Page 73 of Brewbies
These days…he was really starting to hate his job.
Ethan looked over to see Darby in the clutches of a young, handsome, muscular man with a WWI haircut and dimples he could see from the across the street.
Should he be trusted to have to watch some absolute soul-shriveling bullshit like that and also responsibly carry a gun?
To befuckingdetermined.
Curling both hands into fists, he waited for the traffic to make a space and marched across the highway.
It wasn’t that he was a jealous man, per se. In the handful of relationships he’d considered for the long term, his partners had varied from faithful to clingy to file-a-protective-order obsessed.
Women liked him. Were attracted to him. They appreciated his looks, his body, his money, his dick, his manners, and his mouth. He’d not pieced this information together like some delusional incel, either. Women told him so. Embarrassingly often.
He was today years old when he realized it was weird that he’d never encountered a situation like this in his personal life.
He was friends with his exes, or at least friendly. He shook hands with their new partners. Exclaimed over their babies, etc. When something came to its necessary and unavoidable conclusion, he shrugged with regret and moved the fuck on.
Like a goddamned grownup.
So why in the name of Newton’s nut sac did the sight of some tattooed toddler coaxing smiles from Darby’s lips with a whisper make him want to hang the kid upside down from the silk and take his time flaying the skin from the overbuilt body?
Who was this asshole who thought he could enjoy the perfume of her neck? The silk of her vibrant hair against his cheek. The favor of her fond winks and the laugh that made every hair on his body prickle.
Her…ass inhis hand?
Sure, it was just to give her a boost up to her own aerial silk, but still…
He had an ax in the truck that’d take the offending hand off with one swing. Just who the fuck did thisFast & Furiousreject think he—
“Sheriff Townsend. Hold up,” called a remarkably tall Salish-style raven’s headdress. The “wings” of the onyx shawl flapped in the ocean breeze as Kiki Forrester ducked under a canopy and jogged toward him with a rhythmic jangle of bells and beads.
Behind her, other local Natives donned the astonishing effigies of whale, salmon, stag, fox, eagle, wolf, coyote, and otter, representing their tribe’s sacred totems in dances that awed, humbled, and inspired their audiences.
The statuesque woman cut him off before he could stride past the old oak and swing, lifting the massive headdress from her plaited hair. “Hey,” she greeted him with a curt, I-mean-business toss of her strong jaw, then buttered him up with her kind, dark eyes. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you, but can’t catch you in the office this week.” She glanced toward the protesters, her expression tightening. “I wanted to warn you about my campaign, but I guess it’s too late for that. Still. I’d like to clear the air between us before the election.”
The eldest of the prolific Forrester kids, Kiki had graduated high school before Ethan started his freshman year, which put her at fortyish. She was a good peer, a great cop, and onehellof a single mom.
Were Darby not being mauled by a moron, he’d love to stand with her and shoot the shit or bury the hatchet or whatever the fuck. However, right now that shirtless beefcake bastard had finished climbing his own silk and reached for Darby’s silk to pull her close with a move that could have been interpreted asprotective.
“Yeah, we’re good, Forrester,” he said, managing to relax his lips into a semblance of a welcome smile, though he kept one eye over her shoulder at where the Water Street mavens all gaped at what was going on in the silks above them. “You support this?” he asked, waving his hand at the…everything. “Enough to perform?”
She made a face at him. “You don’t?” Opening her shawl, she uncovered the tank top that sported the Brewbies logo in gigantic pink letters, beneath which said,Have the breast day!“My favorite drink is the Filthy Earl Grey. Basically a London Fog has a lovechild with a dirty chai. It doesn’t matter. You have a second later this weekend to chat?”
“Yeah? Um. Yeah.” He was listening.Honestly. This conversation mattered. Kiki’s respect and friendship were important. But how the fuck was he supposed to follow a conversation when Darby was bent almost in half backward, one bare, smooth, long, sexy leg wrapped in the spiral of her silk, and the other wrapped around the torso of a dead man?
“I heard you were the one who shut her down.” Kiki crinkled her brow as if waiting for him to deny it.
“Wasn’t my idea.”Initially,he finished to himself. Fucking hell. The kid had to stabilize her in that position,but did he have to put his hands there?
That’s it.He was going to cut off every finger with dull garden shears.
“What statute did you use?” Kiki asked idly, glancing over her shoulder as if to ascertain whatever was keeping his attention.
He rattled off the statute numbers he’d memorized, and she took out her phone and tapped something into it. It allowed him to watch Darby unroll from her partner and catch herself in the splits to a smattering of applause from those who lingered around the practice.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuk… He could remember the exact moment he realized she could do that in Canada when she’d stretched her leg up over—
Kiki snapped her fingers.
