Bonnie Edwards

Chapter One

On a mission she’d been planning for two weeks and wanting for longer, Faye Grantham took a breath, smoothed her palm up her thigh to hike her dress and crossed the threshold into the darkly lit hotel bar.

Alone.

Desperation was a harsh mistress and demanded sacrifice, and Faye was desperate. Propelled into the bar by a heat under her skin she could no longer deny, her craving exploded outward, from her skin, her hair, the ends of her fingertips. She was on fire, and it amazed her that no one in the hotel lobby had called 9-1-1.

Sex with a stranger. An I-don’t-want-to-know-your-name kind of stranger, that’s what she was here for, and that’s what she was determined to get.

She paused inside the entrance to glance around for a likely candidate. At first she was disappointed. A sparse crowd was sprinkled around the edges of the room. Light came from tabletop candles and subdued ceiling bulbs made to look like the night sky. For a bar called the Stargazer, it made sense.

Couples shared a quiet drink, men spoke into cell phones with laptops open, a woman with shopping bags sporting expensive logos at her feet sipped a martini. Her mouth was set grimly, and she downed the drink fast, nodding for the next before the glass was set back on the table. An obviously bad day.

The only men of interest were a group of rowdy suits at a table left of the door. Four men in their early thirties, happy, celebrating.

Pay dirt.

Her inner heat cranked up to unbearable at the sight of all those delicious-looking men. She kept her gaze forward to hide her interest but had to ease out a breath. She half expected to see fire blaze from her mouth.

Need. She’d never felt such need.

Forcing her legs to take her past the men and toward the bar kept her focused.

An ego-boosting silence hit the table as she strolled by. A whiff of tantalizing male cologne swirled around her head as she moved past. It was a man-spice smell that went straight to every feminine scent receptacle in her head. Her nostrils flared to catch every molecule.

If she turned her head to look at the men, she’d stop walking, and one last shred of pride wouldn’t let her. She would not stand there to be ogled openly.

Moisture pooled at the image in her mind of four men touching her with their eyes, skimming her arms, her breasts, her legs, taking inventory of all her secret places. All of them wanting to be with her, inside her hot, hot skin.

Suddenly awash in heat, she took a hard breath. Keep moving.

If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up with all of them at once! Flat out, stripped naked on a bed with four men making her melt, making her wet.

She felt the back of a male hand brush lovingly down the side of her naked breast. The hair on the back of his fingers would excite and entice as he pressed against the soft flesh. Her nipple would bead, the knuckles, large and knobby, would caress and inflame her areola. Another man would kiss her mouth, sucking at her lower lip before sliding his tongue deeply into her yearning empty mouth. Oh, yes.

She could have two of them suckle her breasts and one could pleasure her toes. The fourth, oh, the fourth would slide his broad fingers into her so she could ride out an explosive orgasm before he slid his massive cock into her. She squeezed her thighs together, barely able to walk the rest of the way. Melting in the heat of her own fantasy, she finally made it to a bar stool.

She’d never, ever entertained such hot fantasies before. Maybe it was turning thirty last month, or maybe it was finally being engaged after five years. Or, maybe, it was Colin’s talk of her needing a sex therapist.

Whatever was going on, she loved it. She was living a sexual implosion and she needed to understand why. And fast.

Her bra felt like burlap and scratched against her raised nipples. Sparkles of desire raced from her breasts to her pussy and she shivered with the yummy feel. In her mind, one of the men soothed the roughened nubs with an expert tongue. She imagined a wet mouth suckling at her and as she tilted her head back to offer more. She shivered as the man’s lips trailed up her neck.

Suddenly remembering she was sitting alone on a bar stool waiting to be served, she pulled herself out of her fantasy and looked down the bar for the bartender. It wouldn’t do to start moaning in the throes of an imagined orgasm.

She’d be hauled out of her seat and sent to a rubber room.

Maybe that’s where she belonged. But before that happened, she was going to get laid. Her nameless lover would be one of those great-smelling men at the table behind her.

One of them would surely read the signs of her arousal. One of them would tap into it, want to exploit it. One of them would want it bad.

And bad was what she needed.

This craving had built for months. At first it manifested as an unsettled feeling when her Great Auntie Mae Grantham had passed away. She’d felt guilty for not going to see her more often.

Then, oh-so-slowly the unsettled feeling grew into an itch she couldn’t scratch. She’d had more sex, but she’d been even less satisfied than usual. All the while the craving grew until it tore and clawed at her, bringing sexual frustration to a pinnacle. She couldn’t fight it any longer.

A sexual implosion was the only name she could give the wild craving. It filled most of her waking moments and all of her sleeping ones. Sexual need crawled under her skin, oozed out her pores, scented her breath and made her carry fresh panties everywhere she went.

Everything she’d done, everything she’d tried had brought her to this moment, to these men. These strangers.