Yes, it was. But it was the kind of trap that had Ana giggling and her hips rocking to ride something more than just a horse. Shivering bliss was working its way through her, humming through her sex, all the way up into her womb. Right now she didn't care what was used—the butterfly, the crop—it didn't matter, so long as Miranda stopped this public torment and took her home where they could be alone.
Home? Ana caught herself. Miranda's apartment was not her home. She was just visiting. Six more days, and then she really would have to go home. Her home. She didn't want to think about it.
Miranda left the purple dress with the pregnant Sara, who promised to take it to be mended before having it delivered back to the apartment. Hand in hand, she and Ana left the dining room. Ana walked bow-legged at first, but after a few steps she became accustomed to the awkward bulk between her thighs, if not to the scintillating shivers it sent pulsing through her sex. Mercifully, Miranda turned the vibrations down. It became almost bearable after that.
A maze of well-trafficked corridors took them through the St. Castle's school library and out into the garden beyond. School must have been back in session because they passed very few 'students', either inside or out.
"Do you have a preference for what kind of horse you want to ride?" Miranda asked, bumping her shoulder playfully into Ana's as they walked the gravel-stone path through a garden of rhododendrons, willows and birch trees. Every tree they passed was pock-marked from all the switches that had been trimmed away. Considering the venue, it was a wonder that any of those trees had branches left at all.
"So long as I'm with you, I don't mind," Ana replied. It came out sounding corny, but it was the truth. This was the happiest Ana had been all day. They were together, nothing else mattered to her. At least not until she glanced over at Miranda and noticed that shade of exhaustion around her eyes and mouth. She was distracted, too. She was here with Ana, walking alongside her, she even reached for Ana's hand, weaving their fingers together, but the way she stared out across the garden showed she was thinking about something else. Whatever it was, from the set of her unsmiling mouth, it must not have been pleasant.
Ana stopped where she was. She swiped the butterfly remote from Miranda's hand, and before she could do more than arch an eyebrow at her presumption, Ana turned it off. The sudden absence of the delicate vibrations left her flesh tingling, but it seemed like an absent-minded pleasure, something happening to someone else. It may as well have been someone else too, because without Miranda's equal interest, Ana would rather she not be involved either.
"Young lady…" Miranda began, but Ana cut her off.
"What's going on?" When Miranda turned on her heel to face her, her mouth now a flattened line and an odd hardness steeling her gaze, Ana tried to soften her approach. To fight right now was the last thing she wanted, but if Miranda was ever going to see her as someone worth confiding in, they had to get all these secrets out from between them. "I know your emergency meant you had to go to the hospital. Was… was it bad?"
"Who told you?" A thin thread of anger had begun to weave itself through the hardness in Miranda's dark eyes.
Ana wasn't about to give names. Getting someone else in trouble wasn't what she wanted to do, either. "No one told me anything, apart from where you were." She huffed a disheartened sigh, because if anything she could see Miranda growing angrier. This wasn't going the way she wanted it to at all. "I'm not trying to pry, Miranda. I just wish you would have told me. I don't want to be a burden—"
"You're not, lovely." That soft-spoken endearment felt more like a bite coming from Miranda's angry mouth.
"Yes, I am. Do you even want to be here right now? We don't have to do this, if you'd rather—" Ana jumped when Miranda suddenly closed the space between them with a single step. She caught Ana's chin between her fingers, a gentle hold and yet one firm enough that Ana didn't dare pull away from.
She bent, capturing Ana's unsuspecting lips in a conqueror's kiss. The butterfly was off, but her sex remembered the hum. Her whole body came to singing life, the fires of arousal not yet fully banked roaring instantly back into bonfire intensity.
"You are not a burden," Miranda whispered fiercely. "Right now, I think you are the only thing keeping me sane."
Ana melted, every bad feeling inside her altering instantly into a need so deep it made her knees buckle and her heart ache. "Take me home," she begged, dropping the butterfly remote into the gravel at their feet and running her hands up into Miranda's soft hair. Her fingers dislodged the pins, knocking the top hat to the ground as well.
