Erotica Ebooks: Free ebook sample of "Cold Angel" by Tom Szollosi

Heidi watched the blood spread on the living room rug beneath her Aunt Lynn’s oddly dented skull.

Until moments before it had been a normal skull. But then Lynn’s husband, Heidi’s stark naked and still semi-hard Uncle Lonnie, grabbed the small replica statue of The Thinker off the floor -- where it had landed when Lynn’s throw missed his head by inches, denting the wall instead -- and clubbed her to death with it.

Right then, Heidi felt the unstoppable tears and was compelled to cover her own nakedness, which was an unusual thought for her. Right then, she realized with total clarity that her life was not like the life of anyone she knew.

CHAPTER ONE: THEN

East Zane, as opposed to Zane proper, was one of those off-the-highway places that made travelers wonder who in the world could live there. There wasn’t a second story building to be seen, which was a good idea because you’d be that much closer to the sun. Nothing looked painted because wind-whipped sand took it off as fast as anybody could slap it on.

For Heidi Connors, East Zane was a place you wanted to get out of as soon as possible. She was just shy of eighteen when she managed it, rescued by the court from the dangerous prison of her parents’ home when her mother’s sister, Aunt Lynn and her husband, Uncle Lonnie, went to court to get custody of their niece.

Lynn swore to the judge that her home was a world away from the alcoholic, drug-crazed deathtrap her niece desperately wanted to escape. The judge, who saw that Heidi was an attractive young woman with particularly good features and, frankly, a palpable sexuality that sent the blood rushing to his Hammer of Justice, ruled in Lynn’s favor. Though lawyers were already speaking of other things as Heidi left the courtroom, the judge didn’t hear them. He was mesmerized by the movement of her ass, shifting back and forth atop her long, naked legs, just above the miraculously placed hem of her mini-dress.

Lynn and Lonnie lived in Zane proper, in a small house with a nice white concrete driveway and white rocks instead of a front lawn. The roof was dark red, also rock, and Lonnie’s metallic blue pick-up truck was forever in the driveway.

Heidi, who celebrated a birthday two weeks after her liberation from her parents, never thought about the fact that she’d always worn relatively few clothes at home. In her now eighteen-year-old, completely self-absorbed way, she didn’t realize that doing so around Uncle Lonnie was not exactly the same as it had been around her father.

Heidi was like a bright shiny object, dangling in front of Uncle Lonnie’s eyes. The more he saw her, the more he looked forward to the next time he’d see her. He began to watch her more and more openly, especially when Lynn went to work at the real estate office where she was office manager. As the months went by, he found himself thinking of her almost constantly, and not in a nice, safe, avuncular way.

She wasn’t sure exactly when it started, but eventually Heidi found herself thinking of Uncle Lonnie, too. She’d noticed his lingering looks, noticed that they were focused on her legs, her breasts, her ass -- and even sometimes on Her. The Her of her. She had long thought of her pussy -- she hated when her friends called it that, like it ate kibble, for God’s sake -- as Her. It was the place men weren’t supposed to look when girls were Heidi’s age and so much younger than they were. And yet when he did, she chose not to challenge his look with her own. Instead, she stayed just as she was or shifted position to let him have even less imagining to do, discovering that she liked having him look at her. She felt a good, spreading warmth, wondered if her face looked as blush-red as it felt… and started wondering about him. This went on for some time…

Uncle Lonnie was a contractor. Because of the physical nature of his work, he was in good shape. He wasn’t fat, didn’t act like an old man -- he was in his thirties -- and from what Heidi had been able to peek at now and then, he was big enough to make her throat go just a little dry.

She’d fooled around a little with guys, taken it out and waved it around for them, but she had never actually let anyone go all the way. There’d been a lot of rubbing, moaning, and grabbing, and even sucking, licking, and squirting. Fingers had massaged her to what she assumed must have been the orgasms she’d read about in her dad’s Penthouse magazines. But nobody had quite worked her up to such a state that she’d said what the fuck and gone for it.

Only now, spending a lot of time alone in the house with Uncle Lonnie, choosing to wear the extra white little white shorts that barely covered anything, much less what shorts were supposed to, she started wondering what it would be like to have his hands on her…his mouth on her throat and her breasts. Her nipples ached just to think of it, that delicious throbbing sensation she recognized from her earlier experiences -- the ones that seemed so childish now.

