Read Pleasure My Lustful Heart: A Romance Novella for Free Online Page B

except for a tiny bathroom with a narrow door, built into one corner. Four bunk beds were pushed against a wall, and in the center of the room was a rustic wood table, with five mismatched chairs. “As someone once remarked: all the comforts of home.” Gregg said. “Electricity, genuine well water, fireplace, and an indoor john.”
    “This really is isolated,” I said. “This is the only cabin I see.”
    “There are more, down the road a little farther.  Dad bought up a big piece of the shoreline during the depression, when land was amazingly cheap. He didn’t have money left to build a real house here, so he put up this cabin, and said he’d build something bigger when he had more to spend. Somehow, he never got around to it.” He unloaded a cooler from the trunk of his car and brought it to the cabin. “Lunch,” he said. “We’ll come back here to eat. By noon we’ll want to get out of the sun for a while.”
    The boat was tied up to a dock on the lake.  Gregg hooked the hose from a red gas tank to the engine, loaded the fishing gear, and two seat cushions. “The seats in the boat get hard after the first hour,” he said. He held up what looked like a small candy box, only it wasn’t filled with candy. “Night crawlers. Worms. The bass love ‘ em. Don’t worry, I’ll bait the hook for you.”
    “Very generous, Mr. Monsell, but I’ll do it myself. Just show me how.”
    “It’s a deal,” he said.  He helped me into the boat, undid the lines to the dock, and tinkered for a moment with the outboard motor. Then he yanked the starter rope a few times, and the engine sputtered into life, then ran smoothly.  We swung around toward open water and motored smoothly out into Wiley Lake.
    There wasn’t a ripple on the water. The air was fresh and crisp. It smelled like orange blossoms and marigolds and freshly mown grass, all mixed together. It was glorious just to be there, gliding along, with only the sound of the motor intruding on the scene. I was sitting near the front of the boat, facing ahead. I turned to look at Gregg. He sat next to the motor, steering the boat. He was smiling at me. I smiled back.
    After a ten minute ride, he stopped the boat and lowered the anchor, a metal bucket filled with concrete, over the side. “This is where the big ones are,” he said. Then, “I hope.”
    “How do you know?” I said. “All the water looks the same from the top.”
    “Because I’m a wizard. I’ll call those big bass forth from the deep. They wait for me right here, you know. They’ll come to the surface, see it’s me, and jump into the boat.”
    More bluster from him, I thought, but in fun. “No, really.”
    “Oh, you want really? Why didn’t you say so? Here’s the truth, really. I’ve caught big bass right where we are now, about a hundred yards offshore, straight out from that big rock in the shallows there. The bottom drops off below us out here, and the fish head into the colder water when the weather gets hot.”
    “I’m impressed. How do you know all these things?”
    “A lifetime of study. Also, I’ve been fishing in this lake since I was a kid.”
    “What kind of kid were you, Gregg? I said.
    He baited his hook while I watched, impaling the worm, then winding it around the hook. “Interesting question. I was a holy terror. Snippy to adults, always spoiling for a fight with other kids. Not afraid of anything. My father died when I was eight, and my mother never disciplined me. I didn’t become a genuine human being till I got into high school. Played baseball. Ran track. Discovered that girls were different from boys.”
    I threaded a big, juicy worm on my hook the way Gregg had done. “I’m sure you know about your reputation around town,” I said.
    “As a bad boy, you mean? When I was younger I was proud of that. In my mind I was a big deal. All the kids thought I was some kind of stud.”
    “Were you?”
    “Not really. Let’s just say my reputation was more