by Mia Malone
“Yay!” Cas called out. “I wanna get really drunk and dance my ass off. I’ll go and see if Ronnie needs any help.”
“We’ll help too,” Sissy squealed, and the women disappeared toward the bar.
Cas wanted to get drunk and dance. The woman had been a split second from dying and she wanted to get drunk and dance?
“Boner!” Cas called out and the dog bounced off the porch with a happy yip.
Black tried to figure out how to shut down his mother’s party, which would make him her least favorite son for a while. He knew from experience that this was a very uncomfortable place to be in, but it would be for the best so he could –
“Your woman has a dog called Boner?”
He turned to look at the grinning morons surrounding him and shrugged.
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh.
“He’d better not get close to Lucy,” Joke said and put his hand on the head of his own gorgeous husky-mix.
“He’s fixed,” Black muttered.
“Still,” Joke said. “You never know around here.”
“True,” Black snorted. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“So,” Ice cut in. He put a couple of six-packs on the porch and turned. “I hear there’s a party tonight.”
“No,” Black said.
“Sissy and Cas will kill you,” Ice snorted. “They were giggling like fucking teenagers over at the bar.”
Ah, hell. Of course they would.
Black rolled his eyes toward the skies and wondered if he could kill his sister right back. Or mother.
Or both.
Ice handed out beer, and they sat down on Black’s porch where Cas had added a couple of benches and some more chairs.
“Black,” Joke said next to him. “There will be a party. You don’t stand a chance, and you know it.”
“I can handle Cassandra,” Black muttered.
“Yeah, I’m not talking about Cas,” Joke said with a grin. “Talking about your mother and sister.”
“I can handle my sister,” Black said.
He wasn’t entirely sure anyone could handle his mother, but Sissy should be manageable.
“Please do.”
“What?”
“Mimi is dating,” Joke said with a sigh.
Black started laughing and heard the others chuckle too.
“You’re laughing, but I say she’s too young,” Joke muttered sourly.
“Getting a step-daughter is fun isn’t it?” Ice asked teasingly.
“The hell it is,” Joke grunted. “Sissy says it’s okay, but I just wanna smash my fist into the grinning morons’ faces.”
“Huh,” Black said and tried to not laugh at the man in front of him.
“I know,” Joke said. “How old was Desi when she started dating?”
Black froze and stared at absolutely nothing at all.
Desiree wasn’t dating.
Was she?
***
Cassandra
Loud laughter echoed on our porch when I walked back with Eye to let everyone know that the men were supposed to grill burgers and that Ronnie had everything else under control at the bar.
“She isn’t,” Black insisted.
Additional rounds of laughter echoed, and then they spotted me.
“Hey, Cas,” one of the men called out. “At what age did your daughter start dating?”
“Supervised when she was fifteen, car dates when she turned seventeen,” I replied. “Why?”
Black pushed out a rasping sound and stared at me with eyes full of confusion.
“Desi is dating?” he asked.
“Of course, she is,” I said with a frown. “She’s in college, and she’s a pretty girl, so I’m sure she’s out and about quite a lot.”
“Out and ab –”
Black cut himself off and pushed out another weird sound.
“Dad,” Eye said quietly. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve got it covered. Lex is checking them ou...”
I turned slowly toward Black’s son with my brows raised.
He winced.
“Uh,” he said.
“Eirik,” I said and narrowed my eyes. “How old were you and your brothers when you started dating?”
“Don’t answer that,” Ice murmured, and I rounded on him.
“And how old were you and Black when you started for that matter?”
“Babe,” Black muttered.
“Don’t tell me it’s different because it isn’t,” I snapped. “At least my daughter isn’t running around breaking condoms all over the place.”
There was a brief silence, and then Joke cleared his throat.
“What?” he asked weakly, and I ignored him.
“How old were you?” I asked Black.
“Babe.”
“How. Old?”
“Fifteen,” he muttered.
Ice snorted out something unintelligible which I assumed meant that had been a lie.
“What are we talking about?” Gee chirped happily next to me.
“Mimi is dating,” Ice said sweetly. “And Desi too.”
“Of course, they are,” Gee said with her brows raised and I growled.
“Black and Joke are not handling it well,” Ice added.
“Double damned standards,” I muttered sourly.
“You seem a little tense, my dear,” Gee said. “Let’s go and talk about –”
“No,” I said quickly. “I’m good. Happy. Not tense at all.”
I did not want to discuss why I was so annoyed with her son. It was partially because of his damned sons butting into my daughter’s dates, which I actually thought was kind of sweet. But it was mostly because I wanted Black to shove me up against the wall and take me in a way he hadn’t done in weeks and weeks, and I wasn’t going to discuss that with his mother.
“You are tense,” she insisted, frowned and added, “If Black has problems, there’s help, you know.”
I blinked, and then I blinked again.
“I don’t...”
Her eyes had started to twinkle, and I trailed off when she turned toward her son.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed about, son,” she said affably. “Erectile dysfunction happens to many men when they get older.”
