by Vonna Harper
“You’re even better than I thought you’d be.” Rylan squeezed her shoulder, the gesture speaking of approval and not an attempt to change their relationship. “I’ll be honest, the first time I laid eyes on you, it took everything I had not to pull you into the relationship Ann and I have. Damn but I’d love to watch you go off.”
“Crude, but I guess it’s a compliment.”
“It’s intended as one. The thing is, much as my cock and certain aspects of my personality associated with it want to rule me, I have a greater need for what you can do for me with your clothes on than off. With your legs over a horse’s back, not spread for me.”
“That’s it then? Our relationship defined?”
“For now.”
“Works for me. Now, if you’re done, I have a horse to cool down.”
“In a moment.” He gripped her upper arm, the firm hold reminding her of how Kade had laid claim to her, the hold of a man accustomed to dominating a woman. “Fuck anyone you want. I have a ranch full of hands more than willing to accommodate you. Just leave Kade the hell alone.”
“Why?”
“He’s the major leagues, Maita. You don’t stand a chance against him.”
* * * * *
A solitary hawk flew overhead. Whenever it changed direction, the sun turned its tail from gray to rust. Maita felt like the hawk, alone in a vast world unchanged by progress except for the ribbon of fence line. She wasn’t sure whether she was still on her employer’s property or had moved to land Kade Severn owned. The horse she rode, a newly gelded wild bronc from Nevada still had a lot to learn about the loss of freedom, which was why she’d decided to spend the afternoon with him away from the distraction of other animals and manmade confinement.
She felt sorry for the short, muscular bronc, but since he’d been captured, he’d had parasites removed, his hooves trimmed and been shod, an assortment of injuries treated, and an eye infection cleared up. True, he’d also lost his manhood but no longer driven by the need to impregnate meant he’d stop getting into potentially dangerous fights with other studs to say nothing of getting kicked in the face by an unreceptive mare. Once she’d finished with him, he’d go to his new owners, a couple with two horse-crazy teenage daughters. He’d spend the rest of his life being pampered instead of needing to put on enough weight each fall to survive the winter.
“It’s give and take,” she told the bronc whose ears immediately swiveled back to catch her words. “You’re probably never going to like a saddle and bridle, unless you forget what freedom felt like. But if you’d weigh the benefits, I hope you’ll decide the trade-off is worth it.”
Was it? Instead of continuing her comments to the bronc, she let her thoughts return to the last few nights. Seeing Ann’s clit ring had sent her mind places it never had before—only more than a captured sex organ had contributed to her restlessness. Rylan hadn’t explained what he and Kade had in common, not really, and her imagination, fueled by the lack of a sex partner, had gone into high gear.
She’d long believed in and insisted on being the one on top as much as she granted the right to whoever she was sleeping with at the time. Once, when they’d both been drinking, a man had tried to tie her hands to the head of the bed they’d been using. The moment she realized she couldn’t move under her own steam, she’d yelled at him to explain what the hell he thought he was doing, and that had been the end of it—and the relationship.
She didn’t understand women who acted like second-class citizens to their men. The last thing she’d ever do was trade in her own last name simply because she’d slipped on a wedding ring. She couldn’t imagine joint checking accounts or being called the little woman. If the bedroom wasn’t the place for equality, what did anything else matter?
And yet didn’t she love controlling animals that outweighed her many times over? She rode in rodeo bareback events because she relished pitting her strength and skill against a creature capable of killing her. To fight a man for domination, to be dominated…to lay there spread-eagled and helpless while a man poked a hole through her clit and—
“Not in this lifetime!”
Her mount sidestepped, muscles gathered for flight. As she brought the animal under control, she felt his fear and excitement through the saddle.
What was it like to helplessly fight a man’s domination, to have him control her sexuality as expertly as she controlled horses? To receive instead of mete out discipline? To surrender and in her surrender experience the rewards of a man pleased with her performance?
Her cheeks felt hot. Her stretched crotch heated. Riding sometimes turned her on, and she’d learned to deal with the state either by rubbing her pussy against the saddle or pushing the horse into a gallop that effectively took her attention elsewhere. Today no one except the hawk and gelding were here to watch. She could rock back and forth, pressing cunt and inner thighs against hard, hot leather while her mind…
She was alone on the prairie, a filly feeling a brood mare’s hot blood for the first time. Even as she wandered in what felt like endless restlessness, her senses remained at high alert. She needed to run until exhaustion drove her to the ground, but she held her energy in check, savoring it, feeling it on and in her entire body. The wind fed her, its insistent heat lashing her. She studied the random, always-changing clouds and wondered what their embrace would feel like. Touching a boulder, she imagined being pressed against it, arms and legs strapped to it, her body arched over the rounded top with her breasts jutting upward, head lolling back and unable to see what her captor had in mind.
No, he hadn’t caught her yet. First came the chase, the struggle, fighting for freedom but instead finding and embracing growling sexual need.
