by Lucy Watt
He ignored her as he finished removing the ropes and let them out with the rest of the mob in the small paddock out the back.
He also ignored her at dinner, sitting in taciturn silence while everyone made awkward conversation around him. Charming, for a guy who’d had his hands down her pants only a few hours ago. She could still hardly believe it had happened. He had showered and put on a fresh shirt and left his hat on a hook by the door. His hair was close-cropped, still wet from the shower, and she noticed a scar on the side of his head. More questions buzzed about in her mind.
Jim sat next to him for a while and mumbled a few directions for the next day, to which he nodded without question or comment. He didn’t eat while Jim spoke. When he did, he cut the meat precisely and took large mouthfuls, but he had manners, resting his forearms on the table between mouthfuls and chewing slowly. The blokes around him all talked with their mouths full and leaned on their elbows, shovelling food into their mouths.
Eventually, everyone gave up trying to talk to him and resumed their normal banter as though he wasn’t there. Pete and Paul talked about some television show and Mick flicked through a hot rod magazine. There were more stockmen at the table now. They were from Bangaloo Creek, the sister station about an hour up the road, and had come to help with the cattle the next day.
Jaimie was among them. He was a guy she’d rolled and ridden several times, but then broken off with when he became too needy. Things were cool with him now that he’d found a French backpacker to take her place. He gave her a wink hello and she grinned at him. Sweetest guy ever. Too sweet for her.
Brett finished his meal and took his plate to the kitchen, passing Nancy on the way.
‘Taste alright, love?’ she smiled at him.
‘That was a feast, Mrs Carney,’ he answered.
Sophie wondered what prison food tasted like. Probably pretty crap.
‘There’s plenty more,’ said Nancy. ‘Don’t go hungry.’
‘I’m good,’ he assured her, and Sophie watched as he took his plate to the sink, washed it and put it in the rack.
She filed in after him and put hers on the sink. ‘Liz does that,’ she said.
Sophie always made a point of not washing her plate. Not one bloke in the place ever did, and she worked as hard as, if not harder than most of them. She took a stand by demanding equal pay, which included food and lodgings, and by not doing any form of house work. No one had ever challenged her. Not even Liz.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t respond.
She strutted out of the room, through the front door and out to her flat. It was a small fibro out-building that she shared with Liz. It had a kitchenette, a lounge room with manky furniture, and two small bedrooms. The air-conditioner hung its arse out of the wall and hummed so hard it sounded as if it would blow a gasket. But it was home and she liked it.
It was Friday night, not that there was anywhere to go out around here. Usually, she collapsed on the small couch, watched an hour or two of The X factor with a cold beer and woke in the wee hours, in the same position, empty stubby on the floor and the test pattern fizzing madly on the TV screen.
But tonight she was restless. She ripped the fridge open and cracked a stubby, stood staring vacantly at an open packet of chocolate Tim-Tams, fantasising about Brett’s naked body, the lower half of which was covered by a crisp white sheet. His fist was wrapped around something enormous under the sheet. His eyes were closed. The thought of him, waiting for her with the door unlocked went straight to her core and made it pulse.
Then she closed the fridge door. What was she thinking? He was a rude bastard.
A rude, very hot, very horny, bastard.
If he wanted to play games, she could play too. She wouldn’t be throwing herself at him. She flicked off the light, went to the window and peeked out through the venetian blinds.
He’d been given the foreman’s residence – a timber home with a verandah running around all four sides. The windows were large and open. It was a lovely home, but its best feature was its distance from the main house, which made it the most private. Jim had moved to a house in town. It suddenly peeved her that this new bloke got Jim’s house, when his position as a horse-breaker was no more senior than hers.
The only light on in the place shone dimly from the lounge room, where a lamp cast soft light. She could see his silhouette. He sat sideways with his knees up on the lounge flicking through what looked like a magazine. The way the light wrapped around him gave her an idea.
