Loosening the Bun

That made sense. And she was grateful. "Thank you, Gavin. And I look forward to touching your peni...your cock soon." She experienced a hit of adrenaline filled with shame and excitement at saying something so crude. Don't even think about it, Gran.

He groaned and kissed her forehead. "Now you're just making it harder. Literally AND figuratively."

She giggled. Was sex supposed to be fun?

As promised, he brought her a glass of water after searching the kitchen and disappeared into the bathroom for about two minutes. About a minute in, she heard a long groan.

She went to tidy her hair out of habit and felt that it was halfway out of her bun. It must look like she'd been through a cyclone! She fought the urge to find a mirror and simply re-pinned by feel. I don't need to be perfect.

When he came out of the bathroom, the kitties woke up, and Gavin & June spent the afternoon cuddled on the couch watching the kitties, the TV, and each other.

*

As she snuggled into her bed later that night, she texted her brother.

June: Hello, Bruce. How are you tonight?

Bruce: ummm...fine junie. u ok? u never next at night.

June: How is the job going? Still well?

Bruce: yeah, its great.

June: It turns out that your boss and I play in the band together.

Bruce:????? no way! how did you find out?

June: We went on a...well, it was a date.

Bruce:!!!!!!!!!! YOU WENT ON A DATE??????

June: Two dates, if you count that we spent the day together today.

Bruce: I literally just pinhed mylsf.

June: You what?

Bruce: pinched myself because this can't be reality

June: laughing out loud

Bruce: so um did he tell you about the store

June: The Tool BoXXX, not the Tool Box? Yes, he did.

Bruce: and you didn't faint or run screaming?

June: I almost did, but I kept hearing you tell me to loosen the bun a little. Oh, and here...

She took a picture of the kitties snoozing on the end of her bed and sent them.

June: Meet Mitzy and Jumbo Shrimp. I adopted them today. I already don't know what I'd do without them.

Bruce: HOLY SHOT! WHO ARE YOU AND WHERE IS JUNE DID YOU KIDNAP HER

June: I think I really like him, Bruce. We kissed today. A lot. And it felt...swoony...and incredible. He's going to come with me to Sugar Show on Saturday.

Bruce: i'm so fracking happy for u sis. Gavins great and I approve. proud of u. love u lots.

June: I love you too, Bruce.

Maybe it was time to make more changes and ditch the bun completely. Her heart beat a staccato rhythm at the thought. Okay, maybe start with a haircut.

Chapter 5

The next morning, Gavin stood in the shower and slowly jacked his foreskin over the head of his cock while playing with his balls. Kissing June had been foreplay, no other touching required. He closed his eyes and thought of her tentative kisses becoming needy, her tongue reaching out for his. The way her hips were thrusting, and her breath panted against his face. And oh, the feel of her tiny body against his. He just wanted to own her. He bet her little pussy would wrap around him so tightly it would yank the orgasm right out of him.

"Fuuuuuck," he groaned as cum shot out onto the shower wall. He milked more dribbles out and imagined June on her knees waiting with her tongue out. "Getting a little ahead of yourself there, dude," he said aloud.

He finished washing and dried off before dressing and heading out to work. He was in the back working on paperwork when Bruce arrived an hour later.

"Yo! Daddio!" Bruce called out.

He raised an eyebrow even though no one could see him. Bruce hadn't actually pulled the Daddy out until now. He supposed he should respond in kind. "Yo, BB!"

Bruce ambled into his office with an angry face and crossed arms. "So, I hear you know June."

Ah, so that's what this is about. "Yes, is this the 'if you hurt her, I'll kill you' conversation?" He matched Bruce's posture.

Bruce's stern face cracked, and he smiled wide. "Man, I'm so fucking happy right now!" He cleared his throat and tried to adopt the angry face again. "I mean, I'll fuck you up if you hurt her." The smile came back out. "I'm not kidding about that, but I'm so glad it's you, for real. I know you'll take good care of her. But if you aren't serious, please let her down easy and soon. She's been living life, first for our grandmother, and then for her dickhead of an ex. Who, by the way, didn't know a pussy from a nipple and didn't even know how to spell foreplay."

Gavin's head was starting to spin. "How do you know all this about her ex?"

