Mountain Man Snatch Read online

  Mountain Man Snatch

  Flash Fantasy No. 3

  Quinn Peachwood

  Quinn Peachwood is the author of the Flash Fantasies series of short novellas, perfect for a quick bite of steamy goodness.

  She loves a good road trip, sampling local food and cocktails, shopping for vintage and best of all, meeting readers.

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  I run into her, literally, but I’m the one blindsided as though it were me swiped by the truck.

  Dumbstruck.

  Can you fall in love with a stranger? Let me give it to you straight - YES you can. A one in a million chance but if it happens it’s like being struck by that truck and lightning both at once.

  I have to have her. Permanently possess her as my own. Keep her safe from harm with me out in the woods. I may live a simple life but it’s a genuine one.

  She calls me Hillbilly and turns her nose up at my bare hut. But I intend to keep Loulou just as stripped down and trust me, she will beg me to make her mine.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  Thank you for reading this Flash Fantasy

  Also by Quinn Peachwood

  1

  LouLou

  It’s an exceptionally beautiful day in High Fork. The kind of day that makes you forget the shitty stuff that’s happened in your life and makes you catch your breath.

  Aside from the mountains and lakes, if I just look up at the sky, I’m amazed by how much bigger it seems in the West. And how the light is like a soft glow covering the pretty town lodged in the valley.

  “What are you even smoking right now?” Shareen laughs down the line as I step into the street to cross, only looking for traffic at the last second.

  I’ve been here three weeks and I’m already accustomed to there being no cars bearing down on the pedestrian, honking at me to get out of the way like they do in the city.

  “Nothing. You know that.” I say, a tiny bit wistful that I won’t have the expanded experience of viewing the beauty of nature with the assistance of some legal weed.

  “Well you sound high for sure.” Shareen says, still teasing me.

  “Can we not talk about being high.” I plead, slightly irritated with my friend who knows how tough it’s been on me getting through a month of rehab. I don’t need to be reminded of the pleasures of flying in freedom. “I’m just kind of in awe of the hugeness of the natural world.”

  “Whereas you used to be in awe of Jared Splinky’s biceps.” She says.

  “Yeah, let’s not go there either.”

  Jared was my first. And my last. Bad boy that is.

  Nope, I won’t be taking that route again, or any route in fact. I’m not only off the dope, I’m also not bingeing on men.

  I’m not supposed to engage in intimate relations, as they delicately referred to hooking up when I was at the facility, for a good twelve months.

  That’s right, no screwing for a year. Apparently I can’t even be trusted to choose a man, not with my psychological addictive personality.

  And how can I disagree, based on previous performance? I fell into the chasm of Jared at seventeen. I was a good enough girl to hold him off until it was legal.

  I think that’s why he stuck around those few months - making him wait only fired his desire to possess me.

  “You will belong to me and only me.” He told me from our first meeting, his slightly high-pitched voice was seductive to my ear.

  I thought he was hotter than summer in the south and that in turn I must also be hot because he wanted me so bad. It was easy enough for him to turn me on to other illusory states of being.

  Call me gullible. Too trusting.

  “You must open up and trust me completely. I want to know everything about you.” Jared said. “Your every last thought.”

  I believed him.

  Every love story I’d ever read, all the romantic comedies my girlfriends and I watched on a weeknight implied the same thing. Open up and trust. Give yourself over to a man right down to your brain cells.

  At the rehab center, same thing, you must open up and trust us enough to let us in to help.

  “Sometimes a girl can be forced to open up too much.” I say into the phone. “Sometimes a girl would like to be a clam and keep a few things to herself.”

  “There you go again with the weird talk. Are you quite certain you aren’t on anything?”

  “It’s ten o’clock in the morning here.” I say. “I’m just in the Starlight cafe getting coffee and one of the supersize homemade scones they’re famous for ‘round here.”

  “There you go Darlin’.” The guy with the check shirt and long beard working the cash hands me my change. “You have yourself a great day.”

  “Thanks, you too.” I say. His wish seems genuine, not tip-focused insincere like baristas in the city tend to be.

  “Jeez, Lou, you sound so down on city life, you gotta get back here before you go all Star’s Hollow out there. When are you coming home anyway?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” I mutter as I juggle the door with hands full of coffee and pastry.

  “Jared was asking about you the other day. Where are you? When would you be back?”

  “You didn’t tell him did you.”

  “Um, no.”

  “Shareen, promise me. We talked about this. Promise me you didn’t tell him anything about me or where I am.”

  “I didn’t say anything that would give the game away.” She snips. “Jeez Lou, stop being so uptight would you? You used to be so much fun.”

  A small flare of irritation sparks in my chest. I step down to cross another street and leap back as the sound of a horn blasting shatters my morning.

  As I jump out of the way of the vehicle, I must roll over on an ankle or buckle my knee or something, because I go down on the sidewalk with a jolt. Nothing too terrible.

