”“Maybe ... Darren -- are you happy with Stephanie?”“Are you happy with Rob?”“I asked you first.” Darren continued to gaze into her eyes... “All right,” she said, “I’ll answer first. I think I’ve been over Rob for at least a couple of years. Recently has been more ... tense ... ever since I started with Walnut Street. Lately he’s been drinking.”“Excessively?”She nodded. “Alcohol loosens his tongue, too ... only what comes out is hurtful. He makes an angry drunk, Darren, and a mean one. Then in. “Amelia Winters, you’re a very independent-minded young woman and I don’t really think you worry much about what the other girls think of you. But even if they do make fun of you, I bet most of them will be envious. Aren’t most of the porn actresses watched by the boys at school clean shaven?”“I guess,” said Mel, her downcast expression showing she wasn’t totally convinced.“I even shave myself, as you saw earlier.”“I wasn’t sure,” admitted Mel. “Many of the boys I do stuff with have little or. They spent the entire weekend in various stages of debauchery, enjoying each others bodies and the new toys she had purchased. It had been just what she needed: her boyfriend to “reclaim” her body after the slutty, secret thing she had done. Since they had started experimenting with swinging several weeks earlier this had been a ritual of theirs at the end of the previous two nights of "explorations." Leman would take her in every way that she had been taken by the other men. Taking back what. She would match him blade to blade.Rebecca began to chuckle out loud, then caught herself short. This was, after all, a library. But the realization of what she had done sparked hysteria in her that she could scarcely contain. She had neutralized his most deadly weapon against her. The memory of the knife coming to her hand in the clinic burst on her. It jumped to her command involuntarily. It would probably do no good against any other assailant, but Ryan McGuire triggered the response and she.