Embracing the Storm

by Marie, Carly

  The waiter had disappeared toward the back of the restaurant before Aiden spoke again. "Spencer wasn't mad at you, was he?"

  I shook my head. "No, not at all. He didn't even freak out when I told him I want to be a dragon."

  Aiden grinned, certain of himself as he answered. "Then you'll be back. My Daddy and Caleb's Daddy will make sure of it. But I can assure you that you won't be surprising him anymore. Daddies don't like things like that."

  I didn't like the idea of disappointing Spencer. Ever. "No, I won't do something like that again."

  "Good. Then you'll definitely get to go back to play with us. I know it. And you'll have all your own toys!" His expression turned serious at the talk of toys. "And that's why we need to get to Target. A dragon needs toys to play with."

  I had a feeling that Aiden was probably going to end up finding toys of his own, and I wasn't entirely convinced he didn't have an ulterior motive for the trip, but I wasn't going to burst his happy bubble.

  Thankfully, our lunches came quickly. Arriving at the restaurant a few minutes before noon had allowed us to beat the lunch rush. We ate quickly, both hungry, and through unspoken agreement understood that we needed to move the afternoon along so I could get home in time for the kids to arrive home. In my case, I hoped to be home early enough that I could unload the car without the kids seeing the crazy food or whatever else we found at Target.

  Christ, how was I going to hide the food from the kids? And when was I ever going to be able to eat it? My husband was not going to like me eating marshmallow treasure cereal before bed.

  Aiden paid the bill as soon as the server brought it over, and we were out the door just a few minutes later. He waved off my offer to pay for half of it and was dragging me by the hand across the short parking lot toward the entrance of Target.

  "To the toys!" he cheered as he grabbed a bright red cart. He managed to temper his excitement as we made our way through the store. "Sparkly toys?" he nearly whispered as we approached the toy section.

  "Oh, yeah, um, I guess?" I hadn't really thought more of it until then. What did dragons like? In all the books I read to the kids and the movies and shows I'd watched, they liked things that sparkled. Privately, I was always drawn to things that sparkled as well—I just didn't make a big deal out of it.

  Aiden was practically bouncing along behind the cart. "It's so cool to go shopping with another little! Caleb's too shy. I think I scare him a little. Or maybe a lot. I mean, not as much as Logan scared him in the beginning, but I think he's still a bit wary of me. Probably because I'm dating Logan." He took a giant breath. "Sorry, I talk a lot when I get excited."

  His excitement must have been contagious because I felt my own growing. I'd been to the store plenty of times—not this particular one, there were numerous closer to our house—and I'd bought countless toys over the years for my kids and their friends, but I hadn't ever come looking for anything for me. Until Aiden had said something, the thought had never crossed my mind.

  "Okay, what do you want to look for first? They've got the baby section." He pointed over toward the right where the plush toys and rattles were located.

  There was nothing over there that even piqued my interest a little. That was an easy no.

  "They have dragon toys over in the action figures."

  That time I thought about it a little harder, but still I couldn't come up with something I really wanted. Hard toys didn't really sound like fun. "Maybe, but that definitely isn't calling to me."

  Aiden bobbed his head in agreement. "Pink, blue, or do you not care?"

  I looked at the aisles ahead of us and realized he was asking if he should be narrowing the aisles down. It drove me insane every time I went looking for toys that the toy sections were so gendered. "Doesn't matter. Don't see myself playing with dolls, but if the thing I like is pink, I'm not going to dismiss it."

  Aiden beamed. "Love it! No wonder Dexter loves you so much."

  I blinked. I wasn't sure what that meant, but Aiden didn't give me time to ask for clarification before he was hooking his elbow in mine and dragging me down the first aisle. It was filled with electronics and kids’ e-readers, and we both easily agreed that it wasn't something that interested me. The next aisle had some baby dolls and play food, and while some of it was cute, I couldn't see a world in which I would actively want to play with any of it.

  We turned down the third aisle and Aiden squealed. "They're perfect!" He gasped, hurrying toward a large bag of ball pit balls. The kids had two or three bags like these in the basement. I was getting ready to say they weren't really my thing when I noticed they were all a silver and gold metallic with glitter accents.

