RopedHitchedandLassoed

by Ann Jacobs

  She turned and dragged his head down for a kiss. “Another disadvantage of being six-six, I guess. But I’m glad you’re big. You make me feel safe while we’re making love.”

  Yeah, he knew. They’d fucked vanilla for three days straight, and she must have come fifty or more times. He loved hearing her whimper with pleasure, scream at him not to stop as she was reaching her peak. It surprised the hell out of him that he enjoyed the quiet talks, the cuddling, as much if not more than the actual fucking. “Stop it or we’ll be going back to bed,” he warned her. “We don’t have time now, but hold on to that thought until we get to Denver. Don’t forget to put out enough food and water for Blue.”

  As he gave her a hard, possessive kiss, to make sure he left her hot while he was gone, Matt realized he’d once again slipped into the natural mode of a Dom, commanding her instead of making gentle suggestions. She liked it, though, if he read that flare of arousal in her eyes correctly. It made him itch to forget everything else and take her back to bed right now, but he wasn’t about to ruin it now that he was ahead.

  Diana was trusting him—at least a little. They’d come a long way in three short days.

  At home he packed some casual stuff as well as a dark gray suit and black overcoat. Normally he didn’t worry about his looks, but today he wanted to see Diana’s face light up with pride when they went out on the town. He thought back, trying to remember the last time he’d dressed up as he tossed a pair of black wing tips into the duffel bag that held his shaving kit. He’d be using that as soon as they checked into the hotel.

  While he liked his Van Dyke beard, it seriously needed trimming. The rest of his face and neck would benefit by losing the scratchy four days’ worth of stubble he could feel even through his gloves.

  On the way out he glanced at himself in the mirror, wincing at the mountain hermit look he had a good start toward acquiring. Diana’s tender body must be hurting, he thought, a wave of guilt coursing through him until he reminded himself about those delighted squeals that came out of her mouth as she reached climax after climax.

  She must love me. Otherwise, she’d have screamed bloody murder the first time I got this ugly mug anywhere near her. Matt fired up the snowmobile and gunned the motor, sending snow swirling around him as he headed back to Diana’s place. Before going to pick her up, he stopped by the barn and gave some last-minute instructions to his ranch foreman and her wranglers. No need to bother his woman with unnecessary work when he could do it just as well.

  Settling her luggage alongside his and bundling her up on the passenger seat, Matt sped toward the airfield he’d noticed near the road on Jared’s portion of the McTavish family’s large spread. It wasn’t until he saw the sleek Beechcraft with its twin propellers rotating and stirring snow on the edges of the tarmac that he remembered. He was scared stiff of flying, especially in small planes.

  “Only for you would I do this,” Matt told Diana as he helped her off the snowmobile in the covered hangar. “I guess I never told you I’m a white-knuckle flyer.”

  She stood on tiptoe and managed to lay a quick kiss on his cheek in spite of the fact that he was loaded down with her luggage as well as his. “Hold my hand. We’ll be okay. Jared’s an excellent pilot and so is Brad.”

  Once he got inside the plane, Matt noticed that both men were in the cockpit, which reassured him a little. He glanced around the twelve-passenger seating group, liked the soothing beige and navy colors that reminded him more of somebody’s living room than a plane.

  Ninia wore dark slacks and a loose jacket, and a long blonde wig he’d never have guessed wasn’t her real hair if he hadn’t seen her in the club a few weeks back, bald as a cue ball. She shot a smile their way when they found seats on an overstuffed love seat and buckled up. Keely, in the chair beside Ninia, looked ill at ease, and her worn jeans and jacket seemed out of place inside the multi-million dollar airplane.

  He managed not to turn into a shivering shadow of a man when the engines roared and the plane began to ascend, a fact he attributed to Diana holding his hand, one of her soft palms below it, the other above. He felt surrounded by her love, safe for the moment.

  * * * * *

  “You did fine, big guy.” Somehow Diana loved Matt more now, knowing he wasn’t all powerful, unafraid of anything and anyone. “Shall we make a detour to the toy store?” she asked as they deplaned at Denver International Airport. “Ninia said she and Jared were going there and invited us to join them.”