And now once in a while he would notice she was watching him. When it happened, she looked quickly away, blush rising from her throat to her face, and tried to figure out just exactly what it was she wanted. Just what she was doing, here, with Uncle Lonnie? He’d been to her parents house at Thanksgiving and at Christmas, with gifts for little Heidi. He’d sit her on his lap without the slightest hint of -- well, of anything.

It wouldn’t be like that to sit on his lap these days, now would it.

And maybe all he felt was that he cared about her. It wasn’t like her parents had cared, and it wasn’t like Aunt Lynn was around all that much. Her aunt seemed to be working day and night. In fact, Heidi had noticed funny little things when her aunt came home. Odd silences. And then finally the short conversation in which Uncle Lonnie said he knew perfectly well she was fucking Whitson, the realtor she worked for. They hadn’t known Heidi was outside their bedroom door, of course, and never meant for her to hear it. They didn’t know she heard Aunt Lynn say what if she was fucking Whitson, and Lonnie telling her he didn’t really give a flying fuck. And how he was glad he didn’t have to worry about keeping her stuffed and happy.

Heidi stood in the hall, putting it all together… his looks, the caring, gentle conversation, his concern for how she was doing, and now the huge, empty space in his marriage to Aunt Lynn. Heidi turned and padded silently back down the hall to her room, reached her door, and went quietly inside.

In the dark, she fell onto her bed and slid her right hand inside her underpants, finding it, rubbing it, massaging with practiced touch and soon, bouncing slightly on the mattress, with jaw-clenching intensity. She put her face into her pillow to cover her moans as she thought of him, couldn’t keep from thinking of him, and bringing herself off harder than she ever had before.

Lying there, eyes open and staring at the dark outline of her dresser against the opposite wall, Heidi listened to the voice in her head, the voice of the Her of her, and knew what would surely happen next.

When he hadn’t initiated anything for another couple of days, she decided to let him know. Maybe he thought she’d never want anyone so much older. He couldn’t have known how she watched the muscles work in his arms as he cooked dinner, how she was unable to take her eyes off his back and shoulders. He had no idea how she had come home in the afternoon when he was working and gone to his room to inhale the smell of him from his pillow.

He usually got home by six, hours before Aunt Lynn, if she ever came home at all. This meant there was plenty of time to set things up just the way she wanted. Light the candles in the bathroom, fill the tub, and make the place smell like one big, open flower. She felt a rush of excitement, fear, and amusement all rolled into one as she slipped out of her clothes in her room, walked nude down the hall to the bathroom and slipped into the steaming tub. She let the water relax her, closed her eyes, and leaned back within the cocoon of sensuality she had concocted. She breathed deeply, imagining he was there with her, visualizing and imagining the tight, firm feel of his body as he slipped into the tub with her.

So she was startled when she opened her eyes and he was standing in the doorway. She was almost afraid to meet his gaze, but once she did she couldn’t look away again. After what seemed like eternity, he stepped into the bathroom, his eyes never leaving her.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked.

She nodded. It was all she could do. Only now did she realize that she was sitting up straight in the tub, her wet, glistening breasts in full view. He was taking them in… noticing the wet blonde curls of her hair. The unconscious parting of her lips, even as she noticed the parting of his.

“It’s not like we’re blood, or anything,” he said quietly.

She just looked at him. Those big eyes. She unconsciously touched her breasts.

The degree of sheer want in the room was driving them both insane. He pulled off his white t-shirt, stepped out of his shoes, undid his belt, and took off his jeans, watching her the entire time. She leaned back in the tub slightly, gnawing absently on her perfect, ripe lower lip, staring at the bulge in his shorts. And then in a single movement he was out of the shorts and into the water, her hunger exploding at the sight of it, her ass moving with the involuntary twitch of excitement that jumped from inside her even before he laid a hand on her. Neither cared that water splashed over the edge of the tub as their mouths came together, pulled one another close, and wet flesh met flesh. Now her hands clutched the arms she had gazed at, even as all she could think was how strange and different it felt to rise to meet him, to let his arms enfold her as he explored with his demanding, insistent tongue, holding her to his hard chest like a captive.

He could drown me or fuck me, she thought with a strange, excited detachment, as if hovering above the moment and looking down at them. She had known it would be a rush, maybe scary and maybe the kind of crazy that got dangerous, but she had not known it would be a thing of domination. The domination, to her mild surprise, took her breath away and excited her in a way she had truly never felt or even imagined. He is ravishing me, she thought. She was not hovering anymore, not looking down, but responding, hungrily opening herself as his hands were everywhere and his mouth was on her breasts -- and then he paused.

