Forbidden (Southern Comfort)

by O'Neill, Lisa Clark

  When it came to sex, Clay thought, even the most sophisticated animal was reduced to the very basic and predictable rituals of mating.

  “I haven’t had one of these in years,” Tate murmured around the banana, drawing Clay’s attention away from the horny teens. Turning slightly, he started to make some inane comment, but the sight that greeted him froze his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

  Sweet Jesus, Tate wasn’t nibbling at the banana the way he and Max were doing.

  She had her lush, delicate mouth closed over the damn thing and was actually sucking.

  Then she closed her eyes, and licked the chocolate from her lips.

  He quickly cut his gaze back toward the old man with the hairy armpits, hoping to substitute that decidedly un-stimulating image for the one that was wreaking havoc with his own hormones. He shifted uncomfortably on the bench. He was not going to give into the temptation to turn back around and watch.

  This was a family environment, for God’s sake, and he was in the company of this woman’s son. Offering to replace her banana with his pertinent body parts was simply not an option.

  “Mmm,” he mumbled in reply because he didn’t trust himself to speak. He took a vicious bite out of his own banana.

  While taking out his frustration, Clay caught sight of the man in the Atlanta Braves hat he’d almost wrangled with earlier.

  The man was lingering in the shade, sitting on top of a table in the far corner of the picnic area. Hat pulled low, his manner casual, he methodically consumed a plate of nachos and took long pulls from a bottle of water. He had another unopened bottle – this one soda – sitting on the table beside him.

  He was minding his own business, paying no noticeable attention to anyone else, and seemed relatively average. He’d done nothing untoward that would in any way suggest ill intent, but something about the man sent Clay’s radar on high alert.

  What was a single male doing at a kiddie carnival in the middle of one of the hottest days of the year?

  Waiting for his wife and child to finish a ride?

  His left ring finger was bare, and he’d shown no interest in the younger children. In fact, when a mother walked a screaming baby past him, he glanced at them with disdain.

  One of the male teens, cigarette dangling from his lips, walked toward the man and apparently asked him for a light. The burly dude shook his head, and then returned his attention to his plate. He seemed to be resisting any unnecessary attention.

  Maybe he was a loner, and didn’t like crowds. But if so, why bother hanging out where large groups of noisy people gathered?

  Maybe the guy worked here, but from his basic good looks and well-kept appearance Clay sort of doubted it. He obviously devoted a lot of time to his body, and he didn’t have that haggard look typical of so many carnival workers. Traveling the country in a trailer was no easy life, and that fact showed on most of the people who made their careers out of bringing their particular brand of pleasure to town after town. Nor did the lifestyle lend itself to regular, intense workouts. And this guy clearly worked out a lot.

  In fact, it was the man’s body that Clay found most disturbing.

  Not the fact that he obviously lifted serious weights – there was nothing inherently suspicious about that – but it had been his experience that people who spent so much time turning their body into a veritable temple were inclined to show it off.

  This man was pretty much covered from head to foot.

  Why?

  Clay took another bite of banana, and contemplated the probable reasons.

  It was quirks like that, little oddities of behavior, that drew Clay like a moth to flame. Something about this guy just didn’t add up. He wanted to know why that was.

  “Mr. Clay?”

  Max diverted his attention, making him realize he’d inadvertently slipped into professional mode. He was here to get away from that, damn it, so he put the puzzle of the burly dude out of his mind.

  The little boy scooted closer, tugging at Clay’s sleeve. He had streaks of chocolate from ear to ear and a hopeful look on his face. “Would you ride the Ferris wheel with me before we go home?”

  “Max,” Tate chastised lightly, reaching over Clay’s lap to wipe the chocolate off her son’s face. She wet the napkin with the tip of her tongue, causing Clay to shift uncomfortably.

  He looked heavenward, studied the overhanging tree branch, and willed his body under control.

  “I think that you’ve put Mr. Clay through quite enough for one day.”

  Oblivious to Clay’s plight, Tate discarded the paper napkin in favor of her thumb, which she licked before rubbing Max’s face. It was an innocent gesture – maternal, for heaven’s sake – but that tongue sent his blood pressure through the roof.

  And then she absently braced her hand on his thigh for balance as she leaned over.

  Saints above, the woman was killing him.

  “Are you okay?” Tate looked worried, and Clay realized he must have inadvertently made a noise of distress.

  She glanced from Max back to him. “There’s really no need for us to stay any longer.”

  Clay took in the slightly mutinous expression on Max’s face, and gathered the kid thought otherwise.

  “We can’t leave without hitting the Ferris wheel on the way out.” Which earned a beam of gratitude.

  “Clay, you really don’t have to –”

  His raised hand stopped Tate’s protest. “It would be like leaving Sea World without bothering to see Shamu.”

  Tate clearly thought that was a stretch, but the matching grins of masculine solidarity on the faces of her date and her son made the point inconsequential.

  “Okay,” she agreed. “One last ride on the Ferris wheel and then we’ll call it a day.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BILLY Wayne Sparks tipped his cap down over his eyes, watching the growing number of teenage girls with interest. He’d known that he would have a veritable bumper crop of pretty young things to choose from as darkness began to stretch its tentacles around the day. Evening brought herds of fleet-footed little creatures gathering at the watering hole. But he had to be cautious, be patient, as he stealthily selected his prey.

