by ANDREA SMITH
I was not going to stay in this cottage by myself, not with this storm raging all around me. I tied my robe up with the belt, and felt for my flip flops just inside the door. I hurriedly slipped them on and went out onto the porch.
The storm was raging full force. I knew it was not safe to be out and about in an electrical storm. I could not figure out why all the other cottages had power except for mine. I had a sick feeling that my power lines had been cut. Who would do that? I could see down over the hill to the horse barn. It was fairly well lit. Perhaps Trey had been called down to the barn for some type of an emergency. Maybe something was going on with one of the horses. I needed to find Trey.
I ran from the porch into the thick of the pelting wind and rain. Lightning still flashed all around me. The thunder was deafening to my ears. I needed to get to the barn. I struggled against the wet wind. My nightwear was blowing out around me and getting soaked with rain. I knew that I would find an answer to all of this once I got to the barn.
It seemed to be taking forever to get there. I was running across the pasture. My flip flops were soaking up the water from puddles like two sponges. My feet felt heavy now. Some of the puddles held water that was ankle deep. The bottom of my robe was sopping wet.
How long had it been storming? There hadn't been a cloud in the sky earlier. I remembered the stars being out when I had returned from the track. They had guided me back to my cottage. Things could change in a moment’s notice. Nothing was predictable. I needed to find Trey; to make sure that he was safe from harm. I couldn’t understand why he had left my cottage. Something had to be terribly wrong.
I finally managed to make it to the horse barn. I was drenched, my robe and my long silk nightgown clung to my body. As warm as the weather was, my rain-soaked clothing made me chilly. I was shivering as I pulled the heavy door open and entered the stable.
Once inside, I stood there as rivulets of water dripped from my hair onto my face. I was frantic, looking around to see if Trey was inside.
The stalls were all empty. Where were all of the horses? They couldn’t have gotten out. The doors to the stable were closed. There was no way they could have left the barn with the doors shut, unless someone had deliberately let them out. My God, was Trey out there now, trying to get them rounded up and back into the barn?
I crept down the gangway, my soaked flip-flops were making a squeaky wet sound with every step. Every stall was empty. This had to have been done on purpose. There was no other possible explanation. Trey should have awakened me. He was going to need all the help he could get.
Just then, I heard a noise from behind me. It was Trey. Thank God! He was completely dry; I wasn't sure how he had managed to stay dry in all of this.
"Tylar," he said angrily, "What are you doing out in this storm? Look at you, you are soaked."
He grabbed one of the horse blankets that hung over the side of the stall. He handed it to me, instructing me to start drying myself off while he went to get a couple more. I did as I was told, noticing how soft the blanket felt against my wet skin, not rough like it usually did. He was back in an instant with several more blankets. He laid one out on a pile of straw over in the corner by the door to the tack room.
“Here,” he coaxed softly, “Come over here where it is softer, more comfortable."
I did as he instructed. He was right; the blanket he had on the straw was soft and warm. I sat down on it as my shivering made it difficult to stand.
“Here, Tylar, we have to get these wet clothes off of you. You will catch your death of cold.”
He left no room for argument, untying my robe, and removing it from me, then peeling my silk nightgown off, and finally my panties. He gave me a blanket to wrap myself in. I felt warm and safe once again. Trey moved closer to me rubbing my wrists to warm me up.
“How did it get so cold out?” I asked him. “You’re not even wet,” I commented.
He didn’t answer me; he just continued to rub the blanket against my skin to get my entire body dry and warm. Finally, it was. I stretched out on the blanketed straw. He gazed down at me with those gorgeous sapphire eyes and I knew that he wanted me. I knew that I wanted him.
The lightning and the thunder continued to rage outside, but it didn’t matter. I was dry, warm and safe with Trey.
I discarded the blanket that had been wrapped around me. I wanted Trey to see me as I was, all of me, good and bad. His eyes perused my body, every inch of it and I saw the hunger in his eyes.
