Picture Perfect Cowboy

by Tiffany Reisz

  Jason tossed the antibiotic ointment tube back onto the nightstand.

  Simone smiled at him. “I’ve had worse,” she said. “Way worse.”

  “I know,” he said softly. “But I’ve…I’ve never done worse.”

  She reached for his hand, and he went down on his knees in front of her and rested his head in her lap.

  “Sorry, baby,” he said.

  “It’s fine, Jason. It really is.”

  Simone lightly scored his naked back and shoulders with her fingernails. He closed his eyes and tried to enjoy it. He hadn’t had a girlfriend since before his career-ending injury put him in the hospital for a month. And that was nearly eighteen months ago. Long time since he’d had a good backscratching.

  “Can I tell you something about women?” Simone asked.

  “Tell me anything you want,” he said.

  “This might blow your mind a little, but I think you need to know the secret about us.”

  “What’s the secret?”

  “Here it is. It’s a big one. The secret about women is…they’re people.”

  Jason looked up at her. “You don’t say.”

  “I’m not kidding,” Simone said, not smiling. “We’re people just like men are people.”

  “You know I know that, right?”

  “I’m not sure you do,” she said. “I think your dad might think women are like, I don’t know, another species. A lot of men do. A lot of men think women are ‘women’ and men are people. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad about a father teaching a son not to hit women. Better than the opposite. But I’m not some ideal concept of ‘Woman,’” Simone said, putting “Woman” in finger quotes. “I’m a real, live flesh-and-blood woman. I’m Simone Levine. I’m from New Canaan, Connecticut. My dad’s an insurance exec. My mom’s a history professor. I have a sister five years older who owns a boutique organic pet food store. When I was eighteen, this hot young Wall Street punk I met at a coffee shop tried to shock me by taking me to a kink club on our first and only date. I shocked him by ignoring him the whole time to talk to the sexy French guy who owned the place. Two years later I was working at that club. Look, Jason,” Simone said, smiling down at him. “I think I could go crazy about you pretty fast, but I’m not going to get involved with a guy who treats women like they’ll break if you so much as breathe on them. If you want to respect women, respect the real woman in front of you, not some fake fantasy idea of what woman are supposed to be like. I’m a professional submissive and proud of it. Men—rich, important men—pay me two hundred dollars an hour to flog me, cane me, and whip me. I earn every penny and I love my job. I want you to treat me like your slave, but only if you can also treat me like an adult. You can call me ‘baby’ because it makes me wet. Don’t call me ‘baby’ because you think I’m a child. I’ve gotten hurt worse than this stepping on a Lego. So there.”

  Eight

  “So there?” Jason said.

  “Tada?” Simone waved her hands in the air.

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “You’re something, all right,” he said. “What that something is I don’t know, but I know I like it.”

  She took his face in her hands, bent and kissed him on the lips.

  “I like you, too. A lot,” she said. Then she added, “Sir.”

  Simone was relieved to see Jason had lost that deer-in-the-headlights expression he’d been wearing since he’d seen the blood on her thigh.

  “I told you I don’t have any idea what I’m doing,” he said.

  “It’s your first day,” she said. Had she ever met a man who was harder on himself than her kinky cowboy? “Could you stay on a bull the first time you rode one?”

  “Got thrown before I was even out of the chute.”

  “See? Everything has a learning curve. I was a crappy submissive when I started. Took me a couple months to learn the ropes. Literally. Rope-play made me really claustrophobic at first. Now I love it. You just need practice.”

  Jason sat back on his knees. “When I was learning to ride bulls,” he said, “only person I had to worry about getting hurt was me.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” she said, “I’d rather be with a dominant or a sadist or a master who worries way too much about hurting me than worries way too little. I’ve been with guys like that. I’ll take you over them any night of the week.” Simone meant every word of that. Jason’s concern for her, misguided as it was, touched her heart.

  “Including tonight?”

  “Definitely tonight.”

  “It’s a good thing I found you,” he said. Simone’s heart fluttered. “I need a pro to practice on before I inflict myself on some poor girl who’s never done this before.”

  Simone felt a sudden pain in her stomach, like a knot tightening. Jason mentioning being with another girl had caused that knot. Pull it together, Simone scolded herself. After all, she was the one who told Jason to treat this like practice so he’d be ready when he had a girlfriend again someday.

  “Of course,” she said. “Just practice. We all have to start somewhere.”

  “You sure about doing this with me?” he asked.

  “Must be sure,” she said. “I changed my flight for you, remember?”

  “What am I gonna do with you for three nights?” he asked.

  “The possibilities are endless,” she said.

  “Any suggestions? Am I allowed to ask?”

  “You’re the master here,” she said. “You’re allowed to do anything you want.”

  “Oh yeah.” He grinned. “I keep forgetting that.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll remind you.”

  “I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what to do with you right about now,” he said.

  “Your wish is my command.”

  “Lay on your back and open your legs,” he said. Simone was more than happy to oblige.

