Just a few words about Rolling Thunder

I just wanted to send a shout out to Juliet and Kimmy whose stories have recently been inspiring me and to my readers who, I hope, enjoy these stories
Showing posts with label Geno Malkin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geno Malkin. Show all posts

Monday, September 27, 2010

Chapter 5



Pulling up outside of Big Sam’s I find myself grinning when I see Becks standing outside of the front door in a pair of skin tight well worn, faded jeans and one of those artfully ripped up concert t-shirts that falls over her shoulder baring a leopard print bra strap and at least a couple of those loose fitting belts slung low over her hips with all the silver studs and loops. The outfit is topped off with a pair of shiny black platform heels that wouldn’t look out of place dancing around a pole. It’s cheap, it’s rocker chic and somehow she pulls it off, looking like a Vogue cover model slumming it on a sunny Sunday afternoon and when she tips her rhinestone encrusted sunglasses down and smiles in my direction I grin back thinking she’s my cover model. 

“You’re late,” she admonishes me as she turns her head to spit a wad of well chewed bright pink bubble gum out on the sidewalk. 

“You could let me pick you up,” I point out to which her only reply is to laugh, toss her hair back over her shoulder and lean in for a long, simmering kiss that leaves me wanting to take her straight back into my car, skip the food and go straight for the sex I’ve been day dreaming about for days. Instead, I reach for her hand, only to find myself staring down at another set of bike chain, black rubber and silver stud accessories on her wrist where I’d expected the elegant diamond tennis bracelet. 

“You’re not wearing it?” I ask, turning my eyes up to meet hers and I realize that I’m expecting her to have broken into a sweat, for her to stammer out some half assed obviously bull shit explanation about having lost it. 

“I’m about to have barbeque sauce up to my elbows,” she answers with a snicker, giving my hand a squeeze and turning around to pull me into the restaurant. “Did you want me to lose it in a vat of extra smoky sauce?” Shaking my head and laughing at my own bias, I stumble after her, wondering how she can not only walk backwards in those six inch heels but how I didn’t realize that she’s also taller than me in them and that I don’t actually mind. 

“Becky! Becks!” Her name seems to ring out from everywhere and I find myself following the echo of the sound of her name from the front of the restaurant to the back before I turn curious eyes on her. 

“I kinda like barbeque,” she explains with a shrug and a not very innocent bat of her long eyelashes. I had picked the restaurant. Well, I’d asked around and some of the guys had heard about the place, mostly from some kind of contest that it had either won or was held here, none of us were quite sure. It isn’t really the kind of food we’re normally allowed to eat during the season. 

“You here to eat me out of house and home Becks?” A handsome, very tall, and very dark African American man with a long row of very straight, very white teeth meets her with a crushing hug and I watch her practically disappear into him while I stand there still wondering what the hell is going on. 

“Becky?” I ask as she turns around, looking sheepish. 

“Okay, so I kinda won a wing eating contest once,” she mumbles, rolling her eyes like it’s no big deal, except the big man with the big plastic menus in his hand laughs out loud, throwing his head back as his belly jiggles with mirth. 

Once?” he snorts, shaking his head as he gives her a little push that nearly sends her flying except that I’m between her and the wall, “Rebecca is the Pittsburgh wing eating champ three years running,” he says to me which makes her groan and give him a very dark look, which I make a mental note never to be on the other side of. 

“Thanks Samson,” she sighs, shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head. “It’s not like I’m not obviously on a date here. Kinda making me out to be some kind of pig when we can all clearly see that I’m not,” she adds, rubbing his generous ponch before placing her hand over her flat stomach. 

“Yeah, I’ve never figured out where you put all of those wings. I’ve always thought you were cheating,” Samson laughs heartily but I can tell just by the way he looks at her that their relationship is almost fraternal and that he doesn’t really mean it, but looking at her, I can’t help but wonder myself. 

“Speaking of wings,” she grins at him, ignoring his taunting remark, “find us a table and bring me a big basket of the little buggers will you?” 

“Same as always?” he asks, and she nods enthusiastically. “You got it Becks. Why don’t you take your man out on the patio? I’ll be right back.” 

“So…how many chicken wings did you eat?” She makes a face but then shrugs and gives me a half smile.

“I don’t know…,” she begins until I raise my eyebrow at her and then she rolls her eyes and lets out a long sigh. “Okay, last year it was a hundred and forty-eight in fifteen minutes.” I’m shocked and not entirely unimpressed by the feat and it must show on my face because I can’t stop staring at that little strip of bare skin between the bottom of her t-shirt and the top of her low slung jeans. “It’s just little bits of chicken sucked off little bits of bones, and don’t look at me like that,” she laughs, giving me a playful cuff across the cheek, “what are you, twelve?”

