The Sex Trap Read online

  The Sex Trap

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  New Dawning International Bookfair

  Presents

  A New Erotic Romance Novella

  By

  C.K. Ralston

  Copyright © 2011 C.K. Ralston

  Smashwords Edition

  The Sex Trap

  Chapter One

  Birthday parties are such a bother sometimes. Dr. Liam Donnelly trudged to the parking lot, the gift he had just purchased cradled in the crook of his left arm, the collar of his heavy cashmere overcoat turned up against the biting wind and the persistent, spitting rain. But Jerry Kardon is one of my oldest friends, and he does love his single-malt. And one must do what one must do for friends, even in the face of this blasted storm!

  “Don’t you fucking touch me again!” Liam heard a woman scream. The wind carried her words to where he was slogging through a puddle toward his parked Jaguar sedan. “I mean it, you prick!”

  Such language. Liam opened the door with the electronic fob on his key ring and tossed his friend Jerry’s gift—a bottle of expensive scotch—onto the rich leather of the rear seat. Why must young people these days persist in saying “fuck” and “prick” and the like with every other word—and at the top of their lungs, in public, no less! Don’t they realize that by using such strong language casually and with such frequency, that they eventually diminish its impact to practically nothing?

  As he prepared to lower himself into the driver’s seat, he identified the source of the bad language; five cars away from his, a very pretty young girl of nineteen or twenty was struggling with a young man. The fellow looked to be a bit older than the girls, perhaps mid-twenties, and he had a nasty smile on his face as he held onto her straining body by her right elbow.

  The girl slapped him with her free hand and he reacted by drawing his right fist back and hitting her full on the cheek, the smack of knuckles on bare skin echoed across the empty parking lot. The place was lined with cars, but Liam Donnelly seemed to be the only soul present besides the unhappy young couple.

  “Hey! See here, you can’t just go bashing women about like that!” he yelled into the wind.

  He wasn’t the type to butt into a lover’s quarrel—or any other type of public row, for that matter—but seeing the young bully hit the girl suddenly got his blood to boiling; he couldn’t restrain himself. Liam slammed his car door and yelled, “You! Yes, you, you young ruffian! Let go of her, she clearly doesn’t appreciate you yanking her about like that!”

  The younger man heard him and turned toward the source of the challenge. He sneered when he saw Liam, yelling back, “Fuck off, Grandpa! You wanta’ do something about it? Drag your skinny old ass over here and I’ll be glad to kick it for you.”

  “You’d better stay out of this, mister!” the girl sobbed. Tears streamed down both her cheeks. “He’s liable to hurt you. He’s mean as a snake when he gets like this!”

  “Like hell I’ll turn my back and just walk away,” Liam muttered, starting toward them almost before he knew what he was doing, seething at the situation and none too happy about being addressed as “grandpa” by this young lout either. He was, after all, just barely thirty-seven and he was in decent shape for his age as well.

  He tugged the brim of his flat tweed car cap down tighter onto his head as he battled the headwind toward the pickup truck, where the two were still wresting. The door to the battered old vehicle stood open and the young man persisted in trying to force the girl into the front seat.

  Liam rounded the back of the truck, which he noted with some distaste, featured one rear fender of a dull red shade and another which was light blue. He glared at the younger man, using the steely look that unfailingly brought dead silence to a boisterous classroom at the local university where he taught.

  “Stop that, this instant!” he demanded of the man. “She obviously doesn’t wish to go with you. Forcing her to do so is kidnapping, and I happen to be a witness, so leave her the hell alone!”

  The younger man, who was shorter than Liam’s six two by a head, was nevertheless a stocky chap with broad shoulders, long, scruffy brown hair, a bull neck and beady brown eyes. He was unshaven, with three days growth of heavy black beard on his square jaw and he was glaring up at Liam.

  “Butt out, asshole,” he snarled.

  The brute yanked the girl out of his way and slammed her into the car parked next to his truck and then let go of her. He stepped past the sobbing girl and got right up into Liam’s face. Sneering at the taller, older man he said: “This bitch is my girlfriend, and she goes where I go. So like I said before, fuck off!”

  “I don’t want to be your girlfriend any more, Aaron, you mean bastard,” the girl yelled at him through sobs. “I keep tellin’ you that, but you won’t listen! Why don’t you do like this guy says and leave me alone?”

  “There,” Liam said, nodding at the girl, who was still leaning heavily against the other car. “Why don’t you heed her words and, as you yourself so eloquently put it a few moments ago…fuck off?”

  The smaller man’s dark eyes flashed. He stepped forward and hit Liam with a right fist, square in the gut.

  All of the wind went out of the tall college professor’s diaphragm at once. He gasped, put his hands up automatically to ward off further blows, and wondered in a mild panic, just what the devil he had gotten himself into here. In the genteel world of academe where his life was spent, people did not generally settle their differences by socking one another!

  “You hooligan,” he finally managed to gasp. “You struck me without provocation; I’ll press charges! I swear to God I will!”

  “Provocation this, you mealy-mouthed old motherfucker!” Aaron said, firing another right toward Liam’s jaw.

