Falling for Heaven (Four Winds)

by Anne Conley

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  Turn the page for samples from other works she's published from her Stories of Serendipity series.

  Dream On by Anne Conley

  Dalton tilted his head back and felt the shot burn as it slid down his throat. He looked over at the woman in the vinyl bustier to his right, and lifted the empty glass to her in a gesture of thanks.

  He had been second-guessing himself. Just because he always came here, didn’t mean he had to always come here, did it? He wondered if he was getting tired of it all. He had been feeling restless the last couple of weeks, and couldn’t quite put his finger on what was causing it.

  He briefly wondered if he was finally ready to go back home, and fulfill his family’s desires for him. Then the shot had showed up and the vinyl bustier had winked at him, and all thoughts of home and family vanished. He figured he could find someone entertaining to do tonight.

  She stood up from the plush wingback chair, and sauntered over to him, to perch on the arm of his chair. Eerily, her face reflected the multi-colored strobe lights: sickly green, mellow blue, demonical red. This last color seemed to mesh well with the abundance of makeup she wore, either to hide her age or hard living, Dalton couldn’t tell, nor did he care.

  Her hand encircled his bicep, as she inhaled slowly into his ear. “That’s a nice shirt. Can I talk you out of it?”

  He inwardly rolled his eyes at her blatant pick up line, but since the outfit she was wearing had “fuck me hard” written all over it, he decided he shouldn’t disappoint. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into his lap.

  This was a club, but The Church on a Sunday night had some pretty lax rules about appropriate behavior. With the bass beat pounding through his spleen, he dipped his head and tasted the woman’s neck. She moaned and leaned into him, pushing her breasts against his chest. That was all he needed.

  He nibbled her earlobe, “The last time I had sex in this chair, they asked me to leave.”

  “Then let’s get out of here.” Her hand stroked his erection through his pants.

  So he obliged her.

  Alyssa was making lunches for her kids while they fought over toothbrushes in the bathroom. “Guys, come on! We’ve got to leave in ten minutes. We do not have time for this!” She finished throwing chips and cookies into the brown paper bags, and tossed them onto the couch on her way to the bathroom.

  Extricating the princess toothbrush from Cayden’s grasp and placing it into Sierra’s hand, she said sternly, “Now, get to brushing!” Ten harried minutes later, they were on the way to school.

  In the car, on the way to school, Alyssa cranked up the radio and tuned out the children. As soon as the bickering faded out, the dream she’d had last night tuned itself in. It had been a good one. She blushed at the pool of warmth forming between her legs.

  It must have been some sort of subliminal thing telling her to get out more, because the dream started out in this wild club. Scantily clad women, men decked out in black leather and metal spikes were everywhere.

  After the club, Alyssa had gone home with this beautiful woman and done unspeakable things with her, because in the dream, she had been a man. Was that her subconscious telling her something else?

  She had been an incredibly hot man, for sure. Auburn hair, gray eyes, muscles everywhere, and apparently a boundless creativity in bed. Saliva pooled in Alyssa’s mouth, and she swallowed, thickly.

  At that moment, with her kids in the car, she was thankful her thoughts were private.

  It was confusing. Alyssa was not attracted to women, and had never had any desire to be a man, but this dream was so real. In the dream, she had performed delicious sexual acts with a woman, and Alyssa had enjoyed every bit of it. There was something about kissing the smooth skin, the supple softness, being in control of everything, that was deliciously foreign. The feelings her body had experienced were so strange to Alyssa. It could very well have been a wet dream. Did women even have wet dreams? She wasn’t sure, but she was almost positive she had had an orgasm last night.

  Neighborly Complications by Anne Conley FREE novella

  Chapter 1

  She should have picked the beach house in Galveston.

  Claire surveyed the mess in front of her. She had initially been excited about it, when Uncle Eddie had left her this house in his will. He had given her the choice between this place and a beach house in Galveston, but she was afraid that the homeowner’s insurance on the Gulf Coast would eat her lunch. Now, she wasn’t so sure. The house itself was beautiful, built in the late-eighteenth century, it would make a great bed and breakfast. Getting it up to code, however, was proving to be a daunting task.

