Something unlocks at the front of my rib cage. It’s like the front gate of the ranch swinging open. I thought she wouldn’t be able to handle this. And maybe she can’t. Maybe this is all bravado.
But there’s only one way to find out, and she’s begging me for it with those pretty blue eyes and those gorgeous lips, and the way she says my name...
If we’re going to do this, the way she says my name has to stop.
Emily tips her head back another fraction of an inch, and I can feel the offering in her body. Her lips form the word please, her breath brushing against my mouth.
Her mouth is where I start, with a kiss that’s meant to show her who she’s dealing with. I take it slow to start, tracing a path over her lips and finding her tongue with mine. She’s sweet. Christ, she’s sweet. Everything about her is so sweet I might as well have the heart attack in advance. She stays still in my grip, obedient, just how I want her. But when my tongue brushes against hers the second time, she lets out a low moan and pushes back.
Hard.
It’s like she’s turned the gas up to full blast on the stove, sending fire into the sky, and I was wrong. I was so, so wrong. Back in Colorado I thought she was too delicate to handle what I want to give her, but then I feel her teeth on my bottom lip, sucking and then biting.
I pull back to put some distance between us. “You don’t do that unless I tell you to. Hands at your sides.”
She drops them to her sides without a moment’s hesitation, breathing hard. “I’m sorry, Wyatt.” The words are an apology, but her eyes sparkle and dance like sunbeams on the bay. “I didn’t mean...”
“You won’t call me that again until I’m finished with you.” Every word out of my mouth feels utterly natural, like skinny dipping in the river. It’s what I’m meant to say. My skin tightens, goosebumps rising, at what I’m meant to do. “You will call me sir.”
She raises her eyebrows and looks down. “All right,” she whispers.
I force her face back up to mine. “Try again.”
Emily hesitates, confusion flashing into her eyes, but then she understands. “All right, sir,” she says, then clears her throat. “Yes, sir.”
Emily
Wyatt releases me.
I hate it.
He drops his hand to his side and lifts his chin and I stand there, frozen. Is this it? Is this the end of our little game? If it is, I need a private room and a vibrator right now.
“This isn’t going to work,” he says, in that cowboy drawl that makes me want to fall to my knees right here.
“No,” I choke out. “Please—”
“Quiet.” I shut my mouth, the sheer pleasure of obeying him strong enough to taste. “It’s not going to work here in the foyer. We’ll go to my room.” He kicks off his boots and brushes past me on his way to the stairs. His room.
I move to follow him, and he snaps his fingers. “No.”
I stop dead in the middle of the hallway, looking up at him. He towers over me when we’re both standing on the floor. One step up, and he looks like the world’s most ruggedly handsome giant. I open my mouth, then reconsider. He told me to be quiet. I get another flush of pleasure from following the rule, but…what am I supposed to do?
“Shoes off. Then strip.”
Here? He wants me to do it here? I have the sudden sensation that anyone could walk in at any moment, and…
It makes me hot.
God, I really do love those novels. On a spiritual level.
I have my shoes off in an instant, but the tunic…it takes longer. My hands tremble on the hem, and it gets stuck under my chin. I have to fight to get it over my head.
“Faster,” Wyatt growls.
I have no choice but to feel the heat of my own embarrassment as I struggle out of the tights. Taking tights off is never the most elegant of things to do. I try to be sexy. I really do. But I end up hopping on one foot and catching my balance. Oh, man, his eyes could burn me alive. I think it’s happening now.
By the time the tights are off I’m ready to die, but I still have to unclip my bra and wriggle out of my panties. I have the sense, from all the books I’ve read, that I shouldn’t look at him now, even though he hasn’t said as much. To be safe I keep my eyes on the floor. Every cell in my body fights for me to cross my arms over my chest, but I put my hands at my sides instead.
“Clasp your hands behind your back.”
