Chapter 1

"I understand there's an apartment for rent over this store."

Marleen Franklin looked up from the counter she'd been cleaning, turning to look at the stranger who'd addressed her. He had a face which matched his warm, friendly, deep tone of voice; full and expressive with finely delineated lips and a rather prominent Classic Greek nose, and dark agate eyes. He was also big, with a massive chest and lean, tawny thighs; and he was tall, standing over six feet in his checkered wool shirt, faded Levi's, and Wellington boots.

Oddly, a faint embarrassment flushed Marleen's face, confusing her momentarily. "W-what?" she asked, flustered, brushing back a stray wisp of coal-black hair with her hand. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you."

She had, but his sudden presence in her store and the charisma that had hit her as she stared at him--it had taken her breath away, and she could feel her skin burning.

the man, not much older than her own thirty-six years, she estimated, grinned, and his eyes bored into her as if he knew that she'd heard him all along and was feeling so damned foolish. He said: "The room. I saw in the paper's want ads about the owner here having an apartment for rent. I'd like to see it."

"Why, yes... yes, of course."

"M'name is Preston. David Preston, and I'm new here in Reedsport," he said as Marleen walked from behind the counter, wiping her hands on a dust cloth. "I'm hoping to find work."

"I'm sure you will, Mr. Preston. Reedsport is a growing community, especially with the new cannery. Is that what you do? Work with fishing?"

"Hardly," he replied with a chuckle. "I'm a diver. I'm going down to see the harbor dredging company. I know a man there who's promised me a job." He followed her as she walked down the aisle to a rear entrance. "One of the reasons I wanted to live here is because of this."

Preston waved his arm and gazed around at the tackle and dry bait, assorted poles, out-board motors, small boats, and other athletic equipment. "Who owns the sporting goods shop?"

"I do," Marleen said with a wry smile. "Does that surprise you? A woman owning a sports store?"

"Yeah," Preston smiled, eyeing her with a different appreciation. "Yeah, I have to admit it does. Then you'd be the Franklin I'm supposed to rent from, right?"

"Right. Marleen Franklin."

If Marleen had been stunned by the impact of meeting David Preston, similarly Preston was blinded by her, and he caught his breath as she continued to talk and was leading him gracefully to the back door. She was better looking than Gloria nine ways from Sunday, and must be smart as well, to run such a shop, he thought hungrily. Looking at her smooth rounded buttocks moving under that skirt; he had the impulsive urge to reach out and run his fingers over the lithe moons undulating so softly and teasingly ahead of him, and then to crush her shoulder-length hair, kiss her full, pouting lips and suck that pair of large, proudly-cresting breasts that strained against her thin green blouse. She was beautiful, and he instinctively knew that she'd be hell on wheels in bed. She'd fuck. She'd fuck and fuck passionately, and his penis throbbed with impatient anticipation at the joys her wet, warm cunt could provide.

Sexy, obviously not bad off financially, and with the manners of unconscious yearning, the smell of a bitch in heat about her. As the ancient Chinese say: it is a happier state to sleep with a dead pig than an uncomplying woman...

"My husband left it to me when he died," she went on to say. "He was drowned six years ago."

Preston licked his lips. Then she was alone... no husband... "I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs. Franklin. It must be rough to be alone and run the shop all by yourself."

"I have my daughter to help me. Speaking of her--" Marleen was standing just inside the rear entrance now, and on her right was a flight of stairs which led up to a hallway which ran the length of the back of the second floor. "Wendy!" she called up the stairs. "Wendy!"

A small, muffled voice cried back: "What is it, Mom?"

"Watch the store for a minute, will you?"

"Aw, Mom!"

"Don't 'aw, Mom' me, young girl. Do it."

There was a slam of a door, and then a young teenage girl, all of sixteen, bounded down the stairs. She wore brief black shorts rolled tight and even shorter against her smooth thighs, and her aqua blouse was open a button too low, the material clung to her budding but prominent breasts electrically. She was barefoot, her slim legs firm and downy golden with tan, and her auburn hair was drawn back tightly from her temples into a single long, thick braid which fell across her shoulder and bounced invitingly against her right breast.

Preston couldn't be sure, but it seemed to him that the daughter, Wendy, had hastily buttoned her blouse over her and that she wasn't wearing any bra underneath. Puckers were evident in the cloth about where her tiny, dark-ringed nipples would be. Christ! This would be some place to rent if he could...

"Wendy, I want to show this gentleman the other apartment. I'll only be gone for a few minutes."

"Well, hurry," Wendy complained. "I want to get back out in the sun some more."

