by Maxine Marsh
He stood for a moment and looked around. “DJ?” he called, but didn’t get an answer.
There was stillness. His house and the property it was on were spread far from the nearest neighbor, and living alone made for quiet evenings. The breeze was warm but slow and barely made a rustle. He went inside. Pausing at the stairs leading up into the second floor, he listened. Nothing. He was used to the quiet and let it lay flat, hoping he’d get a feeling of where she’d gone. The bathroom? He made his way upstairs. He could see from the landing the bathroom door was ajar and dark inside. He walked past the extra bedroom and to his own. Dina Jo was standing with her back to him, facing his bed, looking up at the wall above it.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” he said.
She didn’t start. “Nice house,” she said in an awed sort of voice.
She didn’t turn to look at him but continued to study the arrangement of restraints, toys, leather cuffs, and even a black nylon bondage rope tied into a lasso hanging displayed on the wall.
“You could’ve told me you were awake. I was worried for a moment.”
Finally, she turned. “Sorry,” she said, and shrugged. “I got curious about you.” She motioned to the bondage gear. “Those get much use?”
He grinned. For whatever reason, he wasn’t embarrassed for her to see this stuff. “Not so much anymore.”
She walked to the bedside and picked up a framed picture. “Your wife?”
He nodded.
“She’s pretty.”
He nodded again. “Yes, she was. Come on now.”
DJ put the picture down delicately, right where it had been. “You should’ve woken me when we got to the motel.”
He led the way downstairs. “You were tired out, so I let you sleep. Want a coffee before I drive you back?”
“Sure.”
He got himself a second cup, walked them to the porch, and sat in the same chair he’d been reading mail in. She took her coffee, got out her notebook, sat on the top step of his porch, and sketched. The silence was surprisingly comfortable. He watched the breeze shuffle motes of charcoal dust off the page. She seemed to be drawing the view from his porch: the diminishing sunset over a low hill nearby, and the sparse layout of dogwoods and old oaks. She was pretty good, actually. She worked on her drawing the way she worked with the horses, organically moving from aspect to aspect without seeming to have much of a plan. Parts of the trees were incomplete and half off the page, the sun and the hill not even centered.
“You ever sketch it out before filling it in? Plan the picture first?”
“Nah.” She put her notebook aside and picked up her mug without wiping her fingers off. Normally the dark smudges on his white ceramic would have annoyed him, but somehow it seemed appropriate in her hands.
She turned and put her back against the railing. “That’s some serious gear you got going on up there, Clayton.” She smirked at him. “You don’t seem that way from the outside.”
“Everyone’s got their tastes.”
“Is your taste control?”
He ignored the teasing tone she took with him. “Like I said before, I like a project. I like the training process.”
“Training for what?”
“Discipline. And from the discipline, pleasure.”
“What sort of discipline?” she asked.
“Against reacting. It’s like our job—training the horses out of a way of thinking that causes them to react. Most people consume pleasure like they’re starved for it. There’s more to it, though. Finding self-control—that’s more satisfying.”
“Training your lovers to have self-control, you mean?”
He shrugged. “When I have one. It’s an appreciation for seeking a deeper experience.”
“Sounds rigorous.”
“It is.” He winked at her.
She smiled and looked away.
He wondered why he was flirting with her. She was about as undisciplined as they came. Not his type at all. Or maybe, he wondered, exactly his type.
“The sun’s almost down. We’d better get you home. Come on.” He rose, took his keys out of his pocket and walked her to the truck.
Later that night, he walked into his bedroom and stood, looking up at the wall. There was a space, conspicuous in the mix, where one of his toys, a gag, and clamps, had been propped. It was gone. He didn’t like to jump to the conclusion that DJ had swiped it, but he wouldn’t find it surprising either. He stopped for a moment, staring at the blank spot on the wall.
A scene, vivid and arousing, made him adjust his boxers. Dina Jo with the ball gag strapped tight around her mouth; the shiny silver chain leading down from either cheek to the nipple clamps on each end, DJ’s nipples squeezed tight in them. He could see it clearly—she’d be lying on her motel bed, bored and listening to the wind pick up outside. Breathing past the gag, slowly moving her head side to side until the clamp chain was pulled taut and her nipples tormented. Lying back, young and beautifully naked, thinking of him administering punishment, reaching her hand down between her legs and slapping at her pussy, pretending it was him. Punishment for snooping, discipline in pain and pleasure. He remembered their conversation and wished he’d taken her upstairs to use the instruments on her rather than herding her to the truck to take her home. He would have used the ball gag to shut her up long enough for her to feel her own sense of self, submissive and deliciously ready for his cock to ram the concepts home once she was aroused and supplicatory. Was she lying in her motel thinking about what he had said or what he might do with the gag and clamps? He could almost hear the noise of her palm finding wetness as it met her molten labia with a sharp motion that sent sparks of arousal up her body, wishing it was his hand, and jiggling the chains and pulling her nipples until they were sore.
