6. Back on Duty
BACK ON DUTY
AIDAN — CANNES
Liam and I weren’t supposed to take another job that week.
The Pryzm concert was the kind of gig you wrap up with a handshake and a receipt.
A single day of crowd control for the venue where the concert was held, working under the Agence de Sécurité, which employed us as freelance contractors and provided our working papers.
Our boss would be sure to get on the Starhouse contract first thing in the morning. But if there were any glitches we wouldn’t leave Nice.
Our drive home was a blur of highway lights and exhaustion. The little house in Banneret-les-Vaux sat quiet, tucked into a vineyard slope that smelled of lavender and diesel.
Liam yawned as he unlocked the front door. “How long do we have?”
“Long enough for a good night’s sleep,” I said. “As long as we can pack efficiently.”
He gave a grunt that could’ve meant fine or I hate you.
Our little lion-faced dog, Hayam, greeted us with the kind of performance that pretended we had been gone forever, instead of a single day. Liam picked her up, kissed her snout, and carried her to the back door where he let her out into the yard to do her business.
I prepared her dinner, let her in, and then we fell into routine, the practiced, wordless rhythm of preparation.
I began with a pair of tailored jackets that could pass for high-end security or dinner wear depending on the lighting.
Liam was taller than I was, so I had to pack slacks for him.
We were the same waist size, so we shared shorts.
We normally wore Agence polo shirts when we worked, but for this project we’d be better off blending in with the crowd, so I packed a mix of polos and button-downs.
I liked boxers; Liam wanted his boys contained, so he wore jockstraps. That was fine with me; I liked few things more than seeing him clad only in a white pouch, which I liked to take off with my teeth.
Our Glocks were locked in our gun safe; France had rules, and even if we traveled by private plane, we probably couldn’t bring guns with us without a lot of paperwork. But I slid my personal multi-tool and a pair of miniature flashlights into the go bag.
Liam handled the electronics. On the kitchen table, he lined up devices like a surgeon prepping instruments.
Laptops for comms and analysis, our satellite phone, our drone camera with infrared.
Added to that was a compact jammer for hotel-level interference, and a set of chargers, cables, battery packs, labeled and coiled.
He plugged everything in, the faint red glow of charging LEDs painting the walls.
We’d done this dozens of times, one job blending into another, new faces, new crises.
We had protected young lovers and older men desperate for second chances.
Families on the run, a girl caught in the midst of a revolution.
But as always, I was captivated by the people in danger and how they reacted, including the stylist desperate to save the man he loved.
An hour later, we were ready to get some sleep. Hayam went out for one last run, and when she came back in I stripped down and slid into bed while Liam was in the bathroom. When he came out, he was naked, his toned, muscular body on full display.
“I saw the way you looked at those guys,” he said. “You know they’re packaged that way, to look like sex on wheels. You interested in someone younger? Slimmer?” He put his fists on his waist in a way that showed off his biceps.
“I’m allowed to look,” I said. I pulled back the covers to reveal my erection. “And right now I like what I’m looking at.”
“Only like?”
“I long for your touch, husband,” I said, with a smile. “For those broad hands of yours on my body. For your big dick in me.”
“That’ll do,” Liam said, and he came over to stand beside the bed, posed like Adonis, as I took his dick in my mouth and put my hands on his meaty butt.
“Yeah, baby, you know how to use that mouth of yours,” he said. Then he pulled away. “Raise your legs for me.”
I did as he asked, and he lubed up his cock and his index finger and prepped me for invasion. I let out a long, deep breath and relaxed my sphincter as his middle finger probed inside me.
I looked up at his handsome face, the one I’d fallen for so many years before, and then he replaced his finger with his cock and I leaned back, breathing deeply and staring at the ceiling.
“Eyes on me,” he said. “Who’s your husband?”
“Liam McCullough. My own personal Adonis.”
“Don’t forget it,” he said, as he pushed into me, building up a rhythm.
“You’re jealous,” I said. “Of a bunch of twinks.”
“Just staking my claim. To my man.”
He grabbed my stiff cock with his hand, still greasy from the lube, and began jerking me.
I always tried to hold out until he did, but usually didn’t make it, and that night was no exception.
I whimpered, yelped, and spurted as he continued to plow me, until his whole body shuddered and he shot up my ass.
He slid into bed beside me, kissed me, then wrapped one arm possessively around me. We fell asleep that way.
Saturday May 23, 2026
When I woke, Hayam was snoozing on the floor beside me.
Liam was already awake, sitting up naked with his reading glasses on.
Something about a handsome naked man in glasses turns me on, but when I saw he was reading media reports about the fireworks malfunction the night before, my sexual interest wilted.
“What are people saying?” I asked.
“It’s mostly fan traffic, wanting to know the idols are safe. A couple of crazy ones suggest the explosion was connected to the movie.”
“My Lover from the North?” I asked.
He nodded. “Radical South Koreans don’t want anything that indicates a rapprochement with the North.” He smiled. “Though they use very different words.”
I yawned and stretched, then stood up, giving Liam a clear view of my bubble butt, and then went into the shower.
