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This particular question became more than unpalatable.

Had she lied to him about wanting him?

Tepper couldn’t hide his anger. It was somewhat hard
to be angry when fucking naked in front of five drunken men, and one hot woman
he’d wanted to screw…but he was fucking angry!

Ice water was cold, but Debra’s answer became far
colder than mere ice water thrown at him. She said softly, “I am”, leaving
little room for doubt.

By this time, Casey found his leg muscles could move
and he strode toward them. He did not look at Tepper. He kept his eyes glued
onto Debra.

 “The infamous Debra, I presume? Did she also tell you
she goes by the name Sara?” Casey asked.

Tepper knew the man’s words were meant only for him.

Her sharp intake of breath felt like a slap to his
face. Tepper flared his nostrils.

Griffen then added more, likely to make it sting. “And
that she ran away, nearly six months ago, from my bed?” he gloated.

The hard slap hit its mark. But it did not touch
Tepper’s face. Debra’s slender hand made violent contact with Casey’s cheek. A
half-second later, she practically flew into his mansion, leaving both friends
on the patio stunned speechless.

Tep gave Casey a hard look, then followed Debra into
his mansion. He wasn’t about to let her get out of his sight until she
explained herself. He would more than deal with Casey later on, if need be. For
the moment, he only wanted answers from Ms. Batton—or whoever the hell she was.

He found her trying to redress as fast as humanly
possible inside his bedroom. She’d left her clothing on his bed when undressing
for a poolside respite. Already with jeans and bra on, she was about to button
her shirt when he stormed into the room and grabbed both her wrists to stall
her movements.

The tears she could not hold back spilled unchecked.

 She did not wait for him to ask, before blurting out
everything needing to be said. “What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry for
lying to you? That it won’t happen again? Or what I’d felt about you for six
long months doesn’t matter? Because, it does. For one brief instant I actually
believed I had a real life, with a real man, who could love me back…eventually.”

He waited, but no more of her excuses came, as her
tears fell harder still.

“I didn’t want you to say a goddamn thing to me right
now. Damnit, Debra! I’m trying to process this as best I can.”

“What is there to process?” she prodded, trying to
coax out sane reasoning from the shadows.

“Well, for starters, why you hadn’t told me the
truth?” Very quickly, he saw the flaws in this question by the raising of her
brow, so he tried an alternate approach. “Okay. Better yet, why couldn’t you
trust me enough to tell me the truth?”

Her other brow rose, mocking his pathetic attempts at
wishing he could understand.

“Could you please put some pants on?” she questioned.

“Why?”

“Because it is truly difficult to look at you right
now, and you’re only making it harder for the both of us.”

“Babe, if anything about tonight is the truth…it is,
without question, that I am
not
hard,” he said bitterly. “I might have
been—
Damnit!
I was certainly hard enough to make you happy a little
while ago, and I could be again, given more time—had not a fucking bomb landed
in my lap out on my fucking patio to make me a little soft in the manhood
department!”

“Damnit, Tepper. I didn’t mean your pecker!”

His hands clamped harder onto her wrists to make it
hurt. He was nearly crushing her wrists until he caught the flinch of pain on
her face and dropped her arms like hot potatoes.

“Damn you Debra. Or whoever the hell you are!” His
words edged with razor sharp bitterness he could no longer hide. “Do you even
have a clue as to how I feel at this moment?”

She tried to turn her face from his, but Tepper
grabbed her chin and held firm, forcing the woman to look him in the eyes.

Another flare of the nostrils made, he ordered, “What
the bloody hell gives you the right to play games with people? I was more than
interested in us becoming something beyond mere co-workers. Fuck, Debra! I was
willing to let you in to my heart. What the hell is wrong with you?”

****

This hurt more than anything said thus far, but Sara
held firm.

She’d been hurt before. She knew how to react to pain,
and what she had to do about it.

“What gave you the right to care?” she asked crisply.

Tepper physically tossed her face out of his hand.
“Fuck you, Sweetheart! I bloody hell care because I had thought you worth it.
Now I know better.”

“Know better?” she yelped. “Just because Casey came
here tonight and ruined everything…you no longer think I’m worthy of your care?”

“You’re not!” he yelled out.

Sara stepped back from this. She tried to leave.
Tepper wouldn’t let her—apparently, not until she understood the ramifications
of her lies. He grabbed her upper arm to prevent escape, and would not let go
until he said his peace.

