δåıŋŧѕ/δıŋŋєяѕ

The Song Remains The Same

Tuesday continued…

We’d laid together for the longest time. Cuddling and chatting. Like it was the best thing in the world. To be honest… it was. We managed to plan a rough draft for our wedding plans and come up with a few scenarios to deal with the Jason/Frannie conundrum as we watched the windows get dark and we were just starting to wonder where Alcide and the boys were when there was a knock on the door.

We shared a look and got up to answer it together. Neither one of us were expecting anyone. We opened the door to see Alcide standing there with Jack and Carm. “Why’d you knock? You have a key.”

I backed out of the way so they could walk in. “Oh, I don’t know… Because both of your cars are here and the house is dark!”

I laughed at him. “We were just laying on the couch. How’d things go?”

“Later.” Ohhhh…. kayyy… that good huh?

Sookie smiled at the kids, high 5ing both, and invited them to help her make dinner. They excitedly accepted and followed her to the kitchen asking about what they were making.

“Your daddy told me this morning that you guys like fish tacos… So I thought we’d have that and some nachos. Sound good?”

Carm, the quiet one, cheered and bounced up to grab Sookie’s hand, taking her (and Alcide) by surprise.

**

The boys were all too pleased to be making dinner. Alcide and I sat at the table watching them enjoy themselves. Sookie had given Carm a pair of scissors to cut fresh dill and cilantro so he could whip together the cream sauce for the tacos and he looked like he was going to give himself an aneurysm squeezing the lemon for all it was worth. Jack was given the task of making the beer batter and frying the fish using the deep fryer from a chair. Then they both scattered the toppings over the nachos. They were having so much fun and were so proud of themselves by the time they were done that they’d made a mess of themselves.

Alcide was watching, in observe mode. Sookie was as patient as you would expect a teacher to be with them. Dinner had taken twice as long as it would have if she’d been working by herself, but the kids were having so much fun, they didn’t complain about it being late. At one point Carm mentioned that Amelia didn’t let them in the kitchen.

She smiled at him. “Neither did my mother. My daddy is the one who let me play in the kitchen with him.”

Carm looked up at Alc. “Our Daddy tant took!”

“Then we should teach him… What should we have him make for dinner tomorrow night?”

Jack snickered. “It should be easy.”

Alc stuck his tongue out at him.

“Ok then, how about homemade macaroni & cheese and… fried chicken?”

Alcide actually looked at her completely panicked. I’d seen him with a gun pointed at him with more calm on his face. I laughed at him and he kicked me under the table.

**

Dinner was really good, and we all told them as much. They beamed. Their egos got further inflated when Sookie had them help with dessert. Hot fudge cake with ice cream.

Once their shirts had tacos and nachos on them and their faces looked like chocolate crime scenes, Sookie suggested a bath so that she could wash their clothes before they stain. Alcide went out to the car and got their suitcases and Sookie started their bath then came back to help me load the dishwasher. When Alcide walked back through, I heard him offer a ‘holy shit!’ to the change in the living room. We laughed and kept working.

It was just after 7 when the boys were all cleaned and ready for bed. Sookie set them up in the new living room to watch a couple ‘Wizards’ episodes before bed and the three adults settled into the kitchen.

We couldn’t help it. We stared at Alcide. We’d been worried all day about how things were going to go. And now, he was in the hot seat.

Sookie was the first one to crack. “Alright… I’ve been scared for you all fucking day. Spill.”

He chuckled at her. “She acted weird the whole time I was there. Little shit like obsessing over their suitcases and backpacks and reminding me that Carm is allergic to pollen and that Jack needs a haircut.”

“And?”

“And… Other than that, she didn’t talk to me, or the boys for that matter. She kept herself busy… The boys were playing their handhelds with their ear buds in on the way to the airport and I had a ‘special’ moment. I told her that I wanted a divorce and that I wanted custody of the boys.”

Sookie gasped. Like horror movie/killer in the closet/holy-fucking-shit GASPED. “What did she do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. When we got to the airport, I grabbed their suitcases and she said bye to the boys and cried a little…” He pulled an envelope out of his back pocket and dropped it on the table. “She handed me this and was in the car before I could say anything.”

“What is it?”