He let Hayam out, and then went into the shower himself.
I dressed and made us a quick breakfast. Then I packed up Hayam’s food and toys and carried everything to our neighbors Slava and Thierry, who would spoil her while we were gone.
“Another exciting adventure?” Thierry asked. He was a sixty-something Frenchman who we had introduced to our Russian client Slava a few years before.
“Something like that,” I said, as I put Hayam down. She scampered into the house as Thierry and I laughed.
Then I went back to my husband so we could be bodyguards again.
Liam loaded everything into our Jeep, and we joined the traffic out of the hills and down into the city.
The Mediterranean sun glowed as we crested the hill overlooking the bay, and we arrived at the airport well before the Starhouse crew.
As we were pulling into the long-term parking garage, my phone beeped with an incoming message from Jean-Luc Derain, our boss at the Agence.
“Contract signed. You’re good to go. Be safe. ”
I replied, “Always.”
We were waiting outside the private aviation terminal with our duffels when the Starhouse limousines rolled in from Cannes.
Eun-ji was the first one out. “Good to see you,” she said. “I feel better already.”
She took a deep breath. “The police spoke to all the members this morning,” she said as she led us toward the cars. “Jason sat in on the interviews, along with Grace, our translator. Everyone’s exhausted.”
She pulled a digital tablet from her messenger bag. “Starhouse has chartered a Boeing Business Jet through the end of the tour. It should be ready for us when we pass through customs in the private terminal. The idols don’t mix well in public airports.”
She handed the tablet to me. “Here’s the passenger manifest. Everyone scheduled to travel today. Technical and production staff travel separately on commercial flights.”
The machinery of fame spilled out of the row of limos and I checked them all against the roster. A second stylist to work with Sang-hoon, a makeup artist, and the wardrobe mistress. A translator and the two beefy guys from Starhouse security.
Liam leaned over my shoulder and grinned. “Guess we’re getting our band together and taking it on the road.”
“Yeah,” I said. I walked over to Sang-hoon. “How is Jin doing?”
“He’s tired, but he slept well last night. And he can sleep on the plane.” He flattened his lips for a moment. “You think there is a real danger? Not just a crazy fan?”
“Crazy fans are real,” I said. “But they don’t usually use fireworks. Crazy fans go for one-on-one assaults.”
“On Jin. He’s the center.”
We stood there a moment, baggage handlers moving cars, men and women in orange vests waving cones at the planes. “We’re experienced at this kind of thing,” I said. “Watching out for threats, taking care of clients. But we can always use an extra pair of eyes. Stick close to your guy.”
“I always do,” Sang-hoon said.
There was nothing cocky in it. Just fact.
After years with Liam, I understood how you could love someone enough to jump into an explosion for them.
While we waited to board, Liam and I talked to each of the performers and the traveling staff, and none of them had any idea why someone would want to sabotage the Cannes performance, except Haneul, who seemed to be the group’s de facto leader based on his age.
He wondered if someone connected to North Korea had arranged the explosion because of controversy surrounding the movie.
“It is about love between a South Korean woman and a North Korean soldier,” he said. “When it came out there were some problems, though nothing lately. And nothing against us.”
“We saw some material online about that,” I said. “We’ll keep it in mind.”
A vibration against my thigh pulled my attention away from the boarding stairs.
Richard.
I opened the message while the ground crew guided a fuel truck away from the BBJ, the engines beginning to whine with that rising mechanical pitch that always made conversation feel slightly unreal.
Did a first pass on your passenger list and some public chatter around the group.
One name worth a closer look: Park Min-woo.
Former Starhouse manager, terminated three months ago.
Managed a group called AURORA until he was let go.
Since then he’s been posting steadily against the company, mostly vague accusations about exploitation and corruption, but Jin’s name comes up more than once.
I scrolled down.
One deleted post from last week said, “Centers burn fastest.” Thought you’d want to know. Still digging.
For a moment I just stared at the screen while baggage handlers loaded the last cases into the cargo hold.
“Problem?” Liam asked.
I handed him the phone as a black airport van arrived to drive us across the apron to the waiting BBJ. He read the message as we drove, then jumped out of the van to survey the area before he’d let anyone else out.
The performers and the crew moved to the aircraft stairs, Jin in the lead with Sang-hoon close behind him, one hand hovering at the small of his back in a gesture so automatic he probably didn’t realize he was doing it.
“That echoes the language from the text message Eun-ji got back in Cannes, about the center burning,” Liam said, handing the phone back to me. “That’s either a hell of a coincidence or a lot of people in the K-Pop world have a flair for dramatic messaging.”
The engine noise climbed another notch, hot exhaust washing across the tarmac.
I typed back: Good work. Please keep him in your headlights. Full background, finances, travel, associates. And look for any animus against the movie, My Lover from the North.
Richard’s reply came almost immediately.
Now you’re asking nicely.
I looked at Jin disappearing into the cabin, then back at Richard’s message.
If Min-woo was angry enough to threaten the company, angry enough to target Jin by name, maybe we’d found our first real suspect.