by Amanda Jones
twenty
Jack standing close to me tightened my nipples. Smoothing my fear-wrinkled dress, I whispered, “I can have shifter babies.”
“How’s that make you feel?” Jack leaned back.
“With Rufen, it was exciting at first. But, he doesn’t really even care about that. He just wants my ranch.” I swung my head, freeing my hair to fly around my face in the dusty breeze.
“Besides, he had children. With my mother,” I spat.
“What happened to them?”
“Dead, far as I know. He never mentions them. I had to find out from someone else.” Poor Molly!
“Listen to me, going on like a schoolgirl.” I pulled the nozzle from the gas pump and stuck the end into his tank, starting the flow.
An engine roared from the garage. Aubrey rode by astride the ebony Sportster. He gave us a wave as he passed, his dust glowing orange in the setting sun.
Filling the stranger’s tank didn’t take long. I talked about his bike, an FXB Sturgis in immaculate condition other than the scratches and the dust.
I admired the jacket still hanging off his handlebar, the steel hammer and storm cloud colored words.
Screwing Jack’s fuel cap tight, I said, “You want to see where we made your leather?”
Jack’s gaze fell to my neck’s creamy expanse. “I’d like that.” Excitement rippled through me. I ran my hand through my wind-blown hair as if the action would bring my curls under control.
“There won’t be anyone there, the workers have all left by now.” Time to see if this being was a real alpha.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
twenty-one
I opened my leather factory’s oaken door. The scent of rawhide and coconuts hit me.
“Smells like suntan lotion,” Jack said with a surprised note.
“Yeah, we use coconut oil to condition the leather. Makes it soft.” I ran my hand over a supple hide, draped on the counter. I’d been playing in here for years. The last few years, adult play, but not with Rufen or Aubrey. Just myself. Until now. The leather and oil made my juices run and I squeezed my legs in excitement. Jack was the handsomest man I’d ever been this close to. Next to my daddy, but he was gone. Also, like my daddy, Jack was a match for Josiah Rufen, that much he’d plain as the sage covered hills when he’d saved Aubrey and run the Sunwalkers off.
Just by halfway pulling his big-ass sword.
“The jackets are made here.”
Workbenches covered with cut leather pieces, died in a rainbow of colors, filled this side of my little factory. Finished jackets hung on a rack. Jack spread them apart, running his fingers over the designs. My eyes skipped along his broad shoulders.
He ran his hand over jackets with broad pale moons on the back. Wolf’s heads. Skulls. “We make those on spec. The custom ones are over there,” I placed my hand on his forearm, giving him a slight tug.
Jack grinned. “Any hammers?”
“No. Not since you. If you have any more, your Arizona Legion must get them made somewhere else.” Standing close to him now, sage and dust mixed with male musk washed over me. My heart beat faster.
“There’s just one rider in the Arizona Legion today and I got a Mather’s jacket.” One man against a Sunwalker gang, and he stood tall and stared that blood drinking bastard Rufen down. I licked my lips.
“How did you find us?”
“I got a smartphone and searched for you.” Smash my head with a rock. But his mocking tone coursed through me, leaving hot skin and shivering my legs.
twenty-two
Jack pointed at the sign adorning the top frame of the door to the tack shop, off to the side of the main floor. “You have horse whips and leathers?”
The tack shop is our main customer area, with its own parking area the signs on the road from Signal Hill lead casual drivers to. At this hour, anyone arriving in that lot would see a door with a neon sign reading, “Closed.”
I nodded rapidly. “Yes, let me show you. We have crops, and whips, all sorts.” My breasts swelled against my white lace bra cups, my nipples chafing for freedom. “Do you keep horses?”
Jack’s grin creased his dusty cheeks. “No, I might get a whip for a friend who collects them.”
“Let’s go see what I’ve got,” I bounded before him, eager to get this handsome male into my favorite section the compact workshop.
“I’d like that, ma’am.”
twenty-three
The tack shop’s far wall was lined with bridles and horse blankets.
