by Loki Renard
“You help Marnie get settled in, Sam,” Magda said once she was satisfied Marnie had been fed and watered. “I’m out to milk.”
She bustled out of the room, leaving them alone together again.
“Come on,” Sam said. “Your room’s upstairs.”
She followed him with no small amount of trepidation. The house was old enough to have been built just the slightest bit before people got tall. Sam had to stoop under some of the doorways, and he basically filled the narrow staircase leading upward. The room he took her to was small but clean with little flowers on the wallpaper and a crocheted blanket covering the double bed. The furniture was all from the early sixties, dated, but it would do.
“Not exactly city standards I’m sure, but…”
“It’s fine,” she interrupted him with a shrug.
“Good,” he said. “Now, to pick up where we left off…”
She had no idea what he was talking about, but she felt his hands on her waist and the world spin and then she came down prone over his lap. He’d sat on the bed and pulled her down on top of him, his hard legs beneath her hips, one strong arm wrapped around her waist, snugging her tight to his body.
“Fuck! What! Hey!”
He’d been warning her practically since they met, but that didn’t mean she was any less shocked—and it definitely didn’t mean she was just going to let him do this to her. She fought against him with every bit of her strength, trying to break free of his grasp.
* * *
She was panicking, bucking over his thighs. Sam was experienced enough in dealing with spoiled, spirited fillies to know if he knew if he let her up, all he’d be teaching her to do was to act out when he spanked her—and he had a damn good idea that he’d be spanking her a lot, so she may as well get used to this position now.
“Settle down,” he soothed.
“Let me up!”
“That’s not going to happen,” he said, keeping a firm hold on her as she twisted and squirmed.
“Sam, you let me up now or… or…”
She didn’t have much to threaten him with and they both knew it. For better or worse, she was stuck out here with him—and he with her. Sam didn’t intend to have some stroppy city chick giving him attitude for the next however long.
“Just let me up, okay?”
She sounded a lot smaller now. He could hear the breath catching in her throat. She was genuinely scared, probably because she didn’t know what she was in for and probably because she knew she deserved whatever it was.
“I’ll let you up when I’m done with you,” he said, patting her butt.
His touch set off another set of squirms and bucks, much as he’d expected it would. Handling a spoiled girl wasn’t all that different from handling horses. Had to be calm and patient and above all, firm. Make doing the right thing easy, and make sure that they knew misbehaviour wasn’t going to work.
Horses tended to learn quite a lot quicker than humans though. As he held Marnie in place and let her go through her struggles, he was thinking about how he was going to introduce her to the horses. He’d have to start with one of the older, calmer geldings first. Taxi, probably. You could put anyone on Taxi and he’d plod around the trek and return to base pretty much on autopilot. But really, he couldn’t wait for this girl to meet Trixie, the pint-sized pinto with an attitude. That little mare could be as much of a brat as Marnie was shaping up to be. They’d either love each other or hate each other.
As she settled down over his lap again, he gave her another gentle pat and held on as she flipped out, but less intensely and for not quite as long as she had the previous couple of times.
“Good girl,” he murmured as she started to settle with his palm steady on her bottom.
* * *
There was something in his voice, a soothing quality that made the deeper part of her relax. When he’d pulled her over his lap, she’d been anticipating blinding pain and god knows what else, but he’d barely touched her so far, and his big palm spread across her butt didn’t exactly feel bad.
“Please don’t spank me…” Marnie could barely believe she was begging him like this. “I’m… uhm… sorry?” She tried the word, not really liking how it felt in her mouth.
“You’re not sorry yet,” he said. “You don’t have any reason to be. This is about giving you one.”
“No!” she said quickly. “I am sorry, seriously, I am. Really.”
“Uh huh.” He didn’t sound convinced. “What are you sorry for?”
“Uhhhmm… I’m sorry you don’t like my shoes.”
His palm left her butt and returned with a swift smack.
“Owwww!” she screamed as his hand met her bottom, not because it hurt too bad, but because she was expecting it to.
“You can cut the drama,” he said with a snort. “When you get spanked properly, you can make sounds like that, but not for this one. This is a warning. If you act out like you’ve been doing since you got here, giving me attitude and mouthing off, you’re going to get spanked. Hard. I need someone out here to help me, and by the sounds of things you’ve got a lot to learn. I don’t have time to argue with you all day.”
With that, his palm landed on the seat of her shorts with another crisp swat. It didn’t hurt, but it also didn’t not hurt. To her surprise, what it mostly did was send a hot blush through her body, making her face burn more than her bottom did.
He repeated the treatment a dozen or so more times, working his palm over her bottom with those slaps that made her blush and squirm. She was being spanked. Actually spanked. She couldn’t believe it, even though it was currently happening. Every time his palm landed against her butt, it sent a thrill through her body and made her hips dance. She tried to stay still, but she couldn’t help it. It was doing things to her.
After twelve or so smacks, he seemed to be satisfied that she’d learned whatever lesson it was he’d been teaching. Marnie was just squeezing her thighs together, trying not to give her secret away. She hadn’t been with a guy in a long time and being pressed up against this big beast of a man, his hands so close to all the most intimate areas of her body, it was making her react in a way that was anything but sorry.
