If you're new to this series, you can read the chapters in any order you like but there will be some through lines if that's your thing. But you might want to go back and give the short prologue a read. Enjoy!
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Mary-Kate Lane has it all. Ten years ago she opened a little sandwich shop with hardly any money in her pocket and half a degree from culinary school. Today, she and her husband John own five locations in New York state. It's a total success story. And most perfect of all, it's the exact level of success Mary-Kate wished for.
She owned her own house. She and John constantly threw house parties: wholesome summer pool parties, debaucherous New Years bashes, wine tastings, cooking parties, political debate watching parties. Mary-Kate loved to host and loved to be a fixture in the community.
And a fixture she was. Beloved by the entire town, everyone knew Mary-Kate Lane. She babysat, she worked at the food pantry, she played guitar and sang at the local coffee shop's open-mic night. She seemed to be able to do it all. Everyone in town knew she was a good woman with a good life.
She smiled.
"What are you smiling at, hon?" came a voice next to her.
Mary-Kate shook herself from her daydream and the world came flooding back. There was her supportive, loving, handsome husband, John. He'd been behind her since the beginning. They strolled side-to-side behind one cart in the grocery store, so strong was there bond that they seemed to move as if joined at the heart.
"Nothing," Mary-Kate replied. "I was just thinking about how happy I am right now."
John let out a snort-laugh. "At the grocery store?"
"Mm hm," Mary-Kate giggled. "Even at the grocery store. I'm so at peace. I'm so darn zen that I can love my life, my husband, and my career while lugging a broken shopping cart around a crowded supermarket on a holiday weekend."
"Wow," John awed. "I'm impressed. You must be pretty darn zen."
As Mary-Kate lifted an eyebrow at her husband as if to say, "Damn straight," John took in the total picture of his wife.
She pulls off something that not a lot of women can. She was so unbelievably, otherworldly beautiful and sexy and yet still managed to seem like a normal person. How do some women do that? They couldn't be more out of your league and yet seem to be just within in your reach.
Her style was a successful modern take on the 50s housewife look. She wore a short green dress that clung to her breathtaking curves with eye-drawing buttons running all the way down the front. It was perfectly cute-but-sexy. Her outfit and her figure— plus her natural brunette hair in a well coifed up-do and her deep red lipstick— were quite distracting to many of the shoppers.
She was John's and he was her's.
He couldn't believe is luck. He'd married an angel. Now it was John's turn to drift off into a daydream. He couldn't wait until they got home so he could slowly and sensually pull her clothes off on their kingsize bed. Couldn't wait until he could feel the pleasure of making love with his angel. The joy of running his hands over her perfectly toned butt or putting his lips on her D-cup breasts.
John said, "What do you say we bring home a bottle of Yellowtail and cuddle up with a little 'Outlander' when we get back?" But when he turned he saw he was speaking to no one.
John looked behind at Mary-Kate and saw she had stopped walking a few feet back in the wine aisle. She stared dead ahead just over John's shoulder with an impenetrable look on her face. Shocked... but not alarmed, scared, or angry. Just the look you get when you miss a breath and have to catch it. John turned to see what had caught his wife so off guard and there stood a man.
The man's gaze was locked on Mary-Kate. 'Hungrily' was the word that darted through John's mind. "Mary Kate? Who is this guy?"
Mary-Kate's brain was racing a mile a minute. Her heart felt as though it was slamming out of her chest. She hadn't expected her adrenaline to spike so high the day her Prince came to collect his debt. Of COURSE over the years she'd wondered in what form he would appear and where. She never dared to dream up anything like this.
She knew one day the Devil would return and, in exchange for all her success and happiness, demand anything he wanted from her sexually. She had always imagined it happening in a private bedroom or perhaps some sort of black void between reality. And yet, here the day had come and her Prince was standing before her...
...in the middle of a crowded supermarket on a holiday weekend.
Mary-Kate knew it was him the millisecond she saw him, though he didn't look the same as he had ten years ago. Back then, he always wore a suit, seemed to be about 40 years of age, gray on the sides of his hair, and had eyes the color of ocean green. He still had those eyes now, but everything else about him was different.
Now before her stood a cocky looking 25 year old with messy dark black hair and a lithe but muscular frame. He was dressed simply: black shoes, black jeans, and a plain grey t-shirt. He was running his eyes up and down Mary-Kate's sexy fucking thighs, full tits, and her curvy ass shaped like and upside down heart.
His confident, lusting gaze stirred her from the inside. Heat between her legs. A hand absentmindedly reached up to her chest and began rubbing itself back and forth.
"Mary-Kate?" John said again. He was starting to freak the fuck out. What was going on?
"Tell him who I am Mary-Kate," said the young man.
"John this is—" but she cut herself off. She didn't even know where to start.
"Or don't," said the man with a cruel snicker.
"It'll be easier if I don't explain," Mary-Kate eventually said.
"WHAT will be easier?" barked John, nearing hysterics.
The man cut John off. "Mary-Kate?"
"Yes, Mr. Prince."