"Junie 'n me are super close. She has trouble talking about sex in general...Gran taught her that wasn't proper for a lady, but I got some wine into her one night and the whole story came out. I won't share more detail than that, but the guy was a douche who didn't care about her pleasure at all. I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't know the joys of sex, which is a sad, sad thing."

"Thank you for telling me that. I can't promise this is serious, but I won't count it out either. I sincerely like her and promise to take care of her feelings, even if things don't work out," Gavin told him earnestly. "I'm glad you guys are so close."

"She's my best friend, even over my roommate, Chase. She's been more than just my sister since the day I was born. Her happiness is more important than my own." Bruce had visible tears in his eyes.

"Aw, come here, man." Gavin stepped toward Bruce, and they gave each other a back-slapping hug. "Now go get to work. Those new cock cages won't display themselves."

"Yes, Daddy," Bruce said with a salute before going back into the main part of the store.

"Fucker," Gavin said under his breath with a smile.

*

The next morning, Gavin arrived at June's house at 7 am with coffee and breakfast. He normally avoided this hour like the plague, but the excitement of spending the day with June burned away the sleepiness.

When June opened the door, he almost dropped everything. She'd been to the salon, and her hair had been cut so that shiny waves framed her face. It looked like she was wearing a bit of mascara and lip gloss, making her eyes pop. She was wearing a fitted, blue, V-neck top, and a stylish, long, denim skirt, and her Keds. Nothing about her outfit was provocative at all, but the transformation was stunning.

"H...hi, Gavin," she said, shyly.

He unfroze himself with effort. "Damn, JB." He almost told her how beautiful she looked, but he didn't want her to think she hadn't been beautiful before. "You look like...you. How do you feel?" That may not have been the right thing to say either.

"I...I feel beautiful. I feel...transformed. It's shocking the difference a simple haircut and a new outfit can make. Here, come in before Jumbo Shrimp runs out." She took the coffee from him, and he closed the door behind him.

He took one step into the room before there was a tiny furball attached to his pants. He reached down and gently detached the tiny claws before picking him up and nuzzling the little head. Jumbo Shrimp repaid the gesture by biting Gavin's nose and then licking it.

"He's full of himself. I went out and bought one of those flyer toys yesterday and had him flying all over the room." Her smile showed how much fun she was having with it.

He couldn't get over how different she looked. Impulsively, he put down the bag of food, stalked over to her, and kissed her deeply. She fisted his beard in one hand and his shirt in the other and tentatively licked into his mouth. She gasped and went up on her tiptoes to get closer.

He was going to deepen the kiss when the sound of a bag ripping caught his attention. He turned his head to find Mitzy tearing into the bag with her teeth and Jumbo Shrimp looking like he was getting ready to join in.

"Oh, Drat!" June ran over to extract the bag before the kitties could rip into the actual food. "This smells good; what did you bring me?"

"Sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits. I figured we could rearrange any ingredients you didn't like."

"Yum, thank you. I'm starved. I didn't eat dinner last night. I was too nervous about getting everything finished." She set the food on the kitchen table and then brought the coffee over. Before she could sit, Jumbo Shrimp was in the bag again like a little shark trying to chomp on the food.

"Shrimp, no!" she said sternly. She picked him up and took him to the guest room where she locked him in. She huffed a sigh as she sat back down. "My research indicates that this is typical behavior for kittens, and he should grow out of it if we don't encourage it."

His heart warmed at her use of 'we'. "You shortened his name to Shrimp?"

"Not officially. I think Jumbo Shrimp is really cute, but it's a mouthful. I've called him both Jumbo and Shrimp. I know I can change his name to whatever I want, but I'm sticking with it for now. And Mitzy will still be Mitzy. It fits her. She cuddled on my lap last night. It was marvelous...So calming when I was so stressed."

They ate their food quietly and he was once again grateful for her ability to let a comfortable silence be just that.

She balled up her trash and put it in the torn bag. "Okay, we'd better get on the road. All of the boxes on the counter need to go. Everything is packed securely but is extremely fragile. Hopefully, we can get everything arranged in the car so that nothing slides around." She shook out her hands as if shaking off nerves. "Okay, let's do this." Her new look seemed to give her a new confidence that was magnetic.