“You can’t play games with men like us. We eat little
girls like you for breakfast. We brush our teeth with little girls like you. We
fuck as many little girls like you as we want, because we can and no one is
ever going to stop us. You’re no better or different than any other little girl
wanting a man’s approval or his huge dick shoved into your wetted cunt.”

“But you’re not like other men. And I never once
played games with you.” The tone of her voice had risen to near shouting. “I
actually like you, Tep. In fact, I
really
like you. I would’ve done
anything for you. That is perhaps the worst part of this disaster. I would have
done
anything
for you!”

“The same
anything
you did for Griffen while
you were in his bed?” he asked brusquely.

The hard slap hit its mark.

The returning slap stunned Sara speechless.

The words “If you’re a whore, Debra, just say so!”
caused a far worse reaction in her than she could possibly get over.

Sara considered it grossly unfair one man could affect
her as much as Tepper was, when he was no better than the other two she briefly
had in her life. But unfair, or not, it was what she now had to deal with. Both
men wanted only what they could have. Both hurt her deep.

Clearly, Tepper no longer felt anything for her
because of Casey…and this conflicting struggle hurt far more than any pain felt
to the face.

He’d said he wanted her—a relationship.

He lied.

****

Tepper Le D`oun would share his home, his food, his
drink, and his money with the other guys, but not his women. The thought of
Debra, or Mecenna, or whoever the hell she was, being in Griffen’s bed made him
ill.

A free hand rose and she was about to slap his face
again for calling her a whore, but Tepper stopped the violent act before any
contact was made to his skin.

“You will not lower me down to Griffen’s level,” he
threatened. “He might tolerate getting his face slapped in the heat of the
moment, but I fucking do not!”

She kicked him in the shin, instead. This got her an
early release, a loud curse about her parentage, and the hair at the back of
her head grabbed in an unrelenting grip of restraint.

By strength alone, he pulled on her hair and
physically tossed her onto his bed. A half second later, he put his entire
weight on top of her, pinning her down to the mattress.

His breath fanned her face. The veins in his temple
throbbed painfully, as he growled out, “If I wasn’t so damn angry with you
right now…I wouldn’t be letting you get away all this bullshit. However,
because I am so damn angry and was raised far better than you, it would seem, I
will let you get away with it before I do something I’ll certainly regret.”

Sudden tears sprang to her eyes and spilled almost
violently out of their sides.

“I wasn’t raised by anyone,” she said firmly. “I was
tortured by whoever could get their hands on me, belittled until I had nothing
left inside me to defend, abused as only a form of amusement, but I was not
raised…by anyone.” She turned her head to hide the shame. “Why do you think
that I never….” She suddenly stalled on the admission.

Tepper’s jaw tightened as a surge of anger threatened
to take control. He kept his sight glued on her face. He would not get up or
back down from personal attack to her person. In fact, though physically
relaxed, his weight held her firmly to his mattress to where she could barely
breathe.

Working against this, he pulled back, removed himself
from her body, and stood at the end of his bed. “I’m going to ask you one more
question, and you damn well had better answer me with the truth.”

She waited, but couldn’t control the steady flow of
tears out of her eyes.

Sadly, Tepper was unfazed by the moisture, well past
tears and shame or anything else she dared throw his way.

“Would you have slept with me tonight?” he demanded.

She nodded slowly.

“Because you wanted to or because you can’t help
yourself?”

She seemed shocked by the question.

“Never mind answering that. It doesn’t really matter
anymore, does it?”

He watched her gather words in her mouth, pull them
together to form sentences, and then choke on them, only getting out, “I would
have slept with you because I’ve been falling in love with you for quite some
time, you idiot. And if you won’t believe anything I ever say again, let me
assure you, this is the God’s honest truth.”

Dammit!
The
bitch knew if she threw God into it, he might have believed her. But Tepper
chose, instead, to glare, turn on his heel, then walk out of the bedroom as
naked as the day born. He had guests to attend too. His attention didn’t need
to linger on a lying, cheating whore.

****

Sara heard the door to a spare room in the mansion
slam shut. This gave her the only chance she would likely have to leave before
caught.

Tepper did not say she had to leave, but only a damn
fool would have stayed at this point.

Unfortunately, Casey had other plans about such a
hasty escape. Sara found him seated on the front step as she crossed over the
threshold, her intention to walk home if need be.

