The night was no longer young, Maddy and Janice had sunk several hours into their game, and they were both starting to yawn as the late hour started affecting them.

“Oh no!” Maddy exclaimed as her character was obliterated by a fireball. Janice put up a valiant effort to bring the fight around but eventually the combat ended in the game over screen. Janice and Maddy both groaned and threw their heads back. “All right load it up. Let’s go again.”

“No Maddy,” Janice instead quit the game. “We’re tired. We’re just gonna keep making mistakes, we gotta call it.”

“But when are we gonna get to play again?” Maddy whined.

“Eventually,” Janice answered plainly.

“When’s that?”

“Eventually,” Janice repeated. Maddy flopped into Janice’s lap with a groan. Janice laughed and playfully scratched Maddy’s now exposed tummy over her onesie. “How’s your diaper doing?” Janice asked already moving to the onesie’s snaps.

“Probably soaked,” Maddy said annoyed.

“You’re not wrong,” Janice said as she squished the diaper against Maddy. “Don’t be so glum about it. You act like I don’t deal with it every day.

“But you shouldn’t have to I should be mmph …” Maddy was cut off by having the pacifier clipped to her onesie pushed into her mouth.

“Don’t even start with that Maddy,” Janice scolded as she snapped Maddy’s onesie shut again. Maddy suckled the pacifier in defeat. “Right, I’ll go refill your baba, meet me in your room for a diaper change,” Janice playfully swatted Maddy’s diaper as she scrambled to a standing position, stretching as she did. Janice smiled as she heard Maddy sleepily shuffle up the stairs while she grabbed the mostly empty bottle and unscrewed the large nipple top. She quickly refilled it with the water dispenser in the kitchen and screwed it back shut as she walked up stairs.

She entered the nursery to see Maddy waiting on the changing table kicking her feet, replacement diaper and changing supplies already laid out at the foot end of the changing table. When Maddy saw Janice enter, she spun around and laid down flat on the table. Janice sat the bottle down on a nearby nightstand and quickly got to work, securing Maddy to the table with its restraints.

“What time is it?” Janice asked as she snapped open the onesie in one smooth motion.

“You’re probably gonna be mad if I tell you,” Maddy admitted. Janice shot a look as she rolled up the used diaper and disposed it in the nearby diaper pail. Maddy held up two fingers in her restrained hand.

“Ugh! Why do I let you keep me up this late,” Janice complained as she fluffed up the new diaper.

“What?!” Maddy stood up as much as she could. “Don’t pin this on me!”

“You’re supposed to tell me when it’s getting late,” Janice laid the new diaper underneath Maddy.

“When did we agree to that?” Maddy replied incredulously. “What am I, your alarm clock?” Janice giggled as she wiped Maddy down with a baby wipe.

“Actually, you kinda are an alarm clock you know,” Janice pondered as she sprinkled some baby powder over Maddy. “You need a diaper change like every few hours I could probably keep time on it.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Maddy shrugged as Janice taped the new diaper on snugly.

“Josh and Jill were the same way so it’s not just a you thing,” Janice said releasing Maddy who sat up with a groaning stretch.

“Thanks babe,” Maddy leaned up and pecked a kiss on Janice’s cheek. Janice gave a goofy smile in response. “You off to bed?”

“We’re both off to bed I thought,” Janice sternly crossed her arms.

“I might stay up a little longer and work on my project,” Maddy gestured to the bathroom that connected her two rooms. Josh’s room had been converted into something like an office space for Maddy, it had a tv and her computer in it, she spent a lot of her alone time in there.

“Maddy Schwartsman it is two a.m.,” Janice unintentionally donned her stern mom voice.

“Closer to two thirty now,” Maddy corrected. “Look I need to get it done, the conference is coming up. I just wanna go over some reports for this one start up.”

“Maddy!”

“It’ll take an hour tops.”

“You’ll have an hour tops when you go to work on Monday so save it for then,” Janice said sternly. “We’re supposed to be going shopping tomorrow and I don’t want you tired the whole time.” There was a tense moment of silence before Janice spoke up again. “Crib. Now.” Janice pointed to the crib sternly. After a moment Maddy relented with a sigh and clambered into the crib.

“I would have been fine. I’ve stayed up later you know,” Maddy said defensively.

“I guess we’ll never know,” Janice said as she closed the crib door shut and secured the lock.

“Really? You're locking me in here?” Maddy whined on hearing the click of the crib’s lock. The crib’s latch was a simple gate like mechanism. One that Maddy had learned to open from the inside. Thankfully for Janice they made padlocks to prevent such escape attempts, and Janice had such a padlock which she frequently used to secure her little escape artist. This was a lock with a series of five wheels of numbers that needed to be in certain positions to open. She locked it shut and spun the wheels for good measure.

“Really. I know you’re gonna sneak out as soon as I leave unless I lock you in here,” Janice handed Maddy’s bottle through the bars of the crib. Maddy took it with a pout. “Now which friend do you want tonight?” Janice moved mover to a clothes hamper across from the changing table that was overflowing with stuffed animals.

