18 – The ‘S’ is for Situations Dr. Seuss Should Have Schooled Us About

SPOV 

Wondering if I’d lost him for a moment by randomly whipping out a page from my Dr. Seuss Law Library, I got a little lost myself staring into his eyes.

And then at his lips.

And in the memories of the things they could do.

Pancakes were all well and good, but they weren’t what I wanted to chew on at the moment.

I’d kissed plenty of guys over the years, but there was something decidedly different about kissing Eric. I just wasn’t sure what that difference was.

I could count red fish blue fish like a boss, but Dr. Seuss hadn’t written a book series for grownups about that to explain it all.

What I needed was something along the lines of Sookie Seeks a Significant Other.

When instead I’d been graced with the equivalent of a pop-up picture book, Look at the Fanny on my Manny.

  

Not that I was complaining. I’d looked plenty.

But now I wanted to touch.

His fanny and every other part of him.

Wondering if a hand-job was still on the table – even if I couldn’t be sure it was ever on the table – had the baby not been in the room I more than likely would’ve already slipped underneath the one we were sitting at to get the ball rolling.

By rolling my tongue all over them and then circling my lips over the tip of his…

“My mom.”

“Your huh?” I blinked, licking my only set of dry lips, while wondering what in the hell he was talking about.

And why in the hell he would bring up his mother at a time like this.

“My mom,” he repeated, with a slight upturn of his lips that made me wonder if he’d been reading his own Dr. Seuss for grownups book, Smirks on Jerks.

Then piercing me with his gaze instead of the one-eyed pirate in his pants, he added, “Is coming for a visit this weekend. Once she gets her hands on Jason, we’ll probably need the Jaws of Life to get him back from her, so I was thinking she could watch him for a few hours and I could go to the party with you.”

Right.

He wasn’t a mind reader and we’d been talking about something other than me walking his plank.

Right?

But it took me a minute to figure it out, so he’d taken my silence to mean something else and hesitantly said, “Unless you’d rather go alone?”

“No,” I denied, still trying to get my head out of his crotch.

Figuratively, that is.

It was a hard thing to do.

I was still imagining him literally hard.

Like my sex drive, my imagination had gone into overdrive at the thought of pledging my allegiance to his flagpole.

With liberty and orgasms for all.

“No?” he repeated, both looking and sounding unsure. “I would understand if you’d rather go alone. It is a work function and now that I’ve said it out loud, I realize it’s bad form to have invited myself along. Forget I said anything.”

“No,” I repeated, with a slight shake of my head, wishing I had a mental reset button for times like this instead of the tiny throbbing button in my panties, encouraging me to slip under the table and into his pants.

Fighting the urge to fan my face, I argued, “That’s not it.”

Really, Sookie.

Get your head away from the thought of giving him head and back in the conversation.

Really.

“Then what is it?”

“Um…” I hedged, trying to think of something to tell him other than the truth.

Admitting I was stuck on the thought of Captain Kilauea erupting in my throat wouldn’t do either one of us any good.

Well, it would do him some good, if he’d let me.

So good…

I know I’d left the door open, but I hadn’t figured on Hurricane Hoohah blowing through it.

Blowing…

Jesus fucking Christ…

“You said something about making an online dating profile?” I forced out, hoping to change the subject.

But he quickly reminded me this wasn’t 2008 and Barack Obama couldn’t run for a third term because both hope and change were dashed when he narrowed his eyes at me knowingly and said, “Nope.”

Well, at least it rhymed with hope.

But being both naturally and legally blonde myself, I had no compunction donning my Elle Woods and cocked my head to the side to innocently ask, “You didn’t say something about making an online dating profile?”

Jason was larger than a Chihuahua, but he could still fit in my bag and he was a bruiser.

It was close enough in my Etch-A-Sketch of Legal Ethics.

Leaning forward, he put both hands on the table, as he stared me down. But I’d faced worse interrogators than him – Pam, for one – so the only thing he actually accomplished was reminding me the fanny on my Manny wasn’t the only part of him worth looking at.

