15. EVERETT

My sweet princess's lips sucked the stress right out of me. Maybe I shouldn't have gone so long without a release. Not only did it unleash an uncapped potential of dopamine, but there was also a physical connection I found my body craved. I never wanted to leave it that long again, and from the satisfied expression on Bryce's face, I doubt he wanted that either.

I'd told him that I'd take my dessert later, whether that was tonight, or tomorrow morning, I'd make sure we shared a more intimate moment that wasn't while one of us was on their knees under the dining table.

We took the Lego into the living area and I revealed the large TV which was behind a white panel in the fall. And to go alongside it, I'd also invested in a lot of blankets and cushions wrapped in one of the larger sofa throwovers and shoved to the corner of the room. They were all online purchases, so none of them matched the aesthetic at all, pink, gray, black, blue, it was chaos but they were very comfortable.

"Where were you hiding all those?" Bryce asked, feeling each and every cushion and blanket against his face. "This actually adds a softer tone to the entire rom. It's nice."

I sat on the floor with him, only in my briefs and tank top. "They were going to be part of another activity. Again, tell me if I'm doing too much. I don't want to overwhelm you with everything."

"Tell me," he said.

"Pillow or blanket fort," I said. "I didn't know how many things I needed. And the cushions that arrived were actually not the size I'd wanted. I thought they were going to be sofa seat sized. Or of a substance that could support a fort-like structure."

He giggled. "It's ok. You're not a blanket fort architect."

That was true, however I was an architect of security systems, and I should've been able to foresee the potential pitfalls and errors. "I assume you are," I said. "Or at least you've got plenty of experience."

"Blanket forts are usually not for building Legos in," he said. "And I want to build one near the window so I can look outside as well."

I agreed to everything he wanted. I never wanted to say no to him. If I could do it, I would do it. "So, what do you want to watch while we start this castle. It looks like it'll take a while, so we might not finish it tonight."

He shrugged. "Cartoons. I don't know what channels you have."

"All of them."

"Ooh!" he cooed. "Where's the remote? I wanna see."

The remote, like everything else in the apartment blended seamlessly with the surroundings. I handed the remote to him as I unboxed the large castle set on the coffee table. I thrived in the organization of all the pieces and instructions. I'd toyed around with buildables before, so I knew the important of everything having its place and following everything in steps, which this set outlined perfectly.

Once Bryce found a channel with bright cartoons, he sat back beside me in the cushion and blanket comfort in front of the coffee table.

"Ok," he said. "What do we do?" He looked to me. "Daddy's supposed to know."

"I do know," I said, tapping my fingers on the gray tactile board. "This is our base. We build on this."

From the instructions, he ripped open the first bag and I made sure all the pieces stayed in our nearby vicinity. It was Bryce's toy, so he placed each piece, I was just there to instruct him and say he was doing an excellent job. It was true.

"Maybe you can use this as your castle for Princess Valeria in your game," I suggested.

"Well, Princess Valeria lives in the Crystal Kingdom, so it's mostly ice and stuff. This is more of a castle where we would explore and fight monsters. I wonder if they sell monsters so we could put them inside."

The base wasn't even constructed but he was using that imagination of his to talk about it like he could see the entire thing built up to completion. "If not in here, then in one of the turrets." The other Lego box was a turret that opened with a spiral staircase. "I bet there would be monsters in there."

"In the game, Princess Valeria would slay them with ice beams easily. But I might need your protection though." He pouted.

I'd read a study once that mentioned how spending time with someone you really liked stripped the stress hormone from your body. Bryce made me believe it. Stress left my body like it had never been there in the first place. I pulled him into a hug and kissed his forehead.

"How long is it going to take?" he asked.

I wanted to do the obvious and ask how long a piece of string was. "It might take a couple more dates, which means we have to keep seeing each other now."

"And then we've got the other bits," he said. "At this point, we should be making holiday plans together."

I didn't know if he was being serious about the idea, but I would happily incorporate him into my plans—which were currently empty. The only plan I had for the holidays was a sweeping visit to the family home in Boston. Perhaps it was too early to be thinking about any of that, it was only October, Thanksgiving was sooner than that.

