Chapter 1

"Ooh, Gianni, you are soooo wonderful.... Oh, baby, yes, yes, yes!"

"Hey, baby, I can say the same for you. You have the most delicious body. I want to kiss, and then lick, every bit of flesh."

"Ooh, ah, oooh, Gianni darling! Put that big boy inside of me! Do it, do it, do it now!"

Erica Ivonne Rael closed her book, leaned back against the headboard, and checked the clock on her nightstand. Oh, yes. Just like clockwork. At least her upstairs neighbor kept on schedule. The women in his bed might change, but the time and the pillow talk remained constant.

Not that Erica would complain. After all, the upstairs condo owner had a right to entertain. He never played loud music or raised his voice enough to consider it shouting. He didn't stomp his feet or move heavy furniture. The problem lay in the vent for the centralized heating system. The duct ran from Erica's bedroom wall and up and over to Mr. Gianni Sloan's master boudoir. Of course, she really couldn't hear much at all unless she really concentrated on listening. With the stereo or the television on in the bedroom, she heard nothing at all. So why did it annoy her so much?

Erica did not consider herself a snoop, a voyeur, or a busy body-far from it! She had far too much on her personal plate to worry about other people's lives, or love lives as the case may be. So, she didn't have a steady man in her life right now. She had Tepeyol, her temperamental but loving black and white cat who enjoyed sitting on the foot of her bed as he did at present. As far as dating anyone... Well, Erica had decided to give up the dating scene for the moment. Despite what those matchmaking sites claimed as success rates, she had two very disappointing blind dates before she decided to call it quits with trying to find Mr. Right over the Internet.

Perhaps, Mr. Gianni Sloan from No. 5C irritated Erica so much because he seemed the ultimate poster boy for the playboy types out in singles land who thought their come-on lines were so suave that women ate up every word they uttered. Obviously, many did, if the onslaught of feminine company upstairs proved indicative of his conquests.

Not that Erica kept a tally, but so far she'd counted twenty-five different female voices in the past two months. Always good in math, she figured Mr. Gianni Sloan copulated with three-point-one females every week. That is different women. And as far as she could distinguish, each new conquest would eventually come around again in the next cycle. Thus, in four months time, Mr. Sloan seduced and recycled fifty women. Not even the Miami Dolphins managed to score such an impressive record in any one season.

Tuning her stereo to a jazz station, Erica turned it up just enough to cover the kissy-coo noises. Thankfully, her upstairs lady killer had wall-to-wall carpeting, or she might have born witness to a whole lot of shaking and quaking going on once Mr. Stud really got started under or over the sheets. In the six months since Gianni Sloan had moved in, Erica had yet to meet this God's Gift to Women face-to-face. Not that she wanted to go looking for this lounge lizard, but he did have her imagining what he looked like, even what kind of sheets he preferred-one hundred percent cotton or maybe black satin?

Sometimes, while in the elevator or even in the laundry room, she wondered if the man in the suit standing next to her, or the one doing his underwear two washers down, could actually be him. Erica knew his name from the elegant script across his post office box in the lobby, and though she sometimes lingered as she fetched her own mail, she had yet to catch a glimpse of her upstairs neighbor. Of course, the way his female conquests took his name in vain as they screamed in bloody passion only reinforced his status as a professional Lothario in her mind. Now if she wanted to do a bit of digging, Erica could probably come up with a tenant or two who knew something about the real Gianni Sloan. That was if she really wanted to find out more.

When a strident meow came from the other end of the bed, Erica offered her apologies to Tepe for accidentally hitting him with her foot. Stretching, she reached for her book and for him.

"You poor baby." She stroked his soft fur. "I know I had you fixed, but you don't want to go around boinking all the girl kitties every night like that tomcat upstairs, do you?" Tepe answered with a firm purr and a chin nuzzle before jumping out of her arms. Erica took up her book.

Another Wednesday night, another journey into the romantic sexcapades of a Clarise Lamour novel. At least the cries of ecstasy from Gianni and his love interest had wafted away with the strains of a jazz quartet. Now, all she had to do was read about a magical night in the embrace of a fabulous, mythical hunk. Glancing at her nightstand, Erica sighed. She always had her trusty vibrator.