KENSINGTON BOOKS

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      This book is dedicated to Ed,

       my editor,

       my conscience,

       my partner,

       my friend.

      CONTENTS

      THE PLEASURES OF JESSICALYNN

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      VELVET WHISPERS

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      And my thanks to Angela Preston for her short story entitled “Assimilation,” which I use with her permission. A talented writer, Angela has a bright future.

      Chapter

       1

      “Steph, it’s Jessie.” Thirty-six-year-old JessicaLynn Hanley kicked off her high heels and stretched out against the mountain of pillows on her king-sized bed. She crossed her stocking-clad ankles on the paisley bedspread and, holding the cordless phone between the pillows and her ear, unfastened the thin gold bracelet she had just bought.

      “I thought about you a lot today,” Jessie’s best friend Stephanie Carlton said from a thousand miles away, “and I was hoping you’d call. Is it done?”

      “Done,” Jessie said, glancing at her watch. “According to my lawyer, for three hours and seventeen minutes I’ve been a legally separated woman. All the papers neatly signed by the judge. It’s over.” Through surprisingly misty eyes, she glanced around the tastefully decorated room in which she had slept for the last nine years of her marriage and the fourteen months since Rob moved out.

      “You knew this day would come,” Steph’s soft voice said. “Weren’t you prepared?”

      “Oh, I guess I was,” Jessie said, taking a large swallow from the can of diet Pepsi she had grabbed on her way upstairs, “but, I guess I wasn’t quite as ready as I thought I was.”

      “How do you feel about everything now?” Steph’s voice was filled with concern.

      Jessie let out a long breath. “Mixed emotions. I thought about Rob a lot this afternoon and, hell, he’s still the person I spent all those years with, thinking we were happy. Part of me is sad, like something died.” She shook her head. “Of course, most of me still wants to shoot the bastard.” She closed her eyes and the moment that changed her life played behind her lids like a movie.

      It had been more than a year since she had arrived at her husband’s dental office late one afternoon with swatches of fabric for new chairs for the waiting room. His receptionist had left for the day, so Jessie had wandered back toward his private office where he often worked late getting his paperwork in order. As she glanced into the main operatory, she had been greeted by the vision of her husband’s bare ass, muscles clenching, back arching as he crouched over the contour dental chair and drove his cock into his recently hired twenty-two-year-old dental assistant. “Harder Robby baby, harder,” the girl had been screaming. “Fuck me good. Fill me up.”

      Snapping back to the present, Jessie said, “You know, Steph, all I could think of when I walked in on the two of them fucking was the old joke about the voluptuous woman who goes into the dentist’s office. After a brief exam, he tells her that she needs quite a bit of very expensive dental work. ‘Oh fuck,’ she says. ‘Okay,’ says the dentist, ‘just tell me which cavity you want me to fill and I’ll adjust the chair.’”

      Jessie enjoyed her friend’s deep husky laugh. During their senior year at Ottawa High in Ottawa, Illinois, Steph, her steady boyfriend and now husband Brian, Jessie and Rob had hung out together. They had gone to the drive-in in LaSalle in Rob’s father’s Pontiac and pretended to watch the latest movie, shared burgers and fries at Bianchi’s or the Root Beer Stand, and planned their futures.

      “Wall Street,” Brian had said, over and over. “I’m going to make millions and then Steph and I will get married and have a dozen kids.”

      Immediately after graduation Brian, true to his dreams, had moved to New York and had made a great deal of money as a commodities trader. He had sent for Steph and they had married and moved to Westchester County. Unfortunately, their only child, Theresa, had been killed at the age of nine. She had been riding her bicycle near the elementary school when a drunken driver ran his car onto the sidewalk and struck the child.

      “I’m going to be a doctor or dentist and make scads of money,” Rob had said from the driver’s seat of the Pontiac. “I’ll join the country club and play tennis every Thursday afternoon.” And Rob had done just that; gone to college and dental school while Jessie had worked to support both of them. Insisting that he wouldn’t make a good father, Rob had also decided that the couple would have no children.

      Through the years, though a thousand miles apart, Steph and Jessie had kept in touch and had remained close. Jessie had even visited the Carltons’ home in Harrison occasionally.

      “It’s good to hear that you haven’t lost your sense of humor,” Steph said.

      Jessie sat on the edge of the bed and began to pull the pins from her carefully arranged titian French knot. An attractive, green-eyed redhead, she had freckleless ivory skin and a slender figure with ample curves in all the right places. “My funny bone is still intact. Actually, I feel a little sorry for the jerk. I get weekly reports from some of our old supposedly well-meaning friends who think I need blow-by-blow accounts of their comings and goings, pardon the pun. I understand that he’s going to marry the bimbo. She has the brains of a thumbtack and giggles all the time, but you know all the stories about the seven-year itch. Rob always was a bit slow. It took him thirteen years to feel it. I hope they’ll be very happy, snarl. I’ll retract my claws now.” Jessie’s voice dropped. “Anyway, maybe she’s good in bed, better than I ever was.” Jessie was amazed at the knot of bitterness that was lodged in the pit of her stomach. She and Rob