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Sara pressed her hips firmly to his. Compensation of
such an enormous size, anything had of him would be a damn good thing.

****

Even though all the outer doors were now locked in the
club, Casey did not trust Lace to come back here, ruin a good thing, and save
Mecenna from harm. He wasn’t going to hurt her, only instruct, so any saving
would be more than detrimental to his plans for this evening.

He intended to teach Mecenna the ways of sexual
tension by way of dance. Moreover, any lesson taught her would be while inside
a private room where there were mirrors. He wanted to watch her lithe body try
to please a man by a woman’s natural sensuality. He wanted to stare at her from
head to toe—allowed to do so without the slightest interruption from anyone
else. And he wanted to be where nothing could interrupt them, free from
conventions, rules, and judgment.

The guarded room in which to do all this was inside
the depth of his lair.

That lair was his home.

The woman wrapped in his arms did not know this, but
she would soon enough.

Casey slid his hand down the length of Mecenna’s arm,
gathering her wrist in his grasp. He had only one good hand for use, the other
out of its brace but hurt like hell if he moved it the wrong way. With a gentle
tug, he guided her toward the edge of the stage, jumped off the platform, then
eased Mecenna down to him.

She tried her best to avoid his injury, but could not
help collapsing into his arms. Tonight she’d put on clothes, more the pity.
Casey had wanted to see her incredible body from the moment he’d entered the
club. Now he would have to wait.

A gentle rasp slipped out of his mouth as he told her,
“We are going to do this at my place.”

Mecenna stopped her forward momentum. She slammed on
the brakes as her eyes widened. “But you said I would get to do this inside the
private room.”

He grinned out the playfulness a mere kiss had
started. “And so you will.”

Mecenna looked confused.

Casey deferred this confusion. “My private room is
inside my house, Mecenna. You will do this there.”

He needed not come out and say the words, because the
brain easily grasped upon the fact that, by the end of this night, she would
also be in his bed. But hopefully, this fact had been made perfectly clear by
the way he’d touched her on the stage, by the way he could barely keep his eyes
off her now, and by the kiss.

Casey was so in control of his thoughts and actions,
they physically dwarfed any she might have had. It was her vulnerability she
could not hide from him, scaring him the most.

Nevertheless, his smile came easy and it lingered on
his lips as he read her mind, contributing more to the adrenaline rush inside
his muscles than anything ever before.

“And yes,” he started, adding more when her iridescent
gaze rose to his. “By the end of this evening…you will not be disappointed.”

He smartly kept the words,
neither will I
,
hidden inside his thoughts.

Only a fool of a man would have said them aloud, and
perhaps scared away his prey. As hot, horny prey as Mecenna was, Casey wasn’t a
fool. If she resisted, balked, or even tried making his life miserable in any
distinguishing way, he was quite capable of punishing her in the worst possible
way.

Abstinence.

Casey wasn’t a fool and he wasn’t ignorant. Both he
and Mecenna wanted what they should not have, and it was now time to put that
want to the test.

Chapter Six

S
ara Rogan
had been kissed many times; more times than she could possibly count. She had
sex more times than she should’ve and with far too many men than the
required—perhaps moralistic amount—for a woman her age. But this was different.
Casey was different.

In a way, this difference scared her…more than Mecenna
Jones ever found out as really being Sara Rogan.

Casey had made her life difficult from the moment she
first took the job at his nightclub, and he’d continued this difficulty as
though it gave him tremendous power—even infinite pleasure. He wanted her to
work hard, be civilized to the paying customers, care about her looks, and made
certain she never gave out any personal favors to anyone confirmed as
ineligible for those favors; meaning men who were fucking rich and worth the
hassle of a pliable woman.

Thus far, Lace had been the only one of five girls
with an agreed confirmation; which netted Lace’s paycheck nearly four thousand
dollars bonus, on top of the thirty-five dollars an hour she made working the
pole. Stripping was highly profitable.

No one was certain if Griffen pimped out Lace, or if
consent had been mutual with the customer and the dancer. All his girls knew
was Lace had a hell of a bonus for a few crummy hours of work, and none of them
really asked too many questions afterward. They all privately hoped a windfall
like it would someday land in their backyard, but not one of the girls was
holding their breath for it to happen.

Griffen had his favorites, and they all knew Lace was
at the top of the list. She’d been with him the longest.

Not so, for Sara. She’d been hired last among the
five. Besides, she already had her windfall. Boyd McCarlye rang that bell—the
hard way.

She knew more than anyone one bad apple dropped in the
backyard could easily draw in the dangerous hornets. Sara did not want to go
through pain like that again. It would hurt too damn much to endure twice.

