her, “Got no take, baby, but I’m lookin’ forward to meeting her.”
He also drove me to work, because he intended to stay for the show, and hang with me during my free times, because, “It’d suck, date two ended at eight o’clock.”
I mean, for heaven’s sake.
Was this guy awesome or what?
Which brought us to now.
Back at my place.
And Axl had discovered the creamer.
He hadn’t filled his drawer (though I’d shown it to him, and the slow smile was so worth the struggle of trying to make space for him—what could I say, I liked clothes and I had a walk-in, but it wasn’t Kardashian level).
I hadn’t filled the drawers he’d cleared for me.
But this was real.
It was happening.
And all those things I’d discovered about him that first day in his house were panning out.
We were compatible.
Like, crazy compatible.
He hung up his towel.
I did too.
He rinsed his whiskers from the sink (he’d brought over a razor, and shave cream).
I had no whiskers, but if I did, I’d rinse them.
He put his coffee mug in the dishwasher, I did as well.
We both liked Mexican.
We both liked going down on each other.
We both liked lots and lots (and lots) of sex.
I liked to dance when he was at the club.
He liked to watch me.
I mean, were we not perfect?
On this thought, he came down the steps into my bedroom carrying two mugs of coffee.
I pushed up on an elbow. “Which one did you go for?”
“I got a toffeenut and a cinnamon. Which one you want?”
Hmm.
Tough choice.
He sat on the bed facing me and I asked, “Which one do you want?”
“I don’t care. You got all the best flavors. I’m good either way.”
I was too!
See!
We were perfect!
Since he didn’t seem prepared to head straight out the door, in order to get caffeine and more time with Axl, and not spend that time talking about who wanted what, I decided, “Cinnamon.”
He handed me a mug.
I adjusted the pillows and scooched up to rest a shoulder against them so I could take a sip.
“You down with me putting a litter box in your utility so Cleo can come over?” he asked after he took his own. Then he shot me a handsome grin. “Like the other girl in my life, she likes alone time, but I got the cold shoulder yesterday when I went over to give her breakfast. She didn’t even come into the kitchen. Just sat in the doorway giving me the evil eye.”
I was surprised this wasn’t Cleo’s normal morning ritual.
Still, I replied, “Oh no. Totally, it’s okay to set her up here. Since you’re working, I’ll go out and get the stuff. Is she particular?”
He grinned again. “What do you think?”
She was particular.
Man, I liked that cat.
“I’ll text you a pic of her sitch at my place and the brand of litter,” he said.
“Cool.”
“You got Mac’s shower tomorrow,” he noted mysteriously.
“Yup,” I confirmed.
“Sunday, wanna take you and your dad to a Rockies game. They’re in town and got a day game.”
Mystery immediately solved.
But all I could do was stare at him.
He didn’t miss me staring at him, and not only because he couldn’t, considering he was practically sitting in my lap.
“You don’t think that’s a good idea?” he asked.
“I … don’t …” I pulled it together. “I don’t think I’ve done anything fun with Dad in, uh …I don’t know. Maybe ten years.”
“Then it’s time,” he stated.
Maybe he was right.
“I’ll call and ask him.”
He nodded.
“Is there a reason why you want to take Dad to a baseball game?” I queried.
“Only that, if he’s been thinkin’ on shit, and sees that your relationship hasn’t been healthy, and sees at this time in your life, you shouldn’t be weighed down with the health and welfare of a parent, maybe you should show him it’s time to be father and daughter friends. Like you’re friends with your mom.”
Friends with my dad.
Doing something fun with my dad.
“He really likes baseball,” I said quietly. “When I was young, he’d take me to games a lot.”
On this thought, one I hadn’t had in a long time, I felt something happen in my belly.
Something weird.
Warm, but not.
Because that “not” part was scared.
“I think that’s why I like hot dogs,” I shared. “Because that was the only time he’d buy me something crappy to eat and not give me shit about it. All the pressure that seemed to be there between us wasn’t at the ball field. We’d have fun. He taught me how to keep score. He explained strategy. I wasn’t really interested in it. But I was interested in being like that with my dad.”
“Then I hit on the right thing,” Axl said softly, his eyes the same on me.
“I’ll call him,” I decided to take the risk. Give in to a little hope. Think positively when I thought about my dad for the first time since I was fourteen. “See if he’s up for it.”
