by Maxine Marsh
Working toward another climax, she eventually dove back down, this time feeling like she had taken him with her. Their cries mingled, both deep and prolonged until they just moved and felt. Finally, she simply decided to reach for it, grabbed hold, pulled it down to where she was, and let her climax blossom outward. Her orgasm was mind-blowing and intentional, leaving her buzzing all over, gasping.
She swam back to him, opening her eyes finally while he undid the cuffs around her ankles and gently let her legs down. They tingled. She adjusted her position, shuffling her butt back to the bed as he moved the cuffs and the straps out of the way. Something brushed her thigh and she looked down between them—he hadn’t come yet. His cock was glistening, hard and straight. He pulled her legs straight, straddled her body made his way up toward her and offered his erection.
She looked at him, held his gaze, and took his cock into her throat. Steady and still, she held him in. A firm palm slid behind her head and held her to his crotch firmly but she didn’t struggle, only kept his eyes locked on hers. He managed through the burning ache to nod at her, slightly, once. She swallowed, the muscles of her throat hugged in around his shaft. He came. A hard orgasm, she could see just how hard in his eyes and the way his jaw set like steel.
Afterward he removed the nipple clamps, licking at her breasts playfully while she made little satisfied noises and wrapped her arms around him. They settled down, and her eyes were already closed when he put the cuffs that had been on her ankles on her wrists, let out plenty of slack and attached them to the bed again. He lay next to her, a heavy arm around her belly.
She fell asleep with the amazing sense of being taken care of and a confidence in him that she had not experienced before with anyone else. So she slept easily and steadily—she hadn’t slept so well in ages. Years, even.
Chapter Seven
When she awoke in the morning, he was there, fingering her binds and making sure she still had enough circulation to her arms. She did. As soon as he saw her eyes, he knew. He smiled down at her. She was special. He knew what she would be feeling: immediately light, as though she’d lost weight in her sleep. He released her left arm from the cuff and she reached up to push her hair out of her face. Her hand was shaking, fingers trembling as she smoothed messy wisps back. When she tried to stand up, her knees nearly buckled, but he had her by the arm and managed to keep her upright.
“Whoa, whoa,” he said calmly. It was the same soothing voice he used with the horses. Caring, attentive, a tone that was instinctive to his nurturing side.
“Huh,” was all she managed to say, in mild surprise.
“I knew I should have bathed you last night.”
“Why?” Her voice was raspy and dry-sounding.
“You’re not even all the way back.”
“I’m not?” she murmured, acquiescing to his hold on her elbow while he walked her from the bedroom to the bathroom down the hall. The smell of her rawness enticed him, even this early in the morning, even after how she’d exhausted him the night before.
“We shouldn’t have done this on a work night,” he said, thinking aloud. “You need time.”
“What happened, Clay?”
He shushed her. She let him put her in the bathtub where she sat, nude and calm. Tan skin stood out against the white porcelain—he’d forgotten how much he enjoyed this part of it too.
He kneeled next to the tub and turned the tap on. She scooted her toes away from the flow until it warmed. She sighed and laid back. He studied her where she sat, noticing her eyes were somehow different.
He pinched her cheek and smiled at her. “Relax, you’ll feel better soon.”
He stood and left the bathroom, walked back down the hall to the bedroom, and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. His breathing labored. When he realized what was happening, he tucked his chin down, put his forearms on his legs, and let his head hang. He was hyperventilating a little. There hadn’t been a chance of him feeling like this ever again. He’d been so sure. So sure, he hadn’t realized what was happening until it was too late. Feelings for her had sparked to life inside him. They had formed some kind of bond over the last couple of weeks, and last night, one that couldn’t be broken easily. The dominant in him had instinctively searched her submission out and found it brilliantly. It was like he’d never taken a day off. He’d dominated her, hurt her, pleasured her, and now was taking care of her. As a result, something about her had begun to strip away. The trouble he sometimes detected in her eyes was vague this morning, almost not even there. As he trained her to embrace his domination, she was healing. The thing he hadn’t counted on—the thing that made his chest tight and made him put his face in his hands in anguish—was the healing he felt too. He thought he’d been fine but he’d been wrong, and now felt like he didn’t know himself anymore.
He counted twenty deep breaths, slowed his heart beat down, and made himself go back to the bathroom. She’d turned the tap off and was lying back, head turned away from him, looking up and out of the little bathroom window toward the sky. He had to approach this the right way. He kneeled next to the tub again, smiled at her when she looked at him, then turned his attention to her body. Rubbing her, massaging her wrists, washing her back, it all slowly got her grounded and present.
She stepped into the towel he held for her. “Thanks,” she said. “We’d better get ready for work or we’ll be late.”
“You feel okay, then?”
She nodded. “Yes.” She seemed to hesitate, then stood on her tiptoes and kissed him gently on the lips. Without a second glance, she went to find her clothes.
