by Nan Ryan
“Darling, we can’t, not here,” Claire murmured, heart racing. “The stable boy…”
“Sound asleep. He won’t wake up,” Hank said, not caring if it was true. He was already frantically raising Claire’s skirts.
“But the stallion,” Claire warned. “Will he—?”
The sentence was never finished. Hank’s lips covered hers, conquered hers. His tongue delving deep into her mouth, Hank held her with one encircling arm and managed to get his hand up under her dress and inside her satin underwear.
She sighed into his mouth as he touched her, teased her, readied her to receive him. He abruptly ended the kiss, lifted his head, and maneuvered her to the far back corner of the shadowy stall where the floor was strewn with loose hay. He released her, yanked his shirttails out of his trousers and furiously unbuttoned his shirt, dropping it on the hay. Claire eagerly followed his lead. Anxiously they undressed, eager to be naked.
In a matter of seconds they came into each other’s arms and kissed and embraced, unmindful of the agitated horse attempting to bite his master’s bare shoulder. Shrugging off the stallion’s halfhearted attempts to inflict pain, Hank sank to his knees, taking Claire with him.
There in the straw, they knelt on their spread clothes, holding each other, continuing to kiss until they were out of breath and their hearts were racing in their naked breasts. Upset and excited, the colt nickered and paced back and forth in the small enclosure, his sharp hooves barely missing the pair kneeling on the hay.
“Hank, we’re torturing the poor stallion,” Claire murmured in Hank’s ear as she glanced up at the huge black colt.
“Better him than us,” Hank replied, too aroused to concern himself with Black Satin’s distress.
He eased Claire over onto her back and, with a well-placed knee, urged her legs apart. He came between her legs and immediately entered her, certain of the level of her arousal. Claire exhaled as he slid into her, his erection rock hard and huge.
“Ahhh,” she gasped, suddenly unsure if her body could accommodate him.
“Take it all, baby,” he entreated, his hands going to the insides of her thighs, raising her knees, pressing her legs wide apart. Bent on opening her fully, his need to fill her completely spurred him on.
Claire loved it.
Never had they been more intimate. Never had Hank been more totally hers. She could feel him thrusting and throbbing inside her, greedily possessing her, taking her with a primitive hunger that was both frightening and thrilling. And she, led by innate passion and determined to make him hers, skillfully used the muscles of her young, firm body to squeeze and hold and give him exquisite sexual pleasure.
“Baby,” Hank gasped, his eyes closed, perspiration glistening on his chest. “Sweet, so sweet.”
A secret little smile playing at her lips, Claire clung to his biceps and rocked with him. Giving. Taking. Making hot, uninhibited love. She was as primal as he, as wild in her quest for sexual nirvana. Glorying in the joy of their total surrender to each other, Claire lay there on the hay, accepting each hard driving thrust from her randy rutting lover. Tilting her pelvis up to accept the rhythmic strokes, she bit her lip, turned her head, and caught sight of the black stallion rearing up, agitated.
She saw what Hank had observed earlier.
The big beast was aroused, ready to mount a mare. She should have felt sorry for the poor stimulated creature. Or repulsed by the frightening sight. But caught up in the throes of consuming carnal lust as she was, she found the shocking spectacle exciting.
It was incredibly thrilling to have the big aroused stallion just a few short feet away while she and Hank made love beneath him on the hay. It struck her that this big lusty lover pumping furiously into her was every inch as much the well-hung stallion as the black colt. The way Hank filled and stretched her, his was surely as huge as the stallion’s.
It was one of those shameful secret thoughts that made Claire blush with guilt while triggering her coming climax.
Somewhere in her foggy brain Claire knew that what they were doing was unforgivably rash. Perhaps even dangerous. Should the stallion bring those sharp hooves on Hank’s back it could harm them both.
So be it.
She couldn’t stop.
With Hank loving her with complete abandon, Claire clung to him and thought she might die of an ecstasy so intense she was nearing sexual hysteria. With her arms and legs wrapped around Hank and the pungent scent of horses and hay and sweat and sex assaulting her senses, Claire found heaven.