“What are you thinking?” I asked him, shivering under his bold stare.
“I’m thinking how good it would feel to fuck you,” he said pointedly.
“What’s stopping you, then?” I asked him, taking my hand, and tracing it around my own nipple, enticingly.
I was so bold now. He moved to where I was reclined. He lowered himself down next to me. He reached over and pulled me up into his lap. My legs straddled each side of him, and he pulled my face toward his, until our lips met in a searing, hot kiss. He pushed me back, and put his mouth onto one of my breasts, roughly sucking it, and then moving on to the other. I could feel his erection beneath his jeans. I wanted to see what I was feeling. I put my hands on his erection, rubbing it against his jeans, feeling it getting larger and larger.
Suddenly, he stopped. He lifted me off of his lap and stood up.
“We can’t do this, Ty,” he said abruptly. I had never heard him call me ‘Ty’ before.
“Why not?” I asked, desperate to understand why he was rejecting me.
“I belong to someone else, Ty. It’s as simple as that.” He walked away from me.
I was consumed with humiliation and shame. What a spectacle I had made of myself. My God, how could I ever face him again? I was left there sitting on a blanket, totally naked and rejected. I didn’t think it could get any worse than this.
There was no way I was going to put those wet clothes back on. In fact, I never wanted to see those clothes again. I never wanted to see Trey again, or this place again.
I wrapped the blanket that was previously covering me around my entire body, tucking the end over in front like a bath towel to secure it somewhat. I found my soaked flip-flops and slipped them on. Rain or not, I was going back to my cottage and darkness or not, I was leaving this place.
I stumbled past the door to the tack room. There was a small window in the door, and I could see that Trey was not alone. Did I want to know who was in there with him? Did I want to know who he had left my cottage to meet? I couldn’t imagine that Charlotte was meeting him in the horse barn.
Hell yes, I wanted to see who it was. I barreled through the door. Trey looked back at me then turned his attention back to the woman standing there in front of him. It was not Charlotte. It was my mother! She looked over at me and smiled.
“Hey baby girl.”
“Mom?” I questioned. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Well, now what do you think, baby girl?” she purred. I noticed that she was wearing the pearl drop earrings along with the tear-drop pearl gold necklace. Trey knew all the time how those got into my cottage. He was in on it with her!
Mom looked at me as Trey stepped in front of her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling his handsome face down to hers. She kissed him, long and passionately.
“Pay attention, baby girl,” she instructed. “I’m going to show you something that you’ve never managed to learn after all of these years. I'm going to show you how to please
a man.”
She dropped to her knees in front of Trey. I heard the sound of his zipper being lowered. I saw my mom tug at him, and then heard her soft moans as she began her sensual rhythm of sucking and loving his beautiful penis.
“No!” I screamed. “Stop it, stop it now! Trey, for god sakes, can’t you see what she is doing? Why are you letting her use you to hurt me? Why? Why do you want to hurt me, Trey? I can do those things! I can be what she is!”
Trey’s face was suddenly rig
ht in front of mine. He looked angry. I had really pissed him off this time, I guess. Maybe he was still angry with me for being in the race. He started shaking me, roughly.
“I promise, I won’t ride anymore. Just stop, please, Trey, please just stop. . .”
“Tylar!” He was screaming now.
He had my face cupped in his hands. His hands were all wet as they gently rubbed my face. The room was light. The electricity had come back on. My window A/C unit was humming again, and the air was cool. There was no more lightning and thunder. The rain storm had stopped.
“Did the rain stop?” I asked. ‘Why are your hands wet?”
I realized then that my face had tears running down both cheeks. His hands were wet from my tears.
“Oh, God,” Trey gasped.
He looked so alarmed.
“Baby, you had me scared shitless!”
He was beside me on the bed, pulling me out from under my covers, onto his lap. He was cradling me on his lap, rocking back and forth.