The arm porn was spectacular as well.

Maybe if I flung my syrup covered plate at him I would have a legitimate excuse to use my tongue like a loofah to lick him clean from head to toe.

Maybe?

A hoarsely whispered growl of my name rumbled through his lips, making my cotton cork expand that much more.

“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” I grumbled in return.

Grumbling, more so from the reminder I’d just given myself of the Monty Python in his pants, than from him not dropping the subject.

Or his pants.

What I would give for a killer rabbit to come barreling into the kitchen right about now.

“Tell me what you were thinking.”

HA!

Turning to look at the baby, so I wouldn’t end up turning Story Time into Show and Tell, Jason grinned back at me like he knew I was a lost cause.

But I was of the generation that had been raised to believe I could be whatever I wanted, if only I put my mind to it.

And at the moment I was of the mind of wanting to be a liar.

So I acted like the last few minutes hadn’t just happened and stood up to start clearing the table, only offering, “So I was thinking we can put a fake ad on Craigslist. Pam will hate it even more since not only is it free, it’s sketchy.”

Scraping the food from my plate into the trash, I turned to rinse it off in the sink. But the dish slipped from my fingers, when my own internal plumbing rumbled to life, just as I was suddenly boxed in from behind.

My ticking time box was set to explode now that there was a Manny on my fanny.

“Craigslist, huh?” he cajoled, with his lips trailing down the side of my neck, just shy of actually touching my skin, and his hands firmly gripping the countertop on either side of me. “For some reason, I don’t believe that’s all you were thinking.”

Like the fact he was sexy as all get out wasn’t enough, he had to go and be smart too.

Forcing air into my lungs, I let it out slowly, hoping the urge to whip around and go down on him would go with it.

God knows I wanted to.

Totally didn’t do it though.

I considered it my new superpower.

But he was doing awful things to my self-control, so I dug into my brain searching for something to offer him – other than a blow job – but as it turned out, Jason’s baby got back time worked in ways other than to improve his motor skills.

Because my baby appeared to have mine.

And he let us both know it in the form of a loud shriek of disapproval at being abandoned at the table.

Loosening his grip on the countertop, the warm air from his sigh tickled the back of my neck before Eric finally pulled away and turned to face Jason, speaking as though he’d been a part of the conversation all along and saying, “I know! I can’t believe she thought we’d fall for that. Craigslist…”

Babbling back to Eric in return, I took a moment to just watch the two of them, certain that if I tried real hard, I was sure I would be able to hear David Attenborough’s voice in the background, narrating the birth of their bromance.

Jason appeared to be fully engaged in whatever it was he thought Eric was saying to him, while Eric cleaned his hands and face, before he took him from the highchair and slowly made his way out of the kitchen, as they continued their one-sided conversation.

I couldn’t say for sure what they were talking about though.

It was like I’d been watching a reality TV show of them on mute.

Supermanny.

Considering how easily I’d been sucked into watching, I knew they’d be a hit with the nineteen to thirty-four year old female demographics.

EPOV

Sitting down on the couch, I let Jason use his grip on my fingers to do his pull-ups, while wondering how in the hell I could get Sookie flustered enough to start rambling.

It was the only way to find out what she’d really been thinking.

Then again, I should probably worry about keeping my own thoughts to myself before karma decided I was in need of a good bitch slap and make me inadvertently spit them out into the ether.

Because it was way too fucking soon to be thinking about marriage.

Of course, hearing a white noise version of The Wedding March, seeing her walk into the room, didn’t help my cause any. So I pulled Jason up against my chest, hoping he would smack some sense into me before I said anything that could derail the train still barreling towards a cliff’s edge.

Besides, if I was using both hands to hold the baby, then I couldn’t subconsciously pull an AT&T by reaching out and touching someone.

Someone named Sookie.

