Chapter 28
twenty-eight
De Leon knocks this time, but probably only because he knows I’m so tightly strung right now that I’d shoot him if he broke in.
I take one look at the bedroll he has secured to his huge backpack and shake my head.
He slaps my shoulder as he pushes through the door, even though I haven’t invited him in. “Looks like we’re bunkies again, mate.”
“You’re on the couch,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “At least the futon is a double. Beds in Devon were worse. What the fuck’s up with those twin beds?”
“Civilian life’s made you soft,” I tell him, closing the door and re-engaging the security. “Your timing’s good, though.”
“Yeah?” He slings his pack onto the futon without any direction and hangs his hoodie—probably armored like the hoodie he gave me from the way it hangs—on my coat rack before heading toward the kitchen. Sucker bet he’s going to start up the coffee machine.
“Yeah. My new bed just arrived. Fucking flat pack. You can help me assemble it.”
He scowls at me. “I can be bribed with espresso.”
Espresso in hand, and careful lack of judgment on his face, De Leon helps me take apart my old bed and assemble the new one.
The damn rungs need eight hands each, but De Leon and I make do with four, and after only two hours, three minor injuries, and a lot of colorful language, we lift my old mattress up onto the new frame.
As I’m running the vacuum over the packaging-strewn carpet, De Leon says, “So, a cage.”
I nod.
“How long does one put one’s girlfriend in one’s cage?” he asks.
I snort at his absurd phrasing. “One’s girlfriend goes into the cage on her own for as long as she likes. It’s her safe place.”
De Leon rubs his hand over his beard. “I didn’t realize you might use it that way. I thought it’d be for punishments.”
“I’ve tried a punishment that involved confinement. I didn’t do very well with it. I’m still figuring out what works for us.”
“You didn’t do well with it.”
“No.” I put away the vacuum, open the closet and pull out the bedding I’ve had delivered for the cage. I crawl in to lay the foam underlay and let De Leon stare at my ass.
“Explain that,” he says.
“No. Hand me the rolled up white thing.”
He screws his baseball cap around so the bill is to the back and lifts his eyebrows. “The white thing.”
“The mattress. Stop being a dick.”
“Tell me why you didn’t do well with the punishment.”
“I told you before, I’m not a fucking science experiment.”
“I thought we got beyond that.”
“I didn’t.”
“Get beyond it, Max. I know you too well for modesty at this late stage.”
“It’s not modesty, you asshole. You don’t get to know my every fucking trigger and failing. Now gimme the mattress.”
He grumbles as he peels the packaging off and passes it through to me.
“Now the black bag,” I say, once the mattress is down and covered with the dry pad and microfiber cover. He’s going to get a surprise when he opens this one.
“What the—”
Fifty stuffed bees of various sizes explode all over him when he pulls the tear cord on their vacuum packaging.
He shoves the mountain of bees off him. “Very funny,” he says.
I thought it was. I mound the bees around the edges of the mattress, propping them against the cage bars, leaving the center clear for my little queen bee.
Once the bees are arranged, I clip the deep rack I’ve gotten to the bars and arrange a water bottle, spare television remote, and a tablet I’ve loaded with all the streaming services in the rack.
Finally, I pile several jersey-knit blankets in the middle of the hive for Cynnie to arrange as she wants, and carefully back out, being sure to “accidentally” kick De Leon as I shuffle backwards.
He grunts but his reflexes are too fast for much more than a bruise.
Once I’m out, he squats down and surveys my work. “That’s . . . not something I’d ever considered. I mean, I like the idea of having my sub captive, waiting for me in my bedroom, but I’d never have thought of creating a . . . what do you call that?”
“I call it a hive. My girl has a thing for bees.”
“That makes you, what? Her drone?”
“It makes me her daddy who likes to encourage her imagination and create places where she feels safe and comfortable.”
“Right.”
“Not everything’s a sex game,” I tell him. “My girl’s little age ranges. When she’s very little, sex is off the table. The cage is a safe place for her to sleep or play or whatever, but it’s her safe place.”
Although we might “christen” her hive, I anticipate she’ll mostly want to snuggle and sleep in it. It’s too confined for the sex games we like to play.
“And when she’s bigger? That’s when you’ll use it as a cage?”
“No, I don’t see us using this as anything but her hive. It’s a sacred space. I don’t plan to even go in it unless she invites me. It’s her space.”
De Leon looks like I’ve blown his mind. He follows me around as I bundle up all the packaging and take it downstairs for recycling.
