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He would share only a part of himself with her…but not
all. Supposedly, emotional caring was listed under the category of
not all
.

Hard silver eyes then trapped hers. That hardness came
out in the tone of his voice a half-second later; as he took a full step back,
reached down to pull up his clothing, and took an even further step from her
and his desk.

Sara remained seated on the man’s desk. For the first
time since moving into the house next door, the first time since they’d kindled
this relationship into a physical need so unstoppable, Sara felt cold.

Boyd wanted her with fervor over the last eight
months. He’d said there was an undying need to have a woman with actual warmth
in her body, in his arms. Lord knew his wife had no warmth. Still, Sara
shivered. She felt sudden remorse.

She felt guilt.

How dared he have done this to her? Made her
feel
guilt. Guilt and remorse were the only two things she hadn’t felt for a full
year of freedom.

Mecenna Jones
hadn’t
done anything to feel guilty about.

Sara had to get to the bottom of her concerns,
posthaste. She asked him, with her tone as reassuring as she could get it down
to, “What was this about, Darling?” The virility she found so alluring
violently dissipated before her very eyes.

His mouth pinched tight to where tiny white lines
appeared at the corners. His eyes were a mere fog of what they’d been when
she’d entered his kitchen; then again, when he’d entered her. His large
shoulders shrugged as if in answer, an actual opposite of blasé indifference to
what came out of his mouth.

“I need you to go home, Mecenna.”

He never lied to her before, but this was a lie if
ever heard.

Sara’s heart raced, complicated by the guilty feeling
of caught doing something illegal. “I don’t understand.”

She slipped off the desk, slid off more than slipped
off from all the sweat and semen pooled under her buttocks, to move toward her
lover. Her teeth dug painfully into her lower lip while hoping to hide her
shock to these words.

Go home? Now?

Boyd took another step back, severing every intention
of mortal savior.

“Mecenna.”

Deep and strong, this one lone word chilled Sara to
the marrow of her bone. She stopped dead in her tracks, stared at his face. She
could see he was trying hard to find the words that would not come,
explanations to the unbelievable. Of those things, neither came quickly or with
any certainty.

Boyd took this moment to rub a hand over his face. He
looked ill at ease, as if at any second his wife was about to come back, rush
into this room—a man’s inner sanctuary—and catch the husband with his pants
down and Sara quite naked, dripping of his sex.

Sara was always naked. This was what probably made
life for the McCaryles’ so difficult—and a man’s wife’s fears compounded into
daily action or vocal reprimand. Yet, if
Iceberg
hadn’t caught them
before, Belinda surely was not about to now. Boyd’s physical body motion, the
step back from temptation, said otherwise.

“Boyd?” Sara questioned, hoping the sudden coldness
she felt in her veins would thaw. She needed this man in her life. She had only
one good thing for the moment—only one
real
thing. Boyd was this real
thing.

“No, Mecenna.” His large hand rose in her face. “I
need you to go home now.”

Their coupling had been too hard, Sara too strung out,
and her nerve endings too rushed. She needed answers, and those answers had to
come from the one man who was trying almost desperately not to look at her
face.

Fury filled her fast. “Why?” An easily asked word, at
the worst possible moment in her life.

Boyd’s shadowed gaze told her more than any spoken
words could, but he said the one thing she did not want to hear—ever—making it
so damn real.

“My wife is pregnant, Mecenna.”

As his sentence sunk in, the blood started to pound
angrily in her veins. As the blood pounded, making her heart skip a few beats,
she went on the attack. Born from bad circumstances, Sara had earned her
street-fight skills through blood, sweat, and tears. A crocked smile slid
across her mouth, but it held no amusement, only heartache and shame.

Christ! Another two words she thought never to have
felt—heartache and shame.

“How ever did you thaw apart
Frigid’s
legs long
enough to get the witch pregnant?” slipped off a tongue that felt swollen.

Swollen…
with guilt
.

English language could suck when one dared to
understand it…and guilt was right up there with
Fuck!

****

Boyd did not comment on Mecenna calling Belinda a
witch. His wife was. He knew it. Mecenna knew it. Every one of their neighbors
knew it. Perhaps even Belinda knew it, using it to her advantage.

“It happened, and now I have to deal with it,” he said,
turning away and shoving his hands into his pockets.

