using, and discarding them as though they were toys. But now he needed just one woman to feed life back into him. Returning the talisman to its place around his throat would smother and suppress the dark power strumming within him. It would maybe make him wholly a man once again, and yet the devil within raged against such a course. Once again he found himself waging war on himself, man against the beast. The reigning champion monster rejoiced as his empty hand left his pocket. “Her husband should be back soon. Best we leave now.”
Neil glanced at his watch and nodded. “We’ll make it just in time for the interview. Maybe there will be hope there.”
His friends, Neil and Troy, kept parading women before him, hoping one would trigger his hanging dick. So far their efforts had been in vain. They at least managed to get a good screw out of the whole affair while his cock remained as stoically limp and lifeless as the ladies he’d once bent to his will. It was fucking just punishment for the perverse way he’d treated the fairer sex.
* * * *
I can’t believe I’m doing this. Claudia Slater pulled against the collars of her shirt threatening to strangle her as she listened with partial attention to the wheezy voice that droned on. Blah! Blah! Blah! The heel of her boot thumped nervously as she scanned the tiny room once again. Nothing had changed in the five minutes since her last perusal. Each and every woman here was dressed in fancy little dresses and balanced on tiny pencil heels. Great big posies perched atop twin slender reeds. But it was not their apparel that disturbed her over much. It was their bodies. Agewise they just about matched her close-to-half-a-century existence, but they had obviously not been quite as lax about their physical appearance as she’d been. Although they could never be labeled bottle-figured women, the mass they carried was definitely not flab. Shit. She could not help but look down at herself in disgust.
Damn Reggie. This was his fault. She wanted to kick him in his fat ass for what he’d done to her. While she’d been slaving, cooking, and taking care of two kids on their Texas ranch, he’d been feeling up more than horse legs and cattle rumps. Well, she’d sure giving the cheating bastard a swift kick out the door. And with him went twenty-five years of her married life. It hadn’t taken long for her to decide she couldn’t sit around and wait for him to settle half of their matrimonial assets on her. The stingy miser would have dragged this out in the courts for the rest of her life. And she damn sure wasn’t going to waste another minute of her life on him, so she’d packed her bags and left the ranch, dirt poor but ready to take on the world.
The world, however, seemed reluctant to take her on. So what if she was past her prime agewise, and a tad overweight? She was a damn fine worker and made of good, sturdy stock. Not that anyone had been willing to test the theory. It was her desperation to feel wanted that had led her to the Serpent of Eden, a club that catered to everyone’s sexual needs irrespective of their shape, size, or advanced age.
The first step into that place had been like the turning of the luck tide for her. Lady Fortune had sought her out, except her name was actually Sin Collins. Sin had given her a decent-paying job. But the enigmatic Sin had had an ulterior motive—matchmaking. And she’d been just about as subtle as a tiptoeing elephant. Her constant whining, like a buzzing mosquito in her ear, about her twin brother, Vice Kenna, and his ability to restore a woman’s flagging libido had finally stirred Claudia’s interest. So here she was, in a rustic inn on the outskirts of a remote Scottish village, on a trip paid for by the generosity of Sin. But things were not going as easily as she had anticipated. For one thing, no one had mentioned she would have to compete for the man’s attention.
She cocked her ears once again as the
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