He chuckled hoarsely. “How're you doing?” he asked quietly.
Her own laugh was thin and shaky. “Good,” she murmured. Perhaps she should have felt shy, but there was nothing between them now to feel shy about.
Now that the act was over, she was aware of a certain tenderness between her legs. She flinched when he pulled out of her, doing up the buttons of his fly, and he even looked a trifle guilty.
“Come on,” he said. “I suppose you want to get cleaned up.
He slid down from the horse and lifted her down after, catching her when she would have fallen down.
On wobbly legs, she made it to the shores of the pond where she looked back at him quizzically. “I'm going to wash,” she said tentatively.
Less than an arm's length away, he nodded, a lazy grin on his face.
When it became obvious that he wasn't going to move, she realized that she would have to clean herself in front of him. Even in light of everything else they had done, even if she was completely bare from the waist up, the thought made her flush. She would be lying, however, if there wasn't a bit of appeal to it at all, and she knelt down on the grassy bank.
She cupped handfuls of cool water in her hand and dribbled it over her face first, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He was definitely interested as the water dripped down the slopes of her breasts, and she grinned.
Slowly, she cupped the water in her hands again, and, flipping up her skirt, she poured it between her legs. There was a sensual luxury to it that she had never felt before. As the water ran over her slit, washing away her own juices and his seed, she closed her eyes, simply enjoying the sensation of the water on her most intimate parts.
Marigold yelped when an iron-hard hand closed around her wrist and pulled her roughly to her feet.
Jake was a man with moods that could change faster than the unpredictable weather of the prairie.
She could see a darkness on his face that was at odds with his earlier gentleness.
He held up her clean hand, inspecting it carefully, and then looked at her.
“No blood,” he said.
She realized what he was implying.
“I was a virgin,” she hissed, stung. “I was.”
“Virgins bleed,” he said, dropping her hand in disgust. “You seemed just fine to me.”
“Some don't,” she retorted. “I worked for a living, Mr. Sloan, even before I came to the shores of this benighted country, you see? I worked, I walked, I ran, I rode carriage ponies with my friends who worked in stables. I could have lost that little bit of blood anywhere.”
He moved away from her focusing on tending to Tamu, ignoring her.
Furious, she stomped up, finding her corset and fastening it again with quick, angry movements. “Hypocrite,” Marigold snarled. “It's not like you were.”
“I never said I was,” Jake snapped. “I will tell you that I cannot abide a liar, and you, miss, that's all that you are.”
She was struck silent by his harsh words, and when he boosted her up on Tamu's back again she started to cry silently.
Mounted behind her, he gave no indication that he had even noticed, and they started back for the ranch.
They rode back to the ranch in silence, and then, for a small amount of time, she was alone. There were chores to be done, she supposed, and he left her with food enough. She ate, and then because she could never bear to be idle, she cleaned. She cleaned the hearth, she swept, she took the homey old rugs out and beat them.
As she worked, aware of what a sight she must be in her disreputable finery, her rage built up and up. She was aware of a tension and soreness between her legs. Her virginity, something that was meant to be given to the man who would be her mate forever, had been bought, sold and gambled away, and the grief of it was that the man who had taken it thought she was a liar. The thought simmered and festered.
When Jake came back through the door at dusk, he was met with silence. If he was discomforted by it, he gave no sign. She served him his dinner as silent as a servant, but when the time came to put away the dishes, she couldn't restrain herself any longer.
“I was a virgin,” she cried, slamming the plates into the wash basin. It was a miracle that the plates didn't break. In the silence of the prairie, it seemed that the echo of her violent motion was very loud. “I was, damn you...” Marigold supposed that a sweet girl would be on the verge of tears, but all she could do was get angrier and angrier. Her face was flushed and even she could hear a defensiveness in her tone that made her sound like the liar he thought she was.
“You seemed to be just fine today,” Jake said acidly, leaning back in his chair.
Insolently, his gaze raked her from head to toe, taking in the corset that pushed up her breasts to the bare shape of her hips and her thighs under the slowly shredding silk.
“I thought virgins bled,” he taunted her. “I thought they begged and pleaded...”
Something inside Marigold snapped like a dry twig. With an angry shout, she flew at him. She knew that she couldn't hurt him, not really, but she needed to flail at him, to scratch at him, to batter her fists at his chest.
For a moment, he allowed it, but then he simply wrapped one large hand around her slender wrists and pulled her up short.
“Some restraint you've got,” he said mockingly. “I've known whores who behaved more sweetly.”
“Do you know many?” she spat. “Is that all you know? Is that why you don't know when you've had an honest woman?”
He laughed, and, to her shock, he started to drag her to his bedroom.
“I think you want more of what you got at the watering hole,” he told her. “I just think you don't know how to ask.”
She had been thinking about what he had done all day. All it took was the barest ache from between her legs or the scent of the prairie coming through the house on a sweet breeze to make her think about it all over again. Her embarrassment was revealed in the red flush of her cheeks.