No way was he to tell Mecenna his wife had caught him
in the act of staring at a flawless form—through binoculars. Or, that every
waking moment he could not get his lovely neighbor out of his thoughts. He
wasn’t the only one who enjoyed Mecenna’s nudity at all hours of the day. There
were others. But none had sampled her in a purely physical way, and none had
been caught in the act while masturbating.

Out of all the men on this beach, they considered him
the lucky one. The sampling had turned into a complicated affair, and those
complications escalated into irreparable.

Mecenna had been on the beach, she’d moved from it to
take a moonlight swim, perhaps to torture him for having invited guests over that
day instead of their usual clandestine meeting. In his defense, with hopes not
to have any need to explain his actions or the binoculars, he’d taken
Iceberg
to bed right after the impromptu party. He’d smoothed out any ruffled feathers
his wife had gotten from the masturbating incident by having sex with her.

He hadn’t made love to Belinda that night. He’d made
love to an image stuck in his thoughts while over his cold, unfeeling wife’s
body and his cock shoved into her even colder track.

Christ! At times, he felt like a freeloader inside
this possessed, loveless home. His wife paid the bills and put food into his
mouth. She made certain he could stay home to paint and write. Therefore,
whenever the urgent feeling for sex came over him, as it did any man, he would
find Mecenna, and then come into her. In a way, having Mecenna evened things
out; put some perspective into the disaster of being married.

The unwanted pregnancy just happened. He never meant
for it to happen, but it had. Belinda wasn’t happy about it. She’d threatened
retaliation by way of making his existence truly miserable.

But wasn’t it miserable enough, married to a witch?

Boyd was furious over the meaningful accident. It put
his plans and future at the doors of Hell. Now Mecenna was going to hate him
from this moment forward. He could see this in the incredible blue eyes staring
at his face, and more clearly by her rigid posture. One fucked up moment of
mortal weakness to pay an eternal price of damnation, and he was going to lose
the best thing ever happening to him.

He turned from her stare, unable to accept the loss.

Why was it he couldn’t stop wanting her…when he knew
he had to let her go?

****

Sara had no pockets to shove in her hands. She stood
before the man in the buff. Now? Behind his back, since he’d turned on
her—mentally and physically. Yet, if a glare lethal, Boyd McCarlye would be six
feet under and rotting. With a huge mountain of hurt and regret to bury him
there, keeping him there.

“It happened?” she snapped.

Her lover turned swiftly to face her, his smile
hovered on the edge of laughter.

Boyd’s silver eyes then hardened until confidant she
got the message of it being something unplanned and unexpected. “Yes, Mecenna.
It just happened. This does tend to occur when one sleeps with one’s wife.”

Sara took a sudden step forward and slapped him as
hard as she could. The red welts on his cheek were clearly visible within a
matter of seconds.

“Then what the hell was this for?” Meaning, why had he
fucked her on top of the desk, only to ask her to leave?

“This isn’t going to change things between us,
Mecenna,” he offered. A smug dare put in his eyes to cause another unwarranted
reaction inside her. A reaction he’d likely hadn’t put much thought toward.

“Like hell it’s not!” she clipped back.

Sara couldn’t properly weigh any decision in her head
right now. She felt dizzy—and vulnerable. And used. Well, more used than she’d
been using him these last eight months.

She started to move forward, walk away from this room,
get air to breathe, but Boyd’s left hand snaked out and he grabbed her wrist to
stall her hasty exit.

“Don’t leave me like this. We have to talk about this,
Mecenna. We always talk…and right now I need that more than anything.”

Sara yanked her arm free of his grasp.

Good God! Was he fucking kidding?

“No. We do not have to talk.” And she meant this with
every fiber of her being. She’d put her hand in the fire, played the fool, but
now it was time to get that hand out before it turned to ash.

“I know you’re angry with me,” he said.

“Damn straight I’m angry…”

“But this is not the way today was supposed to be,” he
reasoned.

Sara’s brow rose in sharp contrast to her thoughts.
“Oh, really? Then what was it supposed to be like—for you? Perfect? Same as
always? Settled—once the bomb was dropped?” She stalled her thoughts before she
forcibly added, “Easy?”

For it was, without a doubt, the hardest single word
ever to have come out of her mouth.

Easy, this was not.

Painful? Hell, yes!

