Copyright Chris Tanglen, 2003. All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

"Oh, God, yes! Don't stop! Don't stop! Harder! Harder!"

Melanie Clover really wished that she were the one making those requests instead of the one lying alone in bed hearing them through the thin apartment wall. Here she was, halfway through her twenty-third consecutive month without sex, being forced to listen almost every night while her neighbors went at it in a frenzy of nymphomaniacal glee. Though at least tonight the woman wasn't shouting out Olympic-style ratings for each pelvic thrust.

She tried to ignore them and focus on the handheld video game she was playing, Milton Monkey's Banana Quest. She'd gathered two hundred and eighty-seven bananas, her all-time record, and if she found thirteen more she'd move on to level six. This was the highlight of her day, made even more pathetic by the fact that she'd gotten this far by using a hint guide she had downloaded off the Internet.

"Oooooooh, fuck me, you stud! Sledge that hammer! Sledge that hammer!"

She sighed deeply. Life was so cruel. Why did this neighbor lady, who stole Melanie's newspaper every morning, deserve to get bed-breakingly laid while the closest Melanie had come to sex in the past year was catching a brief glimpse of the cable repairman's butt crack?

It just wasn't fair.

It wasn't like she was unattractive or bitchy or foul smelling. When she was a kid she'd hated her curly red hair and freckles, but she'd long outgrown that phase and now at age thirty she only hated the way she could get sunburned just by looking at a picture of the sun. Sure, she'd put on a few ex...