“Do we have an understanding?”
“Yessir,” she said quickly, the ‘sir’ part coming from some random part of her brain.
“Good girl. You know, you can be cute when you’re not being a brat,” he said, rubbing her stinging butt gently.
She bit her lower lip and tried to not make the noises she was tempted to make. Not cries of pain, but sounds of something else. Thankfully her shorts were covering all the strategic parts of her anatomy, so he couldn’t know that while he’d been spanking her, she’d been getting wet.
After a couple more minutes, he let her up. She was both glad to be allowed to stand, and a little disappointed it was all over. Keeping her face turned away from him, she studiously avoided his gaze in case he saw the truth of her reaction written there.
He stood up, smoothing his palms over his jeans. “Look at me, Marnie.”
She couldn’t, not until he took her by the arm and used the fingers of his other hand to tip her chin up.
“I know you’ve been through a hell of a time,” he said, looking down into her blushing face. “And I know this place is about as far away from home as you can get—and maybe that’s a good thing.”
“It’s not a good thing,” she insisted. “Why is it a good thing? Do you like seeing me floundering in a place I don’t fit, like a fish out of water?”
Sam chuckled, and she wanted to punch him. He’d already made her butt burn and now he was laughing at her misfortune? He really was a piece of work.
The glare she gave him was one she’d perfected over the years, designed to make even the most intimidating of people quiver. But Sam didn’t flinch. Instead he smiled, his eyes crinkling up at the corners in a way that made her want to melt, but she steeled her resolve. She was not going to succumb to his charm
s. Not after the way he’d just manhandled her over his lap and… and… she couldn’t even think about that right now. Not when her butt was still tingling and her pussy was still wet
“It’s a fresh start,” he said simply, interrupting her thoughts.
“Maybe I don’t want a fresh start?” she snapped. “Maybe I want my old life back?”
“Maybe you do,” Sam conceded. “But that’s not likely to happen, is it? The earthquake changed everything.”
Although she continued to glare at Sam, and even stomped her foot for good measure, he still didn’t react. If anything, his smile widened, like perhaps he found her amusing. She huffed dejectedly and pouted.
“Come on, let’s go find you some decent boots and I’ll show you around.”
“I don’t want to be shown around.” She knew she sounded petulant and spoiled, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything anymore.
“Would you rather another spanking? A proper one this time?” Gruff, growly Sam was back; his patience was obviously wearing thin.
A shiver went down Marnie’s spine at his tone, as she considered his words. What was a proper spanking? Had the one he’d just given her been improper? She giggled. Yes, improper probably was the right word to describe what Sam had just done to her. She’d quite liked it, though. And because she’d liked the improper spanking so much, she assumed that a proper one wouldn’t be nearly so enjoyable. Life seemed to be like that: the proper things were never as much fun.
She couldn’t help asking the question anyway, though. “What does a proper spanking entail? How is it different to what you just did?”
Judging by the way Sam’s hands clenched and unclenched by his sides and the way his jaw stiffened, he didn’t like her question much. But then, that didn’t really surprise her. So far, Sam didn’t seem to like very much about her at all.
“It will be hard, and it will hurt,” he growled. He flexed his right hand. “Shall I show you?”
She gulped, unsure why she was still intentionally pissing him off, and shook her head. “Nah, I’m good. I guess you can show me around.”
Sam walked to the window and heaved it upward, sliding the bolt into a hole halfway up the frame to hold it in place. A blast of hot air rushed inward, hitting Marnie in the face.
“We can start here if you like.” Sam pointed out the window. “See those mountains? We do overnight treks out there. And follow that river along, that’s mostly where we go on the shorter treks. Four hours return to the waterfall.” His voice was animated as he described the land he quite obviously loved.
Marnie took a step closer so she could see where Sam was indicating. As she stepped forward, he moved back slightly and she ended up wedged between his body and the window frame, her shoulder up against the hard ridges of his muscular arm. Her traitorous body remembered being held by that strong arm just moments before and reacted; her shoulder burned at his touch, sparks shot to her core. She couldn’t see the river. She couldn’t even see the mountains. All she could focus on was Sam, and the way his touch made her feel.
Sam continued to speak but Marnie was oblivious to his words. She felt heat rise to her face as she remembered the way it had felt as he’d held her fast, upended over his dusty thighs, his huge palm resting lightly on her rear. She was so confused! The man next to her was a brute. One minute she was in his arms while he comforted her, the next he was whaling away on her ass. Even worse, she’d enjoyed both situations.
She realized, too late, that Sam had stopped speaking and was looking at her expectantly, as if waiting for her to answer a question.
“Do you?” The slight quirk of his brow sent her insides flip-flopping madly again.
“Huh?”
“Socks.” Sam sighed loudly, exasperated. “Did you listen to anything that I said?”
“We-ell…” Marnie drew the word out into several syllables. “I did at first,” and then I just started thinking about you, instead of listening.
“Do you have any socks?”