Before he knew it, he had his cock in his hand, his eyes closed and a fierce sense of DJ’s desire to be dominated. He imagined himself going to her motel, letting himself into her door, which she’d left unlocked in the hopes he’d notice the toy was missing and come looking for the petty thief. He wouldn’t touch her—she hadn’t earned it—but he would watch her tease her clit with each sharp strike of her palm until she was close to orgasm. He’d command her to stop, then he’d tuck a finger under one of the chains and pull her nipple until she gasped and whimpered, and stopped. Then he’d free himself from his pants, stroke his cock hard and slow, rub the tip of it along her lips, and watch her struggle with the gag, wishing she could lick him and take him into her mouth. He would enjoy watching her watching him, moving closer when he got to the edge and then—
He laid back on the bed, thrust his hips up, and came into his palm. The fantasy slowly subsided along with his orgasm while he held his hand around himself, felt the stickiness, felt the warmth of it, and closed his eyes. He would have come all over her breasts and her face and left her to finish herself off on her own. His cum would dry on her body as a reminder that he knew her attitude with him was an arousal game, and that he would dominate her despite her bratty tendencies.
He went to clean up, tired suddenly, then found his way back to bed. Rounding the bed, he looked down and saw the harness, gag, and nipple clamp toy that had hung on the wall. It must have fallen, bounced off the side of the bed and halfway under the side table. He smiled at it ruefully, shook his head a little, then picked it up and put it back on its hook on the wall.
He went to sleep wondering if DJ was still awake and what she was doing.
Chapter Four
Another week passed and DJ took a handful of opportunities to tease him about his intimate tendencies. He shook them off good-naturedly. She could tell he wanted to flirt more by the way he hesitated when she brought it up, but he seemed intent to brush her off easily and redirect her to work.
“She’s gaining weight. And her coat looks better,” he said when he came to check in on Sadie. And her.
DJ nodded. “Yep. Getting her groove back, little by little.”
Clayton pi
cked up the clipboard, looked irritated at her lack of notation, and began filling it out. “You been trying any of the tricks I taught you?”
DJ bit her lip and looked at Sadie. “I try. But sometimes it’s like she’s not even here.”
“She’s still dissociating, then,” Clayton murmured, and wrote on the clipboard.
“Not all the time,” DJ countered.
“Evasiveness, then?”
DJ huffed. “She’s hard. I got a lead on her yesterday, and she bolted suddenly like she could hear things I couldn’t. It took all day for me to get her close enough to the fence for me to take it back off.”
Clayton nodded. “So it looks like we’re still on step one. Trying to prevent her from dissociating on contact but balancing that with trying to avoid her explosive tendencies.”
“If you say so, Dr. Freud. Personally, I think she just doesn’t like people. She’s seen how horrible they can be, and she’s playing it smart.” DJ motioned to her. “Now she’s back in the corner.”
Sadie stomped. Clayton sighed.
DJ sighed, too. “All I end up doing most days is sitting nearby and being quiet. Trying to get her food quietly. Trying to clean up around her quietly.”
Clayton nodded. “That’s just fine.” He shook the paperwork at her. “Just try to keep up with this, okay?”
She shrugged. She watched him go, with the relaxed cowboy swagger of his, then worked up the courage and shouted after him, “I heard the others say they’re going over to Ronny’s after work. You, too?”
He turned and seemed to think about it. “Yeah, probably.”
He ended up driving her and the other two interns over to the bar after they stayed until dark to help him close everything up. James chatted her up in the back of Clayton’s truck, talking about his horses’ progress before he caught the bored-as-hell look on her face and changed the subject. Adam only occasionally chimed in, and DJ thought he must be tolerating the job as well as she was—well enough but not as much as Chatty Cathy James. They got a hold of one of the beat-up tables inside and sat together, joined now and then by more ranch employees who moseyed in and wanted a place to sit. DJ eventually gave up her seat to one of them and wandered over to the bar. It was a Friday, and it seemed like the whole population of Gooding was there. Ronny ran around like a headless chicken between either end of the L-shaped bar. She reminded herself to ask him for a job sometime soon. He could use the help, at least on weekends, and it couldn’t be that hard to pour beer, could it?
Clayton eventually wandered over too, ordered another drink, and sat next to her. She’d spent the past hour watching the cowboys and their lady friends dance around the small open floor, spilling beer and having fun. The whole bar was loud and cheery.
Clayton sat nearby but didn’t talk much, which was fine by her. The music changed, slowing down, and couples circled around and around.
“Dance with me?”
DJ looked at him sideways. His question caught her by surprise. His usual overt and fatherly tone was relaxed, possibly because he’d had a few beers. She glanced out at the dance floor, where boots and hats and skirts swayed to a slow bluesy song. “Yeah, okay.”
He led her to the floor. One of his hands engulfed hers and the other found her waist. They moved in the small sea of bodies.
“Friday nights always so packed here?” she asked, trying to ignore how hot his hands were where they touched her.
“Just about,” was all he said.
