Scarletta wandered around the von Schlafen mansion, rapidly becoming bored with the costume party being held there. Her editor, Therese, had invited her to tag along with her to the event, an annual fundraiser which benefited the local schools and library. Therese hoped, no doubt, to play matchmaker and find the perfect guy for her premier author . . .

“There is a reason I don’t write that crap,” Scarletta had told Therese three weeks earlier when the editor mentioned all the handsome, intelligent, single, straight guys who would be at the party.

“What crap?” Therese asked, scanning the last chapter of Scarletta’s latest crime novel.

“That romantic junk that gluts the market and inevitably ends up in the used books sale at the library. The stuff with the bosomy broad overflowing her low-cut, flimsy gown being groped by some furry-chested, tanned handsome stranger on the cover.” Scarletta rolled her eyes.

“And what part of that do you object to?” Therese inquired, peering up over her glasses at Scarletta’s own voluminous endowments being primly constrained beneath a black turtleneck sweater—which only served to accentuate, not downplay, her assets. “Being groped or having your bosoms overflowing? Not that I would ever know what that’s like,” Therese muttered, dipping her chin to glance at her modest set of 34B’s.

“Only that it’s fiction, not real life. At least my stuff is based on reality: crime happens, it either gets solved or it doesn’t. These poor gals who read this stuff actually think some hunky stranger is going to come sweep them off their feet and rescue them from the emptiness of their lives. What crap!”

Therese chuckled and turned her attention back to her editing as Scarletta swept out of the room, her grumbling diatribe now addressed only to herself as she retreated down the corridor.

Scarletta strode along the tree-shadowed sidewalks of the village of Cemetery Lake, oblivious to the admiring stares of the males and the envious glares of a few females along her path. Had she written a story about herself, she would have described herself as “statuesque.” At five-feet-nine, she was slim in the waist with welcoming hips—“good birthing hips” as Mama would say. Her generous breasts were kept in their northerly position by a two-mile swim in Cemetery Lake during the warm season and an intense year-round regimen of weight training, boxing, and cardiovascular workouts. Her eyes, variegated and green as the juicy pulp of a kiwifruit, slanted upwards ever-so-slightly and were fringed by feathery pale lashes. Her nose, thin and straight, with just a hint of an up-tilt at the tip, was dusted with a faint spatter of freckles which faded into the beveled planes of her cheekbones. Her crowning glory was the cascading ringlets of waist-length hair the color of a Pacific sunset, the fiery red naturally shot with rays of gold and brass. When she had been delivered of that dark corridor within her mother’s hips, she entered the world already loudly voicing her opinions in a strong non-girlish bellow. Her proud mama took one look at the flaming fringe forming a halo around her new baby’s head and bestowed the name which had eluded her until she finally laid eyes upon her child: Scarletta Aurelia Russell.

Thirty-five years after receiving her identity, Scarletta found herself actually considering, with great introspective amazement, the invitation her editor had extended. It wouldn’t hurt to go to a party, God knows she had been busting her ass to get this latest story finished and could use some entertainment. She didn’t have much time for anything other than research and writing these days, and while she didn’t believe in all that hokey bodice-ripping romance junk, it would be nice to find a mountain man who wouldn’t mind scaling her peaks and cutting a swath through her valley. Something quivered and jolted to attention between her thighs and she could feel herself blushing as she made her way down the sidewalk.

A flash of green went off like a strobe light at the corner of her peripheral vision and she stopped up short, executed a graceful about-face on the ball of one foot, and took a few steps back.

“Hello, beautiful,” she whispered to the vision in the display window of a miniscule dress shop that had opened within the past year, but somehow had escaped her attention and exploration. She wasn’t looking at her reflection in the plate glass but beyond, to the fabric rainbow of formal gowns.

“Beautiful” was a silk gown being worn by some lucky mannequin decked out with blonde wig and vacant blue eyes. The dress shimmered and winked at her, its jade-green fabric accented with tiny green crystal beads, the bodice plunging and strapless.

