Men of a Different Sort

by Addison Avery

  Men of a Different Sort

  A little game of hide and seek across the Wild, Wild West develops into a substantial union destined to last forever as one woman and two men make their unconventional home in a desolate prairie.

  Callie Matthews grew up without a family. Little Joe Dylan took her in as a friend and promised to take care of her. Years later, Callie is pursuing her peculiar ambitions only to discover her wayward path leads her right back into Little Joe's arms.

  An outlaw, Little Joe longs to have Callie beside him, but discovers his lust for man-love outweighs his desire to become a family man. A masculine lover in the form of Richard Brandon enters the picture, but Joe finds a way to keep Callie on guard, watching and waiting for him. When the time is right, Little Joe makes a final play and earns the hand of the lover he wants and the woman he can't live without.

  Note: This book was previously published with another publisher.

  Genre: Historical, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Western/Cowboys

  Length: 18,309 words

  MEN OF A DIFFERENT SORT

  Addison Avery

  MENAGE AND MORE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage and More

  MEN OF A DIFFERENT SORT

  Copyright © 2012 by Addison Avery

  E-book ISBN: 1-61926-512-5

  First E-book Publication: April 2012

  Cover design by Jinger Heaston

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

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  DEDICATION

  For Lance

  MEN OF A DIFFERENT SORT

  ADDISON AVERY

  Copyright © 2012

  Chapter One

  The ka-clink, ka-clink, ka-clink sounded out in a recognizable and undeniable jingle. Without question, the man behind the wayward walk stopped her heart. Only one cowboy in the wild Wild West owned such a pronounced gait and stepped to that particular pace.

  Callie was in an outlaw’s presence, and she didn’t need to turn around to verify who’d entered the dimly lit room. She sensed him without his hands groping her or his strong body melding against her much smaller one.

  The ebb and flow of the rowdy saloon activity softened the second he entered the building, and why wouldn’t the ambiance suddenly change? Few outlaws possessed his presence. Few men, if any, deserved her complete attention.

  Callie Matthews held her breath. She placed splayed fingers against her belly. If she knew how to fake a believable swoon, she might have considered dropping to the dirt floor. Then again, the night held a lot of promise, and she didn’t want dust on her skirts. Instead, she waited, and oh Lord how she yearned for his first touch.

  When the air changed, she shut her eyes and anticipated his voice, the broken way he made his demands, or the halfhearted requests he expected her to meet with a certain amount of predictable enthusiasm. He depended upon her to respond the same way each and every time he rode into a town where he apparently thought he might find her.

  They had a history, and she always respected his wishes. He didn’t wait his turn. She never asked him to. If she had a customer in hand, she’d drop him. If some lonesome gambler bought her a drink in hopes of sharing a whiskey sip, she’d gulp it.

  The decision-making process was pretty simple. Her heart stopped one stroke shy of striking its next beat whenever she heard his distinct and alluring strut. Sometimes she thought the thumping in her chest quit altogether when he showed up in the desert saloons where she worked. Every nerve ending in her body came alive, and he set her womb on fire just by being close enough to touch her.

  The man had his issues. Lord knew all about them, and she did, too. His flaws didn’t matter. He’d found her again and, most likely, wanted his just reward within the hour.

  Folks everywhere called him Little Joe, but there wasn’t anything small about him. He had thick, long limbs and broad shoulders. He stood six foot five, and some said maybe even a tad taller. His hands were the biggest she’d ever held, and another important body part was the largest she’d ever felt.

  Callie cared about Little Joe, but she feared him. They grew up on adjoining farms, but then Little Joe’s father had sent him away. When they met again a few years later, she had her eighteenth birthday behind her and a lot of tainted dreams tugging at her from the front. She was wild, young, and apparently just a little on the dumb side of things, dreaming up young woman fantasies.

  Back then, when she thought about the future, she dreamed of men bidding for her time, bringing along expensive gifts, and paying for intimate services she wanted to provide anyway. She never imagined the loneliness or the life she’d forfeit working as a whore.

  Little Joe had warned her. He told her so. She refused to listen.

  “Whiskey,” he said in his gruff voice.

  The barkeep there knew him. The locals recognized him. They harbored him for safekeeping because in Tombstone, the occasional outlaw—so long as he left the townsfolk alone—was viewed as a hero of sorts.