“It’s just you said suck and my mind just went blank,” I explain, laughing as she turns with an impatient huffing sound and struts away from me towards the patio. I watch her go for a moment, admiring the view as I think how this girl is a never ending set of mysteries and how much I’m enjoying unraveling them all. 


“I told you,” I grin across at him, using one of the wet naps I had stashed in my purse to wipe a smear of barbeque off of his cheek. “So do you forgive me for not wearing the bracelet now?” 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman dive into her food like that,” he chuckles, sitting back and spreading his fingers over his stomach, making a face like he shouldn’t have eaten that last hush puppy. “Not that I’m complaining,” he adds quickly with one of his devious grins. “It was kind of a turn on to watch you suck the meat off of all those bones.” 

“Yeah?” I grin over at him, sticking my thumb in my mouth and sucking the last spot of barbeque off it, watching his gaze settle on my thumb as it disappears into my lips as his gaze becomes unfocussed. 

“Oui,” he replies breathlessly as I ease my thumb out, a millimeter at a time, until it comes out clean with an audible ‘pop’. “Tabernak! Si vous ne me prenez pas la maison et me fair l’amour ma tête va exploser.” It’s funny how I’m beginning to get the hang of this French language, or at least half the time I don’t need a literal translation to get the gist of what he’s saying. The look of pure, unadulterated lust on his face as I reach across the table and insert his index finger into my mouth to lick a spot of sticky red sauce from it is enough. “Your place or mine?” he asks suddenly, springing to his feet and digging in his pocket for his wallet, pulling out a handful of bills and tossing them onto the table. 

“So that’s it? A few wings and a couple of ribs and I’m all yours?” I ask, sitting back in my chair and crossing my arms over my breasts, regarding him with skepticism.

“I didn’t…I thought….” Looking crestfallen and a little embarrassed, Max stands there across the table from me like a little boy whose just had his hand slapped and is waiting for a scolding.

“You’re funny,” I laugh, grabbing my purse and pushing my chair back with a loud scraping noise. “Like I made your bed for no reason.” 

“So it’s my bed?” he growls, giving my ass a hard enough smack that I can’t help but let out a yelp as he reaches past me to push open the door to the parking lot. 

“What? You don’t think I’m going to look amazing on all that shiny black satin?” I ask as I walk around to the passenger side of his sleek, dark car. 

“If you make me imagine that we won’t get very far,” he warns, stopping to look at me over the roof of the car, with a sort of half assed grin on his face that’s kinda like throwing a red flag in front of a bull. 

“Oh so you mean you don’t want to think about me, naked, in your bed,” I begin, hooking my thumb beneath one of my bra straps and pulling it down over my shoulder. 

“Tabernak! Get in the car,” Max groans, sliding into the driver’s seat while I giggle hook my thumb under the waistband of my panties, pulling it up over my hip so he’s forced to see it. “Do that when I’m driving and we’ll crash.”

“Do what?” I ask batting my eyelashes at him before flipping my hair over my shoulder, bending over and reaching for the fly on his jeans. I wait for him to object but all I hear is a long low groan and the sound of the seat sliding back as I slide my lips down over his half flaccid dick. 


I’m scared to death. I’m probably more turned on than I’ve ever been in my entire life but I’m also scared to death. 

With my pasty white ass pressed against the window, I can’t help but glance nervously around as Becky struggles out of her tight jeans, pushing them over her hips and wiggling like a happy puppy beneath me as I hold myself over her, partially because there’s nowhere else for me to go and partially to help give her the sense of privacy I no longer have because somehow I’m already naked as the day I was born while she’s still got her heels and jeans on. 

All I know is we’re somewhere between the restaurant and my house and that with her lips wrapped around my dick, I don’t want to or maybe can’t wait until we get back to my place. I pulled into what I am praying is an empty alley, and it didn’t take more than that to get Becks to hop into the back seat and yank off her top.

Grabbing one of her feet, I marvel for a second at the width of the platform on her shoes and the slim, almost weapon like narrowness of the steel stiletto before tugging it off and tossing it into the front seat and then grabbing at the bottom of her jeans and sliding them off over her blood red toenails. Now all that’s between us is a pair of black bikini bottoms with the word ‘rowrr’ written across her mound in leopard print. 

