The latch clicked as Carla Moore softly closed the door behind her. None of the middle-aged and senior ladies had locks on their doors. As usual every morning, Mrs. P left her rooms to watch the quiz shows on the huge TV in the Spa's activity room. Carla had no business in the woman's rooms, but she needed her morning fix. Paula Pembrooke's bedroom was a prime lookout, and Carla wanted a few moments of tingling pleasure.

The thick soles of her sensible shoes squeaked against the polished wooden floor as she skirted the area rug Mrs. P insisted upon. For about a year now, Carla had administered one wing of the Riverside Spa's second floor domain--a wing consisting of individual apartments.

A few weeks before taking the position, Carla had laid her mother to rest in a nearby graveyard beside her father. An only child with a few distant relatives, Carla, who was thirty-six at the time, had wondered what to do next. She'd applied for her current position in the local newspaper. Although the job had sounded somewhat prosaic, Carla had been pleased when she had been hired to oversee one of the wings. The salary wasn't everything she'd hoped for, but it covered her property taxes, dressed her, fed her and her cat, and provided some extra to put away for a rainy day. Carla didn't regret the decision for one moment when she accepted the position.

Now in the doorway to Mrs. P's bedroom, Carla's eyes roved over the lady's elaborate furnishings. Wistfully, she ran a finger over the polish on an exquisite mahogany side table and looked over at the massive, ornate bedstead. Its heavy, dark wood must weigh a ton. Carla had watched the moving men struggling to carry it onto the building's freight elevator and up to the second floor. She had often wondered how it would feel to make love in that huge bed.

Thoughts about her handsome deceased husband tormented her these days. She would gaze at his picture and think about what might have been if he were here to satisfy her longings. His clumsy caresses, his youthful, eager lovemaking, and the untutored nights they shared during those first months of marriage, were now only dim memories. God, how she missed the rush of desire, and the need for satisfaction [MF1]that plagued her these years without a man in her bed to take her over the edge to completion. How she wanted to experience those out-of-this-world feelings again as a mature, sexually active woman instead of a deprived unmarried widow.

Wanton, unsatisfied lust had created a repressed yearning for erotic expression. Now Carla hoped to see--and devour--what was outside. She turned from the bed, wiping away an erotic vision of a naked man lying in it, opening his arms to receive her. Tentatively, she took the drape and eased it away from the window, peeking out. She swallowed hard, dry mouthed. Squeezing her eyes shut for a moment to tease herself, she hung onto the wild flutter of anticipation raging in her chest--the tremors she felt when she first saw him.

Inhaling deeply, Carla opened her hazel eyes and looked.

God! He was absolutely beautiful.