The desert night breeze was hot as it blew through the open window of the small, weathered motel room. The young man slowly slipped under the covers, cursing the necessity of playing out his little game with the young waitress who would soon be arriving with food and probably one hell of a lot more--if he knew women!

Johnny Belmont laughed to himself as the sheets covered his naked flesh. The bedsprings complained as he shifted into a more comfortable sitting position.

"If I know my women, this Mary will be helping me really bang up a racket with this bed!" he chuckled.

A sharp edge of excitement shot through Johnny as he considered the young waitress. She looked like a lonely, sex-starved girl who would serve herself up on a platter for any man willing to share a bed. He had known a lot of girls like her. They lived lonely lives in nowhere places like this road stop, that was nothing more than a gas station, restaurant and motel dropped between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. He didn't question the fact that when she brought his dinner, it would be with the offer of more than food to devour.

The thought pleased him. She'd probably be the last casual bird to joyride with him. The last of countless women, young and old, rich and poor, who found it difficult to turn down a good-looking stud like Johnny Belmont. He didn't fool himself about the attractiveness of his body or his power over women. That was the only talent he'd ever had; the only complete success he'd managed to rack up on his life chart. It was the one thing he clung to like a desperate, drowning man clutching at a straw in the middle of a pool of quicksand.

There was a timid knock on the motel room door.

Johnny looked at his watch, where it lay on the small stand beside the double bed. It was almost exactly an hour since he had left the restaurant.

A pleased grin spread across his handsome lips.

"Come in," was Johnny's only response.

A brownish-haired woman in her middle twenties stepped in, pushing the door open with her back.

She was still dressed in the slightly wrinkled yellow uniform--but the cap was gone and her hair hung loose in long straight lines about her face and shoulders. Johnny noticed that the top button of the uniform had been opened.

The longing, half-hidden, desperate look in her eyes as they met his revealed naked loneliness, days and weeks without real lovers. Without real human contact. She was one of those typical females lost in nowhere towns, crummy shacks, lousy jobs, and even crammed in the big city crunch of agonized isolation. They were all the same in so many ways. And he'd managed to make the most of their hungers for human connection. They had been easy meat to his seductive powers--and he'd enjoyed all of them.

For a moment a pang of understanding and almost tenderness flashed through Johnny. Sure, he'd known a lot of girls like her, used them for an instant night of pleasure and disappeared. They were born to be used. Just like he had been, as one rich lady claimed, "born to be loved!"

But, Johnny realized, he was just as foolish and lonely and just as much of a failure in life as this woman and many of those before her. To the rich bitches, the high-society tramps, the young girls out for an attractive escort and a big bang-up screwing time in the wee hours of the night, Johnny Belmont had been only a thing to be loved and tossed aside.

Yes, he thought, they were all hungry, lonely and needed love of one kind or another to make it possible to survive another long day.

In a way he had a lot in common with this young waitress. Too much so.

"Hello," she greeted in a slightly timid, shy voice.

There wasn't any real outward embarrassment in her actions as she moved toward the bed with a covered dinner plate, a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Only those eyes, pleading to give her a moment of escape from this small, closed-in world in which she lived.

"Hi," he grinned as she placed the tray on a narrow desk a few feet from the bed.

She turned, offering: "Drinks, or food first?"

He studied her full body as if he were trying to see through the formless cloth that draped about it. She had wide hips, a slight belly, and high plump breasts pressing against the half-open top of the uniform. Johnny noticed she'd removed her bra.

This was the last time to enjoy such casual pleasures, he realized, almost sadly. And against all the beauties I've escorted into bed in the past, this Mary didn't stack up very good.

"How about drinks?" He hadn't ordered the bottle; she had brought it on her own. "Nice of you to think of it. What will I owe you for it?"

"Oh, forget that!" Mary tossed her head, causing the hair to flow freely about her shoulders.

There was a kind of innocent honesty about this woman that suddenly appealed to Johnny.