Don’t make me look at you. Don’t make me look at you…
My face is superheated, hotter than the center of the sun, and clasping my hands like this has the effect of pushing my breasts out into the air. There’s no way he can miss what’s happening with my nipples. There’s now way he can miss anything.
“Legs wider.” Wyatt says this as easily as he might say answer the door, like it’s the obvious thing to do. I move my feet another step apart. “Farther.” I do it.
“Gorgeous.” This single word carries so much of an ache that I feel it run over my skin. “You’re gorgeous, pretty thing.” Pretty thing in that out-West hot-sun drawl makes my knees feel loose, and I tighten them up to stay upright. He’s not touching me with anything except his gaze, and it still steals the breath from my lungs.
Just when I think I might pass out from the lack of oxygen he speaks. “Upstairs.”
I unclasp my hands and start breathing again.
A single step toward these stairs ears me a no, the word curled up with the hint of a laugh. I look up into Wyatt’s face, a question on the tip of my tongue. How else am I supposed to get upstairs if I can’t walk? He wears a smirk, a half-amused thing that reminds me of the energy pulled taut between us. If we were on equal footing before, we’re not now. I could stare into his face forever. But then his lips move again.
“Crawl.”
Wyatt turns and goes up the stairs, at the top in a matter of moments. The hot blush that’s centered in my cheeks spills down over the rest of my body. A twist of shame and desire winds tighter between my legs.
Crawl.
I haven’t thought much about the act of crawling. It’s been a long time since that was my main mode of transportation. And crawling in front of Wyatt seems mortifying.
Deliciously mortifying.
I lower myself to my knees. The floor is polished and cool and clean under my hands. He must spend a lot of time maintaining the house, because as I make my way up the stairs, not a single one creaks or bows under my weight. I’m free to concentrate on the way that crawling tugs my thighs apart, exposing the hot center of me to the cooler air. It does nothing to lower the temperature was there. If anything, it makes me hotter.
Wyatt steps back when I reach the landing. “Good girl.”
Oh, god, it’s hot. It’s so hot. I shiver on hands and knees, only daring to look at the hem of his jeans. In the books I read, the heroes are usually rich men with custom suits, but Wyatt exudes that same power in denim that’s meant to stand up to the ranch. I wonder if he’ll make me lick it. I’d do it, I think. There’s not much I wouldn’t do in this moment.
His feet move down the hall and I hesitate long enough that he snaps his fingers. “My bedroom isn’t in the hallway, sweet thing.”
I steal a glance at him as he disappears into a door at the far end of the hall, which must be the master bedroom. He hasn’t given me permission to walk, so I crawl there too. The wood ends just inside the threshold of the door, and my hands meet the edge of a braided rug in shades of blue.
“Sit up, with your hands on your knees.”
I do.
Wyatt walks around me in a tight circle, making adjustments as he goes. Tugging my knees farther apart so that the air can kiss between my legs. Tapping my back so that I arch, my breasts on display. And finally he takes my hands from my knees and pulls them to the small of my back, where he folds them neatly on top of one another.
When he’s finished, he stands in front of me. I keep my eyes on the rug, on his toes digging in.
“Now,” he says. �
�It’s time to address the matter of your punishment.”
Wyatt
I thought the crying would break her, honestly, I did. There are very few women in Paulson who have the same tastes I do—who want to be on the receiving end of my tastes. For a long time, I’ve kept them locked up tight. I’ve seen my share of horrified looks when I hinted that I wanted more.
Nothing about Emily looks horrified.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, with a deep pink blush cascading down from her cheeks to her perfect breasts. And she’s in this with me, so deep that it takes a few seconds for my words to register.
Her eyes snap up to mine, but then she looks right back down at the floor. Good girl. I don’t know what kind of books she’s been reading, but she knows enough…or she’s a natural submissive. Either way, it steals my breath. “You can speak,” I tell her. I want to have this conversation. I want to hear the tremble in her voice.
“My punishment?”
“Look at me.”
She does, her eyes huge and wide. There’s fear there, but also a naked want. She told me the truth before.
