by Ann Jacobs
When he could move again he shoved his cock back in his jeans, zipped them…and bent to lick every last drop of the salty, slick fluid that glistened around her cunt while she trembled with the aftereffects of her climax. Then he sat on the air mattress beside her and took her hand.
“You know how hard it’s going to be for me to share you? How I…” His words trailed off and he stroked the back of her hand with his thumb.
Ninia knew it. Knew Jared had held back during their scenes at Boundless Pleasure. She just didn’t know whether it was because he wasn’t into group scenes or voyeurism…or if it had to do with his reluctance to display his body to virtual strangers in a dungeon. “You don’t have to, you know. You’re all the master I need.” She sat up beside him, looked into his troubled gaze.
“No. I’ve seen the longing in your eyes when I’ve passed on chances to share you, even to open the curtains and let others watch. I’d be a lousy master if I didn’t give you everything you need. Come on, let’s walk over to that scenic overlook and I’ll tell you a little about my family.”
The subject of ménage was obviously closed, at least for him. For her, too, although she shoved it gently to the back of her mind. Sliding down from the truck bed, she smoothed the wrinkled skirt of her sundress, offered him her hand and matched her pace with his. Once they reached the rail that fenced off a deep sandstone gorge, Jared stopped and gestured toward a plateau on the other side. “This land looks pretty much like home. Like the ranch on the outskirts of Laramie where we all grew up.”
He paused, as though remembering Ninia had grown up an orphan and not wanting to hurt her with too much reminiscing about the joys of having parents and siblings. It stung her more, having her master holding back from sharing the anchors of place and people that had made him the man he was. “Go on, please. Tell me about your skinned knees, your first pony. Your fights with Diana and Brad, and the spankings you got from Mom and Dad. After all, I bored you with stories of how I shuffled from one foster home to another, never finding a real home.”
Leaning his backside against the rail, Jared rested his bad leg on his left boot. Then he looked at Ninia and shrugged. “I don’t remember Dad all that well. He died when I was just five years old and Brad was eight. An accident out at Grandpa’s ranch, or so we were told. After that, Mom pretty much fell apart. She moved us into town, and she died when I was ten. Diana was only eighteen at the time, but she took over, practically raised Brad and me. We all finished school in Laramie. Brad went on the rodeo circuit as soon as he graduated. After I went away to college, Diana married a Dom she met in town and they moved out to her share of Grandpa’s ranch. Guess all that responsibility made her want some peace and quiet—while having her watch over us like hawks sent Brad and me out seeking excitement. And learning sexual dominance was a turn-on to us both.”
The picture Ninia got as Jared looked back on his childhood was one of three hardheaded kids, anchored on each other, all determined to find satisfaction in ways they’d been denied when they were children.
“Come on, let’s see this piece of Wyoming you call home.” It didn’t matter what had shaped Jared or why he felt as he did. She put her hand in his and let his warmth surround her as they made their way back to the truck.
* * * * *
The rugged foothills of the Rockies rose in the distance, a panorama of sandstone boulders and gnarly shrubs surrounding them in every direction from the large log cabin at the end of a winding gravel road through the property Jared had inherited. Fields stretched out for what seemed like miles, fallow fields dotted with massive cottonwood trees like the one that shaded the cabin. Jared sat on the porch, a step above her, toying with Ninia’s hair and pointing out places where he’d played as a child when he and his siblings had visited. “We lived in Laramie because Mom wasn’t very much for the great outdoors, especially after Dad got killed in that freak accident up in the high pasture.”
That was too bad, Ninia thought, because her Master obviously felt at home in these rugged surroundings. She liked them too—the sense of peace, the silence broken by a rustling breeze or the squawk of a bird on some branch of the sprawling tree. She imagined living here with Jared, bringing up children far away from the city and its temptations. “I love it here.” I love you. She’d say it, but he hadn’t uttered the words and it wasn’t a slave’s place to put her master on the spot.