“Honey, that color is all wrong for you,” Scarletta murmured in the general direction of the mannequin. “But it’s perfect for me,” she said, imagining the verdant silkiness cool against the pale silkiness of her skin.

The writer entered the tiny shop, entranced by the beckoning dress. The interior was shadowy and dim, one of the fluorescent fixtures flickering with a worn ballast. She took her eyes off “Beautiful” for a moment and tried to focus on some of the other dresses, all in brilliant parrot colors, all intricately embroidered or beaded, not in some gaudy overdone style, but with taste and restraint.

“Hello?” she called out. “Is anyone here?”

“Yes, madám, may I help you?” A young woman in her late twenties came out of the back, strings of beads reminiscent of the 1960’s clacking and swinging as the woman swept through them. She was dark-haired and dark-skinned, with full ruby lips and high cheekbones. She had an accent, Slavic or Balkan of some sort, and the aura of incense formed an invisible halo around her body.

“Yes, I was wondering if I could…” Scarletta’s focus returned to the dress and she hesitated a little, wondering if they even had the dress in her size.

The young woman smiled, revealing dimples on either side of her wide mouth. “Ah, you wish to try on the jade. Here, let me get it down for you.” She stepped over to the display and began to unhook the tiny buttons at the back of the dress.

“Oh, no, no, don’t do that. Don’t you have another one here?” Scarletta protested, feeling her heart sink before she heard the reply.

“Madám, this is the only one we have. It is a one-of-a-kind creation by my grandmamma. Trust me, this one will fit you. Here, the dressing room is right here.” The woman let the way to the back of the dim store to a small fitting room lined with mirrors. She carefully hung the dress on a hanger inside the stall and stepped away, motioning to Scarletta to enter, then pulled the curtains closed.

Scarletta pulled her turtleneck over her head and shucked her jeans. She stood naked before the mirrors, but ignored her own reflection. She touched the gown’s fabric instead, feeling its cool skin beneath her fingers, and studied the workmanship. This was definitely a hand-made dress, a quality garment, with tiny hand stitching, and matching globular jade buttons instead of a zipper. She slipped the gown over her head and the material slid along her body, clinging like a second skin. She opened the curtains and spoke to the sales clerk, who was waiting just outside the dressing room.

“Do you think you could help me button up?”

“But of course, madám. The color is perfect for you.” The woman’s long fingers brushed against Scarletta’s naked skin as each button was fed through its hole, and the writer tried to repress a pleasurable shiver. She could feel her nipples grow hard against the fabric and hoped the clerk wouldn’t notice. It had been nearly a year since she had dated, and the touch, any touch, even that of this strange woman, was a welcome contact. But what I would give for the touch of my fictional mountain man, Scarletta thought with a rueful sigh as she imagined herself in the clutches of her latest novel’s mysterious suspect-cum-good guy, Denver Paxton.

“There, all finished. What do you think?” The dark-haired woman stepped back and allowed Scarletta to view herself in the mirrors.

“It fits as though it were made for me,” Scarletta exclaimed with amazement and delight. She twirled around and her multiplied images twirled happily with her.

“Ah, my grandmamma says all her dresses are made for someone special. It just takes that person to come in and find the dress.”

“I need to find matching shoes,” Scarletta murmured, frowning at her reflection.

“If you would allow me, I believe I have something that will match. Are you going to a celebration of the All Hallows Eve?”

Scarletta smiled at the use of the archaic term for Halloween. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I was invited to go to a party at the von Schlafen mansion. I’m not sure who I’ll go as with this dress, though. Perhaps the oversized wife of a leprechaun?”

The sales clerk chuckled dryly as she rummaged through boxes stored beneath a low counter. “Perhaps madám can go as Lady Godiva. She, too, was renowned for her beauty.”

“Thank you. But I believe Lady Godiva rode naked through the streets on a horse.”

“Yes, she did. She shed her clothing and rode proudly upon her steed, her hair falling about her beautiful body. Perhaps you shall be so lucky as to find a stallion and ride him in the same fashion along the passages of the von Schlafen mansion,” the dark-haired woman declared boldly.