My cock throbs between my legs. It’s going to take everything I have to punish her before I take her. A dream come true…that’s what this is.
“You’ve disobeyed me plenty.”
“No, I—”
“You have disobeyed me.” I don’t get much louder, but she closes her pretty lips, the color on her cheeks deepening. “I told you not to come here. Did you think you could get away with that without facing any consequences?”
“No,” she says, so soft it could be the breeze in the trees outside my window.
“I couldn’t hear that.”
“No, sir. I didn’t think that.”
“It’s time to think about what you deserve, sweet thing.” She teases her bottom lip with her teeth. “What would it take for you to learn your lesson?”
Her breaths come fast and shallow. “I…I get to choose?”
“Oh, no. I’ll choose. You’re mine now.” The words slip out so easily that they might as well be true. In this moment, she is. “But because I’m a good man, I’ll allow you to make a suggestion.”
Her mouth opens, then closes. When her lips part again she lifts her chin, and the words come fast: “I might learn my lesson if you spanked me.”
I want to draw this out. I want to coax every word out from between those pretty lips until that blush is on every inch of her skin. I want to make her tell me her dirtiest fantasies.
But one glance at the clock tells me we don’t have time for that.
I wasn’t entirely truthful in the truck. Send me straight to hell in a handbasket. I don’t have until the evening—the booth opens at five o’clock. And it’s a big deal for Bluebell Ranch. We’ve only this year smoothed things out enough to bottle several batches, all in time for the Cherry Festival. The carnival is already set up in a huge lot by the bay, and everybody’s there, getting ready. My brothers are there, getting ready. I swore Id’ be back after I made the delivery to the Riverbend.
There’s one thing I need before we get started.
A bowl of fresh cherries, a decoration I’m supposed to take with me to the festival, sits on my windowsill. I pluck one out, thensit down on the edge of the bed. “Over my lap, then.”
It takes me patting my knee to get her moving. She’s jittery, nervous, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “I don’t—I’m not sure how—”
I take her by the arm and tip her over my lap.
Once her belly is pressed against my thighs, Emily lets out a sigh like she’s been waiting for this all her life. I run a hand over the soul-searing curve of her ass. “Keep it up, like this.” She freezes in place, toes against the rug. The blue braided rug has been in my family for three generations. I doubt it’s ever seen anything like this.
“And now…” I press the cherry between her teeth. “Hold that there. Don’t bite through it.” I can hear the shape of her breath change around it. “You’ve been a bad girl.” I let the statement hang in the air, feeling her squirm against me. Her body is begging to be pinned, so I do it, an arm locked across the small of her back. She’s not going anywhere now. “You need to learn to obey me. If you can’t obey me, I can’t keep you safe. I can’t give you what you need.” I’ve never had the chance to say this to a woman before, and now I know why—I was meant to say it to Emily. I swear, the stars are aligned above us in the sky. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” she whimpers around the cherry.
“You’re going to take thirty strokes.”
The muffled gasp tells me this is more than she was expecting.
“You’re strong enough to handle it.” I keep moving my hand in slow circles over her ass, waking up the flesh there, so she knows where to expect the strokes. “This is going to teach you your lesson.” Down on the floor, Emily inches her feet apart. I let out a low rumble of a laugh. “You like this, don’t you?”
“No,” she gasps. “No. Want to be good—”
“Liar.” I move my fingertips down, down, down between her legs until I meet the slick, soft folds there. She’s soaked, and bucks against me the minute I make contact. I tease at her entrance, forcing a moan from her mouth, then take my hand away. Emily makes a sound that borders on anguish. “This is what happens to bad girls,” I tell her. “They don’t get to come until they’ve taken their punishment.”
“Lemme take it then—lemme—”
“In good time.” I put my fingers to my mouth and suck. Candy. She’s like candy, and something uniquely Emily, and I make sure she knows what I’m doing. “I think you do like this. This isn’t the taste of a woman who’s not interested.” I put my hand back on her ass. “I think you need this.”