“Separation papers. Bank stuff. Her credit cards… Custody papers. That’s why she wasn’t packing yesterday. She was meeting with a lawyer. There’s a letter in there. The fucking bitch put it in writing that she never wanted kids and that she needed a break. She didn’t know it was going to be ‘like this’. She feels like she’s been a single parent for years. She wasn’t cut out for this… Blah, blah, blah. She pulled a few grand out of savings to ‘start over’. She gave ME permission to divorce HER.”

That dirty fucking whore. Never wanted kids? Who the fuck says that? I stayed quiet, knowing that if I opened my mouth at all, I would succumb to a bought of explosive verbal diarrhea. I left being calm to Sookie. It was her turn.

“Did she say why now?”

“The letter says I have you to thank. She said she had only stuck around as long as she did because she thought I’d ‘fuck it up’. But when she met everybody out here, she figured y’all would keep me from fucking up too bad.” That’s really sweet of her to worry about Alcide ‘fucking up’ the kids she considered throwaways.

“Did she say how long her little break is going to last? If she’s planning on staying in contact?”

“She’s going back to Dallas until her ‘head is straight’. Said she was packing up the house and having everything sent here. She didn’t mention anything about the holidays, seeing or calling them. Nothing.”

“So… What’s your plan now?”

He smiled at her. “I haven’t come up with one yet. Tonight, I’m settling in the kids then having a beer. Maybe 10.”

“How does it feel?”

“What?”

“To get what you asked for?”

“Other than having to explain it to the boys… FUCKING PHENOMINAL.” I’d never seen him smile so wide.

She smiled at him and got up, going to the back porch. She came back with a case of longnecks and set it on the table next to him. “Would you like a straw?”

He smiled back at her. “You bet your ass…” And there it was. The mood had lifted. Our worrying had been resolved and all was right with the world… “So what’d I miss? Other than the new living room… It looks too nice to sit in, by the way… What’d you two do today?”

I looked over at Sookie and she smiled at me. “Do you guys want the kitchen or the bedroom?”

“Ummm. Here is fine.”

I smiled when she kissed me. “Ok then, I’ll be in our room. I have papers to read, shopping to do and travel plans to make. Try to keep it down though. I’m going to keep the door open so I can keep an ear on the boys for y’all.”

“Yes ma’am.”

As soon as Sookie was around the corner, Alcide yanked open the box and handed me a beer. “Travel plans?”

I nodded. “Yeah. We actually had enough down time to start making wedding plans today.”

“Oh really… What’s the plan?” I had almost cowered about mentioning it, given his news, but he seemed in good humor about it… I guess he was too relieved to be cynical at the moment.

“We want to do it in New York. Do all the Christmas tourist stuff. A family vacation. Otherwise, the wedding would look like Dirges… and then some if we do it here.”

“Makes sense. Where y’all doing it?”

“Rockefeller Plaza… Drive by style… Show up. Get married. Go celebrate. We’re going to stay in her apartment there. So if you want to, you can do your Christmas shopping online and have it all shipped straight there.”

He started shaking his head. “She has an apartment in New York City?”

“Long story.”

“I have time.”

I rolled my eyes and took a deep breath. “You know how her mother set her up with Bill because he’s from ‘old money’?”

He nodded.

“What it boils down to… Compton money isn’t as ‘old’ as Stackhouse money, it was just the closest to it. Then… Bill’s father gave her everything just to spite his cock drip son.”

“So Sookie is… comfortable.”

“You could say that… Anyway, the plan is to spend the holiday in New York. Sookie wants to use the boys.”

He narrowed his eyes at me and took a swig. “What does she want to use them for?”

“So that she doesn’t have to stand in line alone to get her picture taken with Macy’s Santa.”

He started laughing. “That girl of yours is a trip… So what else did I miss?”

Alcide nearly shit his pants laughing when I told him about Bill. He wished as much as I did that he had been here to see the look on Bill’s face. I warned him that Jason is just as much a flirt when he’s hung over as when he’s drunk and then we got down to business. I ran out to the car and got the aerial photo to show it to him while I explained Kenya’s genius. We spent more than 2 hours going over things, then looking through the evidence that Burnham had delivered. Between all of the different storage devices that were found in the two apartments, there ended up being more than 3000 photos that he had taken of his victims. Before. During. After… DURING. It made me regret having eaten.