So, yes, she could honesty say Casey had made her life
difficult from the first moment she met him. He gave her the third degree a
long time ago, the required drug tests every other month, even the once over
with a leisurely roam of the eyes and done within the first five rapid blinks
upon introduction. And all this difficulty made, he’d done as a prerequisite
toward tonight. Sloppy, careless, and heartless would have been a real turn off
with the man. He liked things neat, precise, and warm. He wanted a woman to
think while on her feet. He wanted her to care about people, which Sara had, in
a roundabout way. And he wanted her to stay fit and trim.

Fit, she was. Trim, most definitely. Pilates was a
fucking Godsend to a woman.

But thinking on her feet or caring too much about
others? Hell, no. If she’d done that, she would not be inside this man’s car,
contemplating having sex in her imminent future with the person who signs her
paychecks and could take those funds away in the blink of an eye.

For this one moment in time, she’d be little more than
his dancing whore—and she was fine with that, if the reward worth the effort.

Her eyes darted to his lap. The anticipation of any
reward was wetting the panties in a real bad way.

Casey drove the sports car into an underground parking
garage beneath his home. She quickly knew why he’d done all he had to her. He
did it for himself.

Her eyes slid cautiously over the entire man, a man
who had complete control. She could see a profile of determination, a twitch of
muscle in the jaw-line that stated he wasn’t playing her the fool, as first
suspected. When his ice-blue eyes turned her way, the heat he was trying to
hold back hit Sara like a ton of bricks; its affect caused the sharp intake of
her breath.

Casey wanted her to dance—but only for his view. He
wanted this dance done as a private show. And he was not about to take any
argument against this otherwise.

The only thing Sara wasn’t certain about was if a
private show would actually escalate into the physical act of sex. Controlled
men could pull back from want when need overtook all else. Controlled men, at
times, eventually became too controlled—they could easily turn into almost
frustrating.

With any hope, Casey wanted her more than he needed
her, because she sure as hell desired both. In fact, Sara’s need was so great,
the clothing on her person felt claustrophobic. She couldn’t wait to get out of
her jeans and tank top and start on her night with this man.

First, however, she had to get out of his car, and for
the moment, she could not make her hands work to save her soul. Sara was
nervous. An entity of fate that made otherwise normal decisions inside one’s
head excruciatingly painful.

Casey shut down the engine as the garage door closed,
cocooning them into darkness. Before an overhead door light turned on, he shifted
in his seat.

“Well?” he asked.

Sara licked her dry lips, drawing the man’s sight to
her mouth.

“Well…what?” she questioned back.

He gave her a soft chuckle, then got out of the car.
Two seconds later, he stood beside her door, opened it, and held out a hand for
her to take. The slight hesitation on her part raised his brow.

“Are you getting out? Or staying inside my car all
night?”

Sara swallowed the lump in her throat, placing her
hand into his. This statement made only as a jest; on the other hand, perhaps
he’d used it as bait to get her to move out of the vehicle before sunrise.

“This isn’t going to backfire in my face, is it?” She
couldn’t help but utter the wrong thought out of her head, at the worst
possible moment.

His brow rose. “Are you going to disappoint me?”

“No.”

“Good,” he played with. “Hate to make a long drive
just for the hell of it.”

The drive had taken them all of twenty minutes. Long?
To Sara’s opinion…not long enough. To Griffen’s, most likely too damn long,
since he wasn’t smiling and his patience looked to have worn thin over those
twenty minutes.

As he guided her out of the car, his good hand moved
to the small of her back. The first initial touch of fingertips against her
body caused Sara to flinch. An unwarranted action; nonetheless, one she’d not
gotten away with.

Casey turned her into his arms. The darkness of the
interior garage hid what was in his eyes.

“Why are you so nervous?” he asked, his mouth put near
her ear.

Little goose bumps ran down her spine, tingled in
places denied such an exquisite pleasure for quite some time, as Sara moistened
her lips. “Me? Nervous? Whatever gave you such a crazy idea?”

He bent forward and his tongue slid down the length of
her neck, creating even more gooseflesh to rise. “Yes, Mecenna, whatever gave
me such a crazy idea as that?” His mouth then moved from her neck to her lips.

The kiss lingered, and it heated her up from the
inside out like none other before. The evidence of shared desire could not stay
hidden. His engorged erection pressed firmly at the juncture of her legs.

Sara’s breasts were tight and sensitive against his
muscular frame. She couldn’t find voice even if she’d tried. Nevertheless, she
soon discovered her hands had moved to his neck to hold his head firmly
attached to hers. And, that his one hand had slid down to her ass, cupping her
left butt cheek in a firm grip.

The sudden tug of pressure in Sara’s inner core built
to unstoppable. Dammit! She wanted more from Casey, but for some inexplicable
reason he was doing his level best to hold her back.

