Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 72944 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72944 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
So weird, but not stressful.
Even the carpet had been more interesting than anything going on around us.
We’d walked through the lounge area.
We’d walked down the short hallway that led to the large open-space room where the pups and a few littles were playing.
Had he even seen the littles when we’d walked in?
No.
We’d walked up to the doorway and he’d panicked, immediately hiding behind me and going silent. Even the humming had stopped. I’d barely gotten a glance at the littles over on the other side of the room and that was because I’d been looking for them.
They were young, quiet, and I hadn’t recognized any of them, so I thought we were in the clear.
Obviously not.
What hadn’t I been looking at?
The toys…the chairs…the pups?
I crouched down in front of a wide-eyed Ashton who was sucking on his binkie like his life depended on it. “Did you recognize one of the pups?”
Bingo.
A head nod.
It might’ve taken me a while but I caught up eventually.
“From one of the munches?” God, I hoped not. “Was it someone who was mean to you?”
And I was back to square one.
His head shake was forceful and immediate. It wasn’t one of the drama queens from the munch? “Not even that pup who tried to bite you?”
For some reason that particular meetup had gone spectacularly wrong on a variety of levels.
Another head shake.
Huh.
“You don’t go that many places, baby.” Where could he have seen someone else in the lifestyle that would shock him? His favorite cashier at the grocery store? That barista who was always bending over and showing off her breasts? “You go from home to work and then—”
Oh.
He started nodding so fast I was pretty sure he’d given himself whiplash.
“I’m going to look in the room and see who it is.” Hopefully I’d remember them from the handful of office parties I’d been to. “You don’t have to look in the room and you don’t have to say anything.”
Fingers crossed they’d stand out.
“If it’s your boss, I’m just going to laugh.” Ashton described him as well-meaning but truly strange, and it honestly wouldn’t have surprised me. “I’m sure I’ll see who it is.”
Yep…they stood out.
For fuck’s sake.
How had I not guessed them immediately?
Just peeking around the doorway, all it had taken was one look at the chaos of the pups running around to know who he’d seen. The frowning guy with the two partners. What the fuck was his name? Tom? No. It was something to do with historical fiction. Tom Sawyer.
Sawyer.
“Okay. I can see what the problem is.” That didn’t seem to make Ashton feel any less stubborn about hiding, but he seemed less panicked and wasn’t trying to hide under me any longer. “I’m going to point out something that’s going to frustrate you.”
He sighed and crashed into me as I stood up again. Since it wasn’t a safeword, I kept going. “He’s here with his two partners and one is a pup. Full gear and everything. He was chasing a ball across the room, baby.”
So at least we could be confident he understood kinks and the lifestyle.
For some reason, most of the office seemed sure the guy was so vanilla they were confused about how he’d ended up with two partners. One of the office admins actually went to HR because she was worried he might not know he was dating two guys.
Strange office dynamics aside, we could now safely say he understood he was dating two men.
Because one was nearly naked and the other had been grabbing his ass.
Ashton was still stuck on seeing someone he knew, though.
“Alright. We’ve got two options.” I had every intention of figuring them out on the fly, but before I could get one out, a head popped around the corner.
I managed not to jump like we were in a horror movie, but I hadn’t been expecting a masked head to just appear.
Especially one that wasn’t human.
The pup.
God.
I wasn’t good enough with names to play this game.
“Baby, Sawyer’s partner would like to say hello and I don’t know his name.” Ashton giggled at that and the pup barked, clearly not mad at my lapse in memory.
Still, I glanced back at him and apologized even though I wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do. “I’m sorry. We’ve only met once and you were human…and dressed…and I’m just not good with names.”
He barked again.
For fuck’s sake.
Neither of them were helpful in the word department.
I could hear human voices whispering behind him, but other than a clearly delivered fuck and a hand trying to tug him back, no one else came out.
“He’s going to get in trouble. He’s as stubborn as you.” That got a giggle from Ashton but he wiggled his way around me so I was between him and the pup. “He’s not going to bite. He isn’t growling and doesn’t look rabid either. The other one was an anomaly.”