She moved her hips hard up against mine, moans slipping from between her lips with every breath. Her hands slipped over my ass, her fingertips digging into my muscles, holding me hard against her. I reached back to pull her hands free—she was stronger than she looked!—and to lift her thighs, raising her knees as I gained a little leverage on my own knees. I pounded against her, and judging from the screams that came from her throat, she loved it.

When it was done, I moved over onto the other side of the mattress, peeling the condom off and tossing it into the little trashcan on her side of the bed.

“You don’t have to use those, you know,” she announced. “I’m not getting pregnant—God forbid!—and I haven’t been with anyone else in months.”

“What about your husband?”

She scoffed. “Man can’t get it up. He says it’s stress from work, but I think he’s just done with that part of our lives. You know, he never was that virile anyway.”

“Yeah? What’s going on at work?”

She rolled toward me, scraping her perfectly manicured nails over my bare chest. “He doesn’t talk to me about it. But I know he’s about to get a visit from the corporate office, an audit of sorts. I guess someone’s been complaining about his work, or something.” She made a little circle in the center of my chest with the tip of one nail. “The Guardians aren’t happy with him, either. They warned him to pass the audit, or else.”

I bit my bottom lip, hiding a smile. “Is that right, Mrs. Truesdale?”

She grunted. “It was cute when you called me that the first few times. But it’s getting a little old, Quentin.”

“I like it. Makes me feel like I’m stuck in the middle of that movie.”

“The Graduate?” She giggled. “I always admired Anne Bancroft.”

“Does that make me Dustin Hoffman?”

She sat up, her small, perky breasts bouncing with the movement. She studied me critically, her eyes picking out the parts of me she admired the most. My red hair that was slowly growing out from the military cut I’d worn for so long, my green eyes that she called perfect jewels. My long, slender torso with the small Q Ball tattoo just above my left pec, and the abs that she was touching now, running her fingers between the lines of my six pack. And then her fingers dipped lower, touching that one place that she really enjoyed, more often than I’d imagined a woman her age would be up for.

She was voracious, this woman. It was both a blessing and a curse.

“You’re taller,” she said with a quirky little smile. “And probably more fit than he ever was, even in the early days of his career.”

I ran my own hand over my hip and down over my heavy thigh. “You didn’t say handsomer.”

She groaned, leaning down to press a kiss to the center of my lips. “You’re the most handsome man I’ve ever known.”

“That’s better.”

I twisted her hair around my fingers and tugged her closer. We kissed hard for a long moment, her knowledgeable lips still capable of teaching me a thing or two. Another perk to this unconventional arrangement.

She stretched out beside me after a moment, resting her head on my shoulder as she went back to tracing shapes on my stomach with her fingernails.

“My daughter’s coming back to town in a week.”

“Is that right?”

“We probably won’t be able to sneak off as often when she does. She’ll have too many questions.”

That was good. I was tiring of this arrangement anyway.

A recording of our encounters had appeared on her husband’s computer every Monday afternoon for nearly three months. It obviously didn’t bother him as much as I’d imagined it would. Either that, or he was just good at hiding his outrage. He was, after all, a member of that infernal church that believed marriage was more than just an earthly connection, but a connection of the souls that continued into the afterlife. Divorce was out of the question, even in the case of infidelity.

Yet, it was easy to hide his humiliation when he was the only one aware of it. I wondered how he’d handle it when I emailed the recording being made at that moment to everyone on his contacts list.

I was pretty sure that list included the highest members of the clergy in his church.

Revenge was…what was the saying? Revenge was a dish best served cold. But it wasn’t bad lukewarm, either.

“Neri’s been helping the poor in South America. Did I tell you that?”

Half a dozen times.

“She’s a good girl. Always wanted to help people.”