“You know, were I any other woman, I would take those comments as brazen and crude!” Scarletta exclaimed.

The woman smiled again, shrewdly this time, as she held out a plain cardboard shoe box. “But you are not any other woman. You are the woman who belongs in that dress, who desires to show her lovely body proudly and with confidence, and who is unafraid of the shadows of the mansion hold in store for her. And who, I believe, is the new owner of these.”

Scarletta opened the box. Nestled in the thin tissue paper were the shoes that would complete her outfit. “Glass slippers! I can go as Cinderella!”

“And you don’t have to leave by midnight. Do they fit?” the woman asked.

Scarletta leaned against the counter and slipped each shoe on. “A perfect fit! I’ve seen acrylic shoes before, but never like these!”

“They are not acrylic, Madám. They are real glass, blown in my grandfather’s hometown many years ago.”

“I can’t take these. They must be family heirlooms.” Scarletta slipped off the shoes, feeling her heart sink once again.

“No, no, you must take them. They were meant for you. How else can you explain the fit?”

“Are you sure?” Scarletta turned so the clerk could unbutton her, shivering again as the woman’s nails barely scraped across her flesh.

“Of course. Grandmamma would be furious with me if I let you walk out without the completion of your wardrobe.” The woman carried away the jade dress and Scarletta could hear the sound of tissue paper being carefully tucked around the garment as she dressed in her street clothing.

As Scarletta paid for her purchases, she chatted with the sales clerk. “How do you know so much about the von Schlafen mansion? You sound as though you’ve been there.”

“I have, on occasion. But Grandmamma spent much time there in her youth. She was a good friend of the Count’s wife, read her palm and tea leaves. They were very close. Very close. She knew many secrets about the mansion. It is rumored that there are secret passages below the building.”

“Those are not rumors, my lovely grandchild. They are fact.” An elderly woman crept out of the shadows from the direction of the beaded curtains, her balance braced with a carved wooden cane. She had been tall once, almost as tall as Scarletta herself, before the arthritis claimed her bones. Her face reminded Scarletta of the dried apples the old women had carved into faces along the Appalachian Trail down south where she had done her research for her last book. Her cheeks were as broad as her granddaughter’s, and her eyes still bright and clear despite her obvious age. Her hair, ebony shot with silver lightning strikes, was neatly coiffed in long braids looped around her head and fastened in place.

“In my youth, there were many parties held at the mansion, even on the occasion of All Hallow’s Eve as this year. Young handsome men, beautiful elegant women, they came to enjoy all that was available at the galas. And much was available.” The old woman looked slyly up at Scarletta, then ran a thin finger along the writer’s wrist. “You are a strong woman, as I was when I was your age. You write well, I have read your books. That means you also must read much. When you go to the party, be sure to examine the library carefully. I think you will be quite satisfied with what you find there.”

The old woman shuffled back to the rear of the store and the glass beads of the curtains rattled as she passed through them.

“Well!” Scarletta exclaimed. “I have the feeling your grandmother was quite a worldly woman in her youth.”

The sales clerk smiled slyly. “You know what everyone says about these old Gypsy women, how they danced and sang for the men. Now they sit around and tell tales of their adventures when they danced and read the leaves.”

Scarletta tilted her head and looked down at the sales clerk, a smirk curling her own lips. “I thought you preferred the term ‘Roma’ to ‘Gypsies’ these days. After all the horrors the People have suffered, I thought that the word ‘Gypsy’ was considered an insult. And I know that the Roma have some very strict ideas about purity, so I doubt your grandmother was that wild. But she certainly seems to have witnessed quite of bit of wildness up at the mansion.”

The darker woman’s face lit up with a broad smile of delight. She threw her head back and laughed. “Ah, you know about the People, then? Yes, they have many names for us, Gypsy, Roma, Romani, Tsigani. After all the centuries of persecution and being hunted and hated, now we use Roma or Rroma.” The woman leaned forward and motioned for Scarletta to lean in so she could whisper conspiratorially, “But around here, where the tourists visit and don’t know any better, Gypsies are great for business!”

