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and his knowing grin, fully aware of the effect he had on me.
    “ Excuse me,” I muttered. Snatching my purchases off the counter, I hurried quickly toward the door and pushed blindly through it.
    What was wrong with me? I ’d been flirting! And with a total stranger!
    And worse, I was married. It might not be a love match between Pete and me, and he might be on the road more than he was home, but we had a daughter together and he took care of us financially. I should respect that, and yet here I was acting like a teenager with a crush, entertaining thoughts that I had no business thinking. I shook my head in dismay and let out a large pent-up breath that did nothing to calm my rapidly beating heart.
    Reaching my truck, I tossed my purchases inside the open window, and was about to open the door when I felt a touch on my left shoulder. Startled, I spun around and came face -to-face with . . . Jason Brady.
    “ You forgot your change,” he said.
    When I tore my gaze from his grin and looked down to his outstretched hand, I found three wrinkled dollar bills. But my focus wasn’t on my change, it was on the man standing in front of me. He was so close to me, too close, and watching me too intently for me to feel at all comfortable.
    And yes, dammit. He did smell good. An understated, yet softly spicy bouquet wafted off his skin, and along with it, the faint odor of sweat and the crisp scent of leather.
    Swallowing hard and with a slightly trembling hand, I reached for my money and when I did, his free hand came down on top, his hands caging mine, his touch freezing me in place.
    “You should stop by the club and see me sometime,” he said, his eyes lazy, his smile filled with less-than-honorable intent. A smile that had my stomach flip-flopping.
    I cleared my throat and managed to choke out, “I . . . I’m married.”
    Jase ’s smile never wavered. “Baby, I ain’t tryin’ to marry you.”
    Releasing me, he held up his left hand and wiggled his ring finger back and forth. His wedding band, a thin band of platinum , glinted menacingly in the sunlight. “Got the battle scars to prove it too.”
    I stared up at him as foreign thoughts infiltrated my brain, thoughts of him and me naked, sweaty, our bodies colliding. I saw heated kisses and furious groping and—
    Instantly disgusted, more so with myself than at his audacity, I had spun back around and quickly jerked open the driver’s side door. Yanking it closed behind me, I’d thrust the key into the engine, slammed the truck into reverse, and hit the gas. As I had burned rubber out of the parking lot, I could see him in my rearview mirror, still standing where I’d left him.
    Laughing.
    What an absolute scumbag.
    What an absolutely, perfectly sculpted, beautifully smelling . . . scumbag.
    • • •
    Since I was young and unhappy in my marriage, it had only taken Jase a few months of pursuing me before I’d succumbed, and an even shorter period of time before I’d fallen head over heels in love with him. A love I’d chosen above all else—my marriage had ended and my family was lost to me, viewing me as an adulterer; the utmost disgrace.
    And my dignity, I ’d sacrificed that as well.
    And for what? To be a club whore?
    I might be off-limits to the other boys, belonging only to Jase, but the painful truth was that he’d never be mine. All these years later he was still married, still armed with a litany of excuses as to why he couldn’t yet leave his wife, and still promising that he someday would.
    It was a promise I ’d recently given up on.
    I could either accept my fate and status in Jase’s life—always a club whore, never an old lady, forever waiting for what little crumbs he would toss my way—or I could leave him.
    But how could I leave him? After all I’d given up, all I’d sacrificed for him, the sheer lengths I’d gone to ensure that someday I would be his one and only, how could I simply walk away?
    The truth was that I