“I’m glad. Lift your hair for me.” When she did, he reached in his shirt pocket and drew out a thick, gold collar set with a large, faceted topaz. Reaching around her, he held it for her inspection then settled it around her neck. “It looks like a piece of jewelry, but it’s not. Once I close the clasp, it won’t come off unless somebody saws it in two.”
He paused, his hands still at the back of her neck. “Do you still want me as your Master? If not, you’d better tell me now.”
“Yes. I still want you.” How could he think otherwise? Couldn’t he tell the only thing she wanted was to belong to him, body and soul, claim him as her master in front of God and everybody on Earth?”I want to wear your collar so everyone will know I’m yours.”
The gold felt smooth, cool. Its weight was a welcome reminder that she, like it, was the treasured property of her beloved master. She reached up, touched the precious stone above the leash hook, liked the way its weight made the front of the collar settle at the base of her throat. “Fasten it, Master, please.” She wanted to hear the finality of the metal being joined, to know she belonged to the solemn man who’d stolen her heart long before claiming her body and soul. “I want more than anything to be your slave.”
“And I want to be your master.” She felt his warm breath against the sweet spot on the back of her neck just below her hairline, trembled when he bared his teeth and nipped her there. “Listen. I want you to come when you hear my collar snap closed.”
The feel of his knuckles as he fumbled with the locking mechanism was as arousing as if he’d been tonguing her clit, and the power of his suggestion had her growing wet between her legs. The warm breeze carried her scent and his, heady and arousing as it swirled around them. Her pussy clenched, the flesh apparently as eager as she to relinquish control…to entrust everything—her sexual satisfaction, her well-being, even her life—to Jared McTavish. To the man who owned her, body and soul. To her master.
The collar closed around her neck, its sound metallic. Final. Ninia’s belly tightened. Her pierced nipples hardened and her clit began to throb. Her pussy started to spasm, and her ass contracted around the plug she wore at her master’s command. When she started to shake all over, he wrapped her in his arms. “I’ll take care of you, sweetheart. Always.”
* * * * *
The inside of the cabin was much as Jared remembered. It looked a lot like the private chamber he’d taken that first night at Boundless Pleasure. He and his new slave had shared a picnic supper on the porch then come inside, where he’d built a small fire to ward off the chill that always came in the mountains after nightfall. After they’d come inside he’d stripped down and ordered Ninia to shed her clothes, it was his very pleasant duty to see that she didn’t catch a cold. The firelight cast a glow over her beautiful body and made her collar and nipple rings sparkle in the near darkness. “Come here, my sweet slave,” he said, motioning for her to join him on the red leather-covered couch in front of the fire.
She’d given him the riding crop earlier. Now he balanced its leather-wrapped handle on one palm, considered how the braided leather could easily bruise her tender skin. “Why is it that you get pleasure when I hurt you?” He’d often wondered but had never cared enough before to delve that deeply into the heads of the subs he’d pleasured before his injury.
“I’m a bad girl who needs to be punished.” She stared at the fire, her fingers moving along the smooth gold surface of her collar, as if she was considering his question—and the answer she’d glibly given. “Seriously, I’m not sure. It’s hard for me to let go of control. Always ha
s been, even when I was a child. Karada bondage, the touch of those metal tips on your cat o’nine…wearing a plug or dildo at my master’s command—all of these things remind me I’m helpless to your will. That I’m not responsible for the pleasure you make me feel.”
“Does wearing this make you feel out of control?” He ran his finger under her collar, deliberately reminding her she’d accepted permanent sexual slavery. Twice. “Did wearing his collar make it feel safe for you to let go?”
“Yes, Master.”
“You’re one of the strongest women I’ve ever run across, strong enough to stand up to some of the meanest, nastiest soldiers on earth. Hell, you stood up to me when you thought I was being stupid about this.” He rapped on the socket of his prosthesis. “Take this off me and come straddle my lap.”
When she did, he didn’t feel the sense of helplessness that usually followed when he went without the limb somewhere other than in bed, and he knew that was because she was there. Because he trusted her the way he’d never trusted any woman, the way he’d trusted the other members of his Force Recon team to protect his back, same as he’d done his damnedest to protect theirs. “Ride me. Milk my cock with your hot, wet cunt. Do it well and I’ll try out your gift on your delicious ass cheeks.”