"Hope that wasn't taken as serious," he said. "I was low-key joking, I'm not throwing myself at you to be introduced to anyone."

My silence had been interpreted as avoidance. "Oh no. I was just thinking about how I never do holidays. I find it stressful. I was trying to think about how to tell you that without you thinking I was rejecting you." I had to be careful with my words. I'd seen the texts where Bryce spiraled and they weren't fun. "You know I'm not."

"I know," he said. "It was just a funny thought."

"Since you mentioned it, why don't you tell me about your plans," I said. "In fact, should I go open a fresh bottle of wine?"

He nodded. "Only if it's sweet though."

I didn't have a large choice of sweet wines, and since I'd started drinking red wine, I wasn't going to switch. I had two bottles of red wine I considered a dessert red wine because of how sweet they were. I'd never open them alone because I rarely ate dessert alone. It wasn't a fancy bottle of red, but it was nice from previous experience. A red lambrusco dolce.

Bryce's first taste tinted his lips a gentle pink. His eyes lit up. "Tastes like strawberry juice," he said, clinging to the wine glass.

"If you like it, I'm ordering a case."

"No, you don't have to," he said, his voice echoing in the glass as he pulled it to his lips again.

"Whenever you say you love something, the mental note has been made and I'm going to make sure you get it," I said. There was a strong berry scent from it, almost dizzying. The first taste was in fact very sweet. I sucked air through my teeth, almost in an effort to combat the sweetness on my tongue. "But if I buy a case of it, you'll have to keep coming over to finish it."

Slurping the drink down, he nodded.

"Maybe I should grab the napkin again," I said, wiping the pink droplet from his chin. "Or get you a pink dress so that even if you do spill, it won't show as a stain."

Quickly, the sugar rush took over both of us, and mixed with alcohol, we were laughing, joking, and making a Frankenstein mess of the castle. Bryce reminded me that the instructions were a guide, and we didn't have to follow them completely. The imagination was a powerful tool to be used to mix it up. I was in awe at his ability to throw all ideas out there.

It took a couple of hours to fall bored of building and not getting far with it before we stopped altogether. We'd finished a bottle, and opened the second Bryce declared the perfect building spot for the princess fort. It also meant rearranging some of the furniture in the apartment, but I'd been thinking about it for a while.

"The back of the sofa will be a sturdy wall," he said. "We need to put that over there." He pointed to the window. "And then we can use the backs of the dining chairs at either side so that the blankets go like this." His arm made a an angular sloped gesture.

"Have you become a bossy princess?" I asked.

"I've been an architect princess," he said, clapping his hands once. "Let's make sure we get your duvet too for extra comfort. And pillows. You have those thick pillows."

Overexcited by it all, I followed his plans in order to create the best princess pillow and blanket fort. I just hoped he wasn't hoping to spend the night in it. The light through the window in the morning would be a killer, especially when it happened so early.

This was actually the first fort I'd made. I didn't recall doing it as a kid or a teen. It wasn't anything I'd thought about, but now that I was doing it with Bryce, it held a special place in my heart. He stocked it with all the cushions and pillows, turning it into a small space completely different to the rest of my apartment.

Dipping to my knees and wiggling inside, Bryce had a stack of books on his lap.

"Where did those come from?"

"I brought them," he said. "They're from the same series that you read to me. Now is the perfect time to read more of them. And I can lay on your lap and look out over the city. It feels like a dream."

It looked like a dream too. "Let's get comfy," I said. "I might need to use the flashlight on my phone though."

"Next time, you need to string some fairy lights up," he said.

I wiggled my way back out of the fort to find my phone. I didn't want to be distracted by it, and the first thing I see is messages from both Daniel and Mark. Further surprised when I saw that Sophie had in fact worked her magic and forced them into a civil working friendship.

As I got back to the fort, Bryce's face was pressed against the glass, attempting to look directly down.

"Lose something?" I asked.

