“Ohhhh,” Heather Fawxx moaned, as the well-hung stud’s cock pistoned in and out of her pussy. “Ohhh, God, yessss!! Fuck me, Danny! Fuck me hard!!”

“You like that, don’t you, Miss Fawxx?” the young man smirked, continuing his assault on her cleft. “Is this how you want me to serve all of my detentions from now on?”

“Just shut up and keep fucking me. Oooohhh, your prick is so big and hard. I love it!”

“Danny?” the surprised voice came from one side. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like, Tina? I finally got this uptight teacher of ours out of her pants. Look at those tits. Weren’t you telling me last night how you’d like to suck on them? Well, here’s your chance.”

The vapidly pretty young blonde giggled and slipped out of her school uniform, revealing a gravity-defying set of breasts. “I think I’d rather sit on her face and have her eat me. My pussy’s been dripping all day, and I’m so horny I can’t stand it.”

“Maybe later,” Heather said, sitting up and taking the pins out of her blond hair. Letting it fall in a cascade to her waist. “But right now I have another item on my menu.”

With hard-won skill, she deep-throated the rock-hard cock waving in front of her, then rapidly bobbed up and down. The red shaft gleamed wetly when it emerged from her mouth. From behind her, she could feel a hot tongue probing at her womanly folds, and spread her legs wider.

She closed her eyes as the young man began to fuck her mouth. To her happy surprise, he kept his strokes short and quick, and the hands in her hair didn’t pull, but only guided her.

“Oh, Miss Fawxx! I’m gonna cum!”

“Do it,” she demanded, letting his rod slip out of her mouth. She spit on the bulbous head and began to rapidly jack him. “I want to feel your spunk shoot all over my tits. Do it, Danny. Do it now!”

The young man stiffened, his eyes glazing. His hips jerked rapidly, thrusting his cock into her stroking hands. As he came, she aimed his crown at her cleavage, watching as several ropy bursts of his semen splattered on her chest. The white liquid trickled between her breasts and down towards her belly.

“Ohhh,” the young girl said, wriggling close. “That was a big one.” She pushed Heather down on the desk. Pulling her hair back, she began to lick her stomach clean, not pausing until every drop of her boyfriend’s cum was gone.

“Cut!”

‘Heather Fawxx,’ who until eight years ago had been known as Heather McCormick, slid off the desk and shrugged into a robe, knotting the belt firmly around her waist. “Well,” she said brightly, “that’s the last cock I ever eat on camera.”

“Good job, everyone,” Jacob Weintraub, the director, said loudly. He glanced at his watch. “We’re all done here for today. Go home. Have a great weekend. Be here on time on Monday for Tina’s gang-bang scene, or I’ll gut you with a spoon.”

“Wait,” pouted the pretty blond nymphet. “What about the scene where me and Heather sixty-nine?”

“We shot that last week, Tina” Jake said, with a tone of long-suffering patience. While Tina had an incredible body and was amazingly sweet-tempered, no one would accuse her of being a genius, evil or otherwise.

“Oh, that’s right,” she laughed. “Well, you can’t blame me for wanting to get another crack at her.”

“Why a spoon, Jake?” Heather asked the Englishman with a smile, as the rest of the cast and crew of After School Special 9 drifted towards the door of the cheap soundstage. From the sounds, several of them were already making plans for the weekend. She smiled over her shoulder as Tina gave her butt a farewell squeeze before she wandered off.

“Because it’s dull, y’ twit. It’ll ‘urt more,” he declared in his broadest Cockney accent, with a lopsided grin.

She smiled and patted his cheek. “I’ll miss you most of all, Scarecrow.”

The tall, thin man, his head capped by a rat’s nest of rapidly thinning blond hair, shook his head. “I don’t get it, Heather. Why are you retiring? You’re at the top of the heap. I mean, have you seen the download numbers for Jill and the Beanstalk? They’re through the roof. We’re raking in hundreds of dollars a day.”

“Of course I have.” She rolled her eyes at the cheesy title. ‘Heather Fawxx’ had climbed up the titular beanstalk only to be ravaged by several horny giants. The only thing giant about them had been their cocks, which had left her nether regions sore and aching for days afterward. “I bet I keep a closer eye on my numbers than you do.

