STORY EXCERPT

As Charity Harper luxuriated in a warm bath, she felt the stresses and strains of the day slowly begin to diminish. She loved children, and one day, in the not too distant future, hoped to have a brood of her own. However, a class of some twenty or more five- and six-year-olds took its toll on her resilience, making Charity savor her “me” time.

She’d been working as a schoolteacher at Blue Beacon Elementary for almost four years now, and by and large she loved every minute of her job, not once regretting the move from Freshwater, Missouri, to the small friendly town of Sharpsville, Texas.

She let out a long, lingering sigh as she squeezed the giant sponge, allowing warm scented water to cascade over her bonelessly relaxed body. “Ooohh, that is so wonderful.” Her other hand hung limp over the side of the tub, and right now she didn’t give a damn that she dripped water on the tiled bathroom floor. “Ooohh, lovely. Heaven. Sheer Heaven.”

When the shrill, insistent noise of the telephone roused her from the sybaritic pleasure she was enjoying, Charity cursed herself for not remembering to have it within easy reach. “God damn it, woman, will you never learn? Take the phone with you when you have a bath.”

Closing her eyes once more, she steeled herself against the irritating sound, hoping it would simply go away, and she could return to her therapeutic relaxation. It didn’t, instead endlessly ringing, until she could take no more. “Okay…okay you win. Whoever you are, and whatever you have to say, it had better be good.”

Breaking the suction that stuck her to the tub, she pulled herself upright before stepping from the freestanding bath.

“Okay, I hear you. Give me a break will you.”

Almost falling as she slid like Bambi on ice across the wet tiled floor, Charity hastily shrugged on a fluffy robe as she raced toward the lounge.

She wrenched the phone from its cradle. “Yes!” She knew she sounded pissed, but wasn’t minded to beat herself up over it. After a hard day at school, she deserved her wind-down time. “Charity speaking.”

“It’s your mother.”

Right now she needed this conversation like she needed a hole in the head.

“Hello, Mother.” Not once in twenty-six years of life could she ever recall referring to her mother as Mum or Mom. It saddened her at times, but that was just the way things were—had always been. Sarah Harper was a duty mother. A woman who looked all but perfect to outsiders, but in reality was anything but. Sure, as a child Charity had always been well fed and immaculately turned out by both of her excessively strict parents, but neither of them were able to give their daughter what she needed most of all—love.

Charity didn’t blame them anymore, because as one year had merged into the next, she’d grown to realize that her birth parents were incapable of such life-enforcing emotion.

No, unbending discipline was what Elijah and Sarah Harper were best at. Their “God fearing” ways, making them unafraid to spare the rod on their own flesh and blood. Her mother was forty-four years old when she was born, and Charity often wondered if the age difference had exacerbated the mother-daughter disconnect.

When she was a child, God was everywhere in the Harper household, but not in a benevolent, loving way. No, Charity had been raised to fear the wrath of the Almighty, which often took the form of a studded strap against her bare ass. Needless to say, since growing up and moving away from home, she hadn’t once felt the urge to go to church.

For as long as she could remember, she’d always been attracted to the bad boys of this world. Her first taste of the excitement of rebellion being when Tommy Lawson refused to do what Miss Collins told him while in first grade. She’d instinctively gravitated toward him after that, much to her parents’ stern and ever-present disapproval.

With the phone still pressed to Charity’s ear, her mother had only uttered three simple words “It’s your mother,” yet already the lack of compassion that so characterized the woman was clearly evident.

“How are you, Mother?”

“Your father suggested that I contact you.”

There was that disconnect again. The inference being that had it been up to Sarah Harper, she wouldn’t have bothered to call her godless daughter in the first place.

“And how is Father?”

“Your father strongly suggests you should come home for the Easter vacation. We could all attend church together, just as we used to.”

Just as you forced me to, you mean.

Clearly, both her parents were still as unbending, unforgiving, and uncompromising as ever, and Charity had no desire or intention of returning to the parental strangulation that lay waiting for her in Freshwater, Missouri.

“I’m visiting friends, Mother. It’s been arranged for some time,” she lied.

“I see, Charity.”

She didn’t of course, because her mother was incapable of understanding what made her only child tick.

A strained silence then followed, and Charity became determined to stand her ground. Even into her early twenties, she’d have never dreamed of confronting her mother with an opinion of her own. However, she’d moved on in the last few years, and at twenty-six, she was now her own woman. “Tell me something, Mother, how did we reach the point, where neither of us can stand the sight of one another?” Even though she was over eight hundred miles away, she clearly heard Sarah Harper suck in a belligerent breath.

“Such blatant disrespect. You’ll go to hell, my girl. You were always a troublesome, wayward child.”

“So bad that you needed to beat the devil out of me, that’s right, isn’t it, Mother?”

“Yes, Satan was never far from you.”

“Bullshit…I was just normal kid, who longed to love and be loved by her parents. But do you want to know something, Mother…your sickening piety drove me straight into the arms of Satan.”

