Convincing Leah by Becca Jameson

Chapter 10

Craig

I have so many questions and they keep piling up as I wander aimlessly around my house. I only managed to sleep about four hours before sliding out of bed, careful not to disturb Leah.

The poor girl was and still is exhausted. Every time I sneak back into my bedroom to check on her, I find her dead to the world. She hasn’t moved. She’s curled up on her side with her arms tucked up against her chest, breathing heavily.

I probably shouldn’t have washed her hair because it’s a mess of curls all around on my pillow now, but I couldn’t stand the idea of bringing her into my bed until I’d washed every inch of her. I didn’t want any lingering scent of that deranged man’s house near her, and I’m certain she didn’t either.

Leah is small but she isn’t overly short, she’s skinny. Her metabolism must be very high. As I stop to stare down at her for the tenth time, I see that she has fisted her hands and drawn them up near her mouth. She looks so young and innocent.

At first glance, I thought she was sucking her thumb. My breath caught in my throat before I realized her thumbs are simply pressing against her lips.

I want to touch her, stroke her hair, absorb her sweetness in slumber, but I must not. She needs to rest as long as she can. I’ll have to wait to touch her later.

Leah is mine. If I had a single doubt before yesterday, it evaporated in the middle of the night when I died ten deaths thinking I might have lost her. The way she clung to me for hours kept me from losing my shit, but I can’t be sure she will wake up today and feel that same raw need to be comforted.

She probably won’t. And I need to prepare myself for that eventuality.

I draw in a deep breath as I leave her yet again, wandering back into the hallway. I’m drawn to the room across the hall, a room I rarely enter. I keep the door closed most of the time. I find myself shuffling toward it and turning the knob.

Like the rest of the house, I’ve pulled out all the carpet and refinished the hardwood floors. The only piece of furniture in this room is an antique white-washed rocking chair. It was my grandmother’s and then my mother’s. When my mother passed, I took several memorable items from her house. This was one of them.

I shuffle toward the rocking chair and lower myself onto it. It’s sturdy. In a hundred years, it will still be in good shape. My grandfather made it for my grandmother when my mother was born. I remember being rocked in this chair as a child clear up until the day I finally declared myself too old to be rocked.

I smile at the memory. I’m pretty sure I was about ten. Probably too old for a little boy to still want to be rocked, but I’d secretly enjoyed the quiet times in my mother’s lap. She often read to me in this chair.

Before my divorce, this was my wife’s playroom. She took nearly everything in it when she left. The rest I donated to charity, not wanting the reminders. I’ve since painted the room a soft yellow, mostly because my ex-wife hated yellow.

Between the total house renovations, both inside and outside, and the replacement of nearly every piece of furniture, there’s nothing left of my ex-wife here.

Not that we have any animosity. We don’t. I keep up with her and her new husband, Andrew, from time to time, but I was pretty broken up when she left me after so many years together.

Avery and I had a lot of history. We were twenty when we got married. We entered the fetish world together. We learned everything we knew together. It was her desire to be a little that brought me down the path of becoming a Daddy.

Avery is nothing like Leah. She’s five-two, curvy, naturally blonde, blue-eyed, and a little through and through. Her particular preference for age play grew over time until it became nearly impossible for us to manage her needs with my long deployments.

Our split-up and divorce was unavoidable. We’d grown. Changed. I had three more years in the Army. She was lonely and had needs I couldn’t meet. It was sad and hard for me to swallow at the time, but I understood. I had to let her go.

It was the right thing to do. Avery is very happy now. I know it was bumpy for her at first. She’d hoped to find a Daddy to fulfill her craving faster than it took her, but eventually, she met Andrew. They’re perfect for each other.

I stare out the window and shift my thoughts to Leah. I’d give anything to redo this room to suit her. The last thing she said to me keeps running through my mind. What on earth did she mean when she alluded to the fact that she was born an adult?

After she fell asleep, I stared at her angelic face for a long time, wondering what she’d meant. So many unanswered questions running through my head, and though I don’t have any of the answers, I know one thing for sure. If she for some reason didn’t have a normal childhood, she could be craving the nurturing she missed out on.

I think back to her odd momentary slip into a very young little space after our scene Friday night. I’m still wondering if she was abused as a child. She’d reacted strongly to me using the word naughty. Now, she’s telling me she was never a child?

It’s also possible I’m reading too much into this. Seeing what I want to see. And even if I’m right, even if she does have a deep-seated desire to practice some form of age play, that doesn’t mean she’d be willing to do it or even admit it out loud under normal circumstances when not suffering from severe duress.

“Craig?”