The silence on the porch was suddenly so thick you could have cut it with a knife.
“Erect –”
Black cut himself off and stared at his mother. I wasn’t entirely sure where to look and felt a burst of highly inappropriate laughter bubble up my throat.
“That’s when you can’t get it... you know,” Gee said calmly and made a gesture with her arm to illustrate something moving upward in her groin area.
“I know what –”
“There are good treatments these days,” she said with a shrug.
Black turned to look at his brother, and they both shifted around to stare at their father who came strolling across the yard.
Roddy froze and stared back at his sons.
“What?” he growled.
There was another long silence and then one of Sissy’s friends, a very handsome man named Paddy, threw his head back and started laughing loudly.
“God, I love this place,” he choked out.
***
Black
The party was loud and rowdy, and except for Roddy telling just about anyone repeatedly that he didn’t have a limp dick, everyone was happy.
He heard his mother and one of Sissy’s friends squeal about their nicknames, which were Lee and Gee, and wondered when that fucking joke would get old. Then they squealed about his son’s nickname being Dagger and one of the other guys having a son whose actual name was Digger.
“I wonder who it’s gonna be next,” Cas asked and looked around the group. “Ice and...”
She trailed off and Sissy was apparently not entirely sober, or possibly out of her mind, because she pointed a wobbly finger at their brother and shouted, “Lice!”
Everyone froze and stared at Sissy
.
“Lice?” Ice asked.
“Or something,” Sissy murmured, probably recognizing that the look on Ice’s face didn’t mean good things were coming her way.
“Lice?” Ice repeated.
“Well it rhymes.”
“So does nice,” Ice snapped. “And so does twice and price, but you couldn’t think of those words, could you?”
It looked like his siblings would get into an argument that he knew would probably last for the rest of the evening, so Black sighed and leaned forward toward his brother.
“She could have thought of Edelweiss, overprecise and cockatrice too but she didn’t. Now let it go.”
“But –”
“Now.”
Ice glared at him, but his lips twitched.
“What’s a cockatrice?”
“No clue but it rhymes with your damned name.”
Ice barked out laughter and flicked his fingers at Ronnie. “Ron, babe, get me some whiskey?” Then he turned and said smugly, “You know what rhymes with your name?”
Black didn’t even bother answering.
“Nymphomaniac,” Ice said and walked away with his glass, laughing loudly at his own joke, and Black couldn’t hold back a grin of his own because it had been kind of funny.
“Let’s hope it’s accurate too,” his goddamned mother murmured, wiggled her brows and walked over to talk to a group of women at the other side of the room.
“Babe,” Black muttered in Cas’ ear and put an arm around her shoulders to pull her closer.
“I did not tell your mother you can’t get it up,” she sighed. “Who knows why she says the shit she does?”
“I know,” he said with a grin. “Hilarious to see Dad’s face when he heard what she’d said, though.”
It had been, and it still was, so they grinned at each other, but then a funky song started playing, and her eyes lit up.
“I love this song,” she murmured, and he felt her body start to sway with the beat of the music.
“Babe,” he said calmly. “I don’t dance.”
Her brows went up, and she pouted in that cute way which always shot straight to his dick. Erectile dysfunction, he thought to himself. Not likely.
“You don’t dance,” Cas echoed with raised brows, but then she twisted out of his arms. “Well, I do,” she said over her shoulder as she disappeared toward the dancefloor.
Black turned toward the men he’d been talking to but heard a loud hoot behind his back and winced. He knew what that hoot meant and hoped Cas wouldn’t get embarrassed by the dance moves Ronnie usually pulled off. She’d been a stripper in her twenties, and the way she danced was still heavily colored by that period in her life.
Then he noticed how the men in front of him were staring openmouthed at the dancefloor, and his brows went up.
“I dance,” Brooks muttered and walked off.
“Yeah,” Gibson said and put his bottle down. “I actually like to...”
Paddy and Day followed the others without a word, and Black turned slowly.
Cas and Ronnie were both rolling their hips in a way he suspected might not be entirely legal. Then Gibson got up on the dancefloor, and the fucker had some moves, Black had to give him that, but the way some of the women squealed sounded ridiculous.
“You used to dance, Black,” Ice suddenly said quietly by his side.
“When we were fucking young,” Black snapped.
“You’re saying we’re old?”
Their eyes met but then there was another round of catcalls from the dancefloor, and Black emptied his glass of whiskey.
Ice snorted out something and muttered, “You might wanna...”
“Yeah,” Black said hoarsely. Cas was doing something with her arms and the way she moved made her breasts jiggle a little. “That fucking woman.”
Then he walked up on the dancefloor and pulled his woman into his arms, hoping that he still knew what to do.
Cas had been right, the song was good, and he hadn’t forgotten, he realized. It also felt great to be there, surrounded by friends but looking into her eyes as they moved to the heavy beats of the base.