  He draped her legs over his shoulders and opened her pussy up for him with his fingers. If Simone thought Jason looked sexy while drying dishes wearing nothing but jeans and a smile, she didn’t have the words to describe how good he looked while eating her pussy like his life depended on it. His brown eyes flicked upward to watch her watching him. He somehow managed to smile a dirty wicked smile even while rubbing his tongue over her swollen, tingling labia. He pressed two fingers into her and up against the tender spot on the front wall of her vagina and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed it while he licked and licked and licked her. The sounds coming out of Simone’s throat might have woken the dead.

  Simone could barely lie still as he swirled his tongue around her clitoris over and over again. He might be new at playing master but the man knew how to eat pussy, God bless him. As he fucked her with his fingers, she panted and moaned and begged for his cock.

  “Not yet, Spanky,” he said before going at her again with even greater intensity. The man was trying to kill her. No doubt about it. This was a murder attempt and that was fine by her. If she was going to die, let it be with Jason Waters’ fingers on her G-spot and his tongue on her clit.

  Her climax built up fast and there was no stopping it when it came. She cried out, her shoulders coming off the bed as he bore down on her mercilessly until she went limp, completely limp, on the bed and her legs slid lifelessly off his shoulders.

  Jason stood up and leaned over her, examining her with a curious expression on his face.

  “You all right there, Spanky?” he asked.

  “You killed me dead. Put on my tombstone, ‘Here lies Spanky Levine, done to death by her master’s cruelty.’”

  “Cruelty? I made you come so loud my ears are ringing.”

  “You didn’t put your cock in me,” she said. “That’s cruelty.”

  “It’s my cock, not yours, and I’ll put it in you on my say so, not yours.”

  Simone raised her head and met his eyes. “Ooh…” she said. “That was very sexy, sir.”

  “Come on,” he said and dragged her by the arm to he
r feet. “You still have my come all over you. We need to wash that off.”

  “Shower time?” she asked.

  “For you. You shower. I watch.”

  He pulled her down the hall to a door at the end. The bathroom, no doubt. But Simone dug her heels in at another door opposite the guest room.

  “Is this your room?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “It’s messy,” he said. “I have a bunch of junk in there.”

  “Why do I find that hard to believe?” she asked.

  He turned around and stood at his bedroom door. He sighed.

  “It’s just…it’s a bunch of stuff I don’t quite know what do to with yet.”

  “I’m very good at organizing,” she said. “Maybe I can help.”

  “You good at carpentry?”

  “Not my strongest suit.”

  “Then you probably can’t help. See?” He opened the door and flipped on the light switch. Simone did a double take, blinked and looked at Jason in shock.

  “Holy crap,” she said. Then added, “Am I allowed to say ‘crap’?”

  “You can say ‘crap.’”

  “Holy shit,” she said. He pinched her ass in punishment. Simone walked into the room, jaw slightly open as she gazed in amazement at the massive collection of trophies, cups, ribbons, medals, and what appeared to be gold-plated and enormous belt buckles piled along the wall of his bedroom.

  There had to be at least one ton of prizes just sitting on the floor.

  “These all yours?” she asked. She’d seen fewer trophies in her high school’s trophy case and that was for the entire school.

  “They got my name on ‘em.”

  Simone knelt on the floor in front of the collection.

  “This is incredible, Jason. You must be so proud of yourself.” She saw several trophies and cups that read “World Champion” among other equally impressive accolades. A decade’s worth of achievement. And all just sitting on his bedroom floor.

  “I had a good career,” he said simply. “Glad it’s over, and I’m still standing.”

  “So modest,” she said, grinning. “Why do all these say PBR? Was Pabst Blue Ribbon beer a big sponsor?”

  Jason laughed. “PBR. Professional Bull Riding. Although you’re not the first to ask that.”

  “Are you planning on building a trophy case or something?” Simone asked as she sat back and carefully examined some of his prizes.

  “Aimee told me to,” he said, dropping down on the floor next to her. “But it’s not my style. I don’t want all this stuff in my living room.”

  “Got a spare room?”

  “I don’t want it in either of the guest rooms either. It’s just too much. I was going to store it all up in the attic until Aimee chewed my ear off for even suggesting it.”

  “Maybe your old high school would take it? Or a museum? Are there cowboy museums? Rodeo museums?”

  “My high school would love to have it,” he said. “But Aimee’d still kill me if I chucked it all, even to them.”

  “Well, it’s your stuff and your house. You get to decide what to do with it. Although I think you should wear this every day.” She picked up a shiny diamond-encrusted belt buckle that was literally as big as her head.

  “If I ever need a jockstrap and don’t have one,” Jason said, “I’ll use this.”

  He took the buckle back from her and put it in the pile.

  Simone finally wrenched her gaze from the massive, and somewhat garish, collection of trophies and cups. As impressive as they were, she wouldn’t want them on display in her living room, either.

  She studied Jason’s bedroom and found it to her liking. The floor was stained a nice light gray and the walls a darker gray. A large casement window looked out onto his pastures. And, she was pleased to see, one entire wall was covered in photographs—pictures of his family, his friends and his horses, all of them in rough wood frames of various sizes. The bed was king-sized with an old-fashioned iron headboard and footboard, the kind with vertical bars kinky people favored since they made tying someone to the bed so very easy.