  “What are the bride and groom going to be doing?” he asked as he helped the other men unload the luggage.

  “Brad needs to take Keely shopping for some clothes and buy her a ring and collar.” Diana remembered when Gareth had padlocked a leather collar around her neck, knew Brad’s choice would be something with class. Something Keely would be proud to wear in front of their vanilla friends as well as at the dungeon. “She’s been at Brad’s since the blizzard hit, and apparently all she had with her was on her back. Fortunately she was able to fit into a few of my things that Brad got me for when I came home from rehab for the occasional weekend, even though I’m taller than she is. Otherwise she obviously would have frozen.”

  Matt shook his head. “I’m surprised she didn’t freeze on the way from Brad’s to the airstrip. Jared’s wife is pregnant, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. She’s due in April. She hardly shows yet.” Diana couldn’t help the edge in her voice. Of course she was happy for her brother and his wife, but she couldn’t help being at least a little envious.

  When their taxi pulled up in front of the toy store Brad had recommended, Matt handed the cabbie a folded bill and asked him to wait. “What we’re getting won’t take long.”

  Jared and Ninia’s cab stopped behind them, and Jared helped Ninia out. He seemed a little wobbly on his feet, more so than she’d seen him for months. “I hope Jared didn’t overdo it, flying us down here today. Apparently he had insisted on going out himself to check on his horses the morning after the blizzard started. Somehow he gouged his good leg with a grappling hook. Ninia says she has to fight him to get him to realize his limitations. She wasn’t happy.”

  “I hope he’s okay, too. For selfish reasons. He just gave me the most comfortable trip I’ve ever taken in a small plane, and I’m expecting an equally pleasant ride home.”

  Diana laughed. “Brad’s as good a pilot as Jared. We’ll get home in one piece. Trust me.”

  Half an hour later they got to the hotel and went to look over their loot in one of the two smaller bedrooms in the suite. “I’m ready for a nice, warm soak in the Jacuzzi, how about you?” Diana asked.

  “That sounds great after four days of taking cold showers. Later, though. Right now I need to shave. How about us taking a little rain check on that hot tub?” He laid out a beautifully crafted cat-o’-nine across the bed. “I bought this for you to use on me.”

  * * * * *

  While Matt shaved, Diana lifted the coiled whip. Remembering the feel of a similar one lashing her back as being mildly painful but extraordinarily stimulating, she imagined herself using it on Matt. She’d use the pair of handcuffs she’d bought to secure him to the bed, give him the sense of helplessness that had always brought her to the brink of climax, anticipating the punishment that usually accompanied the closing of the cuffs on her wrists. Sometimes her ankles as well.

  The metal balls on the ends of each of the nine slender tails at the end of the whip felt smooth against her fingertips, the braided leather supple, almost as if it were alive. She slid her hand up the cat until she reached its handle, savored the power that flowed through her when she gripped it.

  “I see you’re ready to dole out my punishment,” Matt said, stretching out on his belly on top of the king-size bed with its black satin comforter. “Go on, do your worst.”

  “Put your arms over your head.” When he did, she put the cuffs around each wrist and then fastened the other ends to the sturdy wood headboard. The metallic sounds they made
when she clamped each of them shut was ominous, a prelude to the main event. “I want you to come when I say so,” she said as sternly as she could manage.

  Then she raised the cat. It felt heavy in her hand. Unwieldy. She stared at his tanned skin, registered each small scar put there by opponents’ cleats over the years, the one large one on his right shoulder where he’d apparently had surgery to repair a separation she vaguely recalled having read about in the Laramie paper.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.” But she remembered the strength of orgasms she’d had when Gareth had whipped her this way. “I want to give you pleasure.” Her words came out as mere whispers, but the emotion behind them surrounded her, floated around the luxurious room. Tentatively she swung the cat.

  The metal beads clattered as they moved in slow motion, making contact with the flesh on Matt’s tight ass. He winced but voiced no complaint, even when she raised the whip and administered several more hits, each harder than the last.