Alcide had nearly filled an ashtray. He’d even noticed how much he was smoking and went out on the porch a time or two. I was starting to look for a reason to put things away when Sookie jokingly stomped down the hallway and stopped at the door frame.

“Can I come in?”

We scrambled to put the folders back into the box as quickly as we could before we said she could. Disclosure or not, if she had a hard time dealing with seeing deCastro with a hard on while stalking, these pictures would definitely turn her stomach.

She went to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of tea. “Judging by the look on your faces, you’ve been up to your assholes in ugly, so I won’t ask.”

I smiled at her. “What have you been up to?”

She grinned back. “Long or short version?”

Alc gave her a snort and growled ‘short’ as a joke.

“Lil a this. Lil a that.”

I kicked his foot. “Long version.”

She giggled. “You asked for it…. I started grading papers and ended up having to call a student and give him fair warning that I know he’s selling papers and if I catch him again, I’ll call in my references on his college apps. I read 15 nominations and made a verdict on the scholarships. I got a fair amount of my Christmas shopping done. I talked to Bubba. He’s so laid back, he might as well be in a coma. Really sweet. He keeps calling me ‘Miss Sookie’ though. That’s one slice of the south I don’t think I’ll ever take a shine to… He’s officially our personal shopper and errand boy for the New York end of the holiday. The doorman will give him a tour of the apartment tomorrow so he can inventory things and measure… AND I arranged flights and cars for everyone.” She took a bow.

“Sounds good. What’s he measuring?”

“He going to inventory the beds and bedding, dishes and silverware to make sure we have enough for the crowd. He’s going to measure the balcony and windows so that we know how many lights and decorations to buy and I can’t remember how high the ceiling is, so he’s checking on that to make sure the tree he buys doesn’t look dwarfed in the room. He’s going to make sure the bathrooms are fully stocked too. He’s bonded and I did a background check on him while I was on the phone with him. The only thing he’s ever done was forget about a bounced check to his dentist. He made good on it the day the warrant was issued.”

Alcide looked over his shoulder at her. “Scholarships?”

“Yeah. I’m the trustee for the Stackhouse and the Compton Scholarships. The students write essays and can either tell me why they should get one or why someone else should. This year, I had 60 essays and narrowed it down to 15 kids. Most of them were about the same kids though.”

“How many go out each year?”

“However many I feel like. Last year I handed out 8. This year, unless something changes, 13. Quinn hates it because we award them on academics. He calls me an oleteist.”

“Olitist?”

She started laughing. “Yes. And every time he says olitist instead of elitist I remind him why I broke up with his dumb ass.” Oh. My. God. Jason hadn’t been exaggerating about Quinn being a ‘r’tard’. She hadn’t gotten bored with him. She cut him loose because he was intellectually underdeveloped. I guess it’s a good thing he coaches and is principle for the schools instead of shaping young minds.

When we were done laughing at how dumb Quinn was shaping up to be, Alcide handed her a beer. “How are we going to work things out tomorrow?”

She boosted herself onto the counter and took a sip. I was watching her carefully, wondering about if she’d drink during the ‘maybe phase’ of our oops. “Ummm. You guys have your little breakfast meeting. Unless you want to dip out for a few minutes to take them, I’ll take the boys in. Then you can pick them up from me after 3. We’ll be at the stadium until 5ish. We can play it by ear.”

He smiled and nodded. “Wait. How did you book flights and cars? Am I the last to know about New York? I hate missing shit!”

“I haven’t told anyone. You’re the first to know. You don’t have to have a head count when you book a corporate jet and car service. Eric and I will fly out on the 19^th and his parents will leave San Diego early on the 22nd and the plane will pick everyone else up in the afternoon. You’ll all be at the apartment by dinner… Sweetie, you need to make the call on Marnie so we can make arrangements for her if you’re feeling charitable.”

I growled at her.

She raised her eyebrow at me. “Your call. I’m just putting it out there. It’s Christmas and she might not be your favorite person, but she is Smom’s daughter. Besides, we can put her in the servants quarters behind the kitchen with scratchy sheets on a lumpy mattress and we’ll have a couple of days to rig the toilet and faucet to run.”

