Page 21 of Ace

Baze shook his head. “One cookie each after dinner. It’s not a weekend, little one. Some of us have to work and do important grown-up things.”

“Ugh, adulting, yuck,” Luna grumbled.

Lizzie choked back a delighted giggle even though she was one of the ones with boring grown up things to do the next day.

“Come on, clean up your toys, then head on into the kitchen and have some pizza,” Baze urged, finally getting them to move. Lizzie immediately started putting away blocks even though she wasn’t the least bit hungry.

The other girls, with the exception of Jade, left the toys, games and puzzles where they were, and ran to the kitchen like something was chasing them.

“Yay! Pizza night!” they cried.

Lizzie followed, but when the rest of them got in line to grab plates, she found Ace in the living area and sidled up to him. “Daddy!” she cried. “You’re still here!”

He scooped her into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. “Of course I’m still here. You didn’t think I was gonna leave you all alone on a playdate with strangers, did you?”

She shrugged. “They’re nice strangers, Daddy.”

“Well, that’s good.” He chuckled. “I had no doubt you’d all get along, but I still wasn’t gonna leave you alone.”

“Thank you for bringing me, and for not leaving me alone.” She dropped a spontaneous kiss on his lips, hugged him tight, and snuggled against his chest. “The pizza smells good, but I’m not hungry at all.”

“That’s okay. I explained to Baze that we’d already eaten.”

“Good. I don’t want him to think I’m being rude by not eating his food.”

“He won’t.” Daddy dropped a kiss on her nose. “Are you having fun?”

“So much fun, Daddy! They have a massive playroom, and so many Legos! I built a ship, and a tower and a cat!”

“A ship and a tower and a cat? Wow. It sounds like we need to get you some Legos of your own.”

She flushed with happiness and then quickly cooled her jets. Ace kept saying things like that, talking about them in the future. And she wanted to cling to those promises, to believe that what they had would live beyond one perfect day, but she also didn’t want to trust it and get her hopes up, because she already knew. When this ended, it would crush her.

“Do you want to do that?” Ace asked, still holding her tightly. “Get some Legos of your own? Maybe some for home and some to keep at Daddy’s?”

At Daddy’s. She wanted so badly to say yes, but she forced herself to stay chill and shrugged nonchalantly like it didn’t matter and she didn’t care one bit.

Ace peered at her, shifting her on his hip, and looked intently into her eyes. “You know, sweet little Lizzie, I get that our day didn’t go exactly the way we might have planned, and I don’t want you to fret about missing your chance. So let me just make this clear, right now. I do intend to take you home tonight, because we both have to work tomorrow, but I am not intending to make this a one-time thing. I was hoping we could spend the weekend together. Then we could be sure we would have enough time to do everything we wanted, and we don’t have to stress about what we don’t get to do today. How does that sound to you?”

Lizzie felt her whole body deflate with relief, like stress was a balloon someone had blown up inside her body and Daddy’s words were someone letting the air out so the balloon could zoom around the room. She wanted to zoom around the room with happiness, but she settled for throwing her arms around Ace’s neck.

“That sounds perfect!”

Chapter 9

Lizzie

She loved her job, working in the family business, delivering beer and liquor to dive bars all over Vegas, enjoying the peace and the driving, rocking out in the truck to whatever music she liked, getting to pop in and say hi to customers she’d known nearly her whole life since she’d been doing deliveries with her dad since she was knee-high to a grasshopper until she was old enough to do them herself.

Now though, work was the grind. Just another thing between her and her newly discovered Little side. All she wanted was to curl up in her jammies, color in her coloring book, build with Legos and hug Bert. But more than that, she wanted to be with her Daddy. Of course she couldn’t because Ace also had a job and responsibilities just like she did but very quickly what had started as an experimentation for both of them had changed into something else and now it was starting to feel very very real.

It was Friday now, her busiest day, making sure all the bars on her route were stocked up for the weekend. Only a few more hours of work then she could take her hair out of the ponytail, put it in braids, don the new Little gear she’d purchased last night from Alice and her Daddy Lyle’s shop, pack a bag and head to Utopia. She and her Daddy had big plans to spend the entire weekend together.

She was nervous because he said they would make it real, come up with rules and stuff. The idea made her queasy because having rules meant being able to break them and breaking them meant spankings and whatever other punishments Ace came up with. The idea did funny twisty things to her insides.

She wasn’t sure she was ready for all that, but Daddy said she was and now she knew she’d be hurt if he didn’t follow through.

The anticipation was making the hours tick by extra slowly and, of course, her first stop of the day was her least favorite. The Viper’s Den. The Vipers were an MC club too, but unlike the Sin City Saints, they were more of a gang, and they certainly didn’t go around doing good and advocating for victims. They were the kind of guys who created the victims Ace and the Saints advocated for. She knew all that, but they’d never been bad to her. Oh they cat-called and made comments and brushed by her a little too close and flirted in a way that was more aggressive than sexy, but the club president Vinny always let it go just far enough but not too far before he roped his men in and told them to behave. If Vinny wasn’t around though, that’s when shit got bad.