  One wrong move could send the whole lot of them scurrying.

  The smart predator – the successful predator – waited for the weakest of the unsuspecting quarry to fall back, to separate themselves from the others.

  The weak ones were the least likely to be noticed if they suddenly disappeared.

  The girls draping themselves in provocative poses all over the picnic table to his right lacked a certain appeal. He and JR had discovered that most of their clients preferred an air of innocence in the stock. And bona-fide virgins fetched a hell of a price.

  Of course, that meant that he himself was denied the pleasure of breaking them in.

  But hey, there were plenty of girls in that not-quite-virgin, not-quite-slut category that afforded him the opportunity to show their consumers how the product performed. Although the current availability seemed considerably lacking.

  It was unfortunate that the girls whose circumstances made it easiest for them to take were also the ones exposed to the realities of life at an earlier age. He’d like to grab one of the pony-tailed, Gap-clad young teens who traveled around in giggling packs like pretty gazelles. But the hue and cry that would result from taking a child of obvious means and protective parentage made such thoughts an extremely risky business.

  Circumspection was the name of the game in this enterprise, thereby making the most babelicious of the little bubble-gum smackers off limits.

  He returned his attention to the sluts.

  One of the girls – a cute little brunette in a Hello Kitty T-shirt and a pair of booty hugging denim shorts – looked a little younger and less used than the others. Her legs were slim and nicely tanned, her breasts small but well rounded. He put her age at approximately thirteen or fourteen. As a rule, he and JR tried not to dip much below
that end of their targeted age bracket, because in general people no longer viewed the girls as kids once they’d entered their teens.

  It excluded them from some of the market, but it also helped to keep them off the biggest of law enforcement radars.

  And besides that, Billy Wayne didn’t enjoy having sex with kids.

  Sweet young things, however, were a different story.

  Watching the brunette casually from beneath the cover of his hat, he took another long drink of water. It was hot as a bitch today, and he rued the necessity of his cumbersome clothes. The tinted lenses and fake tan might enable him to blend in with the crowd, but it didn’t protect his sensitive skin from sunburn.

  The brunette laughed uproariously at something one of her compatriots said, tilting a bottle of Coke to her gloss-slicked lips. From the way she’d grown louder and more unsteady over the past half hour, he concluded there was something more than soda in the bottle.

  Excellent.

  It would be so easy to slip a little GSB in along with her vodka or rum, to watch her stumble off into the trees. Her friends would conclude that she’d passed out. He’d been watching, and most of the teens were well on their way to being drunk or high, showing little concern for anything but their own path to self-destruction. A friend who displayed signs of being dangerously wasted would be more of a cause for amusement than alarm.

  He’d just about decided on his course when a movement off to the right caught his eye.

  It was the girl from the funnel cake trailer.

  She strolled into the perimeter of the picnic ground with a rumpled looking little blonde girl in tow – assumingly the younger sister. She made her way toward the big metal barrel where she threw the remnants of a half-eaten hot dog away. Her clothes – an apple green T-shirt and a pair of navy blue shorts – were a little ratty, mostly clean, and not in the least provocative.

  Unless, of course, one had Billy Wayne’s ability to envision what lay underneath.

  She turned slightly, catching his eye.

  It was tentative, but there could be no mistaking her smile.

  Ho, ho, ho. What do you know? Most of the girls were too intimidated by his size to find him appealing, except for the ones who’d been had so many times that they knew what they were getting into. That wasn’t the kind of target he wanted to attract.

  But this little sweetheart had given him an endearingly flirtatious smile.

  Senses sharpening, he became the predator – swift and sure – spotting its tantalizing prey in the tall grass.

  This one.

  Yes, this was the one he wanted. She might prove more challenging, for he had to take the little sister into consideration, but he would have her nonetheless.

  Smiling, answering her unspoken flirtation, he delighted in her blush as she turned away.

  He watched her head off toward the Ferris wheel. It rose above trees whose shadows fell longer and deeper as daylight disintegrated into night.

  There was a path amongst the trees, he knew, leading to the rarely used dirt road. The road where he’d parked his van.

  Plan formulated, Billy Wayne stood, indulging in a leisurely stretch. And then casually strolled toward the trash barrel to toss out his plate.

  Just like any conscientious citizen.

  THE hazy half-light of dusk had begun to settle by the time Clay and Max finally made their way to the Ferris wheel. Midway lights throughout the entire fairgrounds popped on in a symphony of rainbow hues.

  “Look, Mommy.” Max pointed toward the kaleidoscope of bright bulbs outlining the ride. Reds and greens winked against the pinks and indigos of the evening sky, creating a panorama of saturated color.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Tate scooped him into a hug, smiled over his head toward Clay. The first tentative breath of night sighed like relief through the trees.

  “It certainly is.” Blind to the lights, Clay looked at Tate, and thought he’d never seen anything more lovely. The fact that she’d seen both innocence and trust perverted, was raising a child without a father, and still managed to look at the world and see its wonder made Clay feel that he’d taken his first real breath of that air.