“I’ve done the math, Jake. With what I’ve put aside and invested, and what I can expect to get from royalties in the future, I can live very happily for the rest of my life. Especially when you count appearances at trade shows and signed memorabilia. If the blue chips and treasury bonds don’t do a nosedive, I’ll be set.”

“Royalties,” Jake muttered. The word sounded like a curse. “I should never have agreed to that. Worst mistake I ever made in my life, sending you to night school and teaching you how to think for yourself. Stay,” he begged. “Just for ten or twelve more films. Hell, in another two years, you’d be running this studio, not me.”

She kissed his cheek, the gesture unmistakably fond. “Maybe. But I got some good advice when I started in this business. Do you remember what you told me, Jake? ‘Once you get ahead, Heather, get out.’

“You only have yourself to blame. I’m ahead. So I’m getting out.”

The older man sighed. “I remember. But I can’t help wanting to keep you around, kid. You’re one of the good ones. And I don’t just mean on camera, though you’d be a legend if you decided to stick with it.”

She shrugged, not wanting to have the argument all over again. When she told Jake about her decision to retire, he had been flabbergasted. Then he had spent the next two months trying to convince her to stay in the business. He had been, she thought wryly, one step away from locking her in the basement and only bringing her out when he needed to put her in front of a camera.

“So when are you leaving?” he asked, apparently deciding not to beat a dead horse. She breathed a sigh of relief. She loved Jake like a father, but her mind was made up.

“Tomorrow morning,” she smiled. “Me and the U-Haul are heading east. No more LA, no more smog, no more traffic jams, no more blowing guys on camera for cash.”

“Jeez, Heather,” he said in a pained voice. “You make it all seem so…so tawdry. You know we’re just obeying the laws of supply and demand, right? If we didn’t do it, someone else would.”

She grinned at him. “And I won’t say that I wasn’t well-compensated for providing the supply. But someone else is going to have to do that from now on.” She pulled him into a hug, surprised to feel the sting of tears in the back of her eyes. “You’ve got my e-mail address and cell number. You can call anytime, as long as it doesn’t involve a movie camera.”

“What about still photography?” he asked hopefully. He mimed clicking a camera. “There are some websites that would pay a bundle for some exclusive photos of the one and only Heather Fawxx.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Nope. Only very improbable. I’ll see you around, kid.” Shaking his head, he walked out the door.

Heather took a deep breath and grimaced at the stale scent. She looked around at the stage, the cameras, the cheap props, the scattered costumes.

Let’s get the fuck out of here, Heather Anne.

She kicked off her stilettos, walked out the door, and left her old life behind.

*****

This may have been a mistake, Heather thought, huddling deeper into her winter parka.

She stood outside her new home, shivering violently, as she watched the movers carefully unload the truck and carry her newly-purchased furniture and the belongings she had hauled from Los Angeles into the house. A raw northwest wind born on the Canadian prairies swept down out of the gray December sky, numbing her cheeks.

South Dakota. I must have been out of my mind.

Well, you wanted someplace quiet. Someplace where you could blend in. Someplace where the cost of living wasn’t sky-high. You didn’t want to fry in the summer, so you crossed off the southwest, and you didn’t want to live in the bible belt, for obvious reasons. And Florida was right the hell out.

And besides, didn’t you tell yourself that a girl who was raised in New Hampshire could handle a little cold?

She snorted, a puff of cloudy breath hanging in the air for a moment before it was swept away. Beside her, the representative from the real estate agency shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat. Heather had spoken with him dozens of times over the phone as she went through the interminable procedure of purchasing the house. In her car were the forms she had signed earlier in the morning, scrawling her signature on line after line until her hand ached. It had taken a half-dozen missteps before she had been able to convince her treacherous fingers that her name wasn’t ‘Heather Fawxx’ anymore, and that she was actually purchasing a home, not signing endless glossy photos of herself at some tacky adult convention in Las Vegas.

“It’s a nice place,” he said at last, seemingly out of a need to fill up the silence. “Split-level, with plenty of room upstairs and down. And you have a big backyard for landscaping or gardening, if you’re into that. A lot of people around here are. And the schools are good.”

“What about the neighborhood?” she asked, more out of politeness than any real need to know. She figured she’d get to know the area well enough in the next few years.

If I don’t die of hypothermia.

