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“I don’t.”
The tight lines of worry that had suddenly appeared on his face smoothed out, and he gave me a bashful smile. “Okay. I don’t want to go, either.”
My heart started beating again, but I was more confused than ever, and it wasn’t a feeling I was used to.
Or liked.
“I don’t understand… sweetheart.” I hesitated to add the term of endearment that had been slipping so easily off my tongue all week. But he’d just said he didn’t want to go, and I couldn’t resist it.
“I’m still house sitting for you,” Dashiell said, his voice trembling a little. “But… but as a favor. Jackie said if I work for you, or… or stay here without having any other place to go, it would make an… an imbalance of power.”
“So, Jackson put this into your head,” I said grimly, the betrayal hurting just as much, but in a different way, as the thought of losing this boy.
“I don’t think I’m explaining it right,” Dashiell said in a small voice. “He said it was a good thing, if…” He shook his head, then, without completing that thought, whispered, “But you’re acting like it’s not.”
“It would be a good thing if… what, baby? All I want to do is take care of you.”
And, quite frankly, I didn’t like the idea of another man doing that for him, even if it was just Jackie.
“I like it when you do that,” Dashiell said with a tentative smile. “When you take care of me, I mean.”
“Then I don’t see the problem.”
Dashiell chewed on his lip for a minute, then blurted, “Do you… do you think you might want to do more than that, though? More than just, um, just making sure I have a place to stay?”
“Yes,” I said, a hot pulse of need going through me. It was the first time he’d come right out and asked me what my intentions were, although even now, I could just be reading what I wanted to hear into that question. I cleared my throat. “I want to have a physical relationship with you.”
His eyes went wide again, that delicious little hitch in his breath. “You mean sex, right?”
“I do.”
“Oh good,” he said with a wide, excited grin that released all the weight from my chest in an instant. “I want that, too! It’s why Jackie said I shouldn’t work for you. So, this way, when you tell me to do something—”
That little hitch was back, and his cheeks colored so prettily that I had to stifle a groan, barely able to refrain from demanding that he tell me in explicit detail exactly what kind of “something” he was imagining.
“—um, I can just do it, and you’ll know it’s not because I’m afraid of getting kicked out or losing my job or anything.”
That thought tamped down my libido. “Sweetheart, I would never…”
I let my voice trail off, thinking of everything he’d told me about his past, along with all the oversharing Jackie had done over the years about the kind of relationships people had in the BDSM community he was so enamored of. The kind of relationship that I’d never allowed myself to imagine having before, but that, with this boy—who said things like “when you tell me to do something, I can just do it” with the same breathless eagerness that he’d described some of the ridiculously decadent frozen coffee drinks Jackie had apparently been feeding him all week—it felt temptingly inevitable.
“I didn’t think you would,” Dashiell said, looking down. “But Jackie still said it would be better this way.”
“He’s right,” I said, feeling a stab of guilt for doubting my nephew… but still not liking the idea of Dashiell being anywhere but in my bed. “Do you plan on staying at Jackie’s place when I get back?” I asked, doing my damnedest to keep my voice neutral.
“I’d rather stay here? You said you didn’t want me to go.”
“And you said you already moved all your clothes over there.”
His cheeks colored. “Not all of them. There are a lot. We can return some, though? Andrea had already had a bunch delivered that first day, but then Jackie took me shopping anyway, and…” He shook his head, looking adorably bewildered. “We should definitely return some. But any that I keep, I really will pay you back for! I promise.”
“No.”
“But—”
I smiled, something I hadn’t thought I’d be able to do just a few minutes ago. “Sweetheart, if Jackie was that opinionated about the ‘imbalance of power’ between us, then I’m sure he also told you that I can be an overbearing asshole, and I’m putting down my foot about this. You said you’re still house sitting for me.”
“Well, no one ever actually gave me any duties here, so really, I’m just… here.”