“What did she do to you, Tylar? Tell me for the love of God, what did she do to you?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I awoke and saw the sun streaming in through my bedroom window. My window A/C was still humming. I stretched languidly and realized that Trey’s arm was wrapped around my waist from behind. Apparently he had slept next to me all night and we had been “spooning” as near as I could tell.
Then I remembered the turmoil and confusion of the night before. It was difficult for me to discern what part of the previous night was fiction and what part was real. I knew that Trey being with me now was the blessed reality. The whole thing with my mom was part of yet another nightmare it seemed in a string of many. I glanced over to my dresser and the two blue velvet boxes were still there, quite real. My nightmare could not explain that away.
I gently rolled over, careful not to wake Trey. I wanted to watch him in all his gorgeousness and try to remember pieces of the night before. We discussed it briefly before I finally fell asleep. As it turned out, there had been no storm that was part of the nightmare. Of course, there had been no electrical outage, no trip to the barn, no my getting naked, though Trey said that he would have liked it if that part was true (cad). The stuff with my mom, well I was too embarrassed to fill Trey in on the specifics no matter how much he had pressed me. I was too ashamed, too embarrassed. The horses were all fine. The reality of the blue velvet boxes was not part of the nightmare. That puzzle still required solving.
As I watched Trey, sleep, I was amazed that this beautiful man cared about me. I could not figure why. I was not sure of his motivation; I was not trusting of him entirely.
My mom had always drilled it in to me that men simply weren’t to be trusted. My mom had once told me that she had held on to her virginity until her wedding night with my dad. She had confided to me that I was conceived the very first time she had marital relations.
She explained that was the reason she was fanatical about practicing safe sex. She claimed my father had lost interest in her after I was born and went elsewhere for romance.
Trey’s hair was mussed from sleep, and probably from running his hands through it a million times last night as he was trying to make sense of what was going on with me. He wanted answers that I couldn’t give him. He promised we would talk today, once we rested and cleared our heads. I reached my hand up and brushed some hair back off of his brow. I leaned in to him, gently kissing his forehead. He stirred feelings in me that I had never known. They were confusing at times. For right now, I wanted to pamper him for some reason. I wanted to let him sleep and make a nice breakfast for him.
I exited noiselessly from the bed, and slipped into my robe and slippers. I quietly opened the bedroom door and went out to the kitchenette, shutting the door softly behind me. I put the coffee on. It’s something that I only had occasionally, but I figured Trey to be a coffee drinker. I checked the fridge and got out the carton of eggs, milk, and cheese. I checked the cupboard and I found a small can of mushrooms that I opened and drained. I grabbed a bowl and the wire whisk and whipped up the eggs with milk, cheese and mushrooms for omelets. I could hear Trey stirring in the bedroom. It sounded as if he had gone into the bathroom so I started the heat under the omelet pan. I had no point of reference as to how long men take in the bathroom, but I figured it was a shorter time span that it was for women.
I poured the omelet mixture into the heated pan to cook. I pulled a couple of slices of bread out and put them in the toaster. I had set two places at the breakfast bar. I heard the toilet flush in the bathroom. Trey would be making his entrance soon. I pulled two coffee mugs from the cupboard along with two juice glasses. I had finished cooking the omelets and was buttering the toast when Trey emerged.
I had to chuckle when I saw that he was wearing my older shabby blue bathrobe. It was pretty tight on him. The sleeves went only to just below his elbows.
“You look nice this morning,” I greeted him cheerily. He cocked one eyebrow, scratching the back of his head and immediately grumbled for coffee. I saw my man was not a morning person.
“Sit down,” I instructed, and got the coffee pot, filling one of the mugs. “Cream or sugar?” I asked sweetly.
“Black is fine, baby,” he said, yawning, as I handed him the filled mug.
He took a sip of coffee and then another. I handed him a plate with toast and an omelet and sat down next to him with my plate.
“This looks great, Tylar,” he said as he started digging in, “Umm . . . it is good.”
