Sadie's Little Christmas - Maren Smith Page 0,7

After all, he wasn’t some green, wet-behind-the-ears youth, playing at being in charge. He’d grown up at this resort, helping in the care of lost women. Runaways and single moms had been his dad’s soft spot. Derek had known for years now, his father would have been appalled to know the direction his son had re-envisioned the Ranch. But Derek was a Dom, and for as long as he’d known the Ranch would someday be his responsibility, he’d wanted to use it in a way that would help his local BDSM community.

Opening his home to Littles had come as naturally to him as breathing. It catered to that part of him that deeply, passionately needed to provide for and protect those who most desperately needed it. He took that self-appointed job seriously. The submissives in his home weren’t here to cater to his base desires. He kept that—the beast beneath his carefully cultivated veneer—locked up tight inside. Never would he ever have allowed himself to subject the Littles in his care to the depth and degrees to which his inner demon liked to play. Most, he was sure, would never be able to handle it. But Sadie… from the moment he’d laid eyes on her, something triggered in him an intense attraction that spiked his nervousness just one degree higher.

Had he made the right decision, letting her come here? Hell, after hearing what had happened, how could he have turned her away?

Was it the right decision to put her in this wing, in a dorm, all by herself? He hadn’t known when he’d agreed to Jared’s request that she was a Little, but he’d bet money on it now. She was tripping too many of his ‘little Little lost’ triggers. But even if she wasn’t, he could hardly let her run unsupervised through the resort where a steady flow of guests came and went, most of who were Doms either vacationing to relax, take a few of the classes the Ranch offered, or meet one of the Littles Derek deemed ‘ready’ to venture back out into the world. No, he really couldn’t let her run wild out there, not marked up the way she was.

Hell, even if she wasn’t bruised from her beating, he didn’t dare give her unfettered run of his resort. She was too young. He knew Jared and trusted the man. If Jared said she was eighteen—and she had to be at least that to be allowed into the dungeon where the lawyer liked to play—Derek knew she had to be legal. However, as soon as he got her settled in her room, he planned to check her ID for himself. Eighteen was still a teenager, and barely legal submissives were highly sought after by a lot of so-called Doms. Just looking at her, he could tell in the right clothes, with her hair done up in pigtails and ribbons, Sadie could easily pass for sixteen. The thought of her being eyed by any of the other Doms here, all of whom couldn’t help but realize the same damn thing the second they saw her… now that really made him nervous.

No.

No, putting her in her own room in the Littles’ wing was the safest thing he could do for her. There weren’t a lot of people who could handle being lumped in with six or ten excited, exuberant, mischievous, sometimes bratty but always flying right on the cuff of whatever emotion currently gripped them Littles. Not for an hour, much less twenty-four/seven. Not knowing Sadie’s personality, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to trap his Littles with someone who might not be gentle with them, either.

There was no help for it. Dorm Room Four was her new home, and she would be stuck in it by herself for as long as he deemed necessary. There was simply no other place to put her.

Unless she was a Little.

And his brain went back around to that. The way she’d stopped, frozen in her tracks the moment she saw the nursery, spoke volumes. Then her reaction to the spanking had thrown him. As he stood watching her, he could have sworn—from the tiny gasps she breathed, the rise and fall of her perfect breasts, the slight flush of pink that kissed her cheeks before spreading its telltale color down her neck onto her chest—he would have sworn she’d been aroused.

Right up until she panicked.

He’d misread the situation. He had to have.

Usually, he was very good at reading people, but not