  "Ohh." I gasped. "They are perfect!"

  Aiden was bouncing on the balls of his feet. "We need to find something to put them in. Dammit, it's winter—the blow-up pools are out of season."

  We looked up and down the aisles, but all we were finding for outdoor toys were winter-related items. "I'm getting on Amazon. They have everything!"

  "Wait!" I stopped him as he pulled out his phone. "I think we have one in the garage at home. It's never even been opened. If we don't have one, I'll order one from Amazon."

  Aiden squinted his eyes. "I've already got this one up. I could have it delivered to your house by tomorrow if I just type in your address."

  I chuckled. He was so persistent, and I kind of loved that about him. He made me feel less weird for what I was discovering about myself. "Promise. I'll check as soon as I get home. If it's not there, I'll order one."

  He didn't seem happy with my response but relented. "Fine. But I expect a call and a picture when you get home."

  "Deal. Let's go back and get the bag of sparkly balls."

  "Ohhh, and this glitter ball!" Aiden picked a ball up that had been filled with some sort of gel and glitter. It sparkled in the lighting, and thanks to the gel, the glitter moved slowly inside of it. "It's perfect."

  I nodded and let him put it in the cart. Then we went back and I put one of the bags of ball pit balls in the cart, but Aiden quickly decided that wasn't enough. "Two minimum. You probably need three." He looked at the bag and squinted his eyes. "How big is the pool?"

  He was taking this quite seriously, so I vowed to do the same and thought hard about the box I was thinking of. "Tiny, just a little inflatable wading pool."

  "Okay, we'll start with two. They'll be easier to find a home for than three anyway."

  I nearly groaned. Where was I going to hide this stuff from the kids? They were going to want to know where it all came from and if they could play with it. I needed to find a way to keep it hidden. That would be a problem for At Home Grayson—Target Grayson was just excited to be getting some toys.

  "What else do you need? Do you have enough blankets and stuffies?"

  I nodded yes to both. "I think this is enough to start with. Spencer's going to think I've gone insane if I bring much more home." My eyes got wide as a thought crossed my mind. "What if Spencer isn't okay with it?"

  Aiden gave me a look like I'd lost my mind. "You told me you had a talk after DASH, and that you even got to play on Friday, and that he didn't mind that you want to be a dragon. Why would he not be okay with toys?"

  I chewed on my lip. We were already walking again, and Aiden seemed to have a direction in mind. "Well, yeah. What if he is okay with it because I like it but it's not something he really wants?"

  Aiden shot a firm stare my way. "That's something you need to ask him about. But from what you've said, I don't think it's going to be a problem."

  I sighed and could only hope like hell he was right. Aiden made a stop at the dog toys and picked out two rope toys and a soft ball. "Curious will like these," he told me as he put them into the cart. "Okay, I think I'm good. Do you need anything else while we're here? It's getting kinda late. I'm guessing you need to get going."

  It was nearing two. I had just over an hour until the kids would be home, and I had a thirty-minute drive and stil
l needed time to get everything put away. "Yeah, I probably should head home," I admitted, though I wasn't really ready to say goodbye. It had been nice talking with Aiden for the afternoon.

  "Give me your phone number," Aiden said as we loaded the two bags of balls into my back seat.

  We exchanged numbers, and Aiden hugged me tightly, then said goodbye. He called over his shoulder at me as I was climbing into my car. "Expect many texts."

  I laughed, but my insides felt like they'd burst from happiness. I didn't have a lot of friends. We'd moved around a lot for years, and I didn't work in an office. It was mostly me at home, me with the kids, or me going to Spencer's work functions. In under two weeks, I'd made two friends—three counting Logan—and I didn't get the impression they were going to go anywhere.

  I headed home with a smile on my face and a car full of goodies. Sure, there were a lot of things that our family needed for the next week, but there were also things just for me… well, me and Spencer. Or was that me and Daddy? Master? Handler? Could there be dragon handlers? Logan called Trent his handler, but he was a puppy.

