Convincing Leah (Surrender Book 9)

by Becca Jameson

  It’s also possible I’m reading too much into this. Seeing what I want to see. And even if I’m right, even if she does have a deep-seated desire to practice some form of age play, that doesn’t mean she’d be willing to do it or even admit it out loud under normal circumstances when not suffering from severe duress.

  “Craig?”

  Her small voice makes me jerk my gaze to the open doorway. I smile at her as my heart seizes. She’s so fucking little right now. Her curls are a mess falling down around her shoulders. She has on nothing but my T-shirt. And she’s rubbing her eyes. The only thing that would make her more little would be the addition of a stuffed animal dangling from one hand at her side.

  I motion for her to come to me. “Come here, sweetheart.”

  She shuffles closer, looking around. “What are you doing in here? And why is this room empty?”

  When she reaches me, I grab her around the waist and lift her onto my lap, situating her between my legs.

  She leans her head on my shoulder, her slender arms around my neck.

  “This was my ex-wife’s room,” I tell her.

  “Oh. You mean her little space.”

  “Yes. She took everything with her when she left.”

  “Except this rocking chair,” Leah points out.

  “Nope. This was my grandmother’s. I snagged it from my mother’s house two years ago after she died.

  “Oh. What was your wife’s name?”

  We haven’t discussed my ex much. “Avery.”

  “Was yellow her favorite color?”

  I chuckle. “No. She hated it. That’s why I painted the room yellow after she left.”

  Leah giggles. “Nobody likes yellow, Craig.”

  I laugh again. “Okay then. Guess I better buy some more paint.”

  She snuggles in closer to me.

  I love it. So much that my chest is tight. She has her knees pulled up. I have my palm on her bottom. “I’m not myself,” she murmurs.

  I kiss the top of her head. “You sure? Maybe you weren’t yourself before.”

  She sighs. “I don’t know.”

  I pat her bottom. My shirt is long enough that it’s covering her, but she doesn’t have on panties. “It’s okay. You don’t have to know everything right now. There’s no rush.”

  “Something happened to me in that room. I feel like I snapped and now I’m a different person.”

  I rock her, emotion welling up inside me. “You’re the same person, sweetheart. You’ve been through a trauma. It’s going to take some time to figure things out. You’ll probably need some counseling.”

  I want to ask her so many other things, but I don’t. She’s fragile. I need to take my time with her. Let her think. I won’t pressure her.

  “I was so scared.” Her voice is soft and trembling.

  “I know, sweetheart. Anyone would have been.” My heart aches. I can’t fix this. Only time can fix it.

  “I’m still scared,” she whispers. “I can’t shake it.” Her body trembles now. “I was having a nightmare. I was trapped in that room for months, forced to write a book, and I couldn’t come up with anything, so the days kept going by. That man was growing increasingly angry with me. I kept thinking he would break my legs.” She pulls her boney knees up tighter.

  I swallow the knot in my throat. “Like Stephen King.”

  She nods against me, her fist coming to the front of my shirt, clutching it absently.

  “I’m so sorry you had a nightmare. I shouldn’t have left you alone.” I hug her tighter. It’s all I can do.

  “I can’t expect you to watch over me constantly.”

  “Sure you can. I consider it my job.”

  She sighs. “What am I going to do?”

  “First, we need to get some food in you. One step at a time. I’ll call Roman and see if he knows a counselor in the fetish community, okay?”

  She tips her head back to look at me. “Master Quinten is a counselor.”

  “I don’t think I’ve met him.”

  “He’s in a menage relationship with Josie and Master Grayson. You might have seen Josie in the nursery sometimes. She’s friends with Lucy. She’s about the same size as Lucy. Petite. But she has long straight black hair and boobs.”

  I chuckle. “And boobs? What does that mean?”

  Leah shrugs, pulling her arms in toward her chest. “Not tiny ones like mine.”

  I can’t resist sliding my palm up to cup her breast. “No idea what you’re talking about. Perfect handful.”

