The room was lighted in soft moon glow and there was soothing music playing from the recorder; low and sensual. The highlights which went along the woman's semi-nude body accented her lushly developed breasts and curvy voluptuous body.

"Man, do I need you," she moaned, standing over Frank Martin like a conqueror, a giant goddess of lust who had come out of the night to take possession of his body for the sole purpose draining it to exhaustion in sexual combat.

She raised her arms, so that the thrust of her large breasts surged upwards, invitingly.

"We're good together, the two of us!" she half sighed. "You're the best man I've known!"

Frank felt a tingling at the lustful offering of this woman's body.

Kay Clifford isn't a gentle lover, Frank mused as he watched her hands slide lingeringly along her silken body.

"You're quite a woman!" Frank laughed huskily, automatically reaching out for her.

She glided back, saying: "Not so fast! I want to tease you a little."

Taking that body was exciting; but nothing much beyond that.

After the long build-up of dinner and cocktails at the Beachcomber, then the dancing at the Huntington Hotel and the final exodus to his apartment, Frank didn't want to play games. He had been with Kay too many and felt like the drunk who takes more drinks because he doesn't know better. Physically he was excited by Kay, but bored with the routine. She enjoyed teasing a man; to her that was some kind of erotic thrill; and at first it had been interesting. Now it was just routine, without much impact.

Kay's fingers tucked under the top of her panties. "Wanna see?"

Frank waved his hand, inviting her to come closer.

"No, love! You have to wait a little!" She started peeling down the panties. "Just watch!"

Finally Kay slipped the panties down over her wide hips, then along full thighs. She stepped out of them, and threw the lacy cloth away. It disappeared from sight into the blackness of the room that surrounded her highlighted form.

Her eyes continued to stare teasingly into his as she once more cupped her hands under those large breasts. "They want you, too, love!"

Finally, Kay's bra slipped off and then disappeared from sight into the blackness of the room which surrounded her highlighted form.

He couldn't really see her lips smiling sensually, or the point of her tongue moistening their surface to a soft glistening shine, or see the raw flame of desire sparkling in the hidden depths of her dark green eyes, as if a furnace were burning brightly beyond their surface. He didn't have to see all that to know it was what took place in the few seconds in which Kay stood unmoving, her head bent down in his direction. As hot as Kay was, Frank found their relationship slightly tiresome. He wanted something more than mere sex with a woman. And that, in reality was all she was: a sexy body.

Instead of mentally picturing her standing there in the dimness of the room, his mind played strange tricks with him. For a moment he saw another lovely woman standing there, like some phantom. It was illusion, but delightful. A thrill shot through him at the mental image. This was a woman he could really get interested in. It was an image which had been teasing him at lot these last days. Ever since Joe Hanson had shown him her photo a week before.

A girl who had golden hair and dark, almost hauntingly lovely, frightened eyes. An oval face with high cheekbones, a mouth that was just a little too full to be perfect, but still lovely.

Jean MacManners. She'd been captured in his brain, like a fiery, lovely, welcoming brand. He hadn't even met her. Yet. Tomorrow was the magic day! That's when he would meet this charmingly, haunting woman--and discover just what it really was that had captured his imagination so vividly. Fantasy was one thing; reality another.

But why should her image be pestering him in the middle of a real-life seduction with Kay?

"Frank oh, Frank," Kay's low, rich voice cut into his thoughts. She was leaning down near him, her breasts swaying within inches of his lips.

He leaned forward, smothering his lips against her flesh. "Oh, Frankie, you're good.'' she murmured breathlessly. "So good."

She drew him to her, and in the next minutes they were locked together in a continual series of caresses and kisses.

Yet his mind simply kept drifting away from what they were doing, as if a part of him were totally bored.

He continued to see imagines of Jean teasing his mind, even as his body was reacting, intensely responding to Kay's love-making. Her hands, lips and body captured him in a series of loving caresses, mad, passion hungry kisses. Then finally she lifted, moaning, and she totally envelop him. It felt as if she had swallowed him whole. For a few deliciously wild moments they shared the fury of mutual ecstasy.