As his mouth drifted from hers, he rasped out, “You
owe me a dance, Mecenna.”

Sara could only nod.

If anything could be ever said about Casey, it was he
could certainly kiss a woman into speechlessness. The only thing she felt was
heat. Heat that lit, overran, and took full control of her body. Heat that
proved this was real.

He took her by the hand and moved them from the garage
directly into his home. He wouldn’t turn on any lights as they made their way
to the farthest part of a fifteen thousand square feet playboys’ domicile. A
staircase that led to a second story was then taken at near record speed before
she had the opportunity to change her mind. Well, it was probably less than
record speed, but Sara’s heart was doing double-time to what lie ahead and it
sure as hell felt as if a steroid-induced roadrunner was controlling her
footsteps.

Three minutes later, she found herself inside a fully
mirrored room with circular cushioned center surrounding a single metal pole. A
leather chair was set off to one side. A small red light reflected from the
twenty panels of glass gave the room a strange hue.

“The light can be changed,” he said.

Sara turned her head to face him. “What?” Her mind had
traveled a million miles away; taken there on a rollercoaster ride by a kiss, a
touch, a promise, and a roomful of mirrors.

Casey pointed at the small red globe above the pole.
“The light can be blue or green.”

Red suited the mood. Blue would be have been
interesting. Yet Sara found her mouth uttering, “Red is fine—if you want it as
red.” She would rather the light as turned off, than caring what color it was.
The dark would have been much easier to do this.

Darkness could have hid her fears.

Casey smiled, looked about to say something more, but
must have changed his mind because he cleared his throat to alter its fact and
stilled his tongue.

Sara glanced at the pole. “So? How do you want me to
start on this?”

Practicing in the club late at night was one thing. To
do this, within a private mirrored room, inside a man’s home—that man her boss,
and with one hell of a hard-on in his pants, and she with the panties so wet
the material could’ve been easily wrung of the moisture—turned into an entirely
different something to be dealt with. Especially, for the basic fact she wanted
to release his hard shaft and have it in her hand as quickly as possible. Or
mouth. Or deep inside her wetted core. She wasn’t picky, only horny, as he’d
predicted.

Casey held firm to his convictions of their planned
night by saying, “Later, Sweetheart. First…you dance and I see if what you’ve
got is worthy of the club.”

A raised brow and a hard grasp on reality, and not on
the man’s bulge under his tight jeans, had her asking, “And if you don’t like
the way I dance? Then what?”

Casey’s smile came out unhindered, repeated twenty
times throughout the mirrors. He need not say words to such a smile, but did
so, perhaps only to appease her conscience. “I highly doubt you will disappoint
me, but if you do…”

His stalled thought had Sara eagerly questioning, “If
I do?”

“Mecenna, there are surefire ways of a man punishing a
poor performance from his dancer. If he paid for it, it should be perfect. And
if perfect…the dance should achieve its intended goal. This isn’t supposed to
be a display of endurance or physical ability. It’s supposed to be an art form,
a perfected sway of the human psyche into believing the impossible—sex without
touch, driving enticement into panting need. And if done right, that panting
should be pretty damn special.”

Sara’s brow rose. “What kind of punishment are we
talking about?” Her heartbeat had already jumped out of her chest when he
claimed a pole dance as an art form. What possible punishment could he have in
mind to a poor performance?

Casey stepped forward to take her upper arm in a firm
grip, easing her body to within inches of his. “Yes, Mecenna, what kind of
punishment would that be?” he said, leaving it up to her.

 She could either take the reins of their evening, or
leave them alone for the man to grasp. The ball was now in her court. In other
words, if she displeased him it would be up to her what the punishment would be
and how it was administered, as well its duration. Casey looked to have a few
ideas in his head, as did Sara. Unfortunately, those ideas probably did not
match.

He dropped her arm and took a step back. “Undress
Mecenna.”

Sara’s eyes widened. “Now?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Were you planning
on doing this tomorrow?”

“Um…no.” She was feeling a little sheepish all of a
sudden, that’s all.

“Undress, Mecenna. I want to see all of you.” His tone
crisp, with no allowance made for mistake on her part, his gaze took a
leisurely tour of her still-clothed form.

Sara swallowed the stubborn reoccurring lump in her
throat. “Don’t I get a little music to dance to?”

His cocked brow added more to these words, stalling
any movement on her part.

“Undress Mecenna. If I like what I see, I’ll turn on
the music.”

He gave her a hard look, rather cold and heartless,
chilling her, as did the throaty tone of his voice. This made her angry; far
angrier than she’d ever been in a long time.

“Well, you certainly liked what you were looking at in
the club! Nothing has changed since then.” She made a full sweep of her body
with her hand to prove this fact. What he saw before was still there. She’d not
switched bodies.