His eyes turned to her as he asked, “Going somewhere,
Sara?” A harsh mock made to a rather miserable start of a long anticipated
night.

“What the hell do you care?” she responded bitterly.

“I don’t. But at least I’m honest about it.”

Sara made to walk away, but Casey rose to his feet and
grabbed her by the upper arm. “I said, going somewhere?”

Sara yanked her arm free. “Fuck off, Griffen! Better
yet…fuck you!”

The venom quickly overflowed from his every pore. “No,
Sara. I don’t care for another man’s leftovers. Even if he a friend of mine and
likely done with you from this moment on.”

Sara was too furious to dignify this statement by
daring to comment on it. She took a step forward, and Casey grabbed her upper
arm yet again. This had her seeing red within seconds.

“What is it with men like you? Every fucking time you
think to stall me, you grab my arm? Really think that’ll help, asshole?”

Casey flipped her arm away. He also flipped an empty
beer bottle into one of Tepper’s manicured shrubs. “I’m not like other men, and
you fucking know this.”

“You are
exactly
as they all are—an arrogant
asshole, with too much time to play with, and too much money to waste on
foolishness and infinite pecker-induced pleasures. You run a fucking strip
club, for Christ’s sake! Besides, I know for fact it pleases you greatly to
hurt others. I’m actually surprised you don’t have a peacock tail sprouting out
of your ass.”

“Are you done?” An arch of his brow made as he turned
his head to stare directly into her soul.

“Not by a long shot,” Sara aimed back. She hoped he
would get the point of her fury. However, the clenched jaw and brittle anger
behind his eyes told her differently. There was no point made, found, or
kept—only heartache, and lots of it.

“Not by a long shot, you say?” he dared speak. “Seems
to me I’m now looking at a cornered vixen, with too much bravado, not a lot of
experience with the hunters, and still itching to pull the trigger if she can
get her hands on the gun. Am I right…
Sweetheart
?”

Sara growled at his face.

Chapter Nine

C
asey could
barely contain his fury. In fact, he’d never been so angry in all his life.

That anger wasn’t only for finding the lost woman, at
Tep’s of all places. It was because this woman ran away from him instead of
having dealt with her problems as an adult. She’d pulled a scared little girl
routine on him—pissed him off in the worst possible way.

After the day of her disappearance, Casey tried hard
to figure her out. However, no amount of brain matter wasted would be able to
decipher a woman like Mecenna, or Sara, or whatever she was calling herself
these days…
Debra, was it
?

Tepper liked to talk during their weekly poker games.
They talked shop, financial markets, business strategy amongst friends. The man
would literally brag to the guys about his conquests. He told them how great
his assistant curator was, how dependable and efficient she was, how
irreplaceable she would be if he ever lost her to another gallery. Between
friends, this meant he was fucking the woman and they would soon meet her;
perhaps that meeting done so after a huge ring on her finger, the player
trapped by her irresistible charms.

Casey figured Debra, who had Le D`oun wrapped around
her little finger, would be much closer to the personality and looks of a
bookish librarian than hot, always ready Mecenna Jones…pole dancer wannabe.

Damnit! He had to keep reminding himself Sara was
not
Mecenna. Mecenna wasn’t real. Mecenna had never been real. A woman’s name,
attached to a real person, but not real in any sense of the word.

He turned his eyes to her. He found Sara with her
teeth biting down on her bottom lip. A trademark move made by Mecenna, Debra,
and
Sara.

Casey presented his back to her, staring at the
manicured front lawn of Tepper’s palatial home. He wondered, had she done this
tell-all move first while she’d been Sara, perfected it equally as Debra? Or
did she only achieve success with it while she was Mecenna? He’d thought
perhaps a nervous habit would change from name to name. Her bottom lip was
getting a good workout…and for the life of him, the motion was driving him
insane.

Casey heard the heavy sigh she made behind his back.
This caused a smile to form on his face. The only time he’d ever heard Sara
sigh was when she was in real trouble.

He turned to face her; suddenly made up his mind about
how things were to go from this point on. Without warning, his hand moved to
her lower arm. His strong fingers settled against her warmed flesh. The touch
caused her incredible blue eyes to rise, and were then trapped with his. “We’re
going for a drive,” he reasoned.

She tried to yank her arm out of his grasp, failing
miserably.

“Now,” he warned, pulling on her arm. Casey could feel
the deep dimples sink into his cheeks, as strongly as if carved by knife.

