As She's Told (61 page)
Authors: Anneke Jacob
Anders stepped out into the hot afternoon sunshine and looked around.
The quiet was incredible. Crickets somewhere close. A tiny, very distant whine, probably of a chainsaw. No cars, no people. Even the squirrels were in siesta.
He took his slave by the bridle and brought her forward, trap and all, then took up the whip and the reins and got in. Behind his mare at last. The rear view was something to savour; framed in the convergence of the shafts, from the firmly-planted boots, up the taut thighs, to the oval buttocks outlined by straps, already marked and waiting tensely for more pain. Those helpless paws, fixed even more helplessly between their little wings of shoulder blades. The enforced curves of her form, outlined in a slight sheen of sweat.
Anders gave the reins a shake and clicked his tongue, and she started forward. Hours of practice had conditioned her to that sound at least. At first she had to lean into the harness, but once she had momentum going she seemed to have no trouble. He drew on the left-hand rein and steered her onto the track that bordered the fields. Then he flicked her with the whip and said, in Danish, "Trot." Having been trained so far in English the girl was at a loss; she lifted her knees higher and continued to walk. Anders flicked her harder and said the word again, louder. She leapt at the sting, and hesitantly picked up the pace. Again he whipped her, both sides this time, shook her reins and said the unfamiliar word. Her flesh jumped and her pain was audible, but now she was trotting. "Good girl," he said, and she heard the intonation and settled into the gait.
Trot, walk, trot; the rhythmic sounds of small boots and nipple bells, under the friction of wheels. She had already been trained past some of the awkwardness of constrained arms and shoulders, and at home Anders had begun to see some grace, some economy of movement developing. But the pull and push at her hips was a new element; it altered her centre of gravity, and now again she was hesitating, losing her rhythm, confused. He tried to apply the whip as he had done so often, expert flicks to direct and control, but he had never before done this from a moving cart, especially not one that jolted behind a pony in disarray. He missed his mark, and further bewildered her. It was like trying to manage a clutch in a car that was jolting because you were doing such a lousy job of managing the clutch.
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So he pulled her to a stop. She stood, back arched, panting, her smooth skin shining with sweat. Anders yanked the reins back just a little as a signal of displeasure, and then held them firmly while he laid a couple of hard stripes across both cheeks. Her open-mouthed squeals came back to him, and the reins trembled. Carefully he signalled another start. This time when she made the first error he was quicker to get her back into order before she could spoil his aim. He could see that he was going to have to do some learning himself.
Not so easy, this horsemanship. After all, how many times had he been on or behind a horse? A couple of trail rides when they went to Algonquin Park one winter. Janne had been the one interested in horses, really, and the rest of the family had gone along. A cart ride or two with a lot of others when he was what? Eight or nine, at some summer camp. A few pony rides at fairs as a small child. That was about it. No wonder he was better at getting engines to go. This was a very different matter, using a live creature to make your wheels go round.
They were past both fields now, and entering welcome shade beneath the trees. Drawing on the reins, he slowed her to a walk to let his eyes adjust.
The green shadows were rich with the scents of living sap, moving water, a sharp tang of pine; Anders took a deep breath. Then he yanked his slave's head over to the right and punished her; she'd been trying to follow the leftward curve of the road without direction from him. 'Never let the horse decide for itself which way it wants to go, or how fast. It must know from the outset that the decision rests with you.' Anders had perused a couple of horse-training manuals in preparation for the summer. A whimper and a dancing step or two and she walked as the reins directed, onto a deep grassy verge. Anders got out and drew her forward beneath a tree, then looped the reins round a low branch. Taking a bucket from the cart, he walked to the stream, half-filled it and brought it back to gave her a drink. Water trickled down her dusty breasts already spotted with saliva, making streaks of mud.
He squeezed them anyway. "There now," he murmured in Danish, "my pretty thing. What a gorgeous pony you make. Just your back view as you pull the cart is almost more than I can bear."
Her eyes half closed as she offered her breasts to him, swaying forward, head tipped back by the pull of the rein above her head, her boots still firmly planted at the spot where they had been told to stop. Anders stroked over the 386
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striped buttocks to the enclosed vulva and felt her go rigid; his presence there, even on the other side of metal, was making her shake. And he hadn't even included the dildos. His eyes danced.
He strolled back to the stream, rinsed his hands, and stood for a while watching the light play on the surface. It was rocky just here, and the shallow stream rippled and snagged, swirled in little eddies and caught up with itself before sweeping round the bend. Pretty. Was that a fish? He looked closely, walked a little upstream and then back, spying two more; just minnows. Not much to catch here, but there was a deeper pool further on. Anders returned to his vehicle and got underway again.
Something about the curve ahead, the approaching dazzle where the trees ended, something about the motion of his slave and the cart: a moment of déjà vu. Had he dreamt it? Dappled light on a naked haunch, the humus smell of generations of old leaves, the living reins across his palms, their weight against his fingers. Was it only imagination? A year or more of preparation and planning. Years more of wanting just this: to reduce a woman to the simplest level of physical being, the motive power. Feed calories in. Maintain animal mass, and fuel acceleration, which together equal force.
A mechanical thing then, an engine; pure physics? No, a sensitive, sentient engine, responsive to the slightest twitch of the reins. Processing his signals through a filter of love and fear.
***
Sweat was running down my neck. My head was pulled back in the reins grip, slowing me. Lungs like bellows. Down to a walk. A flick at my thighs.
No shambling! Tired legs lifted their boots and set them down where they 387
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belonged. The reins and the bit said Yes. Good girl. I walked. Happy. So happy.
