Good morning all! Sorry, are you getting dizzy with all the new stories, no-shows and freak outs? I am. But have no fear. Urbex is still in process, it was just moving along a little slowly for the blog story. So here's a faster paced, hopefully sweet and sexy take on a well used trope.
Like A Wolf
A Little Red Riding
Hood Story In Which the Wolf Must Choose Between Innocent Red, and the
Seductively Skilled Hunter He’s Been Toying With For Years
Jan 19: That's what the
fortune cookie said.
Hungry.
Hungry was a bar… more of a club really… on the outskirts
of the town of Millbrook. It had once been an old school house, and then a gift
shop sometime in the seventies when the town began to grow and attract
tourists, then finally a restaurant.
As a restaurant, it
was too far from the main attractions of the city, and didn’t boast a
spectacular enough menu to draw crowds.
The building was
abandoned for some six years before Henry Wolf bought it. For him, it was
perfect. He had the drive and ambition to turn it into something Millbrook
needed desperately- something he called fine dining with an edge of danger.
The restaurant was
rustic, the food, as many a satisfied patron declared, three star worthy.
Robert Redding stared
at the building. Despite the rather full - for a Tuesday night- parking lot, it
seemed deserted. Not a bit of light peeked out, glinted, or shimmered in a
window, unlike his own cheery diner in downtown. His place was deserted
tonight, as was usual for a Tuesday night. He’d left his waitress Bella and the
sous chef, Nico in charge while he went on his fact finding mission because he
had to know.
Why did everyone
flock here, and leave his own charming restaurant with its pretty, smiling
staff empty?
Wasn’t the remote
location.
Or the charm of the
building itself, which was squarish and rather lumpy.
“Are you going to
stand here all night staring at the place? Did you change your mind?” The eagerness
in Saul’s voice was unmistakable. His friend wanted to go inside Hungry.
“No of course I
didn’t change my mind.” But he had. A hundred times from the moment he’d opened
the fortune cookie and read its rather mundane little message, Hungry had been on
his mind.
To triumph, you must
face your competition.
That’s what the
fortune cookie said.
“Then come on!” Saul
tugged on his arm, and Robert reluctantly left behind the weak shelter of the
single parking lot light that was lit and headed into darkness. “I’ve been
dying to try this place!”
“It looks like trying
it might be fatal.” Robert muttered under his breath. “Would it kill them to
put some more parking lot lights out here?” Maybe considering Hungry to be his
competition was cocky- after all he ran a diner, not a fine dining
establishment. And he wasn’t even certain the Hungry qualified as a restaurant.
Maybe it was just a bar with good snack. He hadn’t actually managed to locate
or talk to anyone who’d actually eaten there.
He stumbled slightly when
his foot landed on something in the parking lot that he could feel dig rather
painfully into his insole even through the rubber bottom of his shoe. “I hope
there’s more lighting inside. I hate eating food I can’t see.”
His eyes slowly
adjusted to the darkness, and he managed to get up the shallow step to the door
without further mishap. “I just want to see what’s so special about this
place.” His cheeks burned a bit as they crossed over the threshold. He sounded
so … petty. “I mean, it's not looking like a big deal so far.”
Inside was better.
There was a lot of dim candle light creating intimate little circles a lot of
shadowed alcoves that were… “Creepy,” he uttered.
“If you say so.”
The deep voice from
the left startled Robert and he gave an embarrassing squeak. “Oh!”
“I prefer to think of
them as romantic, secluded little enclaves where a man can be alone with his…
dinner...date. At least, I assume you’re talking about the curtained tables?”
Shuddering, Robert
turned to the left. The man standing at a host’s podium was worthy of the
reaction his voice had caused. He was tall, broad of shoulder and narrow of
waist. His hair hung in a smooth curtain of darkness to the shoulders of his
simple white dress shirt, nearly bursting at the seams trying to contain the
muscles packed into that frame.
“I..we…” His voice
gave out, probably because all his brain cells were focused on striving to see
through the gloom to make the blur of white that was the man’s face into an
image to go along with the voice and the figure.
“You have a
reservation.” The voice purred smoothly along his skin… stroking it, leaving
prickling hairs rising in its wake.
“You know who I am?” Startled,
he moved closer, and found himself under intense scrutiny from a pair of tawny
gold eyes with a curious, elongated slant, almost Asian. “I…” Again he was at a
loss for words.
“No.” A soft
chuckle broke the silence before it could grow awkward, and Robert started.
That chuckle went straight to his groin. “You’re standing at my podium, and …”
He raised a big hand in a cavalier gesture. “The rest is logic. Name please?”
“Red...ding.” Robert
was grateful for the shadowy darkness that hid his face… and his blush
hopefully, from the man at the podium. “Um… Robert.”
The chuckle erupted
into a full-throated husky, ball-tightening laugh. “Ah Red, I am the Wolf.
Henry Wolf, to be precise. My friends call me Hank.”
Was that an
invitation to be his friend?
“This way please.”
Robert hung back just long enough to pick his jaw up off the ground, then
followed Hank...the wolf… his host and Saul through the restaurant to a
table...not one of the curtained alcoves, thank god, but a decently located
table that would allow them to see. “I hope this is satisfactory. I need to get
back to the kitchens, but your server will be with you shortly.”
Saul blinked across
the small table at him. A candle lit the table, revealing a pewter place
setting and creamy white linen napkins. “This is amazing.”
Robert shook off his
fascination, broke his gaze away from the host’s retreating back and looked at
his friend. “What’s so amazing about it? It’s a candle lit table in a dark
room. We haven’t had a crumb to eat or sip yet, so...”
“Aside from that hot
hunk of man that just seated us? And flirted with you? Oh my god he flirted
with you!” Saul’s lashes fluttered in rapturous mockery.
“Oh shut up! He did
not!” Robert adjusted his napkin, turned his water glass upright. “Where are
the menus? I want to see what’s so special that this dark and dreary place is
full on a Tuesday night when everywhere else in town is dead.”
“There’s no menu.”
Saul leaned over the candle. “It’s chef’s choice, a minimum of three courses,
but sometimes there’s been as many as seven.”
I’d choose the chef,
too. Robert blinked, dispelling an image
of those tawny eyes and the sexy shoulders. “How did you find that out? No one
I talked to mentioned it.”
“YELP.” Saul
shrugged. “I was on there posting a review of your new dessert menu, and well…
Hungry popped up in the sidebar.”
“Yelp?” Robert shook
his head.
“Here you go Red… and
friend.”
A rough pewter tray
appeared between them in a large hand, tipped with polished blunt nails, decked
with fine dark hairs. Robert followed the trail of hairs to a thick wrist, swallowing
hard. A gleaming metal watch, a strong forearm, a rolled up shirt sleeve. At
the other end of that hand was the man who’d sent his senses into disarray. How
far did he want to go on this visual track? Was he braced for the impact of
those eyes peering into his soul?
No. No he was not.
TO BE CONTINUED
If you enjoyed my post, click on over to the rest of the Orgiasts and read more!
Oh, I love it! Sexy and deliciously mysterious. And the name of your wolf is quite nice, I must say. ;)
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