Paused and seemed to have a better idea, taking her hand as he stood and stepped out of the tub, pulling her away from the watery cocoon, and watching her nakedness with eyes as hungry as his mouth had been. He pulled her to him again, and she felt herself lifted and opening once more, giving a moan like none she’d heard from herself before. She wrapped her legs greedily around his middle as he walked, carrying her to his bedroom face to face, closer than they had ever been. And all the while she knew it was there, just below her, waiting for its moment with a tantalizing certainty. She reached down and took it in her hand as he carried her, and her mouth opened in surprise at what it had become, at the remarkable smooth efficiency of the thing in all its raging engorged certainty.

The bed beneath her was soft and dry as her wet body, clinging to his, hit the mattress. He grabbed and cupped and finally hovered above her for a moment, looking down at her before grabbing her at the haunches with an iron grip and pulling her to him as much as he pushed himself deep inside with a moan of beast-pleasure that brought her to a new level she had never even known existed. Her eyes were wide with the surprise of the tearing pain and then the wash of pleasure that simply swept it away.

She marveled at the slick, wet feeling that welled from within her as he slowly and deliberately slid in and out. She didn’t know how, but she believed she could feel the contours of him with absolute clarity, the shape of the head to the base of the thick, insistent shaft.

Lonnie was lost in the wet, slippery intensity as well, smiling at the thought that this girl was a fucking fountain -- a fucking fountain -- grinding against him with a moaning, grunting, hungry urgency while literally drenching the bedclothes beneath her insatiable, gobbling thrusts.

Neither of them had any idea how long they went on like that, both hypnotized by a ruthless animal rutting and slamming of flesh on flesh that finally began to build and accelerate until Heidi first threw her head back and seemed to clench from head to toe in a wave of pleasure she could not control. She didn’t recognize her voice this time either, as it came out in someone else’s unthinking words of low, loud, out-of-her-fucking-mind panic and disbelief.

It got stronger and stronger and then as he, too, began to grunt, clench, strain, and finally bellow in a release she could feel course up and out of him in spasm after spasm of climax, his ass like twin rocks as she grabbed him and pulled him deeper, she couldn’t take it any longer and had to try and stop him. But of course, he was in the middle of it, and his spasms went on a few moments longer and the thick, heavy wave of her orgasm became so intense it was painful, and yet the fact that she could not stop him made it somehow better even as she couldn’t escape until he, too, had thrust himself through to the last of his convulsions.

Aunt Lynn had come home early that night of all nights, fresh from a fight with Whitson, the realtor. She heard their gasping, straining noises when she came in the front door, and was drawn down the hall to the room she had shared with Lonnie for so many years.

They didn’t notice her as she watched the final sweaty, straining moments, watched their eyes locked on one another in amazement and a kind of determination she found the most upsetting of all.

“You sick son of a bitch!” The words had a life of their own, escaping her before she had thought consciously of them, before she had stopped to think of her own hypocritical position in this moment.

As they turned in horror and surprise to find her in the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway light behind her, she turned and stormed back down the hall. Not understanding her own tears, she didn’t hear him call her name, didn’t hear him start down the hall after her.

The statue of The Thinker was not a consciously premeditated choice, and yet she knew even before she grabbed it that she had found her weapon. Now she heard him as he came through the end of the hall to the living room. She saw with disgust that he was still semi-erect, semi-engorged, and not guilty or worried or afraid in his nakedness.

He looks just like he did the first time with me, thought Lynn.

That was the trigger that moved her to throw The Thinker in a sudden flare-up of her already deadly rage. She watched in numb disbelief as it shot toward his head -- then missed and took a good-sized chunk of plaster out of the wall behind him before bouncing off the opposite wall and finally hitting hallway floor.

His look, unlike any she’d ever seen from anyone, let alone Lonnie, was the thing that sent the first shock of fear through her. She didn’t run like she should have. She called out, “Lonnie, Lonnie, Lonnie…” as he lurched back out of sight into the hallway to get the statue. She was shaking her head and starting to cry as he came back out, nakedness now murderous. She grabbed the tall brass lamp. The cord fought her, not wanting to leave the socket. She tugged at it but it wasn’t giving.

“Lonnie, please…”

But she stopped trying when she realized he wasn’t going to say anything. Not a word. He just closed in, holding The Thinker like a club.

The last thing Lynn noticed was Heidi, afraid in a different way, peering around the corner at the end of the hallway behind him. Their eyes met and there was understanding. Not approval or apology or anything so complicated…just understanding of this moment.

