Page 6 of Devil's Lair

I chuckled as I moved away. “See you soon, sugar. Lock up tight, tonight And when you’re lying in that big, empty bed, you can think of what a real man like me could do to you.”

Her face turned redder than before. “Please leave. Men like you do nothing for me.”

“Baby, a man like me could do everything for you.” With that parting shot, I rapped my knuckles on the table and left, feeling her eyes at my back the whole way.

No one was going to help her.

Her sister’s fate was in my hand’s and so was the little bird’s.

CHAPTER 4

KENNEDY

It tooktwenty minutes for my heart to stop pounding after “he” left.

I ordered a decaf coffee, partly as an excuse to stay longer in case he was sitting out in the lot waiting for me to leave.

He gave me all kinds of conflicting vibes. I half expected him to be sitting in a car in the back of the diner lot with a ball cap pulled low, waiting to follow me back to the hotel.

A shiver raced up my spine.

He was the kind of man my mama always warned me about. Th type I had always steered clear of.

Husky.

Masculine.

Alpha male screaming from every atom.

He’s a giant and that beard of his. I can’t decide if I’m repulsed or curious. But damn his eyes. They cut me like lasers. His hands are so huge, rough, and callused like he works on engines all day.

When he said those crazy things to me; I imagines those hands cupping my naked breasts while his beard caressed my bare back. He was standing behind all thick muscles and dirty words waiting to turn into action.

I’d never been fucked.

I’d had vanilla but not the dirty, sweaty, animalistic mating I sometimes craved.

Never been touched in a way that felt like sublime fire.

It was my dirty secret that I wanted to be.

My secret self read dirty romance novels. Sometimes it was a man from another world with superior attributes to human males taking me to a place behind space and time…as I touched myself and read my books.

No one knew my secret fantasies.

I worked as a third grade teacher wearing buttoned up blouses, carp pants and ballerina flats.

I was the definition of proper and professional. But at night when I am home alone I dream of adventure, rough callused hands, and a man to take me to the stars and back. Something that I was raised not to want but instead run away from.

My cell ringing brought me back to the moment. I was hoping it would be the sheriff but it was Hailey my bff instead.

“Did you find anything?”

“Nothing. I’m panicking Hals, no one will help. No one claims to have seen her and yet the town’s population in s like two thousand and that might include livestock.”

“They’re scared. They know….”

“…and that just makes it worse.” I start sobbing uncontrollably at the thought of just what could’ve happened to Rose.

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