“Sub Woofer,” Maddy said in defeat. Janice fetched a light brown stuffed dog with incredibly floppy ears. She gently lowered it to Maddy over the bars since it was too big to squeeze through them. Janice tried to hide a smirk as she looked back at Maddy. Maddy was pouting and holding Sub Woofer lose to her chest with one hand and her bottle in the other. “What?” Maddy said annoyed.

“I can’t help it. You just look so cute,” Janice explained. Maddy’s pout turned into a blush.

“Good night,” Maddy said making a dramatic show of getting inside the covers.

“Night. I love you.”

“Love you too,” a sense of genuineness bled through Maddy’s pouting. “Don’t forget about me in here in the morning.”

“I won’t I promise,” Janice assured. As she flicked the lights of the nursery off a small night light kicked on. Janice took a quick moment to peek at Maddy snuggling Sub Woofer trying to sleep before closing the door and making her way across the hall to her own room.

Janice laid down in her own bed with a content smile. She couldn't help but feel a little bad about locking Maddy up, especially now as she was enjoying her larger open bed while Maddy was stuck in a smaller crib. She shrugged it off though. Maddy had proven time and time again that she didn’t mind sleeping in a crib and actually preferred it. She didn’t even mind being locked in it all that much. Janice often wondered about the implications of that, and it gave her conflicted emotions. She was, on one hand, sad that Maddy was locked up in her crib growing up so much that it was a mundane thing for her now, but at the same time she took advantage of locking Maddy in her crib plenty herself. She rationalized it away without thinking too hard about it. Seeing Maddy locked in a crib was attractive to her in the same way that seeing her naked was attractive. Enjoying seeing her partner in compromising positions was a quirk about herself Janice understood and accepted. It was a bonus that it was also convenient on nights like these when Maddy would otherwise be getting into trouble. She looked absolutely adorable in there as well.

After settling into bed, Janice turned off the lap on her bed side table and tried to go to sleep.

Maddy, predictably, attempted to escape from her crib the second she was alone. A few seconds after she heard the door close, she was stretching her hands through the crib bars to reach its latch. She could feel the pad lock and could even guess the code her girlfriend had programmed it with, but she didn’t have the dexterity to move the wheels of the lock or the angle to see what the numbers were. The latch on the crib was deliberately situated in a way that it was hard to reach from the inside. Maddy could barely operate the latch with her fingers by stretching and because she's had decades of practice breaking out of her crib, but even for her, the precise movements needed for the lock was impossible form the inside.

Maddy fell back on her diapered bottom after she gave up. She looked at Sub Woofer with a pout.

“Locked in again buddy,” she said sympathetically picking up the stuffed dog. “We should probably go to bed,” Maddy started a thought, but it deviated almost immediately. “Or I could just do my work on my phone.” Maddy said with a devilish grin. With determination she crawled to the spot in her crib where she usually kept her phone. It was a soft colorful fabric cloth draped over the end of the crib that held a set of pockets. Several power cables were run from a nearby outlet to these pockets. They usually contained her phone and her portable games console, things to help entertain her on the nights when Janice went to bed early.

Maddy’s grin faded when she got to these pockets and found them empty. She looked past the pockets and she could see that both her phone and her game were sitting just out of reach on a nearby table.

“That clever bitch,” Maddy complained to Sub Woofer, who’s head shifted slightly in sympathy. Maddy smiled and giggled a bit. Really the jury was out on whether her girlfriend had preemptively kept her electronics out of reach to prevent this late night escapade, or she had just put them there herself and didn’t have the time to place them back in their proper place.

Maddy sat at the end of her crib for a moment, holding Sub Woofer in her crossed legs as her pacifier found its way into her mouth. She absent-mindedly suckled it while she thought for a moment.

Did she even really want to engage in late night research or gaming? If she was honest with herself though, she was just doing it because she wasn’t supposed to, and she found herself happy that she was prevented from doing so.

Maddy laid down and snuggled into the fluffy covers of the crib and brought Sub Woofer close to her. She thought back to similar nights like this one in her childhood. Her mother, or more usually her nanny, always locked her in her crib, even into her late teens when that really wasn't needed. Maddy remembered being very frustrated. Several mornings of being made to wait in the crib in a soaked diaper were why she asked Janice every night she was locked up not to forget about her in the morning, and to her credit it was rare that she did. Even when she did Maddy did not feel the same sense of frustrated helplessness, instead she had a feeling she couldn’t quite place, but one she didn’t mind. She looked into the eyes of Sub Woofer and asked a silent question.

Why is this fun now when it was horrible back then? Why did she get butterflies in her tummy when her girlfriend locked her up in her crib, when she hated it when her nanny did it? Why did the strange relationship they have seem so normal to her?

Sub Woofer did not offer a response.

“We really gotta get to bed,” Maddy smiled at her toy and put the thoughts away for now.

AUTHORS NOTE: Here's the next new chapter everyone. A cute little night time routine. Get excited for a trip to the mall in the next chapter, and you can read that next chapter a week early over on my ream https://reamstories.com/bigred0603 or subscribe star https://subscribestar.adult/bigred0603 hope you all enjoy