I, Billy F. Marlin, babe-magnet, God’s-gift-to-women, best lay this side of Colorado, stepped into the house and wanted to say the words, “Honey I’m home.” Why am I nervous? She’s just another babe with hooters, but for some reason I’d have given half of my night’s haul to yell those words and have her come running.

I was no movie star or even partially famous. . . well, okay maybe in Clancy’s I had a little fame, but in reality I’m just some guy, able to bench press 280 and think on my feet.

Hadn’t I come up with the idea of blowing the levee? I was the leader of the pack with the canoe caper last summer. I was just me, but I already knew it wouldn’t be enough for the Keating babe, a woman who’d hung with the famous. I just wasn’t going to cut the mustard when it came to the babe of all babes. My dream had come true. She was around. How was I going make her see I was an okay Joe? I knew how to lay my cards on the table when it came to the dipshit boppers. I knew what girls wanted and it was easy to go into my dance. She was the great Yamelda Keating, number one on Clancy’s babe charts. She was anchor of WASS news, a real woman, not some twit in a bar.

I had to get rid of a night’s grit. A shower was first on my list. After the shower, I’d figure what to do with Keating.

***

I’d slept fitfully. The sound of the rain, that damn scratching in the walls and the threat of the flood swamping my bed didn’t help matters. I was scared and exhausted and I’d just spent the night alone, without even late night television. It was my first. Although there were many blankets on the bed, I was still an icicle.

When I awoke to the sound of the front door I froze. It took a few moments for me to remember where I was and how I’d gotten there. It wasn’t until I actually got out of bed, peeked through a partially opened door and saw him, that I remembered the Greek God who pulled me out of the freezing water and saved my life.

While peeking through the door, I watched him undress as he walked toward the bathroom. Each mud soaked layer revealed more of his delightful masculinity. By the time he closed the door behind him, he was stripped to his jockeys. I saw every muscle, especially the ones in his forearms. It was the bulge under a man’s sleeve that lit my fire and he had bulges that wouldn’t quit.

While I waited for him to finish showering, I combed my hair, brushed my teeth with a finger load of toothpaste from the master bath then borrowed a touch of perfume. When he turned off the shower, I was tucked back into bed, covers up, wet and waiting.

Ten minutes later, I realized he wasn’t coming. No man had ever acted that way. No man had simply left me alone. Even the shy ones always knocked and tried to be nice. He simply ignored me. I, the great Yamelda Keating, was not used to that kind of treatment.

It had been an hour since my savior had returned. I was beside myself. Out of sheer frustration and unbending curiosity, I got out of bed, applied a dab of makeup, re-combed my hair, and wrapped the very towel around me that I’d worn when I was dancing around earlier.

When I stepped out of the bedroom and strolled across the living room in front of him, I was the epitome of Marilyn Monroe.

I gave a quick glance at him on the couch pretending to be asleep. I purposefully knocked over a water glass sitting on the coffee table. When it fell, it rang like the liberty bell. I bent, as if not noticing that he was there, picked the glass up, looked at his open eyes and coyly reached up to cover my bursting store-bought bosoms.

I gave him an expression of surprise, pulled the skimpy little towel up to cover my breasts and purposely exposed my slightly siliconed butt. When I sashayed to the bathroom, I turned at the door and glanced back. The goddamn idiot had not moved a muscle.

Some moments later, and I wasn’t about to stand in the freezing house naked for more than a minute or two, I promenaded back across the living room. The second time his eyes were closed. I cracked a satisfied smiled as I passed, then turned as I got to the bedroom door. He was watching, I knew it, but I’d done everything, short of actually inviting him and he’d done nothing.

***

I couldn’t believe myself. I’m a man’s man and I didn’t know what to do. Truth be told, I’d never had a real woman, especially one so famous. And there she was, traipsing by me with no clothes. She seemed so comfortable, I figured she must belong to a nudist colony or something.

Women were all so embarrassed about their bodies. They’re downright squeamish about being naked anywhere except in the bedroom and mostly only in pitch dark. Women are weird, but this woman was the weirdest of ‘em all.

I didn’t have a clue in hell as to what to do. Of course I wanted to jump her, but how?