“You’d better be worth this,” he still growled into her ear as he rolled his hips with hers.
“Einar,” she murmured, shimmied down a little and up again, and added, “When I slide my tongue from your balls to the tip of your cock, you’ll know that I am.”
He literally felt his eyes cross for a second and then he put his hands on her ass.
“And when will this happen?” he murmured into her ear.
“At your earliest convenience,” she said.
It took him a second to realize what she meant, but then he sidestepped in a small stumble and stared at her.
“Now?”
She nodded and raised her chin.
He took hold of her hand and marched them out of there.
“We’re playing later,” Ice called out after them.
“We’ll be back,” Black shouted and ignored the hoots as he walked out of the bar.
He looked at the yard and decided that fuck it, his house was too far away, and pulled her around the corner.
“Babe,” he hissed when she got down on her knees and started working on his jeans. “We should be care –”
She slid her tongue along his cock and all rational thoughts about being careful whizzed right out of his head. Then she took him into her mouth, and he put his hands on her cheeks when she started sucking him. He knew immediately that he wouldn’t last for long, though, and pulled her up toward him.
“I liked that,” she protested.
“You’ll like this better,” he said, lifted her up on a high table along the side of the bar and pushed her skirt up over her thighs.
“Don’t rip my –”
“Too late.”
Then he was inside her and started thrusting.
When he felt her pussy quiver and the sounds she made slid down his throat, he let go and as he came on a low growl, everything in Black’s life was suddenly right again.
Chapter Eighteen
Badlands
Cassandra
We walked back into the bar, and everyone pretended that we hadn’t marched out of there at a high speed on our way to do what we’d done.
Everyone except Gee.
“Alrighty then, Black. I guess you don’t need any –”
“Mom,” Black snapped and walked off toward the band who was fiddling their instruments.
Gee giggled and winked at me.
I realized that she knew her son well and had figured out how baiting him about getting a hard-on would help to push him over the edge and back to where we had been before.
I also saw how she exchanged a glance with Sissy and frowned.
What had that glance been about?
“Gee?” I murmured. “Why did you ask me to come here and manage the Lodge?”
“I needed the –”
I cut her off with a raised hand, and our eyes met.
“Sissy called,” she said. “We’d already guessed something had happened between you and Black, and she said you weren’t happy. Believe me; we already knew how unhappy Black was, but Sissy said they’d talked to Doug Hanes and he thought it was about you. So, yes. We decided that someone needed to do something, and we interfered.”
She raised her chin and looked at me.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
Her face softened, and she put a hand gently on my cheek.
“Oh, honey, don’t you realize?” she said and waved her hand to indicate the crowd and the bar. “This here? Special occasion, Cas. This is us thanking you.”
I blinked furiously as we looked at each other, and I saw how she swallowed.
“Don’t you dare make me cry, Gee,” I said warningly.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“What’s going on?” Roddy asked with a scowl. “Are you bawling?”
“No,” we both snapped and turned toward him
.
“Huh.”
“I’ll go and talk to Ronnie,” I said. “I need a drink.”
That turned out to be more accurate than I knew.
Ronnie stood like a statue with a glass and a towel in her hands, staring at the men in front of her.
“Ronnie?” I asked and rapped my knuckled against the bar. “What’s wrong?”
“Yuh,” she wheezed out, swallowed and restarted, “Guh.”
I turned toward the group of men with my brows raised.
“We haven’t done anything,” Paddy said. “We talked about having been up in this area a long time ago. Had a good time. Partied.”
“Met women,” Ronnie said weakly.
I stared at her and wondered if she perhaps had had a fling with one or all of them. They were ridiculously handsome and looked like men who had slept with more than their fair share of the female population around the mountains.
“Of course,” Gibson said and raised his beer.
“What women?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Ronnie said hoarsely. “What women?”
“How the hell would I know,” Paddy muttered. “We were partying, and so were they. I hooked up with a woman with huge...” he moved his hands in front of his chest.
God.
No.
“Who was called what?” I asked weakly.
“I don’t know,” Paddy said with a shrug. “Ten years ago. A bit less than that. Linda? Lanie?”
“Leeanne?” I said hoarsely.
“Yeah,” he said with wide a grin. “That was her name. Why?”
Ronnie leaned forward and put her forehead on the bar, and I closed my eyes briefly.
“What?” Gibson asked. “You know her?”
“Not really,” I said breezily and turned toward Ronnie who had straightened again. “Can I have a –”
“Yeah,” she cut me off immediately. “I think I’ll have one too.”
“You probably should.”
“I probably should.”
Our eyes met, and suddenly the hilarity of the situation bubbled up my throat.
“Jesus,” I murmured and then we burst out laughing.
“What’s the joke?” Sissy asked, and we squealed.
“Don’t fucking know,” Paddy said with a frown and tucked his woman under his arm. “I hooked up with someone up her ages ago and they...”
He moved his hand to indicate the two of us.
