Daddy's Stepstalker (Daddy's Little Deviants)

Shaw

WhenIarrivedhome, my car was in the garage. And those hateful slurs still flashed mockingly at me. I frowned, running my hand over the hood. Ari promised he would get this taken care of today. Why hadn’t he? He’d always been good on his promise.

I walked through the side door that led to the mudroom. From there, I stepped into the hall. If my breath quickened and my pulse fluttered in my neck, I chose to ignore the signs. Just as I’d done all day, I suppressed thoughts of me jerking my cock with the beautiful boy on my mind.

Nothing good could come of this. The boy obviously thought of me as a safe haven, and the more I dwelled on this, the more I was likely to break his trust.

He needed a father figure, not an old man perving on him.

I inhaled deeply. And again. Nothing wafted from the kitchen, no fragrance of spicy soup, no delicious aroma of freshly baked cookies. All day I’d been looking forward to a home-cooked meal. It was one of the things I missed about Anne. She always took care of the house, and maybe I was old fashioned, but I liked that. Liked the thought of coming home to a clean house and a warm, nutritious meal.

“Ari?” I called softly.

What if he left again? A gut-wrenching ache filled my chest, and I gasped for air. He couldn’t be gone. Not again. In the past four years, I’d been so worried about him. Finally, I’d been thinking of him less, and now he was back. How was I supposed to return to forgetting about this boy who did things to me I didn’t understand?

“Ari?”

The kitchen was empty. The counters gleamed. He’d washed and put away everything we’d used for breakfast. I hurried up the stairs. His bedroom door was ajar, and I pushed it open farther, then let out a long, shaky breath. His bag was on the bed. Alongside a pack of adult-sized diapers that seemed to have been ripped open hastily.

“What the hell’s going on?” Had he gone out? Why on earth did he need diapers?

A part of me wanted to go digging for answers in his bag or the computer on his desk, but I refrained from violating his privacy. There had to be a perfectly good explanation, and I wasn’t going to believe all that madness Anne spewed at me earlier.

It didn’t stop my mind from going a million places, though, as I changed out of mysuit. Where was he? Why would he need diapers?

Anne’s voice from the distant past popped in my head.

“It’s bad enough that you wear those sweatpants around the house. Don’t you see how he watches you? At least put on some underwear and stop giving him a show.”

I stopped with my fingers hooked in the waistband of my boxers and stared down. I found it freeing to go commando at home, and I never put much stock into Anne’s words before, so why now? One call and she made me doubt Ari.

When I descended the stairs, I was dressed in my usual sweatpants, my balls and cock swinging freely. I turned on the television in the living room. Even though the people weren’t real, they would keep me company, make the house feel less empty.

I stopped in my tracks, and my heart pounded loudly. Ari. He hadn’t left but sat on the floor, his back to me. He only wore a small sleeveless shirt and a diaper. Of all the scenarios I’d run through in my head to explain the diaper, this wasn’t one of the versions. Not of Ari looking so comfortable sitting on the floor, wearing a diaper. It fit snugly between his legs, swaddling his ass perfectly, and something flickered to life in my belly.

Even with his back to me, his head bowed, he exuded vulnerability. He must have heard me calling his name. Once he knew I was home, he could have hidden, but he chose to share something that must have been difficult. I didn’t understand it, but warmth spread through me that he allowed me to see him like this.

If Anne ever saw him this way, she would have ridiculed him.

“Ari, I’m home,” I said softly.

He lifted his head a fraction but then lowered it again and went back to whatever he was doing. I caught a whimpering sound, but it was so faint I might have been mistaken. I stepped closer to him, then did a double take. A stuffed sloth was sitting next to him, ratty and one ear tacked on with big stitches.

The same sloth that started all this.

He’d been at the carnival with his mother when I saw him desperately trying to win the stuffy. I thought it was sweet seeing a boy his age being so innocent after all the crap I had to put up with from teenagers. When I’d handed him the stuffie, he’d hugged the sloth and thanked me prettily.

His mother pulled my attention away from him then. I’d been lonely. She was pretty. I knew I was no prize. I’d taken them both to dinner, and the relationship progressed fast. A year later, we were married, and it had been nice having Ari in my life, the smile he provoked every time he cried, “Hey, Daddy!”

Ari’s focus was on the coloring book on the floor before him. Jumbo crayons spilled out of a thirty-six pack. The little sounds I’d heard was him sucking hard on the binky in his mouth, as if his life depended on it.

“Ari, what are you doing?” Why did I even ask that question? A fool could see it, and I was no fool. He was lost in his own little world, coloring his heart out. He was almost finished with the horse in an open field. The coloring looked haphazard, with big strikes and a riot of colors, nothing a grown man would have produced.

“Help me out here, Ari,” I said quietly. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

He gave his head a tiny shake. One I would have missed if I hadn’t been watching him so intently.

“No, but why?”