  Boxing lessons taken as a boy—detested at the time, but endured because his overbearing father had forced them upon him—resurfaced, unbidden, in Liam’s mind. He blocked the punch easily with his left forearm and, calling upon muscle-memory he scarcely knew was still there, he tucked his chin down near his shoulder, and shuffled forward in that peculiar gait that boxers learn in the ring and landed a short, hard left to the younger man’s chin.

  “Whoa!” the shorter man said, clearly shocked by this unexpected turn of events, shaking his head.

  “Whoa, indeed, asshole!” Liam muttered, throwing a combination that landed a left fist solidly on young Aaron’s nose and a right in the middle of his solar plexus, staggering him backward again.

  “Motherfucker!” the younger man cursed loudly, enraged to find himself the one gasping for breath. “That hurt, you old prick!”

  His eyes flashed crazily again and he spun around and leaned forward, his right boot heel snaked to land squarely against the startled Liam’s chest. The blow lifted him off his feet and deposited him flat on his ass, in the middle of a large puddle.

  Now it was Liam’s turn to shake his head, to clear it. His opponent took the opportunity to skip forward and deliver a spinning roundhouse kick, planting the toe of his right boot against Liam’s left temple with all of the force he could muster.

  Oh, my, how dark it’s getting, Liam thought somewhat woozily, as everything went very dark indeed.

  * * * *

  When he regained consciousness, he found himself lying back against a pair of very nice female breasts. He was still in the parking lot, resting against the girl he had attempted to aid. She had her arms around him, trying to shelter him from the wind and rain; they were again
st the rear fender of the car the beat up truck had been parked beside, the spot where the truck had been was now empty.

  “Are you awake?” the girl whispered.

  She moved soft fingers caress his brow lightly and he sighed How nice that felt and how much he hated to leave her warm embrace to struggle to his feet. His chest hurt every time he took a breath, and he wondered if he might not have a broken rib or two. His head felt as if he had just survived an encounter with a blacksmith who had attempted to make a horseshoe out of it with a hammer.

  “I am awake, and hurt a bit, my dear,” he sighed. “Could you help me get to my feet, I wonder?”

  “Sure, here, lean back on me,” the girl said, pushing against him as he sought to get up.

  Together, they made it to their feet and Liam put a hand against the car and leaned on it for a moment. His head felt light and woozy and his chest hurt like Billy-be-damned every time he breathed.

  “Thanks for helping me, I guess,” the girl said, looking dejected, her head held low.

  “You guess?” he asked, not quite believing what he was hearing. His head throbbed and his ribs ached like blazes, and all on her account. “Did you want to go with that…that animal? Did my interference ruin your plans for the evening?”

  “No, it’s not that,” the girl looked up at him sadly. “It’s just that…Aaron was so pissed at me for fighting with him and getting you involved that he…he threw me out! He said that if I liked you so much, that I could go live with you, that I wasn’t welcome at his place anymore.”

  She looked off the other way, her face a study in utter despair. “I got nowhere to go now, mister! I’ve got the clothes on my back and twenty bucks in my purse and not a goddamned thing more!”

  Liam looked at her for long moments. She was very pretty. She had long, auburn hair that fell in damp, curly tangles down onto shoulders of her jacket. It, along with everything else about her, was now well on the way to being sopping wet. Liam didn’t know how long the two of them had been couched beside the car in the unrelenting rain, but must have been a while; he realized that his cashmere coat and the clothes beneath it were as damp as hers.

  “I have a house with six bedrooms and I live alone,” he told her after another moment of debating with himself about what he wished to do. “I suppose you can stay there tonight and we’ll get you sorted out in the morning, after we both get dry and have a good night’s rest.”

  She stepped back away from him, her light brown eyes going suddenly wary. He smiled at her, reassuringly, he hoped.

  “I won’t touch you, I promise,” he said softly. “Come on; let’s get you out of this infernal rain.”

  She shook her head, suddenly looking—quite adorably--like a little girl who was doing what her mommy told her to do…not accepting rides from strangers. She looked so cute that he found himself grinning at her in spite of himself.

  “Come on, I’m almost old enough to be your father,” he said.

  “You are not!” she said, a small smile creeping onto her pretty face. “You’re more like the hot-looking uncle who comes to visit…and we all know how that usually turns out!”

  He threw back his head and laughed hard, immediately wishing he hadn’t; his ribs screamed with pain. Gesturing weakly toward his Jag a few cars down the lot, he got out his keys.

  * * * *

  “My name is Liam Donnelly, by the way,” he said when they were ensconced in his year-old Jaguar XJ-6 sedan, the heater blasting away. “May I ask yours?”

  She turned to look at him, still smiling at the plush interior she found herself surrounded by; the dark brown leather seats, the polished walnut trim, the quietness of the cab as the big car glided down the wet streets. Touching the smooth walnut burl of the wood-trimmed window with her fingertips, she said, “This is such a super-cool car, Mr. Donnelly.”

  Hesitating for a moment she sighed and then offered, “My name is Miranda, but everyone calls me Randa. I’m Randa Calvin.”

