Prologue
Louisiana, 1995
Kasey moaned loudly. Every fiber of her being was at the mercy of the man kneeling at the end of the bed. All she knew about him was that he was a biker, the leader of a club just outside of New Orleans, and that everyone in the bar that night had either looked at him with respect, lust, or fear in their eyes. Kasey had specifically gone out that night looking for a distraction, and Lord had she found one. The thick Cajun accent had sent a thrill through her body first, even before she turned and looked into a pair of the clearest blue eyes she’d ever seen. She smiled at him and thought about her parents. It was an odd thought, or it would be for anyone other than Kasey. But most of her life centered around them, and Kasey was sure they’d both have an apoplectic fit if they knew she was anywhere near a place filled with what they referred to as “swamp people.” Kasey had grown up in New Orleans, but she’d lived comfortably in a French Colonial home in the lower Mississippi Valley and light years away from the rambunctious, fun-loving, Cajun people she was surrounded by at the bar that night. Kasey had picked that spot on purpose, out of a desire to be completely anonymous, and all she was looking for was to leave completely satisfied.
Kasey had been drawn to the Cajun man as if the muscle and ink of his body were magnets, and everything in hers was made of steel. He’d bought her a drink, but she hadn’t needed any liquid courage that night...she’d known what she wanted, and so far, the gorgeous man had given her much more than she’d bargained for.
“Oh God! Don’t stop! Oh my God, that feels so good!” she said now as she lay on her back in the little bed in a room above the bar. The man didn’t speak, but she felt him smile against her flesh. His beard was rough, and her sensitive skin felt like it was being sanded off...but what he was doing with his tongue was so incredible that she didn’t care. She could live without a little bit of skin...she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to live without what he was doing to her at that moment. He spent more time pleasuring her with his lips, tongue, and teeth than any man ever had...not that there had been that many.
Kasey Cormier was twenty-two years old, and the daughter of a right-wing congressman and a bible-thumping southern belle. Her mother had been the queen of every pageant in the parish as a girl and lived only to be a dutiful wife and mother as a woman. Kasey was raised from the moment she took her first breath to be a lady. She wore frilly dresses and patent leather shoes, white gloves, and big bows in her hair. She stood to the right of her father, and just in front of her mother at every political rally, and the family sat in the front pew every Sunday morning at church. Kasey was a good girl, a dutiful daughter, and not long after her cotillion, presenting her to the world as a lady, she graduated as the valedictorian of her high school class. Her mother and father never talked about where she’d go to college. It was simply assumed she’d follow in her mother’s, aunts’ and grandmothers’ footsteps, on both sides. It was a Cormier, and Gentry, tradition for the ladies in the family to attend Ole Miss, live in the sorority house, and graduate in four years with a degree in the arts. It was something she could use later on in life as she headed up the charitable committees that, besides her husband and children, would become her life. It was assumed she’d meet a good southern boy while attending Ole Miss and by the time she graduated that her Mama would be planning the wedding of the century. Their dream included a nursery within a year after the marriage, and hopefully another not long thereafter. In the end Kasey would be a forty-year-old carbon copy of her mother, and her mother’s mother before her. They had it all worked out as soon as the nurse had laid her in her Mama’s arms...but unfortunately for them, Kasey had dreams of her own.
Kasey didn’t apply to Ole Miss, and she wasn’t looking to get any kind of education in the arts; her dreams were much bigger than that. Unbeknownst to her parents, she had applied to Louisiana State University, to the pre-med program. Kasey wanted to be a doctor, and knowing her parents wouldn’t approve, she’d kept it from them as long as she could. It was a week after her high school graduation when she’d gone to her father’s office, armed with the acceptance letter and all the courage she could muster, and brought her parents’ dreams crashing down around them.
Those first few months after were tense. Her mother had cried a lot and her father had tried to bully her into following the path they had mapped out for her even before she was born. It was tough, since she’d never gone against them before, but Kasey stood her ground. She had a trust fund set up for her by her grandfather, who had been a tobacco farmer back in the day, and she told her father if he didn’t want to pay for her college at LSU, she’d use that...and find a roommate and live off campus. They had been completely okay with her moving to Mississippi and living in a sorority house, but the idea of her living in an apartment with one of her young friends, or worse yet, a stranger...that was too much. Her father gave in first, but not because of her original plan. She’d had a back-up plan, one that she hadn’t wanted to use...but they forced her into it. Nobody wants to blackmail their own father, but she didn’t feel like they left her any choice. This was her life, and she was determined to live it on her own terms.
The “blackmail” worked, but of course her relationship with her parents was strained from then on. Trying to get back into their good graces, Kasey brought a young man she’d met home for Sunday dinner. His name was Tom and he was a third-year medical student that had given a lecture in one of her classes. He was a “good southern boy” and just the type that Kasey’s mother would have picked for her herself. Kasey suspected her mother hoped that after dating Tom for a while, Kasey would give up on the career thing and happily settle for someday being Tom’s wife and the mother to his children. Kasey never saw Tom that way however, and when they broke up at the beginning of her sophomore year of college, her mother was the only one who had shed any tears, and another dent was made in their already irreparable relationship.
Kasey’s mother made sure to keep tabs on Tom and let her daughter know that the good southern doctor met and married the daughter of a pastor. Now three years later he was married with two kids and practicing medicine in New Orleans, and Kasey was once again breaking her parents’ hearts with talk of attending medical school in California. Kasey didn’t miss having a boyfriend. Being single had given her much more time for her studies. But since she wasn’t a virgin any longer, she did miss the intimacy. So, for the past two years, she’d done her best to get out of her mother’s sight for one night a month and find a place where she could be completely anonymous while getting her needs met. She never went to the same place twice, and she never used her real name. She wore more makeup than usual and made sure her waist-length, straight-as-a-board hair was tightly curled. Lastly, just in case she ran into someone who had seen one of her father’s rallies on television, she wore brown contact lenses to hide the deep blue of her own. Kasey wanted to live her own life, but there was still that big part of her that didn’t want to break her parents’ hearts; even after everything they’d been through, she still held out hopes that someday they’d think of her as their little girl again. The idea of one of her nights out becoming the topic of conversation over coffee and cinnamon buns on the Cormier front porch sent a shudder down her spine. So far, they hadn’t completely washed their hands of her, but that would absolutely do it.