Sadie's Little Christmas - Maren Smith Page 0,26
out so he could get to know her, but Sadie kept that side of her tightly locked down. Chicken nuggets, personal pizzas, grilled cheese sandwiches, macaroni and cheese… an extensive array of child-like desserts—she refused all of it.
“Salad, please,” she finally decided.
“The Tummy Tempter Platter,” he told the server, handing both their menus back to him. He thought he caught Sadie glancing somewhat wistfully at the sundae bar as he glanced up to thank the man, but she had her eyes steadily back on him before he could turn his attention to her again.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” she said, unwrapping her silverware and spreading her very adult napkin out on her lap.
“Oh?” He copied her, laying the dinosaurs out across his own. “What am I trying to do?”
“You want me to be something I’m not.”
“Not true, darlin’. There is nothing I want more than for you to be who you are.”
“I’m not a Little.”
“Is it because you think there’s something shameful in it?”
“No, it’s because it’s not true!” She said it with such conviction, yet at the last minute averted her gaze to look anywhere but at him—a guilty tell. Whether she knew it or not, she was lying, and that slight flush of pink that stole up into her face said she’d just come to the same conclusion. Her brow furrowed, flickers of confusion moving through her eyes before she flung herself back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest, and falling silent again.
She jiggled her foot under the table. She chewed her bottom lip.
Folding his hands together, he leaned over the table.
“Sadie—”
She looked all over the table, everywhere but at him. Her foot was jiggling rapidly under the table; he could tell by the way her body was jittering.
“You called out to me,” he said, soft enough for his voice not to carry to any of the surrounding occupied tables. It was Christmas, and the resort was doing swift business among Daddies and their Littles, Doms and their subs, anyone who wanted the quiet of a ranch-style getaway among like-minded kinky people. “You said—”
“I know what I said,” she whispered with a wince.
“Please, Daddy, please,” he finished anyway. “That was a level of honesty, I believe more than the words coming out of your mouth right now. It’s not just me you’re lying to, though. You’re lying to yourself, and I don’t understand why.”
“Because I’m not a Little!” she hissed, striving to cover her embarrassment with anger. She looked miserable.
“Do you know your voice changes pitch when you go small?” he countered. “Your whole face changes. You have all these tiny tells whenever your Little gets triggered.”
“No!” she insisted.
“You’re whining,” he pointed out.
She clamped her mouth shut, then opened it again, but whatever she was about to say was waylaid by their server as he brought their drinks—water and wine for him, milk for her.
“What the hell is this?” she demanded.
“Watch your mouth,” he warned. “I know your emotions are raw and volatile right now, but swear again in my presence, and you’ll be sobbing soap bubbles while Mr. Paddle pays a short, sharp trip to Naughty Bottomland.”
She blinked. For just a moment, the adult in her got a tenuous foothold over her rolling emotions enough for her to quite rationally say, “You get wine.”
“I’m thirty-three. You’re eighteen. Ask me again in three years, and I might let you have wine for dinner, too.”
“I don’t think I like you well enough to still be here three years from now. You’re bossy and mean.”
“And that entire statement from you just won the entire Little argument for me.”
She huffed, throwing herself back in her seat.
“Adults don’t sulk,” he pointed out. “Or stomp their feet or attack other adults who happen to lay their hands on our favorite stuffed toys, as happened with Spankles.”
“I don’t like Spankles anymore,” she muttered, her jiggling intensifying. “I don’t want her. I’m throwing her away.”
“I will bust your bottom. You won’t sit for a week,” he promised.
Stubborn determination flashed in her eyes. It astounded him why she was fighting so hard to deny this part of herself. That it had to have something to do with what had happened at the club was the most obvious reason. No one came away from something like that without scars. Yet Sadie wasn’t wearing her scars in what he would recognize as the traditional places.
Regardless of what she’d consented to in the contract they’d signed, back in the dressing room, he’d been prepared