“So someday you’ll read the future and tell tales to your grandchildren?” Scarletta wondered.

The dark-haired woman shook her head. “I don’t read the leaves or palms. I use my hands in different ways.” She plucked a business card from a silver holder on the countertop and handed it to the writer.

“’Domina Zhanescu, Whole Body Therapist,’” Scarletta read from the card. She looked up at the clerk. “So you’re a massage therapist.”

“I do more than massage. I bring renewal and comfort to the entire body, inside and out. I offer healing with my hands, soothing with my voice, what they call aromatherapy these days, and bring rest to your mind.”

“Like a psychologist.” Scarletta slipped the card into her handbag.

Domina reached her hand out and laid it lightly atop the writer’s where she leaned against the counter. The Roma woman held Scarletta’s gaze with her dark eyes and spoke softly. “Better than a psychologist. They dredge up ugly things, things best left in their graves at times. They try to fit everyone into neat little containers, “curing” them of whatever is, in their minds, not normal. Each being is different, not molded from a single cast. Sometimes, the memories are best left in the past, and she who is hurt must learn to live in the present and for the future. And after all, who is to judge what is normal?”

“Certainly not us, Cousin Domina. We wouldn’t know where to start, would we?” came a clarion-toned man’s voice from the back of the store. The doorway’s beads clacked and rattled as the voice’s owner made his way to where Scarletta and Domina stood chatting.

The man was about four inches taller than Scarletta, lean from years of hard, honest labor. His eyes, a glittering shade of dark copper, coolly appraised her from a suntanned face, one brow slightly arched. There was a virtually unnoticeable deviation in the bridge of an otherwise-straight nose, the flaw hinting of a break obtained long ago. His hair was a black profusion of curls peppered with silver spilling down below his shirt collar. The stranger was dressed in a green brushed denim shirt with the collar unbuttoned just enough to show a matching swirl of black chest hair. Scarletta thought of her earlier comments to Therese about the cover of the romance novels she shunned and tried to suppress a smile, hoping she didn’t appear to be smirking.

“Madám, this is Rolfe. He, too, has the gift of the hands, even more gifted than I. Rolfe, this is Madám Scarletta Russell. She is a writer.”

The man took Scarletta’s hand in introduction, just brushing the tips of his fingers against hers. That familiar wet, tingling came back to haunt the inside of her thighs. There was a slight roaring sound in her ears, the same sound she heard when she used to raise the conch shells to her ear as a child and “hear the ocean” as her daddy would say during their vacations to the coast.

Scarletta’s appraisal of the stranger continued downward, taking in the form-fitting black jeans that hugged the man’s tight ass and flat pelvis in a manner she suddenly wished she could hug him with her thighs. What the hell am I thinking, Scarletta mentally berated herself. Wait a minute, that pelvis isn’t so flat anymore, she noticed with a combination of pleasure and alarm.

There was a noticeable bulge beneath the man’s button-fly that hadn’t been there when he walked through the curtains a moment earlier. She couldn’t tear her eyes from that spot and she felt the creeping heat of a blush filling her cheeks.

Rolfe’s arrogant eyes lasered into hers. “Didn’t anyone tell you it’s not polite to stare?” he asked, folding his arms and leaning against the counter, one black biker-booted foot crossed over the other.

Scarletta shook herself out of her reverie. “I’m sorry, I was just admiring your . . . um . . . belt buckle,” she stammered.

It was a handsome piece of silver craftsmanship, a snarling wolf’s head, the eyes embedded with emerald chips.

“Thank you. It was created by one of our uncles and given to me to remind me to honor my namesake, the wolf.”

“Your namesake?” Scarletta queried.

“The name ‘Rolfe’ is the Norman word for ‘wolf.’ Lovely animals, with their intelligence, their beautiful silver coats, their blazing eyes, their well-articulated sense of societal order. The strength of the alpha male, the devotion of the female to her mate.”