Her first pass she knocked over the glass and woke me. I coulda’ died right there because staring me right in the face was those zowie Hooters. It was all I could do to look her in the eyes.

I’d read in Hustler, women didn’t want men looking ‘em up and down. ‘Till then, I’d never put it to practice. I never really cared what women wanted. There was a steady stream of boppers at Clancy’s and I didn’t give a damn whether they liked me or not. Ya-melt-a was different. I’d give my eyeteeth to do the wild thing with her.

On her second pass, I pretended to keep my eyes closed, leaving slits to get a gander of that blonde tuft between her legs.

When she turned, I snapped my eyes closed. I shoulda’ leaped to my feet right then, ran into the bedroom and pounced on her. I wanted to more than anything, but I, Billy F. Marlin, the greatest heartbreaker in the history of Clancy’s Bar and Grill, didn’t know what to do. In complete and total confusion I stayed on the couch. I did, however reach down and give my attentive hardness a little squeeze.

***

What was it with that idiot? Didn’t he get it? I was the great Yamelda, always-got-what-she-wanted, Keating. I wasn’t about to let the moment pass. I had to have him. I needed another notch. The more he resisted, the more I wanted him. I had little tolerance for his disinterest.

He would get the best he ever had, then I’d throw him away like yesterday’s news. The longer he resisted, the better I was going to make it for him and the further I was going to throw, but he wasn’t cooperating. Damnit, I was tired of pussy footing around. Who knew when Stalworth would return? Me, take-the-moment, Keating was not the kind to let any opportunity pass.

For the second time, I jumped out of bed, glanced out the window at the morning light. I was so intent on my conquest I didn’t notice the sea of water starting a few yards from the house.

Again, I wrapped the towel around me and stomped through the door he was supposed to have burst through long ago. Barefoot, heals thumping, I took long strides across the room. Without any preliminaries, I shook him. “Well, you want to do it or not?”

I spun, tramped across the room, turned at the last second before going back into the bedroom. I expected him to be tight on my heels, but he hadn’t moved.

I turned fully around, put my hand on my hip, gave him a scowl and shouted with enraged abandon. “Are you coming?”

***

I was getting back to sleep. It was hard after the eye full of Keating’s luscious body. I was dropping into a sexy dream about her and me when I heard stomping feet come across the floor. Had Stalworth returned? I never met her, but I knew her. Hadn’t Sundog and me been paid to poison her wells, break her windows and kill her chickens? We’d been to the Stalworth property so many times I knew the place like the back of my hand.

The stomping feet blew my single chance with the Keating babe. My one and only chance to prance around Clancy’s and brag, though no one would ever believe me.

During the night, I’d run a hundred stories in my head. I had plenty, but a believable one was a whole other ball game. No point in telling the truth. Truth had never gotten me anywhere. In fact, too many times truth had landed me in jail. Truth was a black shadow to be avoided at all cost.

I was ready to tell about abduction and abandonment on Stalworth’s little island. I was ready to place all the blame on a vague someone who’d disappeared during the night, leaving us stranded.

I was sitting up to tell my story to a pissed Stalworth, but Yamelda came at me like a freight train and she didn’t look friendly. With a scowl on her face, she spit out a sentence I didn’t understand. “Well, do you want it or not?”

Do I want it or not? What did that mean? She was the great Yamelda Keating. She was a woman from a whole other planet. Do I want to make breakfast or not? Do I want to get my lazy ass off the couch and get her off the island or not? Do I want to build a fire and get her warm or not? What she meant I didn’t have a clue, but I wasn’t going to fuck this one up. If I made a wrong move I’d blow any chance of getting next to my dream woman, so I sat still.

Making the wrong move would be a bigger mistake than getting busted for that jewelry heist three years ago. The Dog Man had gotten away with the goods and was able to get me a good lawyer. I still had to do a year in county.

Blowing a chance of getting next to the great Yamelda Keating was much, much bigger.

I sat pondering the “Do you want it or not,” statement. She stomped back across the room, stopped at the door, then turned. She said something, but the ringing in my head muffled the sound. Did I hear it wrong?

“Are you coming to bed or not?”

I was sure I heard, “Are you turning red or not? Are you coming to a head or not? Are you turning to lead or not? Are you wetting your bed or not? Is it something you said or not?”

