When September Ends

by ANDREA SMITH

  His mouth curved slightly, giving me a smile, while his rich voice acknowledged me with a word, “Karlie.”

  I watched as his dark brown eyes flickered over me; and I sensed he approved of the clingy black dress I had chosen for this evening.

  He ran a hand through his wind-tousled dark hair, turning toward the staircase that led up to our rooms. He knew mine by heart.

  I followed him silently up the carpeted staircase as I always did, checking out his backside appreciatively.

  He worked out. That had been obvious to me the first time I had enjoyed his naked body against mine. His sinewy muscles had flexed powerfully as he fucked me from behind, the mirrored wall of my room capturing it in full definition. I was awestruck; totally turned on by watching this man fuck me raw. Hearing his breath catch in his throat, his eyes squeezed shut tightly and his hoarse moans as he emptied his climax into me.

  His sheathed cock had been mighty impressive as well. The thing about Nick that was so different from the other johns I fucked was that he actually cared about making sure I was pleasured. That was novel in this business.

  He also started paying for the entire night. He’d done that around the third time he’d visited Belle’s. That wasn’t common practice here, but hell, it was his $600 to spend any way he wanted.

  It wasn’t like he wanted to fuck all night either. I mean, we’d hit it two or three times, but then he’d pull me against him and we would sleep. Like a couple; like the way he probably slept with his wife back home, wherever that was.

  Yeah, I knew he was married because he didn’t bother removing his wedding band.

  Ever.

  What was the point? Most of the guys that visited Belle’s were married. A lot of them were miners who didn’t feel like driving to wherever their homes were. They stayed in the line shacks that the owners of the mines provided through the week, and then visited Belle’s for liquor and female companionship until they went home on the weekends.

  Nick was different. He wore expensive suits—probably had them custom made in London. But even his casual attire was obviously high end. His nails were neat and well manicured; his teeth were perfect. He never discussed what brought him to these parts for a week out of every month, but it was a welcome reprieve for me when he did, because he would spend his nights here.

  With me.

  He opened the door to my room, and I followed quietly behind him. Once inside, he tossed his jacket onto the chair and loosened his tie.

  “Here, let me,” I said, walking up to stand in front of him. My fingers finished loosening his tie and I removed it, tossing it on the chair with his jacket. He watched me through shuttered, thick lashes as I unbuttoned his shirt, helping him out of it.

  “I’ll get the rest,” he said, brushing my fingers aside as I started to unbuckle his leather belt. “Get yourself naked and on the bed,” he instructed, his brown eyes locked with my blue ones.

  I nodded, pulling my dress up and over my head, unhooking my front-clasped bra and letting it fall to the floor.

  Within moments we were on the bed, limbs tangled together, lips touching lips, and tongues swirling in matched rhythm.

  Nick rolled off of me onto his back, pulling me up onto his naked torso. I reached for the foil packet and sheathed his erection, lifting myself up and over him. His hands braced my hips, lowering me gently down onto his rigid cock.

  “Mmm,” I moaned with the pleasure of his fulfillment. “You feel so good, Nick,” I whispered as I moved up and down on him.

  I was totally getting caught up in the rhythm of our fucking, not prepared for what he said next.

  “I don’t want you fucking anyone else anymore.”

  I stopped mid-stroke, temporarily hauled out of my fuzzy fuck-pleasure by his words to see if he was actually serious. The look on his face said that he was.

  “Don’t stop,” he ordered, his hands once again bracing my hips as he rolled me back and forth, and up and down on his erection.

  My mind was in turmoil and, to be honest, I don’t remember anything after that until I heard him moaning my name as he finished. Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead, so I guessed we had been at it for a while.

  He lifted me off of him, tucking me under his arm protectively.

  “So we’re clear on that?” he asked, his tone very normal and authoritative.

  I looked up at him, my hands clenching the bed sheet under my chin. “No, Nick, I’m not clear on that. This is what I do. This is how I make a living. I mean, you get that, right?”