There’s a joke in that, I know there is, but right now my mind can’t form the words to say it out loud. Later, maybe in the dressing room tomorrow, it will come to me, but for right now, all I want is inside those panties and inside of her. Grabbing her with one hand and the panties with the other, the little shred of material joins the rest of our clothes in the front seat while she rips a condom package open with her teeth. It’s a savage sound and the grin she gives me while her teeth rip into the foil packaging sends a shiver down my spine and straight into my cock which is saluting her craziness in a painful sort of way. 

I can’t even manage a full word as she strokes the latex sleeve over my Johnson. All I can do is groan and mumble something unintelligible as she leads me down between her thighs, down into the dripping wet folds of her pussy and finally into the tight, hot centre of her and then I can’t think at all. My brain is full of explosions, like the fucking Fourth of July, Canada Day and New Years fucking Eve all at once. 

It takes a full minute before my brain can even send the signal down to my hips to move and even then, I’m more worried about slamming her head into the inside of the door or whether or not someone’s going to look in and see me, Superstar, doing it in the alley like some kid out of grade school. But once I do start to move, once we start to move, I forget about being seen or whether or not she’s going to slide off the seat. Once I feel her hands on my ass, her nails digging into my skin, and watch her mouth fall open and realize that I’ve done that, that I’m the one making her arch her back off of the leather seat and squeal like an eight year old girl getting an easy bake oven for Christmas, I stop worrying about getting caught and then all I can think about is how good it feels inside of her, how hot and wet and fucking tight she is. 

“Merde woman! Fuck I’m not going to last long,” I manage to pant, hanging onto one headrest while I brace my other arm against the back of the passenger seat. 

“That’s okay,” she grins back up at me, her eyes flashing in the full dark. “This is just an appetizer lover,” she promises as she meets me thrust for thrust before tipping her head back and letting out a feral growl that sounds like it should be coming from a mother bear and not the full, pink lips slightly stained by hot sauce that recently looked so amazing locked around my cock. “Oh yeah! Do that again!” 


“Quitter!” 

I give his ass a hard, open handed slap, admiring the red, perfectly hand shaped welt it leaves behind. But it doesn’t make him move. He just lies there, prone, naked, on his stomach and groans. 

“I can’t…feel…my dick,” he moans, his face pressed into the only pillow remaining on the bed. The rest are either on the floor somewhere, or shredded, in pieces, with feathers scattered everywhere, including in his hair. Plucking one of the small grey feathers out form his light brown locks, I bend down to press my lips lightly to the tip of his hair. “Non, arrêter. I can’t do it anymore. If I try again it might fall off.” 

“Oh I don’t know about that,” I whisper, curling my body next to the immobile flesh that is his body. “I pulled pretty hard on it before and it didn’t come off.” This description earns me another groan but his hand also twitches, moving faster than the naked eye can see, and his fingers curl around my wrist. 

“I think there’s something wrong with you,” he says quietly, turning so that I can just see one green eye surrounded by a fan of long, dark lashes. “I’m a fucking professional athlete and you have just complètement worn me out. What are you? Some kind of succube?”

“I prefer the term sexual vampire,” I purr back at him, hooking my leg around the back of his so that I can bring my entire body in line with his warm, languid one. “If it makes you feel any better,” I add, nipping at his earlobe, “I can’t remember the last time anyone could even keep up with me this long.” 

“And what did you do with votre dernière victime? Bury him? Burn him?” he asks, a playful smile creeping across the half of his mouth I can see. 

“Oh him,” I roll my eyes and shrug before pulling my hand free and giving his ass another hard, vociferous, slap. “I had Samson cook him out in his smoker, covered him in barbeque sauce and ate him.” With a snort and a shake of his head, Max reaches for me and pulls me against his body before reaching for the sheet and pulling it up to both of our chins. 

“Well then I’ll just have to do better. Let me sleep,” he begs with that devilish grin of his, “just for a un peu de temps, and then…I think there is some whip cream and some sauce au chocolat down in the fridge you can eat me with.”

Friday, September 24, 2010

Chapter 4


 sorry, been down with the flu...I hardly had the strength to check my email the last few days never mind write but I hope this chapter will hold you for a few days more

All these pick-up lines from hell
Icebreakers infernal
from a heart so black and blue
only for you
I'm not afraid to admit I adore you
any more than I was before, babe
I am scared to death, I am scared to death
to fall in love
with you

with you...

scared to death...

I'm scared to death..