But Jason, the drooling little traitor that he was, did just that the moment Sookie joined us on the couch, with her automatically leaning towards his outstretched arms to take him.

Great.

How in the hell was I supposed to keep my hands to myself now?

The last thing I wanted to do was lead her to believe that I only wanted to get into her pants.

I wanted to, of course, but it wasn’t the only thing I wanted.

She would know that if she’d really been a mind reader because The White Noise Wedding March was still playing on a loop in my head.

But I’d already taken more than a few liberties, putting both my hands and mouth on her in the last couple of hours, so I knew I needed to rein it in.

I also knew sitting on my hands would be an obvious tell, so grasping at straws – before I ended up grasping something a lot more tangible, like her inner thigh – I picked up where we left off in the kitchen by offering, “Pam will never believe you would willingly pick up some stranger on Craigslist.”

I might not have known Sookie for very long, but I hoped I knew her well enough to know that.

“You’re right,” she sighed before seemingly smirking to herself when she added, “I already told her all of the dirt bags in lockup would be on Tinder, so she’d never buy that I’d gone shopping for a date in the Casual Encounters with a Serial Killer section of Craigslist.”

Squelching my own sigh of relief, I playfully bumped her shoulder and teased, “Can you say that first part again? I have a feeling I won’t be hearing it all that often, so I want to record it and make it my ringtone for you.”

Her expression was proof enough that her quick mind had already circled back to know what I was talking about and the glint in her eyes told me I was going to pay for it.

Still staring back at me, she blinked and the glint in her eyes disappeared, having been replaced with something similar to what had greeted me after I’d greeted her at the front door.

That same hazy glaze that made me want to believe the three date rule didn’t apply and she was more than willing to cross shower sex off of my getting-longer-by-the-minute list.

My list wasn’t the only thing getting longer either.

If I was a mind reader, I suspected I’d be hearing about all the ways she wanted to rip my clothes off. And that suspicion only grew when she licked her lips and drawled out in tone straight out of a late night movie on Skin-emax, “You’re right.”

But I wasn’t a mind reader, so I was in no way prepared when in another blink of an eye, her expression was back to normal and she taunted, “I probably won’t be saying it all that often, so you should savor it. Like a McRib or a Shamrock shake. It’s here and gone before you know it.”

“You are an evil woman,” I groused. But not wanting to admit she’d easily gotten the better of me, I sullenly added, “Bringing up Shamrock shakes when it’s nowhere near Saint Patrick’s Day.”

“Poor Kermit,” she pouted and baby-talked me with, “It ain’t easy being green.”

Making exaggerated frowny faces at Jason as she mocked me had him babbling back at her, as though he agreed with her.

So, still a traitor.

“Alright, Ronald,” she smiled looking back at me. “You need a cover.”

Forcing my eyes to remain on hers – instead of looking down to see just how noticeable the bulge was in my pants – I asked, “A cover?”

Without offering anything more, she grabbed a pen and one of the many legal pads stacked on her coffee table. Flipping to a blank page, she began writing, while artfully dodging the baby’s every attempt at getting the pen from her.

They’d obviously practiced their little routine because at one point, she was holding his lower half straight out by his ankles, horizontal with the couch, and with him holding onto her shoulder, they looked like the near formation of a capital letter ‘F’.

“Give him to me,” I chuckled, prying his chubby fingers loose from her body before hoisting him up above my head to form our own letter ‘T’.

It was then I remembered Jason wasn’t only a traitor.

He was a drooling traitor.

Setting him back down onto my lap, I wiped the glob of baby drool from my cheek with my shirt, while wondering what in the hell Sookie could possibly see in me.

I had no game whatsoever anymore.

It was a thought that only further cemented in my mind because in the next moment, Sookie grabbed her laptop and pulled up Google Images, as she casually dropped, “We’ll need a photo for your profile.”

A second later a guy with biceps the size of tree trunks – and who looked nothing like me – appeared on the screen, as she stared at him with her eyes slightly glazing over, while she said, “He’ll more than do.”

