"Well, Goddamn it," Melinda addressed the empty room, "I didn't drive him to another woman! He went of his own free will. He had a choice, and he chose Kathy. There's nothing wrong with me, and none of this is my fault. Why should I suffer, mentally or physically, because that bastard came down with a case of the four-year-itch?"
She picked up the telephone and dialed Dave Hammett's office. The detective had proven himself to be all man this afternoon. If he was interested in a return engagement, so was she. But there was no answer.
Melinda grabbed the phone book and leafed through it. There was no listing for him, except the agency. Didn't he have a home phone?
"All right, Dave," her voice quavered. "You had first crack. But Neil isn't the only man in the world, and neither are you. I don't intend to go to bed alone. Not tonight. If my husband can go catting, so can I." She had another drink to seal the bargain, then went upstairs to take a bath, change her clothes, fix her face and hair. If she was going to hunt a man, she ought to look her very best.
"It still seems too good to be true," he said, undoing his tie. Melinda stretched on the bed, hap behind her neck. She shook her hair sensuously, then extended one foot toward him. Her toes crawled up and down his thigh. "I mean, Jesus," he went on, "here I am, sitting in a bar, minding my own business, a stranger in a strange town. And you show up. Sit down beside me, ask all pretty-please if I'd buy you a drink. And now here we are at the Holiday Inn and you're feeling my leg and sexy enough to give a hard-on to that statue of William Penn downtown, and you say you're not a hooker, that this isn't gonna cost me a cent. I just don't get it"
"There's nothing to get," Melinda soothed, her toes drifting into the crotch of his pants.
He turned, saying, "Don't do that, baby. I'm on a short enough fuse the way it is," but he didn't step back, out of her reach. Instead he reached down, caught her ankle, and ground the sole of her foot against his pants and his pecker blossoming inside. "Mmmmm, that feels good, baby," he complimented, and Melinda stretched her leg for his benefit. If he were looking – and he was – he could see all the way up her thighs to the scandalously sheer pair of bikini pants she wore under her short skirt. Hair and flesh showed through thorn panties, she was aware. And so was he.
"Is it the badger game?" he went on. "I read a book the other day, a porno novel, about this girl who worked that racket. She'd take a guy to a motel room and start to ball him, and then somebody would break in and tell the john that the girl was underage, he was gonna call the cops, that whole bit. It that what's gonna happen? Somebody come in here and threaten to bring down the pigs unless I pay him a lot of cash? Hmmmm?"
Melinda laughed. "I'm definitely not underage," she promised. "Can't you just take me at face value? My name's Melinda and I'd rather sleep with someone than go to bed alone. And tonight, I'd like to sleep with you. I don't have any ulterior motives. Unless you count fucking your brains out."
He blushed. Maybe he'd never heard a woman say "fuck" before. A lot of men hadn't. But the blush was cute, and she wiggled her foot against his dick for good measure.
He wasn't really Melinda's type. If she had a type. She wasn't sure she did. She hadn't been with all that many men. Ron was on the short side, funny-faced rather than handsome, with a bald spot at his crown and the rest of his hair receding to meet it. She supposed he was in his early thirties, possibly a traveling salesman of some sort. He'd looked lonely, sitting at the bar, though, and tonight she was very much aware of what loneliness, desertion, could feel like. So she'd gone to him, instead of to one of the younger studs in the room. Anyway – he was only to be the first of a long chain. What had Dave Hammett said, explaining Neil's behavior? That men were basically polygamous animals while women adhered to monogamy? Well, by God, Melinda Stillman could be as polygamous as any man alive, if she wanted to be. Her husband found satisfaction with another woman? She knew how to strike back. She'd become the bluest fucking female Mormon alive.
"Hurry up and undress," Melinda purred. "I want to see your body. I'll bet it's dynamite." She let her foot fall away, then sat up on the bed, lips opened into a smile, waiting Ron laughed awkwardly. "Even if I was in shape," he said, "I wouldn't make more than a firecracker. Oh, Jesus, I feel like a Goddamned dummy. I know that as soon as I get my cock out, you're going to clamp your legs shut and not open them up again till I fork over fifty dollars. Fifty? Hell, you look like at least a hundred dollars' worth."
Melinda flushed, but not with anger. He'd paid her a very pretty compliment. What woman wouldn't like to think herself worth a hundred dollars a lay, on the open market. But he seemed so tense, so nervous. If he kept on at this rate, he might not be able to perform tonight at all. And if she wasn't going to be fucked by a stranger, why had she bothered coming to Ron's motel room in the first place?
"Maybe this will prove something," she suggested, a throaty hint of invitation in her voice. Melinda dismounted from the bed, walking shoeless over the soft carpeting, and she stopped about two feet beyond lion. "Watch very carefully," she purred, taking hold of the top button of her blouse.
She undid it casually but determinedly, one button at a time, allowing the shin to fall open of its own volition. The bra-covered mounds of her tits thrust out at him, and her dark nipples were faintly visible through the clinging nylon. Her tits were erect, and their points were more than faintly on display. She stroked herself for a moment, fingers dwelling on her nipples, and it felt very strange, very nice, to be touching her body this way in front of a man she'd only just met.
She wiggled her shoulders and the blouse fell away. Ron's eyes widened at the sight of her creamy flesh, in such pretty contract to the skimpy beige bra, and she heard him whistle. "There's more, tiger," she told him, unbuttoning her skirt it dropped to her feet, and she stepped out of the fallen pile.
Now Melinda was wearing only her underwear and stockings, and her under things were more than they concealed. She'd bought them for Neil's benefit, but he seemed to have other things on his mind lately, so a stranger would have to reap the visual joys of her matching bra and panties. Which Ron seemed to be doing, in a big way. The front of his trousers was really tented out now, thrusting with the weight of a growing erection.
"DO you like it?" she asked. "It can be yours, and it won't cost you anything except a little effort, darling. All you have to do…" she moved toward him, her hands extended, ready to snake him into her embrace, "…all you have to do is make violent, mad love to me, right on that sweet, soft bed. But I know something that isn't sweet and soft. In fact, it's as violent and mad as it can be. Can you guess what I'm thinking of, darling?"
He groaned, terrifically, as Melinda oozed against him and her almost naked body touched his. She rubbed the growing bulge in his pants with her thighs and tummy, and she was a little sorry that her fingers found him to be on the flabby side, though he wasn't fat. But there would be plenty of time for Melinda to try on for size the young men, hard-muscled, with broad shoulders and year-round tans.
The most surprising part was how easy it all came to her. She'd thought it would be difficult, to say the least, picking up a man, fucking him in cold blood as a kind of revenge on her cheating husband. But it wasn't difficult at all. She seemed to know exactly what to say, how to act and Ron was so sweet in his confusion and uneasiness. Turning him on, keeping him turned on, and using him challenged and enthralled Melinda. Oh, did it ever!! She pound her cunt against him, then stepped back.
"Now it's up to you," she said. "Undress me with your hands. Strip away my underwear. Make me naked."