My mind was reaching for anything that made sense, something other than “Are you coming to bed or not?” The great Yamelda Keating would never say such a thing. She’d never think those thoughts.

More confused than I’d ever been, and I’d spent more than my share of time being confused around women, I, Casanova-of-Clancy’s-Bar-and-Grill, Don Juan Demarco-of-the-south-side, a man all men aspired to when it came to handling women, looked over the back of the couch at the medusa. She was enraged, half-draped in that skimpy towel, standing in the doorway of the bedroom.

I asked, “What do you want from me?”

She shifted nervously, throwing all of her weight from her left leg to her right. Her wildly exciting hip thrust into the air, pulling the towel open. She jabbed her other hand onto her raised hip and sneered. “What part of ‘are you coming to bed or not’ don’t you understand? I’m standing in this cold room with nothing on, freezing my ass off and you’re pussy footing around with semantics?”

I didn’t know what semantics meant, but I knew what she meant.

She stopped for a moment. I was so confused I couldn’t move.

After what seemed like an hour, she snorted, then shouted, “Why, you bastard. Not enough of a man to get it up, huh?”

That got me moving. I’d had more than one woman throw that atom bomb at me and there had been times it had actually been true, but not that night. In fact, I’d been up and rarin’ to go since I’d watched her get into the tub.

In one sudden leap, like a giant spring, I was on my feet and rushing her. Yamelda turned on her heels, sprinted through the door and slammed it behind her.

I reached for the handle, missed and shattered the door into a million splintering pieces.

She squealed and ran for the bed as her towel dropped to the floor. I was two steps behind her.

She didn’t throw herself on the bed, but jumped over. She grabbed a lamp and gave it a long sweeping arc an inch from my face. The cord caught. It pulled out of the wall. It was the only thing that saved me. The lamp flew past and shattered against the wall. She leapt off the far side of the bed and pulled the second desk lamp back for another swing. It shattered over my back as I came in low to tackle her. Cat quick, she jumped into the air, rolled over me and back onto the bed. She grabbed a pillow and swung it into my upturned face. Feathers went everywhere.

She bounced off the bed and leapt across the room. She grabbed an aluminum TV tray.

I stopped as she swung it dangerously close to my nose. The second it passed, I rushed her and pushed her to the floor. She rolled out and was back on her feet. She slammed me with a full swung gut chop, shattering the tray.

I looked down at a trickle of blood.

She seriously wanted to maim me. I’d had this kind of sex before, but it had always been playful. This woman was serious. I’d have to get to her before she killed me. The thought drove me on. She ran to the far side of the room and grabbed a small wooden chair. Before I could get up, she smashed it across my back.

So far, there had not been one word, only grunts, banshee wailing and animal sounds of a life or death fight. I broke the silence with a deep growl. “When I get you, you’re mine.”

She gave me another yowling cougar wail. “If you’re man enough.”

I pulled my pants off. My Johnson, under tight shorts was at full attention. I tore my shirt off. I bounced on the bed as I leapt at her. She sidestepped and karate chopped me on my right kidney. I crumpled to the floor.

The death dance played for fifteen minutes, turning neat little Marylou Stalworth’s bedroom into a dump site. I was getting the worst of the beating. I had claw marks and bruises I’d sport for weeks. I had cuts and a bloody nose. The wounds would be proof at Clancy’s. No one would believe me, but I’d tell the story anyhow.

I was getting winded when, and just by chance, I was able to grab one of her wrists. She came at me like a buzz saw. She kicked and gouged, but I had her and the game was soon to end. When I could, I wrapped her arm behind her and grabbed the other hand. Mostly out of self-preservation, I pushed her face down on the bed. She kicked and screamed. She bit my hand, but I had her and the inevitable was going to happen.

An hour later we lay in each others arms sound asleep. Three hours later she awoke me with scrambled eggs and toast. By noon, I awoke again with the great Yamelda Keating asleep lying next to me.

I slipped a hand under the covers and stroked her long legs, her thighs, her butt and up to those enormous hooters. She came fully awake. This time she took me, not with the wild abandon of the early hours, but with force, with intent, with the strength of her mounting me for her pleasure, not caring about me at all.