And you're sweet like poison
(lyrics from “Scared to Death” by Ville Valo, HiM)

“At least he’s not here this time so there’s no chance of catching him in his underwear,” my sister says in that tone that says that I’m a constant source of embarrassment to her. I consider telling her that I know he’s not home, that I think he’s in Columbus or Detroit or something like that but then decide to keep my mouth shut, that she’d only tell me that he’s only seeing me because I’m easy or that he’d never take me seriously if he knew that I lived in a trailer park. It’s nothing that I haven’t already thought myself and I don’t really want to hear it said out loud, so I just say nothing and follow her inside. 

“I’ll take upstairs,” I mumble, grabbing a mop and a bucket and heading up the stairs that I would have gone up the other night if I had been the easy lay from the trailer park that my sister and my mother think I am. Max knows different. Not that he was happy about it but….

The bed is wrong. 

Standing in the doorway, I stare at the big pine sleigh bed with fluffy looking quilt with its old fashioned homemade looking blue and white design. It’s nothing like the four poster wrought iron king size bed Max has in his room with the black and red silk sheets. 

“Jen!” I yell over my shoulder, frozen to the spot, staring at a family portrait of smiling faces around the Stanley Cup. Max isn’t one of them but Kristopher Letang is. “Jen, we’re in the wrong house,” I yell again. 

“We’re doing both!” she yells back up at me, “they’re right next door to each other.” I mumble something under my breath about not telling me that isn’t at all nice and something even worse about my being too tired and too stupid to notice as I walk over towards another picture of Kris with what looks like a bunch of club kids. His hair is up in some kind of pompadour, his smooth chest his bare and the elastic of his underwear is showing as he gives the camera a seriously sexy come hither look while snuggling up to a couple of girl with big hair and too much make up next to another guy wearing a necklace and a fairly serious fro. 

There’s another picture next to that one of him in the same outfit with a couple of the same girls and a few more thrown in for good measure, but he doesn’t have his arms around them. He’s not even touching them and the look on his face says that he likes whoever is behind the camera better than the present company anyway. 

I wonder if that person is the one in a few of the smaller photographs in simple frames on the top of a dresser and on his bed stand.  One of them shows him with some other buy with the same sort of thick, dark, un-groomed eyebrows but shorter hair and a wider, more confident smile, both of them holding a trophy and wearing medals. Right next to that one was with the same young man, but this time on a golf course, obviously sharing some kind of joke, looking close and intimate. 

The last one was the one on his nightstand of the two of them in Canadian jerseys, arms around one another, looking up at something, a flag maybe. Comrades in arms or…more?

Feeling nosey, I turn my attention to his closet, opening the sliding slatted doors to find a perfectly organized system of both folded and hung clothing as well as one entire set of shelves for a variety of shoes from combat boots to expensive looking alligator loafers, in between which is quite a collection of trainers, few of which look as if they’ve ever been worn.

“Damn, definitely gay,” I mutter to myself as I run my fingers over thick, soft cashmere sweaters and down subtly printed silk ties.  

Besides the tasteful and expensive clothes and the organization bordering on OCD, there doesn’t seem to anything to clean. Running my bare finger along the crown molding over the closet, there wasn’t a grain of dust to be found. Nor were there any lumps of solidified toothpaste in the sink of the en suite, or a gross ring in the toilet. There was definitely no sticky mess on the floor which indicated to me that he had better aim than most men.
“Are you done snooping, or are you going to clean something?” I whirl to find my sister holding a bottle of bleach out toward me. 

“Clean what?” I ask, going so far as to pick up the spin-brush sitting on the counter so I can run my thumb along the granite countertop beneath it, coming up with nothing.  “Either someone’s already been here and you have your schedules messed up or this guy is a neat freak and we’re getting paid to do nothing.” 

This has my sister grabbing her cell and wandering off, muttering something under her breath about schedules and using particularly colourful adjectives for the receptionist, leaving me to stare at a picture of Kris and Max, one on either side of the Cup, huge grins on their faces. 

Comrades in arms or….


“What the fuck was that about?” 

I’m expecting it so it comes as no surprise when Max forcibly drags me down into the seat beside him in the plane and gives me that look, the one that says ‘if we hadn’t been friends forever I’d be kicking your ass right now’. On the other hand, even though I’m expecting it, I’m not about to just give in to his little green monster pity party. 

“Qu’est-ce que tu racontes?” Max hates being toyed with, and his eyes grow dark with a threat that isn’t usually aimed in my direction, but because I’ve been expecting it I don’t flinch, though I should. I’ve been witness to the aftermath of a couple of go rounds with he and Jordan have had and neither time ended well.