“I’m glad you like it,” I said.
I poured some coffee into my mug, adding some sugar and milk. Coffee would help today after having had such a restless night. We ate in silence for a few minutes, but invariably I knew he was going to start pressing me about my dreams. I was pleasantly surprised when the first thing out of his mouth had nothing to do with my dreams.
“What do you have planned for today, Tylar?” he asked, looking up from his plate, chewing thoughtfully.
(Falling in love with you…)
“I really hadn’t planned anything. Just playing it by ear I guess.”
“Do you want to take Derringer out for a ride?”
I was shocked. What happened to ‘nobody mounts my horse but me?’ I wasn’t about to throw that up to him now.
“Well, sure, you mean together?”
He frowned at me.
“Well, that kind of was the idea. I mean if you want to start exercising him in the arena, you need to get used to him. He’s used to me, so I thought maybe we would ride him together. If you have no other plans that is.”
“It sounds great to me. When do you want to do this?”
He glanced down at his Rolex.
“I’ve got to get back to my house, clean up, and handle a few emails. Let’s meet at the stables in a couple of hours. How about noon?”
“It’s a date,” I answered, smiling.
He leaned over the breakfast bar and gave me a kiss, it ended too soon, damn it. Something had changed so drastically between us just overnight and I was trying to figure out what. I felt almost giddy, but it wasn’t as if we had crossed over any major threshold. I did not want to over analyze it at this point. I simply wanted to go with the flow.
We finished up with our breakfast. Trey did the dishes, while I made the bed and folded up the blankets from the couch. He gave me another quick kiss on his way out, and said he would see me around noon at the stables.
I got busy with my hair and make-up. I searched my closet and dresser until I finally located the pair of really tight jeans I liked for riding. I pulled them on noticing they weren’t as tight as they had been before my accident.
I rifled through my dresser drawer finding my favorite top, a lavender spaghetti-strapped cotton camisole. It had a built in shelf bra so I wouldn’t be bouncing all over the place while we rode. I pulled my paddock boots on up over my jeans. I brushed my teeth, gargled, and put some tinted lip gloss on. I surveyed myself i
n the mirror. I had no clue why I was fussing so much about how I looked. It was only a riding date for gosh sake, not an evening at the Metropolitan Opera.
It was just past 11:30 so I went ahead and left to go down to the barn, making absolutely sure that my cottage was locked up tight. It felt kind of creepy in there now since I knew that someone had been in there. Someone from my past.
I let myself into the barn and all was well and normal. There was nothing at all reminiscent of last night’s nightmare. I breathed a sigh of relief. I ventured into the tack room; once again, everything was just as it should be. No evil mom lurking around. I had allowed myself to become very paranoid. Something needed to be done about that. I would not allow myself to go there. I had a feeling that this was going to be a topic of discussion today with Trey. He was fairly adamant after last night that somehow we would find the answers together.
That was the part that I liked best. He wasn’t scared off by my fucked-upness. I grabbed my hunt cap and riding gloves out of my locker. I heard someone out in the paddock area. Peeking out the tack room door, I was relieved to see it was Trey; I was more skittish these days than any horse in the stable.
My stomach had butterflies as I watched Trey get Derringer saddled up. He knew what he was doing. He had put an all-purpose saddle on Derringer for today. It made sense being that he wanted the Lipizzaner to get accustomed to me riding him. I was not worried that it would take long. Trey was dressed impeccably in English rider garb. He was wearing a white linen shirt, with fawn colored breeches that clung to his well muscled thighs and tight buttocks (yum…..).
His tall leather boots were immaculately polished. He had waived the traditional fitted jacket for today, it was quite warm and after all, it was pleasure riding, not competition. I was already taking much pleasure watching his sinewy moves as he readied the horse.
He put his riding gloves on after he finished with Derringer, adjusting the reins a couple of times to make sure the contact was gentle. I knew the trek wouldn’t be a long distance from the stable since we were double mounting the horse.