  What was a dragon's Dom called? I spent the drive home contemplating what I'd call Spencer. No matter how many times I turned the words over, the only one that felt right was Daddy. Master sounded stern and controlling, and Spencer had never been that way, even as a Dom. And Handler didn't feel dominant enough. Daddy felt right. Caring, controlling, compassionate, loving. I really wanted to be Daddy's good boy and dragon.

  I’d become certain of the decision as I pulled into the driveway. I was still riding the high of the afternoon as I took a picture of the blow-up pool in the garage, right where I’d thought it would be, and texted it to Aiden.

  My confidence faded slightly as I found places for each of the special groceries Aiden had helped me pick out. What was Spencer going to think? It still felt surreal that we both liked the lifestyle. Like it was almost too good to be true.

  I was still wrestling with my feelings when the school bus pulled up outside. At least with the kids home, there was no way I'd be able to dwell on what Spencer really thought.

  Chapter Seven

  Spencer

  "Have you two talked any more since last week?" Travis asked as I sat on the opposite side of his desk Wednesday morning. The two of us were sitting in his office drinking coffee at ass o'clock in the morning. It was far too early for humanity, but I'd needed to talk and Travis had been available that morning. It wasn't like I was missing much at home. Grayson was off to get grocery shopping done once the kids left for school.

  I shrugged. "A little. Enough that I know he's interested in trying more and enough that he knows I'm not turned off by it. Unfortunately, besides wanting to be a dragon, I don't know what else he wants." And that was mostly the truth, except I'd done a ton of research in my downtime—what little of it I'd had—and was even more confused. I’d found next to nothing about dragon play with the exception of one Twitter account.

  "Sorry I'm late," a deep voice said from the doorway, and I turned to find Trent standing there in his uniform shirt and a pair of jeans. "Have I missed anything good?"

  Travis's eyes showed a moment of shock, but he recovered quickly and shook his head. "Grab yourself a cup of coffee and pull up a chair. I made a fresh pot not ten minutes ago. No one should be here for another hour or so, so we've got the place to ourselves."

  Trent wasted no time heading over to the coffee maker across the hall, then returned and made himself comfortable in the chair beside me. "Your coffee is so much better than the office's." He took a long sip from the mug and sighed. "I didn't think I'd be able to get the morning off at all, but as it turns out, Logan's insomnia was acting up last night. So when Aiden got up to go to a job this morning, Logan gave up trying to sleep and came into work early." He turned to face me. "How have things been?"

  I lifted a shoulder, not sure how to answer him. "Awkward really isn't the right word, but I think that Grayson isn't being completely honest with me, even after we played a bit on Friday. When he woke up before the kids got home, I thought he was going to combust from embarrassment alone. I tried to reassure him that I wasn't bothered by it, but he seemed… I guess hesitant is a good word there."

  Trent and Travis looked at me with matching expressions of sympathy, and I got the impression they both understood what I was going through. As frustrated as I was with the current situation, it was comforting to know I wasn't alone.

  I scrubbed a hand down my face. I had two hours until I had to be at work, and I'd felt a little guilty telling Grayson that I had an early meeting. I'd been vague enough that I hadn't lied, but I definitely hadn't told him I was coming to Travis's office to talk either. If I knew my husband at all, that knowledge would just stress him out.

  Travis let out a small chuckle as he set his coffee cup down. "You know, Cal wasn't even the one who told me he's a little. That was all Dexter, in a very persistent but roundabout sort of way."

  "Why doesn't that surprise me?" I asked with a smile. I loved Dexter in a way I'd never loved anyone before. He'd put the ball in motion for James to look for me after nearly thirty years of being separated from one another. It had taken me all of thirty seconds to know that Dexter kept James on his toes and not even five more to discover Dexter's filter was not fully intact.

  In the months since, I'd come to learn that Dexter was incredibly calculated and exercised an impressive amount of discretion. We'd spent countless days with Dexter and James, and he'd never let the slightest inkling out that he knew littles or a puppy. Even when he and Grayson had gotten into the homemade wine the neighbor made and the two had begun talking about the kink club, Dexter hadn't mentioned a thing about his friends.