“I do,” she says, that plaintive tone hooking itself right into my heart. “Please give me my punishment, sir—”
If I had more time, I’d tell her no. I’d make her kneel and wait and tremble at the foot of my bed.
But I don’t have more time.
“All right.” I brace my arm tighter over her. “You keep your ass up. It goes down, we do the stroke over.”
She nods, jaw trembling with the effort of not biting down.
“Your safe word is Wyatt.”
“Yes, s—”
Before can finish, I bring my hand down with a mighty crack. “That’s one.”
Emily
Oh, it hurts. Oh, it hurts so bad. It stings, it aches, the pain blooms under Wyatt’s hand like a flower made entirely of thorns. It’s torture to keep my hips in place, but I do it. I’m shouting by fifteen and by twenty I’m crying and by twenty-five I’m tossing my body back and forth in his grip, wriggling against him, trying to get my clit to make contact with his jeans.
I love how much it hurts. Oh, my god, I love it. I love everything about it. I love how completely trapped I am underneath his arm. I love the hard strength of his legs beneath me. I love the solid iron of his cock pressing through his jeans and into my waist.
And then there’s the cherry.
The tender flesh between my teeth. I bite through the skin of it in spite of myself, a fraction of an inch at a time, until the juice runs down my chin.
I’m on fire, I’m breathing in pure heat and crying out numbers. I miss twenty-six and have to repeat the stroke, and it’s a near thing. Holy shit it’s a near thing. My mind shudders under the dirty, filthy pleasure of being punished and very nearly collapses. He’s being very forgiving, because I can’t stay still. I just can’t. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.
“An extra three,” Wyatt says. “For the cherry.” He takes the stem from my lips and tosses it to the side.
Thirty-one. Thirty-two. Thirty-three.
It’s over.
It’s over, and it’s just beginning.
Wyatt scoops me up in his arms and tosses me onto the bed. I land on my hands and knees and feel the bed dip as he clambers up next to me. I’ve been crying from she
er relief, but now the cries turn to moans in my chest. Nothing has been hotter in my life than the past several minutes. Nothing until those big hands are on me again, moving me into position.
It’s an obscene position. Wyatt locks his hand on the back of my neck, driving my cheek into the comforter. He forces my back into an arch, my ass in the air, legs spread wide. I could die. I’m finally living.
“I would wait,” Wyatt says raggedly, and I know what he means, I know it’s true. “But I won’t.”
His fingers are between my legs, stroking and teasing and taunting. He pushes one of them inside, then two, and if I could move any more I’d be rocking my hips back into his hand. Part of me wants to move, and part of me relishes the fact that I can’t. Most of me relishes the fact that I can’t. I’m deeply in love with the hand on the back of my neck, with the press of my cheek against the bedding…all of it. I’m flying. I’m soaring. I’m…making way for his fingers.
It’s been a long time since I had anything up there but a vibrator, and I can feel it in all caps, like HISTORICAL MUSEUM feel it, like shove me up against the bricks at the fireworks and kiss me like we have five minutes to live feel it. I’m ready, so ready, but I have to stretch to let the fingers in and it’s so erotic and so sexy that I almost come just from that.
Almost.
“Christ,” says Wyatt, the jagged edge of his voice coiling at the the bottom of my belly, winding itself up with a pleasure that was born in the pain. It’s unbelievably potent, unbelievably strong, and I can feel the edges of my consciousness buckling under the hot weight of it.
Then the fingers are gone, and so is his hand from my neck. I’m soaring up into the atmosphere, passing through the ceiling and rocketing out into the harsh cold of space.
I’m headed straight for the center of the sun when the bed shifts behind me and Wyatt’s hands come down strong on my hips. I roll them in his palms, once, twice, then three times.
“I need you. I’m going to have you,” he growls.
Cowboy’s Conquest: A Big Sky Short Story Page 3