The drive to the ranch was full of quiet. Clayton watched DJ clock in and go off to her duties, and tried to focus on his routine to ignore the feeling of uncertainty of what he was going to do. He was soon distracted when the sheriff’s truck and a horse trailer attached pulled in. The day started busy with the arrival of this new horse; Clayton embraced it. He started the process of registering the new equine, who was fortunately not too jumpy, and then got a couple of the other guys to move it to a free space. The sheriff made chitchat, thanked them, and left.
“New horse?”
It was James, who seemed to have already been at work when he and DJ had arrived.
“Yep. A little underweight but no obvious signs of trauma. We’ll feed him, get him back to normal, make sure he’s not too skittish, then find him a home.”
James nodded. “Anyone claim him yet?”
Clayton shook his head. “No, but I was planning on giving him to Adam because we’ll be moving one of his recovered horses out to a nearby farm for the time being.”
“Okay, sounds good.” James wandered off.
Everything ran smoothly for most of the day. The ranch was quiet, and when he checked in on Sadie and Dina Jo, he was pleased to find the horse feeding rather than facing the corner and stomping.
“Maybe she got most of it out of her system last night,” DJ said and shrugged, frowning down at the paperwork she was attempting to complete.
He left her to it.
Two hours from the end of the work day, Clayton was outside when King came storming over from the main building. He was frowning and sputtering to himself.
“What’s up?” Clayton asked.
“There’s money missing.” He turned and stormed off.
Clayton walked fast and chased him back to the office. “What do you mean, ‘money missing’?” he asked.
“The petty cash box is gone.”
Clayton frowned. He went over to the cabinet where they kept the cash and found that it was, indeed, not there. “When’s the last time you saw it?”
“Yesterday in the afternoon, around four o’clock. I counted it to reconcile with some receipts and put it back. Came in this morning, the cabinet was closed the way I left it last night. I didn’t need to go into it until just now to pay out for some of the supplies.” King threw up his hands, seething. “It’s gone.”
Clayton shook his head
. “Too bad the sheriff’s come and gone already. I’ll call him back.”
The sheriff, Tom, showed up to take their report. “Have you checked their belongings? The employees, I mean?”
King frowned harder. “Why?”
Tom spoke sternly. “These things are almost always inside jobs. It’s not as common for someone from outside to go through the trouble of breaking in and finding money. They’d have to know where to look. Meaning it’s probably someone who works here.”
They signed off on the report and the sheriff left, promising to do his best but also noting there wasn’t much he could do without some sort of evidence or even an indication of a lead to follow. King and Clayton sat together after, each at his desk.
“Maybe it’s time to get cameras installed,” King said. They’d considered it before, mostly with the thought that someday some angry owner who’d lost his horse might come looking to take it back in the middle of the night, or else vandalize their place out of spite. They’d never had money go missing before.
“You think someone came in at night and took it?” Clayton asked him.
King thought about it. “I hate to say this, to even think it, but the regular employees have the code to the lockbox. Doesn’t make sense that if one of them did it, they’d swipe the whole box. It’d be more likely for one of them to open it and take the cash out. Which means that whoever took it was probably someone who didn’t have the code.”
Clayton couldn’t argue with his logic.
“Which would either be someone from outside, and how would they know the box was even there? Nothing else seemed messy or gone through. So…” He sighed and looked over at Clayton. “The three interns are the only ones who didn’t have the code to the cash, but it’s entirely possible they were aware of the box and knew where it was.”
They sat with that in silence.
“You think we should do what Tom said, check the employee lockers?” Clayton asked.
King shrugged, looking out the window near his desk toward the rest of the ranch. Clayton didn’t like the idea of not trusting their people but it was never far from their minds that they employed parolees and took in offenders for community service sentences. “Yeah, maybe we should,” he said finally.
They called Adam, James, and Dina Jo into the main office separately, sat them down and told each of them what had happened. Clayton let King do the talking.
“We want to trust everyone here, and we both believe that you came here with the honest intention of doing your term of service to the best of your abilities. But we need to check your locker, and your belongings before you leave today.”
Adam sat, unaffected, and flatly said, “Okay.”
James appeared shocked at the news of the theft. He shrugged and said, “Of course.”
Dina Jo frowned and said, “You think I might have done this and you want to go through my shit? Whatever.” She crossed her arms and glared at Clayton.
“Now’s not the time to be stubborn, DJ. Do we have your permission to look through your stuff?”
She pursed her lips together but nodded.
All three of the interns accompanied them to the employee room, where they could take breaks out of the sun and eat their lunches. There were also a row of old-fashioned metal lockers running the length of the back wall.
Adam’s and James’s lockers barely held anything more than changes of clothes and their wallets and jackets. Adam had a few comic books he read over his break time. James had hung a picture of his parents and two siblings on the inside door of the locker. King made his approval of that known, clapping James on the back before moving on. Dina Jo stood behind them and rolled her eyes.
She opened her locker, where her backpack was, along with a second pair of shoes and a grocery bag of snacks.
“Do you mind?” King asked, lifting her backpack up.
“Go for it,” she said quietly.