That earned her a laugh. “Promise? I’ll tell Smom to invite her then, but I’m warning you, whatever I buy her will be three sizes too small and have stripes. WIDE stripes.”

She started to giggle. “I know of a web site that sells gag perfume in designer bottles. Raw sewage, bacon drippings, vomit… That would be a nicer way to fly your asshole flag. She can’t help being squat, plump and obtuse anymore than you can help being gorgeous and exceptional… Or you could kill her with kindness and do something SOOO sweet for her that she’d REALLY hate you… Find one of those 3D sonogram places and get her a gift certificate, or a pregnancy massage. But for the record… the bitch in me thinks a ‘shitty sister’ kit would be fun. Step ladder, gym membership and a thesaurus.”

I raised both of my eyebrows at her. “The bitch in you is pure evil.”

“Short bursts, remember. I’m saving all my energy for sex… What’s with the list of songs? Special requests?” She wiggled her eyebrows at Alc. “I would’ve thought you’d put some cun’tree on there.”

Alcide looked at me and shrugged. “We might as well… She knows the case as well as we do except for this and the photos. Pam already thought you were running off at the mouth anyway and was fine with it.”

He was right about that. It still pissed me off to no end, but he was right. “The emails that got sniffed back here were song lyrics. He’s been taunting Pam directly.”

She suddenly looked horrified. “L-M-N-O… P!”

I nodded.

“So you only have until Februaryish to find him or she could be one of his victims?”

“We think so. He’s been rubbing our noses in his rituals all this time and I want to think that there’s something more to the lyrics, but they seem too random.”

“What lyrics?”

Alcide and I shared a look and I reached over and pulled a chair out for her and slid the legal pad over. She sat down and started looking over the list carefully…

“… The Doors: ‘The time to hesitate is through… no time to wallow in the mire… Try now we can only lose and our love become a funeral pyre’

Melissa Etheridge: ‘You don’t know how far I’d go to ease this precious ache… You don’t know how much I’d give… or how much I could take”

The Pretenders: ‘And there’s no need to take a stand for it was I who chose to start… I see no need to take me home… I’m old enough to face the dawn.’

Journey: ‘We all need clowns to make us smile… Through space and time, always another show… Wondering where I am, lost without you…”

The Misfits: ‘You did your best as someone could… I bet you never knew you would… Did you run away from it?’

Motorhead: ‘It’s all about the game and how you play it… It’s all about control and if you can take it… It’s all about your debt and if you can pay it. It’s all about pain and who’s gonna make it.’

Britney Spears: ‘It was sink or swim when the tide came in… I found myself when I found you…’

The Scorpions: ‘Desire is coming… It breaks out loud… Lust is in cages… Til storm breaks loose… Just have to make it… With someone I choose.’

Aerosmith: ‘But your love made me a prisoner… Yeah, my hearts been doing time’

Guns N Roses:  ‘I used to love her, but I had to kill her, I knew I’d miss her, so I had to keep her. She’s buried right in my back yard.’

She must’ve gone over the list a hundred times. She asked for a pen and started scribbling notes… humming occasionally… scribbling again. When she was done writing, she sat back, lifting a foot and hugging her knee to her chest while she went over the list again and again…

“I don’t think he’s taunting her as much as inviting her. I think the songs are kind of a map.”

Alcide started laughing through his nose. “Where to?”

“I know it’s going to sound funny, but the old Loudermilk Plantation would be the first place I’d look.”

Fucking smart bitches. Everywhere. I gave her a dopey smile. “How’d you get that from the song list?”

“First of all, you’d never have caught it unless you’d ever been out there…”

Alcide laughed. “How much do we owe you for THAT ego stroke?!”

She smiled at him. “I’ll run a tab… K, the whole thing was settled by one guy. When he died, his will split it off to his oldest boy, he got the main farm, then his younger boy and son in law got the other two tracts…

Going down the list…

Light My Fire- probably a reference to the house on the tract that burned down a few years back.

Come To My Window- The back side of the house has a two story stained glass window that was bought as a wedding present for the builder’s wife.

Angel Of The Morning- A huge marble angel statue sits in the flowerbed in the circular driveway.