“Sounds a bit chauvinistic when you say it that way,” Scarletta shot back.

“It is simply the way of nature, the strong protecting the weaker,” Rolfe stated. He added, “Or the more beautiful,” noticing Scarletta’s flush of anger to protest this categorization of women as the weaker sex.

Domina spoke up, steering the conversation back to more pleasant subjects. “Madám Scarletta, perhaps in the future you will wish to use my services as a therapist. For those times when your work tightens your body and mind.”

Rolfe interjected before Scarletta could respond. “It seems to me that Miss Scarletta could use a whole body treatment right now, Cousin Domina. She certainly seems a bit . . . tense. What do you think, Miss? Are you up for a little hands-on work?” He smiled, his straight, white teeth bared in a wolf’s grin.

“Oh, Cousin Rolfe, I have no time right now. I must help Grandmamma with several rush orders. But maybe you can handle her . . . if she would like . . .” Domina said, looking at both Rolfe and at Scarletta with hope.

Rolfe shrugged and uncrossed his arms and legs. “It’s up to Miss Scarletta. Would you like to experience what I do with my hands?”

Scarletta hesitated, wondering if she was being set up for something. Yet, she was intrigued and she had a craving for the touch of this man’s hands, which she noticed where as sinewy and strong as the rest of him appeared to be. “Sure, why not. I could use some relaxation right now.”

“Then follow me and I’ll fix you right up,” Rolfe said.

I’ll bet you can, Scarletta surmised inwardly, admiring the man’s graceful, tiger-like stride as he led the way through the beaded curtains and down a narrow, dimly lit hallway to a door with the painted lettering “Therapy Room.” Rolfe unlocked the door and motioned for Scarletta to join him, then locked the door behind then. Scarletta felt a small thrill of fear at being locked in with this stranger, but rationalized that it was for her privacy.

“We don’t want to be interrupted while I’m giving you your treatment, now do we?” Rolfe said in a reassuring tone, picking up on Scarletta’s discomfort.

“No, we don’t want to be interrupted,” Scarletta echoed.

“There is a robe in that closet to cover yourself if you don’t feel comfortable with just a towel.” Rolfe motioned to the small doorway covered by more beaded curtains. He turned away to wash his hands at a mini-sink while Scarletta disrobed.

“No, I’ll be fine. Just hand me that towel next to you and I’m ready for you,” the writer answered. She took the plush white towel that Rolfe passed to her without turning around and wrapped it around her body. She secured it with a tuck into the top between her breasts. “What do I do now?”

“Sit in this chair and let me work on your neck and shoulders. They hold much of our griefs and stress.”

Scarletta rested her bottom on the low-backed chair. Rolfe ran his fingers nimbly across her shoulders and upper back, along her neck up into her hair, and over the front of her shoulders into the upper portions of her breastline. The man muttered softly to himself, assessing Scarletta’s needs as his fingers and hands crept across the writer’s pale skin. Occasionally, Scarletta would grunt or gasp as Rolfe hit a nerve, a tender spot, a knot in the muscle.

“You need much work here. One moment, let me choose the proper scent for you.” Rolfe moved to a small curio cabinet that held a myriad of colorful vials, rummaging through the contents until he found what he wanted. He poured the oil into a small glass container over a low flame. “Vanilla, to soothe you. Cinnamon, to clear out your mind.”

Rolfe turned down the dimmer switch on the wall and the room seemed to grow quieter. He returned to his position behind Scarletta and resumed his kneading and pressure of the upper part of her body.

Scarletta closed her eyes and let the mysterious dark-haired man work on her, feeling slightly adrift in this dim room. It reminded her of the times she had smoked joints with her girlfriends in her college days, and she wondered if there was something else in the scented oils other than vanilla and cinnamon. Her neck was starting to feel loose and her head lolled around as Rolfe stretched and prodded her.

“Now you need to lie on your belly on the table. You’ll need to remove the towel so I can work on you. Here, I will cover your bottom if that is better for you.”