  She giggles as she squirms, tugging my hand away from her chest. “Maybe if I were ever able to put weight on my body anywhere, I would also have boobs, but it’s not in the cards for me. I’ve been skinny my whole life.”

  “You just have a higher metabolism than some people, sweetheart. I think you’re perfect.”

  I love how her face flushes, her cheeks turning a darker shade of red.

  “Speaking of which, food.” I pat her thigh. “Let’s get you fed. What are you hungry for? Breakfast? Lunch? It’s noon, but there are no rules.”

  Her eyes widen, and she gets a mischievous look. “There are no rules? What kind of a Daddy are you exactly?”

  I swallow. That word coming from her lips stops me in my tracks. I know she didn’t mean anything by it. She’s just making conversation. But I still like the sound of it, and I’d drop to my knees if she ever directly called me Daddy.

  I stand her on her feet and tweak her nose. “The kind of Daddy who says we aren’t following the normal rules today.”

  “Can you make pancakes?”

  I smile. My God. My heart can’t take this. What happened to the Leah who spent the last few months insisting she didn’t have a little side? “Yes, sweetheart. I can.”

  I take her hand and lead her from this empty room, shutting the door behind us. I’m not sure what possessed me to go in there, but I’m glad I got to explain the space to her a bit, and I’ll never in my life forget this first time I was able to hold her and rock her.

  I know she’s not even close to deciding she can be little, and I’d be a fool to assume it’s a definite possibility, but the fifteen minutes I held her in my lap, her hair in disarray, her small body covered by nothing but my T-shirt… Precious.

  When we reach the kitchen, I lift her by the hips and swing her up to sit on the island where I planted her the only other morning she slept over. Was that just Saturday? Five days ago? Seems like a lifetime now.

  She’d argued with me that day, insisting she was not little, the same conversation we’ve had off and on since we met.

  Today, I cup her face and kiss her lips gently. “Will you let me baby you today? It doesn’t have to mean anything. I promise not to make a big deal out of it. But you’ve been through a lot. I bet you could use some TLC.”

  She hesitates and then nods.

  Blessed angels. “What do you want with your pancakes?”

  “Chocolate chips?” Her face lights up.

  I laugh. “I can do that, but I meant bacon or sausage or eggs?”

  She shakes her head. “Just pancakes.”

  Does she have the slightest idea how unbelievably little she is right now?

  I’m going to gamble here, though I hope I’m not pushing my luck. Instead of making her a cup of tea, I hedge. “Milk or apple juice?”

  “Milk,” she states without hesitating.

  Score one for Daddy. I’m walking on clouds, trying not to let myself get too excited as I grab a plastic cup from the cabinet and fill it halfway with milk. I hand it to her.

  She reaches with one hand to take it from me.

  “You got it, sweetheart?”

  She rolls her eyes and lifts her other hand to hold it with both hands. “Happy?”

  “Yep.” Ecstatic. I turn around to grab the pancake mix, mostly so that she won’t see how damn huge my smile is.

  “Just for the sake of argument…” she drawls out.

  I school my face and glance over
my shoulder at her. “Yeah?”

  She licks her lips and glances down at her milk where she’s holding it in her lap.

  I stop what I’m doing and come to her. Whatever she has to say is the most important thing in the world right now. I set my hands on her knees. “Finish that sentence, sweetheart.”

  She swallows as she meets my gaze. “It’s just that, I think I’m hiding.”

  I furrow my brow. “Hiding from what?”

  “From life. From my problems. I’d like to ignore them for the day. I can’t face what happened to me yet. I can’t process it. I don’t want to. Not today. Can I maybe put it off until tomorrow? Could we not talk about it?”

  “Of course.” My heart rate picks up. I pray that I’m right about what she’s going to say next.

  She licks her precious lips. “If I were to pretend to be little today, just so I can hide, would you let me do that without making a big deal out of it and not presume I can do it again?”