When she clamped down those strong inner muscles he felt the plug in her ass, imagined as he did that it was another man’s cock invading her. “Open your mouth,” he growled, and when she did he plundered it with his tongue. She sucked it hard, as if it were yet another cock filling the last of her holes. Grasping the crop in his left hand, he laid a light blow on her bare ass, then another. Her hot, wet flesh clenched around his straining cock as she took him balls deep.
When he came in long bursts that seemed to go on forever, she shattered in his arms, her incredibly soft skin slick with sweat. He wrenched his mouth away from hers. “Come, baby, come with me. It’s okay. God, but I love you, just the way you are.” It didn’t matter. If she wanted a ménage, he’d arrange for one even if it meant stowing his own insecurities.
A master’s job was to take care of all of his slave’s sexual needs, he reminded himself later that night when he spoke with Brad and told his brother how he wanted the dungeon’s observation room set up the following night so he could pleasure Ninia.
“Tomorrow night we’re going to play a scene at Roped and Lassoed,” he told her later, stroking her naked body as they lay in bed in the light of a bright, golden moon. “You’ll be the star attraction…to me and the others I’ve invited to watch and share my precious slave. You won’t have a hole left empty, or an inch of your sweet body left untouched by hungry eyes. Hands.” He stroked her cheek then inserted a finger in her mouth. “You’ve been dreaming about ménage. And you get off on people watching. Don’t try to deny it.”
She wriggled her ass cheeks against his erection, sucked his finger and stroked it with her tongue. “Mmmm.”
Jared couldn’t resist her blatant invitation. Rolling her onto her back, he rose on his knees and joined their bodies. “That’s it, sweetheart. Wrap those pretty legs around my waist and squeeze my cock. Love me.” I want more than your lust, more than your submission.
“I do.” Her arms went around his shoulders, holding him close, dragging him down on her until they couldn’t get any closer. Her sopping cunt throbbed around his cock, milking him, holding him in her as though she’d never let him go. It felt good. So fucking good, this closeness that he’d never yearned for before. And when he came in her, she gave him the words he needed to hear, words that let him set aside the fear she’d find him lacking compared with the ones he’d recruited to enhance her pleasure.
“I love you, Master. Only you.”
* * * * *
God, but I love you. The words he’d said last night still echoed in her ears, warming her heart. She’d said the words too, but in the heat of passion. She wanted to say them now, when her mind was clear.
“I love you.” Ninia bent and nuzzled Jared’s neck while he finished off his second cup of tea. When he turned and shot her an intense look, she tried to distract him before he had time to question her simple declaration. “What’s on for today?” she asked.
“A visit to the bedroom if you don’t stop that,” he growled, capturing her chin in his hand and giving her a long, hard kiss.
“Is that a threat or a promise, Master?”
“A promise. But later. By the way, sweetheart, I love you, too.”
“Mmmm, I just thought you might. But tell me, what are we going to do today?”
“I want to show you around the ranch. After all, you’re a city girl, and you’ve got a right to see what I’ve got in store for you. You ride me like a champ,” he said, a sexy grin on his handsome face. “But I’m wondering. Can you ride a horse?”
“I haven’t, not for a long time. But I can probably manage to hang onto the saddle horn if the horse is tame enough.”
“We’ll take the truck, then.” He gave in too quickly, she thought. Then she figured he probably wasn’t all that anxious to take his own first ride since his injury and have to watch out for a novice like her. “Come on.”
“Okay.” He’d come a long way toward accepting his physical limitations. She was glad, because she’d have hated to spoil the moment by pointing out that he shouldn’t even be thinking about riding a horse again until he had some sessions with his physical therapist on how to compensate for the lack of weight balance the amputation had created.
“Since we’ll be driving most of the time, I think I’ll take off my leg and use crutches. I’m not anxious to get the stump sore.”
