Chapter 1

"Are you ready yet, Desirée?" her mother called from down the hall. "You don't want to be late."

Desirée patted her golden hair into place, smoothed her modest, Sunday suit down over her flat belly, and adjusted her bra again. Her breasts were a liability to her, big and melon-like, the kind of feature that screamed Slut! to everyone who looked on her. That was why she always wore a jacket to conceal them when she went to church. It was because Pastor Hemmings, who was also the local MD with a practice on Main Street, depended on her to sing a spiritual aria - or two - at every weekly meeting that she was in such a hurry this morning. She had been out late with Mark, her fiancee.

Since Desirée had moved to Pickford's Meadows and begun singing for the Pastor's congregation, attendance had grown so much that he had begged her to make her vocal contribution a regular performance. She didn't mind, for she rarely missed Sunday meetings. Indeed, when they had moved from Chicago to the country, Thurston Mitchell, her father, had chosen the community based on the church that they regularly attended at home.

At home. She still thought of Chicago as her home, but father had taken her away from that, and she was too dutiful a daughter to defy him and go it alone. It had been difficult to leave her young friends and life behind, her university education and her music studies, and she often wondered why it had had to be. But she was an obedient daughter.

But she was eager to get there today and see Mark again. He was her love, and it had been hard to kiss him goodnight at the door last night and leave him for the night. It was so hard to be away from him for even an hour. Today was an easy, restful day, and they always enjoyed a picnic somewhere out on her father's enormous ranch.

"Are you ready?" Mother was at the door, a smile on her face. She was proud of her young, sweet-faced daughter with the elegant soprano singing voice.

"Yes, Mom," she said, following the older woman through the large, rambling house. Dad was waiting in the crescent-shaped driveway in the big Mercedes. Desirée got in the back and they moved smoothly away in the direction of the small town that had become the center of their lives since having moved here.

Mark would be there, waiting for her.

Clete Anderson stood cocksure and grinning by his pickup truck, pushing out his big, hairy chest against the uniform shirt he wore and the badge that gleamed on the left side of it. This Sunday morning, he chewed on a donut and watched the people filing out of the church house while the pleasantly-smiling Pastor Hemmings shook their hands. It was a fine, sunny day and going to church was not exactly what Clete would have done to pass the time, but despite his being the sheriff and one of the very few black men in this town of rich retirees and well-to-do farmers, he had few friends among the people he served as lawman.

Clete was a hard man, not very well-mannered, but he had his finger on his job and no one could take that away from him, and he was proud that he had succeeded in landing himself a fiancee just eighteen months after his arrival. Well, at least Nancy Pace, his new love, didn't care about his race and seemed more than taken with his capable lawman's image. Yes, Nancy was his, or soon would be, when he had broken down her resistance to his sexual demands. She was a sweet little innocent and he was sure that her protestations about her virginity were real, but he had no intention of waiting until their marriage to make use of her luscious, young body. He had to admit that the lovely girl, just nineteen years old, was one of the loveliest around, with but only two or three equals that he knew of.

But there was one girl that interested him more than any, and it galled him that someone else had found her first. The problem was, she had never warmed to his approaches and his flattery, but had always just shyly smiled and acted as if she didn't get the idea.

That girl was Desirée Mitchell, the rarest flower he had ever cared to pick. She had lightish, honey-blonde hair that dropped to her mid-back, a body of a model's proportions but with a hint of sexy baby fat, and a big pair of round, fruitlike breasts that begged to be stroked and sucked. Her eyes were wide and blue and her lips full enough to be sensual without being bimbo-ish, for there was no denying her intelligence.