Boyd couldn’t meet her eyes, sinking the knife of
regret so much deeper into her hide.

“This is not easy for me, Mecenna.” A sheepish gaze
turned her way. “It’s why I asked you to make a tape. I want a permanent
memory. I can’t have us permanent right now so I have to settle for you in the
deepest, darkest hours of my night, with a video tape and a remote control to
remember your face.”

For one brief second, she’d almost fallen for his
pitiful sympathy act. Then it passed. “You sound as if this is over between
us.”

She knew it was. She just needed him to say it.

“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,
Mecenna…”

“Well, I have. I have the right.”

Boyd’s intake of breath and sudden flare of the
nostrils told her she was more than wrong about having any rights when inside
her married lover’s home.

In retrospect, Sara highly doubted he’d thought
through what would happen to them when he finally told her the truth. But to do
so
after
such a hard and quick fuck…a near violent fuck, at that? Well,
that was just cruel on his part. Much crueler than anything his wife could have
ever done to her behind his back.

Sara’s eyes, drowning with unshed tears, rose to his.
Her fury, filled beyond the level of comprehension, rose to the top of the
scorned
woman
scale. Her guilt became unchecked. And the worst of it? Boyd McCarlye
had made her feel mistrust again.

“I hope you and Iceberg are happy with each other
because once I walk out that door…” Her trembling finger pointed to the office
door. “I’m not coming back.”

It was almost comical to watch his eyes load up with
shock.

Almost.

Sara knew she was little more than an afternoon whore
the instant she stepped across the threshold of his patio door. Well, whore she
would be no more.

Sara Rogan, head held high, walked out of Boyd’s
McCarlye’s studio, and out of the man’s life. A few weeks later she found out
she was pregnant.

Chapter Three

“
Y
ou can’t keep doing this to yourself,
Mecenna,” Lace stated firmly.

Sara glared at the voluptuous redhead.

“I mean it,” Lace quibbled.

Sara turned her glare off and gave Lace a wry smile.
This angered her friend all the more.

“Damnit Mecenna!”

“Damnit Lace,” she mocked. She could do whatever she
pleased, and how dared anyone have thought otherwise, or said otherwise.

New life, one full year put behind her after the Boyd
fiasco, new chapter to an old book; thankfully, Sara’s pregnancy lasted only
three months. A first-term miscarriage suffered through; any longer, and she
would not be doing what she was today: total push into total exhaustion, until
she perfected this.

Belinda McCarlye’s pregnancy lasted long enough to
bring a squalling, bouncing Baby
Boyd
into the world. Of course, they
would name the brat Boyd. A knife pick to the heart would’ve hurt far less, but
Sara suspected the man had meant to hurt her.

She’d moved from the beach house a month after the
infant’s birth. She couldn’t stand watching Boyd pretend he was happy when she
was so obviously miserable with that happiness.

Sara jumped onto the pole again. This time she put her
right leg wrapped firmly onto the metal and her left leg stuck out as far as it
would go. She had to perfect this.
Or else!
Money was too tight to fail
at the task. Her beach house was up for sale, but who would want to buy it and
move in next to a conniving, irritating bitch? She had only two offers for
purchase on the house thus far, and both offers insulting, to say the least.

Belinda McCarlye might have had a little something to
do with the shameful offers; regrettably, Sara did not have concrete evidence
to use as proof that her real estate agent was being bribed. She had only
twenty-thousand dollars left of her lottery winnings. The money had to last.

But twenty-thousand dollars was one lousy year of life
to live. She needed more to keep going. She took this job as a means to
separate the lottery money from the
real
money.

Two nights a week, Sara would tend bar in the club.
The other two, she ran a naturist class from the back of a tattoo parlor. The
other three…she spent trying as hard as she could to accomplish this without
breaking her neck.

“You’re doing it all wrong,” Lace said.

The sultry Lace stepped onto the stage, jumped onto
the second pole and showed a determined Sara exactly how it should be done.
Lace could wrap her leg around the pole and stick out her left leg, let go of
both her hands from the pole, bend over backwards, and jut out her breasts in a
way to make them swell, enticing the customers. All of this, if done right, was
achieved within a matter of seconds.

Unfortunately, it took far too much concentration on
Sara’s part to get her body past the act of left leg out. The breast part was
easy. She hadn’t the need to stick them out. They were large enough and young
enough; but she had to get her left leg out and both hands off the pole,
otherwise she would slip to the floor and look foolish. No one would pay for a
pole dance if the dancer couldn’t keep her ass off the floor.

