I did love me some burnt ends, and these were fucking fantastic.
“Let me just adjust the heater, Sir.” Tate left me with all the food. “Oh, it’s on max already.”
I was fine. It wasn’t windy today, just cold.
I shoveled some mac and cheese into my mouth and nearly groaned out loud. Tate had one of King’s cookbooks at home; we should make something from it together.
“Good, huh?” He smiled and sat down next to me again.
“Southern cooking—I swear.” Best there ever was.
“Hell, here we go.” KC sighed.
I glanced up to see Lucian support KC as they descended the porch steps, and then I spotted a flash of bright teal coming up the dirt road.
“Daddy, it’s here!” Noa yelled excitedly. “It’s here! The Bratmobile is here!”
The Bratmowhatthefuck?
So was that…Camden? August King’s Little? Whoever it was, he was driving a classic Volkswagen van, painted white and teal, and he didn’t stop in the cul-de-sac and head for the carport. He drove right up on the lawn and honked over and over, much to Noa’s delight. And Kit’s. And Corey’s.
“Everyone, come look at our Bratmobile!” Noa hollered. “Many of our members don’t have a car and can’t come to all our events, so from now on, we’ll have pickups in the city before every event. Cool, huh?”
Aw, fuck. That was a wonderful initiative. We did our best to arrange for carpooling; we had a group for that online, but we were aware of how alienating that could be if you didn’t have a lot of buddies.
A Noa-sized man jumped out of the van, and I could already see why those two boys were friends. They both had sweet mischief written all over, and they could practically be long-lost brothers from their appearance alone.
“Hi, Daddy!” Camden waved.
“Hello, darlin’.” August smiled warmly. “I take it you want to pick up Anthony at the airport in that thing.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Noa exclaimed. “He’d get the royal treatment!”
Camden was in full agreement. “My Daddies deserve the best, and the Bratmobile is the best.”
Tate snickered next to me.
“So, listen!” Noa demanded everyone’s attention once more. “Camden, Cameron, and I are creating a new group online for this beauty, so that when we have a major event, we can sign up for a ride out here, and all we do money-wise is chip in for gas and a little something for the volunteering driver, cuz our Daddies are amazing and have said they will cover the less fun stuff like maintenance and so on, and—”
“And breathe, baby,” KC chuckled.
“Right.” Noa grinned and gulped in some air. Too damn cute. “So anyway, you’ll find more information in the Bratmobile group, but it’ll be pretty straightforward. Whether some Daddy just doesn’t wanna drive one night so he can have a drink, or someone doesn’t have a car, or maybe we’re a bunch of brats going on a field trip, we have a bitchin’ ride with eight seats, cupholders, and snacks. And also, you gotta know the password to enter the van.”
I cocked my head. I sensed all Doms in the vicinity hearing the same warning bell.
Lucian shook his head.
Colt cleared his throat and folded his arms over his chest. “And what’s the password, little one?”
Noa smiled sweetly and wrung his hands in front of him while he rocked on the heels of his feet. “Brats rule at House Mclean.”
Most of us cracked up, but not the competitive Sadists like Reese, Colt, and Greer. They scoffed and got dramatic.
“I was waitin’ for the catch—there’s always a catch,” Colt bitched.
“It’s called Mclean House, god-fucking-dammit!” Reese hollered.
“Noa, c’mere and lemme wring your fuckin’ neck,” Greer said.
I smiled to myself and tucked into my food again, and I enjoyed hearing the brats’ triumphant laughter. This moment belonged to them, and my friends were handing it over on a silver platter.
The push and pull between Daddies and Littles, especially if they had sadistic and masochistic tendencies, was fun to watch—but fuck me, I’d be exhausted to have it as a lifestyle. Tate unleashed the brat in moderation, just the way I craved it. But I wasn’t a Daddy. I couldn’t put on an act like my three buddies were doing right now. When Tate and I went nuts, we took things in the primal direction.
In the end, we had a handful of sadistic Daddies hunting down their laughing Littles across the front lawn.
I’d lost count on the times Greer had rejected the Daddy title, but fuckin’ look at him now.
I grinned around a mouthful of food and turned to my own boy.
“Can you imagine that?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “I literally don’t understand where they get the energy from.”
Exactly.
“We gotta save every ounce for the day we have an actual kid to run after,” I said.
Tate’s smile couldn’t be more beautiful. “I love when you bring that up.”