Miranda breathed in, for the first time the anger dimming from her eyes. "What about the horses?"
"Take me tomorrow. Right now, I just want to be with you." Skin to skin, flesh to soft flesh, with nothing between them, not even the sheets on Miranda's bed.
"Oh, my lovely," Miranda whispered, her fingertips caressing first Ana's face and then her passion-swollen lips.
Half of Miranda's bobby pins were abandoned in the schoolyard garden, though they did pause long enough to pick up the remote. With Ana's hand tucked into her own, Miranda took her back upstairs.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There were three horses in the barnyard corral at the far end of the Castle grounds when Miranda took Ana to see them. They had to cross several acres of grass to get there, and by the time they arrived, the hem of Miranda's riding habit was soaked and Ana's boots shone with drops of moisture.
It was a beautiful morning, with not many Castle guests roaming the grounds outside. At least not until they reached the first of two barns. One seemed dedicated to the horses, all seven of them, their colors ranging from white to black, with one chestnut-brown mare with a white star on its head and a white-socked hoof, that called to Ana from the moment she spotted it halfway across the lawn. The other barn was for the 'ponies', men and women both dressed in halters and bridles, horse-shoed boots and fancy headgear that sported both manes and ears. In a separate corral, Ana watched as trainers led them from their stables to put them through their early morning exercises. But the minute Miranda signaled to one of the workers at the real barn and requested the mare be saddled, all of Ana's attention became focused on the real horses.
They were so much bigger in real life than she'd expected.
"It's all right," Miranda encouraged, once the mare was brought close enough for her to pet. "This is Fire Dancer. She's a rescue horse, but she won't bite, isn't that right, Olivia?"
The blonde woman who had led the horse to them dipped her head to smile at Ana around the horse's nose. "She's our gentlest mare," she assured her. "She loves having her ears scratched. Do you want to touch her?"
By her very tone, Ana could tell Olivia must have spent a lot of time saying that very thing to the Littles up at the Castle, but she wasn't offended. It took both hers and Miranda's encouragement for her to work up the nerve to approach so big and unfamiliar an animal.
Fire Dancer swiveled an ear when Ana reached up her hand. Then she lowered her massive head, and that was the last straw in the bastion of Ana's reserve. From the moment she touched behind the mare's ear, she was in love. Horses were an amalgamation of muscular hardness and soft. The flesh felt very solid, with the hair of its ears feeling much smoother than the coarseness of its long mane.
"Hello, Fire Dancer," Ana cooed, and the mare turned its head, all but butting into Ana's side before fitting the startling softness of its nose into her palm.
"Would you like to feed her a bite of apple?" Olivia asked.
"Oh yes, please," Ana breathed, petting her muzzle, her fingers tracing down the nose of the animal's head. The mare watched with seemingly intelligent eyes as Olivia accepted an apple from a pair of trainers who approached with a saddle, and cut it into wedges.
"Hold your hand flat." The blonde woman, Olivia, lay a wedge on Ana's open palm and Fire Dancer very gently lipped it up into her mouth.
Ana had to fight not to either dance or squeal. She grinned at
Miranda instead. Anything at all could happen from this moment on, and this would still rank as one of the best days of her life.
"Are you ready to ride her?" Miranda asked, as the mare was being saddled.
Fire Dancer bumped her nose back into Ana's palm, either looking for more apple or more scratches. Ana petted her, but it was hard not to take an instant step back as she eyed the incredible size of the gentle mare. She really did want to try, but in the end she shook her head. "I'll fall off."
Miranda tsked. Circling around the horse, she wrapped her arms around Ana's waist, letting her lean back against her chest while Fire Dancer continued to beg for affection. "Do you really think I'd let you fall?"
"If you're on the ground and I'm on the horse, how are you going to stop it?"
"Cheeky monkey," Miranda laughed, and nibbled at her ear.