  “Well, Miranda, you can call me Liam, I think, since you’re not one of my students,” he said, paying attention to his driving on the slick streets. “You’re young enough to be a student of mine, surely, but since you’re not, Liam will do.”

  “Okay…Liam,” she said, saying the name tentatively, as though she were trying it on her tongue for size. “Where are we going; what part of town do you live in?”

  “University Heights,” he said, making the turn that would take them right in front of the university’s main entrance. “I’ve been teaching English Literature here, at the university, for thirteen years now.”

  “Oh, gosh,” she said, sounding shocked. “I finished high school, but just barely. I’m not much of a student, I’m afraid.”

  Her pretty face took on a shy look as she added, “I don’t think I’ve ever met a college professor before.”

  “Well, as a rule, we don’t bite—unless specifically requested to do so,” he kidded, smiled, and turned onto his tree lined street. “Although I can’t vouch for my colleagues in the athletic department on that score, I’m afraid. Some of them strike me as barely human and seem as likely to bite you as a rabid dog might. Ah, here we are.”

  He hit the remote above his sun visor and turned into a driveway leading to the two-story English Tudor that he called home. He parked in the detached three-car garage in back of the house and got out slowly, favoring his ribs.

  His other two cars, a perfectly restored 1966 Jaguar XKE convertible and a four-year-old Land Rover were in the other two parking slots. Young Miranda’s eyes lit up when she saw the low-slung; forest green roadster with its like-new brown leather upholstery and wire wheels gleaming in the soft light.

  What’s that?” she asked, smiling toward the collector Jag.

  “That’s called an XKE, my dear,” he told her, trying not to sound smug about his favorite possession. “It was quite the machine in its day. Everyone in that era wanted a Corvette, a Cobra, or one of these.”

  “It’s wicked sleek-looking,” she said, her dark eyes lighting up as she eyed the exotic roadster. “What year is it?”

  “Nineteen sixty-six,” he told her. “Jaguar still makes a similar roadster, and they cost about eight-five thousand dollars. This one would run you more like a hundred and fifteen thousand, if I were to sell it, which I won’t.”

  “Jeez, that’s a ton of money,” she observed, her eyes slowly taking on a sly cast as she looked him up and down, just as she had the car. “Are you rich or something? I didn’t know college professors were rich.”

  “Well, they don’t pay us anywhere near what we’re worth, of course, but I suppose we don’t do too badly.”

  He gestured toward the side door, leading out to the stone path, which in turn led up to the back of the house. Walking her that way, he hit the button by the side door and the open garage door closed. He snapped off the lights, locked the side door, and led his young guest to the kitchen door at the rear of the house and then used the same key ring to unlock it.

  Once inside, he switched on the lights, keyed in the alarm code, and relocked the door. He led her through the formal dining room, across the spacious living room, and over to the stairs, snapping on lights as he went.

  “Here, let me show you up to your room, and I’ll see if I can find you something dry to put on. Then we can throw those wet clothes in the dryer while we eat dinner.”

  Chapter Two

  “That would be great,” she said, following him up the stairs, looking around at everything. “This is a neat house. It’s like a museum or something, with the swords on the wall and the bookshelves and all.”

  Liam glanced up at the crossed broadswords on the wall next to the stairs. He had purchased them on one of his many trips home to England and had somewhat whimsically had them mounted in their present position a few years ago.

  Museum indeed, he thought huffily. Perhaps I should re-think my decorating choices. Without a woman around here to tell me no, I sometimes do go a bit ov
erboard on the historical English knick-knacks, I suppose.

  “I think this room will do nicely for you.” He stopped at the second door in the long hallway and opened it to disclose a large bedroom, complete with a queen size bed, dresser, and two end tables with matching lamps, an armoire, and a small bathroom of its own.

  “Wow! This is like the nicest room I’ve ever…” Amanda’s voice trailed off.

  He looked at her. “The nicest room you’ve ever what?”

  “Ever had,” she said quietly, looking at the furniture, the big bed, and the heavy drapes. “Outside of a hotel or something, I mean.”

  The poor kid, Liam didn't think his guest room very special. It was just a room, pretty much. It hadn’t had a thing done to it since Ellen had left him, ten years ago, except for the flat screen television he’d bought a year ago, on the off chance he ever did have an overnight houseguest.

  Wait here,” he told her, moving off toward his own room. “I’ll see what I can find for you to wear while your things are drying.”

  He closed the door to the master bedroom and went quickly to his large walk-in closet, shedding his soggy clothes and pulling on a pair of dry sweatpants and a heavy cotton shirt. Feeling almost human again, now that he was clad in comfortable, dry clothing, he grabbed a pair of old sweats that he had shrunk in the dryer and had been meaning to donate to charity.

  She’ll still probably swim in these, but at least they’ll be dry.

  “I found these for you,” he said, sticking his head and shoulders back inside the guestroom and offering her the sweats. “Why don’t you slip them on and then bring all of your wet things with you when you come down and we’ll put everything in the dryer. How does a steak and a baked potato with a green salad sound to you, Miranda?”

  The way her eyes lit up at the mention of a steak, he could tell that she probably hadn’t had one of those in a long time. She nodded eagerly and took the sweats from him.