Trouble Tied Up

by Maxine Marsh

  The whisper found her somewhere deep. She had to swim back up to the moment, opening her eyes and breathing more heavily, not sure where she’d gone. Clayton stood before her, whip in hand, watching her with the eyes of a bird of prey.

  “Are you back?” he asked, as though he understood completely.

  She took a deep, shaky breath in. “Yes.”

  He placed the whip aside, undressed while she watched, then approached her. It took a moment of struggling before she remembered her arms were pinned down. She wanted to touch him.

  He stood back, watching her again. She couldn’t stand it. “Please.”

  He kissed her deeply, found her mouth open and accepting. He pulled back, and placed a hand between her legs. With a swift push of his fingers between her soaking labia, she came with a speed that shocked her. The warmth that had built right up to the edge and tittered during her whipping exploded inside her. She shook against the ropes, against the tree, against his hand. He smiled, an arrogant grin that made her even weaker in the knees. The fingers inside her were soon replaced with his cock. Hardness and heat invaded her and she cried out again, a strangled cry, overwhelmed and needy. Clayton grabbed the ropes on either side of her and found a strong, hard rhythm of pumping in and out of her, full of unrelenting force. Her back pushed painfully into the grooves in the bark of the tree with each thrust, slamming into her again and again. Helplessness set in, not a bad feeling but the opposite, a sense of security and a flow of energy she closed her eyes to and simply felt. Back in the darkness, sinking into the tree, feeling him, only him, and a heat building again, so quickly she got dizzy, the darkness behind her eyes swam and she came. There was the far-off sound of Clayton groaning deeply somewhere near her, a sharp bite on her breast, his intrusion coming to a halt deep inside her, pulsation and waves and gusts of breath and wind all around her.

  He stayed like that for some time, pressed against her, breathing into the crook of her neck. Slowly, he softened and slipped from her, and only then did he begin to untie her. Many parts of her were sore. He’d bitten her breast and left a generous bruise. He carried her back to the passenger seat of his truck and laid her clothes delicately in her lap before dressing outside while she managed, with some effort, to pull her clothes on inside the truck. Wordlessly, he drove her back to the motel, walked her to her room, and saw her inside. A few tender moments passed that almost made her cry as he undressed her for the second time that night, pulled the dingy cover over her prone form, kissed her on the forehead, and let himself out.

  It wasn’t until later and she lay alone in the bed that it sank in—Clayton had taken her against the same tree he’d tied his wife to and fucked her against on more than one occasion. She shivered under the covers, pulled them more tightly up to her chin and curled up on her side. The realization brought an ache to her stomach. She couldn’t possibly be the type of woman Clayton fell for—she was too young and too unfocused. He’d spoken of his wife with a reverence he’d never be able to speak about her, and it wouldn’t surprise her if he made it clear the next day that this would never happen again.

  Chapter Five

  Clayton went to bed more satisfied than he’d felt in ages, but woke up disturbed, like he’d remembered seeing a ghost the night before. Maybe he had. What had happened was unimaginable. He hadn’t dominated anyone like that since his wife. And she was gone. He’d been sure he’d never find that place again, that it was lost to time and heartbreak. But he’d found it easily and had teased and fucked DJ so easily, like he’d been planning it all along. And she’d gotten lost in him. She’d let him set her free. And she’d set him free, and it was all too much to understand so early in the morning.

  He was late picking her up and found she’d already set out down the road toward the ranch. She smiled slightly at him, got into the passenger seat, then looked straight ahead for the whole ride. He tried to read her while he drove but was mostly confused by his own feelings, peeking over every once in a while. It was ridiculous, the two of them being so shy with each other just because they’d fucked the night before.

  “Someone broke into the room next door to mine last night,” she said as they drove.

  He looked over, concerned. “What? Was someone staying in there?”

  She shook her head, surprisingly unaffected. “No. Weird, right? The manager told me when I saw him this morning. Said the room next door is closed until he can get a few things in there fixed. Wasn’t any damage he could see besides the door being broken in.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  She shook her head again. “No. Slept pretty heavy.” She looked away again, blushing a little.

  The blush didn’t make sense to him, but he felt a similar warmth inside him and a sense of satisfaction at it. She was tough. She wasn’t an angel, as she’d said herself. So blushing didn’t go with her personality. He smiled inwardly that it was because of him.

  “Maybe you should move rooms.”

  “Nah, the manager promised me he’d put a new lock on my door, a better one.”

  “Still…”

  “If he hasn’t done it by after work, I’ll switch rooms. Maybe he has something closer to the front office.”

  Clayton immediately considered asking her to stay with him. He had extra room. But there was the matter of mixing work and whatever they were doing with each other, and that wasn’t a good idea. And she was working for them out of prison, conditionally. It didn’t seem like a good road to go down. There was work, there was play, and it was iffy to mix them. Besides, he wasn’t sure she’d even consider saying yes if he did ask her. She was up front enough that she’d probably tell him if she did need the favor, he decided.

