1
Sanders
“Daddies are like good decaf coffee. They don’t actually exist,” I said as I poured a cup of decaf for a drive-through customer.
My family’s coffee shop, The Little Bean, served the best decaf in Red Canyon, but it was still decaf. Which meant it tasted like ass.
Leo rolled his eyes as he snapped a lid on the coffee cup in my hands. “That’s not true. You just have to keep trying. You haven’t gotten laid in three years, Sanders.”
“It hasn’t been that long, has it?”
He folded his arms across his chest and nodded.
That couldn’t be right.
I ambled over to the drive-through window and pulled it open to hand the coffee to a sweaty brunette wearing a camo jacket and yoga pants.
“Just so you know, your mic is on,” she said.
Fuck.
I switched it off. “Sorry, that was really unprofessional. I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t worry about it. Good luck with the whole, ahem, Daddy thing.” She smiled and pulled away from the drive-through.
“And you just gave that decaf away for free,” Leo said.
Shit. What was wrong with me today?
I picked up a wet rag from the sink and started wiping down the counters. Had it really been three years? The last time I had sex was a random hookup during our trip to Vegas… which had been three winters ago.
“It’s not like there are a lot of options,” I reminded Leo.
We lived in a small resort town where we were literally the only two gay guys who weren’t married or obsessed with football. I had tried dating the football-obsessed guy, but it didn’t worked out. He was always at the gym, and I… well, I wasn’t at the gym. Ever.
I wasn’t the sporty, muscular, drop-dead-gorgeous kind of gay. I was more the hopelessly uncoordinated and shaped-like-a-spaghetti-noodle kind of gay, complete with the shoulders of an awkward teenager even though I was twenty-five.
It wasn’t all that surprising I was single.
Leo leaned back against the counter and flashed his standard smirk that made his dimples pop. He had proper man shoulders, quirky plant tattoos that wrapped around both of his toned arms, and an asymmetrical haircut that made him look much cooler than me. He also had a boyfriend.
While I had failed spectacularly with the gay football enthusiast, Leo had done rather well with him. Their relationship was largely comprised of sex and hanging out at the gym, but that seemed to work for them.
“You know that kink app I made you sign up for a year ago?” he asked.
“You mean the app where I got rejected by both of the gay Doms who live within twenty-five miles of here?”
“Yeah, that one.”
I sighed. “What about it?”
“They have a new Christmas feature.”
I turned my back to him. As much as I adored Christmas, I couldn’t go down that road again.
“I hate internet dating, Leo. My dyslexia makes me look stupid.”
Both of the Doms I’d tried to connect with had been put off by my spelling mistakes.
“Which is why I thought we could try putting the app on my phone this time.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and swiped across the screen a few times, turning it toward me when the handcuff icon for the Cuffd app dominated the screen.
“Shhhh! What if someone sees?” I scanned the coffee shop, which was mostly empty at this time of day, except for Mrs. Avery, who sat at her regular table near the door. She was a very good-natured seventy-year-old woman who drank tea and read in the coffee shop every afternoon.
“Oh, stop worrying. Mrs. Avery turns down her hearing aids when she’s reading,” Leo said. That was true. And it looked like she was already in the thick of it with a murder mystery. This one had a ball of yarn on the cover. I wasn’t sure what yarn had to do with murder, but who was I to judge?
Leo typed something on his phone and brought up a tab with a Santa head above a bunch of text. “Look. You can write a letter to Santa.”
No way.
“Here, I’ll read it out loud,” Leo offered, then continued in a whisper:
Wishing for a Dominant of your own this Christmas?
Send a letter to Santa with a wish list describing your perfect Dominant, and we’ll share it with our Santa Doms and Dommes here at Cuffd. If one of them fits your list, they’ll message you back with a simple question: Have you been naughty or nice this year?
It’s up to you how you want to answer…
“That’s… kind of cute,” I admitted.
“See? If you want to do this, I don’t mind helping. You can tell me what you want your letter to say, and I’ll type it out. I can even help you with the profile.”
I shook my head. “I’d still have to respond, and Cuffd doesn’t have speech to text.”
“That’s why I downloaded it on my phone. I can be your speech to text. Hell, I’ll even pay for the subscription this month as an early Christmas present. What do you think?”
The chances of me meeting a guy who wasn’t a tourist in Red Canyon were almost nonexistent unless I tried online dating again. Most of the people who lived here were like Mrs. Avery—I’d known them since childhood. The chances of meeting a Daddy or any other kind of Dom were even worse.
“Okay, but I don’t want this to be a thing we talk about every second of every day. We’re just going to do a quick letter, then I’m going to try not to think about it unless someone responds, okay?”
The fact remained that even if this was the only way I’d have a chance at finding a Daddy, the chances were still slim to none. I refused to get my hopes up.
Leo grinned with unbridled glee. He might look cooler than me, but he was still a goof at heart. That was why we’d been best friends since we were little.
“So… Dear Santa…” he trailed off, waiting for me to continue.
God, how did one go about writing a letter to Santa to ask for a Daddy?
“Uh, Dear Santa. I… um, want a Daddy.”
Leo’s fingers flew across his phone, then he looked up at me for more.
“I’m not too picky or anything. Just someone nice.”
Leo raised his eyebrows in obvious annoyance. “This is your letter to Santa. Santa’s fucking magical. Go big or go home. Tell me about your dream Daddy.”
It seemed like a waste of time. My dream Daddy would never actually want me. I wasn’t a catch like Leo. I was just an awkward, spaghetti noodle, barista boy who talked too much and had no sense of style.
But… Leo was right. Christmas was magical. What did I have to lose? It wasn’t likely someone would respond anyway. And if they did, I’d just consider it a bonus.
What kind of Daddy would I ask for if I knew Santa would bring him to me on Christmas Eve? If I was going to actually do this thing, I might as well dream a little bit.
“Dear Santa, I want a Daddy… who will take care of me.” That was the fantasy that had drawn me to Cuffd in the first place, hoping that a man like that actually existed. I still wasn’t convinced one did.
“I want forehead kisses.”
Leo’s grin widened. “Yes!”
“And games of footsie under the table when we go to dinner.”