It was a fight not to squirm or squeal all over again as Miranda's lips stole sugared kisses from a very sensitive place on her neck. Ana loved this, the warmth and security of Miranda's arms around her and the pillow of her breasts cushioning at her back. She wouldn't at all have minded spending the rest of the day just like this. But all too soon, the saddle was on Fire Dancer's back and Olivia led her by the reins, turning the mare to present Ana with a broad view of her side.
"All aboard," Olivia said, cheerfully.
"Don't be scared," Miranda added, unwinding her arms to give Ana a pat on the well-padded seat of her riding trousers.
"That's easy for you to say." She eyed the sheer height of the stirrup and then the mare's back. "You're not the one having to climb a million miles up there. I… I don't know." She shook her head, and then glanced back across the yard to where the other set of trainers were working with their 'ponies'. The nerves twisting in her stomach began to get the best of her. "People are going to laugh at me."
"Only if they want a good dose of my crop," Miranda said, and patted Ana's bottom again. "Up. You said you wanted to ride."
"I did," Ana hedged. Falling in desperate love with horses was a prerequisite for any little girl, and Ana had danced with that infatuation ever since she was ten and read Black Beauty for the very first time. "I do, I just… I didn't realize she would be this big. Or that there'd be this far to fall."
Undeterred, Miranda turned to Olivia. "Who's your best handler?"
"Me, of course." Olivia grinned and came around the horse's head to offer Ana cupped hands and boost up onto the saddle. "Take hold of the saddle horn, sweetheart, then step here, and up you'll go."
Miranda moved in quickly, delivering a playful swat to Olivia's trousered backside before Ana's foot even left the ground. "That's my job," she said, when Olivia jumped upright.
"Flirt," Olivia said, tossing Ana a wink even as she moved up to take the reins at the front of the horse. "You're lucky my wife didn't see that."
"She did," came a dry call from somewhere across the yard. "We'll talk about it later."
Olivia's face flushed bright pink, and her jaw dropped. She gaped at both Ana and Miranda, before barking a startled laugh.
"Oops," Miranda said, unapologetically.
"You got me in trouble," Olivia laughed.
"I'll talk to her."
"You'd better!"
"Watch your tone," came another dry call across the yard. "That's not how you address a Mistress of the Castle."
Ducking down, Ana looked under Fire Dancer's belly for the source of that remark, and spotted a woman in a riding outfit much like her own, apart from the shiny black boots and belt, the low cut of her white shirt revealing the mounds of her pale breasts, and the riding crop dangling from her waist, leaning in the open barn doorway. Her arms were folded across her ample chest as she watched the proceedings with a wry smile. Despite the censure of her comment, there was open fondness for Olivia on the other woman's face.
"Morning, Siobhan," Miranda called with a wave.
The woman pushed off from where she'd been leaning against the barn threshold and sauntered a few steps out into the yard. "Miranda."
"How's the new girl working out?"
"Heather? She's fine. Spent a little time on the Horse last night, but for the most part, I'm happy with her progress."
"Horse?" Ana stood up straight, glancing to Miranda, who shook her head.
"It's not what you think."
"It certainly isn't," Olivia said with a grimace. "Miss Miranda, please don't you dare get me put on the Horse!"
"Olivia!"
"I said please!"
It was the first time since she'd arrived that Ana saw Miranda laugh with such free abandon. She put her arm around Olivia's shoulder, pressing a brief kiss to her forehead. It was hard to see past the flare of jealousy that stabbed in under Ana's chest at the minute brush of Miranda's soft lips across the lovely blonde's brow, but Miranda didn't hold her for long. And when she let go, it was to Ana that she came, throwing an arm around her shoulder next, and bending to kiss her next. Except it wasn't a slight brush upon the brow that Miranda bestowed upon her. Her laughing mouth caught Ana's own, and it was impossible to hold on to jealousy as poorly thought out as her own when all she could see, and smell, and breathe, was Miranda pouring affection into her… one chuckling nibble at a time.
"Let's get you on that horse." Taking Olivia's place at her side, she bent to cup her hands. "Alley oop."
Feeling very self-conscious, Ana put her left foot into Miranda's hands and reached for the saddle horn.
