The Shepherd (The Game 6)

Ridiculous.

That night…we shared desserts, he was sufficiently impressed by my result with a rubber sledgehammer on one of those high-striker games, I kissed cotton candy off his nose, we held hands, and then it was my turn to be impressed when he showed his skills in balloon darts.

“This is highly frustrating!” he exclaimed. “A game I’m truly good at, and the top prize is a bloody pin.”

I laughed and watched him eye the selection of pins critically. “What about that one?” It was a teacup. Went great with the tea infuser he’d won earlier, didn’t it?

“But you love ice cream.” He picked a pin of an ice cream cone and handed it to me. “You’ve had strawberry ice cream twice tonight.”

I smiled and glanced at the pin.

There was something between us, wasn’t there?

Five years had passed, and for some reason, I still had that ice cream pin in my nightstand.

Despite everything that’d tainted the night afterward, I couldn’t shake that what we’d shared had been real.

I leaned back against the house wall and groaned internally. I couldn’t fucking believe he was here right now. On the other side of this wall.

At a kink party.

That part wasn’t surprising. That he was here, yeah, but I’d felt his natural submission back then. He’d responded so fucking beautifully to me. He’d playfully called me sir… I’d thought it’d be too presumptuous and possibly intimidating to him if I’d called him pet or boy in an attempt to test the waters, ’cause fuck if I hadn’t been curious. I’d called him “little one” instead. Back at the shooting gallery.

“If you wanna win that tiger for your niece, you can’t miss every target.” I stood behind him and lifted his arm that held the rifle. “Remember what I said, gently press the trigger. Exhale before you aim—that’s when you’re steadier. If you suck in a breath and hold it, you become tense and shaky.”

I kissed the spot below his ear as he exhaled.

“That’s it, little one,” I murmured.

It’d been his worst shooting round, and he’d blamed me for it. He’d accused me of turning him on, of reducing his brain to “mush.”

“I can’t concentrate when you act all…you!”

He’d made me feel so damn great.

If I closed my eyes, I could still see him. So determined to win a stuffed animal for his niece, so irritated when he missed the ducks he was aiming at, so fucking sexy when he melted against me.

He’d won four heart-shaped tea infusers before I’d taken over. Otherwise, he would’ve gone bankrupt. And five minutes after that, he had two stuffed animal tigers on whose T-shirts he could decide what they’d print. But at the last second, I’d stolen one of the tigers to select my own message.

Think of me, little one, I’d settled on. Because in that moment, he’d entered my long-term dreams. He’d lived in Pittsburgh, me in Winchester. Even if we saw each other again, it’d be difficult to build a relationship. So I’d wanted him to take that home with him eventually, and he was gonna think of me every damn time he saw that stuffed animal.

What a delusional idiot I’d been. Who in their right mind started thinking about relationships after a single evening?

Well…he’d made me believe he was right there with me on the same page.

“You, sir, are far too dangerous.” He held his two prizes next to each other. One tiger for his niece, one for himself. Then he peered up at me. “I don’t stand a chance against you, do I?”

“Fuck,” I breathed out. I sank down against the house wall and rested my elbows on my knees, and my fingers disappeared into my hair. Five fucking years. I’d done a good job of suppressing all these memories, and yet they rushed back as if it’d happened yesterday.

For a hot second, my future had looked bright.

Archie had stowed away his prizes in his backpack, and then we’d bought popcorn, churros, and sodas on the way back to the concert area. I’d gotten a taste of what it was like to be in one of those romantic bubbles. It’d just been him and me. He’d sat between my legs in the grass, playing with my fingers. We’d listened to some country singer who’d sung about wanting the good and the bad with her love, the truth and the lies, the ugly and the beautiful, the light and the darkness.

He sighed contentedly as I kissed the top of his head, and then he glanced up at me. “I’m a little disappointed you haven’t asked me out to dinner yet.”

I grinned faintly and kissed him softly. “I’m trying to reschedule things in my head.” It was just my luck that I had a packed weekend with Angelo, someone I’d been looking forward to catching up with for so damn long. And now, all I wanted was to cancel so I could take Archie out on a proper date.