Total pages in book: 28
Estimated words: 27008 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 27008 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
So maybe I was nervous but not for the reasons Ben might think.
“I hope he takes a vacation or something. From what he was telling Conner, it’s been a few years since he took much time off.” Ben leaned back and scoffed. “Because being out for a week last year for the flu doesn’t count.”
Even I’d taken more time off than that when I’d been focused on work.
“That doesn’t sound healthy.” Joseph had everything planned out and taken care of in his work life, but it sounded like he needed someone to take care of him. He needed someone to put him first the way he seemed to put his work first.
He needed a Daddy—possibly a firm one that would lay down the law when he pushed himself too far.
Ben nodded. “Yeah, even Conner had to admit that Joseph needed someone to keep him from overdoing it. I’m just glad Joseph was already looking for a Dom.”
He might have been looking for a Dom but what Ben and Conner hadn’t seemed to realize was that Joseph was doing his best to keep his emotions out of it. But that mask had started to slip. I had to work to hide my smile as I thought about the man who might be my boy.
Last week a very tired Joseph messaged me online long after he should have been in bed. I knew he’d intended it to be short and a simple acknowledgment that he was remembering his promise to let me know when he’d gotten back to his house, but the simple message had shown more than he’d probably wanted it to.
I’m home Daddy. I’m tired.
Yes, he was tired, but it was more than just a lack of sleep.
“We’ll see how everything works out.” Letting Ben know how much I wanted it to work out wouldn’t be fair to anyone. If for some reason we decided we weren’t a good fit, I wanted them to keep looking for someone for him. A man as sweet as Joseph would be when he was little needed someone to be there for him.
But I wanted that someone to be me.
“We’ve just been talking online.” Talking. No long-distance sexting. The closest thing that came to any kind of a scene was a few rules I’d put in place after we’d decided to meet in person. He had to let me know when he was done with work for the day and he had to check in at least one other time during the day.
Sometimes all I got was a simple sentence that he remembered the rule but he was heading to a meeting. Others, he found time to message me long notes about random things he’d thought about. Most didn’t seem personal or relevant to me in any way, but I liked the glimpses into his mind. I had a feeling he didn’t show them to just anyone.
“You have more patience than anyone else I’ve ever met.” Ben chuckled quietly. “I’m not sure I could’ve done it.”
“Long distance isn’t my favorite way to get to know someone, but we’ve both been very busy.” And I’d needed to wait Joseph out. If I’d pushed him, he’d have seen that as a bad sign and he’d have been gone.
Luckily, my patience was more well-developed than he’d realized.
Ben scoffed. “Yeah, I might’ve—”
He randomly stopped, his smile widening.
I looked at where he was staring over at the other end of the room and smiled.
Joseph.
He looked exactly like his picture.
I wasn’t the type to be hyperfocused on looks. I liked who a person was inside, but he was as sexy in person as he was in the photo he’d sent. As he surveyed the room, I got to stare unobserved for just a moment at his tousled brown hair and big eyes before his gaze stopped on me.
His expression softened as soon as he realized it was me, but he still looked very closed off, an island in the middle of the busy club. There was something in his face that reminded me of some of the other DC bigwigs that came to the club to unwind. They might be trying to leave their work behind, but they never seemed to look genuinely relaxed to me.
Joseph had said that he worked in DC, but he’d been deliberately vague and I’d respected his privacy. I’d gotten a quick confirmation from Ben that nothing in Joseph’s life would come back to bite me in the ass, so I’d made an effort not to pry information from Joseph.
After a while, he’d casually let slip a few details that said he wasn’t a gofer of some sort and that he had real responsibilities that weighed on him. The best I could guess was that he did something in the diplomatic service or maybe for a big-time lobbying group because he worked crazy hours and traveled all over the globe…and he even seemed to speak several languages based on the weird slang that came up when he was frustrated.