She felt the bright yellow flash of pain rip through her head as The Thinker cracked her skull just above the left temple. She didn’t feel anything else. Not the falling or the hard collision with the floor.

Lonnie stood over her, and all he could feel was annoyance and disgust. The look of irritation was hard to hide when he heard Heidi crying.

“Are you kidding me?” He snapped at her. “She was gonna kill me.”

It didn’t do much to ease the terror Heidi felt.

After a few moments of thought, it was remarkable even to him how easily it came to mind. “I’ll get a bedspread. Wait here.”

She did, feeling more naked than before, and when he returned with the bedspread from Heidi’s room, he laid it out on the floor beside Aunt Lynn’s lifeless body. They lifted her onto it, Heidi numbly following Uncle Lonnie’s instructions and weeping silently the whole time. All she could think was that this was her aunt, the only person who’d been willing to stand up for her and take her in. She watched as Uncle Lonnie rolled his dead wife in the bedspread. Heidi remembered Aunt Lynn telling her she’d ordered it through the Sears catalog because the color went with the carpet in Heidi’s room.

She held the door open for Uncle Lonnie as he carried the rolled-up bedspread into the garage -- it was connected by the service porch to the rest of the house -- and put the bundle into the trunk of Lynn’s Chevy, which was still cooling down from her drive home.

“Let’s get some clothes on.” He said it with a businesslike edge. “Once we get this out of the way we can deal with what we’ll say to people.”

As she got into her jeans and a sweatshirt, the way he said “what we’ll say to people” echoed over and over in her brain. In the space of a few moments, her uncle had transformed himself from her fantasy lover into a hard-bitten, scheming killer.

When she came back out to the garage, he was loading a couple of shovels and a pickaxe into the trunk along with the rolled up bedspread that concealed Aunt Lynn.

“Where are we going?” Only when she said it did she realize that these were the first words she’d spoken since the moment Aunt Lynn died. She felt self-conscious at the sound of her own voice, as if uttering anything made her more complicit or gave her a bigger share of the guilt than she already felt.

Driving out into the desert on a rutted two-lane road, Heidi chose not to even ask exactly where they might safely bury Aunt Lynn. Because it was clear to her, even in the addled state she was in, that this was his plan.

Finally, after the long silence that hung between them, he spoke.

“Listen, I’m sorry you’ve got to be part of all this. I really am.” He looked over at her. “It’s not the way I wanted everything to go. But you know, you always help the one you’re fucking. It’s just what you do.”

Was it really? She didn’t have the slightest clue what to say. It was like a bad joke, his being “sensitive” and understanding. Considering how she might be feeling? It hardened her a little, and she told herself it was time to get beyond crying and think. She needed to be as smart as she could be, remember everything, and not be surprised by anything. It wasn’t lost on her that she was, among other things, a witness. Uncle Lonnie might not want to take a chance by trusting her to keep quiet.

It was a long ride out to the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t going to be another living soul for many miles. She tried to stay calm as she thought about this, drawing slow breaths through her nose, then letting them quietly out through her mouth. You always help the one you’re fucking. She was starting to think she’d imagined him saying that, but knew she hadn’t and got that numb, out-of-the-body feeling again…the same as she’d felt looking down at her dead aunt.

He pulled to a stop down a rocky slope from a cave. She had no idea how he’d known it was out here, but the fact that no one could see it made his reasoning clear.

He lifted the bedspread-wrapped Aunt Lynn out of the trunk. He ordered Heidi to grab the shovels and pickaxe. Tromping uphill was hot, slippery going. He dumped the body on the ground and it rolled out of the bedspread.

“Start in,” he pointed to a spot where she could dig. “Dirt’s not too bad up here.”

Dazed at the insanity of it all, she began to dig her aunt’s grave. Uncle Lonnie went back down to the Chevy and got something out of the glove compartment. Heidi didn’t know what it was but had the terrible feeling it could be a gun. When he got closer she realized it was nothing like that. Instead, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s dangled from one hand as Lonnie climbed back up the little hill.

Heidi kept digging while Lonnie took a seat on the ground and proceeded to down a good third of the Jack. He watched Heidi dig, not saying a word for quite some time. Finally, grabbing the other shovel, he got into the hole with her and took big, deep scoops of soil with what seemed like very little effort. Heidi felt grateful -- it would be over sooner.

Lonnie rolled Lynn into the grave, started shoveling dirt over her, and seemed to lack any sadness or remorse. He glanced at Heidi as she did her share, only now his gaze was not appreciated. They were both sweating freely in the night heat, which was worse in the cave because the air hung heavily with no wind. He paused and pulled off his shirt.