He put Mitzy in the room with Jumbo Shrimp and they propped the garage door open. They brought all the boxes out and carefully arranged them in the trunk and backseat. June went back inside and made sure the kitties had food and water before letting them back out into the house and locking the door behind her.

As she started the car and plugged her phone in, Outkast's B.O.B started blaring through the speakers. Gavin jumped so hard his head hit the ceiling and he would have fallen out of the car had the door not been closed. He turned his head slowly toward June and raised an eyebrow.

She turned the volume down and a giggle, then another, and another poured out of her until they were both belly laughing. "I'm...sorry..." Her laughter was so contagious. "I love Outkast. Are you shocked?"

He leaned over and kissed her soundly. "The best kind of shocked. What other hidden layers do you have buried in that pretty head of yours?"

"I feel like this is where a normal woman would say something coy," she said uncertainly. Maybe...you'll just have to find out?"

"Is that an invitation?"

She put the car in drive, opened the garage, and turned out into her neighborhood before answering. "Yes."

He settled his palm on her thigh. "Good."

The radio still played softly, though now it was some kind of female-fronted rock band. "Who is this?" he asked.

"Icon For Hire. I love their sound." She glanced over at him, presumably to see his reaction.

"I like it. So, tell me about today. What should I expect and how can I help you?"

"I'm entering in two categories: Sculpted Cakes, and Decorated Cookies. For the cake, 85% of the material has to be edible. The theme this year is At The Ball and artists can interpret it however they choose. I've created a formal dress. If I'm able to get everything assembled properly, I think I may have a chance of placing this year. The cookies are the same theme, but I've gone in a different direction and made a hanging display."

"Wow! What do you get if you win?"

"There's a small cash prize, but mostly notoriety and validation."

"Have you won before?"

"This is my first year entering in Cookies. I got an honorable mention in Cakes once. The talent you'll see here is incredible."

He removed his hand from her thigh and idly played with the waves at her nape. Her hair was so soft. She made a sound almost like a purr.

"That feels very nice. Thank you." She took her right hand off the steering wheel and held it in the air for a moment before hesitantly placing it on his left thigh.

He trailed his knuckle down her arm and then intertwined their fingers. He watched goosebumps follow his path and felt a deep sense of satisfaction at knowing he affected her as much as she affected him.

"So, what can I do to help you today?"

"Mostly muscle, to be honest. I think I've accounted for things that might go wrong, but I may need you to help me troubleshoot. It just helps to have someone to talk things through with."

"That I can do." He squeezed her hand. "So, Bruce said you told him about us?"

"I did. Is that okay?" Her brow furrowed and her expression looked like she was waiting for him to respond negatively.

"Of course, it's okay. He only threatened me a little bit. Called me Daddy. Did the whole protective brother bit. And then hugged the hell out of me."

"He called you Daddy?!" she asked through a laugh.

"Heh, yeah. Within the first five minutes of meeting him, I asked if I could call him BB when he pissed me off, and he said, only if he could call me Daddy when I pissed him off. It's a joke between us now."

She was quiet for a moment. "Have...do..." She seemed to be unsure of what she wanted to ask.

"You can ask me anything, JB."

"Have you been called Daddy before?" she asked timidly. "Not as a joke, I mean."

She seemed intrigued. His breath caught and his dick plumped in his jeans. "No."

"Oh," she said quietly.

He watched her profile intently. "But I've thought about it before. I just haven't had a relationship that worked with that dynamic."

Her tight grip on his hand relaxed. "I've read a couple of books with that dynamic and I always found it intriguing. It wasn't even the sex, just the trust and care between the characters; the communication so there was no guessing, you know?"

He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. "I do. Every relationship should have that communication, even without the power dynamic. In practice though, that's not always the case. Even when someone doesn't stop talking, it doesn't mean that they're really communicating."

Her head whipped to the side briefly. "Yes," she said emphatically. "Robbie talked and talked but never seemed to say anything useful. He would tell me all of the ways that I wasn't right, or I disappointed him, but he could never help me understand how I could make things better. It was always about what he wanted and needed." She shrugged.

"My ex was the same. Maybe we should introduce them," Gavin said facetiously.