  I land on my backside, more shocked at the fact someone honked me than injured. No, I’m not hurt but I am wearing half my coffee.

  I look up expecting to see the driver getting out of his car to help me, ask if I’m okay, an apology would be nice, a fresh brew.

  My eyes travel up the side of an old blue pick up, it’s gotta be about a thousand years old. One of those low slung and long vintage vehicles you see all over Instagram. This is no trendy-mobile at a retro wedding however.

  Nor does the driver doesn’t get out of the cab to see if I’m okay. The window cracks down an inch, then another - so old it has to be cranked from within. There can’t be a single auto control on that old jalopy. It squeals in resistance at the three inch point.

  “You oughta look where you’re going.” A voice croaks out through the gap. “Might get someone injured.”

  “Oh excuse me.” I snap, leveraging myself to my feet in an ungainly manner. “I didn’t mean to get in your way.”

  I throw the driver my best hater stare through the windshield. An older dude in a plaid shirt, a messy beard he hasn’t trimmed this century.

  Does every guy around here adopt the same hairy fashion statement? Apparently so, because my eyes dart to the right and there’s another guy in the passenger seat, same shirt, slightly messier but not so thick beard and his hair tied up in a man bun.

  I look to him for some validation
, maybe he can see his companion is being a dick.

  But instead of telling his buddy that he ought to take some responsibility for dangerous driving, or even getting out to see if I’m damaged in any way, he simply sits in his seat staring at me. With the most amazing and intense eyes I’ve ever seen.

  The glint in his gaze pierces through the rather grubby windshield straight into my core. My knees briefly feel like they might give out under me again but for a different reason entirely.

  Despite the overgrowth of facial hair, the guy is plainly the most gorgeous thing walking this planet. Those eyes alone could melt most women but I also detect a pair of broad strong shoulders.

  The kind that could carry a girl under his wing and keep her safe.

  So why is he just staring at me?

  “Right then, Let me get out of your way.” I say with a hint of heavy sarcasm.

  The two men continue to stare at me so I feel like asking whether they’ve ever seen a member of the opposite sex or did they just land from an alien planet.

  I bend over to pick up my phone which landed on the ground. Fortunately it isn’t cracked or anything but Shareen has disconnected the call. I press the starter and nothing happens. The screen doesn’t pop up, no apps are visible. Just a blank stare.

  Shit, my phone is dead.

  “Hey my phone is broken. Can I borrow yours for a second to Google a local…”

  With a squeal of rubber and a back kick of dust, the truck takes off at a clip, roaring around me and disappearing down the street.

  “What the…” I mutter. Then; “Assholes.”

  No manners, no idea how to treat other humans. “What a pair of weirdos.”

  Now I have no way of calling Shareen back and worry sets in that Jared might have wrung some detail of my whereabouts out of her. She’s pretty loose-tongued after a couple of cocktails, never mind the other cocktail of abuse we used to put ourselves through.

  I was lucky, I guess, that my father intervened and got me into a rehab facility. My out of control behavior would have had a detrimental affect on his business. Shareen doesn’t have a daddy with senatorial ties, so I guess I can’t be too judgmental on her.

  We first bonded over having lost our mothers at an early age. Her dad remarried but mine threw himself into his work. He wasn’t mean with me, he just wasn’t there for me. It seemed that success was a drug for him and the more he had the more he wanted, or needed.

  Perhaps that’s an addiction too, working too much to the point of self-annihilation. It’s just one that’s more acceptable to society as it is right now.

  No point dwelling on all this. My only concern is that I remain Jared-free, so I really hope she didn’t let anything slip. I owe it to my dad not to go back to my former lifestyle, which was fun but heading absolutely nowhere.

  I retrieve the half cup of coffee remaining and walk down the street, munching hungrily on the scone. I’m not the best in the kitchen and there’s never anything in the refrigerator at the townhouse I rented the end of last month.

  I’m lost in a swirling array of thought - what will I do next, Jared, the facility’s instruction that I should abandon old friends that might pull me backwards (like Shareen).

  Inexplicably, pushing through all the stuff I have on my mind - is that weird hairy dude’s eyes. How they drilled into me. How they moved through my skin right into my core. I’m all tumbled up, as though I’ve been jolted out of my skin, but that’s got to be down to being almost run down by the ancient pick-up.

  Nothing more than that.

  “And you are not supposed to be looking at men in that way.” I mutter to myself. “Definitely not that way.”

  I guess it’s just been too long.

  Too long since I felt a man’s hands on me. Or big arms enveloping me.

  Not that Jared was much for embracing. Or had big arms. He has biceps after a fashion, but the rest of his body was lean. Not like the stranger whose muscles were plainly visible through grimy glass, two round bulges stretching the fabric of his shirt to its limit.