  The kitchen? Well, the kitchen was last remodeled sometime in the 1950s. Claire imagined a woman in a polka dot dress with a lace apron and pearls, lovingly running her hand along the giant enamel stove. It was the same stove every woman had been fantasizing about since Rachel Ray’s television debut, except this one was rusted, filthy, and totally unusable without a full restoration. Such a restoration was not in her budget.

  Claire sighed heavily, and grabbed a trash bag.

  The kitchen's only blessing was an enormous picture window with the original frame. Unfortunately, it lacked glass, so she made the best of her situation. She tossed her full garbage bag out of it. It was certainly easier than carrying the trash out the back door, down the back porch steps, and all the way around the house. This way, Claire could fill a bag, toss it out the window, and have it halfway to the destination of the curb.

  An hour later, she had five garbage bags full of trash on the ground beneath the kitchen window. She had swept and mopped the floors, wiped down the cabinets and countertops, and almost managed to get rid of the odor of rat pee. She mentally patted herself on her back. Not bad for a morning’s work.

  As Claire went outside the back door, she wondered when garbage day was. Walking over to the kitchen window, she grabbed a garbage bag and threw it over her shoulder. She grabbed another one and started dragging it behind her as she trudged to the front curb.

  Forcing oxygen into her bloodstream, Claire breathed heavily as she carried the trash bags around the house, thinking to herself that maybe she shouldn’t have tried to shove so much into each bag. They were really heavy. When her foot landed on something squishy, she paused and prayed she hadn’t stepped in dog pooh.

  As her shin scraped through the pulp of the soggy plywood, and she fell forward, into a hole that had been covered. Her momentum with the added weight of the trash bags, propelled the top half of her body land on solid ground. Unfortunately, the bag she was dragging added to the weight on the bottom half of her body, which was dangling over the hole.

  She released the garbage bags and grabbed what she could. Weeds. Crap. So she yelled. Loudly.

  “Help me!!! Please! Somebody, help!”

  Usually, when she pulled weeds, she needed a shovel and a pickaxe to get them out of the dirt. These weeds--which Claire really needed to be sturdy little buggers--were coming out as fast as she could grab them.

  “Help me!” she screamed as if her life depended on it. This was probably an old water well, and she had no idea how deep it could be.

  Scrabbling for anything to hold onto, feet dangling in the darkness below her, she tried to swing her legs forward to find something for them to cling to. Her hands grabbed for anything, rocks, grass, roots. Nothing was working. She couldn’t help imagining the Indiana Jones pile of snakes slithering over each other, anxiously awaiting her drop into their midst. Her Converse tennis shoes slipped down the slimy sides of the well Claire imagined was covered with spiders and their webs and egg sacs. She c
ouldn’t find anything for her hands to grab onto, and screamed again as she slipped further into the well.

  A PIPE! She grabbed a pipe that was sticking out of the ground and held on tight. She had no idea what purpose this particular pipe held, except that at this moment, it was saving her life. Now if I can just hang on… Her feet slipped again, as they desperately scrambled to find purchase against the slimy wall. It felt like the wall was made of stones, which would make something there for her to grab with her, wouldn’t it?

  Her hand was hurting, and she tried to hold the pipe with both hands. It wasn’t a big pipe, and since she couldn’t really see what it was connected to, if anything, she didn’t want to grab it with both hands and put all of her eggs in one basket. She tried her best to hold still and not jiggle anything that would make her fall all the way into the well.

  Claire’s head and shoulders were still above ground level, but the rest of her body had sunk through the rotten, water-logged plywood “covering” this giant hole in the ground. She tried to feel around with her free hand to see if any of the rest of the wood was sturdy enough to hold her. No dice. Everything her hand touched, crumbled and fell into the abyss below. Apparently, she grabbed a nest of some sort, because hundreds of tiny spiders crawled around on her hand. She shook them off, while holding on to the pipe with her other hand. Terror filled her veins as she screamed again.

  “Hang on, I got you.”

  Relieve flooded her body, as enormous arms wrapped around her ribcage, and lifted her out of the hole. She looked up at her savior. And up, and up…until her eyes met the caramel colored eyes of…Adonis. He pulled her back out of the hole, tripping over her beloved pipe, and tugged her down with him as they ended up a tangled pile of limbs in the weedy yard.

  She had no idea who this magnificent specimen of a man was, but he was her hero, having just saved her from a horrifying death. Well, possibly. If she hadn’t died, she certainly would have been extremely uncomfortable for who knows how long.