Safe In Strong Arms
A Western Romance
This deliciously dirty story is a part of Susan Fleming’s super-charged, highly lewd collection of love and lust, written in 2015. Those who attempt to steal any part of this goldmine and take it as their own risk being a fiery, hot death from a hunk bearing copyright notices—and she’s not about to play with you.
This is a work of fiction—although we wish that people like this really existed, it’s nothing more than a figment of a very, very overactive imagination. Any resemblance to someone you know, a place you love or anything you hold dear to your heart is nothing more than a craving in your heart that these carnal desires and actions were true!
It goes without saying that this book oozes with erotic sex appeal, and is filled to the rafters with a smorgasbord of acts that you certainly wouldn’t tell your grandmother about. Bodice-ripping, panty-dropping and glasses-steaming, the scenes contained herein are wickedly naughty!
Although all the saucy characters are flirting with forbidden desires and sometimes taking the naughty fruit they really shouldn’t be, all are consenting adults over the age of 18 and not blood-related. What they are is passionate and eager to explore their carnal desires all day long.
In short, this book is going to get you very, very hot!
© Susan Fleming
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any many whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination. Please note that this work is intended only for adults age 18 and over. All characters represented are age 18 or over.
Table Of Contents
Chapter 1: Eyes On The Road
Chapter 2: The Campground
Chapter 3: Kidnapped
Chapter 4: No Family, No Friends
Chapter 5: The Unhappy Past
Chapter 6: Investigation
Chapter 7: The Crime Scene
Chapter 8: The Host and The Guest
Chapter 9: The Real Murderer
Chapter 10: The Guest
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Eyes On The Road
Vince Rowland hated the outdoors. This made it mildly perplexing as to why he had purchased a campground, but there it was. He hated dirt and the smell of grass and the bugs that seemed to love him. His allergies had a tendency to act up at the drop of a hat. Nature was a terrible place to be.
But Vince loved money more than he hated the outdoors. The camp ground had been dirt cheap. As a long time flipper of real estate, Rowland couldn’t resist snatching it up. The price had been too good, and the profit he stood to gain from it better.
Unfortunately, buyers weren’t immediate things. If he really wanted to turn a profit, he would need to sit on the property for a while. He would need to improve it somehow, maybe even turn a profit during his time in ownership of it. Turning a profit meant, inevitably, he would have to spend some time on the property itself.
“Stay at my old cabin,” the former owner urged him tearfully. “Get a real feel for the place. Immerse yourself in it. You’ll fall in love with it just like I did.”
Vince highly doubted that, but he couldn’t deny that living on the premises during renovations would be helpful. So, Vince checked out of his nice hotel room, loaded up his car, and let his GPS guide him.
His GPS, however, steered him woefully wrong. As it turned out, the cabin existed in some backwater pocket universe uncharted by man. His GPS was no help. Only a toothless hillbilly at a gas station was even remotely useful.
“Yeah, you jus’ keep on this road. Yer gonna come to a road veering off to the left. Don’t take that ‘un. Take the next one, then… Lemme just write it down for ya.”
So, Vince ended up driving very slowly through the woods, in the dark and the rain, with his car’s interior lights on, squinting at a rough map sketched on the back of a BBQ menu. He was wondering if he hadn’t been looking at the whole thing upside down when someone ran in front of his car.
“Jesus Christ!” Vince barely had time to slam on his breaks.
There was a woman in his headlights. Her hair was dark and wild, her eyes were wilder. She had slammed her hands on the hood as he stopped, likely just as startled as he was. Her chest was heaving beneath her wet t-shirt. Her mouth moved wordlessly.
Not wordlessly, Vince quickly realized. She was screaming. It was just difficult to hear her over the storm raging on outside. She ran around to the passenger side. Vince, instinctively, locked the doors. She pulled on them, clearly desperate, mouth still moving. She began to bang on the window, which might have bothered Vince had the car not been a rental.
“Help me!” That’s what she was mouthing.
Vince scanned his surroundings. He didn’t see anyone pursuing her, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there. It was much too dark to see far beyond the headlights. From here, the forest looked like an impossible void. Suddenly, Vince wanted very much to leave… He just wasn’t sure he could bring himself to leave the girl behind. Against his better judgment, he unlocked the door.
The girl must have heard or felt the click of the locks. She flung the door open and threw herself inside, soaking the upholstery. “Drive!” she shrieked, and Vince complied.
Vince put the pedal as close to the metal as he dared. The forest blurred past them, branches snapping against the speeding car on occasion. In the seat to his right, the woman was breathing heavily.