“It’s nice enough. Well, your neighbor on the south might be a little touchy at first. She’s in the housing biz as well, and she wasn’t happy when I got the listing.” Chad smirked unpleasantly. “She thought that since she’d known the Swensons for years the old lady would choose her to sell the place when her husband died and she moved in with her daughter.

“But she didn’t move fast enough, and I’m the one who’s going to be cashing a commission check on Monday.”

“How pleasant.” She pasted on her professional smile, the one she reserved for fans who stayed just a little too long at her booth at the trade shows. The ones who stared at her cleavage, as if she was going to decide that they were the answer to her prayers and give them a quickie behind the inflatable doll exhibit. I guess it’s a good thing to know that South Dakota has assholes, too.

The last box was carried inside the house, and one of the workmen slid the door of the truck down with a bang. “I guess that’s it,” Chad said. He nodded at the front door, still propped open. “Want to take a look?”

She kept the smile frozen on her cheeks, wanting only for him to go away. After nearly ten years of being propositioned in every possible way, she could see the signs of a man who was angling for a date. “We’ve already done the walk-through. I think I’m going to get a start on unpacking. Thanks for your help, though.” She offered him her hand, encased in a fashionable leather glove she had bought before she left California. “If I have any questions, I’ll be sure to call. I won’t keep you any longer.”

“Well, all right then,” he said, temporarily nonplussed. “I’m always available, Miss McCormick.”

“I’m sure you are.” Pig.

As his Lincoln pulled away from the curb, her smile became more genuine. She walked over to where the movers were slowly drifting out of the house. “Mr. Sanchez?”

“Yes?”

She reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope. “I’d like you to share this with your men,” she said, handing it to the foreman. “That was a bitch of a job in nasty weather, and I appreciate it.”

The dark-skinned, gray-haired man looked into the envelope, and she smiled as his eyes widened. “Senora, I can’t take this. It is too much.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that? My father spent his entire life doing manual labor,” she lied. “I know how tough it is. Take this and buy something extra for your wife and kids for Christmas.”

Gracias. I will. John! Achmed! Get over here! I have something for you two to put in your stockings!

“And if you ever need work done around the house, senora, let me know. I know all the best plumbers and carpenters and roofers in town. And I’ll be sure to tell them you’re a classy lady, so no one will try to cheat you.”

“Thanks.” She smiled again, then shivered dramatically as a gust of wind bent the leafless trees in the front yard. “You have a nice weekend and a wonderful holiday.”

“Thank you, senora.

She went into the house, closing the heavy inside door behind her. As the loud noise of the truck faded away into the distance, she unzipped her coat, savoring the unusual silence. Except for the sound of the furnace, running at full blast to counteract the wintry weather, the only sound was the wind keening around the eaves.

She looked around. Chad James might be a horse’s ass, but the house was exactly as he had described. It sat on a piece of sloping ground, the large backyard running down to a small creek, now frozen solid, at the rear of the property. The lower level of the house was actually partially underground, the earth serving as insulation to keep the heating bills down in the winter, and ironically, to keep the air-conditioning bills down in the summer. From the entranceway, a short flight of steps could either take her upstairs to the kitchen, living room, dining room, and the master bedroom and bathroom, or downstairs to a combination den/library, which also had a small half-bath and two guest bedrooms.

She sighed in relief, then smiled. Mine. All mine. No screaming neighbors in the apartment next door. No constant sound of traffic. No worrying about whether some creep is stalking you. No getting up at 5 AM to have some guy point a camera at your crotch while you pretend to like it.

She grinned, pulling off her coat and hanging it on a peg by the door. She kicked off her shoes, rolled up the sleeves of her sweatshirt, and climbed the stairs to the main floor. A pile of cardboard boxes met her gaze. She pulled a utility knife out of her pocket, slit the duct tape holding the first box closed, and began to unpack.

Mine.

*****

Barb Shroyer frowned as she pulled into her driveway. The lights in the old Swenson place were on, throwing golden patches of light onto the frost-seared grass of the front yard.

Damn that asshole to hell. I know real-estate is cutthroat, but you’d think he’d have some sense of shame.

Him? Hah.