I touched her back to make her think I was still listening. I remembered Neri. She was several years behind me in high school, and therefore barely on my radar. But it was a small town and she was a cheerleader, so our paths crossed more often than not. She was a pretty girl, with her father’s dark hair and her mother’s intense blue eyes. I remembered her with a mouthful of braces, too skinny to even suggest she might have her mother’s curves someday. But I assumed she’d outgrown that teen awkwardness by now.

“How old is Neri now?”

“Twenty-two.”

I dragged my fingers through my quickly growing shaggy hair, my eyes moving over my lover’s body. She was blond—from a bottle, probably—with barely a handful in the chest, but an ample handful in the hips. She was once a real beauty, the kind of woman boys in high school would call a MILF these days. She’d lost some of her beauty over the years, but if her daughter had grown curves like hers, she was probably a knockout.

A young, nubile knockout who was probably faithful to the ways of the church.

Boring, just like her mother.

“When’s Neri due back?”

“Next week.” She pushed herself up slightly. “I know it’s a drag, the time I’ll have to spend with her instead of you, but it probably won’t be for long. She’s talking about going back to school, getting her Master’s degree in education so she can get into administration. You know, she wants to be a principal or something.”

“Smart girl. Like her mother.”

She ate it up, the compliment. Her face absolutely glowed.

She was so easy.

I walked her to the door a while later, running my hand over the seat of her yoga pants. Whoever had invented those things and made them a trending fashion statement was brilliant! Had to have been a man. There was nothing better than yoga pants other than nudity, especially when it came to beautiful, shapely women. Hell, they even made Rowena Truesdale’s ass look good!

“See you next week, lover,” she said, nibbling on my bottom lip.

“I’ll text you.”

She walked away, glancing over her shoulder at me as she reached the corner of the corridor. She was outside Patrick’s room, not that that meant anything to her. Made me a little nervous. Even though Jack was back and Patrick was on the injured list at the moment, his arm in a massive cast after an incident with the Guardians a little over a month ago, Patrick was still Jack’s right hand man and could get me into trouble if he recognized Mrs. Truesdale.

I waved her on, simply anxious for her to leave. She thought I was waving because I already missed her. She blew a kiss, such glee on her face as she started down the stairs that it was almost embarrassing.

I jumped into the shower the moment she was gone, washing her smell off my skin. It was a double-edged sword, getting involved with her. Every time I touched her, I imagined the humiliation, the anger and shame, I was heaping on Truesdale with the videos I was sending of my time with his wife. And that was exciting. But then she wanted to talk, and, to be honest, when we weren’t talking about Truesdale’s problems—which were mostly my doing—we had nothing in common.

I wondered if he’d ever said anything to her about the videos. I knew he was opening them because I’d attached a little virus to each of them that alerted me the moment he opened them and told me how much he watched. The first time, he only watched a few seconds the first time he opened it, long enough to recognize his wife’s naked ass. He opened it again later that night and watched the video in its entirety. After that, he’d avoid opening them until late in the day, but he always opened them and almost always watched them all the way through.

Made me wonder if he was getting off on them. To each his own, I supposed.

But Rowena never said anything to me about them. I half expected a confrontation at some point, from her, from him. But it never happened.

Either he hadn’t told her and was carrying the burden of that particular bit of knowledge alone, or he had told her, and she didn’t really care. Either way, it wasn’t creating the result I’d wanted. I wanted to drive this man insane. I wanted to take everything that mattered to him, make him lose everything the way my parents had. But it was a painfully slow process.

I’d been sending letters to the corporate offices in Albuquerque, claiming he was embezzling money, he was harassing employees, and he was offering lower interest rates to his friends without going through official channels. She’d said he was facing an audit. It was nice to know that little campaign was finally about to pan out.

I’d sent letters to the church, too, suggesting he was visiting Alli’s Little Shop of Pleasure on a weekly basis, buying interesting items of which I included pictures in the letters.

I damaged one of his neighbor’s cars and left a note suggesting he felt the neighbor was beneath his consideration because he didn’t attend the same church.