Scarletta tried to murmur something about it not really mattering, but could only manage a sigh as she slid onto the table. Her arms were laid down along her side and her forehead rested on the table above the small groove cut into the cushion to accommodate her nose and mouth.

Rolfe started on her neck and soon moved down to her shoulders and arms, his powerful hands bringing a combination of pleasure and pain. Scarletta heard the clink of glass and felt warm oil being poured down the center of her back.

“Mmmm, that feels good,” she crooned.

The man moved his hands lower along Scarletta’s ribcage, his fingers wandering around to massage the curves of her bountiful breasts. The writer felt the towel slip from her upturned behind and soon Rolfe’s hands replaced the fabric as he found pressure points deep within her glutes that needed work.

Rolfe poured more oil over Scarletta’s ass, and she felt it slide into her butt crack and down to the soft tissue of her pussy. She felt the man’s agile fingers dip down into that dark space and spread the liquid out along her lips and up to her thighs. Her pussy suddenly desired to have those fingers inside her, not just sliding around on her skin and she arched her hips upward just a little. The man’s fingertips licked at the opening, then slid away as he wound his path down the writer’s long legs.

“Turn over,” Rolfe whispered in a low voice, helping Scarletta rotate safely on the narrow table. She rested on her back now, heavy breasts uplifted, nipples rose-colored and erect.

The man pulled and stretched her neck and worked the deep tissues to get out any residual knots. His hands moved lower and lower until they were touching Scarletta’s beautiful breasts, and the writer held her breath. Touch me, she thought, touch me all over.

As if reading her thoughts as Domina’s grandmamma had read others’ palms, Rolfe poured a thin line of oil between Scarletta’s breasts and worked it into her flesh. His fingers made circular motions around the mounds until they reached her thick nipples. He manipulated these, as well, pulling at them, running his thumbs across the pink buds. Scarletta took a sharp intake of breath and arched her back.

She felt the man’s mouth upon first one nipple, then the other, his tongue circulating as her fingers had. Rolfe’s fingers were now otherwise occupied. One hand explored its way down Scarletta’s tight belly until it reached her trimmed pussy hairs, as sunset red as the writer’s tresses. A single finger meandered across her labia, feeling their outline, feeling their wetness and need, then sank itself inside their blood-gorged welcome. His other hand was wrapped in Scarletta’s hair which had fanned out about her head.

Scarletta kept her eyes closed; she wanted to feel all that was happening to her and felt no need to see what he was doing. His mouth left her breasts and she felt the man’s tongue glide down the center line of her abdomen until it found the damp opening between her thighs. Rolfe spread Scarletta’s legs apart slightly and tunneled his tongue deep into the blushing crevice that begged for his therapeutic touch. Slipping his hands beneath the cheeks of Scarletta’s smooth ass, he pulled her just slightly upward and deepened his lingual massage.

Scarletta arched her back further, her face reddening with a pleasured grimace, her hands entwined in the thick mane of the man between her legs. Her head thrashed back and forth as Rolfe tongued her vaginal nub, and her sighs deepened into moans. She felt Rolfe slip a finger up her asshole and clenched down, determined not to let it escape. He kneaded her within that orifice as well, and Scarletta began to feel the loosening within her loins that signaled the start of her orgasm.

Rolfe suddenly withdrew his fingers and tongue and leaned in close to her face, whispering in her ear, “Not yet. I won’t let you come just yet. There’s more treatment for you, my lovely red-headed vixen.”

Scarletta opened her eyes in surprise. “What kind of treatment?”

Rolfe smiled, a sardonic tilt to his mouth. “You’re being a very naughty creature right now, aren’t you? Letting a perfect stranger touch your beautiful body, letting him taste you and feel you inside and out. Don’t you think you ought to exercise a little more discipline?”

Scarletta’s heart jumped beneath her breasts as that feeling of danger returned, only serving to intensify her desire for this dark man. “What kind of discipline?” she managed to whisper back in a quavering voice.