Custom saddles sat atop leather stands in the middle of the room, breaking the space into sections. Lights made from carriage lamps hung from wooden beams along the walls, cast a dim, romantic light. Various equestrian accessories hung from the walls: bridles, halters, leads. Whips. Coconut dominated the air in the smaller space. I made a beeline for the handmade whips display.
“We have just about anything your friend might like. We make them all here.”
Jack took up black riding crops. It had braided midnight leather with a diamond shaped leather loop at the end. He ran his hands along the rough shaft. I placed my finger next to Jack’s. “All the leather is from our herds. We use a special method to cure it. They last a long time. Most of them are wrapped around fiberglass.”
I grabbed my favorite crop. The one Faith made.
“This one’s old school, cored with whalebone.” The whip ended in a narrow loop. Extra stingy, the way Faith liked. The way I liked.
“Whalebone? Where do you get that?”
“They die from natural causes. Beachcombers send us the baleen. It makes the best crops. Modern materials are too stiff.”
Jack swished the crop back and forth. My nipples hardened at the sound.
“Feels better,” he nodded. “How will I know it works though? I can’t test it on my Harley.” Jack sensuously stroked the whip’s shaft.
“What style does your friend ride?” I blinked at him, hoping he’d notice my lashes flashing in the romantic light.
“Ride?”
“English? Western? The style helps tell if this crop will work for him.”
I licked my suddenly dry lips.
“Horses? He doesn’t use his whips on horses.” My heart caught in my throat.
“What does do with them,” I whispered.
Jack tested the crop against his palm. “That’ll sting,” he said, sure of himself and his rightful place in the universe.
“My friend uses them to excite his women.”
twenty-four
“Ha ha,” I giggled, nerves coursing through me.
Jack gave me the look of a man who was absolutely not joking. My nipples popped through my thin bra. I pulled the nearest saddle from its stand, a leather covered pommel horse with the handles removed. The surplus gym equipment made a perfect saddle display stand, strong enough for a customer to mount and feel the saddle underneath them.
“You could try the whip on here.”
“That might work.” Jack swung the crop, flicking the end with an expert twist. The loop slammed into the soft leather covering the pommel horse, leaving a half-inch indentation with the shape made by the square tip. I jumped at the snapping sound. I rubbed my legs together to calm my fire between my thighs.
“That’s a good blow, but I’m not sure what it would do to a woman’s skin.”
“Then you need to test it on a woman.” I fluttered my eyelashes again. “You could try it on me.” I pushed my dress-covered behind out. Jack squinted at me and ran the whip’s tip over my posterior. Pleasurable tingles shot through me.
“Your dress will keep me from seeing what it does.” The implication sent waves of excitement through me.
“Are you asking me to pull my dress up sir? I just met you!” I ached to strip for him, but he needed to work to see me naked.
A little.
twenty-five
Jack hooked the hem of my frock with the crop and lifted the cloth, showing my nude-colored thong. C
ool breeze wafted over my naked cheeks.
“Where we are now, I’m past asking and you’re past wanting me to ask. If I’m wrong, tell me.” Jack waited.
Boiling blood flooded the veins in my face. I held my position, with my rear pushed toward Jack, looking at him over my shoulder.
“I won’t tell you no, Jack.” You dominated Rufen and he’s been terrorizing me for months. I want you to stay here. Take me. Protect me. Mate with me.
“I like you.”
Fully a slave to Rufen’s infection, I panted like a bitch in heat.
“Good. I like you Miss Mathers. I like your leather and I like your whips. You smell right. I think we can be close.” Jack lifted my dress and traced lines on my posterior with the tip of the whalebone cored crop. “I’m not going to be the first one to mark your skin.”
I shivered. He must have seen the welts from Aubrey’s switch.
“Just a game. Cowboys and Indians by the river.” I wiggled my hindquarters. “Didn’t mean squat.”
“Aubrey? That’s what got Rufen so upset?”
“Rufen thinks he owns me. He don’t. Nobody does.” My breath came in quick gasps.