Sophie went to her room and switched on her bedside lamp. Gentle light bled into the darkness, casting shadows. Leaving her blinds open, she stood with her side to the window and slowly raised her shirt over her head, giving him the full silhouette of her breasts. She dropped it on the bed, put her hands behind her back and began unclipping her bra. She let it slide off, down her arms and fall at her feet, and then ran her hands over the small bumps of her hips, over her tummy, then up and over the mounds of her breasts. She reached behind her head, loosening her ponytail and letting her long wavy hair fall down her back. She imagined his hand moving over his cock again and a rush of warmth rose up her legs.
She closed her eyes and retraced her finger tips softly over her skin, making it tingle, lingering on her breasts and then sliding them down to her belt buckle. She unzipped her jeans and slipped her hand down, sliding over her silky knickers. Her chest lifted with a sharp inhalation as she moved a finger under the side of one leg and began circling where Brett had touched her earlier, reliving the feeling of his breath on her neck. Her own breath began to hitch at the thought of him and she wished his cock was pressing against her again.
She brought her hands to the waist of her jeans and pulled them down, bending her hips and arching her back as she slid them slowly down to her ankles. Her arse pointed to the ceiling while she removed her socks and jeans from her feet at a leisurely pace. Then, while fully naked, she bent to the small bedside lamp. ‘Take a good look at what you can’t have, arsehole,’ she muttered, and switched off the light.
In the darkness of her room she took one last look at his silhouette. His hands on the magazine no longer turned pages. His chin was lifted and she saw his lips mutter something. And although she couldn’t see his eyes, she knew they were on her window.
She slept naked. Or at least she tried to. The thought of him watching her undress only made her ache for him more. But she wouldn’t let this guy control her. If he wanted her, he would have to earn her. Not just take whatever the hell he wanted.
* * * * *
When Sophie sat at the breakfast table the next morning, Brett ignored her again. He sat at the table with a mug of black tea in front of him and twisted a small screwdriver into a set of rowelled spurs. A small nut fell and the rowel dropped off the shank. It rolled over the table like a tiny tractor wheel. From his top pocket he pulled out a new set. These rowels, she noticed, had a wheel of sharp, pointy spikes. They were nasty. Not something she would ever use on a horse.
While he busied himself fixing the sharper rowels onto the back of the spurs, Nancy brought him a plate that was heaped with food – bacon, eggs, tomatoes and anything else one could possibly think to include in a hot breakfast. The spurs sat on the table while he ate, again chewing slowly and carefully.
Sophie helped herself to the usual stale coffee and cold toast and sat as far away from him as possible. She downed her coffee. It tasted terrible.
Mick finished his meal and took his plate to the sink. On the way out he commented on the spurs. ‘Got a young colt to sort out?’
‘Filly actually,’ Brett murmured in a dark voice.
It was the first time he had spoken to one of the other men. Mick raised his eyebrows, cast a glance at Sophie and smiled, then left the room. Sophie left the toast on her plate and stalked from the room, jamming her hat on her head on the way out.
Outside, Jim yelled at Paul and Pete to get to the cattle ramps. They were loading steers as they branded them, rea
dy to take to the finishing paddocks at Bangaloo Creek.
‘Load any green broke horses onto the other truck and they can come out too,’ Jim called to her. ‘You can show Brett around the other property.’
Sophie nodded and made her way to the horse shed. She tossed out hay and had the breakers into the round yard before Brett made it out to the shed. He walked in, nodded a cursory good morning and opened the gate to the round yard.
‘We’re taking some young horses out to Bangaloo Creek,’ she said. ‘These ones will have to wait until this afternoon.’ She paused. ‘You could fill some water buckets if it’s not beneath you.’
She left the shed before she could gauge his response, and took some halters to the horse paddocks, where the six young geldings she had started last month grazed. She caught them one by one and tethered them to the horse truck. Then she went back to the shed.
To her annoyance, Brett had totally disregarded her directions. Drafted into the round yard were the same three breakers he’d worked yesterday. He was starting with the side-lines again.
‘We don’t have time for that.’