I posted videos of him on multiple websites smoking cigarettes outside the bank, suggesting in the comments that it was marijuana, not tobacco.

I wanted to make this man’s life miserable. And I wanted him to know it was all coming from me.

I didn’t hide my face in the videos, didn’t hide my IP address in the online postings I made. I wanted him to be able to trace it back to me, wanted him to know I was the one fucking his wife and spreading lies about him. I wanted him to remember what he did to my family and know that this was payback.

The Guardians who pushed Truesdale to foreclose on my father were gone, in jail awaiting trial on a multitude of crimes. Thanks to Jack Stone and Stone Security. Joining them was the best thing I could ever have done because Patrick and Crispin and Jack had taught me more about digging into people’s lives, spying on people, than I ever could have learned on my own. And it’d come in handy these past months.

I owed them.

It also didn’t hurt that Jack paid me a generous salary on top of providing housing and a car. I was putting that money away, saving for a down payment to buy back my family’s ranch. That was the end game, to force Truesdale’s hand.

The bank still owned the ranch, but they hadn’t done anything with it since my family moved away. It was just sitting there, some of the older buildings falling into shameful disrepair as a result. I went out there from time to time, ignoring the signs posted all over the place warning that I was trespassing. In my heart, it was still mine, and I was going to get it back. I was going to force Truesdale to sell it to me at a fair price.

I had no idea why the Guardians wanted the property. I had no idea why they had never done anything with it. It’d been a year. If they wanted it for a purpose, they would have put their plan into action by now. But the longer it sat there, empty, the more work there would be when I finally got it back.

I stepped out of the shower, dried off, and wiped the mirror, staring at my tired face for a long minute before applying shaving cream. I’d gone to a war zone, survived snipers and suicide bombers, only to come home and find myself homeless and without the support of my family. I was drinking too much, and it showed in my face, the new lines that marked my forehead and the corners of my eyes. I wasn’t the same person I’d been before.

Neither was my family.

Father was working two jobs, barely going back to their apartment long enough to sleep before heading back. He cleaned floors in a hospital at night and cleaned toilets for some outfit in the mornings. It was the only work he could find. He was a rancher. He didn’t have a college degree.

Mother worked as a clerk in a grocery store, but her diabetes was getting out of control. She’d had to give up her insulin pump when they lost their insurance and was back taking five or six shots a day like she’d done the first twenty years she’d lived with the disease. But she hadn’t done that in fifteen years and was having to relearn how to keep her numbers under control. But even then…she was using cheap, over-the-counter insulin because they couldn’t afford proper insurance and a good doctor. And even then…it was a damn mess. She was tired all the time, her fingers and toes going numb when they weren’t tingling like they’d gone to sleep. Her nerves were dying from the high sugars and the struggle for proper control. Next it would be her eyes or her kidneys. Maybe even her heart.

And Quaid…he didn’t tell me himself, but I knew. He was missing school, failing half his classes when he bothered to show up. He was running with a bad crowd, spending more time tagging buildings and stealing from department stores than worrying about college entrance exams the way a kid his age should.

I sent money, but Father was too proud to take more than a hundred here, a fifty there. He sent back most of the checks I sent, telling me I should keep my money for my own future and not worry about them. I sent money to Quaid on a prepaid credit card and asked him to use it to buy Mother’s insulin and food for the house. I hoped he was doing as I asked.

I should be there for them. I should have moved to Yuma and gotten a job there, made sure they were cared for. But I couldn’t do that when I knew Truesdale was still here, living high on the hog while my family was suffering.

I had to make him pay.

So, I sat at my computer and edited the video my little hidden camera had taken this afternoon, making sure whoever viewed this particular video would know it was Rowena Truesdale in my bed. I wanted him humiliated, and since seeing my weekly little entertainment wasn’t enough, sending it to everyone on his contact list should do it.

This wasn’t a game. This was war.