He laughed out loud. “I can tell that it is. I think what the little hellcat needs is a lesson in restraint.” He tossed her onto his bed.
It was a wide four poster, a piece of furniture that was at odds with his Spartan lodgings otherwise. That was all that she caught before he threw her on her stomach onto the yielding mattress. She struggled to get up, but, before she could, he was on top of her, pressing her down and making sure that she felt the length of his hard body against her back. She could already feel the bulge of his cock as he nudged it gently against her buttocks.
“Against all wisdom, I like you,” he muttered in her ear. “You've got spirit and God above knows you've got beauty. You're one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, and I've been all over this country.”
Almost against her will, she felt herself warming to his praise. She had heard whistles and lewd comments about her body since she was a girl, but the sincerity in his voice struck her deep in her heart. Some part of her had always wanted to hear those words whispered in just this way.
“But I will not tolerate liars,” Jake hissed. “Liars have been the bane of my life since I was a child, and beautiful women, I have found, are among the worst.”
That only sparked her anger again. Futilely, she bucked up against him, groaning through gritted teeth. She never even budged him, however.
He laughed at her struggles. “If I didn't manage to teach you anything this morning, you can be damn sure that I am going to teach you something tonight.”
There was something so menacingly enticing about his words that she went still.
He laughed again. Even with the thread of cruelty through it, she thought that she could become accustomed to how sweet it sounded in her ear. That was before he slid his hand over her rear.
There was no longer any pain at all on her rear, but he didn't seem intent on smacking her again. Instead, he squeezed her round buttock gently, making her purr with pleasure.
Still keeping the skirt between their skin, he we
nt between her legs. After a little bit of careful exploration, his silk-clad fingers found their way between the folds of her drawers.
She moaned to feel him through the soft fabric. There might as well have been nothing between them, and to her humiliation, she realized that she was soaking the fabric around his fingers. She couldn't help it. Every touch of this man's fingers made her want more, and she couldn't do anything but thrash.
When he withdrew his fingers, his laugh was a little more hoarse.
She could tell that she affected him as strongly as he affected her, and there was something entrancing about it. He could do things to her, he could make her sigh and cry and moan, but even as he did, she was holding him in thrall. It was a power of a sort, but before she could think anymore about it, he pulled back.
“Take your clothes off. You won't like what happens if you make me do it, miss.”
She knelt up, not looking at him. As she undid her corset, something occurred to her.
“Marigold,” she said stiffly. “My name is Marigold Morgan,” she supplied archly. For a moment, she thought that he was going to laugh at her again. For some reason, that would have hurt worse than the spanking she'd received. She braced herself in anticipation of it, but his answer was gentle.
“Marigold,” he echoed. “It's a fine name. I am glad to know it.”
There was something almost courtly about his behavior, as if they had been introduced at some fine lady's party or a church picnic, and it almost made Marigold laugh. He had just learned her name, he was even being sweet about, and right now, she was shimmying her drawers and her stockings down and folding them across the single chair in the room.
She started to turn to him to see what he wanted next, but he kept her turned from him.
“You have no idea what kind of effect you have on me, Marigold,” he said softly. “You drive me out of my head and you make me want... well, never mind what I want.”
Before she could question him further, she found herself pressed down hard on the mattress again. She couldn't predict this man at all. Perhaps that should have frightened her, but it only served to thrill her instead.
“I think I should be very afraid of you,” he growled. “I think a good man has a great deal to fear from a woman as beautiful as you, don't you think?” He held her down with a knee pressed to the small of her back and reached for a few lengths of rope that were hanging on the wall close to the bed.
She moaned softly as he wrapped a few loops of rope around her wrist and hauled her arm out flat. Before she could struggle up, he had tied that arm flat to the bed by lashing it to one of the posts then he straddled her and repeated the process with each of her other three limbs until she was roped to the bed. He stuffed a pillow under her hips, lifting her rear up in the air, and then he stepped back.
“Now that's just beautiful,” he said.
“What, a helpless woman?” she retorted.
Instead of being angry, he only laughed.
“Careful, Marigold,” he said, saying her name with surprising love. “I can rope you down like a calf, and I can gag you, too.”
Before she could think of a response to make to that, his hand was tangled in her hair, massaging her scalp roughly before trailing down her back. She had never understood before that her back could be so sensitive, and that was before he even raked his blunt nails down her flanks, making her yelp.
“That didn't hurt,” he laughed.
When she thought about it, she realized he was right. She tried to twist her head to see what he was doing, but he had tied her too well. She could turn her head to lie it flat on the mattress, but that was all she could do, lay down and experience the sensations he was giving her.
She squirmed as he ran his fingernails over her back and her flanks, and then she gasped when she felt something sharp prickle its way over her bare skin.
“That's a spur,” he told her. “My brother gave them to me, but you know, I could never bear to wear them when I rode Tamu.”
“Why- why not?” Marigold gasped as the sharp prickles trailed across her back to run over the insanely sensitive skin at the side of her breast. When she tried to roll even a little to protect herself, it only exposed her flank to the second spur, which had even more access to her body than the first one had.