He looked at his watch briefly and got back to the horse, running his hand over its hind quarter, down its leg and reaching for its hoof. It kicked out at him and he calmly started again, pushing the horse around and around until it willingly stood still. He took the leg and deftly strapped the leather cuff just above its hoof. Then he left it kicking and complaining in the yard. Each time it tried to put its back foot on the ground, it stumbled and nearly fell over.
Sophie watched the young horse trying to work it out. Her father had taught her to use a side-line too. The horses eventually worked out that it was easier to just submit and stand quietly. If they ever got tangled in something more dangerous, like a barbed wire fence, her dad had explained to her, horses that had been hobble-trained wouldn’t panic and hurt themselves. More likely they would stand patiently until someone came and untangled them. It was better than ripping their legs to pieces.
She glanced around the shed and for some reason felt irritated again when she noticed that the water buckets had been filled. Why did that bother her? She’d asked him to. She headed over to the harness shed to get some saddles.
It was a fantastic old shed. Along the open timber struts of one wall hung hundreds and hundreds of rusty, disused horseshoes. She always imagined where those shoes had been and what cattle they’d chased. Some had caulked heels, others had rolled toes, extra clips or had been banged out flat. She imagined all the different horses that had galloped over the granite soils of Stoneleigh over the past hundred years.
Over another wall, tangles of ropes and leather and metal hung like messy bundles of spaghetti. There were disused spurs, rusty iron bits and leather quart pots, plus bridles and limp woollen blankets folded to the size of a horse’s back. There were battered helmets and every imaginable thickness of rope – hemp, cotton or nylon – coiled and strapped into neat bundles or woven into makeshift reins.
The stock saddles, which were in constant use, sat in row after row, stacked on short timber posts jutting from the wall, all leather with big knee rolls and lined with blue or gold felt. Carved into one of the old timber beams behind one of the saddle racks was a quote she loved: Love all, trust a few, but always paddle your own canoe … Ted 2/4/63
She sometimes fantasised about who Ted 2/4/63 might have been.
There were whips: short, long and every size in between, some cruel, some merely persuasive. Short batons for jumping, long slender ground-training whips and elegant dressage whips. There were 12 foot long lunge whips and plaited red hide stock whips. An old leather bull whip also hung among them.
Then there were the hobbles: cuffs of leather, lined with white waxy skin cells chafed from the horses’ fetlocks and secured with strong steel buckles and lengths of chain. Some were designed to restrain a horse’s two front feet; some were for the knees; and some were spider hobbles, made to shackle all four legs. There were breeding hobbles to stop a mare kicking; and more cruel harnesses that were used to stretch a horse’s hind leg back until it hurt. For the life of her, Sophie could see no point in that.
Most of the hobbles had hung on the wall gathering dust since the day she took over the horse-breaking at Stoneleigh. She noticed now that they had been disturbed. From Brett using the side-lines, she guessed.
She took the saddles and gear that she needed and put them in the truck.
By the time Brett joined her, the cattle trucks had pulled out of the long dirt driveway with Mick, Jim, old Sam and the two young cow hands hanging their elbows out of the windows. The Bangaloo Creek boys stood on the back of the farm ute, clinging to the roll bar while it fishtailed on the dirt behind them. They blasted the air horns and Nancy waved out the kitchen window.
‘What, am I the strapper?’ she snapped at him when he sauntered out of the horse shed and began untying horses to load them. Sophie hit the button on the side of the truck and an electronic winch whirred, lowering a narrow ramp.
She snatched the rope from the horse he held, tossed it over its mane and pointed its nose up the ramp. It walked straight up the ramp and she went in after it and bolted a dividing rail alongside it.
She trotted back down the ramp and took the next horse from Brett, who gave her a sneer. Prick. By the time she got to the fourth horse, she heard footsteps behind her.
She chose to ignore him. Until she felt his warm body wrap around hers and take her by the wrists. His arms were huge and strong and they spun her around and wrenched her hands behind her back.