That glow lasted for hours, through supper at my trough, through the long evening, light fading into dusk, with only my chain and pile of straw for company. He'd been pleased with me. Despite mistakes, I'd felt his deep approval, seen it when he unharnessed me, known it in the touch of his fingers against my scalp as I knelt with him in my mouth, and in the astonishing size and urgency of his erection. I was a good vessel, and as a mare I could please him. This pony thing wasn't going to be beyond me. In fact I fit precisely into the confinement of harness and shafts. Like a round peg designed and trimmed for its round hole, both engineered to within a hair's breadth. 'We're all suitable to our calling,' as the rag-and-bone man had said in A Christmas Carol. 'We're well matched.'
The bridle was off and was hanging invisibly above me somewhere on the dark wall, but I felt the bit's absence against the vulnerable nerves it had pressed; something missing. What was it they said about horses? 'A mouth like a glove.' The glove wanted its owner, wanted to be occupied and commanded.
Tomorrow. He'll take you out again tomorrow. The promise made wet insides squeeze. I rolled onto my belly, one mitt crammed between my thighs up against metal, imagining it as gauze. Breath caught and held.
Swollen nipples rubbed and pricked against the rough blanket. Only seven weeks since the last time. A real meltdown blow-out for our one-year anniversary. On our way home from the business at the bank, he'd promised to play me like his violin, and my god, he'd kept his promise. This celebratory event had consisted of hours of the most harrowing, drawn-out, agonizing torment imaginable. With, incidentally, full ironic musical commentary and analogies, and some actual music as accompaniment. He'd strung me up as if in catgut, drawn lines on my skin with whipcord and his tongue. Orchestrated my moans and screams. Moved me forward, rolled me back. Teasingly slow movements, little side melodies. I could still feel the near-crescendos of the piece: the ache of my limbs, stretched as if I were the strings themselves, the whips and teeth and fingers and tongue playing me to desperate unresolved rhythms. Like those classical pieces with one near-ending after another, each approaching finale promising to be the real one, except that the final chord of the final phrase rises in pitch instead of 388
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descending, and on it goes….
And then the real climax. Climaxes. Resonances so violent they shattered flesh and bone, dissolved connective tissue and coherence, and devolved me down into formless ooze. How greedy of me to want more.
At last I released the breath I'd been holding, and lay inert against the straw, nefarious hand still outside the keep, defeated as always. Curses!
Foiled again!
I was unable to conjure up another occasion before Christmas that would call for gift-giving. Something told me the summer was going to be one long protracted tease. Unless the August civic holiday inspired him to a generous festival mood; not likely.
Full dark now at last. We were barely past midsummer; it would be ten o'clock or so. I could pick out subtle variations in the darkness. No moon; perhaps just starlight. Cricket noises, the rustle of straw when I moved.
Occasionally the sound of a deep voice in the distance, a door opening and closing. Windows were open over at the house. The heat had lifted, finally. I rolled myself in the blanket.
It had been hot in the information centre, this whole last week. We'd had the air conditioning guys in twice. Would Jagrati take care of the cataloguing and the utilization reports as she'd promised, or would I have a mess to deal with when I got back? Vera had got herself a research job at York University (my pleased congratulations had been entirely sincere), and Jagrati was her replacement, far more friendly and willing to collaborate, but so far a bit short on follow-through. And she'd only have her half-days to get things done. That interim report on the lawn pesticide by-law…I should remind her…. No. I felt a little laugh bubble in my throat. I wasn't reminding anyone of anything for a while. The report would have to take its chances. I had a different function altogether now. There was the weight of the shafts, the pull against my hips, the huge presence controlling me invisibly from behind.
A voice from the house: Svend. Tomorrow, would he be – ? Probably.
Bound to be, sooner or later. Holding the reins. The others? Karl, Ria, undoubtedly. Even Val. I shrank into a ball.
That close, charged circuit between me and my master was one thing. A bizarre and blissful thing. No shame. Joy.
But the others? These strangers from outside the circle.
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How to bear it. The reflection of myself in their eyes.
***
Just enough so she knows you're there. That's it."
Svend's eyes dropped past the reins to the rhythmic shimmy of that gorgeous butt. It wasn't easy to keep an eye on the road as well; no driver was ever so distracted.
"All right, see if you can touch her up without tangling with the reins this time."
"Once! I only did that once." With a half-practiced motion of the wrist, Svend managed to flick one shuddering buttock, adding a new mark and prompting an increase in speed. Pleased, he decided to press his luck. "Look, even my backhand is improving." This was not as successful; the stroke was higher up, almost on the left hip; the filly shied slightly and he had to shake the reins to keep her speed steady.
From the corner of his eye Svend saw his brother grimace and reach reflexively for the whip. Exactly like the same hands' reach for the steering wheel when Svend was learning to drive. He held whip and reins away from his instructor. "Relax; I'll get the hang of it.”
“Try not to undo all her training while you're at it. Look, steer, would you?”
“I'd rather she watched the road and I watched her.”
“Too bad. Steer!”
“A real horse would know enough to follow a road."
"She's not a real horse. I don't need her that smart. Steer or give up the reins."
"Oh, fine," Svend grumbled. He used the reins to guide the girl away from the road's edge, and was interested despite himself in her responsiveness. Like a very fine sailboat, well-rigged, responding to a touch of the rudder.
This pony business might be more than a prick-engorging game after all, he thought. It could be like sailing. Svend's hands relaxed into a more confident position on the reins, and he leaned back.
His brother glanced at him, interested. "What's up?"
"I just got the connection with sailing."
Anders laughed. "Whatever works."
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