Faithfully- Has a circus and clown reference. Lemuel’s wife loved her garden and mixed in with all of her roses and hydrangeas she put stone sculptures of circus animals. Elephants, dancing bears and horses. Stuff like that.

Green Hell- the house has always had Green trim… even now.

Play The Game- Not the lyric that fits… The man who built the house was Lemuel Loudermilk… Lemmy, Motorhead…

The Britney Spears song is just as annoying. The son in law’s name was Bertrum Spears. B. Spears. He’s buried in the family cemetery out back.

Rock you like a Hurricane- Loudermilk Minor was just a shell when it got flattened out by a tropical storm a few years ago.

What It Takes- that one is veiled slightly, it’s a later lyric that I think fits… ‘I don’t wanna burn in paradise’. The family called the farm Paradise… Paradise Hills.”

Alcide and I just stared at each other for a while with our mouths hanging open. He finally shook off his wonder. He seemed to be dealing better with her genius than I was. “Ok. What’s with the last one? I Used To Love Her?”

“She’s buried right in my back yard… Lem’s wife’s head stone… It’s a 10 foot tall pink marble obelisk with ‘My Darling Pamela’ carved into the base.”

There just wasn’t anything to say. She gave me a sweet grin and handed the legal pad to me. She stood up and kissed the side of my neck. “I’m gonna get out of your hair so you can work. Don’t stay up playing too late, boys. 6 am comes early.”

Once she was out of the room Alcide shoved my leg with his foot. “You’re not used to it, are you?”

“What?”

“Not being the smartest person in the fucking room.” The asshole was grinning ear to ear.

“Fuck you… I’m getting used to it.”

“You should try to work on that face. You look like she shit in your lap.”

We were still laughing when there was a knock on the door.

Hadley was disheveled, to say the least. It was nearly midnight and seeing a crying woman at the door would have gotten my attention regardless. She was wearing pajama pants, her sneakers weren’t tied and was hugging her jean jacket to her body like her life depended on it.

“What’s wrong?”

Her chin started to quiver. “Hunter’s curfew is 10 on school nights. I keep getting his voicemail and when I went to the friend’s house he said he’d be at, he wasn’t there. Never was. I was hoping that Sookie might be able to call a couple of her students and find out if any of them know who might have been…”

Alcide pulled out his phone and started dialing. “How are you doing?… Well, yes I am… Everything’s fine?…” He rolled his eyes to distract from the fact that he was smiling and trying not to laugh. “His mother’s search led her here… Can I come get him?… I’ll be right there.”

He closed his phone and grabbed his coat and Hadley went off… directly in his face. “Where is he!?”

“I woke them up. They fell asleep watching a movie. I’m going to go get him so that by the time we get back, you look angry instead of scared.” She didn’t know it, but he was lying his ass off.

“I don’t need your help!”

He put on his angry face. “I never said you did, but that’s a good start on looking angry. Now dial it back before you wake my kids.” He walked out the door and didn’t look back.

I took Hadley to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. “Do you want me to go wake Sookie?”

She stared at me while she thought about it, just like Sookie tended to do. “No. I guess there isn’t any sense in that.”

I started clearing away our empty bottles and dumped the ashtray before I sat down. “You want something stronger than coffee?”

She huffed out a deep breath. “No. I shouldn’t. Thanks though. What’s the deal with your little friend?”

Little? I smiled at her. “What do you mean?”

“It’s midnight and he’s out driving around looking for Hunter and…”

“We were doing dirty work. Crime scene photos. Playing taxi driver to sleepy teens is a great distraction. I’d have fought him for it, but I’ve had too much to drive.”

She smiled at me and eyed the ash tray. “Do you think he left any smokes here?”

I got up and went back to his room and grabbed a pack from the dresser, stepping over the boys as quietly as I could.

I handed her the pack and she smiled like she’d won the lotto. I really needed to think about smoking. Everyone around me seemed to find infinite relief in it.

“No one knows.”

“Knows what?”

“That he’s only 14. All of his friends are juniors and seniors. They all think he’s their age. It scares the shit out of me, but he didn’t want everyone to think he’s a freak.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed that he’s that young. HUGE. huge.”

She giggled. “Yeah, his dad had to get a waiver to join the Corps. They wanted to make sure he didn’t have a disorder that made him so big. 6’8” barefoot.”