She glared up at him. ‘Well, good morning to you too,’ she said. ‘Mind if I have my arms back?’ She wriggled, but it was futile.
The corners of his mouth pulled slightly and something decidedly sinful glinted in his eyes. With both her hands in one of his, he reached for something behind his back, and she heard the unmistakeable sound of a chain links rattling together. He leaned into her and ran his mouth seductively over hers, pulling gently at her lower lip and breathing into her mouth. ‘Those arms are mine,’ he whispered. Leather, three inches wide, wrapped tightly around her wrists and she felt cold steel buckles against her skin as he drove the pin into the eyelet and fastened them. He stood back and ran his eyes over her.
She pulled at the horse hobbles in which he’d shackled her. ‘What the hell,’ she hissed, horrified and furious and scared all at once, twisting her wrists and trying to slide her hands out. ‘I’m not into this sort of thing, Brett. I mean it, let me go.’
His expression was harsh as he looked her over. He had her buckled tight and there was no one else on the property except Nancy, who seemed to think the sun shone out of his boots. ‘Brett …’ She pulled at the hobbles. ‘Seriously …’
He stepped closer until he was pressing against her. His skin smelled clean and raw and his clothes smelled of diesel and leather. The horse behind her shifted and nickered nervously.
‘Shhh,’ he whispered, the stubble on his chin brushing the lobe of her ear. ‘You’re upsetting the horse.’
Upsetting the horse? Was he kidding? ‘Brett …’
His hand clamped over her mouth and her eyes widened as he squeezed her face with a huge, powerful hand. She whimpered.
‘You wanted to play games,’ he said calmly in her ear.
Panic shot through her. All she knew about this guy was that he had just done four years in prison, because someone upset him. She was an idiot to play games with him last night. What the hell had she started?
Brett took his hand from her face and placed one finger on her lips to silence her, and then he slowly began unbuttoning her shirt, starting from the top. When the last tiny button squeezed through his fingers, he pulled her shirt back over her shoulders and paused while he looked down on her breasts, which were pushed together by turquoise blue lace.
His hands came back to her hips and stilled, as though deciding what to do with her. ‘What games will we play, Sophie?’
; She ran her tongue over her bottom lip to moisten it before trying to speak. ‘Don’t hurt me.’
‘No?’
She shook her head and swallowed.
His fingers ran idly along the edges of her shirt and she shivered. ‘Pain can be good, Sophie.’ He slid the straps of her bra off her shoulders and curled his fingers under the cups, pulling them down and lifting her breasts out, feeling the fullness of them in his hands before rolling her nipples between his fingers and twisting them.
Her breath caught and a current ran up her legs, making her unsteady. He took his hands away and left her, exposed, and stinging.
From the belt loop on the top of his jeans, he unbuckled the spurs he had altered earlier that morning, running a thumb over the sharp spikes, and then checking the tiny indents they left on his skin. With one in each hand he reached behind her back and under her shirt.
She squeezed her eyes tight and gasped as she felt them spike along her lower back in one sharp movement, making her bare breasts arch towards him. Holy fuck, she would never use spurs on a horse again. That was just mean. He rolled them over her skin again; downwards this time and a tiny squeal escaped her throat as she arced forward. The sound of her pain made him smirk. It was the closest thing to a smile she had seen on his face. Sadistic bastard. She vowed not to weaken again.
Brett leaned into her and ran his mouth lightly over her neck, then traced his lips slowly over her chest until he held her nipple between his front teeth. He pressed the spurs into the middle of her back and she pushed into his face and pulled at the hobbles. Her chains rattled against the steel divider she was shackled to.
That’s when he bit down on her. Hard. He pulled, until the soft rosy skin of her nipple ripped from his teeth, leaving a bite mark. Fuck, it hurt! She panted to stop herself from crying out. Oh fuck. While she reeled, he took the other nipple between his teeth and did the same thing. He bit down until she could hardly bear it, and just when she was on the point of screaming, he let it slip from his teeth.