Forbidden (Southern Comfort) by O'Neill, Clark (free ebook reader txt) 📗

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