Since he’s been marginally helpful, I make him another coffee before settling into my rig. He crunches down into a beanbag and opens his own laptop. “Gimme the wifi key.”
I read it out to him.
“Gimme the other wifi key.”
Fucker. He’s good to have found my hidden network. “No.”
“Whaddo you think I’m going to do with it, Maxie?”
“Stage political assassinations? Topple major corporations? Trigger bioweapons? You tell me, dude.”
“Don’t be an arse. I’ve never done any of those things. Eh, okay, I’ve never done most of those things. And everything I’m doing now, I’m doing to keep you safe. I have some contacts on the dark web I want to tap up to help us and I don’t want anyone to be able to trace it.”
I grind my teeth together for a long minute before I reel off the hidden network address and passwords.
“If I ever need to know where the server is, where is it?”
“Servers. Basement. Backup in the A/C shed on the roof. Clone in Singapore.”
“Oh, yeah, your creeper. Squid, right?”
I nod.
“How d’you know him?”
“None of your business.”
Squid went through basic with me but washed out of the Navy.
His American family turned their backs on him, so he moved to Singapore to be with his father’s people.
While I was sweating it out in north Africa, he was building a busy surveillance business.
He contacted me after I got out and has been my backup and silent partner ever since.
De Leon blows out a breath through his nose. “Maxie.”
“One, don’t call me that. Two, still none of your business.
I know him. I trust him with my life, Cynnie’s life, Logan’s life, Emily’s life, and if you use the hidden network to do anything that ends up burning me or Squid, you’ll only need to watch your back for a week or two, because his tentacles are long and he’s a vicious motherfucker. ”
De Leon chuckles. “Your threats are like foreplay at this point.”
I grunt. “I don’t swing that way.”
“I know.” He doesn’t look perturbed by it, either.
“Uh, do you?” Not something that had ever occurred to me.
“I’m open to it.”
“So, you’d be looking for a little boy at playgroup? We don’t have any unattached little boys right now, I don’t think.”
“I’m not looking for anything right now. I’m doing recon. But at some future point, if I thought I could do it right, I’d be looking for both, I think.”
“Both.”
“Uh-huh. The dynamic you and Logan have with your littles definitely fills a hole, but I need some spicy with my sweet. Your doctor friend, Jack? What he’s got with his boy is fucking intriguing. I’m also more than interested in your friend, Brenna. Logan thinks she’s a switch. D’you?”
I grind my teeth for a much longer moment. “Stay away from Sammi. Stay even further away from Brenna.”
“Why? You think I’d fuck up what Sammi’s got with Jack? Not my thing. I don’t expect a virgin, but I want a boy new to the dynamic. A boy I can break in without breaking his sass, you know?”
No, I don’t know, and I cannot think of anything worse than unleashing De Leon on an inexperienced little. “Wrong.”
“You don’t know me, Max. I know my capabilities. Once I get a handle on this daddy thing, I’ll be fucking good at it.”
“That’s a recipe for disaster.”
“Nah, it’s all good. You didn’t answer me about Brenna.”
“I don’t think she’s a switch and stay away from her, too.”
“Why, because Emily’s trying to set her up with your old Master Chief?”
“Logan will strangle you when he finds out you’ve bugged his house.”
De Leon snorts. “I haven’t bugged his house. I’ve bugged you. We slept in the same room for two weeks. You think I don’t have you wired down to your ass-hairs? Think again.”
“That conversation occurred after your job was finished.”
De Leon shrugs. “Seems like I’m back on the job.”
“You weren’t then. You tell me what you’ve got on me and you swear that after this is over, anything I don’t pry outta wherever you’ve shoved it, you turn it off and stay out of my life.”
He holds up his hands. “I swear.”
I don’t believe him. “Asshole.”
“Asshole who isn’t charging you extra.”
“This isn’t about money. It’s about my privacy.”
“While you’re my problem, you don’t have any.
Sorry, but that’s the way it’s gotta be.
You’re in the security business, Maxie. You know true privacy is an illusion.
Your eight fucking phones aside, there are eleven other smart phones in this building.
They’re all listening, all the time. They might not be able to hear you when you’re in your apartment, ‘cause I notice you’ve got it soundproofed, but in the hallways, out on your fire escape, on the street?
They’re listening to you. Might not be Big Brother, but it’s Big Data and it has your fucking number.
I bet if you went on social media right now, it’d show you adverts for dog cages, organic honey, and stuffed animals.
I’m far from the only person who knows your business.
I’m just the one who won’t do anything fucking sinister with it. ”
“Did you honestly just tell me you’re not sinister?”