She began to sob Hank’s name.
His mouth quickly silenced her. While he kissed her she exploded in wrenching orgasm, frantically clasping him to her, her mouth, her body, her very soul laid open wide to him.
When finally the wondrous shared climax ended, Hank tiredly collapsed atop Claire.
“Black Satin?” came a boyish, sleepy voice from very near, “Is that you making all that racket? Somebody in there with you?”
“Stay where you are, Theo. It’s Hank,” Hank called out, then put his finger perpendicular to his lips, silently telling Charmaine to remain quiet. “You go on back to sleep.”
“Satin okay? He was putting up an awful racket. Woke me up.”
“I know, but he’s fine now,” Hank assured, jumping up and reaching for his clothes. “Just a little nervous. Nothing to worry about.”
“Want me to come on in there—”
“No. Thanks, but it’s not necessary.”
“Okay, then.” A pause, and the boy said softly, “Mistah Hank?”
“Yes, Theo?” Frowning, Hank had one foot in his pants leg while Claire cringed in the corner with her clothes pressed to her body.
“You ain’t mad at me for sleeping on the job?”
Hank grinned. Thank God you were. “No, not at all.”
Twenty-Four
Overnight they became friends.
Good friends.
They met at the roulette table, but Olivia Sutton and Fox Connor soon found that they had a great deal more in common than just their love of wagering.
Accepting Olivia’s invitation to come to the estate and share a quiet supper, Fox stayed past midnight. Comfortable with each other, genuinely liking one another, they talked and joshed and laughed like a couple of youngsters, enjoying themselves immensely. They shared a like sense of humor, slightly acerbic. What one found amusing tickled the other.
Near the end of the evening as the pair sat on the white lace settee out in the garden, the easy, inconsequential conversation took a more reflective turn when Olivia casually said, “You know, Fox, all evening we’ve talked about everything under the sun, except each other. I like you very much, but I know so little about you. Other than the fact that you are Hank’s Thoroughbred trainer from Kentucky and his dearest friend. And, that you’re entertaining company.”
“Why, thank you, Olivia,” he said. “May I return the compliment?”
Not to be deterred, she prompted, “Tell me about yourself. About your family, your wife and—”
“I have no wife, no children,” he said in a casual, matter-of-fact manner. After a brief pause, somewhat wistfully he added, “The truth is I never married because the woman I loved wed somebody else.”
“Oh, Fox, I’m sorry, I—”
“Don’t be. It was a long, long time ago. My young, shattered heart has long since healed.” He smiled easily then and told her, “I’m perfectly content, my dear. I love Hank as if he were my own son. I enjoy what I do and I’m good at it. I have a most satisfying life, thanks to Hank.”
“You’ve been together a good while, I take it.”
With an affirmative nod, Fox said, “I’ve known Hank Cassidy since he was a boy. From the start we shared a love of fine horses.” Fox laughed and told her, “Back then I worked on a ranch in Nevada and Hank, well, bless his heart, didn’t even own a pony. Had to walk everywhere he went. But I’d see him in town on Saturdays and take him out to the spread so he could pet and feed
and ride the horses. He loved it. He’d say—blue eyes sparkling in that innocent young face— ‘one day, Mr. Connor, I’m going to have a horse of my very own!’”
Touched, Olivia said, “And now he owns lots of horses.”
“That he does,” Fox said, smiling at the recollection, then continued. “We’re family, Hank and I. I’m all the family he has. Hank was an only child. His mother died giving birth to him. His father was killed in a mining explosion when Hank was seventeen. Hank grew up fast and he…” His voice became so soft that Olivia had to strain to hear. Fox spoke with pride and great affection about the successful young man he loved more than his own life. He conceded that Hank had his faults and that many a disappointed young lady had cried to her mother that Hank had no heart, but he knew better.