  The weather that week got warmer, which seemed to increase the horses’ agitation, and he was busy keeping everyone as on the ball as possible. He drove her home every evening, but nothing had happened. She seemed happy enough to be dropped off each evening and picked up each morning, and didn’t bring up what they’d done. He noticed she seemed far off while they drove and kept a sideways eye on her loose tendrils and the delicate droplets of sweat traveling down her neck each warm night.

  The other horses she worked with showed quick signs of improvement, so she spent most of her time with Sadie. She had an almost motherly way about her with the mare. He made sure to drop by when he thought she’d be with the horse.

  He found her near one of the paddocks. “How do you know so much about horses?” she asked him. She was contemplating Sadie again. DJ twirled the piece of hay in her mouth with her tongue. He reached over and plucked it from between her lips and threw it into the corral.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “That’s gross.”

  “I got it off a fresh bale, you know.”

  “Do you know where those things come from?”

  “Oh, come on, cowboy.” She sulked, but let it go.

  He shrugged and said, “I’ve always been around farm animals. The rest is just a lot of experience, I guess. Vet school was a start, but it’s a simple matter of having patience and paying attention.”

  “What am I doing wrong with her, huh?”

  He was surprised. DJ wasn’t one to voice her consternation often. “Come on,” he said, ushering her toward the barn door and out into the middle of the group of buildings that housed the horses. There was a nice large corral on the eastern edge of the property, divided into sections so the horses could be run or have space to move around when they got better. “See those horses?”

  He pointed out to her a group of three brown, relatively young equines who were feeding together nearby. They were each a different size but resembled each other.

  “Each weened too early, especially the youngest who was still nursing when the mom died. Horses are sometimes sensitive to things that wouldn’t necessarily traumatize a human. We think of them too often in the ways they can serve us, not about their natural instincts. They’re evolved to live in family groups, but they don’t
generally stay in them because we—people, I mean—split them up and move them around and just want them trained. And the training’s never about what’s best for the horse. And then we get them and have to work around that trauma.”

  DJ frowned and stared at the horses. “Yeah, I get it.”

  They looked at each other. He pointed back to her barn. “That horse in there has been through things that would drive most humans crazy. We can’t expect her to be bright and cheery overnight, or even to recover at all.” He patted her on the shoulder. “You can’t save ’em all.”

  She frowned at him. “Gee, thanks for the pep talk.”

  He shrugged. “You asked.”

  She sighed and looked back at the three brown horses. The intern James was restocking their feed trough and making sure the water wasn’t too mucky. He looked over at them, nodded and waved enthusiastically, and went back to his work.

  “That guy’s too enthusiastic for his own good.”

  Clayton squinted at her. “Or maybe he’s happy to have a second chance. Not everyone’s as cynical as you.”

  “Whatever.”

  Clayton had come to understand that, with him, “whatever” was DJ’s way of ending a certain topic.

  “Hey,” she said, a bit of enthusiasm back in her voice, “if I were a horse, how would you train me?”

  “You’re not,” he said flatly.

  “Oh, come on. You said you like a project. You got some of the same tools on your bedroom wall that we have here. What if you could put me in a pen and do what you liked?”

  Her eyes were shining. It was the first time she’d brought up his dominant tendencies since the episode with the tree. He sighed, but decided to play along.

  “First of all, a person’s different from a horse. You wouldn’t punish a horse.” He scooted a little closer so he could lower his voice. “But I’d punish you in ways that broke your stubbornness down.”

  “Really?” she asked wryly.

  He nodded. “I’d strip you, put you in your own little paddock, and wait for you to get tired of fuming and pacing around.”

  She was trying to keep her grin contained. “Would you?” she asked.

  “When you calmed down and got amenable to some touching, I’d bind your wrists behind you.”

  She took a deep breath in, licked her lips. “And then?”

  “I’d find a set of clamps, nice small ones, that would fit your nipples just right.” His voice was barely more than a low growl.

  “You think you could get those on me without a fight?” she asked, amused but quiet. Her breasts heaved a little.

  “Oh, I’d be nice about it at first. Take one of your nipples into my mouth, warm it up, make it feel real good, then put one of the clamps on. You’d get fidgety at first, sure. But then I’d sooth you, lick your other nipple, maybe roll it around in my fingers until you let me put the other on.”

  She didn’t make a smart comment this time, only caught his eye for a moment and then looked away, blushing. To an outsider, it would look like she was watching the horses roam around, but Clayton could see her eyes shining and looking at nothing in particular.

  “Then I’d take my time. Leave you like that, just watch you realize that with your hands tied behind your back, there’d be nothing you could do to touch yourself. You’d maybe rub up against something for a time before you got frustrated. Then you’d see me watching and realize.”

  “Realize what?” she asked.

  “That the only way you were gonna be satisfied is when you calmed down like a good girl and waited for my orders.”

  He smiled too, liking the image in his mind of her doing just that.

  “Then,” he continued, “once you’d become disciplined in your wait for more, I’d come back in with a lead. Hook up a collar and train you up a bit.” He thought about it, how he’d like to see her. “Get you on your knees, poised nice and tall, attentive, graceful.” He saw her shiver. “Then I’d put one of my favorite gags in your mouth, strap it around your head just like it was a bit and take you for a walk.” He motioned a little to the large open paddock where the horses could run around free for exercise. “The night would be cool, the wind warm on your skin.”

