Page 27 of Daddy's Little Chaos Gremlin

They were both respectful as they moved along the path, Tristan never stepping off it to take his pictures, while Zephyr was content to follow him and study everything. It wasn’t a big place, but walking any grounds with a photographer was a different experience. We’d found a boy who didn’t whine or get bored. He just eagerly took everything in, even cocking his head and studying the headstones from different angles the way Tristan was doing with his camera. When we finished, he was just as excited as Tristan to see the next site I had in store for them, and skipped to the car, getting his seatbelt buckled before I’d evenclimbed in. Still, I checked it to make certain it was secure and snug.

“I’m going to make tombstones,” Tristan declared. “It’s going to take a lot of Styrofoam, like big blocks of it, and I’ll have to hit up the craft stores when we get back and see what they have for fake vines in their flower section. I’ll have to practice my airbrush techniques, but if I can make the Styrofoam grave markers look like the ones in the cemetery, we can combine them with the ideas we already had for the moon shoot and create some creepy bondage pieces.

“Ohh, does that mean I get to wear makeup?” Zephyr asked. “I can go full on goth if you need me to.”

“Even your hair?”

“I love going deep black and then dying the tips white.”

“That would be prefect. I’ve got a costume trunk we can dig through, and I’m sure we can find stuff at the thrift stores, too, that’s where I get my best pieces from.”

“Me, too. Those purple and silver jeans with the chains that I showed you, I thrifted everything to make them. The chains were just pet chains that I spray-painted, and the extra loops were cut from another pair of jeans and sewed on, along with the cargo pockets and the patches.”

“They’d be perfect with a mesh crop top.”

“I love wearing them,” Zephyr said. “I keep meaning to get a few more piercings to show off underneath, but I’ve chickened out every time I’ve gone to have my nipples done.”

“Maybe you just need someone to hold your hand,” I offered.

“Maybe,” he said as I glanced down at himself.

I wonder if he was picturing what the piercings would look like, the way I walked beside him with an image stuck in my head of twisting them and listening to him cry out while I fucked him. As exhausted as I’d been when I passed out last night, I’d clearly not gotten enough of my boys.

“Do you have to travel like this often?” Zephyr asked as we walked.

“You mean at the drop of a dime? No, usually I have time to plan a trip out weeks, if not months in advance,” I explained. “The only time I have to rush off the way we did to come here is when someone screws up royally.”

“Did they get fired?”

“You better believe it. My clients trust me with their lives. I hate getting frantic calls telling me their security has been jeopardized. There are many things that I believe in second chances for, but not when it puts someone else in danger. That’s non-negotiable for me. I don’t let the people I love put themselves in danger, either, so you best keep that in mind when you two are planning out your stunts. I’m all for pushing the envelope, but I insist upon every conceivable safety measure being in place and having the opportunity to study any plans or blueprints you draw up, before you start practicing anything.”

“I’m okay with that,” I said. “I’m used to having a spotter when I’m trying anything new, so I’ll stick to the things I know I can perform effortlessly, until something comes up where I’ll need one.”

“That sounds like a good plan. I’ll expect you to keep to it,” I insisted. “I’ll want to vet any spotter that you require to becertain that they have the knowledge and training to do what you need them to do.”

“I will. I promise,” Zephyr insisted. “And I’m perfectly fine with you vetting my spotters. I don’t know anyone outside of Paulie that I trust and could recommend.”

“That’s my good boy,” I said. “And if your friend Paulie is available when the time comes, I’d be happy to fly him in to assist with the project.”

He preened at hearing that. Praise would clearly be the easiest means of encouraging him. With Tristan, there were times when he was so critical of himself that he was unable to hear others when they tried to tell him how spectacular he was. He required distraction and immediate removal from whatever it was that was stressing him out and making him anxious and obsessive. Sometimes I required the same, especially when I was deep in negotiations with a new client’s management team.

Growing a name for myself within the personal security industry had taken a great deal of hard work and sacrifice. I’d spent a lot of time scouting and hand-picking that first team and being cautious about the clients we took. I’d never wanted us to be mistaken for mercenaries, or the kinds of men who could be hired to look the other way when crimes were being committed. We were not enforcers, and we were a hell of a lot more than hired muscle. We were bodyguards. We didn’t just protect. Our job was to ensure that our principals were able to live their lives as uninterrupted by their status as was safely possible. We scouted locations, mapped out routes, and accompanied them on damn near every aspect of their daily lives, right down to checking stalls before they were allowed to piss. We could not afford missteps or momentary losses of focus, something I’ddrilled into the heads of everyone who’d worked for me over the years.

We’d had some good ones, too. Ones I’d have given anything to have back now, though I could appreciate Sully’s desire to go out on his own and specialize in guarding rock musicians, who lived a very different kind of lifestyle from those on my own clientele list. His Damage Control Inc. group was starting to be in demand, something that had cost me two guys about five months back, when they’d jumped ship to go work for him. I was still struggling to find the right person to fill one of those slots, and now I’d need two to bring the crew back up to full strength again. Divas, dancers, and society princesses, that’s who made up my client list. High-end engagements required different handling. There were subtiltiesandniceties that even the guards had to know. Hotheads and social climbers need not apply, though too many of them were tempted to do so. Few made it through the vetting process and the ones who did never lasted long on one of my crews. My long-time people had been taught to keep an eye on the new hires, and I knew damned well that I’d earned the kind of loyalty from them that kept fuck-ups from getting swept under the rug.

Would other firms have let Ryan’s mistake slide? You’re damned right they would have! I’d worked for a few.

It’s what taught me not to let things go, because once you let something minor slip through the cracks, people decided to test how deep the crack was and how much it could withstand. Maybe they didn’t mean to find the breaking point, but it never failed to happen, usually on a catastrophic level. Sometimes it was something so bad that the rest of the team, and even the company, had never been able to bounce back from it.

“What happens when we get home?” Zephyr asked. “Do you go to work each day?”

“Nope, I have an office in the house that you are always welcome to join me in. I have even a bench that pulls right up to my desk if you need a little midday snack,” I explained.

“And I have a studio space,” Tristan explained. “You can join me in there anytime, too. And there is a pool outside that you can swim in.”

“You have a pool?”

“Yup.”

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