Resignation written all over her flawless features,
Sara caught in a huge lie, she had no way out of it and really no choice but to
follow his lead. Yet he practically had to drag her off Tepper’s grand marble
stairs leading up to the massive front door, then walk toward his parked car
beside a huge SUV and a one-ton Chevy pickup, with a woman who didn’t want to
follow his lead.

“Don’t you have a poker game to win big money at?” she
waspishly asked. Again, she tried to pull free of a relentless grasp to her
person.

Casey’s smile grew larger. “I’m sure they will survive
without me.”

As the response came out and he turned his head toward
her, Casey could see in her eyes her every thought. She was wondering if
she
would survive while with
him
. He was still considering that possibility
in his head. The possibility to strangle her if she did not cooperate jumped
right out at him.

No one, and he meant this to the bottom of his soul,
had ever lied so damn much to him, or gotten away with it so damn much. No
one…but her. He wasn’t sure how to deal with that; then, to have found her
lounging poolside with Tep, no clothes on her person, and Tep, naked as well,
dripping wet? For some strange reason, their nudity had caused an unwarranted
reaction inside of Casey he had yet to decipher—a strong, volatile reaction, so
unjust to a man like him.

Sara naked had bothered him in the worst possible way.

Yet, why would it even bother him at all? It’s not as
though he cared about her. Hell! He was a strip club owner, for Pete’s sake. He
hadn’t seen this woman in six months. She’d left him to defend his actions and
misdeeds alone.

 Perhaps the reason he hadn’t seen her was cause for
that bothering now. The required explanations had been the worst of it.
Everyone asked, and he hadn’t any answer to give those who did.

“What if I don’t want to go anywhere with you?” She
seemed frustrated by capture.

His checked smile immediately released its stronghold
on his dimples. “Does it look like you have a choice, sweetheart?”

Her glare was expected. The intensity of it was not.

“Look. If you want to stay here, by all means…stay.”
His hand on her arm, however, did not loosen as he physically yanked her to his
chest, Sara slamming hard into him. “But you have a lot to say to me, and
unless you want an audience to the confessional, I would suggest you get into
my fucking car, and hear what I have to say before doing something stupid, or
something you will regret.”

The sound of another heavy sigh caused Casey a
momentary lapse in judgment. He hadn’t looked into this woman’s eyes in well
over six long months… and he still felt the incredible desire to kiss her. Why?
To what purpose would that serve him? He’d been burnt by a con woman, his
actions and decisions payback to that burning—nothing more.

Casey let the desire to kiss her soft lips dissipate.
He turned on heels and started dragging her toward his sports car. Once they
reached the side of it, he yanked open the passenger door and literally tossed
her into the seat, slamming the car’s door shut the second her firm ass sat
down on the expensive leather.

He jumped over the hood, and two seconds later, he was
seated in the driver’s side seat. He inserted the key into the ignition and the
engine turned over. This action prevented any escape on her part. Key in the
ignition, the doors automatically locked.

Sara had crossed her arms over her chest in mute
defiance. He smiled at that, too. She was always so visible with her anger—so
readable. The last time she’d crossed her arms over her chest, unfortunately
heaving her breasts up a whole lot higher and had made a grown man want to cry
aloud, was when he’d forced her drive this vehicle after he’d cracked a few
wrist bones on his desk.

This seemed so long ago—a near lifetime to him.

Casey wasn’t going to play any more games with her
this time. He wanted the truth. The only way to get to near close proximity to
any truth was to ask for it, straight away. Stalling was never in a man’s best
interest.

“So?” he started with.

She wouldn’t look his way.

“Are you hungry?”

This must have faltered her brain pattern, because she
turned her head toward his, then gave him another of her world famous glares.

“Well, I am. Poker night always came with great food,
among other things.”

She turned her eyes back to the driveway. Multiple
vehicles parked there, and only one of them she was trapped inside of, Casey
quickly made the decision to leave Tepper’s mansion, because in the rearview
mirror, from an upstairs bedroom, he could see an angered host for poker night
looking out the floor to ceiling window; likely wondering what the hell was going
on inside this car; better yet, why Sara was seated inside of it and not
putting up a fight.

Casey put the car into drive and pulled away. No
remorse, no regrets, he was now a player who made a hasty move on another
player of matched caliber. He knew she wouldn’t talk to him if still within
arm’s reach of Le D`oun.