With an effort, she threw off the spate of bad temper. Despite Chad James’ underhanded methods, it was Barbara Shroyer and North Star Realty who were leading the housing market in Rapid City. Not the gold-plated pricks at Platinum Plots Real Estate.

Her smile faded as she entered the house. As usual, the lights were off, and the early winter darkness put the rooms in shadow. Muttering to herself, she flipped on the switches, bringing up the lights in the family room and hallway.

Walking down the hall, she paused for a moment to bang on the door-jamb of her son’s bedroom. Even through the closed door, she could hear the music blaring from his headphones.

“Nathaniel? I’m home.” A longish pause. “Hello? Nate? Can you hear me?”

There was no answer, and she opened the door warily. Her son sat in front of his computer, some sort of video game playing on the screen. Over his shoulder she could see pixelated monsters being blown into bloody rubble.

She hesitated before she entered. Over the past couple of years, Nate had become touchy about her entering his room without permission. She understood his feelings. With the two of them living by themselves following her divorce, their need for privacy had increased. Because they were forced to do more things together, the time they could spend alone had become more valuable, not less.

And she could understand how she might feel if Nate came barging into her room during an awkward moment. She wasn’t too old to remember what it had been like to be eighteen.

Sighing, she pulled one of her gloves out of her coat pocket and balled it up, then threw it at her son’s head. As it bounced off, he flinched violently in surprise, then twisted in his chair. With a quick flick of his fingers, he paused the game, then took off his headphones, rubbing his temple in mock-pain

“Nice, Mom. Real nice.”

“Well, if you listened to that music of yours at a volume lower than ‘jet engine,’ maybe you’d hear me when I knocked on the door,” she smiled.

“Says the woman who listens to ABBA.”

“Careful, mister,” she said, shaking a finger at him. “You start making fun of Sweden’s finest disco group, and we might have to throw down.” She balled up her fists and waved them threateningly.

“Right.” He stood, his tall, lanky form unfolding from his computer chair, and hugged her. “What’s up?”

“I just got home. What do you want for supper?”

He shrugged carelessly. “Whatever you feel like making.”

“Okay. I’m going to change. I think we’ll have leftovers from Thanksgiving.”

“Sweet!”

*****

“I thought we were having Thanksgiving leftovers,” her son commented an hour later. He looked at the soup quizzically.

“We are.” Barb took a sip of potato soup. “I chopped up some of the leftover turkey and put it in. I never thought I’d like this dehydrated stuff, but it does the job when you’re in a hurry.”

“Oh, God. You wasted leftover turkey in soup?”

“Don’t worry,” she replied tartly. “There’s probably still ten or twelve pounds of it left. What in the world possessed you to get such a huge bird?”

Her son smiled crookedly. “Well, I figured there would be plenty left for late-night turkey sandwiches. And there would be,” he said darkly, “if someone didn’t insist of putting it in soup.”

“Boo hoo.” She broke off a piece of garlic bread. “Did you see that we have a new neighbor?”

Nate shrugged. “Yeah. The car was in the driveway when I got home from hockey practice. I haven’t seen anyone, though.”

“Hmm. And was there any interesting mail?”

Nate grinned, pulling two envelopes out of his back pocket. “Two more acceptances. From South Dakota State and North Dakota University.”

Barb smiled, catching the gleam of pride in his eyes. “No word yet from the University of Wyoming?”

He leaned back, snorting disgustedly. “Not yet. But I’m not worried. The message boards tell me that no one has gotten their letters yet.”

“Well, at least you have a couple of safety schools to fall back on. South Dakota State isn’t too bad, you know. Your father went there.”

“Which is one more reason for me not to go.” Her son’s usually mild blue eyes were stormy.

“Hmmm.” She kept her opinion about Ray to herself. There was no need to further estrange father and son. Not when her ex was doing such a good job of it on his own. “Are you sure about the University of Wyoming, though, honey? I mean, it’s not exactly convenient. It must be close to three hundred miles. Can you imagine driving home for winter break?”

“And Brookings is nearly four hundred,” he countered, naming the town where SDSU was located. His spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl and he ladled more soup into it. “It’s nearly in Iowa, for crying out loud. And can you imagine driving six hours on Interstate 90 in December?”

Barb gave a theatrical shudder. Even she, born and bred in the state, wasn’t going to try to defend the mind-numbing tedium of driving through it.