Birches, Cowgirls & Angels

by Lizbeth Dusseau

  “Ahhhhhhh…” her voice was quiet, but the sentiment fused with terror and pain.

  Another and another, the strikes landed in a vehement succession, and did not stop until the burn on her buttocks was far greater than it had been before and there were tiny lines where the thin branches made welts.

  “Gawwwwww! Pleeessssse!” she wailed.

  He struck another and the air was hot with sound. Another and she was begging him to stop.

  “Nooooooo, please!”

  He struck again and again, a dozen times over, her ass laced with lines, dozens appearing, at first distinct and then becoming one enormous rash of red welts. When he had enough of her ass, he moved lower to the tops of her thighs and repeated the angry treatment until she screamed for him to stop. Returning to her ass, he punished her more, in just seconds having her at another anxious and frenetic peak that seemed wholly unmanageable to the contrite Ella. And then, not to appease her, but so that he could reasonably continue laying it on for some minutes more, he settled into a slower pace, giving her some seconds to recover from one strike before the next one landed.

  Clive said nothing the entire time. His thoughts were spoken from the birches, his resonating feelings coming from the fierce treatment he’d sentenced her to. He was grateful that she maintained her penitent spirit, and though she shrieked and cried, she did willingly accept. This allowed him to complete the task much sooner than he might have. In the past, Ella had been less docile, her wit and temper getting the better of her—they’d always been to her detriment. Perhaps her negligent life had brought about this change. Perhaps three years of exile had taught her to value what she’d so easily cast away. Perhaps she was at last ready to take her place beside him, the humble yet intensely lustrous soul that she was. This was his fondest hope.

  After the blows stopped, Clive threw the bedraggled bundle of horror into the corner, then splashed Ella’s roughed behind with more stinging brine.

  “Ah, noooo,” she whimpered while there were still tears streaming from her eyes. The stinging intensified for a time, but then dwindled away. The warmth remained.

  Undoing the tether at her hands, Clive lifted her to her feet, holding her carefully lest her legs weaken underneath her.

  “And now, wife, I see you’re weary,” he said kindly. He ran his hand along her cheek to brush away a tear. “Go to our wedding chamber and wait for me. I’ll be there shortly to do what should have been done a long time ago.”

  He was about to leave.

  “But what of my hands?” she asked sweetly as he was walking away. He turned back and eyed her head to toe.

  “I should like you to remain bound, Ella,” he replied. “Yes, bound this night, that suits you well and satisfies me.”

  Clive remained cool as he spoke, his eyes were as forbidding and cruel as she remembered them. Hearing his answer another frightful fear traversed her pain-ridden body. She could be certain that nothing had changed inside these fortress walls. While the rain pelted the ground outside and the raw winds made the night forbidding, it was all the more forbidding inside this haven from the storm. Her only hope was that the heat of her would warm his physical body, that his voice and eyes and disposition would eventually thaw inside her embrace. She looked at her husband longingly, waiting for more. The silence was as difficult to bear as the lashing from the birch. But then quite suddenly he spoke again, his voice no less severe, though the message was changed.

  “When you’ve paid for the crime of deserting me, Ella, then perhaps you can tell me of you, and where you’ve been. I should like to know.” A long remembered affection returned to his eyes. There might have been tears, but he was too hard a man for that.

  After one last glance, Clive left and Ella managed to dress despite her bound wrists. She had waited three years to sleep with her husband, she’d waste little time now making her way to their untouched bed.

  Dusty’s Revenge

  The wind was howling through the canyon as Ty Holbrook pulled up the stakes of his tent. He could sense this storm was a bad one blowing in and they’d be better off getting back to town before they were trapped with no way out of this high-walled valley. He had a tough time convincing his friends, Stuart, Jack and Deke, but they finally agreed as the sky darkened in the west, now nearly black.

  “You know I’d better check on Dusty Marin,” he shouted to Stuart, as he finished stuffing his bedroll inside his pack.