"That would serve them right, would it not?" She giggled. "In the end, I think I just kept leaning on Gran's teachings and hoping that would solve all my problems."

"Did it work?" he asked softly.

She let out a very unladylike snort and then jerked her hand out of his to slap it over her mouth. At least she had the presence of mind to keep a hand on the wheel.

"That was adorable. I'm guessing it didn't work?" He gently grabbed her wrist and stole her hand back.

"No. But things are starting to look up."

"I think you've made huge strides in the past few days. I can see your shields falling away."

"My old lady costume, you mean?"

"Well, you said it, I didn't." He kissed her hand.

"You weren't supposed to agree with me!" she said with a laugh.

"No? Okay. It wasn't an old lady costume. You were auditioning for Sophia on The Golden Girls."

She snorted out another laugh and thankfully pulled up to a stoplight where she laughed so hard that a few tears escaped. "Oh goodness, it really was that bad, wasn't it?"

"All you needed was the purse. I'm sure I can find you one on eBay."

A horn honked behind them, and she wiped her eyes and started moving again.

"Thank you," she said sincerely.

"For what?"

"For being kindly honest and laughing with me. You're fun. I think I had forgotten fun."

What a sad concept. "You deserve honesty and laughter. And you deserve fun."

"You're right. I do."

He squeezed her hand again in support.

"Okay, we're here. Now for the stress before it can be fun. Would you mind hopping out and grabbing a cart?"

"Sure thing." He got out and snagged one of the rolling luggage carts and pulled it into the parking lot where June found a space.

When she got out of the car, she had a serious expression that he assumed was her 'game face'.

"It's warm today, so we need to work as quickly as possible to get everything in, but not so quickly that something gets jostled."

"Heard. I'll let you direct, and I'll just do what you ask me to do."

She proceeded to boss him around with efficiency and kindness that most supervisors could take notes from. When they got inside, he waited while she completed the registration cards. Her handwriting was neat and feminine, and long letters like y and g had swoopy bottoms.

"Let's take care of the cookies first so I can focus on the cake for as long as possible." She walked briskly to the cookie area and found an empty space. She opened one of the boxes and handed him a spherical object wrapped in bubble wrap. "Will you open that, please?"

He gently removed the tape and unwrapped the bubble wrap to reveal a spiky ball in shades of blue. "What's this? Is it decoration for your area?"

She looked at him with a funny expression. "No, that's one of the cookies."

He startled so hard he almost dropped the precious item. "This?!" He looked at it up close and could now see that the blue spikes were icing.

She giggled. "Yes. They're going to hang from this." She gestured to a structure she'd just put together. "I went more literal with the Ball theme here."

They worked quickly to unwrap and hang the remaining balls in varying colors. They were stunning and he couldn't seem to look away. While he was hanging the last one, the hanging mechanism broke off and the cookie fell to the table, cracking in half. His heart fell to his stomach. "JB, I'm so sorry! I don't know what happened! Oh my God." If he ruined this for her...

"Hey, Gavin." She tugged his beard gently and pecked a kiss on his lips. "I came prepared. These things happen all the time. It's part of what makes the medium a challenge." She gently picked up the pieces and then pulled something out of her bag of tricks that glued the halves back together. She then pulled out a little piping bag of icing to fix the spikes that had broken off in the fall.

"There. What do you think?" she asked earnestly.

"It's stunning. I didn't even know you could do this with cookies."

She blushed. "Thank you. Okay, now on to the hard part."

He wasn't sure if his heart could handle the hard part.

They rolled the cart to a new area and started opening boxes. Over the next two hours, he followed her directions with care as they assembled the "cake." He would forever put quotation marks around that word to describe this display.

The result was...he was speechless. A long, indigo evening gown with a train that had tiny lights that looked like stars all across the torso stood regally on the table. Something she called wafer paper that she must have cut by hand created a lacy effect along the back. She had used rice cereal treats for some of the areas that had needed to be molded. He didn't even know you could do that! She was currently putting the finishing touches on it with a piping bag.

"Do you see anything out of place?" She was looking at it with a critical eye and frowning or clucking at a few places.

"Are you serious?" his voice rose at the end. What could she possibly see that was wrong?