There! On the horizon! A black-clad form on horseback, a large man with a midnight stallion under him. The horse whinnied and charged. Screaming, she broke into a frantic run. Even as she sought even ground, she looked over her shoulder. The man now worked a lasso over his head, his free hand resting on his thigh because the stallion needed no guiding. Despite her fear-lathered pace, she couldn’t outrun her pursuer.
She sensed the lasso circling above her, felt it kiss her cheek before closing around her arms and pinning them to her side. The stallion stopped abruptly. Yanked backward, she landed first on her ass, then struck the back of her head on the ground. By the time she regained consciousness, the cowboy had wrapped the lasso around and around her upper body and used another rope to lash her legs together.
“Mine,” he said. “Mine to do what I want with.”
She couldn’t bring his features into focus, but her breasts knew the feel of this man’s touch.
Kade Severn.
* * * * *
Transporting enough broncs and bulls to supply a three-day rodeo five hundred miles away had left Kade tired, dirty, and seriously wondering why in the hell he’d gotten into the business. True, he always felt this way by the time he dragged his sorry ass home, but this time the effort had sucked more than usual out of him.
“You’re getting old,” he muttered as he watched his hands unload the last of the horses. He didn’t understand how the broncs had enough energy to charge around their pasture after being cooped up all day. If it was him, he’d be drinking from the just-filled water trough before filling his belly from the nearby piles of hay. Unfortunately, he had no choice but to log some time in his office catching up on paperwork and responding to what he had no doubt would be a small mountain of correspondence from the organizers of the next three or four rodeos he’d contracted for.
Another woman client would soon be arriving. By then he’d be more than ready for a change of pace—a change guaranteed to satisfy both of them but in different ways. He’d received a number of offers of female companionship over the course of the rodeo, but for some damn reason, he’d turned them down.
“Just getting myself primed for you, whoever you are,” he said to the upcoming client. What the hell was it she wanted anyway? He thought she’d said
her boss had recommended him, and she was willing to do whatever it took to get the promotion. “We’ll see if you’ve changed your tune by the time I’m done with you,” he added although the truth was, he didn’t give a damn.
“You want us to get started on the steering on the stake truck?” his foreman asked as the weary hands started toward the bunkhouse.
“It’ll wait until tomorrow. I’ll tell you what. After everyone gets cleaned up, see if they want to go into town. I’ll buy the first two rounds.”
“What do you mean, if?”
Kade was still smiling in response to his foreman’s grin when he spotted someone on horseback coming down the long gravel drive leading from the county road. Because he was looking into the sun, at first he thought it was one of the area’s teens. Then his well-developed senses said this was no adolescent boy.
Maita rode a scruffy, long-haired stub of a horse he recognized as one of the creatures who’d grown up wild on government land. Rylan occasionally agreed to gentle one of those animals but only for clients willing to pay his fees. It wasn’t any of Kade’s damn business, but the way he looked at it, Maita’s talents—from what he’d seen of her skill at the rodeo, he knew they were considerable—were better used on horses with a chance of earning back their investment. Still, seeing her cleaned his system of all weariness.
She rode as if she and the horse shared the same set of muscles. Because he knew horsemanship, he knew she was in tune with her mount’s every mood and instinct, no easy task since horses’ brains regularly short-circuited. She could fall asleep in the saddle and still know a horse was going to buck before the animal did itself. She appeared more horse than human, an extension of the creature under her.
He wished he was the one under her—or even better, her under him.
“Taking a busman’s holiday are you?” he asked when she was close enough for them to carry on a conversation. “It’s your day off but instead of getting your nails done, you’ve come to see what your boss’s neighbor’s operation is like?”
“It isn’t my day off. Blue needs all the riding time I can give him.”
“And you decided to come here?” He hadn’t shaved since at least yesterday and undoubtedly smelled like the back of a stock truck. No wonder she was keeping her distance—unless something else was responsible. The possibilities for that something intrigued him. He’d never take her for shy or unsure, but their brief time together hadn’t told him anything about her interest in what he offered. Well, not much.
“I wasn’t thinking about my destination.” She indicated the nearby trucks. “You just got back?”
“About an hour ago. I was going to go in for something to drink. You want to join me? How is Blue about being left tied?”
“He’ll take it for a little while.” Her expression turned introspective. Was she pondering whether she’d be safe with him? He could point out they were hardly alone but decided to let her make the decision. Besides, maybe she didn’t give a damn about safe. He could dream.
With a shrug, she tossed the reins to him and dismounted. He stood close enough that he could have run his hands over her descending thighs and buttocks but forced himself not to. His thoughts fixed on the only other time he’d seen her ride. Bareback bronc riding was a man’s sport, raw and dangerous. But she’d not only entered a competition where death sometimes happened—she’d excelled.
“Did he fight you?” He indicated Blue.