Jack’s laughter erupted from him. “I guess that’s true. But, may I borrow you now? For the next hour or so.” Slowly and seductively his gaze raked my body.
“Well I am Eve and you are the Apple, Mr. Norton. You tempt me so, and I can’t resist.” My skin ached for his touch. The smoldering flame in his eyes startled me. The promise lurking in his pupils enticed me.
This big bad wolf doesn’t just dominate the street.
“Good, then I have a few more requests before I test your work of art.”
Passion radiated from the soft core of my body. Too emotion filled to speak, I nodded my head.
Jack held his hand in front before my face and tensed his muscles. His nails popped into wicked talons. In a blur, he swept his hand down my back, tearing my dress. Showing a master craftsman’s precision, he parted the flimsy cotton with his razor claws, leaving my skin untorn. Clad just in my filigreed bra and alabaster thong, I cowered before him, a flood pouring down my thighs. Two more slashes and my bra and panties dropped to the floor.
“Now, we’re almost ready to for my test. But, I want to try this whip with you lying still on the stand. I don’t want you to be dancing around and making it hard for me to gauge the effect.”
I’d fantasized about being draped over the reconditioned pommel horses we used for saddle stands since I hit puberty, when I’d realized I had a desire for submission. After Rufen infected me, that desire became a requirement, like the need for water or sleep. After Rufen, when I played in the shop by myself, I took down the saddle and rubbed my sex on the pommel horse’s textured surface, imagining some faceless man testing whips. Now, my fantasy was coming alive and my knees knocked together like bamboo wind chimes.
Rufen told me my feelings revealed my breeder status. Women who are destined to love werewolves have submissive passions mixed up in their sexual desires. My fantasies grew richer and more demanding of fulfillment since Rufen bit me, but I was born this way.
While Josiah Rufen was a master in the bedroom, he lacked the imagination to match my fantasies for action in public places and unusual scenarios. I didn’t want to have to tell my mate how to dominate me.
Then there was Aubrey, sweet Aubrey, he tried but he’d been with me in this very room and never thought how perfect the leather saddle stand surrounded by disciplinary devices would be as a whipping bench.
“Yes, Jack,” I breathed. I straddled the arched surface, then lay over the pommel horse. My breasts fell on either side of the rounded top, and my belly sank into the padded leather. The upside down U shape pressed on my clit deliciously as I draped my legs to either side. “Do you like that view?”
Jack put his hand on the back of my neck, and used his thumb to turn my head to the side. He leaned to me and whispered in my ear, “my brother likes to play rough and I need to make sure this toy won’t break on him.”
His kinky friend is his brother? What would Jack Norton’s kin would be like. Probably just as large and attractive. If they had the same mother, Jack’s brother must likewise be a wolf.
He stood back and ran the crop up the back of my thigh. Chills cracked up my leg, straight to my pussy. Wet leather’s scent crashed into my nose.
Using the crop like a fingertip, Jack traced a line up my spine, then over my shoulders.
A tremor inside me heated my thighs and my bare, exposed, womanhood.
Then he lifted the crop’s business end from my skin and I gasped, expecting him to strike.
Instead, the crop’s flexible tip caressed between my legs. He teased my pussy lips, getting the tip wet with my juices. Then he poked the thong lightly between my folds. Upwards he explored, finding my engorged clit.
“Do you understand?” His voice was velvet-edged and strong. I squirted a few drops at his words.
“Yes, Jack. You’ll need to test it. Thoroughly.” My voice was weak, but not with fear. I was panting like a husky in the desert. I didn’t have much extra air for speech.
He kept teasing me, running the leather loop at the end of the crop along my sensitive labial folds, each time stroking my throbbing button. I ached for more sensation.
“Are you going to tease me all night with that thing?” I huffed.
“Yeow!” I jumped as Jack brought the weapon down on my naked ass. I grabbed the sides of the pommel horse, my fingers digging in. Whack! Whack! Jack struck over and again, I lost count at five. The smooth cowhide beneath my cheek ran slippery with my drool. I gulped back a scream, hot tears wetting my cheeks.