Axl replied, “Good,” before he took a sip from his mug.
I did too.
And when I swallowed, I suggested, “For Cleo’s sake, maybe we should be at yours tonight.”
“I was gonna say that.”
Totally …
Compatible.
I smiled at him and asked, “Can I make you dinner?”
“You can do what you want, honey.”
My mind started whirring through ideas.
“Anything you don’t eat?” I inquired.
&n
bsp; “Not a big fan of tomatoes and hate squash.”
When he said no more, I asked. “That’s it?”
“There a lot of food you don’t like?”
“I don’t care for tomatoes much either.”
“Celery?”
Something about the way he pinpointed that singular food item caught my attention.
“Celery?” I parroted.
“Yeah.”
“Well, fill it with peanut butter or cream cheese, it’s a relatively inconspicuous vehicle to eat peanut butter and cream cheese. That’s about all I can say about it.”
He started chuckling.
Then he asked bizarrely, “How do you feel about the polar ice caps melting?”
“I’m wholeheartedly against it.”
At that, he busted out laughing.
I liked to make him laugh, but I was confused.
“What was that about?” I asked when his laughter died down.
“Dad tried to find out where we were at by making mention I didn’t know what kind of martinis you liked. Instead of just asking about you. About us. About how I feel about you. Where I met you. What it meant that you were at his house, meeting him and Mom and having dinner with them. Sometimes, being his son is like being on a witness stand. He tries different tactics to get the answers he wants. Even though I’m not a hostile witness. I’m his son. And he can just ask.”
His dad was really a trip.
A bad one.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“I told him I didn’t know if you liked celery or how you felt about the ice caps because we hadn’t been married for five years. But I intended to find out.” He took a sip and then finished, “Now, I know.”
“Now you know.” I gave it a second and then queried, “You heard from your mom?”
“She’s dodging calls and her return texts are vague. We got your dad and the Rockies Sunday. We’ll figure her out next week.”
I wasn’t sure he should wait.
But I nodded anyway.
He bent to me and touched his mouth to mine.
When he pulled away, he said, “I gotta get to Cleo before I go to work.”
“You want me to go take care of her?” I offered.
“Babe, she already likes you more than me because I’ll baby-talk … maybe … when I have a baby, not before. Don’t take my role as breakfast slave away.”
That had me chuckling.
It also had me thinking about giving Axl ice-blue-eyed babies.
He lifted his mug. “Can I nab a travel mug?”
“Help yourself. Top shelf over the—”
“I saw ’em.”
Another lip touch before he got up and I got to watch his ass in his black cargos as he walked to the living area.
I pulled myself out of bed so I could give him a proper goodbye kiss at the door.
I gave it and good before Axl was off.
Then, since I was up in a way I was up, I went about my usual morning business (during which I saw I had a faint mark on my neck from Axl, which made my toes curl).
I decided I’d do an early rehearsal so I could get to the studio. My order wasn’t in for the materials I’d purchased, but I could start constructing the mold.
After my shower, in order to give my hair some time to dry naturally before I hit it with the diffuser, in my robe, I sat down on a stool at my kitchen counter with my laptop to check the tracking for the stuff I ordered, and pulled up email as a matter of course.
That was when the texts started coming in about Lottie’s shower, which Jet was throwing for her sister, but we were all coordinating presents so we didn’t double up on teddies or the like.
I copied and pasted a photo of the racy red number I got her (that was a stop at the mall Sly didn’t mind), along with a couple’s spa collection (I wasn’t sure Mo could fit with her in a bath, I was sure he’d be down to try), and a nice bottle of champagne.
And that was when I noticed my email was hanging.
I hit the send/receive status, and it was churning, but …
A message downloaded with the subject SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO.
I clicked on it and it had two .mov files.
So that was why it was hanging.
Movie files.
Big ones.
Huge.
Two of them.
One was titled “For You” and the other “For Him.”
There was nothing in the body of the email.
A chill raced down my spine and I instantly called Axl.
“You good?” he asked as greeting.
“I think I got an email from my stalker,” I told him.
His voice was different—crisp but cautious—when he asked, “Why do you think that?”
“Because there are two rather large movie files on it, one is titled ‘For You’ and one ‘For Him,’ the email address is obviously a bogus gmail, because it starts with whowantsyou, there’s no message and the subject says ‘SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO.’ ”
“When did it come in?”
