The muscles of her exquisite belly and legs were well-toned and nicely defined, highlighted by the fine, white hair. She had no discernable pubic hair at the bottom of a slight, sexy pudge just below a sensuous navel. It wasn’t fat, just a feminine belly that beckoned to be touched, rubbed and enjoyed.
Handing her a bottle of body wash, he gave a friendly smile as he jested, “If I was an ol’ hound, I’d never stop chasing you!” After all, she had no idea what he was saying. She just smiled, totally clueless, and stepped into the shower.
He handed her a washcloth, stalling, still wanting to gaze upon that marvelous figure. Her forearms and hands, as well as her lower legs and feet, were covered in a black hair. He could discern now that the black, pointed claws he’d seen earlier, were no longer visible. He deduced now that they were retractable, like a cat’s. The feet were similar to a human’s, yet they were slightly elongated. He noticed when she walked, she seemed to put most of her weight on the balls of them, as if always prepared to run or leap.
He smiled, as he admired it all. Granny’s Jesus! She’s got the body of a cartoon superheroine! It was as if her body blueprint had been hijacked from the illicit sketchings of a hormonal sixteen-year-old boy. Yet, here he was, a man in his forties, and he was embarrassingly fighting a chubby now, hastily beating a retreat out of the bathroom as she put her head under the hot stream of water.
Keep on and you’re gonna need a cold shower!
He plopped onto the bed and kicked off his Red Wing Skywalkers. Stripping off his jeans and t-shirt, he threw his legs around and got horizontal. He reached over onto the nightstand and picked up the MV remote. Idly, he flipped through the local channels. He just wanted something to keep him awake while he waited his turn in the shower. It’d been a long day and he was exhausted. He just wanted to relax and unwind. He still had a full day ahead of him tomorrow and he really needed to get some shut-eye.
Sonofabitch! His channel-surfing abruptly stopped as he sat up, recognizing a familiar face from the past. Hitting the info button, he saw it was the local news channel, HNN. According to the guide, the program on at that moment was called Huntsville Informal with Tom Carr. It took him a minute for it to come back to him, but eventually he remembered what it was. It was one of those interview shows where the host sits down one-on-one with that week’s special guest. He’d never been one for news shows, but with tonight’s guest, he would definitely make an exception.
He gritted his teeth as he turned up the volume to hear what the man on the screen had to say. His hair was gray now, but it was still stylish, and the quality of his barber had obviously improved through the years. Except for a few crow’s feet around the eyes, he still had those camera-friendly, cover boy looks. Still the same used hovercar salesman smile, with all those gleaming teeth.
Tiger grinned nastily. Yeah, well I knew the truth about some of those pearlies …
The host was in the process of introducing his guest. “… with us tonight, a very special guest … our esteemed Senator from the Southeastern Economic Zone, District Three, the pride of Madison County itself, our very own Senator Shelby Denton.”
A sneer of disgust pulled at Tiger’s face. “Piece of shit!”
Tiger had never met Denton personally, but the man was infamous with most spacers from his era. A veteran of Huntsville’s high-tech landscape, when the Rush broke wide open, he’d opened a parts supply depot out near the old Jet-Plex. Due to connections he’d made through the years, Denton had been able to procure some very lucrative NASA contracts. By the time he was thirty-five, he was one of the wealthiest men in Madison County.
He also developed a reputation for dealing in cheap, sub-par parts. He was accused more than once of selling counterfeit parts and passing them off as genuine. When the failure of one almost killed one of his pilots, Cap’n Reb took the defective part over to Denton’s office complex. Thinking he was there to buy more parts, Denton unwittingly let him in. As he walked into Denton’s palatial office suite, the sleaze ball businessman rose from his chair to extend his hand. James never said a word. He simply slapped Denton across the face with the defective piece of metal, dropped it on the floor, turned, and walked out, leaving the bloody and howling man on his hands and knees, blood pouring from his mouth and nose and onto his fancy Persian carpet. Three of his front teeth lay below him. From henceforth, there would be distrust and loathing between him and the suspicious spacers in Huntsville.
“Senator Denton,” Tom, the middle-aged host continued. “You’re up for re-election and your campaign slogan is ‘A More Prosperous Sky.’ Now, you sit on the Senate Oversight Committee for Extra-Orbital Affairs, and you’ve been talking a lot of changes in the way things are done in the commercial aerospace industry.”
“Well, now Tom, you know … I believe no matter how far man reaches out into God’s universe, it all starts right here at home. We may live in an EZ with two of the biggest commercial spaceports, Von Braun and Canaveral … and Lake Lanier will be fully operational this year … but praise the Lord, we also still live in the South. And down here in the South, it’s all about good ol’ down-home, conservative values, hard work, and a belief in a higher power that makes us what we are.”
Tiger rolled his eyes. Boy, you’re spreading it on thick
