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?"