  She stopped in midair when she saw the blood. Streams of it flowing in an eerie pattern along welts that seemed to grow before her eyes. Throwing the cat to the ground as if it were a rattler about to strike, she climbed on the bed, laid her hand over the worst of the welts.

  “It’s okay, honey.”

  “No, it’s not.” It was never okay to hurt anything or anyone. Especially someone you loved.

  She couldn’t help it. She began to cry. Long, pitiful-sounding wails. Cries of sorrow for his pain. For her ineptitude. For her damnable memories that had nudged her to hurt him in her misplaced quest to reject her own submissiveness and dominate her partner.

  “Damn it, I’m okay.” The bed shook as he bucked. His muscles contracted when he wrapped his hands around the headboard and jerked until it gave way, leaving the cuffs on each wrist—but no longer attached to the shattered wood. Splinters of what used to be a carved mahogany headboard surrounded them as she kept on sobbing, her tears mingling with his blood until he turned around and gathered her in his arms.

  “I’m sorry.” Sorry for starting this in the first place, sorry for not thinking to release the cuffs. She hoped he’d turn on her, punish her so badly she’d never dare to hurt him again.

  Instead he held her as if she were precious, as though he was worried more about her than his own bleeding back. “It’s all right, sweetheart. I’m tough.”

  It wasn’t all right. Diana pulled away and stood. She picked up the cat and laid it in Matt’s hands. “You’re no sub, any more than I’m a Domme. Obviously I don’t know how to use this. I don’t ever want to try it again.” Her tears still fell, staining her cheeks, the salty smell mingling with the blood—his blood—on her hands. It almost made her puke, but she managed to get the key and take both sets of cuffs off his bruised wrists.

  He met her gaze and smiled. That made her feel even guiltier. “There’s a trick to using the cat. I’ll take you to Roped and Lassoed and show you how to use it so it doesn’t draw blood.”

  “Here. Take the cuffs. Tie me up and whip me the way I whipped you.”

  His grip on her shoulders tightened, and his lips curled in a snarl. “That’s not going to happen. Get it in your head that I’m never going to hurt you. You don’t deserve it.

  “Come here. Let’s try out the Jacuzzi before I call maintenance to have them send up another bed.”

  He gathered her in his arms, carrying her back to the bathroom and climbing back into the Jacuzzi. “Remember this. I’ll never hurt you. All I want to do is love you. Bring you pleasure.” He took her mouth, so gently it almost broke her heart. With his hands he stroked along her back ever-so gently, returning her cruelty with kindness. And love.

  As they made love surrounded by swirling, steaming water, it felt as though her hang-ups were being washed away along with Matt’s blood and her tears. He left no part of her untouched, using his hands and mouth to invade every orifice but her pussy. That was for his beautiful cock. When he stiffened and began to spurt his seed into her body, she came in waves of sensation more intense than she’d ever experienced from pain.

  In that moment Diana knew the difference between the anger of one who loved her and the one who abused her.

  “You know, I don’t need toys or punishment. All I need is you,” she said later when they lay in bed, his big body curled around her like a spoon. “You make me feel new. Protected.”

  “I’m glad.”

  * * * * *

  Keely looked radiant with her new gold collar and the whopper of a diamond solitaire and matching band Brad had just slid on her finger. Matt liked the soft-looking pink dress she was wearing. Even more, he liked the triumphant grin on Brad’s face.

  He’d staked his claim and he was proud of it.

  Still limping from the accident he’d had the morning after the blizzard started, Jared hovered over his pregnant wife. Matt figured he’d do the same if he and Diana were lucky enough to make a baby. Ninia’s collar glowed, its amber center stone reflecting the sun’s rays. She, too, wore a wedding set whose center stone looked big enough to choke a horse, and a pair of diamond earrings she’d mentioned that Jared bought her the day she told him about her pregnancy.