Hank had a heart as big as the state of Nevada and was kind and generous to a fault. He genuinely cared about his employees as few mine owners did and he never forgot a man who worked for him. Or, the man’s family. Concealing his good deeds as others hid their blackest sins, Hank quietly financially took care of many a downtrodden family.
Olivia nodded and listened and noted that the articulate Fox Connor was telling her about Hank Cassidy, but saying little about himself. She didn’t press him. She was, in fact, learning a great deal about Fox from listening to him speak so fondly of Hank.
“…and then a dozen years ago Hank bought the Greenway Horse Farm and asked if I’d run the operation for him. I agreed to give it a try. I left Nevada and I’ve lived in Kentucky ever since,” Fox concluded. Then he shook his head and said, “Listen to me, I’ve talked your arm off about myself. What about you, Olivia? Is there a Mr. Sutton and perhaps some beautiful grandchildren back in London?”
“No. No, there’s not. I never married, either.”
“Well, now I can’t believe that,” Fox said, truly surprised. “There must have been—”
“Yes,” she interrupted, “there was…somebody.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Oh, I can hardly remember—”
“Yes, you can.”
Olivia was silent for a moment, then said; “Yes. Yes, I can. He was…” Olivia began to talk about the unforgettable man she had loved. Smiling as she spoke about him, she recalled with vivid clarity exactly how he looked, how he moved, how he sounded when he spoke her name.
“And you were swept away.”
“Mmm. A foolish virgin I was…well foolish, anyway,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh. Fox laughed, too.
When their laughter subsided, Olivia’s mood turned somber and she exhaled wearily. Gazing out into the lush, darkened gardens she told her avid listener that the only man she had ever loved was killed in a boating accident before he could marry her and give a name to the child she was expecting.
Olivia fell silent once more.
Fox waited. Said nothing.
When she spoke again Olivia told him that her beautiful daughter, the light of her life, had died at age eleven.
“Oh, my dear, I’m so terribly sorry,” Fox sympathized. He lifted an arm and put it around her thin shoulders in a purely comforting gesture. “A childhood disease?”
“Yes,” Olivia said with unmasked bitterness. “Malnutrition.”
Fox frowned, horrified, but did not comment. He just patted her shoulder soothingly. He didn’t prompt or pry, but waited for her to explain if she chose to do so.
She didn’t.
Olivia stopped short of revealing anything more and wished she could take back what she had said. Due to the circumstances—the ruse she and Claire had concocted—she couldn’t dare tell Fox the whole truth. Couldn’t reveal how, alone and with a child to support, she had quickly fallen on hard times. Nor could she declare that while Great Britain was the most powerful nation on earth and the richest, scullery maids still started at sixty dollars a year.
And even those positions were hard to come by since more than twelve million people—including her and her child—were constantly hungry and on the verge of starvation. She couldn’t confess that she had stolen to feed her sickly child. Or that the frail little girl had perished when she, Olivia, had been nabbed stealing fruit from a street stand and thrown in jail. Couldn’t weep and burden this kind man with how she’d lost her will to live after losing her daughter, how she had survived on the mean streets as best she could until her petty thievery had finally landed her in the infamous Newgate prison.
She couldn’t tell him that she had languished in Newgate for many years until the summer evening when an elegant young woman with golden hair had ended up in that terrible hellhole. How she had managed to save Claire from a brutal attack by a pack of murderous inmates and in so doing had altered her own fate.
“…and since she was well aware of my credentials,” Olivia said, carefully sticking to the story she and Claire had contrived, “the Duchess of Beaumont asked if I would accompany her to America.” Olivia lifted her shoulders, smiled and said, “And here I am.”
“And I’m glad you are,” said Fox.
Twenty-Five
In a roomy, specially built one-seated surrey with fringe on top that was drawn by a pair of high-stepping matched bays, Hank and Claire rode down traffic-clogged Broadway. The rush to the Saratoga racetrack had already begun, although it was a full hour and a half until the eleven-thirty post time.
Like the rest of the fashionable turf set, Hank and Claire preferred arriving at the track early. It was pleasurable to drink their morning coffee and juice and then leisurely enjoy a sumptuous brunch while they studied the day’s racing program.