  In Little Joe’s case, fear kept him out of trouble. No one thought they could take him, and if they did, with his bad attitude and worse reputation, no one wanted him. Callie was the except
ion, and even she denied the attraction. Refraining from admitting her feelings kept things simple between them.

  She glanced over her shoulder before she motioned to one of the whores wiping down the bar there. She mouthed the words, “He’s mine.”

  The woman turned and looked his way. She shrugged as if she could take him or leave him. She didn’t look too impressed, but then again, whores never seemed overly interested in Little Joe until he cleaned up right nice.

  Little Joe took his swig of whiskey, released an ah sound, and then he slammed the glass against the smooth wood surface. “Let me get a bottle. Two glasses.”

  Callie swallowed over and over again. He was moving a little faster than the average Little Joe. He must’ve been without a woman, or a man, a little longer than what he liked.

  Worse still, Callie miscalculated somewhere along the line. When she moved to Tombstone, left, and then returned again, she really didn’t think he’d find her there again.

  Her error in judgment should’ve instilled a few jitters, but instead, her skin felt clammy, and her body prepared for him. No, she wasn’t afraid of what she faced upstairs. She couldn’t wait to get there.

  * * * *

  She took to the steps in a ladylike maneuver, and he couldn’t help but pay attention to her nervous behavior. She tapped the top of her hair with a flat palm before combing her fingers through her bangs. The ridiculous bun she had piled high on her head might fool some, but not all.

  Joe chuckled. His Callie was anything but a lady, but even after agonizing days apart, she was still his woman.

  Tucking a few stray ringlets into the blonde mess, she gathered her thick burgundy dress at the sides and climbed upstairs. She acted like she thought of it as an effort to raise her multiple petticoats with every single step.

  He narrowed his gaze when she reached the landing. He thought about the first time he had truly viewed her as a woman. Something about the way she had bowed her head and lowered her eyes made him reflect on the past. He cherished yesteryear, particularly when he relived some of the days he’d spent with Callie.

  She was about eighteen when he realized he needed to take care of her for the duration of his life. He asked her to marry him, but she refused. He wanted to make an honest woman out of her before she pursued her lifelong dream of becoming a whore. She declined the offer. At the time, her words were hard for him to digest, a little discouraging at the very least.

  Now, he didn’t give a damn.

  Every time he walked into a saloon where she worked, he thought of the years passing him by, the children they might have had, and the love he once wanted them to share. None of his ambitions materialized. Everything had worked out for the best, anyway, considering his profession and, later, hers.

  Little Joe Dylan liked the way things turned out, by and large. Life treated him fine enough. He did what he wanted and never answered to anyone. Hell, everywhere he went, men feared him. The bounty hunters and the lawmen, folks pretty much left him alone.

  Then there was Callie. She had a way about her, and their games kept him entertained. This time, it had taken him two years to catch up with her. The last time, the chase took three months and the time before, six. Sometimes he wondered what he might do if he never saw her again. On rare occasions, he took another whore or two to his bed, but none of them worked out for him like Callie. He preferred her for several reasons.

  One of them—he glanced in the mirror over the bar—stood directly behind him with dirty buckskins and an undeniable grin. He walked a whole lot like Little Joe, and if Joe cared to guess, Callie probably took notice when he entered the saloon. Richard’s timely presence there explained why she’d turned and darted down the velvet-coated hall leading to her bedroom.

  * * * *

  Richard Brandon had the ka-clink part down pat, but his spurs, or the caked mud and manure attached to them, made his stride a little more distinct. When he stopped, the act of halting sounded out in a scratchy-like echo, making her think he might have caught his boots in large mess of tumbleweed.

  Both of her men were in the house. Her heart raced forward, and she gripped the doorknob. After she gave the round brass handle a turn, she traipsed inside her private quarters.

  Callie left the bedroom door open. She didn’t have much reason for slamming it shut or trying to hide behind wooden panels. Little Joe and Richard would look for her until they found her, and she didn’t want them to waste precious time.

  She paced back and forth across the solid-oak floorboards, picking up a few carelessly misplaced articles of clothing. She tidied up her personal space, arranging her pillows on the bed and tucking her undergarments out of sight. The swishing sound of her skirts annoyed her as much as her runaway heartbeat and clammy palms.