“No. By the time I got him, he’d learned fighting won’t get him anywhere.” She stroked the ugly beast’s nose. “We’ve been working on trust.”
He specialized in trust. Trust mixed with resistance, fear, and desire. How would she respond?
“What would he do if you took the ropes off him?”
“I’m not taking the chance, not yet.”
“Wise decision. What’s your usual procedure? Teaching a wild animal he wants what you offer more than the alternative even if it means giving up his freedom?”
Her gray-eyed gaze said she understood he wasn’t talking about horseflesh anymore. “Every horse has different priorities, different needs. The same techniques don’t work for all of them.”
“Spoken like a pro. Come on.” He nodded at the ranch house. “I’m offering beer. Cold.”
* * * * *
She hadn’t been roped. No tethers circled her ankles.
Still, Maita admitted as Kade handed her a frosty mug, it had been an intriguing if unsettling fantasy. When they reached the front porch, he’d invited her inside, but she needed to keep an eye on Blue so had said she’d wait for him on the porch. He’d agreed, explained he needed to check a few things in his office but wouldn’t be long. She’d told him not to hurry, but he’d explained he’d just as soon sit in his own chair on his own land and talk to a neighbor than anything else. She’d laughed and nodded and hadn’t said anything about not knowing what it felt like to own a single square inch of land but wanting that—someday.
He smelled of honest work. Dust coated his hair, and his jeans were stained and faded. He more than needed a shave, but from the way he now sprawled in the hand-carved wooden chair, she wondered if he might fall asleep before he could make his way into a shower. With his eyes closed and his body limp, she could study his form and maybe begin to understand the fascination he held for her.
“Long trip?” she asked after giving him time to down most of his beer.
“Long and intense. I feel like a one-armed paper hanger during a rodeo with everyone coming to me at once.”
“Do you like what you do?”
He looked at her, his attention, she believed, torn between an adequate answer and her as a human being, a woman. She didn’t know how to dress for a man, how to offer one anything beyond her body. Today, she wished she had on something other than horse-scented jeans and a wrinkled shirt.
No, the truth was, she want to be naked.
“Yes.” He drawled the word. “I like what I do.”
“The headaches?”
“Yeah.”
“The rules and regulations, dealing with rodeo committees that don’t always know what they want and either expect you to handle it all or think they’re calling the shots? Being responsible for rogue horses and bulls who’d rather kill you than eat?”
“The stock’s not much of a hassle if you know how to treat them.”
“Treat?” She winked in the way of one insider to another. “Hell, as long as we don’t put a rope on a rogue horse, he’s a pussycat, and if you leave a bull alone, he’ll do the same to you.”
“Just don’t tell the press or fans or I’m out of business.” He focused his attention on her. “Why do you put yourself on a bareback bronc? Damn it, you know he’ll turn himself inside out trying to get rid of you.”
“I want to see if he can do it.”
“Don’t you mean you want to find out which of you will win the battle?”
“Something like that.” She studied the droplets sliding down the outside of her glass but didn’t really see them. She wasn’t much good at small talk, undoubtedly the result of her childhood, but although her skin felt lightning-charged this close to Kade, she had no desire to do anything except what she was—for a while at least. “Rylan told me to leave you alone.”
“Did he?” Looking not at all surprised, Kade leaned back and rested his boots on the porch railing. Even relaxed, his thigh and calf muscles remained hard. “Then you shouldn’t be here.”
“No one tells me what to do.”
“Ever?”
Although he’d only glanced at her, she knew the question hadn’t been casual. “Not anymore.”
“But once? When and under what circumstances?”
“I’m not going there,” she told him.
“I’ll accept that, for now.”
But you have ways of getting the truth out of me? “Why did Rylan say what he did?”
“Because I’m a Brahma bull, Maita. A woman would be a fool to trust me.”
“Of anything?”
Not anymore. “Not that I can think of.”
“Have you ever been afraid of yourself?”
The question circled them and ignited a small fire under her breastbone. She finished her beer and kept her attention on Blue who was starting to get restless. “Explain,” she said.
“Testing a woman’s limits is part of what I’m about, Maita. It’s engrained in my nature—or maybe I should say it developed over the years.”
“Interesting.” The fire kicked up a notch, and she worked at not moving. “So where do you find the women you…test? Maybe you advertise in the local paper.”
“Not a large enough drawing area.” He indicated seemingly endless acres of nothing. “Advertising isn’t necessary because of word of mouth.”
“You’re talking about a lifestyle I’ve never been interested in.”
“You’re wrong.”
She’d once been bitten by a dog who’d announced his aggression with a low, throaty growl she hadn’t paid enough advance attention to, but the lesson had remained. Kade had just issued his own warning. “What makes you say that?”
“Instinct.” He stood up. “I’m what some people call a dom,” he explained. “In the world of submission and control, I control, but it goes beyond the usual BDSM game. I’m good at what I do, damn good.”
“Congratulations.” A trickle of sweat ran down the small of her back.