Gabriel - Jessie Cooke

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