Page 222 of Devil’s Disciples

“Empowering,” I responded.

My eyes scanned the ground for my purse. Upon seeing it, I nodded my head toward the ground where it laid.

“Will you grab my phone? Please?” I asked. “I want to take a picture of this.”

He did as I asked. Standing ten feet in front of me with my phone in one hand and the stick in the other, he looked at me. The pain in his eyes was gone. “Do you want me to take a picture?” he asked, pointing the phone at me.

“Yes, silly,” I responded, alternating glances between my outstretched arm and the badass biker who took me rattlesnake hunting. “But I want you to be in it. Come over here.”

He stepped to my side and swept his thumb across the screen of my phone. “It’s locked.”

“Zero-nine-two-seven,” I said.

He pressed the buttons with his thumb, fumbled to find the icon, and eventually got the camera rotated to take a selfie.

“Take off that jacket,” I said. “Who wears a leather jacket in this heat, anyway?”

He chuckled a dry laugh as he peeled off the coat. “Someone who doesn’t want to be bitten by a snake.”

After tossing the coat on the ground beside my purse, he pressed the side of his chest against my shoulder and extended his arm. With the snake dangling from my shaking hand, I tilted my head toward his, looked at the screen, and grinned.

“Take several,” I said.

A puff of dry desert air wafted his scent into my nose.

The excitement of holding the lethal reptile, the heat from the mid-day sun, and the soul-stirring scent of his manliness proved to be too much. My head spun and my knees went weak. In response, I rested my head against his chest.

At that same instance, he snapped what would be the first picture of many.

“What do I do with this guy?” I asked, nodding toward the snake.

He took the snake from my grasp and handed me the phone. After releasing it fifty feet away from where I stood, he returned just in time to find me posting the photo of my head on his shoulder to my Instagram account.

“Let me see that one,” he said.

I held the phone between us, trying not to smile a cheesy grin at the disgustingly cute picture of me, him, and an exhausted three-foot long rattlesnake.

“I like it,” he said. “Can you send it to me?”

“You can go to my Instagram and get it,” I said.

He choked on his laugh. “I don’t know anything about that shit.”

“Instagram?” I asked, quite relieved by his apparent disgust.

“Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Bumbler, Fumbler, Yourspace, Myspace, any of it,” he said.

My eyebrows raised much higher than I wanted them to. “You’re not social media savvy?”

“I’m not social media interested,” he said. “I’m computer savvy. I don’t think my business is anyone else’s business. I don’t subscribe to any of that shit.”

He had no idea who I was or what I did for a living, that much I was sure of. Thrilled that he was blind to me and my social media following, I contemplated telling him the truth.

“I don’t see why people feel the need to blast their personal business all over the internet,” he said, reaching for his jacket. “It’s fucking ridiculous.”

Okay. Maybe telling him wasn’t such a good idea. At least not yet. There’d be plenty of time to tell him if I felt the need. Hopefully I’d be seeing much more of him at the meetings. If nothing else, I could get his phone number.

“Do you text?” I asked.