I mouthed a ‘wow’. “I was big for my age too… not quite that big though… And I was a 16 year old senior. I didn’t get to have the secret though. My step sister told EVERYONE.”

“How was the stigma?”

“Not too bad. The normal student body wasn’t the issue. I was a jock and I had major issues with some of my teammates. I got ribbed. My nickname was JV, with an emphasis on the Junior.”

“Kids are mean. I didn’t believe it at first because Sookie and Jas didn’t have to deal with it.”

“The Stackhouse charisma?”

She snickered and got up and poured coffee. “That was part of it, but mostly it was the fact that on their first day of freshman year, a senior walked up behind Sookie and called her sugar tits and grabbed her boobs in the middle of a crowded lunch room. Sookie kicked him in the nuts so hard he threw up and then Jas grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him to the office.”

I started laughing. “That sounds about right.”

“The best part… It was Remy! He thought it was me… I’d told him that my cousin looked ‘just like me’, but… come on, Sookie and I share more than just a family resemblance and he hadn’t met the family because my father wouldn’t have approved of his family. The 4 of us were inseparable after that.”

I was still laughing and shaking my head. “That’d be exactly how Alcide won Sookie’s heart. He mouthed off to her and she dropped him…”

She smiled just before her phone started to ring, making her jump.

“Jas?… JASON STACKHOUSE, You son of a bitch!… I’m going to beat your ass the next time I see you…” I could hear Jason apologizing PROFUSELY. “I thought he was lying in a di… Well, you should feel bad!… I love you too.” She hung up and breathed a HUGE sigh of relief.

“Well?”

“Hunter was bored and his plans fell through with his friend so he walked into town. Jason ran into him and they grabbed a pizza and took it back to watch a movie. Jerks scared the shit out of me.” Of course they did. That was an ‘Alcide story’ if ever I heard one.

“Great. Now Sookie won’t let me and Alc play with Jason for a while.”

I smiled at her when she started laughing. “Not until Saturday anyway. You’ll be fine.”

I started goofing off. I was trying to distract her from her receding fright. I poked my lip out. “But we were going to sit together at the football game Friday night.”

She laughed some more. “Oh no you don’t! Then she’ll make me chaperone.”

I shook my head. “I bet you’ll be off the hook. She’ll pay Jack and Carm to babysit us.”

“I’ll have to watch you anyway, just to see how that works out.”

“They’ll do just fine. They managed to keep me and Sookie in line for a whole afternoon.”

She started to snickered again. I’d done what I set out to do… Calm her down.

When she heard Hunter and Alcide clod their way up the porch steps and open the front door, she jumped up and charged into the foyer to see her sleepy eyed son standing in front of her wearing a very wrinkled shirt. He was penitent, to say the least.

Alcide hung his coat and stepped between them. “Save the reaming for the car ride. If you wake up my kids, I’ll blow up your phone until they’re back to sleep.”

She smiled at him and took a step back. “Ok. Thank you.”

He snorted at her and walked to the kitchen to get a beer. She followed him.

“Are you such a jerk that you can’t say you’re welcome?”

“No, but I’m a big enough jerk to point out that he was bored because you didn’t let him stay over with the bad influences you let take care of the problem that came from your original paranoia, princess. Goodnight.”

Hunter and I were both standing behind her when she crossed her arms and took a huge breath to defend herself… she thought better of it.

He stood there, his eyebrows raised and drawn together, waiting. He looked down at his watch. “I have work to do. Is there something else I can do for you?”

She hunched over and watched while she fidgeted her feet. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

He pulled his chair out and sat with his back to her. “Ok. Goodnight.”

After Hadley and Hunter left I walked into the kitchen to join my partner and… check to see if his pants were still on fire!

“Taryn?”

He turned his chair and leaned back, beer in hand. “And Ginny and Hannah and Michelle.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “How the fuck?”

“She mentioned when we got back from Dirges that her parents are out of town this week.”

“So she had a little cheer sleepover and he crashed the party.”

He smiled from ear to ear. “Fucking kid had to apologize that he was going home while they pulled on his arms to get him back in the house. Pimp.”

I sat down shaking my head. “How’d you get Jason in on it?”

