Venus and I reached out my hands and I cupped the underside of her naked breasts. I felt Amber’s semi-erect nipples grow hard against the tender skin of my palms and my senses tingled in euphoria as I lost my self in the moment, falling backwards, head over heels in my mind, but only as far as the mattress in reality, and I pulled her to me by her breasts until she lay upon my chest and then I wrapped my arms around her back and I pressed her body to my body enjoying the exploratory entanglement of our feet and ankles, thighs and hips. I grew aroused again.

Amber was small and light and her skin was soft and supple as I brushed my fingertips over the firmness of her muscled flesh; her buttocks and waist; the small of her back and the ripple of her spine; the blades of her shoulders and the curves of her arms. She raised herself up and looked down into my eyes and then she collapsed into my lips with a kiss and I swam, with my tongue, in the churning ocean of her mouth and I was transported back to the time to when I had first kissed Catherine, and I got lost in Amber, as I had once done with Catherine so long ago, and I realized that

Amber was my Catherine in a different time and place. I realized that Amber could fill the void that Catherine had left. And I realized too that I wanted, more than anything, to vanquish the pain that Catherine had caused me with her betrayal; and I grew hard.

Without using her hands and without breaking off our kiss Amber found me with her soft fissure and swallowed me with one slow undulating stride. I was reduced to a human probe as with eyes pressed closed I saw her nakedness, with my tongue and with the head of my prick, from the inside out while she devoured me in successive pulses, her hips rhythmically rocking, her pelvis grinding, seeking, finding; that perfect point of sensation; ever-so-slowly tweaking that ecstasy laden g- spot somewhere deep in the flaccidity of her cavern until she could no longer maintain our kiss. Her mouth opened up as she raised her tiny torso and squatted above me, still grinding that sensitive point against me, and emitted a moan of the slightest steadiest pitch so high that she could have broken a wineglass, and she hummed until the sound of her pleasure sent a signal, with her low piercing squeal, to some place in my brain that cut loose my bonds and forced me to release deep inside of her a scorching torrent of liquid that seemed to sap my mind of oxygen and all but the slightest connection with consciousness. I was only vaguely aware of Amber’s little body collapsing against my own, her harbor still a vacuum to my pier, as she cooed my name up into my ear. “Mathew, I think I love you.”

Her words, spoken in the passion of the moment, were warm and comforting, as from a mother to a child; or at least that was their effect on me. I may have been Sarah’s caregiver and her comforter; but in my damaged state of mental disarray I needed an emotional guardian of my own. Amber’s affection was the first real abetment I had known since my last night with Catherine. Her words of affection gave me a sense of peace I had not known in what had seemed like ages.

Her words told me that everything was going to be okay. That she would take care of me, like

Teresa had taken care of Albert.

With Amber’s words still sliding around in my brain I slipped away into a dizzying sleep, the warmth of Amber’s body my only blanket. When I woke in the morning from a dreamless sleep Amber was gone and I wondered at first if she had been the dream; and had she not left her dainty pink panties on the pillow next to mine I might have doubted that such a perfect night could have happened outside of a hallucination.

* * *

Melanie was a stripper. She lived like a homemaker but she made her money the old fashioned way, or as close to the old fashioned way as one can without being a prostitute. The beauty of it was that she wasn’t the least bit ashamed of what she did. And why should she have been? She was putting to use the tools god had seen fit to give her, much like Amber had done when she left home at a young age and she too took off her clothes for a living. I’m not saying that I would have wanted Sarah to have grown up to be a stripper just because she had the body for it, but you have to admire a survivor.

Besides being a stripper, Melanie, as it turned out, was also a fantastic cook. After sleeping for so many hours I woke up ravished and Melanie, despite having worked until two- thirty in the morning the night before, made me the most incredible breakfast I had ever eaten. She made a mushroom and cheese omelet that caused me to audible grunt my appreciation, with bacon and hashed-brown potatoes mixed with a delicious concoction of spices and homemade rye bread slathered with butter. And for breakfast-dessert we had sizzling strawberry crepes. Sarah, who normally didn’t like breakfast at all, feasted as though she were at a pastry shop.

And Melanie, dressed in a set of pink cotton flannel pajamas, made the atmosphere so homey. Melanie even let Sarah help prepare my breakfast, something Catherine never had the patience to do. And she made Sarah, who had grown a little self-conscious about her boyish short Auburn haircut, feel every bit the girl both helping in the kitchen and afterwards making her pretty little face up with lipstick and rouge and eyeliner so that she looked as though she were a Beautiful teenage girl instead of the seven year old boy that I had manufactured. Given the dreams I had had of late I wasn’t thrilled about the look but it made

Sarah happy and I certainly didn’t want to insult our hostess.

“Hello lover!” I turned around from building a fire in the fireplace just in time to see Sarah bat her eyelashes at me while Melanie stood admiring her work from the hallway threshold.

“Lover?” Melanie laughed the word.

I smiled back at Melanie, a little embarrassed, “It’s a private joke…or at least it used to be.” I laughed, “We like to watch old movies together, and she got it from a one of the movies. Anytime she wants to get me to smile, she says ‘hello lover’ and raises her eyebrows and it tickles the hell out of me.”

“Speaking of lover,” Melanie flopped into the room wearing a pair of big pink fuzzy slippers that matched her pajamas, “I have a business proposal for you, if you’re interested.” She tumbled onto the loveseat at the edge of the fireplace. “Sarah honey, why don’t you go put our makeup things away and clean up while I talk to your daddy.”

Sarah hesitated, frowning slightly, unsure of whether she liked being told what to do by her newfound friend, and then she skipped out of the room cheerfully.

“What did you have in mind?” I tossed the last log on top of the growing fire.

“Well…Amber says that your looking for work, and while it’s not a fulltime gig…you would really be helping me out and you could make a few dollars.”

“Doing what…exactly?” “Being my security.”

“Your security? What do you need security for?”

“Amber told you what I do for a living, right?”

“She said you have this tendency to shed your clothing at night…professional werewolf?”

“Exactly!” she smiled, “Now you know why I need security. On weekends, usually on nights when there is a full moon,” she rose from her seat and she began to animate her hands, “I go to bachelor parties and other such events and I take off my clothes,” she covered her mouth feigning embarrassment, “and I…grow hair all over my body…” she covered her chest and her crotch with her hands, “and you know, I just feel so defenseless, being a she-wolf an-all! And I need a big strong man,” she squeezed my bicep through my shirt, “to come along with me to collect the money…and all of the silver bullets,” she fired two imaginary six-guns and blew the smoke from the barrels, “from all those bad boys who want to eat me up!” she said this while unbuttoning the top buttons of her pajama-top and revealing a titillating portion of her cleavage. “So what do you say big guy? Wanna help protect a little ole she-wolf?” she asked as she sat down close to me and looked up at me.