"Have you ever had sex against the window?"

"Oh. No," I said. "Unless that's something you want."

"Maybe," he giggled, coming back to sit against the back of the chair. He pulled the thick duvet up around himself. "You've got to come under the covers with me and read."

It was warm under them. Once I was beside him, he handed the books to me. "Can you read while stroking my head while I lay on your lap?"

"Yes," I told him. "I'm very good at multi-tasking."

He laid his head on my lap as I took a look at the books he'd handed me. I used the little light coming in from the window at first, then turned to the torchlight on my phone to actually read to him. It was nice to have this level of peace and comfort. More than anything, it was nice to have a warm body cuddled up against mine and remind me I wasn't alone in this world, or this lifetime.

As I read, I made sure to put on voices for each of the characters. He really responded well to it, giggling to himself. It was the most wholesome sound. I went through each of the books as slowly as possible to savor the moments and details of the time we were together.

"You're a good storyteller," he said, rolling around until he was face up on my lap.

"They're not my stories," I said, "but maybe I could tell you a story. One I'm going to create right now."

"Right now?"

"Yeah, and this one is all about a boy, a princess boy."

He gasped. "Like me."

"Whoa, would you look at that, he might just be like you," I said, tickling a finger down the side of his face and neck. "This boy who absolutely loved his dresses, one day, while he was outside doing his own thing, he came across a man, and that man muddied the back of his dress. He was not happy about it. But the princess didn't know that the man had done it accidentally after being blinded by their stage presence." It was a very thinly veiled description of our story.

"That's like us," he giggled.

"I think it might be us ," I said. "The man decided he wanted to know this princess, and he tried, but it was very late, and everyone involved seemed disoriented. A day passes, the man hadn't slept, and outside, in the rain, in non-princess clothing, someone runs up to him, and he thinks the entire world is about to end until he sees the boy's face and realizes his world is just about to get a whole lot more interesting."

Bryce nodded. "So, what happened? What did you do?"

"I walked him back to his friends under the umbrella of my suit jacket, and I handed him my business card," I said. "We set up a day for a date. And—oh balls, I meant, they went on a date."

Wiggling around he continued to giggle in my lap. "I know it's about us. But I like to hear it from your perspective."

It was hard to believe I was even lucid after the lack of sleep. "It was at that moment, the man vowed to rescue the princess from the elements of the city."

"You did," he said. "And then you took him into your tower, high above the city where nobody else could see him, ever again."

"I'd never steal you away from the world," I whispered. "Borrow, yes, but steal, never. You're too talented."

"You really think so?" he asked, letting out a large yawn.

I caught it, yawning back at him. "Of course, I think so."

"Thank you."

I hunched my neck to kiss him, falling short of being able to reach him, and not breaking my back. He lifted his head to meet my lips and kiss me. "Mwah," he sounded.

"Let me know when you want to go to bed," I said. "We have two options, we sleep out here, or we sleep in my bed, which I would like to preface has a very nice mattress."

"Obviously the bed," he said. "The floor is hard."

"There are plenty of other hard things you can have instead," I said.

He bit his lip and nodded. "I hope so." Slipping his hand under the duvet, he reached for my cock. Hard. If he'd nudged his head a little further to his left, he might've laid his precious head on it, but he didn't. "Oh. I think I'd like that second dessert now."

I rubbed my hands together, making sure they were warm enough for his body. Up his dress, I touched his inner thigh, going further to feel the softness of his skin. I wondered if he'd shaved for the occasion, or maybe he didn't have much body hair in this area.

"Against the window," he said. "Is it safe?"

"Very naughty," I said, finding his hard cock pushed up inside a tight pair of briefs. "It should be fine. These things are reinforced. But I'm afraid people will see, and I don't want anyone to see my princess."

"Maybe if I keep the dress on," he said. "But I don't want to make a mess in it."

Pushing my hand inside his briefs, I cupped his balls. "If you do, I'll have it dry cleaned. You can't think about that, it's Daddy's job."

Bryce nodded. "Ok, Daddy."