Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 71497 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71497 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
As Kenzie sighed and blushed faintly, I sorted through what I knew. The crazy old man thought Kenzie would bore me talking about his something…his job? It hadn’t been English, but it seemed to be something like job or career or hobby since we’d been talking about his work.
Going with that, there also seemed to be some kind of cultural issue with Kenzie possibly rushing into showing me his interests.
Fuck it.
“I find everything about Kenzie to be fascinating.” Giving the old, slightly stooped man a stern glare, because if anyone was going to make Kenzie blush it was me, I decided he was on the controlling end of the local spectrum and treated him like a Dom who’d slid out of his own lane and into mine. “And it’s not your place to scold him.”
I really didn’t like that word in general, but it seemed to fit the circumstances.
Kenzie’s eyes went wide, but the crazy man who seemed to be nearing one hundred laughed and gave a faint nod. “The wer has spunk.”
Human?
Dom?
Asshole?
“He does.” Agreeing with the man I could only remember seeing in passing, I didn’t back down or look away. “He also does not need help in dealing with his…date.”
My deliberate pause had Kenzie nearly giggling as the nosy man chuckled. “Date. Yes, that’s one word for him.”
Cultural issues aside, because I was clearly missing something, I kept up my best Dom don’t look at my boy glare and just watched him snicker as he shuffled toward the front door.
We had everyone’s attention in the place, because the only sound was the woman in the back cursing at something that wasn’t cooking fast enough, if I was sorting through the profanity correctly.
I knew our audience wasn’t going to tune out any time soon, so I ignored the nosy drama queens and focused on Kenzie. “Now, you were telling me about the paint? What do you think of hunting for food versus necessity?”
Keeping my fingers crossed he’d been talking about bugs—because that was the only animal I could remember that ended up as paint—I waited while he finished giggling and squirming. “I like paint, Daddy.”
Oops.
Something I’d done had tipped the scales and he’d slid from happy sub to something closer to excited little. In keeping with that, I changed the topic slightly. “I bet you paint all kinds of things.”
“Paint is so pretty.” Yep, his response and eager nod said the scientific discussion on paint was over and it was time for a conversational shift.
But I wasn’t sure exactly what to say.
Doing my best, I picked the first random thought about paint that I could find. “I never learned how to paint anything but walls. I’m very good at that, though. In my last house, I painted the whole thing and it turned out great. It even helped the house sell faster when I decided to move here.”
I wasn’t sure what else I could say about paint without starting to lecture him about edging techniques, but luckily Kenzie charged right back in to help. “I wanted to paint my house but most of the wood is too pretty and there were too many other colors to pick from, so my playroom is white. Lorne says that’s fine and Alick says green would be pretty and Boyd says to stop complaining or he’ll pick something for me.”
Of all Kenzie’s friends, I had a feeling I could relate to Boyd the most.
“How about you show me around your playroom later and we’ll pick out some options? We’ll make your playroom pretty.” For fuck only knew what reason, that had everyone going quiet again.
Fucking aliens.
Kenzie leaned forward and gave me a smile like I’d said the most romantic thing ever. “And make it neat and organized too? So I can find everything and see it all and show you all my special toys?”
The handful of humans scattered around the room were nearly fucking giggling, so I knew we were back to weird cultural issues. But since I didn’t think little Kenzie would be the type to ask about sex toys in the diner, I was fairly certain we were talking about regular toys.
I was just missing something.
Something big.
Hoping I wasn’t somehow asking Kenzie to marry me, I ignored our audience. “Yes, cutie. You can show me every special toy and we’ll make sure the playroom is beautiful.”
Now they were sighing.
Fucking hell.
What had I gotten myself into?
“Thank you, Daddy.” Kenzie was still looking at me like I was the best Daddy he’d ever seen, but since he hadn’t mentioned anything about bonding life forces or beaming me up, I decided not to worry.
If we’d gotten married this easily, a divorce couldn’t be too hard.
I was worth a romantic proposal at the very least, so he’d have to be patient before we got married in the human sense of the word.