Sadie's Little Christmas - Maren Smith Page 0,11

“Don’t you dare laugh at me.”

They weren’t. Neither he nor Nanny J so much as cracked a smile as she slid down the wall, huddled around her kitten in a tight, defensive ball. Knowing that could change at any minute, she buried her face in Spankles soft, glittery head and wished she were somewhere—anywhere—else. It had been a mistake to come here. Just one more mistake she’d made because just like in every stereotypical guy-joke, she couldn’t stop letting her pussy make her decisions for her.

Standing over her, Nanny J looked up at Derek. “She is absolutely a Little.”

“We can’t put her in with the other Littles,” Derek replied in kind.

“She can’t be left in that room all on her own.”

“No,” he agreed. “She won’t be staying in Dorm Four.”

Something in his voice made her look up—just another mistake. The minute their eyes met, her stomach tightened, and her pussy pulsed, a single hot thump of wanting that depressed her. She was so messed up, she had no business wanting a man like this. Especially after the way she’d just behaved.

She buried her face in Spankles’ soft fur, only to snap back up and stare at him again.

“Until further notice, she’ll be staying with me.”

Chapter 3

Derek was seated in his office, at his desk, getting no work done whatsoever. His thoughts were all over the place. Corralling them long enough to focus on the open bank statements and accounting ledger on his laptop was impossible. Even the laptop had given up on him and timed out a good twenty minutes ago. Instead of numbers, his gaze kept drifting from the colorful pipes, zipping aimless patterns across an otherwise black monitor screen to the corner where Sadie now stood, hugging her stuffie, her head slightly bowed as she studied the meeting of the walls.

He had to be crazy to consider taking her home with him. He knew that with the same degree of intensity, he knew he couldn’t put someone as volatile and out of control as she was with his other Littles, but he couldn’t send her away. She’d been in his office for only twenty minutes and in his life for less than an hour, but that was all the time it took for him to realize he was in trouble.

Given enough time to think, he could probably tally up the sheer number of Littles who had passed through his home, and not once had he ever been so drawn… so intrigued… so tempted by one. When she’d been throwing that feral fit of temper, all he’d wanted to do was hold her—forcibly if he had to—until she wilted back into the sad, confused submissive he’d glimpsed when Nanny J had pulled her into her arms. He didn’t regret going through her bag. The way she was acting, he was positive he was going to find alcohol at best and at worse, drugs hidden inside. Nothing else he could think of went any distance at all toward explaining the way she’d reacted when little Mary picked up her abandoned duffel bag.

The stuffie didn’t exactly surprise him. He’d been around Littles for so long at this point, he wasn’t sure he’d know how to behave toward a woman who didn’t crave a special toy when she was at her most vulnerable emotionally. What had surprised him was the way she’d grabbed it away from him, retreating into that huddled up ball of misery, clinging to it as if it was her only friend. He’d never seen anyone look smaller or more lost and forlorn in his life, especially with all those bruises mottling her pale skin.

Sadie breathed a soft, frustrated sigh through her nose. With her right foot, she scratched the back of her other shin, then put her foot flat on the floor again. Looking down at the stuffie in her arms, she turned the white kitten around so it could face the corner, too. Against his will, Derek gave in to the smile now tugging at his lips. Almost as quickly, he lost it again.

He could not take her home with him.

If the road to Hell truly was paved with good intentions, surely Hell was where he’d be bound the moment he took her—even temporarily and for her own good as he was so sternly trying to tell himself—as his own. It was so easy to see her standing in a corner of his suite—her and Spankles both—staring at the wall while they contemplated what they’d done and