I hadn’t checked emails in a while, so I scanned the date.
Dang.
“Saturday,” I told him.
“You go through your postal mail since being home?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing?”
I shook my head regardless he couldn’t see me and told him what he had to know since I would have shared if there was.
“Nothing.”
“You open those movie files?”
“Not yet.”
“Everything you got on your computer that’s important backed up in the cloud?”
“Everything.”
“You good to open them and tell me what you see, or you want to wait for me to come get your laptop?”
“I can open them.”
“Okay, I’m on my way, but open the ‘For Him.’ ”
Of course he was on his way.
And …
Of course he’d pick that one.
Because he didn’t want me to see what this lunatic thought he had in store for me.
I double clicked on “For Him.”
It started right in on some porn well after any preliminaries.
This guy was going for a quick response, because on my screen was a man, again muscular, on his back on a table, long legs spread wide and tied high, arms tied down over his head. He was being finger fucked, not delicately, and jacked, also not delicately, by a tall, hooded, bare-chested man in black leather pants.
The man being worked looked in agony.
“Gay porn, male, BDSM,” I told Axl.
The finger fucking stopped, and Black Leather Pants man grabbed a short, multi-tailed whip and started swatting at his subject’s cock.
Ouch.
Seriously.
I could totally feel that, and I wasn’t a guy.
And yeah, even more agony.
“Now whipping,” I reported.
“Close it and don’t open the other,” Axl ordered.
“Axl—”
“I’ll call Cisco, see if Sly is free. If not—”
Argh!
There went my alone time.
“Axl—”
“Babe, no,” he bit off.
I shut up.
“I’ll be there in ten,” he grunted.
Someone was not happy.
I wasn’t happy either.
Because not only had alone time vanished, so much for going to the studio.
“Okay, honey,” I murmured.
He disconnected without saying good-bye.
I watched until it was over, which was only maybe another minute.
But during that minute, there was a further splice, a jump in the action, so I was clear on the outcome.
Well, one thing could be said about this dickhead, he intended things to come to fruition.
I was about to close it when something struck me.
Instead, I started it again and watched the whole thing.
&nb
sp; Then I opened the other one and I didn’t sit through the whole thing, I skipped to the end.
She climaxed too (or faked it).
I went back to the first, watched very closely, specifically the man at work, not the one being worked.
Then I went to my porn site.
It took a lot of scrolling through their library, but I found it.
I clicked on it.
And the movie started.
I hit mute and fast-forwarded to where the worker was bare-chested (the workee had long since lost his clothes).
And yes.
There it was.
I’d never seen this one, but I’d gone through the short highlight reel they offered so you could make your selections. None of the action my stalker picked was on the highlight reel, but I remember the guy on the table (before he was tied to the table). I thought he was good-looking, had a great body, but another film had caught my eye, so I’d passed it up.
But I remembered the tattoo that slithered up his hip from his leather pants.
I was watching it when Axl walked in.
As he strode purposefully my way, his eyes did a quick scan of me before they dropped to the laptop.
“Is that it?”
His voice was abrasive with anger.
“No, it’s from my subscription site. But it’s the movie he used.”
Axl stopped beside where I sat on one of my kitchen stools. “You’ve seen it before?”
I shook my head. “Just scanned the highlights.”
“So, what are you—?”
“I’m going to tell you something and you have to promise and swear that you won’t say anything. To anybody.”
I could make a case that the steel-blue of his eyes was actual steel with the way he was looking at me.
“Promise?” I pushed.
“Promise,” he grunted.
“Ryn told me about this site because—”
“Boone and Ryn are Dom and sub, which means BDSM is their thing, and she likes watching man-on-man too.”
Whoa.
That was even more than I knew.
I blinked up at him.
“He doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty, but we share,” he said like he was forcing it out. “Though I’m just guessing about Ryn digging watching man-on-man.”
He guessed correctly.
I didn’t get into that.
“Okay,” I replied quickly, wishing to move us along not only for me, but also for him, Boone and Ryn. “So, you took my laptop to see if it was hacked, I wonder—”
I didn’t finish that.
Axl had his phone out so fast, I didn’t think he moved to get it. It was just that one second, he was standing there, scowling down at me, the next it was at his ear.
Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3) Page 25