  I slide my hands to her hips. “I’d be honored.”

  She lifts a brow. “Just today. One day. I’m curious and I feel vulnerable enough to experience it. Yesterday, while I was alone and scared in that room, I promised myself if you found me, I would try to be little for you. I was kicking myself for being so stubborn.”

  I rub her hips with my thumbs. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, sweetheart. You didn’t do or not do anything that caused you to get kidnapped. It could have happened no matter what. If not specifically yesterday, then another day. He was determined. He would have watched you until he caught his break.”

  She shrugs. “Maybe.”

  “Definitely. And people make weird deals with God or whatever deity they worship when they are in a dire situation. Just because you promised yourself you’d try age play while you were scared for your life, doesn’t mean you have to hold yourself to it today.”

  She stares at me as if I’m crazy. “I promised,” she says as if there are no other options. She says that word in a very young voice, and again I get the feeling she has slid into her childhood, and I’m dying to know what happened to her and why it’s suddenly haunting her, dragging her into the past.

  I can’t yet fathom what happened to her as a kid, but with each passing hour, I’m growing more certain something happened. It’s like her eyes glaze over and she becomes a very young Leah, viewing life through the lens of a toddler. It’s inconceivable to her at the moment that she would or could break her promise to give age play a try today.

  My heart hurts, but as I stare at her, it feels as if I’d be doing more harm right this minute if I insist she not give age play a chance. “Leah, you’re welcome to be as little as you want for as long as you want. If you change your mind, just say the word, and it’s over.”

  “Okay. If you tell Eve or anyone else I did this, I’ll never forgive you.”

  I lift my hands to cup her face, holding her gaze. “You have my word, sweetheart. You’re entitled to experiment without being judged. I won’t judge you, and no one ever has to know.”

  “I’d never hear the end of it from her, and you can’t tell Master Colton either. No one.”

  “Promise.” My heart is going to beat right out of my chest.

  “Will you let me ask you questions so I can understand you better?”

  “Ask anything you want.”

  “Okay.”

  I’ve never seen her this vulnerable. The responsibility she’s given me is huge. I can do this. I have no choice. I need her to fully understand that side of me and experience it. It’s the only way she can ever make an informed decision if she ever decides to give age play a more permanent try.

  Chapter 11

  Craig

  Game on. I gently remove the cup of milk from her hands and turn back to the counter. After setting it down, I open a drawer and find the matching lid for that cup. I snap it on and turn back around to hand it to her. “Now you can’t spill it.”

  She giggles as she takes it. “Damn. You’re serious.”

  I narrow my gaze. “No bad words.”

  Another giggle. “Got it.”

  I so badly want to ask her to call me Daddy, but I won’t. It wouldn’t be authentic. I’d rather wait for a day when she does it on her own without me requesting it.

  I kiss her forehead and turn around yet again to start the pancakes, praying I don’t burn them in my state of elation. I’m so distracted by this unexpected boon. I also need to remind myself every few minutes that she is only giving this a try. It’s not permanent. I can’t push her. Whatever she eventually decides, I have to accept her decision.

  Plus, something deeply psychological is going on with her. There was a catalyst to this shift. Probably it was a combination of events that happened too close together for her to avoid facing her past. Something absolutely happened to her. At this point, I’m not sure she even knows it. Maybe it’s fucking buried, which would be challenging.

  “How many littles have you had?” she asks me, yanking me out of my thoughts.

  I glance at her. “Just my ex-wife. After her, I dabbled at clubs, but I’ve never had a little living with me or even spend the night.” Not until you.

  “Oh. Why do you have stuff like sippy cups then?”

  I lean a hip against the counter so I can face her while I stir the batter. “Mostly because I’ve filled my house with wishful thinking.”

  She grins. “Is anything left over from your wife?”

  I shake my head. “No. Part of the reason we got divorced was because after we spent a few years dabbling in age play, she realized she was more suited as a middle. She gravitates to an older age. Like twelve or thirteen.”