Sara, frustrated, slid off the pole, planted both bare
feet firmly onto the floor, and sighed. Lace was already into another move,
making it look so damn easy.

Sara wanted to strangle the woman. Why it was some
were better at gaining success than others? The sinful smile Lace sent back at
Sara did not help matters.

She grabbed her towel, wiped off her hands, then moved
off the stage in disgust.

The two friends would sneak in here on their Sunday’s
off to perfect a routine. Sara was frustrated. Lace was perfecting.

She went behind the bar and poured herself a drink.

Catching what she was up to now Lace came off the pole
and moved her way. “You can’t be doing what you are,” Lace said, tongue in
cheek.

Sara smiled at her friend and temporary roommate, said
nothing, downing the shot. She poured two more and slid one over to Lace.

And first, Lace’s face took on that look that said if
the cops were coming she didn’t want to be in the same room as Sara, or getting
the handcuffs slapped on her delicate wrists. The look passed and Lace downed
the shot, shaking her head to retract the heat.

Sara poured both another.

And another…

Two hours later, a full bottle of tequila reduced to
drops and a dead worm, Sara didn’t care if her ass slipped to the floor. She
was too drunk to care—but at least she could get her left leg off the pole, and
most of the time the hands to follow, without worrying about breaking her neck.
Thank God, the consumption of tequila could achieve all of this.

Unfortunately, this was also when the door to the
strip club opened and the women were caught in the act.

Only one spoken word came from the darker shadows put
chills to Sara’s spine. “Ladies.”

She stiffened, slid to the floor again, stood up on
unsteady legs, and squarely faced the intruder to her actions.

Though she could not see his face, she knew damn well
by voice alone who it was.

“Mister Griffen?”

Sara did not like Casey Griffen…and Casey did not like
her. A mutual understanding of animosity had formed between the two when he’d
hired her. According to him, she somehow made life miserable for a man.
Emphasis had to be put on
somehow
. He had yet to say how, and she had
yet to ask. But it was there, nonetheless.

“Care to tell me why two lovely ladies are on my
poles, and quite obviously drunk?” He eyed the empty tequila bottle and the two
shots glasses set on the bar. Neither woman was brave enough to have eaten the
worm—but certainly brave enough to do a little breaking and entering and theft
of spirits.

Strong legs carried Casey toward the stolen alcohol.
He grabbed the empty bottle and glasses and removed all three while he sent
another disapproving look at only Sara.

Drunk, frustrated with being unable to accomplish the
rather easy task of pole dancing, she said the first thing coming to mind.
“Care to tell me why your pecker is so pathetically small, Mr. Griffen?”

Lace hid her chuckle, but not before Casey turned icy eyes
to the other woman to force violent retraction of this undesirable reaction.

“Well, Mecenna…,” he began with conviction, the ice in
his voice chilling Sara even more. “Since you haven’t had the pleasure of
seeing my pecker, how the hell do you know of its actual size?”

He was baiting her. Unfortunately she was too drunk to
let any bait float downstream, undigested. “Then show it to me now, Big Boy.” A
slow lick of the lips was made to entice the man into action. “I’m in no
hurry.”

Casey owned this strip club. He was also the bouncer.
Big, burly, mean…and so mouthwatering muscular, at six-feet-two and nearly two
hundred forty pounds, all of his height and muscle he put to good use over the
years.

“Come a little closer and maybe I will,” he offered.

Sara was ten feet away from him. Any closer and he
could’ve easily made a grab for her.

Sara didn’t chance this. The last time Casey touched
her body it had taken her days for the nerve endings in her arm to get back to
normal. And since there were numerous moments in her daily routine where she
felt abnormal, fate need not be tempted its hand.

Casey was hot. At one time in his life he’d been an
exotic dancer. He worked out and kept himself fit.

Unfortunately, Sara wanted Casey in the worst possible
way—any way had—because she was lonely and horny. Yet, the last time she felt
this way about someone…a baby Boyd came out of the wrong woman’s body. She
would not be fooled twice. Besides, she had a goal. The pole was not to conquer
her. The wretched stripper’s pole had become her nemesis.