  He looked at me warily. “You no longer need to make a living like this. I don’t want you making a living like this. I have a better opportunity for you.”

  There was something in his tone; something that told me he’d given this some thought and that gave my interest level a shot in the ass.

  “I’m listening,” I replied softly.

  “I own several dog tracks, horse tracks and gambling establishments throughout West Virginia and a casino hotel in Atlantic City. I’m headquartered out of Camden, New Jersey, and I make my home in nearby Cherry Hill.”

  “Okkaay,” I replied, not sure where this was going. “So, you want me to go to work for you at a casino? A racetrack? A brothel?”

  He gave me a glare, which was so not like him to display facial expressions, with the exception of when he climaxed; then he was totally readable.

  “If I had a brothel in mind, I could simply leave your ass here in the sticks. No, I want you near me. Accessible.”

  “And how would I earn my keep?” I queried, knowing the answer before he gave it.

  He frowned, and for a moment, I actually believed I might’ve caught him off guard.

  But not for long.

  “By being…accessible. To me.”

  I sat up, still clutching the sheet against me.

  “So, you’re taking me away from all of this…debauchery? Only to become your private…whore?” I asked, my eyes flashing.

  At least they felt like they were flashing. I mean, I actually couldn’t know that for sure.

  I would’ve been less insulted if he’d asked me to be a window cashier at one of his tracks, or maybe on the housekeeping staff at his hotel/casino.

  He looked at me for a second, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

  “That’s not how I see you,” he replied. “Tell me that I couldn’t offer you more than…this?” he finished, his eyes glancing around my sparsely furnished room. “You’d never have to worry about what kind of…of fucking freak you were paid to service and what he might do to you. That has to count for something.”

  I looked into his dark brown eyes and I saw the truth. Don’t ask me why, but it was the truth. Every word of it made perfect sense to me. Why should I feel insulted?

  But still, in a way, I did because I knew I was capable of much more. The circumstances of my upbringing had led me to Belle’s nearly two years ago. I didn’t want to think about that now when Nick was so obviously waiting for my response.

  “Is your real name even Nick?” I asked directly.

  “Sort of,” he replied, a slight smile gracing his sensual mouth.

  “I don’t know anything about you except what you just now told me. I don’t know your last name or if I’m even permitted to know your last name. You’ve been coming to Belle’s for months now and you don’t share a thing with me…well, except for the obvious,” I replied, feeling a flush take over my face.

  I actually think I saw him smile genuinely for the first time ever. I don’t know what he found so amusing; it was all fairly confusing to me.

  “My last name is Castellano. I’m Dominic Castellano.”

  Holy Mother of Christ…

  Sneak Peek of “Past Tense Future Perfect”

  Anthology by Andrea Smith.

  This is sold as an e-book boxed set.

  Book #1 - Maybe Baby/Love My Way

  Excerpt

  I wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my han
d, capturing a stray lock of brown hair that had escaped from my ponytail. Angrily, I twisted it behind my ear as I had countless times today.

  Damn, it’s hot!

  It was only 2 p.m. and I had to endure two more hours in this sweltering stable. Sweeping my pitchfork the length of the stall, I studied the piles of manure and chunks of straw that reeked of horse urine, fantasizing about the cold shower that awaited me back at my cottage when my shift ended.

  Just then, Luke Winslow came into the stable leading Ariel, a gray dappled mare, down the aisle between the stalls. I noticed him taking off his wide-brimmed straw hat and wiping sweat from his brow with his forearm. Luke was tall, strawberry-blond, and leanly built.

  “Hey, Tylar, looks like you could use a beer about now,” he remarked, bringing Ariel to a halt outside the stall I was picking. I glanced in his direction briefly, keeping my focus on the straw. The college hands liked to party after hours.

  “Sounds tempting, Luke. All I can think about now is finishing up here and getting a cold shower back at my place. My shift ends at four.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Well, I get off at three. I got a keg at the cottage. Some of the others are coming over later. We’re going to have a bonfire. Why don’t you stop by? It’s Friday, you know!”

