Chapter 3 #2
High-maintenance women were usually piss-poor company.
But…this one was a mass of contradictions.
She wore no makeup. Although she’d pulled her hair back in some fancy braid on both sides of her head, the rest tumbled down her back freely.
And she didn’t fidget with it. Her only jewelry was a necklace with a golden pendant: “If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.”
She was a romantic. And she was going to adopt a bony Labrador. Yeah, he wanted to get to know her better.
Although the fact that Jake would approve was annoying as hell.
With a couple of bites, Atticus finished off his biscuit and grabbed another before Jake could get there.
At Jake’s low curse, Gin giggled.
Atticus turned to her. “Thanks for making my kind of food. When I helped at one of Kallie’s gourmet camp cooking weekends, I swear, the chef taught people to make a salad of two lettuce leaves topped with something gooey and a single raspberry. Jesus.”
She wrinkled her nose. “No gourmet from me. I’m all about southern comfort food.”
“Works for me,” Jake said, joining in. “I hope you come on more trips. We could expand our menus.”
“I’d like to join you again,” Gin said. “I love cooking for others.”
Jake glanced at Atticus. “See? She has the attitude you should search for.”
Atticus stiffened. “Don’t recall asking for your opinion.”
The Hunt brothers could be as tenacious as wolves on carrion, and Jake ignored him to say, “Those ‘do me’ submissives you pick up aren’t worth the time.”
“What’s a ‘do me’ submissive?” Ralph asked, keeping the annoying topic going.
Jake smirked at Atticus. “Much as there are Doms who are only interested in getting serviced”—he added air quotes around the word—“there are selfish submissives who care only about getting their needs met. They want to be taken under command for a scene, to get their rocks off…so to speak…and then they’re done.
In a good relationship, each party—whether Dom or sub—has as much desire to please the other as to receive. ”
The guy from San Francisco nodded his understanding. “That selfish attitude is found in vanilla relationships, too.” The man kissed his wife’s hand. “Before Sylvia, I might not have understood what a difference a generous heart can make.”
Atticus glanced down at Gin.
She was listening with interest, although he doubted she fully understood.
“The Dom/sub dynamic can confuse people. Sometimes it’s difficult to sort out what’s going on,” Kallie said to the guy, then turned to Atticus. “For example, you have a super-take-charge and protective side that disguises your over-the-top need to make your subs happy.”
“Interesting. Super-take-charge and a need to please. I bet you were the oldest.” Gin tilted her head. “And maybe you needed to take on adult status before your childhood peer group did?”
Atticus stared at her, brows drawing together. “Where the hell are you coming up with that?”
“Gin’s a social worker at the prison.” Kallie added for Gin, “Atticus works with Sunny’s husband at the police department.”
A social worker? Like edged steel, the words sliced into his brain. He couldn’t move for a second. Sawyer’d mentioned last week that his counselor was a pretty Southerner.
Counseling, my ass. Last winter had revealed to him the truth of prison “counseling.” It’d been in the prison reception room.
Sawyer had his elbows on the steel table, his shoulders hunched like an old man, as if each day drained more of his endurance.
After the so-called therapy had started, he’d almost stopped talking.
Unable to tolerate the silence, Atticus had to fill in with talk about his week.
When he’d complained about a perp arrested for the third time, his brother had muttered, “He’s a total fuckup. Like me.”
“Bullshit.”
“Fuck, Att, even my therapist says I’m not worth the food I eat. The air I breathe. That I’m a waste of skin.”
Their stepfather’d tried to convince Sawyer he was worthless. This counselor had damn well finished the job. Damn her. She’d appeared so softhearted; seems her generosity didn’t extend to convicts.
As the students’ conversation drifted to overcrowded California prisons, Atticus turned to Gin and lowered his voice. “You like working with inmates?”
“Not as much as I thought I would.” His frozen voice and expression must have registered. Her head tilted. “Even though you’re in law enforcement, you have a problem with people who work in prisons?”
No. He had a problem with shrinks in general, like the one who’d medicated a teammate into a coma, the one who’d let his stepfather loose after his so-called “therapy,” and definitely this one in particular. “Yeah.”
She flinched.
He wanted to apologize…until he remembered his brother’s spiral into hopelessness. God, Sawyer, fight it. Frustration chilled his voice even further. “Yeah, I do.”
Her expression went blank, and she bent to pet the dog.
Unaware of the discussion, Jake was refilling coffee cups. “Atticus, did Kallie give you an invite to the party in a couple weeks? Some of the Dark Haven members from San Francisco plan to come. And guests are welcome.” Jake glanced at Gin and raised his brows.
No fucking way. “I’ll be working.” Whatever night it was.