She must have thought they were going to sit inside
his parked vehicle, talking about the weather, for her eyes widened and turned
his way as the distance separated them from the mansion.

“Unless you start talking to me…I’m not letting you
out of this vehicle,” he warned.

“You’ll run out of gas eventually,” she waspishly
flipped off her tongue.

“Gas tank holds at least twenty. That’s a whole
shitload of petrol, Babe. It’ll be about six full hours before this puppy runs
dry. Think you’ll survive, stuck inside a car with me, for six whole hours?”

She gave him another glacial glare. “I can always jump
out,” she said flatly.

He hadn’t thought of that possibility or that she
would even consider it. Cautiously, Casey’s left hand slid from the wheel and
rested against the door lock. He couldn’t stay in this position for long. He
had to shift gears, and he couldn’t drive and shift with only one hand—unless
he used his knee to drive and his right hand to shift—a rather dangerous idea,
truly stupid in fact. He loved his car. He loved life. He did not want to smash
his baby, or damage his life because of suicidal stupidity.

Sara must have known this, as well. Her face lit up
with a sudden smile. “I won’t jump out unless you really piss me off—this
time.”

He looked at her to make certain she wouldn’t do
something as foolish as to jump from a moving vehicle. She looked sincere. His
left hand drifted back to the steering wheel.

“Besides, I’m not going to run this gear thingy for
you, no matter what you say or do to me.” She pulled her arms apart and pointed
at the stick, then folded her hands together to place them in her lap.

Casey would have rather she’d kept her arms crossed.
He’d been enjoying the view of her perky breasts, exposing ample cleavage to
hungry eyes.

“So you remember?” he asked.

Sara rolled her eyes. “How could I ever forget?”

Casey swallowed hard. “Yes. How could you?” He would
never forget that night, either. It was the night he’d finally admitted to
falling for this woman.

Regrettable, she only made his life incredibly
miserable ever since. He was a bear at the workplace. He fired one of his
seasoned bartenders over a trivial matter—too many broken glasses. He barely
slept most nights, barely ate an entire meal, and somehow hated this woman with
all his heart and soul.

Fuck! What a lie that was!

How the hell could he hate her when just looking at
her was turning him on in a real bad way?

A few miles from Tepper’s mansion, Griffen started on
the process of handing such an ungrateful con woman the third degree. It was
either that, or he ravaged her in the front seat of his car until she begged
for mercy. Ravaging was certainly out of the picture. The smile, the shock on
her face seconds after he’d walked onto Le D`oun’s patio, had told him well and
good Tep and she’d been doing the nasty before the poker party showed up.

He did not like used goods, especially a good friend’s
castoffs.

“What the hell is your real name?” he rushed at her,
turning left at the corner. The car’s transmission slammed into second, then
third, then fourth.

By fourth gear, Casey was driving the vehicle at
ninety-miles per hour on a marked fifty-five mph road. If pulled over by the
cops, he could always claim insanity. Surely he was losing his mind and near
insanity to have taken her from Tep, just to talk?

Yet that wasn’t all he had on his mind—talking. He had
making love to this woman until she screamed out his name in the purest form of
ecstasy stuck on the brain, and that brain needed a proper scolding when time
allowed.

A proper ass-kicking, too.

Sara did not answer his question right away, forcing
Casey to ask again. “Unless you feel like being stuck with me until you do, I
would suggest you start with the truth.”

She mumbled out, “It’s Sara.”

He drew in a deep breath, flaring his nostrils. “Nice
to meet you, Sara.”

“Fuck you!” she mouthed his way.

I wish
.

He shook his head and asked his second question before
the goo inside his skull took over the rest of his being. “Why do you lie about
it?”

Sara crossed her arms over her chest. This made him
groan aloud.
Again, with the perky breasts heaved up? Really?
A man
could only take so much torture when not ready for it—or when he couldn’t do a
damn thing about it while driving a car.

Her eyes whipped to his face. Casey felt the heat of
her glance physically slap his cheek. That look said she wasn’t going to tell
him
why
. He would have to earn the truth from her.

He drove up the on ramp to the interstate, dragging
his thoughts from large boobs and lower anatomy. He’d meant every word said. He
was going to keep her in this car until the vehicle ran out of gas. Wherever
that landed up to be, would be, with any hope, where he found himself fully
satisfied and with all the proper answers given him. Or just fully satisfied.
At this point, his anger was too uncontrollable to decipher a real difference
between the two.