  “I’ll see, maybe. Is Jenna going to be there?”

  He smiled wickedly. “Sure thing. You know Jenna. She doesn’t miss a chance to party,” he winked.

  He flashed me a grin, pulling on Ariel’s halter and clicking his tongue as she finished her business. “It’s cottage number eight on the end,” he called out as he led the horse down to her stall. “Hope to see you later.”

  “We’ll see,” I called out after him.

  I was the new kid on staff, and among the youngest at age twenty, soon to turn twenty-one. The others had worked at Sinclair Stables on weekends and summers since high school. Most were in college and one was even in grad school; they came back to work summers to pay for college.

  I wasn’t a local, having been born and raised in Kentucky and now attended nearby Virginia Intermont College. My major was equine studies. My dream was to work with quarter horses and warm bloods in breeding science.

  My parents divorced when I was a baby; I’d never known my father. I knew that he had financially supported me over the years. I was using the trust he’d established to pay for college. It had become active when I turned eighteen.

  Mom was a part-time secretary at the law firm that handled my trust. She often came to me for help especially after the child support payments stopped. She couldn’t afford the lease payments any longer on her new Mustang; I’d given her my old Jeep. She’d bitched about how the Jeep wasn’t sexy like her ‘Stang had been.

  I’d attended a local college my freshman year, but living at home wasn’t working out well. I figured my being at home put a cramp in her style. At age forty-one, she still had the looks to land plenty of guys. I felt uncomfortable living with her after high school with the constant parade of men in her life. So, I transferred to Virginia Intermont my sophomore year and lived near campus in Bristol.

  A loud snort and whinny brought my attention back to the present. Derringer, the most beautiful black Lipizzaner I’d ever seen, was pawing the ground in the stall across from me. He was skittish and spirited and he intimidated most of the other help here. His temperament suggested he was missing something or someone.

  “Easy, boy,” I said quietly, unlatching the gate to his stall. I entered slowly; pulled a carrot from the back pocket of my jeans, and held my open palm out to him to take it. He snorted loudly, backing up two steps, eyeing me. Then he slowly lowered his large, beautiful head, and nuzzled my palm with his nose. Soon he was chomping happily as I rubbed his sleek, shiny neck.

  “Ahh, I get it. You want to walk don’t you boy? I don’t know,” I said, rubbing his mane. “It didn’t go so well last time, did it? You promise you’ll behave today if I take you out? You embarrassed the hell out of me the other day over at the Belle.”

  He whinnied, moving his hindquarters almost in a dancing motion. I had to giggle; he was a show-off, if nothing else. Perhaps he’d been trained in dressage. That would definitely explain his frustration with never being exercised with the other horses.

  “Okay,” I clicked my tongue as I led him out of the stables, “But remember your promise. No showing off for the pretty little fillies over at the Belle this time.”

  I led him out to the pasture and then over to the gate that opened to the trail leading over to the Sinclair plantation on the other side of the woods. The estate was called “La Vie Belle,” which meant “The Life Beautiful.” We all called it the Belle for short.

  In addition to their estate and stable, the Sinclair’s owned and operated a horse farm, a summer horse track, a winery, and a tourist attraction, which was an immaculately restored antebellum mansion. There was a turf racetrack where horseracing events were held on weekends during the summer months, attracting hundreds of tourists. The mansion and winery hosted tours all year round.

  Leading Derringer through the woods offered some relief from the sun and presented a more pleasant, slightly cooler atmosphere than the stable had for sure.

  “Hey, wanna go by the mansion and make fun of Jenna in her hoop skirt and prissy little bonnet?” I laughed.

  Jenna lived a few cabins down from mine; she worked at the Belle. She and Rodney were tour guides in the mansion, wearing period costumes of the Civil War era. Jenna, as a Southern belle, absolutely hated the hoop skirts, frilly undergarments, and button-up leather boots required. When she was in character, she wore her bleached blond hair in a tight bun, and no make-up.