“Oh yes, you’re one of the Devil’s disciples, all right, but I don’t blame myself, because your father and I did everything we could to keep you from his evil clutches.”

Charity shook her head in disbelief. “Can you see how deluded you sound?”

A familiar sneer made its way down the line.

ADULT EXCERPT

As Kyle spread her legs uncomfortably wide, Charity figured that things would be different with this animal of a “man.”

He hunkered down. “Oh, woman.” She obviously pleased him and was glad that she’d shaved her pussy silky smooth in the shower that morning. Forcing his powerful forearms beneath her thighs, he then tilted her backward so that her puckered hole became clearly visible to him. “Woman, you are beautiful.”

Without permission being sought or given, he then buried his head between her thighs, breathing deeply as the most communicative tongue she’d ever experienced repeatedly traveled from asshole to clit and then back again.

Her response to the unbelievable pleasure he gave her was perverse in the extreme. “Kyle, no, don’t.” What she actually meant was “more, keep going, don’t you dare stop, you sexy bastard.”

He certainly knew his way around the female body, and she figured that Kyle black had been in this exact same position with an almost unlimited number of women.

Realizing that her negative protestations had absolutely no effect on the man himself, Charity decided to enjoy rather than endure the surreal event unfolding before her very eyes.

“Oh Jesus, Kyle, that feels so good, too good.” His magical tongue alternatively circled her engorged clit before probing deep inside her feminine wetness, bringing her closer and closer to letting go.

However hard she tried, she couldn’t stop herself from fisting her hands into his hair, coiling those jet-black locks around her fingers with wanton abandon.

“God damn you, Kyle, you bastard, I shouldn’t be letting you do this to me.”

In reality she knew she had no say in the matter, because this powerful, dominant, and yes, dangerous man was in complete control of her. Deep down, she actually enjoyed the feeling of utter helplessness and submission, because when a person had no control over a situation, it absolved them of any guilt.

Guilt?

Her crazy fucked-up parents had fed it to her by the spoonful when she’d been growing up, and she’d had a bellyful of it. Since leaving home, she’d revised her outlook on life and jettisoned much of the harmful sickening piety that her mother in particular had crushed the life from her with.

Life isn’t a rehearsal, Charity. You don’t get a second life to put right what you fuck up in the first one. This is the only one you get, happening right here, right now. So make sure that you enjoy every minute of it, girl.

As he continued to adore the most intimate part of her body with complex movements of his lips and tongue, Charity felt work hardened hands roughly pulling her blouse from the waistband of her skirt. Almost immediately those same hands pushed her bra over her breasts, causing them to bounce several times before coming to rest.

Charity had no doubt in her mind that Kyle Black could be a subtle refined lover when the mood took him, however, on this occasion his demeanor was more that of a caveman rather than a twenty-first century sophisticate.

With his tongue still probing deep inside her most intimate place, she felt insistent fingers first tease, then pull, then finally stretch her aroused nipples until they hurt enough for her to cry out with what could only be described as painful ecstasy.

“Ooohh…ooohh…Oh dear god, dear god above. What are you doing to me?”

The edge of that ultrafine line—the one that separated persistent pleasure from full-blown climax—suddenly became blurry, and as her breathing slipped from her control, she came apart for Kyle Black, a man she barely knew and wasn’t sure she even liked.

Just a perfect head of jet-black filled her vision as he skillfully bought her to exquisite orgasm time after time, making her squeal with a joyous delight that she hadn’t believed herself capable of. “Kyle. Kyle…Kyle.”

When he finally took his head from between her legs, his rugged yet handsome face wore a mischievous smile that let her know that he’d enjoyed himself as much as she had. It was only when he wiped her feminine juices from his mouth with a theatrical flourish that she realized just how wet and wanton her pussy was for this man.

“Like that, Charity?”

Finding it hard to put into words how she really felt, and still finding it difficult to take in a full lungful of air, she simply nodded, like some dumb idiot.

“Good. I aim to please, schoolteacher.”

Well he’d certainly done that, although “pleasing her” seemed far too ordinary a phrase for the sheer delight he’d gifted her.

Still kneeling between her fully open legs as though it were the most natural place in the world for him to be, he winked at her, letting Charity know there was more to come from the incredible and enigmatic Mr. Black.

“My turn now, babe.”

“What? You mean you want to—”

“Damn right I want to, schoolteacher. That was just a preliminary event to warm you up. I’m going to fuck you real hard, Charity. That’s the effect you have on this guy.” He meant it, too, because unstoppable sexual intent glinted in those penetrating eyes.

Deep down she knew a man like Kyle Black was never going to be satisfied with just oral sex. Even so, it still chilled the blood in her veins and increased the blood flow in her vagina when she thought about what would happen next.

Without saying another word and with those calculating chips of blue ice giving her not a moment’s respite, he rose from his knees.