“Take yours off if you like,” he told her.

She didn’t respond but instead kept shoveling soil over her aunt’s now hidden corpse.

Part of it was the rush of freedom, and part of it was the Jack, but when they were finished Lonnie stared at her with the expression he’d worn when he saw her in the bathtub. She understood immediately but averted her eyes.

“Come on… not here. Please. Not now…”

She noticed for the first time that he had kind of a mean grin. “I mean, with her being right here and everything…” she tried to make it sound like she wasn’t completely sickened by the idea of having him touch her again.

“I don’t give a fuck where she is,” he replied in a surprisingly quiet voice. “It’ll be the first time she’s ever been around while I got a good piece of ass.”

Even after drinking the Jack and helping dig the grave, Lonnie was still much stronger than Heidi, and she quickly found that she could do nothing to stop him. The frustration, fury, and grim resolve were all she could think of. She endured his sweaty, awkward thrusting as if her own body was as dead as her aunt’s. With the absence of any response, he had to work harder, but in his selfish haze he didn’t seem to mind. Abruptly, however, he slapped her hard across the face, glaring down at her.

“Give me something, Goddammit!”

“Gonna kill me too, Uncle Lonnie?” She had no idea where the courage to say it came from, but her anger was deeper than even she understood. “Gonna kill everybody tonight?”

But as she whispered the last of this, he wasn’t listening. He was, in fact, coming inside her, a further insult she tolerated, more aware of the rocks on the cave floor cutting into her back and legs than any other sensation.

Finally, exhausted and done, Uncle Lonnie lowered himself onto her body and simply passed out. The whiskey, the effort -- all of it had taken its toll. He stayed out when she pushed him off, snoring softly as he rolled over onto his back.

She stared down at him, hating him with all her soul, crawling backward on the ground, a few feet away. Try to think straight. The way the night had turned out, she knew that when he woke up, it would not be over. Aunt Lynn hurling that statue at him had thrown a switch in Uncle Lonnie. Any pretense of caring and humanity had vanished, the curtain had fallen away.

More than anything else, she couldn’t shake the idea that after resisting him, she wasn’t his hot little fantasy dream girl anymore. He would probably decide she couldn’t be trusted and then he would kill her, too.

So the decision came with surprising ease. Right now was the best -- maybe the only -- chance she had to control the situation. Her breathing didn’t quicken, her conscience didn’t raise a red flag. It was her life or his, simple as that. Before she could talk herself out of it, before her stupid sense of right and wrong jumped up and bit her in the ass, she moved. Took the pickaxe by its long smooth blond wooden handle and turned toward him, raising it over her head.

But he had moved! Rolled onto his back, eyes little slits, trying to process what he was seeing. It spurred her on quickly, before it was too late. She drove the pointed part of the pickaxe into his chest with every ounce of strength she had, screaming “Fuck YOU!” at the top of her lungs.

His expression was fully aware, fully disbelieving. His hands went to the deeply buried head of the pickaxe, trying to tug at it, to do something to push it back, get it out, but his body would not cooperate. Seeing his effort, Heidi -- still holding the handle, gave it a vicious counter-clockwise turn. Eyes wide in shock and surprise, he coughed convulsively, spewing thick red blood from his mouth and nose in one horrible spasm, and then stopped moving.

Standing over him, and leaving the pickaxe right where it was, Heidi stared at his blank, open eyes and realized she wasn’t crying now. She couldn’t cry now, to tell the truth. Not for herself, Aunt Lynn, and, God knew, not for Uncle Lonnie. She’d used up her supply.

She went to work digging a second grave, alongside Aunt Lynn’s. She had no idea what time it was by the time she was done, after she patted the ground down to create matching disturbances in the floor of the cave. She turned to go, leaving the two shovels, the bedspread, and whatever else was there behind. She had no use for any of it. No use for remembering it. Besides, it would be stupid to take such things with her. They could be evidence. She’d watched enough TV to know that much. Not that she disagreed with Uncle Lonnie’s belief that nobody would ever, ever trip over this place and find the nasty little scene she was leaving behind.

She traipsed out of the cave and went carefully back down the rocky little hillside toward the Chevy. She knew Uncle Lonnie always left his keys in the ignition, a risky little macho habit which was one more way of saying ‘watch what I can get away with’. Now, driving wasn’t something she’d done a lot of, but she knew enough about it to slowly guide the Chevy away from the cave, and when she finally endured the rough terrain and reached the real road, she turned it back toward Zane.