  “Why the hell would you want to do that?” Stu shouted back through the sound of the wind.

  “She may be a brat, but I sure as hell don’t want to see her dead if the water starts racing down this canyon.”

  “Suit yourself, but she’s one tough broad. Handles herself pretty damn well. Seen her put more than one guy on the floor in the middle of a bar fight.”

  “That may be true, but she’s also the best damned looking thing around this town, and I just as soon be able to look at her pretty face for a while to come.”

  Stuart nodded agreeing. The redheaded Dusty Marin was one hot babe, long, lanky built, voluptuous in all the right places. She wasn’t the kind of woman that ever looked at someone as mild-mannered as a Stuart Gracey; but Stu had always thought she and Ty Holbrook would make an interesting pair. They’d certainly look great together, his dark half-Indian physique, the manly swagger, like he really was the boss of everything. Yeah, he’d have a woman like Dusty, but then they probably wouldn’t last a month, the two both as stubborn and tough as mules. He chuckled under his breath as he watched Ty take off across the ravine to find the high-spirited brat.

  “Follow me over when you guys are finished packing up,” Ty called to him, “we’ll take the trail north out of here. He waved and was on his way.

  With the sky darkening, it was looking like night in the middle of the day. Negotiating the path across the rocky terrain was rough going when he could hardly see in front of him. Just above the ravine floor, he found Dusty’s campsite, though the redhead was nowhere to be found. He started calling for her, but he couldn’t rouse her. He wasn’t sure what to do, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to leave her here by herself. The rain was coming on fast and the sounds of thunder and lightning in the distance made him shiver. Just as he was about to take off north in search of her, he heard her voice.

  “So, what’s Ty Holbrook doing at my campsite?” she blared through the noise of the storm.

  He whipped around.

  “I think you should get out of the canyon,” he said. “We’re packing up and on our way out.”

  Dusty looked back over her shoulder at the sky. “It’s headed north,” she concluded. “I’ll stay here.”

  “No way, we’re right in its path,” he countered.

  “And what makes you think you’re so right?” she snickered at him.

  “You don’t want to be here to find out.”

  “I’ve camped this canyon in worse weather, Ty Holbrook.”

  “And I say you’re hiking out with us.”

  “You are a male chauvinist ass.”

  “And you are a stubborn ….” He started.

  “Ah, careful,” she interrupted, “you wouldn’t want to use words like that in front of a lady.”

  “Lady? That was hardly what I was thinking.”

  “Yeah, you were thinking “bitch”, weren’t you, you mad Indian?”

  “Get your stuff, Dusty.” His voice lowered and he used a tone of command he saved for only the most dire circumstances, those few times he had to discipline his younger brother and cousins. It usually worked well.

  She tried laughing in his face.

  “I’m not playing around, Dusty. This is the perfect time of year for a flash flood, the ground’s dry and you’re camped on low ground. I’d think you’d know better than this.”

  She bristled instantly. “You can show you’re concern, Ty, but I’ll leave this campsite when I damn well choose to.”

  “No, you’ll leave now, and if you don’t get your stuff pac
ked, I’ll take you over my knee and blister your ass.”

  “I’d like to see you try that!” she snapped and then brusquely turned around.

  Challenged, Ty lunged for the hot-tempered Dusty, and whirled her back.

  “You get your gear together.”

  “I will not!” Her green eyes glowed like the devil and her freckled cheeks were flushed with anger.

  In one swift move, Ty drug her with him to a rock big enough to sit on, and tossing her over his lap, he tugged at her shorts and panties having them down to her ankles before she realized what was happening.

  “You fuckin’ bastard stop!” she roared, the voice echoing off the canyon walls even with the storm rumbling noisily.

  Ty, too furious to stop, began smacking her bared rear end as hard and fast as he could. He didn’t know when he’d met such an obstinate woman.

  “Get your hands off of me!” Dusty screamed. She jerked for all she was worth, but Ty, as muscled as this tough rancher was, had a hold on her so strong she thought she was caged in steel. She flailed but went nowhere.