Marnie thought. She did, of course, in her bag. But where was her bag? Was it still on the back of that filthy ute? Crap!
She nodded.
“Good. Get them. We’re going for a walk.” Sam gripped her upper arm tightly and held her close, just inches from his face. “And you listen to me, girl. You’re not to go running off again, understand? This is a farm. There’s dangers here you know nothing about. This isn’t the city, you know. So you stick with me, all right?”
“Yessir,” she whispered, hardly daring to breathe.
* * *
Leading the way down the stairs, Sam tried to rein in his anger, but he only partially succeeded. What the hell had Aunty Magda been thinking? She hadn’t—that much was obvious. The new girl was so far out of place he couldn’t have found anyone less suitable if he’d tried. She was disobedient, far too sassy, spoiled, and didn’t listen when she was being spoken to. None of which boded well for her future at Terako Treks.
“Get your bag,” he snapped at her as they got close to the front door. “Grab your socks out of it and leave it all here; I don’t have time to wait for you to fluff about.”
She wasn’t moving. He turned to glare at her and found her standing, staring at him, with her arms folded across her chest in an outrageous display of defiance.
“A gentleman would get it for me,” she said accusingly. “Not very good service here, is it?”
“We’ve been through this already, brat,” he growled. “You’re here to work, not be serviced, and I’m not a gentleman. I’ve never claimed to be one, and I won’t be starting now. I’m not going to run around after you doing things for you that you’re perfectly capable of doing for yourself. Besides which, you’re not exactly a lady. Not with the mouth on you that you’ve got.”
“Bastard.” She mumbled the word as she pushed past him and stomped down the rickety steps to the ute, her city shoes sending up clouds of dust.
“Watch your mouth,” he warned. But he felt like a bastard as he watched her struggle to drag her big bag over the high sides of the ute and up the steps to the house.
Her body was rigid with tension as she pulled on her socks and she didn’t say a word to him as he put several pairs of boots of varying sizes in front of her, spares they kept for riding guests who didn’t bring their own.
“These are riding boots,” he explained as she pulled the first pair on. “We’ll have to get you some proper work boots, but these will do in the meantime. They’ll be better than those strappy sandals, anyway. Do they fit okay?”
She glared in response, so he took that to be a ‘yes.’
As she followed him out to the barn he wasn’t sure which was worse: her sassy, bad-mannered attitude she’d been displaying or the stony silence she was giving him now.
Throwing open the big double doors of the barn, he breathed in deeply of the familiar horsey scent.
“God, it stinks in here!” Marnie’s voice sounded nasally and distorted and when he turned to face her, she was pinching her nostrils shut between her finger and thumb. He stifled a laugh. This smell was nothing. When it was full with horses on a hot day… that was when it really stunk.
“Do you know how to muck out stalls?”
Her blank expression told him all he needed to know.
“It’s when you clean out all the soiled and wet sawdust,” he explained. He grabbed one of the rakes hanging up on the wall. “You use this.”
“You want me to… to… shovel shit?”
“Not right now, no. But this will be one of your jobs, when it needs to be done.”
“You can’t make me touch shit,” she moaned, her desperate tone barely above a whisper. “Nobody told me about this.”
She looked pale, like the very thought of mucking out a stall terrified her and he almost felt sorry for her. Until he remembered why she probably didn’t know anything about her current situation.
“You mean, you weren’t listening when you were told abo
ut this,” he corrected.
“No,” she insisted. “Nobody told me.”
* * *
He was looking at her that way again, his brow drawing down over his eyes. She had disappointed him. She felt like the shit he wanted her to shovel. Like something lower than whatever dung was undoubtedly on his boot. This guy was hot and capable and he was probably already with some country girl who knew all about horses and had the right shoes and who didn’t make him scowl every six seconds for some new infraction.
The sensation of arousal from that spanking he’d given her had long faded with the smell of manure. Instead the feelings of inadequacy, disgust, and rejection triggered her flight impulse.
“Okay, that’s it. I’m going home. Seriously. Take me back to the bus stop. I’ll just wait there until one comes.”
She felt sick to her stomach with longing for something familiar. It was bad enough when she’d had to deal with everything being covered in dust. But now he was expecting her to clean up after horses? That was about as far beneath her as any job could be. She shouldn’t be surprised though. He’d treated her with pretty obvious disdain since she got there. Maybe he thought she was too dumb to notice the way his lip curled, or how his eyes darkened every time she didn’t know some stupid farm thing.
“I can’t take this,” she said, backing away, holding her hands up in surrender. “This was a huge mistake. You know it. I know it. Let’s just cut our losses.”
He leaned against a stable door and looked at her with an expression even worse than derision: pity.
“Where are you going to go, little girl?”
The words little girl made her squirm inside, but she was too upset to give way to that feeling. She was close to crying again, but she wasn’t going to. Not this time.
“I don’t care,” she said, backing out of the stable. “Anywhere but here.”
He watched her, not moving. The muscle in his jaw ticked, but he didn’t say anything. He just watched her as she got further and further away. She didn’t stop until her boots hit grass, then she stalled, knowing there was probably a fence behind her.