"You have the rest of summer to get a tan," Marleen said primly. "And you shouldn't be out on the porch without--" She hesitated, glancing quickly at Preston. "You know what I mean, Wendy."

"Aw, nobody can see," Wendy grumbled, walking into the store.

Marleen and Preston went up the stairs, and David was glad that the woman was in front of him, leading the way. His cock was now rock hard and pressing painfully against his underpants and trousers. First the mother, seductive... and then the more blatant daughter, running around half naked after sunning topless on a porch. He stifled a groan of sheer lewdness. This was the hottest potential he'd stumbled into since he and a couple of buddies took three sisters out in the woods when he was in the Navy, and they all had turns on each other, the sisters holding hands the whole time...

The apartment was small and the furniture used and cheap, but it was what he'd expected to find for the money he had, and it was clean. Which was more than he could say for the cockroach farm he was temporarily hoteled in. There was a combination livingroom and kitchen, the distinction between the two areas drawn by a dinette set lengthwise against one wall. The floor was carpeted in the Old Rose pattern popular with hotel lobbies, and the few pictures on the walls were strictly Woolworth Pastoral. Against the far wall was a gas heater, and when he looked in the bedroom, he was glad to see that the heater had a small duct to pipe hot air into it as well as the main room.

The bedroom--well, what was there to say about a bedroom? It had the usual double bed, closet, lamps and bureau. The rug was newer and a different color, but same pattern. He shut the door.

"There's a porch which is actually the roof of the storage room below," she said, nodding over her shoulder towards the hall and beyond. "You can't see it from here, but you get to it from either end of the hallway; there's doors leading out onto it."

"I'd like to see it if I may," Preston asked...

The porch was railed and its flooring was of redwood slats. It had a magnificent view of the whole Reedsport harbor, of the frosty blue Pacific lapping gently against the sandy, boulder- and driftwood-strewn shore, of the verdant green lacery of trees and shrubs which enclosed the sheltered harbor like a crescent-shaped cove. To his left was the main part of Reedsport, a community of some twenty thousand, nestled in the heart of the fishing and timber producing area of fertile Northern California.

Reedsport was in between Crescent City and Eureka, and not much different than its sister town along the Oregon Coast further north. However, here the lumber mills and catch basins for the wood weren't in the immediate vicinity, so the air was fresh and clear and without the dull haze of burning sawdust. The cannery Marleen Franklin had referred to lay over the crest of a large hill, out of sight and smell, built along a sand and rock jetty, which had once been the home of an oyster processing plant during the Depression. Reedsport itself had a quiet but not sluggish atmosphere, the residents going about their affairs with civic pride and shrewd dignity, without the paranoiac hysteria which can so easily infect a growing area. Not the target for hordes of invading tourists, the zoning laws permitted motels and amusements only along the strip of US 101 Alternate, the old Coast Highway which ran through the center of town.

To his right, David Preston could see the residential area, sprawling for some distance around the peninsula, its homes covert and blended with the firs and pines and redwoods, showing logical and ecological building rather than the flattened bareness of tract developments. While the fishing harbor was at the bottom of the town and increasingly more at the Cannery, the bay was dotted with piers and boathouses of the shore-owners; Reedsport was the perfect mix of pleasure and business.

Directly ahead of him was the back yard of the sporting goods store. It also had a pier, a wooden finger of planks sticking out in the water; a klinker-built Thompson fourteen footer with some sort of outboard attached bobbing in the salty swell, covered with a green tarp: and high wood fences on both sides running from the building out into the water.

"Excellent," he said. "I really do want to stay here, Mrs. Franklin. Or... may I call you Marleen?"

His smile was so winning, his charm so overpowering, that again Marleen felt the heat of redness stain her cheeks. "I... I suppose so."

"In that case, call me Dave."

"We haven't decided the details yet, Mr. Pre--Dave," Marleen said, feeling almost schoolgirlish at her silly way of responding toward this man. What was wrong with her? She was around men all day, running the shop the way she did... She cleared her throat, getting a grip on herself. "The rent is seventy-five dollars a month, including utilities, first and last months payable before occupancy. And there's a deposit of fifty dollars which I'll refund when you move out."

"Deal," Preston said emphatically. "That is, if..."

"Yes?"

"Well, one of the reasons I like your place is that it's fenced in back--"

"Naturally," Marleen broke in hastily. "I don't want burglars to break in the back or children to wander through and possibly hurt themselves." She realized that she was all but babbling, over-eager as if she wanted this strange man to move in, to be pleased and without any problems. What was the matter with her?