“The kind bad girls like you deserve for going into locked rooms with men and showing them your luscious breasts and pussy, pretending that you want one thing when you really want another.”

“And what do you think I really want?” she asked defiantly, sitting up and swinging her long legs over the side of the table.

“I think you want someone to keep you in line, the way your editor keeps your words in line,” Rolfe said, moving in front of her and blocking her way.

“What makes you think that?”

Rolfe smiled down at her, his hands on her shoulders, fingers digging into spots just above her clavicle that were making her arms just a little numb. “I’ve read your books. Your heroines, always so tough and strong, always in charge, and smart-asses, all of them. Just like you, I’ll bet. But I’d also bet that just once, or maybe more than just once, you’d want your Denver Paxton to take your heroine down on the floor and take total charge of her – your – body and drive some of that smart-ass attitude out of her – you.”

Scarletta’s eyes widened at her earlier thoughts being put into words by this total stranger and she turned a deep crimson. “And you think you’re the man to do the job, huh?” she challenged, knowing full well what the consequences of her smart-assing would be.

Scarletta tried to slip off the table to her feet, but Rolfe caught her by the waist and pulled her close to him. She could feel the bulge beneath his button-fly knocking against her butt as he held her in his grip. He nipped her on the neck with his teeth, not breaking skin, but declaring his wolfen authority as she had seen dogs do when mating with their bitches in heat. His face held the smoothness and the biting spice scent of a fresh shave. She struggled briefly, but the man’s grasp was strong and the sensation of his mouth clamping down on her arched neck was overpowering her desire to escape. She gasped and cried out as his mouth explored her neckline.

Rolfe easily lifted her off her feet. Although she prided herself on her physical prowess and strength, she was no even match for his overwhelming power, and he laid her facedown atop the table. He raised her arms above her head, holding them in place with one hand as he unbuckled his belt with the other. Scarletta clenched her eyes shut and clenched the muscles of her ass as she awaited the contact of leather with soft flesh—some dim recollection of her father strapping her for her many indiscretions sailing past in her mind’s eye—but it did not come. There was a slight thud as Rolfe dropped the belt to the floor, followed by two more thuds as he pried off his boots by the heels.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, struggled vainly to free her hands and to raise herself to her knees.

“Only what you really want me to do,” Rolfe answered. She heard two buttons plink to the floor as Rolfe undid his shirt with one hand. Scarletta opened her eyes and saw the green fabric flutter to the floor, followed immediately by his jeans. No underwear joined the other clothing items.

“That figures,” she muttered in brief amusement and just a shade of satisfaction.

“What?” Rolfe asked roughly as he leaped agilely onto the table and straddled her thighs.

“Nothing,” she muttered, squirming beneath his weight.

“Smart-ass! A smart-ass who deserves a smart ass,” Rolfe admonished, just before he brought his hand down on her right buttock. There was a sharp “smack” as flesh contacted flesh, and Scarletta jerked.

“Youch! You asshole, that hurts!” she squawked.

“Smart-ass!” Another smack as he spanked the other cheek. Her flesh stung and she felt heat rising up to the surface.

A rain of quick slaps descended on her ass, stinging like the barbs of a fishhook. It brought a quick memory of fishing with her dad, of catching a fishhook in the hand when she got in the backwhip of one of his cast-outs, a sharp and biting fire as the hook grazed her hand and nipped out a tender chip of flesh on its way to some damned large-mouthed bass.

Scarletta’s eyes watered as Rolfe spanked her, his legs trapping her ass so she couldn’t escape the fiery blows. She felt his phallus, heated and fiery itself, poised over the crack of her ass, and her desire to have its thickness inside her pussy blossomed as hotly as the red glow spreading across her butt cheeks.

Rolfe let go of her wrists and used both of his hands to redden her ass, the smacks coming in a quick trio, then singly, then back to staccato threesomes. Scarletta grasped the head of the table as she received Rolfe’s well-aimed whacks. She cried out and whimpered, dreading the descent of his hand, yet desirous of the next blow.

“How’s that, smart-ass?” he demanded, his voice low and thick.