“And who is that?” I eventually asked.

Eventually, because it had taken Jason smacking my face to bring me out of my stupor.

“David Ramsey,” she sighed out, practically swooning.

At. Her. Laptop.

Licking her lips, she visibly shook off her own stupor, but kept her eyes locked onto the screen as she explained, “But you have more in common with his character’s identity of John Diggle. You were both in Special Forces. You’re both hot. And you’re both a danger to my panties when you hold a baby.”

Then turning to face me, she declared, “You’re practically twins.”

“Sure,” I childishly glared back at her, not finding any solace in anything she’d just said.

Calling me ‘hot’ and ‘a danger to her panties’ didn’t take away from the fact he looked nothing like me.

Or I looked nothing like him.

What-fucking-ever.

The fact remained that I was a blue eyed blonde and he wasn’t.

“Now, say it so I can record it to be your ringtone,” she grinned before schooling her features and doing a godawful impersonation of me, as she said in a tone a few octaves below her own normal voice, “You’re right, Sookie.”

Was that what this was about?

Shaking my head, I gently pressed my lips to Jason’s head before placing him on the floor out of harm’s way and gave her no warning whatsoever when I launched myself at her.

Making sure to sweep her legs up onto the couch so she wouldn’t accidentally kick the baby, I pinned her body underneath mine and began tickling her without mercy, taunting, “You’re right, Sookie. Is that what you wanted hear?”

“Yes!” she shrieked, trying and failing to squirm away from me.

Payback may have been my initial motive for testing Sookie’s bladder control, but I’d forgotten all about karmic bitchslaps and how many I was due.

Forget keeping my hands to myself because while my hands were on her body, they were still in semi-neutral territory.

The same couldn’t be said about my dick, now trying to call a 1987 ad slogan, by reaching out and touching her squirming body beneath mine.

Jesus, I was a lost cause.

And I only realized Sookie was just as lost as I was when I felt her hands change course and instead of trying to fight me off, she clutched at my biceps, while her legs wrapped around my hips, with her rubbing her lower half against mine.

Growling out her name in warning, I had no idea what expression she wore because my eyes were squeezed shut.

Because I couldn’t be held accountable for my actions if I saw her hazy glazed over eyes staring back at me.

But I huffed out a chuckle hearing her breathe out, “It’s a different kind of tickle.”

Taking a deep breath only forced our bodies closer together, but I still forced my eyes open to say, “You’re not helping.”

My self-control.

My grip on my sanity.

My ability to think straight.

“How about now?” she asked, before tilting her hips up and pushing me further towards the brink, while she purred out, “Is that helping?”

“Not even a little,” I sighed.

Cried.

Same thing.

“Fishing for compliments?” she laughed out. “Alright, I’ll bite.”

Then licking her lips, she practically stripped me bare, with nothing more than a look, when she said, “There is nothing little about that.”

Deciding everything was a lost fucking cause, I gave in – somewhat – and lowered my body down to press my lips against hers, while I grumbled, “I mentioned you’re evil, right?”

“Aww,” she chuckled against my mouth. “Well, given the time of the month, I suppose it’s only fitting that I’m the Red Skull to your Captain America.”

Completely bypassing the subtext of her words – because testosterone – I only took in the word ‘fitting’ and proceeded to imagine all of the different ways our bodies could fit together.

It wasn’t fair.

‘It’ encompassing ‘every-fucking-thing.’

“Sookie Stackhouse, Super Villain,” I breathed out before swallowing whatever protests she would have made.

Because this was Sookie.

Of course she was going to argue.

It was one of her best features as far as I was concerned.

And with every-fucking-thing a lost fucking cause, I gave up any pretense of being able to resist and spent the majority of the rest of the night getting familiar with some of her other ones.

It may have been too soon for marriage, but Sookie seemed to agree that it wasn’t too soon for that.