  Argh, I have to stop this.

  This time, when I step down to cross the street, I make sure to check all around for traffic. Nothing. This is the kind of town tumbleweed rolls through on a windy day, despite its recent tourist-driven gentrification.

  I smile to myself and take another bite of the scone, garnering a tasty mouthful of raspberry and white chocolate mixed with the cake. Oh, that’s so good. My eyelids come down in pastry heaven then I look up at the sky, relishing my world, grateful for the new beginning.

  The future is wide open, which is a little scary but also exciting.

  I’m aware of feeling unusual contentment - about the beautiful day and also that, while I have a reputation as a fiery little wildcat, I’ve now learned enough self control that I held it together and didn’t scream curses at those two rubes who tried to run me off the road.

  So now I’m walking along, practicing gratitude shit, when the heavy hands grab my upper arms from behind, sending the coffee cup and remaining scone through the air. I let out an uncontrolled squeal but it’s quashed by some rough material going over my head, plunging me into darkness.

  I scream louder but my noise is muffled. The arms that pinned me now wrap around my torso so my kicking legs come up off the ground. I can flail all I want, but it’s clear I’m going nowhere other than where the assailant wants me.

  Helpless, I’m bundled into the back of a vehicle and my head is pushed down on the seat, presumably so I’m not seen by passers-by. I pop back up, because no one is taking me without a fight.

  A rough hand shoves the back of my head back down and then pulls my arms back roughly, but not too painfully, to tie my wrists together behind me.

  A body comes down close to mine, I feel the heat from the torso into my back. Then hot breath on the side of my neck as a gruff voice comes close to my ear.

  “If you scream again I’ll stuff your mouth.”

  “I won’t.” I squeak into the hard fabric of the seat.

  But the man isn’t waiting for my agreement. He gets into the front seat and drives off at speed. Only one thought comes to mind about my predicament.

  How do I deal with Jared Splinky now that he has me in his clutches once again?

  2

  Grayn

  I toss the girl into the back seat and just like that she’s mine. It seems way too easy that you can pluck a bride of your choosing right off the street, but that’s how it is.

  The moment she looked into my eyes, I knew my fate was sealed. Our fate. Her gaze came floating up and glued onto mine, flashing, provocative, but strong and sensual too.

  Totally fucking irresistible.

  I’ve never known such a powerful connection to another soul. Admittedly I haven’t been close to that many women and the ones I have known barely possessed a soul. Nowadays, it isn’t often I get into town and there are no women out where we live.

  I should have climbed out of the cab to make sure she was okay after Den pinged her.

  While Denver sat in the driver’s seat cursing her for not looking where she was going, I was mesmerized. As though she’d unknowingly cast a trance of hypnosis over me.

  It’s true she did step out like she owned the road and was more focused on her swanky coffee beverage than her personal safety.

  But still.

  I should have gotten down to check on her, it was the decent thing to do despite Den’s hostility and insistence on being in the right like always.

  Problem was I became transfixed in the moment our stares locked on. Time bent out of shape, slowing to a halt as she stood in the street staring through the windshield like she’d never seen a man before.

  Like Den and me were a pair of aliens landed from an off-world colony. Then life speeded up way too fast and Den was high-tailing it down the street, like we were back in the desert and Haji was coming. We left the girl back there, still staring after us like she’d missed the chance of her
lifetime.

  I realized I’d missed mine.

  “I want her.” I blurted out as we drove away.

  “What’s that?” Den grunted.

  “That woman. I want her. I want to take her home with us.”

  “You sure ‘bout that?” He chuckled. “She looked like a bit of a feisty one to me.”

  Den doesn’t much like resistance. Even with me, it’s often an issue between us when I counter his orders. I guess because he figures I owe him. And he certainly doesn’t stand for any lip from a female.

  But it’s interesting that he’s not denying my wish, only the appropriateness of my choice.

  “She’s the one I want. I know it.”

  “Well alright, son. If you think you can keep her under control. She might need some taming but it sure is about time we had a feminine presence around the homestead. Let’s go get her.”

  He doubles around the block and cruises silently along a side street, waiting for the woman to approach the crosswalk such as it is. I can’t believe how wildly my blood is pumping at my veins - even Haji didn’t get me this cranked up.

  This time she looks for vehicles and as her attention goes in one direction, I climb out of the cab, move stealthily around the corner and grab her from behind.

  She yelps and thrashes around but her strength is nothing compared to mine. Actually, I relish the bucking of her body against mine.

  When I wrap my arms around her, I can’t help but notice the press of her full breasts into my forearms. I restrain her by lining my torso to her back and her writhing immediately sets my cock dancing in my pants.

  Taking her is going to be without doubt a lot of fun if she possesses this much physical prowess.

  “Let me go.” She shouts with defiance from the back seat, although it’s less audible with her face scrunched against the springs and old leather.