  Rodney came from Mississippi. Along with helping Jenna, he also provided horse and buggy rides for the tourists. Rodney was a serious guy with a fun-loving side.

  I led the horse up the brick, half-circle drive in front of the colonial mansion. I saw Jenna in her floor-length hooped skirt with the layers of crinoline underneath to poof it out nicely. She had a frilly parasol opened and positioned over her head, tilted at an angle to shade her face from the sun while she was talking to some worker, I presumed.

  He was leaning up against one of the massive columns on the front veranda, muscular arms crossed in front of him as Jenna was peering up at him smiling and talking; she occasionally pointed over towards the brick smokehouse off to the side, fanning her face vigorously as if telling him of some problem.

  Ah, I bet she was bitching about the fumes whenever they roasted a pig over at the smokehouse. I’d heard her yapping about it the other day to Clint, complaining how it made her nauseous day after day having to breathe in the stench of roasting pork.

  I wondered how long she would’ve lasted shoveling horse shit. I continued leading the horse and noticed that Jenna had caught a glimpse of me and Derringer as we’d started up the stone driveway. It seemed that she was working even harder at trying to keep the guy’s attention. I could now see why.

  “Hottie tomattie,” I whispered. He looked a bit older than the usual college workers employed during the summers. Probably a local who worked full-time year round. He was around 6′3″, muscularly built with dark brown hair that was thick and tousled at the moment; he had a firm flat belly, and broad shoulders. He had a white tee shirt on that hugged his ripped abs in all the right places. It was my turn to fan myself and Jenna caught it. I heard her flirtatious giggle float down the drive as we closed in.

  “Well, well,” she called out, “I see you’re out with the beast again, Tylar! Ever going to get enough nerve to put a saddle on him and ride over?”

  I see Scarlett’s trying to impress ole Rhett here with her Southern charm.

  The guy turned his attention to me and Derringer; immediately a look crossed over his face that was not good. I was close enough now to see the color of his eyes and they were blue. No, that’s an understatement; they were more than blue, they were piercing sapphire blue and, at that very moment, they were an
extremely pissed off blue.

  He immediately excused himself from Jenna and jumped down from the porch, taking long, angry strides towards me and the horse.

  What the hell?

  As he reached us, he immediately looked me over top to bottom, then bottom to top, his hands now resting on his hips, standing in a half-slouch that was really, really hot, and I noticed his chin dimple.

  My first instinct was to flinch because beneath my faux street-smart demeanor, I’m actually quite passive and avoid confrontation whenever possible. The fact that Jenna was standing on the porch observing us and probably expecting me to hightail it out of there was just enough to spark a bit of courage in me so as to hang on to the faux cocky attitude I was trying to pull off.

  “Why do you have Derringer over here?” he asked abruptly.

  “I’m just taking him out for some exercise is all.”

  “What’s wrong with letting him out in the fenced pasture?” he pressed.

  “Well, there’s nothing wrong with it, I guess,” I faltered. “I mean, sometimes he just likes it when I lead him, you know, to different places for a change of scenery.”

  “I see,” he said, regarding me beneath his thick lashes, his anger dissipating somewhat.

  “I mean, if you’re worried I’m going to let him loose around the pigs or your smokehouse, you don’t have to worry about that; I keep his reins firmly in my grasp. I don’t allow him to wander without me.”

  “That’s good to know,” he replied tersely, his eyes flickering over the horse as if I’d allow some harm to come to him.

  What’s his deal?

  “So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take him over to the horse barns so he can visit with some of his buds,” I said, clicking my tongue to get him moving. Derringer didn’t budge.

  “Come on, boy,” I urged, tugging a bit harder on his lead rein, clicking my tongue again.

  Nothing.

  I saw a smile flicker over the guy’s face, a cheek dimple now appearing.

  “Yes, I see the control you have over the beast,” he said. “I can’t imagine that spirited animal would give you any problems at all.”