  Both women were beautiful, both years younger than Diana. Still, Matt saw his woman as the most gorgeous creature on earth, especially now that the shadows of her past seemed to have faded in the last few hours since the traumatic, emotional purging in their hotel room. Matt smiled down at her, loving the clean, fresh scent of the perfume he’d bought her last night in one of the hotel’s boutiques. The swirly skirt of the blue dress she had on drew his eye to her shapely legs. No stilettos, just normal black heels. Before the year was over, Matt vowed he’d drag her to an altar—any altar—and make her his wife.

  Oops. He needed to buy her a ring, one at least as flashy as the ones her brothers’ wives had on. Good thing he’d saved an obscene amount of his seven-figure-a-year earnings. He’d need a lot of it to make sure his woman had everything her sisters-in-law did, without using any of her own fortune to buy it. He’d also need to refurbish his grandpa’s place, make it fit to bring a bride. That wouldn’t happen until spring came along.

  “Wasn’t that beautiful?” Diana squeezed Matt’s hand. Tears sparkled in her eyes, but they were happy tears today. “I guess both my little brothers have grown up now.”

  “Yeah. I think you’re right.” Soon, he thought, there’d be another wedding, one that had been twenty-two years in the making.

  Epilogue

  It wasn’t fall yet, and the work on Matt’s house was nowhere near done. That didn’t matter, though. At least Diana had a ring on her finger—a headlight of a diamond Matt had put there the week after Brad and Keely’s wedding. And they had a roof over their heads. Her place, where this whole crazy thing between them had begun again on a snowy night nearly nine months ago, with the beginnings of a new TV room and glass-walled greenhouse that already filled the space where the former torture chamber had been.

  Her words that had made them move the wedding up two months resonated in his brain. We’re going to have a baby. The news had sent them both over the moon, and they hadn’t wanted to wait until their new home was finished before making it official.

  The summer sun beat down on Matt’s head despite the canopy of tall evergreen trees overhead. His suit was damn hot. No wonder, since it was August. None of that mattered when Brad and Jared escorted Diana to him. She had that radiant look he’d first noticed three months ago, just before she’d told him about the baby, and he felt ten feet tall when he looked at her and their child who was growing beneath her heart.

  “Who gives this woman?” They’d decided on traditional vows to go with their mutual decision to go vanilla, leave the BDSM lifestyle to her brothers and their wives.

  Brad and Jared answered as they laid their sister’s hand in Matt’s, and the ceremony commenced.

  White roses centered the bouquet Diana handed over to Keely when it was time to exchange rings. Hers was p
latinum like her engagement ring, studded with diamonds that sparkled in the sun. Matt slid it on her finger then brought it to his lips. “With this ring I thee wed.” He said it first. Then she slipped his ring onto his finger and repeated the words.

  His was plain, a circle of platinum. He liked the weight of it on his finger, the sentiment she’d had engraved inside it. Love forever. Your honey, Diana.

  The food tasted great. The vintage champagne he’d ordered from Denver flowed cold and bubbly. The small country-western band Diana had hired alternated between sentimental ballads and hoedown dancing music. Matt ate it up, the family and friends and the good wishes that so obviously thrilled his new wife. He even endured eating that first bite of gooey wedding cake out of Diana’s hands, then getting her back by smearing her face the way she’d smeared his. The kiss that followed brought more hoots and hollers—and that feeling in his groin that made him figure he ought to get rid of the company and hurry his bride off to bed.

  A baby cried in Ninia’s arms. Their nephew, born on Easter Sunday, apparently didn’t appreciate the solemnity of the occasion. Jared hurried to his wife and took the baby, who seemed to calm down. “Let me take him inside for a nap.”

  Ninia smiled at Matt. “If you don’t mind, I think little Jared’s ready to go home.”

  Yes. This public celebration had gone on long enough. Nearly four hours by Matt’s estimate. “Maybe we ought to wind this down,” he said. “I think the honeymoon’s about to begin.”

  * * * * *

  Alone at last, Matt scooped Diana into his arms and carried her to the upstairs bedroom where a warm breeze floated in from open windows. Blue lifted his head as if to say, “What took you two so long?” Then the cat moved to the foot of the bed, as if he knew his mistress and her new husband wanted space for themselves.