“Helena…  please…” 
Tina began.

            “Please what, Tina.  You know you want to; I’m a rather good
chef…”

            “Helena!”  Tina said wanting to get a word in edge wise
but the woman wasn’t letting her.

            “Yes?”  Helena answered sexily and Tina took a deep
breath.

            “I have to work this
evening, Jo is out of town and I have to be at Twilight tonight.  I also have a girlfriend.”  Tina said for the first time and suddenly
felt a weight off her shoulders.  She
didn’t have to dodge Helena any more, it was out and she felt so much better
for having said it.

            “Oh well if that
doesn’t bother you, it certainly doesn’t bother me.”  Helena stated seductively and Shane walked
into the bedroom, grabbing the phone from Tina and said in a dark voice into
the receiver.

            “Helena? This is
Shane, Tina’s significant other.  I don’t
take kindly to people trying to fuck with my relationship.  I take deadly offense to it.  Are we clear?”  Shane said with a calmness that was
eerie.  Tina’s mouth hung open as she
watched Shane’s eyes shifting from dark green to the brightest of ambers that
she’d ever seen.

            Shane was threatening
Helena’s life, not figuratively, but literally.

~*~*~*~*~*

            Ivan slouched at the
bar, leaning on one elbow, rubbing his fingers up and down the bottle of
Michelob.  Again, he looked at the shot
glass and licked his lips, staring at the glass as if it were a sexy woman
ready to be devoured.  He could feel the whiskeyburn
in the back of his throat, and that wave of pleasantry that would surely
follow.  The body never forgot.

He dug his thumbnail into the label on the beer bottle
and dragged it down, peeling the paper as he went.  He used to save the labels of the beers he’d
down in an evening.  A tracking mark of
how much he’d drunk because on many occasions, he couldn’t have remembered his
name in the morning, much less the beer count.

            “You gonna drink that
or just stroke it?” The bartender gave him a weary stare.  This guy gave him the willies.  There was somethin’ not right about him.  His eyes were too bright and his smile was
too leery.  And his face was too young
for the defeat in his shoulders.