  “Dammit, you ass!” she blared.

  His punishing hand kept coming down with sharp, steady smacks to her bouncing derriere. One of Dusty finer assets when encased in a pair of tight blue jeans, her bottom was even more delectable over his lap as he watched the two mounds of flesh redden with each strike. She jerked harder still, gritted her teeth and tried to buck off, but went nowhere. At the same time her ass end was heating up from the blistering punishment.

  While Dusty struggled and Ty kept up his rain of strikes, Stuart, Deke and Jack showed up, all three amazed by the wild sight of this fighting pair locked in a furious battle. Looking on, they had a wondrously shocking view of Dusty’s naked ass turning as crimson as a polished apple, her healthy cheeks bouncing and jiggling and looking stunning with the rose red hue.

  “You’re going to come with me without a fight!” they heard Ty tell the raging woman.

  “I will not!” she blared loud enough to wake the dead.

  “Stu, give me your belt,” Ty shouted to his watching friend.

  “What?”

  “Your belt, I want your belt.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “He’s going to use it on the brat’s behind, what do you think,” Jack said.

  “Oh, yeah …”

  “You will not!” Dusty shouted while she waged another futile attempt to get off Ty’s lap.

  “You coming with me without a fight?” he asked.

  “NO!” The roar was as fierce as ever.

  By then, Stuart had his belt free and was handing it to his angry friend. Hardly missing a beat, Ty had the black leather doubled in his fist and began using it on Dusty’s hot cheeks.

  “No, ouch, stop, goddammit!” she roared. The intensity of the spanking had risen a thousand degrees, so it seemed. The fire on her ass seemed to shoot right through her system, startling every atom in her enraged body beyond its ability to bear up to the pain.

  “Ty Holbrook stop!” she shouted in agony. This had to end soon.

  While the strikes continued, Ty sensed that Dusty was finally giving in. She had to be exhausted—he was. But then too, he couldn’t be sure. He’d never wrestled with a calf as bad and mean and belligerent as this fractious woman.

  When it finally became clear that he wasn’t going to stop until she gave in, she called a halt.

  “Stop! I’ll go!” she pleaded with him.

  The belt struck again.

  “You mean that?” He laid on another.

  “Ooo, ouch! Yes, yes!”

  “That’s a promise?” he asked.

  He smacked her hard again.

  “Ouch! Yes, I promise.”

  Ty let loose with two especially nasty strikes of the leather and handed the belt back to Stuart while he pushed Dusty to her feet. He rose with her, towering over her much smaller form.

  “Get your stuff packed, as you can see it’s starting to rain.”

  It seemed that the sky let loose as soon as the “rain” on Dusty’s ass was over. She looked into his eyes, with hers flashing fire. “I may be going with you, Ty Holbrook, but I swear, if it’s the last thing I do, I will get you back for this.”

  “Suit yourself, bitch, just get going.”

  Dusty stared from Ty to the gaping mouths of Stuart, Jack and Deke, realizing that she was standing in front of them with her shorts hugging her ankles. Quickly, turning around, she pulled them up over her ass, at the same time giving them one last view of her red-hot bottom as it disappeared inside the denim. Not saying a word to any of them, she had her things ready in five minutes and like a dutiful, though fuming pup, she trudged up the steep canyon hillsides while the rain drench them all until they were soaked to the skin.

  ***

  If Dusty thought the incident with Ty Holbrook was over after she left the canyon that day, she was sadly mistaken.

  “Boy, did he have that cowgirl tamed!” was the first flippant remark she heard while she was eating breakfast at the diner the next morning. To accompany that, there were several snickers and sidelong glances that made her wonder just how many people knew about her spanking over Ty’s lap.

  “Is there something I don’t know going on here?” she asked Marge who waited on her at the breakfast counter.

  “You should know, you were there,” the waitress said.

  “About Ty and me?”

  “About your getting your ass cheeks reddened, yeah, I think everyone in town knows.”

  “Why that bastard!”