“Fuck me!” she gasped out. Her squirming ass reached upward towards his extended cock.

“You want me inside you?” he teased, halting his blows and rubbing the head of his penis against her distended labia, themselves red with her excited rush of blood.

“Stick it,” she bit back.

Rolfe smiled—she didn’t have to see him, she could feel him smile—and he gave her a couple more whacks on the behind. “I’ll take that as a request and not an epithet,” he responded.

His hands steadied her ass—his touch burned her tingling skin—and he raised her hips up to meet his protruding flesh. He pushed firmly against her, her inner channel giving way beneath his steady force, until he filled her up. Scarletta rocked against him, her vaginal muscles sucking on his shaft.

He began to spank her again, more softly this time, quick shallow blows to the sides of her ass and hips. Scarletta’s breath caught at each smack, caught with the pain, caught with the internal pleasure Rolfe was giving her.

His thrusting deepened and quickened and she could hear his breath coming in loud bursts. Scarletta locked her elbows and arched her back, slamming her ass against his pelvis as he thrust. Rolfe grasped her hips and hung on, and for a moment, Scarletta had a terrifying vision of the table collapsing beneath their combined exertions. The visualization was swept away by a sudden inner mindstorm of red and green and black strobe lights flashing in an arctic storm of white snow. Scarletta’s postponed climax finally reached its appointment and she hissed and cried out as her flesh-filled channel released its liquid river.

Rolfe felt her dam break all around his cock and he muttered “Fuck! Fuck!” as his own wave frothed out and overflowed Scarletta’s tightened pussy. As his sexual tide ebbed, Rolfe gasped and jerked within her every few seconds, until he finally sighed and rocked back on his heels, his spent shaft slipping out of her soaked canal. Scarletta lay down on her belly, the fire in her rump cooling down to a simmering warmth.

She felt Rolfe’s hands upon her shoulders and back, working out any new knots brought on by their tabletop gymnastics. She dozed off as Rolfe relaxed her body, and woke up with a kink-erasing stretch a half-hour later.

“Did you like my treatment?” came the man’s voice from the doorway.

“Much better than a shrink,” Scarletta answered as she rose to dress herself. She winced a little as she eased her jeans up over her still-pink buttocks. “What do I owe you?”

Rolfe snorted in amusement. “I think I exacted payment already, don’t you?”

Scarletta smiled and ran her fingers through her hair. “Will I see you again?”

“I didn’t scare you away?” he asked, leaning against the wall, one foot crossed over the other as before.

“It would take a lot more than a couple of whacks on the rear to scare me away, wolf-man,” she sassed.

“Smart-ass,” he growled at her.

“It is now,” Scarletta responded, rubbing her tingling behind through her jeans as she walked out the door and down the hallway towards the front of the shop.

“Will I see you again?” she asked once more as she picked up her boxed dress and shoes.

Rolfe shrugged. “We’ll see. Perhaps we will run into each other again sometime. When you are tense and need another treatment.”

Domina called out from behind the counter, “Cousin, did you give her a good treatment?”

“Oh, I think we’ll have some return business, Cousin Domina,” Rolfe answered confidently. He smirked at Scarletta and waggled his fingers in a “later” gesture as he exited through the front door. A moment later, a motorcycle’s powerful engine roared to life, and Scarletta caught a glimpse of her wolf-man sailing past on a black-and-green detailed bike. His curls which had escaped the capture of his helmet were a flurry in the wind as he shifted gears and drove off.

Domina glanced at her watch with an anxious look. “I’m closing up for the evening. Grandmamma needs her social time with her old friends and I’m her chauffeur this time. Good night, Cinderella. Enjoy the von Schlafen mansion. I’m sure it will be quite an exciting experience for you.”

Scarletta turned to look back at the shop as she walked away, but the Roma woman had already closed the blinds and turned off the lights. Scarletta walked down the darkening streets to her car and drove home, exhausted, her rump still afire, but thoroughly satiated with her discoveries within the recesses of the shop.