Ethan

I called a few moments before I pulled up at Denise’s house. It was smaller than most of the ones in town and I could tell that she had lived there awhile. It also told me without having to ask a thing, that she lived there alone. There wasn’t enough room for anyone else to actually live there with her. The place was downright tiny.

Knocking on the front door, even that looked puny when I stood next to it and I had to bend down a little bit to get through the threshold. I was only a few inches over six feet, so it wasn’t me, but this small place where she lived.

“Hey, come in for a minute. I have to finish getting dressed.”

I agreed and my eyes took in the woman. She was in a towel and her red hair was wet and dripping down her shoulders. No, no prude here. I would have categorized her a tease before a prude. She was gorgeous, but I had a feeling that she didn’t know how she looked in my eyes. There was no flirting in her or beguilement. She really just acted like she was oblivious to it all and I don’t know why I found that so irresistible.

Walking in, there was a candle burning in the corner of the room that smelled like flowers and the aroma was the first thing that I noticed. I had smelled it before when she would pass me in the restaurant. I’d thought that it was a perfume, but it must have been from being here. The place was even smaller on the inside, but every inch was used well. I wanted to ask her about it, but I didn’t know where she had gone. She was here one moment and gone the next.

I called out her name and she popped her head out from a canopy bed up top. It was a tall part of the house where she could stand up and she turned her back to me as the towel dropped. The top part was bare and I could see her smooth, milky white back, but nothing more. She already had some shorts on that I hadn’t even noticed before because the bottom hem wasn’t showing from underneath the towel.

The shirt was on and she was jumping down from the loft quickly. There was a ladder, but it was clear that it was Denise’s preferred way to get down.

“Sorry, I’m running a little late today. Molly took off with her old man and wasn’t answering her phone for a while. She does that a lot lately.”

Denise giggled a little to herself and I was too worried about what I’d seen and how she looked in front of me, more than I was worried about anything else. She didn’t look like she was ready to go hunting, but there was a case and a gun out, as well as a little backpack that I assumed had her life saving gear in it. She was not at all like any hunter that I’d ever seen before. Denise was a woman all her own.

“So are you ready?”

I sounded incredulous to my own ears because she looked like she was going to the beach or something, not deep in the woods to hunt a very spook-able animal. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her long legs. It was impossible not to.

“Yeah, I got everything I need. How about you?”

I felt a little silly with everything that I had on and was bringing with me. It was just normal gear, but I was far less comfortable because of the layers and extra bits.

“I’m good.”

“You got enough?”

Another smirk and I tried to ignore her. “We’re just going out back. It doesn’t have to be that far before you will start seeing tracks. I say that we can be out and back with something within an hour.”

That was a lot to say and I doubted that it would happen that way. I don’t know about Denise, but I didn’t have those kinds of days very often, certainly not enough that I would count on it. Was she going to smoke me out of the water? Should I give up now?

I dug in instead of giving up. I don’t know why, but I was sure that I was going to have to prove myself to her. She was not like most girls. I had heard story after story about her and no one said anything about her being easy. I’d heard rumors that she was gay, but I didn’t get that vibe off of her either. I was starting to think that everything assumed and heard about her wasn’t very accurate.

All I had heard was that Denise was the one in town that no one could resist. But at the same time, she didn’t give anyone there the time of day. For a small town, that news was perplexing because she was so pretty, I can’t see how no one was able to entice her. I wasn’t having any trouble getting that look of need in her eyes that would turn to action soon enough. I could see it evolving as we spent more time together.

“You’re sure of it?”

“Pretty much. I never have to be out long. I don’t like to hunt, not really at all, but I’ve had to on one or more occasions. Last winter my freezer went out while I was gone and the house was too warm. Lost everything so I had to do a lot of hunting, even though so many people sent me meat. There were some things missing that I wanted.”

“Well we will see. It usually takes me a lot longer.”

“If you would hurry up and do it, you wouldn’t have to walk around with all of this stuff on. I think you’re scaring them away.”

“I do okay.”

She grinned and held her hands up like she didn’t mean any harm. I didn’t like to be the butt of a joke and I knew then that I was going to have to win this little bet of mine. I thought about the other one I had made a couple of days ago. I was going to win that one too.