Her small voice makes me jerk my gaze to the open doorway. I smile at her as my heart seizes. She’s so fucking little right now. Her curls are a mess falling down around her shoulders. She has on nothing but my T-shirt. And she’s rubbing her eyes. The only thing that would make her more little would be the addition of a stuffed animal dangling from one hand at her side.

I motion for her to come to me. “Come here, sweetheart.”

She shuffles closer, looking around. “What are you doing in here? And why is this room empty?”

When she reaches me, I grab her around the waist and lift her onto my lap, situating her between my legs.

She leans her head on my shoulder, her slender arms around my neck.

“This was my ex-wife’s room,” I tell her.

“Oh. You mean her little space.”

“Yes. She took everything with her when she left.”

“Except this rocking chair,” Leah points out.

“Nope. This was my grandmother’s. I snagged it from my mother’s house two years ago after she died.

“Oh. What was your wife’s name?”

We haven’t discussed my ex much. “Avery.”

“Was yellow her favorite color?”

I chuckle. “No. She hated it. That’s why I painted the room yellow after she left.”

Leah giggles. “Nobody likes yellow, Craig.”

I laugh again. “Okay then. Guess I better buy some more paint.”

She snuggles in closer to me.

I love it. So much that my chest is tight. She has her knees pulled up. I have my palm on her bottom. “I’m not myself,” she murmurs.

I kiss the top of her head. “You sure? Maybe you weren’t yourself before.”

She sighs. “I don’t know.”

I pat her bottom. My shirt is long enough that it’s covering her, but she doesn’t have on panties. “It’s okay. You don’t have to know everything right now. There’s no rush.”

“Something happened to me in that room. I feel like I snapped and now I’m a different person.”

I rock her, emotion welling up inside me. “You’re the same person, sweetheart. You’ve been through a trauma. It’s going to take some time to figure things out. You’ll probably need some counseling.”

I want to ask her so many other things, but I don’t. She’s fragile. I need to take my time with her. Let her think. I won’t pressure her.

“I was so scared.” Her voice is soft and trembling.

“I know, sweetheart. Anyone would have been.” My heart aches. I can’t fix this. Only time can fix it.

“I’m still scared,” she whispers. “I can’t shake it.” Her body trembles now. “I was having a nightmare. I was trapped in that room for months, forced to write a book, and I couldn’t come up with anything, so the days kept going by. That man was growing increasingly angry with me. I kept thinking he would break my legs.” She pulls her boney knees up tighter.

I swallow the knot in my throat. “Like Stephen King.”

She nods against me, her fist coming to the front of my shirt, clutching it absently.

“I’m so sorry you had a nightmare. I shouldn’t have left you alone.” I hug her tighter. It’s all I can do.

“I can’t expect you to watch over me constantly.”

“Sure you can. I consider it my job.”

She sighs. “What am I going to do?”

“First, we need to get some food in you. One step at a time. I’ll call Roman and see if he knows a counselor in the fetish community, okay?”

She tips her head back to look at me. “Master Quinten is a counselor.”

“I don’t think I’ve met him.”

“He’s in a menage relationship with Josie and Master Grayson. You might have seen Josie in the nursery sometimes. She’s friends with Lucy. She’s about the same size as Lucy. Petite. But she has long straight black hair and boobs.”

I chuckle. “And boobs? What does that mean?”

Leah shrugs, pulling her arms in toward her chest. “Not tiny ones like mine.”

I can’t resist sliding my palm up to cup her breast. “No idea what you’re talking about. Perfect handful.”

She giggles as she squirms, tugging my hand away from her chest. “Maybe if I were ever able to put weight on my body anywhere, I would also have boobs, but it’s not in the cards for me. I’ve been skinny my whole life.”

“You just have a higher metabolism than some people, sweetheart. I think you’re perfect.”

I love how her face flushes, her cheeks turning a darker shade of red.

“Speaking of which, food.” I pat her thigh. “Let’s get you fed. What are you hungry for? Breakfast? Lunch? It’s noon, but there are no rules.”

Her eyes widen, and she gets a mischievous look. “There are no rules? What kind of a Daddy are you exactly?”

I swallow. That word coming from her lips stops me in my tracks. I know she didn’t mean anything by it. She’s just making conversation. But I still like the sound of it, and I’d drop to my knees if she ever directly called me Daddy.

I stand her on her feet and tweak her nose. “The kind of Daddy who says we aren’t following the normal rules today.”

“Can you make pancakes?”

I smile. My God. My heart can’t take this. What happened to the Leah who spent the last few months insisting she didn’t have a little side? “Yes, sweetheart. I can.”

I take her hand and lead her from this empty room, shutting the door behind us. I’m not sure what possessed me to go in there, but I’m glad I got to explain the space to her a bit, and I’ll never in my life forget this first time I was able to hold her and rock her.