  "Dexter is an amazing man, when you get past the insanity," Travis told me on a chuckle.

  "Maybe it would have been helpful if he'd shared a little more, honestly. Maybe I'd have picked up on some subtle cues that I think I've missed over the years. Or maybe it would have given Gray a chance to gain some confidence in talking about what he wants."

  "Or maybe you're just overthinking everything right now," Trent said. "There's a chance that Grayson wasn't hiding anything all these years."

  I remembered him telling me about how drawn to the littles' space he'd been, and he'd told me how surprised he'd been.

  Travis brought me out of my thoughts. "One of the first things Dexter ever told me was that Caleb needed a boyfriend to care for him. Caleb nearly killed him, but it was those words that got me thinking about what Caleb really needed. Thankfully, what he needed was exactly what I needed."

  Trent nodded his head while he listened, then set his coffee mug on his knee. "You really had no idea?"

  "None. I know that Gray is nervous and thinks he threw too much on me at once, and I think he's worried that I'll see him differently if he's playing with toys instead of sprawled out across a spanking bench or strapped to a cross."

  Travis narrowed his eyes at me. "Would you?"

  My head shook back and forth without thought. "Absolutely not. I mean, it's different. Him playing with Aiden and Logan and Caleb was totally different than when we'd been there for wax play, flogging, or spanking scenes. In the latter, the entire goal was to show him off, turn him on, and end with an incredible orgasm. When he was… little, I guess is the right word, he was just happy being. I think, if we hadn't had so much to talk about, he would have been just as relaxed by the end of the night as he normally is after a scene."

  "That's a really good comparison, honestly. Aiden can drop deep into subspace from a spanking, and he's super relaxed and happy when he comes out of it. That being said, he gets the same sense of relaxation from playing, and without being sore later." A smile played across Trent's face. "I'm pretty sure Trav and Cal have a more twenty-four seven dynamic. Aiden's pretty fluid in and out of little space."

  I listened carefully, despite having gone over this with them at DASH. I'd been so overwhelmed at the time that not a lot of it h
ad stuck. "Then there's the fact that he wants to be a dragon. Oh, I found that hood and ordered it, so thanks for the information." My thoughts were coming out so fast I wasn't making sense, but it felt good to say them out loud. "I really do think he enjoyed the time he played with Curious just as much as he enjoyed playing with Aiden and Caleb. I just don't know if interacting with Gray the dragon will be different than interacting with Gray the little and how interacting with either of them will be different than Gray my husband."

  Trent gave me a smile that said he was genuinely happy when he thought about Logan. "Logan's not your typical pup. He uses puppy play to simply not think. There's not a submissive bone in that man's body, so there's no Master or Dom relationship between the two of us. The most I do is make sure that he remembers to drink water and eat while he's in that headspace. Well, that and make sure he isn't tormenting Aiden too much. Puppy play allows Logan to just be. With Aiden, he's normally pretty snuggly, but when Grayson came along, he was definitely more like he is at moshes. He loves being active.

  "No matter what, there are going to be differences in each side of him. But that's the point of it all. He doesn't want to be adult Grayson all the time. Sometimes he might want to be your boy; sometimes he might want to be your dragon. Hell, sometimes he might want to be a little dragon. Each of those sides of him are valid in their own right."

  That was interesting. I knew a little about puppy play—actually, I knew more about puppy play than Daddy-boy relationships—and from what I'd learned, puppies… or in Grayson's case, dragons… were usually submissive as well. "Grayson juggles our kids and a full-time career. BDSM isn't a huge part of our relationship, overall. Once every few months we go to the club, but after seeing you all at DASH, I've been wondering if he needs more. There are just so many questions I have and he seems to be as confused as I am."

  Travis spun his coffee mug around on his desk as he thought. "Caleb struggled to talk to me about what he wanted for a long time. It took him months to open up fully, and we both knew that we wanted the same things. Depending on the little, it can be incredibly difficult for them to express their wants. How many times have you told your kids they are acting like toddlers? Or to act their age? Imagine being in your forties and trying to explain to your husband that you are curious about age play. The doubt demons have to be off the charts, especially for someone who has never identified as a little in the past."