Page 23 of Tessa

With a giggle, she leaned into Beau’s chiseled chest, laying her cheek against the soft cotton of the sweatshirt he was wearing, and inhaling his sweet, yet rugged scent. He smelled like pine trees and mint with just a hint of citrus. The combination was surprisingly intoxicating.

She was content there snuggling against Beau’s chest and even though he hadn’t been the one to discipline her, it didn’t feel awkward. Dax returned a few minutes later and joined them.

“You okay, kiddo?”

“Yeah,” she answered with a happy sigh. Even though her butt hurt, and Dax spanked a lot harder than she’d expected, it hadn’t felt awkward at all, and she didn’t feel weepy or out of sorts. She felt cared for and corrected and forgiven, exactly how she was supposed to.

“Do you need more cuddles?” Dax asked, coming up to hug her from behind, making her the creme filling in a Daddy sandwich. And as nice as that was, she really didn’t. She wasn’t a sensitive, heavy-aftercare type of Little, especially on a punishment that was routine like that had been. She was more inclined to accept that she’d messed up, accept her punishment, and move on to the next thing.

“Uh-uh,” she answered, shaking her head. “I wanna finish coloring my picture.”

“Okay, we can do that.”

They broke their embrace and all sat back down at the table, with Tessa wincing a little when her bottom made contact with the hard surface of the chair. Even with her pull-up providing padding, it wasn’t comfortable.

As they colored, conversation began to flow again, a bit stilted at first, like everyone was still processing, but eventually settling into an easy flow.

“Well, I’m done!” Beau declared, the first to finish his page, as he had chosen a simple Transformer with no background or action in the picture, and colored it red and black, forgoing any fancy shading or additional details.

Tessa leaned over to inspect it, with the tip of her tongue sticking out between her teeth. “That’s really good, Daddy Beau! But you needta write your name on it so we know who colored it.”

“I do? Oh you’re right, silly me.” Picking up the discarded black crayon, he painstakingly wrote “Daddy Beau” across the bottom in blocky lettering. “All done. What next?”

“Now you wait for us to be done,” Dax answered with a wink at Tessa. He was taking the project much more seriously, just like she was, and had chosen a picture with a lot of background and details. His Transformer, which he’d colored yellow, was standing atop a pile of rocks that had exploded and there were flames rising up the sides of the page. He was shading them very carefully to look like real fire.

Tessa wished she had the patience to color like that. She’d finished two of her three bears and was now working on the third. After that she still had trees and grass and a picnic blanket and basket to color.

“It’s gonna take me a while,” she announced to Beau, who had stood up, and was pacing around behind her.

At her declaration, he stopped directly behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders, prompting her to look up at him. “Is that okay, Daddy Beau?”

He leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “It’s perfectly okay. And after that, we can have lunch and then I think it will be naptime.”

“Booo!” Tessa chanted. A thought struck her and she went ahead and asked it because she knew her Daddies appreciated her directness. “Do I hafta go home to nap? Or can I stay here?”

“I think we can all nap together. And after that, we can head out to the strip and find a store so that you can have some things to keep at our place. We don’t have any Little girl supplies and we are going to need some.”

The thought of them spending money to do anything special for her knotted her stomach for reasons she couldn’t explain. “I don’t need anything special,” she protested. “I have lotsa stuff upstairs. I can just ask Baze if I can bring a few things down.”

“Nonsense,” Dax responded, without looking up from his coloring page. “It’s no trouble. It’s more convenient for us to have things like sippy cups and pull-ups and special plates at our place than it is for you to have to lug that stuff around constantly. Besides, and trust me on this, telling Beau not to spend money or do something nice for you when he’s already made up his mind… that’s an argument you will not win. Best not to even try unless you’re already spoiling for round two.”

Tessa’s eyes bulged and she shook her head emphatically back and forth. “No, thank you.” She still wasn’t crazy about the idea of them spending money on her, but she swallowed past the lump in her throat and focused her attention on the picture.

“I’m done!” Tessa exclaimed a while later, jumping up from the table and waving her picture in the air.

Beau had been done for thirty minutes, and Dax had finished shortly after him, but she had taken her time and put a lot of extra detail into her picture.

She’d added a sun in the corner of the page and given each of the boy bears a bow tie to match the one she’d added on top of the girl bear’s head. She’d put a checkered pattern on their picnic blanket, and even drawn a tiny stuffed giraffe on the page. Details were very important to her, and she’d really wanted her Daddies to like her picture.

“Oh! I forgot to add my name!” she hollered. Laying the paper flat on the table again, she grabbed a red crayon and dutifully added her name and the date at the bottom along with the memo “first playdate with Daddy Beau and Daddy Dax”.

When she finished again, she presented it to them.

“Oooh wow! Tessa, that’s amazing!” Beau, who was sitting right next to her, writing something on a yellow legal pad since he finally stopped pacing, took the paper and admired it with a warm smile on his face. “You’re an artist!”

Tessa beamed and blushed, shaking her head at his praise. “I’m not too good at drawing. Except for giraffes. That’s all I can do good.”

Beau didn’t argue with her, just took the piece of information offered in stride. “Well, you are very good at giraffes.”