Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82371 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82371 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
He wiggled excitedly, rocking against me again and making a pleased sound. “If everyone weren’t watching us, I’d make you even happier. With my mouth.”
Huh?
“Oh, and if that comes back to Master, make sure he knows I was very subtle.” Lorne beamed like he loved being able to say he’d been good. “I didn’t talk about private things while we had an audience.”
Damn it.
Letting out a sigh I couldn’t hold back, I dropped my voice to a whisper as I tried to ignore the implications of what the line about his mouth might mean. “Are there more cameras?”
I thought I’d gotten them all when I’d done a walk through earlier and had talked loudly and clearly to myself that I’d needed to do some late spring cleaning as I’d gathered up all the weird shit I could find. Random clocks, teddy bears, and an assortment of strange shit were now piled in the dumpster behind the building.
But from the way Lorne was nodding against me, I’d missed more than a few.
“Yes, Daddy.” Lorne’s tone sounded like I’d asked him if he had books at his house. “But don’t worry. I made a chart and we’re in just the right blind spot to keep them from watching us.”
Dragons above.
“You’ve got to be kidding?” Looking over his shoulder, I finally realized that what he’d been sketching out was a diagram of my building. He’d laid out what seemed to be a Mission Impossible-type grid to show what camera covered what space.
“No, Daddy.” Lorne straightened and kissed my cheek. “But be careful what you say by the customer service desk. Someone placed way too many cameras there and you can’t say anything private. The feedback from that must be insane, though. So they might not be able to hear anything?”
Lorne shrugged sweetly. “I’m still looking that up online.”
Damn it.
“How did you find them?” I wasn’t sure if that should’ve been my first question or not, so more just flooded out. “What kind are they? I thought I caught them all earlier.”
Lorne shrugged, giving me cute wide eyes that actually seemed to be filled with genuine confusion instead of just adorable manipulation. “They must have special shiny things in them because they just stand out like those cameras that watch everyone in Walmart.”
There were cameras in Walmart?
Wait.
Telling myself not to get distracted by things that were obvious, I let out a frustrated breath. “Okay, I’m glad you noticed them. Thank you.”
As I tried to decide what we were going to do now, Lorne frowned and looked around again. “Someone isn’t very smart, though, because you’ve also got those weird luggage tag things from the expensive phone people. You know. The ones that tell you when the airlines are lying.”
What the fuck?
“That’s…” He was right. Someone had no idea what they were doing. “I don’t even know what to say.”
He rolled his eyes. “Someone needs to learn to google better.”
Yes, he had a point.
“And a few people are spending way too much money on being nosy.” Shaking his head, Lorne sighed. “But you’ll be happy to hear that, based on my research, the government isn’t funding this operation. It’s just the neighbors.”
Well, at least there was one upside.
“Do I want to know how you know that?” I wasn’t surprised when Lorne shook his head. “I thought so.”
As I tried to decide what kind of lecture Lorne needed to hear, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Goddamn fucking dragons.”
Lorne’s eyes got wide as he suddenly went still. “Master is very angry.”
“And in our heads.” I thought that was the most important part.
And Lorne’s eyes somehow got wider and looked like they were going to fall out of his head.
“Mates!” Doing a little happy dance, Lorne leaned to the left and smiled at a toolbox like we were on TV. “We’ve got such a strong mate bond we can hear that you pissed off Carrick. Ha. Go gossip about that.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Okay, we’re going to debug this place later. For the time being, I think we need to go find our mage before he kills whatever dragon made him nuts.” I wasn’t even going to begin to guess who it was because the list was too long to count.
Lorne didn’t seem worried. “Master gets…well, he gets upset easily, so it could be anybody. The bakery people who tattled, for one. But this is Sunday, not Tuesday. It could be the…no, they’re not open today.”
Cocking his head, Lorne looked around. “Why are you working today? Did I ask that earlier? I know why I worked today. But even most of my clients don’t think to ask me to work on Sundays and they’re all assholes. Well, most of them.”
I wasn’t sure if laughing at that would make me a bad Daddy or not, but I had to chuckle. “All customers have the ability to be assholes. But to answer your question, I usually take Tuesday and Wednesday off because I wasn’t getting enough appointments on those days. Most people need more help on the weekends so their car is ready for Monday.”