Chapter Twelve #2
worries me to death. Dad’s freaked out. And Mother is Mother, but I bet she’s
freaked too. Enough. For you and for us.”
Carolyn stared at her sister a beat, before she pushed out,
“I’ve been a bitch.”
“Stop bein’ that, sort your shit,
and it’s all gonna be good,” Dutch told her.
Her eyes hit him and lit.
“Do you think Jag—?”
He shook his head and ended that before she started it.
“You two are done. There’s no goin’
back. It’s not about a grudge. It’s about trust. And shitting on family. You
broke the first, and worse, committed the cardinal sin of doin’
the last. He’s gone for you.”
“He’s a good guy,” Carolyn said softly.
“Yeah,” Dutch agreed to the obvious.
“Like you,” she murmured, pulled in another big breath, her
eyes shifting between them again, before she settled on Georgie and something
else hit her face, something he’d never seen.
But it was the something Georgiana knew was there, buried
until then, but not gone.
Carolyn’s life was in the toilet.
But she knew her sister was happy.
So she was happy for her sister.
Carolyn again spoke.
“I’ll call Dad. I’ll let you know if he’s not being cool.
Then I’ll call you.”
“Call me anytime, Caro, don’t forget the part about me
loving you. We’ll do lunch or dinner, and for that, I’ll buy.”
One side of Carolyn’s lips went up and she said, “You’re
such a bitch because you’ve always been so cool.”
Hearing that, Dutch was about to lose it when Georgie
replied, “You’re such a bitch because you’ve always been such a free spirit.
It’s annoying.”
“You’re annoying.”
“Your face is annoying.”
“Your face is obsessed with a cat.”
“Your face needs an ice cream sundae.”
“Got that right, sister.”
After Carolyn said that, they both started cackling.
Jesus Christ.
Were they serious?
“Come here,” Georgie bid, breaking from Dutch to go to her
sister.
They were serious.
They hugged.
And didn’t let go.
He heard Georgie whisper, “Dad’s gonna
take you in.”
“I know, but bluh, he
watches so much football and Michelle fusses.”
“She wants us to like her.”
“She’s been around two decades, we like her already, geez.”
“Just be cool.”
“You be cool.”
“I’m always cool.”
“Annoying.”
Fortunately, this sister shit didn’t go on a lot longer, and
after Carolyn apologized again for the day before, and interrupting them that
morning, Georgiana got her out the door.
And as Dutch watched this, he thanked fuck he had two
brothers.
When Georgiana shut the door on her sister and turned to
him, he asked, “You all right?”
She took one skipping-running step to him, another, then she
body-slammed him and curved her arms around.
He did the same with his arms around her.
“She’s gonna be okay,” she said,
smiling brightly up at him.
“Yeah,” he murmured, taking that in, feeling it filling his
chest, knowing that was all he needed to get through this day.
Hell, probably the next week.
“It’s gonna suck for her huge,
though, because Dad is the consummate NFL junkie and Michelle totally
fusses.”
“You’re gorgeous, you know,” he decreed.
She blinked, her chin jerking back, before she asked,
“What?”
“You’re gorgeous. Beautiful. Great face. Great hair. Great
body. Perfect skin. You know that, don’t you?”
She melted into him and said, “I feel I must inform you,
Dutch Black, that although you have a body carved by God himself, so beautiful
it makes me salivate, my down-with-the-patriarchy days, which, mind you, are
not over, include me being not down with the patriarchy-led
gazillion-dollar diet and workout industry. Which I will allow, some of them
actually strive toward offering humans an avenue to a healthy lifestyle. But
especially with the diet industry, it feeds on insecurity and the media’s
utterly impossible-to-achieve version of beauty, making fat white cats big
bucks. So since I was about twelve, I considered my curves a badge of honor.”
“Good.”
“Though, it’s sweet of you to say.”
“Pointing out, God carved your body too.”
Another blink and chin jerk and then a smile and a soft,
“Yeah.”
“Do you need coffee?”
“I’m only about to die without it.”
Shit.
Georgie and her quick mouth.
Fuck, he dug this woman.
To share that, he brushed a kiss on her lips, let her go,
and finally went and poured them both some joe.
Dutch drove them home from the fancy-dinner part of
their marathon date mildly pissed.
And since he was, he got into that.
“You did that on purpose.”
“Mm,” she hummed.
“Mm?” he asked.
“I did tell you,” she reminded him.
“No man likes a tease.”
She let out a giggle he’d never heard before, it was
feminine and hot, and he became less mildly pissed and more just straight-up
pissed.
“It’s not about the tease,” she educated. “It’s delayed
gratification which I’ll remind you again was your idea.”
