Dizzily, she heard herself reply in a way which an hour ago she would have labeled as impossible. From a mouth which seemed not her own, came the echoing words: "I'm an adult, David, and once was happily married. Have your visitors as often as you like, but all I ask is that you be discreet. Not for my sake as much as for my daughter's."
"I understand," Preston said huskily.
Marleen returned to managing the shop after David Preston left. She took care of the customers in a peripheral, dazed way, her mind still charged with the emotion of meeting a man who attracted her tremendously, who had awakened her drives and needs and made her aware that she was a woman. It was a tremendous jolt to her nervous system, and though she had no intention of throwing herself at him, or even of being other than the distant, courteous, and civil neighbor and landlady that she had always been with her tenants, she still couldn't get the piquancy of his masculinity out of her nostrils or the tight band of jealousy from around her chest.
She ached, and her firm inner thighs and pubic mound swelled with heated blood… the blood of unwanted, subconscious arousal. It scared her, and she solidly resolved not to let David Preston know how he'd affected her, or let herself go beyond this stage of, she thought, mild interest.
Night had settled on Reedsport. From the set of three small-paned windows overlooking the street, David Preston stared out at the building across from the sporting goods shop and his apartment. Not that there was anything especially to see – the building was an old grey stucco apartment house, and the few windows that were lighted were covered with curtains and shades. The street was empty below, and only faintly could he hear the crumbling surf from the ocean behind him and the occasional bark of King in the yard.
His eyes weren't particularly focused on the non-existent events anyway; his thoughts were turned inward, and he was mulling over and over the fantastic luck at finding this apartment, and the desirability of his new landlady. Not to mention her daughter! Sweet, virginal pussy – it was enough to make his balls explode, just thinking about it! He'd fuck them both, given the opportunity, and as he stood there in contemplation, he decided to let fate have a few nudges so that the opportunities might present themselves.
"Davy-boy," a high yet throaty voice said to him. "You want a beer?"
He didn't turn. "Mm."
"Well, do you?"
He turned then, and smiled. "Sure, Gloria. Sure, I'd love one."
"Me too. Boy, is it hot, especially after all this moving."
Preston watched her as she walked to the kitchen and opened the small refrigerator, comparing her body from behind mentally with Marleen Franklin's. Gloria Talbot came out damned good, but second place. Not because of her body, which was actually lusher than the Franklin woman's well-proportioned form, or her walk – it was the other things, he decided. The things which make a relationship lasting and never boring; but from the sexual aspect, Gloria had been one of the finest swingers he'd ever picked up.
She was bending over, picking out the two cans of beer, her perfectly proportioned buttocks tight in a pair of shorts shorter than the ones young Wendy Franklin had been wearing. She wore a white velour blouse and a half-bra which thrust her magnificent, globular breasts out, their upper portions clearly visible as being bare almost to her pink nipples. Seductive, that way. Her legs were the kind he never tired of running his hands along, and her back was smooth and creamy, and he could span her waist with both of his hands, flaring into thighs and hips that were invitingly succulent in their shape.
Then she straightened languidly, a beautiful feline cat, and opened the snap-tabs over the sink to catch the foam. She swiveled around, thrusting her hip out slightly, and extended her hand, which held one of the beers.
"Here, lover…"
"Not there," he replied, feeling the stirrings of sexual arousal in his gut. Damn, she could always do this to him, always, even in opening a God-forsaken can of beer. She was a walking sex machine, he thought lustily. Absolutely without scruples or restraints, and her eyes sparkled as she undulated seductively toward him, her expression of promised salaciousness, and he knew that she was primed and ready for him to make love to her. No, not to make love to; to fuck.
And that was the main difference between Gloria Talbot and Marleen Franklin, and what made Gloria runner-up in his private contest. Preston demanded a challenge, a game in which he could pit his experience and cunning against a woman's pride and virtue. He loved the searching for clues and vulnerabilities and making the adjustments, the inexorable moving into intimate channels, retreating and advancing with skill and daring, chancing his abilities against hers. Marleen Franklin had that air of steadiness and sincerity about her which promised such action and made him want to give chase. The tension of the chase excited him, answering a need to master the female sex. He'd been a scrawny little bastard in school, a thyroid condition preventing him from developing when his friends had, and the girls had totally ignored him; when he had found a few years later that girls were attracted to him, once he had grown, he'd been afflicted by the subconscious drive to compete, to continually prove to himself that he was a man.
Gloria Talbot had been sitting in a bar, hungry for a man, when he'd met her up in Portland, Oregon, hungry but not starving. The bar had been smoke-fogged and Preston had been whisky-dulled, yet there had never been a question in his mind as to whether she would or wouldn't; only the one as to how good she'd be, and a single look at her had assured him that she'd be active and tasty. He'd known she'd put out – it was in her eyes, the loose, cock-sucker quality of her smile, the way she would move her long, too-yellow hair back over her ears with a movement of her arm and head that made her breasts jiggle slightly. That had been four months ago, and she'd been with him ever since, an awful lot of woman for a guy that was practically broke and living the ramshackle life. She was the best thing that had come along, up to now, up to when he'd met the Franklins, mother and daughter…
"Here, Davy-boy," she purred. "Let's take them in the bedroom."
"In a minute."
"Now…"
He laughed and put his arms around her, against the soft muscles of her back, and sliding his hands down, he cupped one full, hardening breast. "Aren't you tired after carrying all my things up here?"
"Yes, but not that tired."
"When are you moving in with your brother and sister-in-law?" That was one of the reasons he'd ended up in Reedsport. He was a diver by profession, but he didn't know anybody at the dredging company, the latter a white lie to allay any fears about him drifting that Marleen Franklin might have had. But Gloria knew some people, including her brother, and Reedsport was an excellent town in which to find a job, so when she had said she was heading south, Preston had decided to go along. Nothing to lose – he'd just been blackballed from the union in Portland.
"Tomorrow," she replied. "But let's think about tonight."
He laughed again and let his hands rove further down, around her slender waist and onto the roundness of her quivering buttocks. The shorts were so tight that he could tell that she wasn't wearing any panties underneath – there wasn't the tell-tale ridge of elastic.
"Don't you ever wear panties?"
"I can't afford to lose any more of them, and you keep ripping them off of me," she said and pouted in mock anger. "I'm down to Saturday, Sunday, and Monday." She was talking about the set of French Day-of-the-Week panties that he'd bought for her as a present some time ago. "Thursday was torn beyond repair."