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Her bald head glistened. Damn it was hot. It was hotter than the blue and white flame that comes out of those cool windless lighters. Adelaide's stilettos clicked as she descended the stairs of her three-story walk-up, athletic legs on grand display beneath her impeccable Dior mini dress. She carried her wig box. Long and blonde was what she'd chosen for this day, she would become another person when she reached the ladies room of the hotel. A convention of Swedish proctologists was in town, and though she found their conversation as dull as a knife that is no longer sharp, she also knew from experience they were selfless when it came to sex. And they tended to be big spenders.

Unaware that her life was about to change forever, she reached the landing, extended one perfectly manicured hand towards the door and was knocked on her keester as it burst open like those wooden gates in a rodeo when the bull shoots out to chase the guy dressed as a clown.

"Shit!" she thought, "Proctologists can't abide a bruised ass".

But the vexation was wiped away when she realized a stranger was hovering over her, his form backlit by the July sun. His face was in shadow, but his hump was in perfect silhouette. A hunchback. And an extremely short one at that. A hunchback with such a large hump that it loomed higher than his head, much like woman's breasts if she was laying on her back and one was larger that the other. Adelaide was repulsed, sickened, grossed out even. But then he spoke.

"I'm terribly sorry. Are you hurt?"

His voice was a rumbling baritone so sexy it made her swoon. How was it possible that this voice was coming from such a creature? And how was it possible that she could be so repulsed, and yet so turned on, at the same time?