  “You really think he’d tell?” the gritty old woman chuckled. “Ty’s hardly the type to kiss and tell, or spank and tell, as the case may be. I think it’s more likely the peanut gallery that watched you getting your fanny blistered.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use that word,” Dusty said, feeling as though she wanted to crawl under the counter and hide.

  The barbs and snickers were only worse when Dusty opened the general mercantile she owned and ran. It seemed every customer knew about the state of her derriere that afternoon before. Those that weren’t brave enough to mention it aloud, simply stared or glanced at her strangely and then chuckled to themselves. She even found a group of high-school girls looking at her, whispering. They finally burst with sassy giggles because they couldn’t hold their amusement.

  “I hate him!” she declared to her closest friend, Jerilyn, when they were having lunch in the back of the store.

  “I would to. This town hasn’t made anyone the butt of a joke, excuse the pun, since Doc Greely was running around here naked last year.” She sighed. “I mean he was really pathetic, his Alzheimer’s and everything. But you, hon, this is one everyone’s gonna laugh at and you can’t do anything to stop it. Your best defense is to hope that some catastrophe happens to get people charged up about something else.”

  “Oh, I hate him!” Dusty seethed again.

  “You could challenge him to a rematch,” Jerilyn suggested.

  “No, I need something besides that. I mean there’s no way I’m going to let that asshole win. I will get him if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Better be careful, Dusty, that could backfire.”

  “Oh, it might take time, but I will find the right thing.”

  The conversation lagged for a few minutes. Dusty ate her tuna sandwich and Jerilyn chomped her apple.

  “I suppose if you had an extra $50,000 you could buy that bottom land Ty’s been leasing to graze his cattle.”

  “Buy it?”

  “Yeah, someone said it’s up for sale and Ty would like to strike a deal with the new owner, though he just might buy it himself.”

  “Who owns it?”

  “Emmett Locey.”

  “Em, really?” Dusty’s eyes lit up. “I didn’t know that.”

  “You know him well?”

  My daddy and he were best friends.” She was jubilant, jumping from her seat. “Will you take care of the store for me a while?�
�

  “I have an appointment in a half hour,” Jerilyn called to her.

  “I should be back long before that,” Dusty exclaimed. She was much too excited to stop, and went flying out the door on her way to Emmett’s survey office two blocks down the street.

  A week after the under the table purchase, Dusty had her eviction notice ready, and served on Ty. She’d ordered his cattle moved to new grazing land by the end of the month, just three weeks away. It took the shocked rancher just twenty-four hours to reply to the cryptic letter from Dusty Marin.

  Striding into the general mercantile, his boots hit the wood with a distinctive clump, clump clump that made Dusty smile as she had her back to him, stocking shelves with canned peaches. She could just see him from the corner of her eye.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing!” he said, waving the letter in her face as she backed off the ladder.

  “I’m talking to some other cattle owners about that acreage and they’re willing to pay much more than your lease. I’m afraid you’ll have to have your cattle off.”

  “You can’t do that, we’ve been running cattle on Emmett’s land for twenty-five years.”

  “That’s been good for you, but you’ve been swindling Emmett out of a near fortune, what you and your daddy have made from that beef. I’m not as much an easy mark and not as nice as Em.”

  “Does he know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes, and I told him why. The old guy’s eyes lit up like the 4th of July when I suggested I could make a whole lot more than he had, and I’d be glad to pay him a percentage.”

  “What are you going to get from the other rancher, must be Jud Sparks,” Ty figured that much out himself.

  “Why, Ty,” Dusty droned with a fair amount of sass, “that’s a private business arrangement. Truth is, if he doesn’t sign the lease, I’ll probably let it go ungrazed. I was thinking about that anyway.”

  “Is all this because of that stupid incident in the canyon?”

  “I told you I’d get you back.”

  “You are one hateful bitch!” he seethed.

  “Oh, no,” she shook her head. “There were a lot of ways to get me out of that canyon and you chose the wrong one. You can pay now.”