Then it was finished, spent out.

Neither of them moved for a long time, only sliding apart after that one last instant of pleasure had rippled through them. It was a long while before Frank's mind began to organize thoughts out of the gray mass of nothingness which had been the aftermath of love-play. And again his mind pictured the young blonde with the large dark eyes whom he would be meeting the next day.

God, he could hardly wait!

"You're a lucky brute," Joe Hanson had told him with envy. "She's a real great woman!"

"But does she like to be--well, nicely put: enjoyed?" Frank had wanted to know.

Joe Hanson told him: "She ran away from an affair here when she went to New York!"

There was some doubt in Frank's mind whether Jean MacManners was going to be an easy conquest, but the years of experience he had chalked up during his youth didn't leave any doubt in his mind that there wasn't a girl in the world that he couldn't have one way or another. And from what he had seen of Jean, from her picture, she would be well worth a lot of effort.

"Oh, love--" Kay murmered softly into his ear. "You love me?"

Frank felt himself go tense and cold inside. "Now, baby, don't get that way."

Kay sat up, gripping his arm. "Why not?"

"I've gone over that with you. I'm not the marrying kind."

"Oh, you're maddening!" she exclaimed heatedly.

"You aren't the marrying kind, either. You're just fooling yourself!"

"And why not'?" she demanded tartly.

"Because there's not a man who could keep up with you," he explained.

"Oh, you rat!" she sighed, clawing at his back with intense savageness. Her nails cut into the flesh.

"You drive a girl wild," she choked in a rasp. "A girl could really go for you. Frank. You know that? A girl would be lucky to have a man like you!" Her voice was light and joking, but serious nonetheless.

"There've been women before who tried to hook me," he warned softly.

"Bet there haven't been any like me!"

"Not many," he offered.

"That's not a nice thing to say, Frank! It was mean!" she pouted. "You're supposed to tell me I'm the best. Something real nice, like that. Like I'm special..."

"Every woman has something special to offer. Every woman has something to make her different. It has nothing to do with better. Better in what way?"

"You're a bastard. You know I'm crazy about you." Her voice was so throaty and husky that he almost laughed; it was too affected to have the conviction of truth. But that was Kay. Then she was all over him again, demandingly charging his own body to take her on, full blast. If nothing else, she was one hell of a wild woman. And it continued until both of them fell exhaustedly unconscious in one another's arms.

The morning sun was the next thing that Frank was aware of. He stirred in bed and then felt the other form next to his. For a moment he couldn't remember who it was.

"It's eight-thirty!" she exclaimed in a tired voice.

Frank moved from the bed. "We still have a little over half an hour to get to the office--we can catch something for breakfast during the coffee break."

Kay looked at him as she slowly stood.

"That was really something," she announced, happily, patting him thigh. "You sure are a hard one!"

Frank simply nodded as he started getting dressed. His mind had already lost interest in Kay.

"You doing anything tonight?" she inquired boldly.

"Sorry. A party at the Hanson's," he told her in an almost irritated tone.

"You don't have to snap my head off!" Kay countered, obviously hurt and angry sounding.

"I'm sorry, I was just thinking."

There was a long silence as they got dressed. When Frank was starting out of the bedroom, Kay stopped him, with:

"Can't you call it off--tonight?" Her eyes were intimate promises. "Or--or make it a short visit? I'll--wait."

Frank slowly shook his head. "I'm sorry."

But he wasn't. One evening every three or four days was about all he could take of Kay.

"Oh, damn! I could go on like that for days--without end!" Then Kay shrugged her shoulders, the action bobbing her breasts slightly. "Well, there'll be other times. Maybe some weekend--in the mountains or at the beach--or just at a motel or hotel or yours or my place."

"Maybe," he agreed absently.

In silence they walked from the apartment and down the hallway to the elevator. A couple of minutes later they were in his car driving down the Hollywood Freeway to Davis, Martin & Gordon, Insurance.