  He’d been suffocating, Clay thought. In work. In routine. In the sheer, unrelenting misery he saw all too often. And here, here was goodness.

  He wanted to drink it in.

  TATE saw the change in his eyes – that flash of heat signifying intention. She touched the tip of her tongue to her lips, whether from nerves or anticipation she couldn’t say. And watched desire slip like a living thing from the steel band of his restraint.

  Oblivious to the press of the crowd around them, he brushed his thumb along the slope of her cheek.

  “Max?” His normally smooth voice tumbled roughly, like a pebble skipping down a rocky slope.

  “Yes, Mr. Clay?”

  “You may,” he suggested man to man, “want to turn around and look the other way.”

  “Why?” Max pulled his gaze from the lights, brows knit in a puzzled frown.

  “Because if it’s okay with you, I’m going to kiss your mama.”

  His lips on hers were undemanding, gentle as a summer rain. Tate felt herself begin the slide from reluctant interest to all-out attraction. If he’d pressured her, been the least bit aggressive, or hadn’t taken her son’s feelings into consideration, it would have been a heck of a lot easier for her to maintain some emotional distance.

  But he’d asked her son’s permission, for God’s sake. And then proceeded to kiss her as sweetly as if they were both virgins on their first date.

  It was that consideration that was her undoing.

  She stretched an arm around his neck and found herself kissing him back.

  “Excuse me,” a syrupy voice drawled before the kiss could get really interesting. “The line’s moving, and I think that y’all are next.”

  Embarrassment had her eyes popping open, her hands pushing against his chest. And turning, she apologized to the woman and three children waiting with varying degrees of patience behind them.

  “That’s okay,” the woman chuckled. “If my husband looked like yours, I’d be all over him, too.”

  Tate’s eyes went wide, but Clay’s laugh rang out as he wrapped an arm around her to draw her forward. “Come on, sugar. You can watch me and the kid while we’re on the ride, and I give you permission to be all over me later.”

  Shaking her head, Tate watched Clay get Max situated in the seatbelt.

  And was struck, not quite easily, by what an amazing man he truly was.

  How many men would voluntarily spend an entire day of their vacation entertaining the demanding five-year-old son of a woman they’d just met? A woman who’d made it clear that she had no intention of providing any diversionary physical entertainment?

  Of course, if she were being honest, she would have to admit that a couple minutes ago she’d been on the verge of forgetting that she didn’t engage in fleeting physical relationships with veritable strangers. Clay’s tender kiss had rekindled long dormant fires that hadn’t been lit since… well, she hesitated to actually recall how long. She’d been in such a sexual drought that she was like a little pile of dry kindling.

  And Clay Copeland was quite a potent spark.

  What would it hurt, she mused, to indulge herself with a little adult recreation? To allow whatever seemed to be igniting between her and Clay to develop naturally?

  The Ferris wheel groaned suddenly, interrupting her thoughts, and she smiled and waved as Clay and Max began their backward ascent.

  Clay winked, and then slid his arm around her son to help keep him from bouncing out of his seat with excitement. Max looked up at him with naked adoration.

  It was then that Tate came to the sinking realization that she couldn’t see Clay again.

  Even if she could handle a brief affair in a mature and reasonable fashion – which, given her short and unimpressive history with affairs of any sort, was highly unlikely – sh
e couldn’t discount the effect such a relationship might have on Max. She’d always been very careful to keep her dating life, what there was of it, totally separate from her son. The look she’d just seen pass between Max and Clay reminded her of the wisdom of that decision.

  For five years she’d done her best to shield Max from the rejection children inevitably feel growing up in single parent households.

  Max was young still, but he’d already peppered her with questions about his absentee father. Where he was. Who he was.

  Wondering why the other children he knew had daddies when he didn’t.

  It was no fault of his own that his bastard of a father hadn’t been interested in making any significant contributions to his life other than donating his sperm.

  As the Ferris wheel slid backward again, the little boy in question leaned over, waving an arm in enthusiastic greeting. Clay said something in his ear which had him erupting in a fit of giggles, and Tate winced even as she waved back.

  No, she definitely shouldn’t see Clay again. And especially not in the company of her son. Clay would be leaving in a few days, and if she allowed anything to develop, Max would be confused and possibly hurt when Clay waltzed easily out of their lives.

  It would be best to thank Clay for a truly wonderful day, explain that she had nothing more than friendship to offer, and bid him farewell so that he could enjoy the remainder of his vacation.

  Whether alone, or in the company of a more accommodating woman.

  And it didn’t matter, couldn’t matter, which avenue he chose.

  Drawing a fortifying breath, Tate pushed at an errant lock of hair and turned her attention to some of the other bystanders waiting for the ride to begin.

  A happy set of plump grandparents waved enthusiastically to their grandsons, a father laden with camera equipment videotaped his wife and young daughter, and a pretty teen with dark eyes watched as a smaller girl climbed aboard and buckled herself in. From the child’s competence and the teen’s air of boredom they’d obviously gone through the routine before. A man in a ball cap strolled over and began chatting amicably with the teen.