  “Oh. What age do you enjoy?”

  “In a perfect world, about five. I enjoy the nurturing aspects. I’d prefer a little who needs and wants to be taken care of. Fed. Bathed. Rocked.”

  “Like Eve or Lucy or a lot of the other littles at the club.”

  “Exactly.” It makes me nervous to share all of my preferences with her. I have to worry she might be turned off and run. That’s the last thing I want. But the truth is my best path. It always is.

  I pour batter into the heated pan and then open the cabinet and pull out three plastic plates—hot pink, blue, and yellow. “Which color do you want?”

  She scrunches up her nose. “Pink. Yellow is ugly.”

  I chuckle as I put the other two away. “I thought yellow was sunny.”

  “Bleh.” That silly noise coming from her lips makes my cock hard. I need to get a grip or I’m going to end up excusing myself to relieve the growing pressure in my jeans.

  I sprinkle chocolate chips on the tops of the pancakes and then flip them before grabbing the syrup and butter. I point at the cup in her hands with my spatula. “Drink your milk, sweetheart. You need extra fluids today.”

  She lifts it, tips it back, and sucks.

  Watching this one small action melts me into a pile of goo. Is she faking like she suggested, just for the day? Or is this authentic? “Can I ask you questions too?”

  “Sure.”

  I lift her pancakes out of the pan and onto the pink plate before turning off the burner. While she watches, I add butter and syrup and cut them up into bite-sized pieces. After taking the plate to the table, I return to lift her off the counter with one hand under her bottom, easily carrying her across the room.

  She squeals at the gesture, grabbing my neck. “You make me use two hands to drink milk, and now you’re using one hand to carry a human.”

  I chuckle as I sit her on her chair and scoot her up to the table.

  It’s her turn to laugh when I hand her a chubby toddler fork with a pink handle.

  I slide into the seat next to her.

  “You’re not going to eat?”

  “Nope. I ate earlier.”

  She takes a bite and moans as she chews. “These are so good. Thank you. I can’t remember when I’ve had pancakes. They always seem like a mess and too impractical to cook j
ust for me.”

  I tap her nose. “I just cooked them for you.”

  “And I feel a little awkward letting you do stuff for me too.”

  “It’s what I love, sweetheart. Nothing makes me happier than taking care of a little girl.”

  “Sounds exhausting.”

  “On the contrary, it’s fulfilling.” I hand her a napkin. “You need more to drink. You want more milk? Water? Juice?”

  “Water is fine. Thank you.”

  I get up and fix her a sippy cup of water, pink this time. “Is pink your favorite color?”

  She shrugs. “Never thought about it.”

  I frown. “Who doesn’t have a favorite color? When you were little, what color was your room?”

  She stops moving, her fork midair, syrup dripping off the bite of pancake. She finally sets her fork down. “I was never little.”

  My chest seizes again. She said something similar last night. I school my voice so that it’s soft and calm. “You told me last night that you were born an adult. What did you mean?”

  She hesitates and then leans back and looks at me. “I’ve never talked about my childhood with anyone.”

  Fuck. “How about you finish your breakfast first,” I suggest. I don’t want her to get all emotional and not finish eating.

  She silently eats the last few bites, though I suspect she can’t taste anything. I take her plate and fork to the dishwasher and return with a wet washcloth.

  She giggles again as I wipe her hands and then her face. “How are you single? You’ve been retired two years and you haven’t found a little who would take you up on the offer to be her Daddy? I’d think they’d be lined up. There are lots of littles without caregivers.”

  I lift her out of the chair and hold her against my chest, pleased when she wraps her legs and arms around me to hold on. I’m not unaware of the fact that her pussy is naked and pressed against my shirt. I doubt she is either, judging by the shudder.

  I head straight for the sectional and sit, maintaining this position so she ends up straddling my lap.

  She leans in and whispers conspiratorially, “I’m not wearing panties.”