For Desire Alone by Jess Michaels

It is most stimulating, especially when there is such abandon as there was tonight.”
    She shivered just thinking about it, and John shifted as if he too was thinking of what they’d seen and done.
    “And yet when I first suggested the back room, you hesitated in going,” he pressed. “I felt high emotion in you, and not of the pleasant variety. Is there a reason?”
    Mariah closed her eyes and drew a calming breath. John was a bulldog on topics he perused. Now that he had gotten hold of this one, she could see he wouldn’t release it until he had the answers he demanded.
    “John,” she said softly. “You are the one who did not wish to be my protector, who wanted to keep our affair so rigidly free of connection. Why the shift now?”
    He stared at her in plain disbelief.
    “Mariah,” he whispered. “I am not so cold as you accuse. The fact is I am not asking you these questions as a protector or a lover. I ask you because I am your friend. I’m still that, aren’t I?”
    Once he had told her they’d never been friends because of his lust for her, but she’d always known that was a statement meant to make a point, not truth.
    “You are my friend,” she replied, her voice so soft that he had to lean closer to hear her.
    He smiled and the expression was genuine with relief and affection. “Then tell me, why did the beginning of tonight make you so uncomfortable. I don’t want to repeat that if I can avoid it.”
    Mariah took a deep breath. Damn him for seducing not her body, but her emotions. For making her trust him, when she knew she shouldn’t, friendship and passion be damned.
    “I—” she began, trying to keep her mind from wandering to unpleasant memories. It was an impossible task. “Owen did love to watch, as did I. Our shared desire for such a thing brought us closer at first. But after a while he told me that watching was not enough to satisfy him. He wanted us to…participate.”
    John’s eyes went wide and he nearly dropped the drink in his hand.
    “Participate?” he repeated as if he didn’t understand.
    She knew the feeling. When Owen had suggested it, she had barely understood herself.
    “He…said that we had been together a long while, two years the first time he brought up the subject,” she continued with difficulty. “And that our passion was growing stale .”
    She spit the last word out with difficulty, for hearing it had hurt her so deeply. Owen had been kind in the exchange, but no amount of kindness could ease the pain of his meaning.
    John tensed but said nothing, so she continued.
    “He asked me to come with him to the center of the back room, to give myself over to whatever the others wished, and he would do the same. I refused. I could not picture myself in the middle of that room, watching my lover pleasure and be pleasured by others. I wasn’t ready for such a shift in our relationship. I knew it would open a Pandora’s box.”
    “And what did Owen say when you refused him?” John pressed in a thin, tight voice that betrayed unexpected anger at the subject.
    She blushed. “He did not force me, but he made it very clear that he was disappointed to his core. Disappointed in me and my ‘missish refusal to tend to his desires’.”
    John cursed beneath his breath. “I assume the subject did not drop, either.”
    She shook her head. “No. Soon after he began suggesting we recruit a friend or two of his to join us in the privacy of our rooms, rather than begin with such a public act. He even suggested you.”
    John backed up another step. The anger that had been mild in his tone now flashed dark and deep in his eyes.
    “Me?” he repeated, his voice gruff and low.
    She blinked. “You sound surprised.”
    He laughed, but there was no humor to the sound. “I am.”
    She shook her head. “I—I thought you knew! That he had talked to you about the subject and had your permission to bring up the topic with me.”
    “No,” he barked and several heads pivoted at