The genuine Duchess of Beaumont—so Caroline Whit had peevishly reminded Claire—had never attended the races with her late husband, the duke, when they visited the Springs. So heads always turned when Claire showed up each morning on Hank’s arm. Race enthusiasts mused that judging from the way the duchess studied the form and focused her binoculars on the field and loudly cheered for Hank’s entries to cross the finish line first, she’d had an amazing change of heart.
Playing her part with ease, Claire had admitted to Hank that she had never been interested in horses or racing, so she knew very little about the sport. He would have to educate her. He was, Hank had assured her, happy to be her tutor.
And so she had learned a great deal about Thoroughbred racing in the short time she’d been at the Springs. She had learned even more about Hank Cassidy. Hank positively loved horses and it showed when he talked excitedly about his prized Thoroughbreds.
He told Claire that he had promised himself when he was a boy that one day he would own the finest stallion in Nevada.
“And now I own dozens,” he had said with a satisfied smile.
“Mmm. They’re all fine horses, but Black Satin is my favorite,” she had replied with coquettish smile, subtly reminding him of their frenzied lovemaking in the stallion’s stall.
Hank had winked her and said, “Well, now, I don’t know, Duchess. Maybe you ought to give Silver Dollar a look-see some night soon.”
“You naughty boy,” she accused with a throaty laugh. Then added, “A man after my own heart.” Hank laughed. She said, “Tell me more about the Thoroughbreds. Educate me, darling.”
He nodded and spoke with authority and knowledge about bloodlines. He proudly told her that there were at least twenty-five stallions working as studs at Greenway Farm in Kentucky and a herd of the bluest-blooded broodmares in the world.
Eyes flashing, Hank stated emphatically that he didn’t condone the whipping of horses to win races, no matter how important the race. Not a single one of his Thoroughbreds had ever had a whip flourished over them or felt the grating of a spur.
“How do you know they haven’t?” she had asked, skeptical.
“Because I know Fox Connor. He runs the entire operation with an ever-watchful eye. Fox would never tolerate such behavior from a jockey,” Hank replied. “Every rider we’ve ever hired has been firmly warned against the slightest mistreatment of an animal.�
��
“But many jockeys do apply the whip if they think it necessary?”
“Most really good jockeys cajole their mounts. Others occasionally apply the whip, but lightly, not really harming the colt or filly.” His lean jaw tightened and he admitted, “However there are a handful who have been known to beat the hell out of the horse.”
“That’s terrible. You’d think the mishandled mount would rebel and—”
Interrupting, Hank told her about a speedster called Domino that hated his jockey. “The only way they could get Domino quiet long enough to get a saddle on him was to hold a rubbing cloth over his eyes.”
“The poor creature.”
“Amen.” Hank nodded. “A few unscrupulous owners have even been accused of using electric prods and narcotics on their horses. The cruel bastards!”
Claire saw the sudden flushing of Hank’s tanned face and the narrowing of his beautiful blue eyes. She felt her heart squeeze with affection and respect. He was so gentle, kind-hearted.
Now as the pair approached the oval track where a sea of carriages were discharging passengers, Hank exhaled with agitation. He was silent. Claire was quiet, as well. The surrey sat unmoving in a long queue of carriages.
As if on cue, they turned and looked at each other. Claire lowered the wide brim of her straw bonnet slightly, shading her fair face from the morning sun. She smiled at Hank. Hank smiled back. Holding his gaze, Claire removed her gloves, dropped them into her lap, and laid a soft hand on his trousered thigh. She felt the muscles bunch and jump beneath her palm. She lifted her chin a trifle, licked her bottom lip wetly, and saw the sudden flare of passion in his expressive blue eyes.
For a long moment they stared at each other.
Finally, Hank spoke. “It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely perfect.”
“Tell me, Duchess, which would you rather do on this perfect morning? Watch a bunch of Thoroughbreds race around the track—” his gaze dropped to her lips and lingered “—or make love to me?”