CHAPTER 1
Billy
“Sugar, you are one hot and tasty snack of a man!”
The delicious piece of ass who’d just murmured the remark made no secret which parts of me she thought were hot… or tasty… or manly. Her bold hands required no invitation before tugging at the hem of my shirt and sliding them beneath the thin cotton. The material bunched up as she spread her fingers out on my torso.
I took a slight step back, putting an inch of space between us to give her better access and my back bumped against reams of paper stacked in the tiny supply closet we were holed up in. She giggled and I grinned down at her as she licked her plump, red lips. Auburn hair draped across her face as she lowered her eyes to my body and damn near purred while her expert touch wandered the ridges of my pecs.
“Mmm, yummy.” Her breath caught as she continued her exploration up to my chest.
My muscles automatically flexed beneath her touch.
“You must work out all the time,” she commented in awe.
I didn’t.
My old man didn’t have many traits I was proud to have inherited but his naturally muscular frame was sure as hell one I didn’t mind having. The Comfort genes were strong and generations deep.
My father, James Comfort Sr., had two brothers, Henry and William. Just like genes, names also ran deep in our family. My younger brother Jimmy had been named after our father, and my brother Hank and I had each inherited an uncle’s name.
The OG Comfort brothers all shared the same broad shoulders, chiseled arms, and washboard abs, which they were good enough to pass down to us.
None of us had to work for our athletic frames. Besides slinging cases of booze and kegs of beer at Southern Comfort, the bar I ran with my brothers, I didn’t do much in the way of exercise. Unless you counted hooking up with pretty little things like this one as physical fitness training. If that was the case, I suppose you could call me a workout junkie.
Sadly, as of late, my “fitness routine” was getting a little old. Stale. Played out. I wasn’t finding the same results as I once had from my favorite sweat-breaking activity.
For the past year or so, each encounter I’d had left me feeling empty instead of satisfied. Numb instead of invigorated. Don’t get me wrong, in the moment, I felt a whole lotta alive, but after the surge of a heart-racing release, I flatlined.
Variety sure as hell wasn’t to blame for my declining enthusiasm. Before my diminishing results, I broke a sweat on a regular basis with a myriad of workout partners.
Firefly Island might have a population of less than five thousand but it drew close to half a million tourists a year. My humble Georgia hometown was renowned for deep sea fishing, breathtaking beaches that lit up nightly with lightning bugs, a downtown area with both historic and arts districts, the tallest Ferris wheel in the East on Firefly Pier, and Abernathy Manor, an estate that was regularly on “The Top Ten Most Haunted Places in The U.S.” lists and had been featured on several paranormal investigation and reality shows.
Thanks to those diverse attractions, there was a constant stream of visitors, and a good percentage of them were women ready to cut loose and let their hair down. Vacation sex with a local seemed to be high on many a traveler’s to-do lists. And being the Southern gentleman that I was, I was more than happy to oblige.
Instead of an open door policy, I had a revolving door policy. Women entered and exited my life, and I was just as happy to see them go as I was to see them come.
At least I had been. Over the past year or so, I hadn’t been the least bit tempted to exercise. Next week kicked off spring break, which was normally the candy store with me as the kid.
But not this year. This year, it seemed my sweet tooth hadn’t got the memo.
I’d just grown tired of being women’s vacation hall pass. And as far as local talent was concerned, in Firefly, Comfort men were dirty little secrets. They weren’t fit to bring home to their mamas.
They were the men that women snuck around with and didn’t take to Sunday service. We were the sinners, not the saints. Not that I was looking for anything serious.
But sometimes, there was just no replacement for a woman’s touch. And