Clayton watched as King went through DJ’s bag. He pulled out a bag of her toiletries and several changes of clothes. A few paperback books that looked worn to the binding. Her wallet and a pair of sunglasses. He felt around toward the bottom, then pulled something out. He held it up with a squint. It was small and white with little metal knobs on the end. Her vibrator.
“What’s… Oh.” He shook his head, glanced over at her and quickly dropped it back in.
Clayton blanched a little and wondered if the other interns had seen it. DJ stood stock still and looked a cross between mortified and vexed.
Finally, King removed the notebook.
“That’s my—” she said, stepping forward and grabbing for the book.
“Hold on,” King said, and began flipping through the journal.
Clayton felt a slow burn of embarrassment right away when he realized what he was seeing. He hadn’t noticed just how much she’d drawn. He’d watched her sketch him on the porch the night before but in the pages proceeding that sketch were others, lewd sketches of her and him, lewd things that had clearly been populating DJ’s fantasies.
Adam snickered. James cleared his throat and looked away.
King looked sharply up at Clayton and then slapped the notebook shut. “Wow,” he muttered. “All right. Thanks for cooperating guys … and DJ.”
He turned to leave the break room, then stopped and turned back. “Clay, can I have a word with you?”
“Sure,” Clayton answered in a measured tone.
Clayton admitted to his partner that he and DJ had become involved. King sat silently with that information for a while.
“I know it’s been a while since you were with someone, but—”
“You mean since Cynthia died,” Clayton countered.
“Right,” King said slowly. “But you have to realize how inappropriate this is, Clay.”
“We’re both adults.”
“That doesn’t matter. Not only is she almost half your age, but she’s an ex-con. She’s here on a service sentence after serving time for a felony and you getting involved with her might look … imprudent, to say the least.”
Clayton sat silently. What King said was true. He’d put them in a bad position, one that might hurt the ranch’s reputation and influence the relationships they had with law enforcement. King left him to go look over things at the stables.
The more Clayton sat and thought about it, the angrier he became with himself. It was possible he’d let himself make decisions out of some sort of sense of loneliness or neediness—he ought to have started dating more frequently and earlier. He’d gotten too focused on work and forgotten about the needs he’d mastered meeting when his wife was alive. What King didn’t know was that there had been others, but no one like DJ. She’d come along and thrown herself at him, and he’d been starved enough for what he sensed in her to bite. She was too young for him, too impulsive, but that thing inside her complemented that thing inside him, and he’d allowed himself to be impulsive too. She hadn’t stolen the money but now, sitting and thinking about the notebook and the images she’d put on paper, he realized they weren’t a good match. The sex and the scenes were fun. But there couldn’t be more. She would come and go, having served her service time here, and getting enmeshed in her life was a wholly bad idea, from any angle he looked at it.
Chapter Eight
Dina Jo had sensed hardness in him first thing that morning, and had actually been glad for it. Her own had softened; she wasn’t used to not having it in the forefront, the wall of attitude and cynicism that had colored her existence since she could remember. As she worked in the stalls that day, she wished it back. It was too much; a serious relationship was forming and she didn’t know how to stop it. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to stop it. The previous night was something she’d never experienced before. Clayton made her feel so much and so strongly, it was like she could suddenly see things differently. She felt softer inside.
The day had gone smoothly until the whole incident about the theft of the petty cash. She hadn’t even realized
they had a petty cash box. It didn’t help that they’d wanted to search her things, but fine, it wasn’t like she was there working on her merits. When King found the vibrator she’d been embarrassed and annoyed, but when he’d found the pictures, she’d felt the bottom of her stomach fall out.
Not long after, secluded in her assigned barn and staring in at Sadie, DJ realized she hadn’t thought so thoroughly about what she and Clay had been doing. The theft and subsequent events now made what they had done the night before less pristine in her mind. Thinking about an actual ongoing relationship like that with Clayton now seemed less tenable. It seemed deviant, and how could he have a relationship with someone if it appeared … dirty.
She’d never qualified her sexuality like that. It must have something to do with the softening. She wanted that hard feeling back in her all of the sudden, wanted whatever feelings she’d grown for Clayton to wilt and fall off. Wanted to go back to an angrier version of herself, the one that didn’t care so much what anyone thought of her. The one that drank silently at the corner of the bar and went to bed alone.
Things only got worse when Clayton finally came in late toward closing time.
He came into the barn and mumbled something in a low and grumbly voice.
“What?” DJ asked.
“Why aren’t you finished yet?” he asked, adding an exasperated sigh to the question this time.
“Well, I—” she began, but he cut her off.
“I was hoping for more from you, DJ.”
She listened as he proclaimed in euphemisms that he was disappointed in her attitude and her behaviors. She stood stunned for a moment, turned and made sure Sadie’s paddock was locked properly, and then leaned up against the side of the barn. She didn’t know how to fight with him, couldn’t seem to summon her usually ubiquitous attitude, and only felt a sort of pathetic need to plead.