She tried to look over his shoulder, aware that everyone here knew one another and might make something of it that it wasn’t. Or maybe that it was. Surprisingly, she enjoyed the feeling of him holding her waist and the way he led her by being firm. It reminded her of when she’d ridden him that first night they’d met. She tried to shake the memory off and focus on the dancers nearby, following Clayton’s lead, but felt prickly behind her ears. It was warm in the bar.
Clayton, on the other hand, seemed not to care about the others present as much as she did and pulled her in closer.
The near-embrace seemed to squeeze words out of her before she even thought about them. “I’ve wanted to ask you something, since earlier this week,” she said.
“Yeah? About work?”
“No.” She licked her lips, wondering if she was taking a step too far over whatever line they’d, figuratively, been dancing around. “I’ve been wondering about that lasso in your bedroom.” The lasso had been the thing, in all its normality as property of a Texan, that drew her attention most. “See, I’ve got an imagination, and I can’t help but wonder if you used to tie your wife up with that rope?” She held her breath, waiting for him to get upset and abandon her on the dance floor.
Instead, he chuckled in her ear. “Is that where your mind goes when you see rope?”
“It does when I imagine it in your hands.”
He pulled her in closer. “The answer is yes. She liked those sorts of things. We played all the time … like that.”
DJ breathed in heavily. “Like what?”
He took a moment to answer. The song was long and drawn out, everyone seemed absorbed in their own orbit of swaying and spinning. No one seemed to notice that their torsos were pressed together tightly and their cheeks met close.
“It was the way we were together. She took care of me. I took care of her. When she needed to be tied up and tortured—in the best possible way, mind you—I was happy to. She was a good woman. A passionate woman.”
There was a happy sadness in his voice, like he was remembering. His breath was soft against her ear.
“Like if I were dancing with her here right now,” he said, “I’d be whispering in her ear all the things I was gonna do to her when we got home later. Maybe even before we got home. Maybe on the way home.”
DJ gave in. “Tell me.”
He turned them again, tightened his grip on her waist. “Maybe I’d get too excited to make it home. Maybe I’d pull off the road to this spot I know, a spot I like. When the moon’s full, everything is lit up just right under that tree. I’d park and have her take her clothes off. Look at her body complete in the moonlight. Push her up against the tree, tell her to stay. I’d take the old rope I keep hanging in my truck and bind her up.”
Something hot throbbed between DJ’s legs. She could picture it, the way she sometimes saw things in black and white—a woman bound to a tree, naked, the rope threaded between her breasts, the slight glisten of moisture dripping down the inside of her thighs. The way Clayton might look at her. The way he might touch her lightly at first, slowly taking his time, torturing her with pleasure until she sobbed and begged to come.
He read her mind. “We did all sorts of things, but it always ended with her begging me to make her come.”
The song ended. Couples parted and departed the dance floor. Without another word they separated, went to the bar and found their drinks. They didn’t spare each other another glance until they found each other later in the parking lot, when most had gone for the night and the breeze was heavy and warm again.
She couldn’t believe the elation she felt when she saw the tree. It was perfectly secluded off a path off the main road, surrounded by neglected high grass and spots of shrubs. The countryside seemed to sway in the breeze, the grass danced. Without words, he stripped her. Her hat and shoes first, taking his time. He unbuttoned her shirt, slung it over the edge of the truck and ran his fingertips lightly down the center of her chest. Her flesh, still bound under her bra, puckered, responding with an ache she couldn’t remember feeling for ages. He ran a fingertip over her right nipple, teased it until it perked up and betrayed its excitement through her bra. He undid her jeans next, pulled them down and off. When he finally freed her breasts, he stood back and stared. It seemed to her that his gaze was followed by the wind—a warm tongue of breeze touched her nipples, making her pussy throb and dampen, moistness he noticed when he got to his knees and stripped her panties off.
And just like that she was
naked, pushed up against a tree under its wild waving branches. With maddening patience, he took his time to look at her and touch her, to occasionally place his mouth on her breasts, to tease one nipple and then the other, occasionally running a finger down between her labia so that a spark of sensation traveled through her clit and made her whimper into the night. He looked at her the way she looked at her drawings, appraising, feeling it out and finally creating.
He used the length of rope in the back of his to pin her arms to her sides, so that she had no hope of touching him back. He nudged her legs far apart, then tied them to the tree without mercy, so that her entire pussy was exposed to the night. He left and walked back to the truck, leaving her alone. When he returned, he had a horse whip. An old sort of thing he would never actually use on a horse—mounted straps of soft suede wrapped tightly into a thick handle. He kissed her, draped the leather down her breasts and her body, rubbed her between the legs with it, then whipped her.
She’d never had this done to her before. It was like being punished by the wind. The straps were soft where they struck her, stinging more and more when he increased the strength behind the blows. She closed her eyes and felt it all. The whip found her labia, striking enough to send bolts of sensation up her torso. She cried out, softly at first, then louder and louder until she wasn’t thinking at all, only feeling. Still he whipped and whipped her.
A pause. “Open your eyes, Dina Jo.”