Bam! Slam! Jack continued his fiery assault on my tender flesh. “Oh please, not so hard,” I wailed, slipping off the far side of the horse.
Jack stopped then, and grabbed my waist with one huge paw, steadying me.
“Maybe I got carried away. You’re such a sexy little beta. It’s no wonder Rufen is pissed.”
I let Jack pull me back on the horse. My ribs heaved, struggling to corral my fleeing breath. My backside burned with the heat of the noonday sun on the range.
This man, this wolf, dominant, strange and powerful, stole my will away and I wanted to lay supine beneath him, taking all he could give. Taking whatever turned him on. The way he rode up and dominated Rufen, the way he saved poor Aubrey, the way he controlled whatever scene he walked into, whether the open range or the leather shop, all flashed through my mind. His power and passion consumed me and I wanted to be consumed.
“Maybe you need some help staying on the horse, girl.” Jack held me in place with a strong hand on the small of my back. “I can’t test this toy if you’re going to be flopping all around.”
My eyes flew open.
“Hold this for me.” Jack placed the crop’s stem between my teeth. Instinctively I bit into the leather, like a dancer with a braid wrapped rose. I stuck out my tongue and tasted the cowhide. Sweet from the coconut oil, and salty. Probably from my sweat.
Jack took a broad belt from the wall. Black leather, inlaid with white wolves racing, taking down a buck. Turquoise silver buckle. My mother’s design. My mother, who Josiah Rufen married, then betrayed.
Jack bent and wrapped the belt around my knees. He drew the leather tight, securing me firmly to the horse, my thighs now pulled together underneath the imitation beast’s stitched leather belly.
I could flail my arms, but I couldn’t reach the clasp and free my knees.
With a gentle tug, Jack retrieved his crop.
twenty-six
A crack echoed through the shop like gunshot, and I tensed, straining against the belt, holding my breath. But no painful slash accompanied the sound, and then I recognized the source.
The door to the factory slamming shut.
“Hello?”
I flailed against my bonds. “It’s Aubrey,” I gasped. “Let me up.”
“I like where I put you, how I put you, Mi
ss Mathers. Let’s just see what he wants.”
“Jeslie? Mr. Norton? That Sportster needs a fuel filter.” The sound of booted feet getting closer filled my mind.
“I had to hike back from Signal Hill.”
I hid my face in the padding of the pommel horse, terrified of what Aubrey would say. What he would think.
“Wow, what’s going on Mr. Norton?” Astonishment tinged his voice.
“Miss Mathers was just helping me test out this fine whalebone crop.” Jack slapped it down on my thighs, making me jump. “Jeslie, don’t be rude. Say hello.”
“Go ‘way, Aubrey.” I moaned into the leather.
If Aubrey stayed, would he join in with Jack? Would he punish me also? Mate with me? I clutched the sides of the horse with my hands, willing myself to disappear.
Bound, my submissiveness raged and I longed for the taste of the whip, like an addict waiting for a fix. My ass wiggled with its own mind. The smooth leather slick with my juices teased my clit.
Jack slammed the whip into my ass. Again and again. “Don’t. Be. Rude.” Each word he accented with a harder whip. I lost myself in the sensation, forgetting to worry about what Aubrey would see. What he would think.
I’d been innocent before Rufen, and he had taken that from me. Before being bitten, I might have been happy with a vanilla life. Maybe a spanking now and then.
But Rufen bit me and changed me. “Blood drinkers love hard, Jeslie. You’re a natural, you’re built to take painful sex. And enjoy it,” he’d said.
With the way Jack owned the Sunwalkers this morning, I’m guessing wolves love even harder than blood suckers.
One thing Josiah Rufen never done was share me with another. He’d made clear his goal: to marry me and keep me for himself, which is why he wanted to kill poor Aubrey. A poor pup from the Ninemile Pack up north. Kicked out because they had too many males, and not enough breeders.