Before she spoke something she might not be able to
take back, Lace grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her off the stage. “Come
on, Mecenna. We should probably get you home.”

Sara yanked her arm out of her roommate’s steely grip.
For a slight woman, Lace was one tough broad. “No. Not until I get the pleasure
to see the size of Casey’s enormous pecker.”

He’d moved behind the bar, caught up in what he was
doing, until she dared utter these words.

His eyes rose, as did his smile. “You really asking
for trouble, Mecenna?” he warned crisply.

“Trouble is my new middle name,” she reasoned.

A smile to charm the pants off the man then sent his
way. Whatever it took to get him to show her the goods.

Two seconds later, Casey rounded the bar. His
movements were quick; too quick for drunken Sara to react to, and just fast
enough for Lace to clear off the stage and move out of harm’s way. He grabbed
her wrist, pulled her hand down to the front of his jeans, then dragged her
knuckles over the huge bulge under the taut material and smiled.

“You couldn’t handle all this heat, Sweetheart.”
Another second passed before he slowly let go of her wrist.

Within this time, he’d told her all she need know
through the glare of his eyes. Deep, unsettling dark blue eyes were warning her
she was playing with fire.

She might have been able to handle the size of him,
but Casey wasn’t offering. Moreover, smart as she was, Sara knew she should
never take any warning with a grain of salt. Then again, Tequila was running
this show.

She dove headfirst into the fire and reacted as only
she could by the inducement of too much alcohol and the late hour that it was. The
tequila sloshing in her brain unfortunately claimed
‘salt be damned!’

“Name the time and place, Big Boy, and prove you can
handle all
this
heat.” Her hand made a full sweep of her nude form. If
one was going to practice pole dancing while in a strip club on a Sunday night,
one must do so without clothing on the body.

Lace was naked, as well.

Casey, the grumpy elephant in the room, had the only
clothing on. Faded jeans, snug black T-shirt, it was his thick five o’clock
shadow and perhaps the unusual dreads tonight that drew her in—hard. Normally,
his hair was left to drape his shoulders. Normally, she had to do everything
imaginable not to touch him.

After the initial snickering was heard behind her back
from her roommate and friend, Lace had also taken the opportunity to escape to
the dressing room and was about to leave Sara with the boss—alone.

She yelled out she was going home as the back door
closed and locked from the inside, leaving Sara in a strip club, naked, with a
man who was obviously quite angry and aroused. That angry man took a step
forward and came to within inches of her. His hot breath fanned her face. Devil
dark eyes stared straight into her soul.

In that one single moment Sara felt real fear. She
knew Casey would never hurt her. He would lose too much: his club, his fancy
playboy house, his one hundred fifty-thousand dollars sports car. All of it
would disappear if he dared hurt one of his employees. Besides, she was pushing
all the wrong buttons on this man, and those buttons led to the most
interesting of places in the human body.

Sara’s downfall was she wanted a man between her legs.
Griffen was certainly a man; a huge, hungry, predatory man in which she could
sink her teeth into. He would certainly serve his purpose.

“How many times are you going to do this to yourself,
Mecenna?” he asked.

Sara felt wanton, raising a brow. “Do what?”

Matched brows arched even higher. “Come here on your
nights off. Drink my stash…” His voice hard with impatience.

Sara squared her shoulders. This caused her breasts to
rise. “As many times as it will take for me to perfect the pole.”

Casey did not back down. However possible for a man
his size, he stepped forward in space only molecules could exist. His
shirtfront brushed her protruding nipples, the material’s roughness causing
them to tighten.

Sara wouldn’t back down either. Tequila had this
effect on her. “And I have not perfected it—yet.”

“And I have warned you twice, just in this last week,
you are not working the poles in my club.”

“Why not?” she rushed out, her tone neared whining.

“Because…”

Sara stepped forward. She squashed those molecules and
atoms with vengeance and pressed her body as tight as she could to her boss
upon hearing this undesirable answer. Sara felt his heat, his finely tuned
heartbeat fluttering through her flesh, the shudder that ran down the length of
him and back up again, the huge bulge under his jeans that was now beyond an
aroused stage and drawing her in.

Casey would never say so, but he didn’t have to speak
it. Sara only had to feel it. He wanted her…and tonight there’d be no turning
back.

They stared at each other for what seemed like hours,
when in fact only but a few seconds slipped past.