You, hitting on my girl,” he snarls, giving me a look that dares me to deny it, which I do with a single shrug. 

“I spoke to her, oui, but hit on her? Non mon ami, je n’ai pas flirter avec ton fille.” I look him directly in the eye as I say it so he can see that I’m not lying. At least I don’t think that I’m lying. Did I want to flirt with her? Of course I did and not just because she was pretty. Lots of the girls that hang around us at bars are pretty but there was something different in her eyes that drew me in. “I know the rules and I’m not GoGo or Gronk. I don’t break the rules. She’s your girl Max, c’est fini.” Max stares me down and I let him because I feel guilty. I feel guilty for thinking about her sweet half smile and the way she looked at me from beneath her lashes. She might be his girl but there was something there, something between us and I know she felt it too. “You took her home didn’t you?” I ask when I feel like I’m going to break, when I’m about to spill my admission like a teenager in confession after he’s wacked off for the first time.

“No,” he grumbles and sits back in his seat, starting at the back of the seat in front of him. “She said she had a headache or something; that she’d been drinking too much.” It’s all I can do to keep my expression neutral as I nod sympathetically even while my mind is racing through the details of the night. She neither smelled of alcohol nor do I remember her ever having so much as a single drink in her hand. 

“Meilleure chance la prochaine fois, mon frère,” I offer to which he only shrugs one shoulder and continues to stare sullenly at the back of Flower’s seat. 

I tell myself not to read anything into it but there’s a little part of me, somewhere in the pit of my stomach that does a little happy dance at Max’s expense. 



I can’t help but compare the items in Max’s closet as I dust his room, which can use it. He’s definitely not as much of a housekeeper as his teammate. 

Where Kris’s closet was divided and carefully organized by type of clothing, colour and type of care required, Max’s closet is a jumble of both wire and wooden hangers with everything, including his jeans, hung up and where Kris’s closet was generally made up of more muted tones, Max’s is a virtual rainbow of bright primary colours.

“Chalk and cheese,” I mutter to myself as I head for Max’s private en suite, which, in all honesty is not as bad as I’d anticipated. There are a few petrified wads of toothpaste in the sink and I’m not sure I’d actually sit on the toilet seat but I have seen worse. 

I’m about to spray the mirror over the sink when my breath warms the cool surface and a message begins to appear. With a grin, I lean forward and blow, revealing a note scrawled in block letters:

I hate that you’re in my bedroom without me

Shaking my head I spray the mirror and wipe the message away. He might not be the neatest member of his team but he’s definitely charming. Sliding my cell out of the back pocket of my jeans I send him back a message that reads:

Maybe we’ll remedy that when you get back

I’m half way through cleaning the shower when my phone vibrates in my pocket and it’s not a text, it’s a call. 

That’s not fair,” a voice thick with sleep slurs on the other end of the line. Stepping out of the shower, I peer out the en suite door, looking for my nosy sister. 

“What’s that?” I ask, knowing damn well what but wanting to tease him, especially considering the barely stifled long drawn out yawn I’m currently listening to. 

Mmm, you’re in my bedroom ma petite coquina favorite,” he growls, a sound that has my skin breaking out in chicken flesh all at once. 

“To be honest, I’m in your shower,” I correct him only to hear him groan, followed by the rustle of sheets. “What are you doing sleeping in the middle of the day anyway?” I ask, stepping out of the shower and sitting down on the cleaned, closed lid of the toilet. 

We nap before a game, but how can I nap now with cette image in my head?” he asks, and I can hear the sultry grin he’s wearing in his voice. “Qui va être impossible. Just tell me, promets-moi that you’ll take care of this…condition when I get home.” 

“And what condition is that?” I ask, playing the innocent, just to hear him groan out loud again. 

I think we both know exactement what you do to me, mon petit chat,” he argues and I can’t keep a straight face. I do know and it was only because his handsome teammate had thrown me off that I hadn’t taken advantage of the state I’d left him in at the club but there had definitely been no doubt about how much he’d been enjoying my company. 

“Well I suppose we’ll have to see if you’re a good boy or not,” I chuckle, listening while he growls with frustration. 

Go to my bed, open the drawer on the bedside table on the right hand side,” he instructs me impatiently, his words succinct and to the point, his tone abrupt. Getting up, I walk over to the King Size bed with its canopy of fairy lights and its mountain of lavish opulently embroidered pillows and slide my hand into the drawer of the table on what I assume is his side of the bed, with its photos of Max with what can only be his brothers and his mother. My fingers slide over a long, thin box covered in soft velvet and I know he hears my sharp intake of breath when he laughs. “Open it.” 