“I called him on the way back. His exact words were: ‘he may not be 17 yet, but he sure as shit isn’t 9 anymore either’. Did you hear any of his call to Hadley?”

“Just a well played waterfall of ‘sorrys’… So why play the asshole?”

“Interference. If she’s throwing all her angry at me, there’s less for Hunter.”

“You ARE turning out to be a bad influence.”

“Bright kid, star athlete, girls chasing after him… You didn’t turn out so bad.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t have someone show me how to look like I’d been sleeping either.”

“Having him rub his eyes and sit on his shirt on the way back was easy.”

“If he gets some girl pregnant, Hadley and Sookie will both come after you.”

“I told Hunter that this was a onetime deal. If it happens again, he’s on his own.”

I thought about it for a minute and couldn’t get over it. “What would you do if it was Jack?”

“I’d ground his ass for being out past curfew and not picking up his phone.”

“Why give him the cover story then?”

“Well for starters, he would have been grounded for the wrong reason: being a hound. AND, I don’t want to piss off a babysitter my kids like by being an asshole to her boy toy.

“You still going to have him babysit with her on Saturday?”

He started shaking his head and laughing. “Why not? Hunter and Taryn are more likely to keep their clothes on after the boys are asleep than you and Sookie.”

He has a point. “Speaking of which… “

When I got to our room, Sookie was sitting up against the headboard, keyboard on her lap, glasses on… sound asleep.

I smiled while I moved the keyboard and set her glasses on the nightstand, wondering if I’d wake her up since she hadn’t been drinking tonight. She was dead to the world.

When I undressed and climbed into bed, I pulled her down so that her head was on a pillow. She didn’t budge and I actually caught myself pouting. I snuggled into her side and laid my arm across her hips and closed my eyes.

I was drifting off when she rolled over and pushed her body against me. I groaned. “That’s not fair.”

She whispered sleepily. “What isn’t?”

“That you wait until I’m almost asleep to start teasing me.”

“I wasn’t teasing. I was just cuddling…. This would be a tease.” She reached back and put her hand on my thigh, kneading and moving her hips back and forth, pressing herself against my dick. Then she gave a little giggle and tried to scoot away from me.

I reached out and yanked her back to growl in her ear. “You have a mean streak.”

“Is that what that’s called?” She reached between us and grabbed my cock, her fingers going straight to work. Ungh. FUCK! I started panting right away and she rolled over with that wicked grin on her face and buried it against my neck. All I could do was hold on and enjoy the ride. Mmmmm. She licked and bit her way to my ear, sending chills all over my body. Oh. God. She pushed me over to my back and straddled my legs, her free hand grabbing mine as her tongue trailed down my chest and every breath… every move… put me more on edge. Every muscle in my body was close to locking up to keep from jerking away from the torture. I let out a loud grunt and she looked up at me smiling from the corner of her mouth again, she winked and let my hand go to put her finger to my lips. She shushed me and started her chewing again, trailing down my thigh. Until I couldn’t lay still anymore…

I grabbed the back of her head and pulled her mouth to mine. She moaned into my mouth… fffffuck. She has to know by now what that does to me. I rolled her over and pinned her to return the favor. She fisted her hands into what she could grab of my hair and laid her legs over my shoulders. Her thighs twitched and shook as she lost control. She’d managed to tame her usual moaning and panting down to heavy, pained gasping until it all stopped… again. She put her feet to my shoulders and lifted her back from the bed, contorting to bury her face in the mattress. Oh. My. God. In. Heaven! When I finally started to work my way back up her amazing body, I put my hand behind her knees, holding them… pinning her… curving her back enough for her to meet me on my knees… As soon as I pushed into her, I was nearly forced out… She was coming again… Clawing at my sides… I wasn’t nearly done with her… I let her knees go and hugged her legs to my chest… Her body locked up again… She clamped down so hard it almost hurt… Almost. I pulled her up to meet me, holding her body to mine… moving for both of us… Holding back until one more twitch grabbed me and robbed me.

I crashed to the bed, taking her with me. We landed on our sides and she panted into my chest. She kissed my throat and kept her arms curled up between us while we let ourselves calm down.

A giggle became more of a laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. I just think our mean streaks work well together.”

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