  Suddenly, Callie was aware of how much she’d missed them. She’d rarely serviced a customer without thinking about Richard and Little Joe. Truth told? She didn’t gain much in the way of satisfaction when a paying client entered her room, fell upon her bed, and solicited a poke.

  Her men shared similarities she appreciated. Richard was as played out as yesterday’s bloom, but he looked about like Joe. Tough and hardened, handsome and wild, many women considered him the sexier of the two. He possessed bronze skin, blue eyes, and dirty-blond hair which he didn’t bother to cut. On a good day he was plain mean and any other, just downright deadly.

  Sometimes, Callie liked him better than Joe but for reasons she never dared explain. While Richard visited her bed, his purpose for being there wasn’t the same as Little Joe’s. She was the only one who knew their secrets. She believed Richard was the sole reason Joe refused to let her go.

  Callie turned down the bed and rearranged the pillows again. The men would go for a hot bath and enjoy a few glasses of their whiskey. In all likelihood, they’d put up a good front. Most of the time, and she recalled hearing them tell plenty of stories, they informed the locals about their ambitions. They were in town to see a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman they couldn’t wait to share.

  They never told the locals the truth. Joe was the one, the only one, who enjoyed life in the middle.

  They’d endured a long wait. Nearly two years had passed. Sometimes Callie wondered if Joe and Richard ran out of days and if luck finally deserted them. Maybe a gun battle gone wrong left them dead somewhere on the open range.

  She shuddered at her last thought, remembering the bad dreams she’d endured for several weeks after the last time they’d visited for a bit. She’d had a recurring nightmare, one where Joe and Richard shared a pine box. Their corpses had been left on display in the middle of an Arizona prairie.

  She’d learned to take the good with the bad. For nearly a decade, they’d played this game of hide-and-seek. It was part of the allure, the element of the unknown. It kept life exciting and her senses alert.

  She used to fear what would happen if a group of outlaws or even a few good guys, those fellas on the right side of the law, rode up on Little Joe and Richard frolicking in the river like they used to do when they were younger. Would some cowboy take offense to their wolfish behavior and maybe fire up their asses with some power found in a different kind of gun, one Little Joe might have left holstered with his clothes? Or would they drag them back with their breeches around their ankles and force them to hang with their cocks in each other’s hands? Yeah, she had cause to worry some.

  Callie carried those fears. She dreaded the day the news would come. Some loudmouth cowboy might stand downstairs buying drinks for everyone, shooting off his trap about two men he’d discovered in a compromising position. Or worse still, she wouldn’t see either of them again, and they’d leave her behind to mourn the unknown.

  The latter bothered her the most and for several reasons. If she never saw them again, she wouldn’t know if it was because she won the game and they couldn’t find her or if they’d died trying to catch up to her. Then again, sometimes she thought Richard and Little Joe might eventually give it up, stop
fighting whatever they felt for one another, live together in the middle of nowhere, and forget all about her.

  She had spent a number of days feeling uneasy, but positioning herself on the bed right then, with her dress high above her thighs, she struck an inviting pose and released a sigh of relief. She smiled to herself in acknowledgement. For today, probably the entire week, her worries were over. Her men were coming for her, and soon they’d be standing right inside her door.

  Chapter Two

  Little Joe eased into her room first. “Callie.” His dark eyes dropped to her chest for a passing second just like they always did, only today might have been a little different because the natural sparkle in them had disappeared.

  “Little Joe,” she responded. A sizeable lump formed in her throat. She swallowed a few times. She needed to practice her gag reflex anyway.

  Joe liked it when she wrapped her lips around the better part of a man. He’d told her the last day they were together he thought Richard might eventually ask her for a scad more than they’d shared before. She didn’t think much about it at the time. Richard never mentioned a favor. If he had, she might have charged him, since his penis was thick enough to make a woman’s mouth bow wide with a painful stretch.

  She imagined his size was why he never bothered with a request. Joe had the money. He might volunteer to pay for Richard’s pleasure if she asked him, but they never discussed rates. Richard didn’t lie down beside her, and truth told, she wouldn’t mind if he did. He could have a free one.