“Max…you don’t even know me,” I sigh, pulling out the black velvet hinged box with shaking hands. 

Just open it mon ange,” he insists in that offhand jovial way he has. Tipping the lid open I find myself staring down at a diamond tennis bracelet with a single charm hanging from it, a heart with the Pens logo that spins in the middle from each end of the hockey stick with a diamond in the centre of the Penguin’s chest. 

“Max…this is too much,” I hiss into the phone, thinking more about my mother finding it and pawning it for booze and cigarettes, or worse, my sister finding me with it and thinking I stole it than about how truly pretty it is. 

Just a little thank you for cleaning up after me,” he chuckles, steering the tone of the conversation in a more comedic direction, a talent, I’ve noticed, that he uses to his advantage a lot. 

“Well then I hope you left one downstairs for my sister because whatever you cooked last is still all over the stove,” I muse as I consider taking the fragile sparkling bracelet out of the box, but decide to close it instead. All I’d need now is Jen finding it, or seeing me on the phone, and having to explain it. 

“I promise I’ll put an extra twenty in when I pay the bill for her,” he laughs as I slip the box into my back pocket. “So, will I see you when I get back?” 

“When is that?” I ask, like I’m checking my date book, as if I have a line of suitors out the door waiting to ask me out and the inbred loser with the missing front teeth and rusty TransAm in front of his place in the trailer park doesn’t count.

A couple of days, ma petite colombe, and then I will take you out somewhere coûteux et impressionnant and you can wear it for me, d’accord?” 

“I don’t know what you just said but yeah…why, you can take me wherever you want Mr. Talbot,” I add, throwing in some real Scarlett O’Hara Southern twang just to get even with his using his accent against me. 

“Puis il est convenu,” he adds with a throaty chuckle that reminds me that I’ve awoken him from his pre-game nap, “a black tie dinner for two, my treat, bien sûr, at the finest restaurant in Pittsburgh in two days time. Shall I pick you up?” 

“Uh no,” I mumble, beads of sweat breaking out across my forehead as I try and think of how I’m going to scrape enough together for another new outfit to wear. “You know you could just take me for hamburgers, or barbeque, I like a good rack of ribs,” I offer, realizing at the last minute just how that could be taken. 

A simple girl with simple tastes. Comme vous le souhaitez,” he adds and I can’t help but hear the grin in his voice when he says it although I can’t truly decide if it’s genuine or a rueful sort of smile. “I’ll ask around and see if I can find a good restaurant de la bière et le barbecue, just for you sweet Rebecca. I’ll text you when I get home.” I hang up and blow out the air that’s accumulated in my lungs while I’ve been talking to him and then I can’t help but laugh. You can take the girl out of the trailer park but apparently you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl.


“Did you buy twenty of those…,” Geno mimes the shape of something round around his wrist and looks perturbed that he can’t think of the word. 

“Bracelets,” I tell him and shrug, “yeah but I only had a couple left and she’s worth it.” 

“You like all the ladies,” the big guy laughs, rolling over onto his side to face me and supporting his big head on his big hand. 

“I don’t know about all, but generally yeah,” I agree with a yawn, “but there’s something about this girl…don’t know what it is but I like her…a lot.” I hear a chortle and glance over to see the big Russian looking back at me with sincere disbelief on his face. “What? You have Oksana, Sid’s got Tabby…why shouldn’t I have someone too?” 

“I never knew you are a…,” he thinks for a moment and then smiles and nods, happy with where his thoughts have taken him, “sheep.” 

“Ouch!” I grab my chest over my heart roll my eyes back in my head and collapse back on my bed. “You kill me big guy. Here I am, opening my heart to you and you shoot me down like that and I thought you were my friend.” 

“I am friend,” Geno laughs, tossing a pillow at me that lands right on my face. If there’s one thing you can’t fault the big lug for it’s his aim. “That’s why I tell you I think is funny you can be with one girl only. Eto tol’ko nyeestestvennoe.” I toss his pillow back and raise my eyebrow at him, which is one of the ways we have of reminding one another to speak English. “It not…not Superstar” he manages and I shrug and roll back on to my back, my arms behind my head as I close my eyes.

“Yeah well, I think you better get used to the idea of Superstar being off the market big guy because I’m telling you…there’s something about this girl…something different and I plan on getting to the bottom of it.”