"On three," Miranda said. "One… two…"
'Three' came with a dizzying heft, and Ana pulled as Miranda boosted. She quickly flung her right leg up over the back of the horse, falling forward over the saddle in her haste to make sure she didn't fall back down again, or worse, topple straight over the horse and land face-first back on the ground on the other side.
"I'm up!" she cried, equal parts surprised and excited. Fire Dancer didn't so much as twitch beneath her. The saddle between her legs felt awkwardly broad, but not uncomfortable. She'd done it! She was actually on top of a horse.
She grinned down at Miranda and Olivia, both of whom were grinning back at her. With Olivia holding onto the bridle, Miranda handed Ana the reins.
"Don't go," Ana begged—now that she was sitting so high up off the ground, she was suddenly very much afraid of how she was going to get back down again.
"I won't leave you," Miranda soothed. "Pay attention to what Olivia tells you. She's going to teach you how to ride."
"Sit up straight," Olivia instructed, and Ana did. It wasn't hard to do. The saddle was comfortable, but in a way that encouraged correct posture. She clutched the stiff reins in both hands, pulling them so tight that Fire Dancer raised her head in protest. "No, relax your grip."
Ana immediately complied.
"That's it. Now, don't lean so far forward and don't look at Miranda. Look at me. Are you ready?"
"Don't let me fall," Ana quavered, her thighs already beginning to feel the strain of hugging onto the saddle as tightly as she could.
"No one's going to let you fall, lovely." Miranda stroked her knee, and then stepped back a pace. Just one, and no more.
A rush of gratitude swept through Ana, but trying to follow Olivia's instructions, she quickly averted her gaze back to the front of the gentle horse.
The first rolling step was at once the most frightening, the most strange, and the most exhilarating. Ana squeaked, clutching both the reins and the saddle horn.
"Back straight and elbows in," Olivia corrected. "You're doing great, honey. No, look at me. Sit with your body in one line."
One rolling step became two, and then a whole lot more. With the blonde handler holding Fire Dancer's bridle, and Miranda following on the inside, Ana rode her first horse all the way around the inside of that small corral. After that first round, she began to relax and even to enjoy the plodding, rolling gait. She barely felt any panic at all when Miranda ceased to walk alongside her, finding instead a spot along the fence from which to watch.
Rather than on Ana, however, Miranda's gaze was at that moment locked on the cell phone in her hand. A sharp pang of disappointment cut through Ana's pleasure, but it was a fleeting thing that instantly reversed itself when Miranda held up her cell phone, pointed it at Ana and called out, "Smile!"
She snapped three pictures in all, and when Fire Dancer at last made her way back to the barn and, flush-faced and grinning, Ana was helped to dismount, she got to see what she looked like. Two of the pictures were out of focus, but the third was perfect: showing only the barest hint of Olivia's hand on the bridle and Ana sitting on top of her mare, her face alight with joy.
"If I live forever, I'll never forget today," she breathed, looking down at Miranda's phone.
"I take that to mean you enjoyed your ride," Miranda said, wrapping her arm around Ana's shoulder and tucking her in close to her side. Together, they admired the picture in her phone.
"Yes." Ana nodded, her belly turning instantly molten when Miranda leaned down to whisper, for her ears alone, "Good. I'm glad, because now it's my turn to ride. And, lovely, I'm not talking about Fire Dancer."
A rush of warmth spread out through Ana, moving up through her chest to burn her face, flowing down all through her lower half, putting an instant quiver of weakness in her legs. Picture forgotten, she looked up at Miranda.
"I'm going to count to five," Miranda said, her brown eyes alive with sparkling amusement. "Then I'm going to chase you down. Wherever I catch you, love, is where I'm going to have you, and I don't care where we are or who might be watching us."
In that fiery moment, Ana wasn't sure she cared either. But then Miranda started to count—
"One…"
—and Ana's ever-present modesty quickly reasserted itself.
"Two," Miranda warned.
Her squeal more of a laugh than real distress, Ana took off running as fast as her legs, packed into her tight-fitting riding trousers, would let her.
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