"Well, you see, I own a dog." He looked at her, trying to see her reaction. Dogs and little children screwed up more situations, including the renting of apartments. "He's a friendly cuss, loves people..."

"We'd have to see him first of course, but personally I like dogs. I mean, if they're real dogs, and not those little dust- mops that run around biting ankles and yapping all the time."

Preston laughed warmly, and Marleen found herself joining in. "No, Marleen, this isn't a dust-mop. King is a German Shepherd, only he's not quite pure-bred. His mother was, but the kennel she was at didn't watch her well enough one season, and she mated with an Alaskan Husky. King was the result--almost all Shepherd, only a little shorter and thicker, and much more even tempered--and I got him for nothing. But he'll be a good watch-dog around here, especially if I can build him a kennel out there, maybe by the rear door there. He won't be any trouble, I promise."

"I'm sure he won't, David."

Preston opened his wallet, a battered and dog-eared brown leather with frosted-plastic picture windows and bits of paper stuck haphazardly to its pockets. He gave Mrs. Franklin two hundred dollars in twenties. "I'll move in this afternoon, if you don't mind. I don't have much stuff. It's all at the Buckingham Hotel, on--"

"I know the place," Marleen said, wrinkling her nose in disdain. God forgive the fancy name, it was over a garage, entered by a flight of stairs narrow and dark, open to the street. No door, no entry way, the place from the outside had the sleaziest look imaginable. Window shades were dirty and cracked and crooked, and the curtains, where they existed at all, were limp, bedraggled, and filthy. It was a fierce looking place, and Marleen had never been prompted to set foot in the place. But it was about the only reasonably priced place for transients in Reedsport, which didn't cater to "outsiders" much--beyond the expensive and garish motels along the Strip.

She took the money offered. "I'll write up a receipt later," she told him. "Your mail can be addressed to the store, and will be in with mine. I'll sort it." She handed Preston the key with which she'd opened the apartment door, telling him she'd air it out if he liked, and that there was a side entrance separate from the store at the foot of the stairs, connecting with an alley-way and gate leading to the sidewalk. "The key works the gate, too. You're free to come and go as you wish; I'm not a nosy woman.

"Good," he grinned, and she thought she caught a glimmer of risqueness in his eyes. "I was afraid that you'd mind if I had, ah... visitors now and then."

Visitors... Polite euphemism for girls in his room. Mrs. Franklin found her throat suddenly constricting and a weird, loud pounding of breath in her chest. Girls, to make love with... Her head whirled, but not with shock. That was the galling part--she was a good woman in her own mind, a respectable grass-roots widow with a child to raise, who had successfully placed sex in the back of her mind since her husband's death, and she should be shocked. But she wasn't. Stoically she had spent six years with only the memories of Howie's wonderful love-making and his delightful ways of causing her utmost joy, and though she'd been on dates now and then, there'd never been a man among the fishermen and other acquaintances she and her late Howie had known that had attracted her. Even then it wouldn't have meant sexual contact, for she would save herself for marriage, as she had the first time.

But as she looked up at the frank, open expression on David Preston's face, she felt no bitter and righteous indignation. She felt something in its place--what? It was a shock, then, a heart-quickening, blood-pulsing shock to realize then what was causing the turmoil in her mind. She was saddened! She was standing there, having met a man for less than fifteen minutes, and she was dismayed to learn that he knew other women, that he was interested in making love to them instead of... instead of her!

Mrs. Marleen Franklin, a woman who had always prided herself in being honest with herself above all, of accepting her frailties but determined to overcome them and be a strong and resourceful person, of taking on life's responsibilities and working without rancor for a better day, a happier life, felt her body quiver inside, though its fleshy shell of skin remained motionless, if slightly blushing. She was actually jealous of the other women in her new boarder, David Preston's, life, and that was a bruise to her disciplined morality.

No, she couldn't turn him out, not for being a man. And what a man he was, she had to admit, a secret tingling of excitement spreading through her loins. He stood in a lord-like, animalistic splendor, not arrogance or cruel maliciousness--only with the innate healthiness of an earthy, hedonistically-oriented male. He took his women, a modern-day Ghengis-Khan or Viking; from his flaxen, wavy hair down to his strong, muscular legs, he was the conqueror. No, she couldn't turn him out or deny him his physical pleasure any more than the maidens of Rome could do anything but melt to the ravishments of the Visgoth barbarians. She couldn't, because the pure and basic magnetism between a man--a true man-- and a healthy woman wouldn't allow it. She felt this without knowing it, without admitting it.