“What the hell?” Vince ventured, still speeding along, chancing the occasional glance in her direction.
“I need a phone!” The woman declared, rather than explaining herself.
“You what?”
“A phone! A phone! Give me, your phone!” She grabbed the rectangular shape in his pocket, causing him to nearly swerve off the road.
“Okay!” Vince slowed the car by half and fished his own phone from his pocket. He tossed it at her, reluctant to get too close. It fell to the floor board and she scrambled for it, making small relieved sounds as it lit up her face. Those relieved sounds turned suddenly and violently to cursing.
“There’s no signal out here,” said Vince, pointlessly, she’d already seen as much for herself.
“What the hell kind of shitty service do you use that you don’t have a signal?!”
“My phone service isn’t the problem! We’re in the middle of nowhere!”
“We’re not nowhere! We’re in the middle of Georgia! Your service is clearly the fucking problem.” With one last impotent shriek, she threw the phone back down to the floor board.
“Hey-” Vince glared at her.
“Keep your eyes on the road!”
Vince looked back ahead of them just in time to hit the brakes. He’d found the cabin. He’d nearly driven right into it, too.
The woman’s eyes went wide again. She looked from Vince to the cabin then back again. “Do you know who lives here? Do they have a phone?”
“I’m staying here,” said Vince, turning off the engine and holding up his keychain. He pointed out the house key. “If you can take a minute to explain to me what the hell is going on, then we can go in there and find out together whether or not it has a phone.”
The woman didn’t waste a moment. She grabbed the keys, threw the car door open, and ran. She didn’t so much as hesitate when Vince yelled at her to slow down and to stop. He hurried off into the rain after her, up onto the front porch of the cabin. He got there just as she finished fumbling with the lock.
Vince hurried inside after her, but it was completely dark inside. Almost immediately, he tripped over something low to the ground and table-shaped. Vince hit the ground and started cussing under his breath. Not so far away, he heard the woman doing the same.
A light flickered in the
darkness. The woman had pulled a lighter from somewhere.
“There aren’t even any working lights,” she said, going from one corner of the house to the other. More flickering light followed her. At least she had found candles. Unfortunately, she couldn’t seem to find much else.
“Slow down.” Vince got to his feet and limped after her, his shins aching. “How about you just wait a second and tell me what’s going on.”
To Vince’s surprise, the woman did stop. She turned to him, looking like a pale, wild eyed ghost in the candlelight. She stared, as if waiting.
“Okay.” Vince began with an easy one. “What’s your name?”
“Lori.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “Okay, Lori,” Vince continued, slowly. “What are you running from?”
Lori’s eyes went impossibly wider, her face paler. “The man who killed my sister!” she blurted and then, just as suddenly, collapsed to the floor in an unconscious heap.
Chapter 2
The Campground
Vince relocated Lori to the sofa then did a search of his own. He couldn’t find a phone either. It seemed believable that there wasn’t one. He wouldn’t put it past this hell hole’s former owner.
Vince supposed his best bet was to wait for morning. He locked the front door and pushed a chest of drawers in front of it for good measure. If a killer really was out there, he didn’t want to take any chances. Everyone around here likely carried a gun. All Vince had was some keychain pepper spray. He found his way to the bedroom. The previous tenant, thankfully, had left the most basic of furnishings.
Thank goodness. Vince wasn’t heading back out for his bags. He would have to be sure and send the man a gift basket or something later - once he was back in civilization.
Even with the bed made, Vince didn’t sleep particularly well.
Morning found Vince being woken up by the sound of birds. There was more noise in the city, certainly, but there was something specifically, annoyingly incessant about chirping birds. It was somehow worse than the sounds of bugs and frogs that had kept him up for most of the night.
Along with the birds, there was the unmistakable sound of a fellow human. Vince followed the sound into the kitchen. Lori was there. She was sitting on a stool at the bar, clutching a steaming mug in her hands. Daylight streamed through the open windows, illuminating her. She looked better. Hell, she looked downright pretty. Curvy figure, cute freckles, curly red hair. He’d slept with worse.
Lori must have felt his eyes on her. She looked up. “I made coffee,” she said, raising the mug in a mock salute and offering him a half smile.
Coffee sounded heavenly. Yes, he would definitely be sending the man he’d bought this place from a gift basket. He went to pour himself a cup. “You seem pretty calm for someone who’s sister was just murdered.”
“There’s no phone here, and yours doesn’t get signal in any corner of this place.” Lori gave a long, resigned sigh. “This whole thing is so… surreal.”
“Guess I’ll just have to drive you into town,” Vince said, trying to sound like it was a real burden and that returning to civilization wasn’t what he wanted to do most anyway.