“That right there,” he stated. “Retaliation.”
She said nothing.
He remembered their conversation of the night before.
“Cerebral and long-lasting,” he grunted.
She giggled again and he got why he felt that in his dick.
Because it was the auditory sound of her got-your-cock look.
She slid a hand on his thigh, stopping way too close to his
cock, and told him, “We’re almost home. So your torture is almost over. And so
is mine.”
Torture was a good word for it.
Her.
In that red dress.
Short, mid-thigh, fitted skirt. Sleeves that came down to
just under her elbow.
All that relatively modest.
It was the cleavage.
A scalloped, semi-wide v-line that went all the way down to
her midriff.
You could see a lot full-on, but if you caught a view from
the side.
Fuck.
Which meant her gorgeous tits had been in his face all
night.
He didn’t even taste his steak.
And if it wasn’t for her dark hair tumbling down her back
and all over her shoulders, lush with curls. The red lip she gave him that
reminded him how those felt wrapped around his dick. Her heavily made-up eyes
that made her look sultry—because it was the classy, glamorous kind, not the
trashy, overdone kind—he wouldn’t have looked at anything else.
And he barely thought of anything else but how many ways he
was going to fuck her that night.
If asked, he would have called it that he would hook up with
a woman in the life. Like Snap did with Rosalie. Rosie’s dad was a biker, she
knew their world and didn’t want to leave it.
He did not suspect he’d find someone like Tack found with
Tyra or Hop found with Lanie, or even Joke found with Carissa.
He got his own version of that.
Rosalie could get dolled up and it’d be hot, in an objective
way from Dutch’s point of view.
But she wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress that hinted at
professional, was demure in almost every way, but in truth, was designed to
drive a man out of his mind.
“If I had to endure the torture for days,
you can do it for one dinner,” she declared.
“Babe, since we started to get busy, you’ve had five
orgasms, sucked me off three times and got me off with a hand job. You’ve
hardly gone wanting.”
“Mm,” she hummed again, squeezing his thigh.
He realized talking about this shit wasn’t helping.
He caught her hand when it shifted dangerously, and when he
did, she said, “You give good date, Dutch Black.”
“I don’t know how you can think that. You turned me into
that loser who can’t stop staring at a woman’s tits.”
“Honey.”
At her tone, horrified and remorseful, he glanced at her.
Which instantly turned him the latter.
“Babe, it wasn’t that bad,” he somewhat lied.
“I think you need to know something,” she told him.
“What?”
“That’s the best date I’ve ever been on.”
This, “What?” was surprised.
“You know, I’ve got a mirror, so I know conventionally, with
the symmetry of my face and the thickness of my hair and whatnot, I’m
considered attractive.”
Suddenly, at her detached and impartial assessment of her
own looks, he wanted to laugh.
He didn’t and she kept going.
“That said, every girl who goes on a date with a guy she
really, really,” she squeezed his hand, “likes, wants that guy to
stare at her through the date like he can barely control himself from pouncing
on her. Not only is it sexy as hell, it feels unbelievably nice.”
“Glad you enjoyed yourself,” he muttered.
“Sorry you didn’t,” she said. “That sucks.”
Well, shit.
“Georgiana.”
“Yes?”
“I’ll remember you sitting across from me in that red dress
and how proud I felt that you were right there, with me, and you’d end the
night in my bed and I’d end it in you, for the rest of my life.”
“Dutch,” she whispered.
“So don’t listen to my bullshit. I’m just impatient to get
you home.”
“Then hurry,” she urged.
He was not about to get in a wreck that would end a
fantastic day in blood and trauma, so he did not hurry.
He didn’t go slow either.
And outside Carolyn showing, and maybe even partially
because of Carolyn showing and how that eased the mental load for Georgie, it
had been a fantastic day.
They’d fooled around in bed all day, whispering to each
other and dozing between times, getting out of it only to grab food and when it
came time to get ready to go out to dinner.
Georgiana told him about her mother, who was definitely a mother.
A woman who sounded dedicated to nothing but striving to mold her girls into
physical perfection that would attract a man in a way he would not get shot of
her.
Not surprisingly, that meant they had a strained
relationship that included what amounted to duty visits and texts only, with
the occasional dinner thrown in and the obligatory rotation of holidays between
her and Georgie’s dad.
Dutch told her how Hound was his dad without being his dad,
this not about blood, but about not hooking up with his mom until a few years
ago.
She told him she was uncertain about the crime beat, because
it required a fair amount of aggression and legwork, and she wanted something
that was more about face-to-face interaction and research.
He admitted working in the shop wasn’t so bad, but there had