That last remark had her speechless. Jared never went out without the prosthesis, and he rarely consented to using crutches in public, no matter how sore and swollen the stump became. “Uh—”
“We’re going into Laramie tonight to play. I figure I’ll need to be in top form then, or you may toss me over for one of the cowboy Doms.”
“Oh.” Unable to come up with a good reply to that, she watched him roll up his jeans and pop off the artificial limb. He was about to roll down the jeans when she found her voice. “If you leave the stump uncovered, the air will help heal the sore spots.”
It surprised her that he did just that, leaving his jeans rolled up over his knee and letting the stump hang out as they drove around the ranch. A very impressive ranch, she thought when he showed her high pastures dotted with what seemed like thousands of red cows with white faces. And dozens of oil wells. “That’s where the money comes from,” he said when he noticed her staring at the pumpjacks that dotted boulder-strewn fields with about the same frequency as huge, green cottonwoods where the cows seemed to congregate under the trees’ wide canopies. “Diana says the cattle operation has barely broken even for the past couple of years.”
Ninia hoped Jared’s sister would like her as they neared a rustic stone ranch house near what must have been the opposite side of the ranch from Jared’s log cabin. “Didn’t you tell me Diana shares our lifestyle too?” she asked, fingering the collar no one in the BDSM community could possibly mistake for a plain old necklace.
His frown wasn’t something Ninia could miss. “Yes. She’s a sub, a 24/7 slave to her husband.” He paused, his expression darkening further. “Her collar is leather, and most of the time it’s attached to a leash. Don’t be surprised if she’s got a shaved head. Brad mentioned that she told him she’d done something yesterday to piss Gareth off, and that’s usually the way he punishes her.” He paused, as though deciding whether he should say more. “Gareth Bender isn’t the sort of Dom Brad or I think much of, but as long as Diana’s happy…”
He stopped the truck and turned to her. “I’d just as soon not run into the bastard. With any kind of luck he’ll be out with those wranglers we saw, chasing mustangs in the canyon. Diana had to raise Brad and me when Mom sort of fell apart after Dad died. I guess my sister took so much of having to be strong for us that she wanted to live under the total control o
f somebody else.
“Brad and I are different. Between Mom and Diana, we never had the chance to act on our own, so I guess that’s why when we grew up we wanted to exert a little of the discipline we got as kids onto our lovers.” He paused, reached in the backseat, grabbed his prosthesis and put it back on.
“I’m glad. Glad you want me to be your slave. If you ever want to, I won’t mind if you shave my head. Earl did it once, or rather he took me to a barbershop around the corner from Boundless Pleasure and had the barber do it. He didn’t do it for a punishment though. He wanted to see if my scalp was as sensitive as this sweet spot just below the hairline on my neck.” She fingered the spot, got wet when she recalled the rush she’d gotten as she’d felt the clippers buzz off her hair. She’d practically come when the barber applied a hot towel then brushed fragrant hot lather over her head. The best part had been the razor, the sound of it mowing down the short bristles the clippers had left—and later, feeling Earl’s rough fingers against her scalp, holding her bald head to his crotch while she serviced him with her mouth.
“Was it?” Jared stroked the back of her neck, sent shivers all the way down her spine. “You don’t need to answer, I can feel it in the way you tremble when I touch you here, smell your arousal. Do you want me to shave you sometime?”
“Would you?” In spite of his expertise as a sexual Dominant, Ninia thought of Jared as being essentially conservative, not the type who’d want his slave parading around making such an obvious statement about their lifestyle.
“If it will give you pleasure, sure. If I can wear an artificial leg out in public, you can certainly wear a wig if it turns you on to have me shave you and play with your bare scalp.” He grinned then drew her to him for a hard, hot kiss. “We can talk about this fetish of yours, but later. Much later. We’d better get on down to Diana’s house or we’ll miss our lunch. My sister may be completely submissive with her master, but she’s not submissive at all with me or Brad. I learned how to use the cat o’nine just so I could keep her and her hickory switch at bay.”