  “You do the decorating in here?” she asked.

  “Aimee might act like she owns the place when she visits, but not even she’s allowed in my bedroom,” he said.

  “I love your photographs,” Simone said. She stood up and looked at the wall of pictures. She picked out his parents easily. His mother—petite, gray-haired, pretty even in her farm clothes—smiled happily at the taller, broad-shouldered older man next to her. Jason’s father didn’t smile much. Like father, like son. In one photograph, Jason stood with a woman about his age with dark brown hair and a wide grin.

  “Aimee?” Simone asked.

  “That’s us,” he said. “That’s my old house in the background there. Mom and Dad’s house, I mean.”

  “Have they visited you yet?” Simone asked.

  “Not yet but they’re talking about it,” Jason said. “Mom’s still not thrilled I moved all the way out here.”

  “And your Dad?”

  “He respects it. Told Mom to stop trying to tie me to her apron.”

  Simone turned to him and saw his eyes still on the photograph of his parents and their cattle ranch. She studied a different photograph of him and his sister. It looked like it was taken ten years ago. They were both holding trophies—his for bull riding, hers for barrel-racing.

  “Your life looks so picture perfect,” Simone said. “Like some kind of Montana fairy tale.”

  “Looks that way, I guess. Never felt that way.”

  “How did it feel?”

  “Like I was trying to be perfect,” he said. “Playing the part.”

  “You played it pretty well,” Simone said, nodding meaningfully at his trophies and cups.

  He gave her a tired smile. “I only got into bull riding because me and Uncle Vince got along so much better than me and Dad when I was in high school. But I guess that’s normal. Most fathers and sons butt heads at that age. Just when you butt heads with a man like my father, only one of you walks away. The other crawls.”

  It sounded like Jason was trying to explain away his unhappiness, blame it on the nature of father/son relationships instead of admitting that his father had crossed a line and harmed his son.

  “Why did you move out here? Really?” she asked. “I know Montana has horses. There’s one right there.” She pointed at a photograph of Jason’s sister on a big black horse riding in the midst of a massive herd of cattle.

  “Soon as I retired and recovered from this,” Jason said, pointing at the scar on his stomach, “Mom and Aimee kind of took it upon themselves to find me a wife.”

  “A wife? Are you serious?”

  “I want to get married one day,” he said as if that were the most obvious thing in the world. “But I need to do things my own way. I couldn’t go to dinner at Aimee’s or go to church with Mom without either of them trying to set me up with some new girl.”

  “You know some of those women might have been kinky,” Simone said. “Or open to trying it with you.”

  “Maybe so, but I know I’d never feel like I could do that there with them. Not with my family breathing down my neck and Aimee trying to be best friends with every girl I so much as had a beer with. When your family is close as mine is, too close sometimes, the only way to get any privacy is to move halfway across the country.”

  “I can see that,” she said. “My family knows better than to ask me about my personal life anymore. I tell them if I find someone, they’ll know when they get a rainbow-striped wedding invitation in the mail, and until that time to mind their own.”

  “Does that work?”

  “Like a charm. Trust me, you drop a couple hints that you’re kinky, your parents stop asking about your love life really fast.”

  “Mine would probably put me in a mental hospital.”

  “I would bust you out,” she said. “Me and Rusty. We’d ride off int
o the sunset, all three of us. And we’ll be as kinky as the day is long.” She put her arm around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder.

  “I don’t know if Rusty’d be into that,” Jason asked.

  “Well, fine. He can be vanilla. We’ll be kinky.”

  “I like that plan,” Jason said. “That’s a good plan. But I have a better one.”

  “What’s that?”

  Jason took her by the hips and steered her toward the door of the master bathroom.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “Showering with an audience.”

  The bathroom was nice, as modern as the bedroom was old-fashioned. Jason turned on the water in the big glass shower stall and Simone stood there passively as he took his shirt off of her and dropped it onto the floor.

  “In,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, smiling. Naked, she stepped under the steaming water to wet her hair.

  She didn’t try to put on a good show for him. Fact was, she really needed a shower and if he wanted to watch, he could watch. Fine by her. She found his soap and lathered it up in her hands and proceeded to rub it all over her chest, breasts, and stomach. She closed her eyes and put her face under the spray and wasn’t the least bit surprised when she opened her eyes again to find Jason in the shower with her. Naked and happy to see her.

  “I thought you were only watching, sir.”

  He pulled her to him. He was hard and she smiled as his erection pressed into her stomach. With a hand in her wet hair he tilted her head back, way back and kissed her neck, nibbled her earlobe, licked the water off her skin. He put his mouth to her ear.

  “I’m in charge,” he said. “I make the plans. I can change the plans.”

  This was a much better plan.

  Nine

  After their shower, it was close to bedtime, and Jason was just not sure what to do about that. Simone sat near the foot of the bed, naked but for his flannel shirt she’d put back on after the shower. She was toweling her wet hair and he was having trouble taking his eyes off her as she made herself at home in his room. She looked so damn cute, with her pink hair all wet and her bare legs sticking out from his shirt, that he could have stared at her all night.