Page 85 of Down and Dirty

“Gone, gone, gone,” he said. And he meant it, too. For some reason, Britta had stuck in his craw for the last two years, probably because she hadn’t given in to him. Then the last few weeks, after she had given in to him, he’d convinced himself it was something more than lust. Well, he was over her now. And, to be fair, she was over him, too, as evidenced by her telling him more than once in recent days to “Begone!” Usually after some particularly brutal rotation in WEALS, which she was taking personally.

“Who’s watchin’ the kid?” Sly asked.

“My brother, Danny, again. He’s building up brother points.”

“And he doesn’t mind you being gone?” Omar asked, rubbing the shin that Sammy had bruised a few weeks ago.

“Hah! You know what he told me to do tonight? To go boink Britta till her eyeballs rolled.”

A bunch of the guys, overhearing, laughed. They got a kick out of Sammy’s antics. He did, too. Sometimes.

“So, why aintcha takin’ Sammy’s advice, mon coeur? About Britta, I mean?” Cage was staring at him as if he saw something that Zach didn’t realize was apparent.

“Number one, Britta won’t have me. Number two, so the hell what? Number three, out of sight, out of mind. Number four… ” Glancing at Linda who was still talking with JAM, he shrugged. “Enough said!”

“Number five, bullshit!” Cage laughed, not buying his story at all.

The waitress showed up then. Not Bawdy Maudy, but an older woman he didn’t recognize. He ordered another Sam Adams, and Linda ordered another Double VO. Yee-haw! No longer talking with JAM, she placed her hand on his thigh, high up, licked those tempting red lips, and began to suck the salt off a stick pretzel she picked up from a basket on the table.

Seven sets of eyes observed intently.

Life is good… or about to get good, he thought.

Until he saw who was entering the tavern.

Looking for fresh meat… uh, men…

The Wet and Wild was an eating and drinking establishment that had an odd showering device just inside its front door. Women who were willing to have their sherts showered went in free.

When an explanation was given to Britta for this odd practice, she exclaimed, “Men! They are e’er the same, drooling over a woman’s udders. Would any right-minded lady e’er suggest wetting down a man’s breeches to ogle his manparts?”

“Men would jump at the chance,” Terri pointed out, and they all agreed.

“I’d have to be half-blitzed before I’d go in here with a wet T-shirt,” Donita said.

“I doan know,” Marie mused. “Depends on who I’m tryin’ ta impress.”

Britta and her friends chose to pay the entry charge.

It was hard to hear each other speak over the loud music and hum of conversation, clinking of glasses, and laughter.

Immediately, they were accosted by men offering them drinks and places to sit at their tables, or requesting that they dance with them. One particularly persistent fellow identified himself as Dill-land Overdorf, a Navy pilot. That was a person who steered those metal objects flying across the skies. He wore a wide-brimmed hat similar to the one Cage wore betimes… a cow hat for boys, she thought it was called, although Dill-land was far from a boyling. He wore carved leather boots with heels and a belt with a large brass buckle. He pressed a glass of mead into her hand and remarked on how good she smelled.

“Fruit or flower?” she asked, sipping at her mead.

“Uh… flower?”

“Ah, my armpits.” She raised an arm so he could get a whiff of the floral scent.

At first, the guy seemed surprised by her action, but then he grinned, “That would be the one. Hey, I love a gal with a sense of humor.”

Britta gave him another look. He was tall and lean with dark hair and eyes and a most alluring dimple at one side of his mouth. He really was an attractive man. Not as pretty as Zachary, but then no man was.

“Are you Navy, darlin’?” he asked.

“WEALS.”

“Ah.”