HOUND

xx

"Come over when you feel better, Mr. Hound." The voice on the other line had giggled. "I want to try something new. A new type of--poetry."

The invitation had revitalized Jack and given him a new drive to become well. Instead of the prescribed 14 days, he found himself free of the flu in just 11.

He had to look at his student files to find her address, but soon set up a date when her family would be out of town.

She lived in the wealthier part of the neighborhood, of course, and her house had several Greek-like statues of cherubs and Aphrodite decorating the startling green lawn.

He knocks on the door, and she answers it right away.

She is in a pair of denim shorts, tight with little scuffed holes, and a cropped pink tank top. Jack frowns. The look doesn't suit her personality, he thinks. She shouldn't show off her body like that anyway, she shouldn't dress like a slut.

"Where's your uniform?" He asks.

She laughs nervously. Where was the confident seductress from the hallways of the Catholic school? The one who blasphemed the Pope and the Holy Virgin Mary by stuffing her underwear with stolen rosemaries?

"I don't wear that at home." She looks at him strangely, and he blushes. Did she think he was weird? Would she tell him to go away?

She grins, all awkwardness fading. Grabbing his hand, she yanks him through her house and up the staircase and into her room. He takes a moment to look around.

The first thing he notices is the bed. Surprisingly to him, it's not the crimson red silk he expected. Instead it's cotton-candy pink with little unicorns dancing across it. The books that line her shelves are mostly children and youth literature, nothing of incredible literary merit. There are random girly trinkets scattered across the room, and posters of boy bands on the wall.

It's not what he expected.

In fact, it almost feels wrong.

But when she tears off his clothes and her own, kissing him with a lustful passion--things feel a little less wrong a little more right.