By the time she got there, a fairly decent plan had taken shape. She certainly wasn’t going to let her life be destroyed by the things that had taken place in the last few hours. She clicked the remote door opener and parked the Chevy in the garage, closing the door again behind her. Now, with the pickup truck in the driveway, it looked like Lonnie and Lynn were home. The appearance of normal conditions allowed her to relax somewhat, so she didn’t panic or hurry. After standing in the shower for almost an hour, letting it wash away the dust and grime -- but not the memories she most wanted gone -- she got some things together and put them in a backpack. She grabbed the “secret” stash of household cash dumb-ass, ever macho Uncle Lonnie had shown her “because I want you to know I trust you,” and walked out of the house for the last time. She walked up the block without looking back, heading toward the Zane Greyhound office, which was, like everything else in Zane, not far away.

CHAPTER TWO: NOW

Sagebrush Video faced the world through a dusty mini-mall window at the corner of Cactus and Nowhere, in the desert community of Pistol, California. Sixty miles from Zane, it’s a place of still boredom that spawns foolish schemes, as well as the bad judgment needed to carry them out.

Even in this town of pickup trucks and cowboy wannabes, video business is down. The place has the sad feeling of having been passed by in a universe of downloads and Netflix.

But there’s music inside. College rock booms as two young men in SAGEBRUSH VIDEO t-shirts re-stock shelves with returned videos. The throbbing bass and ever so slightly distorted vocal are stark contrast to the windless world outside, where asphalt takes over the heating chores for the sun that baked it all day.

Greg Jordan, angular and sinewy, thinks about Heidi, the now twenty-fiveish woman who shows up on nights like this. She lingers in his thoughts like sensual incense, for days after. Not that he’d admit anything bordering on fixation or infatuation to his co-worker and long-time friend, Carl Wachtel. Carl wouldn’t get it. He’s the practical guy incarnate. Sure, he notices Heidi -- a fucking blind man would notice Heidi -- but he’s as different from Greg in his approach to everything, women included, as he is in stature and build: short, naturally compact and athletic, to Greg’s terminal gangliness.

Greg is pretty sure he’s smarter than Carl, harboring his explicit thoughts of a naked, eager Heidi while carrying on a “general” conversation on the basic nature of man-woman relations. Greg’s theories are murky and confusing to Carl, who thinks Greg watches too many movies when he explains that the trick is getting the female of the species to believe that you give a shit.

“So they need to think you care how their puppy died?” Carl can’t hide his disdain.

“Almost. They need to think you care what they think,” explains Greg.

Carl can’t imagine why he’d ever pretend to do such a thing. Greg points out that it’s not the old days. It’s the new days, and they want to be taken seriously. Eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling. It’s here, and it ain’t going away any time soon.

Carl gives him a “that’s your wisdom?” look. “You still haven’t explained why any of this matters. Even a little.”

Greg can’t believe Carl is this dense. “So they’ll fuck you! Why the hell do you think?”

Carl’s eyes finally brighten with understanding.

At the same moment, low-slung headlights swing into the parking lot outside Sagebrush Video, pulling into one of the slots in front of the store. Greg knows those headlights belong to a red Mercedes. And he knows what’s inside that car.

“That’s her,” he says. “Right on time.”

It’s dawning on Carl -- his friend has been waiting for this particular customer. The dulcet, locally unchallenged, almost impossibly nubile Heidi. It’s dawning on him that Greg has truly got The Virus.

Seen through the window, Heidi is blonde, all grown up at twenty-five, and probably dangerous to any man with a heart condition. Faded blue Levi shorts stop just above the flawless, luminous skin of her perfect thighs, but not quite below her taut, firm, mesmerizing behind. Desert breeze flutters in an act of conspiracy, rustling her hair even as it whistles down the cleft between her breasts.

She enters the store, letting the air conditioning take effect beneath the skin-thin fabric of her cut-off t-shirt. She pauses as if unaware of the jut of her breasts or her ultra-flat stomach.

“Jesus,” Carl says softly.

This is precisely the reaction she seeks -- because Heidi has become more than just another perfect body and heart-stopping face. She’s a theorist, believing with all her barely-covered heart that any beautiful woman can, if willing to go far enough, make a jackass of any man. She is still pure sex, with a direct connection to that place in every man that can drive him to acts of depravity and slobbering-conquistador-self-indulgence. She is the keeper of the gate to that place, and likes it a lot more than almost anything else in flat and boring Pistol, California.

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