“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
Casey 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 lo
oked 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?
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