I know she’s not even close to deciding she can be little, and I’d be a fool to assume it’s a definite possibility, but the fifteen minutes I held her in my lap, her hair in disarray, her small body covered by nothing but my T-shirt… Precious.

When we reach the kitchen, I lift her by the hips and swing her up to sit on the island where I planted her the only other morning she slept over. Was that just Saturday? Five days ago? Seems like a lifetime now.

She’d argued with me that day, insisting she was not little, the same conversation we’ve had off and on since we met.

Today, I cup her face and kiss her lips gently. “Will you let me baby you today? It doesn’t have to mean anything. I promise not to make a big deal out of it. But you’ve been through a lot. I bet you could use some TLC.”

She hesitates and then nods.

Blessed angels. “What do you want with your pancakes?”

“Chocolate chips?” Her face lights up.

I laugh. “I can do that, but I meant bacon or sausage or eggs?”

She shakes her head. “Just pancakes.”

Does she have the slightest idea how unbelievably little she is right now?

I’m going to gamble here, though I hope I’m not pushing my luck. Instead of making her a cup of tea, I hedge. “Milk or apple juice?”

“Milk,” she states without hesitating.

Score one for Daddy. I’m walking on clouds, trying not to let myself get too excited as I grab a plastic cup from the cabinet and fill it halfway with milk. I hand it to her.

She reaches with one hand to take it from me.

“You got it, sweetheart?”

She rolls her eyes and lifts her other hand to hold it with both hands. “Happy?”

“Yep.” Ecstatic. I turn around to grab the pancake mix, mostly so that she won’t see how damn huge my smile is.

“Just for the sake of argument…” she drawls out.

I school my face and glance over my shoulder at her. “Yeah?”

She licks her lips and glances down at her milk where she’s holding it in her lap.

I stop what I’m doing and come to her. Whatever she has to say is the most important thing in the world right now. I set my hands on her knees. “Finish that sentence, sweetheart.”

She swallows as she meets my gaze. “It’s just that, I think I’m hiding.”

I furrow my brow. “Hiding from what?”

“From life. From my problems. I’d like to ignore them for the day. I can’t face what happened to me yet. I can’t process it. I don’t want to. Not today. Can I maybe put it off until tomorrow? Could we not talk about it?”

“Of course.” My heart rate picks up. I pray that I’m right about what she’s going to say next.

She licks her precious lips. “If I were to pretend to be little today, just so I can hide, would you let me do that without making a big deal out of it and not presume I can do it again?”

I slide my hands to her hips. “I’d be honored.”

She lifts a brow. “Just today. One day. I’m curious and I feel vulnerable enough to experience it. Yesterday, while I was alone and scared in that room, I promised myself if you found me, I would try to be little for you. I was kicking myself for being so stubborn.”

I rub her hips with my thumbs. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, sweetheart. You didn’t do or not do anything that caused you to get kidnapped. It could have happened no matter what. If not specifically yesterday, then another day. He was determined. He would have watched you until he caught his break.”

She shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Definitely. And people make weird deals with God or whatever deity they worship when they are in a dire situation. Just because you promised yourself you’d try age play while you were scared for your life, doesn’t mean you have to hold yourself to it today.”

She stares at me as if I’m crazy. “I promised,” she says as if there are no other options. She says that word in a very young voice, and again I get the feeling she has slid into her childhood, and I’m dying to know what happened to her and why it’s suddenly haunting her, dragging her into the past.

I can’t yet fathom what happened to her as a kid, but with each passing hour, I’m growing more certain something happened. It’s like her eyes glaze over and she becomes a very young Leah, viewing life through the lens of a toddler. It’s inconceivable to her at the moment that she would or could break her promise to give age play a try today.

My heart hurts, but as I stare at her, it feels as if I’d be doing more harm right this minute if I insist she not give age play a chance. “Leah, you’re welcome to be as little as you want for as long as you want. If you change your mind, just say the word, and it’s over.”

“Okay. If you tell Eve or anyone else I did this, I’ll never forgive you.”

I lift my hands to cup her face, holding her gaze. “You have my word, sweetheart. You’re entitled to experiment without being judged. I won’t judge you, and no one ever has to know.”

“I’d never hear the end of it from her, and you can’t tell Master Colton either. No one.”

“Promise.” My heart is going to beat right out of my chest.

“Will you let me ask you questions so I can understand you better?”

“Ask anything you want.”

“Okay.”

I’ve never seen her this vulnerable. The responsibility she’s given me is huge. I can do this. I have no choice. I need her to fully understand that side of me and experience it. It’s the only way she can ever make an informed decision if she ever decides to give age play a more permanent try.