“Yeah,” Lori said, slowly.
There was an awkwardness between them. It was a unique kind of awkwardness. It wasn’t often that Vince had tried to converse with people escaping from their sister’s murderer. “Are you… Are you okay?”
Lori looked at him, expression almost disgusted. “No!”
“Of course you’re not.” Vince finished making himself some coffee. Lori hadn’t so much as budged. “Far be it from me to tell a person how to react in this sort of situation, but… Why aren’t you in more of a hurry? Shouldn’t we get to the police?”
Lori looked up. She nodded a little absently, stood, and headed for his car. Vince took his coffee with him and followed her. “Want to tell me the whole story?”
“Not really,” muttered Lori, but she did anyway.
Chapter 3
Kidnapped
Lori worked with her sister at a boring office job in a boring little cubicle. Their cubicles were adjacent to one another. Her bosses had thought they were doing her a favor, putting her cubicle so close to her sister. They weren’t that far apart in age. They had spent their whole lives together, grown up together, and even now lived in the same apartment complex. The thing was, though… Lori hated her sister.
It wasn’t one of those familial situations where you swore up and down you hated your family member but still loved them, because: Hey, they’re still family. Lori hated her sister because she was the worst human being that she had ever had the misfortune of meeting.
Her name was Linda. Linda was only about a year older than Lori. They had the same red hair and the same gray eyes. They had similar patterns of freckles. They wore just about the same size in clothing, though Linda would swear up and down that they didn’t even while stealing her younger sister’s clothes.
Linda was, widely considered, to be the prettier sister. She had always been more popular than others, but not because she was particularly friendly. Linda was one of those people that others seemed to innately try to impress. She had an aura of superiority that others believed. She lied, she manipulated, she took advantage. She would smile and apologize and then do it all again. She would shower you with compliments while ruining your career and reputation behind your back. And that was if you were lucky.
If you were unlucky, she’d do the same thing, just right in front of you. She’d bad mouth you to your face, and there was nothing you could do about it.
Lori would have said that making her little sister miserable was Linda’s favorite hobby, but that felt like it would be giving herself too much credit. In all likelihood, she didn’t matter all that much to Linda, not in the grand scheme of things.
This weekend had been a team building retreat. Work paid for them to spend the night out in the wilderness together. It was miserable but mandatory. Lori didn’t much care for her coworkers. Linda had bad mouthed her to nearly all of them. They were civil with her, but that was about it.
She was paired with Chet for trust exercises. She’d been sleeping with Chet… until he slept with Linda. Then he’d slept with Linda until she had moved on to the next man Lori had her eye on. It made things awkward. Still, they did their trust exercises and made forced small talk.
After that there was dinner and then a campfire. There was singing and s’mores no one wanted to eat because most of the workers were on some new fad diet and the rest were too ashamed to be the only ones eating s’mores. After that, everyone gradually retired to their respective tents.
Lori was sharing a tent with her sister. At first, she was only all too happy to have it all to herself. She read and then, when she was tired of reading, tried to sleep. She couldn’t sleep, though. She was too curious. Finally, she left the tent and went looking for her sister. She checked the showers and the latrines and the fire pit that was now extinguished and empty. She was about to start asking around at tents when it happened.
Lori was kidnapped by a murderer.
It all happened very fast. Someone grabbed Lori from behind, covering her mouth and nose as they did so. She remembered collapsing but there was a giant gap in her memory after that.
When Lori woke up, she found her sister. It was hard to miss her. She had her by the shoulders, their faces mere inches apart. Linda was shaking her screaming her name.
“Lori! Wake the hell up! Lori! Wake up! Lori!” There wasn’t really concern in her voice, just alarm. She was terrified, and who could blame her?
Their hands were bound with stretchy, bungee like material. There was plenty of slack, but between them was a tree. There would be no running off, not unless one of them was untied… or happened to lose a hand. Lori wouldn’t have put it past Linda to volunteer her own sister for the latter.
“W-what-” Lori looked around, blinking in the darkness. She saw him almost immediately. There was a si
lhouette in the woods, a lantern at his feet. The frame was male, but there was little else there to recognize. “What’s going on?” Lori asked, looking back at her sister. She hoped this was some sort of sick prank. It felt unlikely, but still. She hoped.
“Help me,” Linda demanded, shoving her bound hands in Lori’s face.
Lori looked from Linda’s hands to the mysterious man in the woods. “I don’t understand.”
ROMANCE: Badass Boss (Billionaire Alpha Bad Boy Romance) (Western Mail Order Bride Calendar Contemporary) Page 31