“Because Tamu is clever. She's a fine mare who learns after only being told once, and she responds to a word or a whistle. She's never been so headstrong that she needs spurs dug into her side.”
On the last word, he pressed the spurs a little deeper into her flesh. She knew that it wasn't deep enough to draw blood or even to do more than to make her cry out, but it was startling to her nonetheless.
“You're very lucky with your horse.”
Jake made an approving sound, and then he ran the spurs from her shoulders to the curve of her rear, leaving two tingling tracks in their wake.
“I am,” he agreed. “I don't seem to have gotten as lucky with my woman.”
She might have protested being called his woman, but then he was moving down her body. The spurs, which had been just shy of unbearable on her back, became something more pleasurable but also more maddening as he ran them over the insides her thighs. He ran them down to her knees and then up again, and she held her breath as he brought them achingly close to her sex, which was already humiliatingly wet for him.
“You love a little bit of pain with your pleasure,” he said softly. “Are you one of the women who need it?”
She whimpered, but a memory flashed through her mind, one so vivid that it was like she was there again.
“What?”
When she made no reply, he dug the spurs a little more harshly into her hips.
She cried out, bucking up helplessly.
“I asked you a question,” he said, all silky menace. “You're beginning to see what happens to spoiled little mares who don't obey, aren't you?”
Marigold remained still, but she could imagine him narrowing his dark eyes at her silence.
“Was it a memory of a past lover?” he asked sharply.
“I didn't have one,” she said indignantly, but that only earned her a brisk slap to the rear. She had been wrong when she thought that there was no pain left. The sharp slap woke up the pain there, bringing back a hot echo of what it had felt like to be turned over the fence and swatted.
She whimpered, but it took a second sharp prod with the spurs before she could finally speak.
“It... it was when I was working as a charwoman at one of the inns in Bristol,” she managed. “I spent all day going up and down the stairs, carrying buckets, changing sheets, and seeing to things.”
“Seeing to things... like the men there?”
“No!” she cried furiously. “It was a clean place, and, believe it or not, I was a good woman, or at least I was before I came to America. Now do you want to hear me or no?”
“I do,” he said.
She wondered if there was something contrite about the way he said it. Perhaps he was beginning to believe her protestations of virtue, but she doubted it. “One day, I was going up and I heard.. I heard some people talking. It was a man and a woman, and they were engaging in.. in...”
“They were fucking,” Jake guessed.
When she nodded, he rewarded her with a gentle finger traced from the curve of her ass down to her slit. He toyed with the wetness there for a moment, making her sigh and moan.
“Keep going,” he said.
Marigold thought that there was something soft and husky about his voice now, and she swallowed hard. “They were fucking,” she repeated. “They... I could hear them, him on top of her and their bodies slamming together. She was yelling like anything, telling him that she would fair kill him if he stopped, that she would die if he stopped.”
“A good woman,” Jake said with approval. “Was that what caught your attention, dear?”
She shook her head, or at least she shook her head as much as she could from the position she wa
s in. Though it had alarmed her at first, now she was startled to realize how comfortable it had become. There was something that called to her about lying stretched out for the gaze of this man, something that warmed her and excited her, and it didn't hurt that his skilled fingers were tracing along the lips of her wet slit with loving care.
“It was what the man said,” she whispered. “He... he was calling her names. He was saying... oh he as saying cruel things to her, awful things, and it just made her cry for him harder, and want him more. Oh, Jake...”
Marigold moaned as he pressed two fingers into her tight channel, easing her open with care. There was something surprisingly loving and gentle about it. It was an odd counterpoint to what he was making her say.
“Cruel things,” he said teasingly. “Awful things. So tell me dear, what was so awful about these things?”
“He.... Oh, oh Jake, please...”
She couldn't. She couldn't talk while he was dipping his fingers inside her and spreading them so slowly, but clearly he expected her to do just that.
“Don't stop,” he said, a note of warning in his voice. “If you stop, I will.”
If he stopped, she was certain that she would die. Swallowing hard and licking her lips, she continued. “He was.. he was calling her a slut and a whore, and he was saying that he knew how much she wanted his... his prick, and that he was going to fill her up from bottom to top if that's what it took to make her quiet.”
“Man after my own heart,” Jake said with satisfaction. “What did you do?”
“What?”
Her question earned her a good-natured tug on her hair, something that made her blush and sent another surge of heat down between her legs.
“I asked you what you did after that. You remembered it so clear, and even as I'm sitting here and listening to you talk, you're squirming and grinding on my fingers. I'm not moving them at all, dear, that's completely your doing.”
With a flush, she realized that he was right. He had been holding his fingers entirely still and it was her who kept grinding down on them. She couldn't resist the maddening sensations that he was offering her, and when he pulled his fingers away slightly, she couldn't help but follow them. She was brought up short by the way her hands were bound, and she realized that that position only made her look more vulnerable. Her rear was thrust up, and with her legs bound apart they way they were, she realized that she was showing him everything.
Savage Impulses Page 3