  He looked nearby and noticed a few round barrels of hay laying about, waiting to be distributed.

  “After your walk, while you sat still like a good girl, I’d push one of those bales over, walk you over to it, and lay you down.”

  He could see it clearly, as though it had already happened. Dina Jo’s naked body lying facedown, wiggling at first while the hay poked and prodded at her breasts and the nipple clamps. Ass in the air. The lips of her pussy exposed and vulnerable, rosy with need. The smell of her arousal becoming more and more prominent with every moment that passed.

  “Face down, ass up. Not knowing what was going to happen. Nervous and giddy.”

  Now she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  “Sure, I like tools,” he said. “But to start your training, I’d use my hands. Close contact to form the bond so you could feel yourself being dominated. I’d run my hands up and down your spine, caress your ass before I landed the first blow. And that first one would be hard, to make you cry out through the gag, so you’d get a sense of your frustration, at how powerless you could feel. The next one hard too, so hard you could feel it vibrate right to your pussy. Each time I spanked you, I’d make you feel it completely. So completely that you’d get lost in the pain, and the pain would melt into pleasure and you wouldn’t know where one began and the other ended.”

  He would take his time, he decided. Draw it out so he could draw her out.

  “Your ass would be red, excited. I’d go hard on you until your pussy dripped your juices down the insides of your thighs. Until I could see your pussy swelling.”

  Her eyes were fire then. Her nipples were hard and pressing tightly against her tank top. God, he wanted to take one in his mouth right there, to nip at it until her need was so strong that she couldn’t even stand up anymore.

  He looked out at the horses, but saw her out there, lying over a bale of hay, naked and punished.

  “I’d let the gag out of your mouth then. Have you count.” He paused.

  “Count for what?” she asked.

  “Oh, when I take the gag out of your mouth, you’ll beg right away for me to finish you. But I won’t just yet. You’d have to earn it, DJ. You’d have to prove that you’d learned to postpone your pleasure on my order.”

  She licked her lips. He liked the way they shined, imagined them for a moment around his cock.

  “And how could I prove it?” she asked.

  “I’d put my cock in you.” He watched her mouth open and then close again, lost for words at the moment. “I’d stand real still, sunk in all the way. I’d order you to lie perfectly still, to relax around me and wait for my order to move. And then … the whip. Over your back, over your ass. I’d make you count to ten, during which time you’re not to move against me or around me. The moment you move a muscle, we’d start over. We’d stay like that until you made it to ten.”

  He leaned on the corral fence, nudged her with an elbow. “You’d probably be crying by then.”

  Looking sideways he could see her jaw set. She gritted her teeth like he was already pushed inside her and forcing her to be still. God, he wished they were somewhere alone.

  “When you finally made it to ten, I’d fuck you so hard from behind, you’d scream. Lose your mind, scream, and come harder than you ever have before.”

  She looked full in his eyes just then.

  “And you would have earned it.” He turned and walked away, glad that he had his hat in hand to hide his erection.

  He spent the rest of the work day away from her for fear of returning to a painfully aroused state. While the others began clocking out, he made his final rounds and found her back near Sadie’s stall. He pulled the barn door partially closed behind him to keep the cool air out.

  “All well with ou
r girl?” he asked.

  She turned to see him, smiling. “Yeah, just put some fresh hay in there for her.”

  He looked for the horse. “Did you remember to lock the gate?”

  She turned and frowned. “Oh—”

  The mare burst from her paddock. An explosion of hooves and black muscle nearly ran DJ over, and Clayton had the presence of mind to jump for the door and pull it completely shut before Sadie could escape through. He dove to the side and rolled toward an open stall door.

  “DJ! Get behind something!” he said. DJ was already in the stall across from Sadie’s.

  They watched wide-eyed as the horse stomped around the floor, nearly kicking the barn wall.

  “What do we do?” DJ yelled to him.

  “Hold on!”

  After taking a few large breaths to get his wits back, Clayton climbed the far wall of his stall and wedged himself into Sadie’s stall next door, which was no small feat for a man his size. He hit the floor, grimacing. The horse stamped out on the main floor, a furious noise but by the sound of it, she seemed to have stopped running around.

  He looked around. “Shit,” he murmured. He thought for a moment. “Dina Jo?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where’s her halter?”

  There was a moment of silence, then DJ’s tentative response. “Still on her.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He wasn’t sure whether or not to be upset with her for breaking protocol, or to be happy for it.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “You got the lead somewhere nearby you?”

  “Yes,” she called back, voice shaky.

  “DJ, listen to me. You’re going to have to get it on her halter.”

  “What?” she said in a low hiss. “Are you crazy?”

  “You don’t have a choice, DJ. She spends more time with you than anyone else.”

  She huffed.

  “You get it on her, lead her this way, and get her back in her stall.”

  Grumbling. Sadie stomped. Clayton climbed back up to the gap between stalls, swung one leg over, then leaned forward until he could see the horse. She seemed calmer but was pacing near the barn door.