Bridled: Bitter Creek Doms #1 (4 page)

I nearly hit my head on the bottom of
the window when the telephone rings. Diving across my bed for the
phone on my nightstand, I call out to my mother that I’ll get it.
It’s silly to imagine it’s one of them, Quinn or Zach. They didn’t
even ask for my number.

There’s a heartbeat’s worth of
hesitation when I answer, before I hear a calm, deep
voice.

“
Mel, it’s Quinn.” I don’t
mean to sigh in relief, but I guess it’s pretty obvious. “You
didn’t think you’d hear from me?” he asks, a suggestion of
amusement in his tone.

I’m glad he can’t see how red I’ve
turned. “I never gave you my phone number.”

“
Yeah, well, it’s on the
reports you filed about Peterson vandalizing your pasture fences.
Using the records to get the information isn’t the most ethical
thing I’ve ever done, but neither is coming out to question you
about that incident today and ending up tying you up and nearly
fucking you.”

Panic scatters my thoughts and sends
my pulse racing. Is he saying he regrets what happened today? I’m
so scared of the possibility that I could cry.

“
How…?” My voice cracks,
and I stop to swallow hard. How can he say that when I wanted it as
much as he did? How long until I see him and Zach again? How
serious were they about making me their submissive? “How did Zach
make those knots?” is all that comes out, sounding surprisingly
nonchalant.

“
We learned it while we
were serving on a base in Japan. Rope bondage is an art there. It
started as a way of binding military prisoners.” Another painful,
breathless pause. “Did you like it? Really? Be honest.”

“
I did,” I
whisper.

Now it is Quinn’s turn to sigh in
relief. “I was concerned you got caught up in the moment and let us
do things you didn’t really want.”

“
No, I…” He can’t even see
me and my cheeks are burning with embarrassment. “I want
more,...sir.”

“
You haven’t done much like
this before, Mel. Are you sure you can handle it? You Bitter Creek
women are firebrands who are used to wearing your own boots, if you
get my drift.”

“
I understand what you’re
saying,” I assure him, chewing thoughtfully on my lower lip. “It
doesn’t make me weak just because…just because I want to give
myself to you or like it when you take charge and make me do what
you want. What we both want.”

Quinn draws a heavy, pensive breath on
the other end of the line. “I know that. Are you sure you know
it?”

Realization dawns on me slowly. “You
think I’ll change my mind once I get involved with you and
Zach?”

“
It’s a
possibility.”

I sit upright, rigid, tense, like he
can see it. “It’s not,” I insist. “I want this. I want what you and
Zach did with the girl in Japan. I want you to tie me up and force
me to submit to you, to the sensations of being touched and used
and owned. Just…”

“
Just what?” Quinn asks,
and I wish I hadn’t even begun the sentence. “Just what, Mel?” His
voice grows firmer. “Answer me, Melanie, right now.” His tone
brings back all the desire and desperation I felt today in the
barn, from the flush of heat to the queasiness in my stomach, the
trembling in my knees and my pussy.

“
Just don’t leave me again,
okay?”

There’s a low whistle on his end. “I
deserve that one,” he says. “You want to know why I left like that,
I suspect. Why I’d get involved with you like I did at the party
that night if I knew I was leaving for the Corp in a couple of
days.”

“
I figured I was a quick,
convenient score you’d probably never see again.”

“
No,” Quinn says flatly.
“But I guessed you’d be upset with me. I didn’t mean to act on the
attraction I’d been feeling for you, but you were more than a
normal eighteen-year-old boy could resist. What was I going to say?
That I was getting the hell out of our little backwater hometown so
I wouldn’t end up scraping by with odd day jobs that made just
enough to get drunk at night? End up living in some falling down
trailer after knocking up a girl I barely liked—or worse, one I did
like? I didn’t want that, and you deserved better. My biggest
regret was being too much of a coward to say goodbye like a man. It
took a few years in the Corp to make me that.”

After several moments of silence so
thick I could chew it, Quinn asks, “Are you still
there?”

I rub the back of one hand over my
teary eyes. “Yeah. Thanks for telling me that.”

“
No crying, baby. It hits
me in a soft spot when you want me hard,” he says, but I can hear
the smile he’s wearing.

“
When can I see you and
Zach again?” I blurt.

Quinn clears his throat briefly, as
the tone of the conversation shifts tangibly. “What are you
supposed to be calling me?”

“
I want to see you, sir,” I
plead.

“
First things first…if you
really want to do this. Tonight before you go to bed, you will
shave your pussy smooth and keep it that way as a sign of your
submission, a sign that it’s our pussy, not yours. Is that
understood?”

“
Yes, sir,” I sigh,
shuddering at the unexpectedly arousing idea.

“
Go do it as soon as I let
you off the phone. I want you to think about why you’re shaving as
you do it, what it means. Imagine what it’s going to look like,
feel like, when your cunt is bare and smooth and so sensitive to
the touch. When we penetrate you with our fingers or our cocks or
make you fuck yourself shamelessly with a big dildo while we watch.
When we tie you with a rough, thick rope drawn up between the lips
of your pussy, right up against your tender little clit. Are you
touching yourself, Mel?”

“
No, sir.”

“
Do it. Finger yourself,
right now.”

“
Yes, sir,” I rasp as I let
my weight fall back on the bed. It’s enough to make me lose my
mind, the sound of quiet, stoic Quinn turning hard and commanding
and hungry. My feet come up off the rug to balance on the edge of
the bed as I bend my knees and spread them wide. Not even bothering
to unbutton my shorts, I tug the denim to one side and quickly sink
two fingers as far up my aching slit as I can. My thumb plays fast
and rough over my clit.

“
How many fingers are you
using, Mel?”

“
Two,” I mewl, already
pumping my hips up and grinding my mons against my palm.

“
Three,” he orders, and I
obey and groan at the stretching sensation. “Good girl. Push them
deep, like it’s my long cock forcing its way up that warm, tight
hole. Show me you can take every inch. I want to hear you strain
for it.”

“
I am,” I whine, “but it’s
not enough. I want you, sir, you and Zach.”

“
Put the phone handset on
speaker.”

For a second, I worry that my mother
will overhear, but I remember she’s in the living room at the other
end of the house watching her favorite television show and probably
dozing off in the middle of it after her weekend shift cooking at
one of the restaurants in town. I thumb the speaker button and lay
the handset next to my head.

“
Okay, I’m on
speaker.”

“
Good. Use your other hand
to pinch your clit, Melanie. Pinch it hard.” I bite my lip to keep
from squealing too loudly when I do as he commands. “That’s my
girl. Now pull your fingers out and slap your pussy.” He hears the
hesitation, I guess, the lack of sound. “Don’t ever make me repeat
a command. Now.”

I slap my pussy lightly, but it’s
enough to make me tense, arch my back, enough that Quinn can
hear.

“
Again, harder.” He makes
me do it over and over, until my pussy stings with heat and I
realize I actually like it. “Are you ready to come?”

“
Yes!”

“
You may not.”

I think my heart misses a beat, and I
swallow the breath lodged halfway up my throat. “Please, sir,” I
keen.

“
No, you may not,” he says
again, quietly but firmly. “Now go shave yourself. We’ll see you
tomorrow.”

“
Sir?” I ask, clearly
begging.

“
Goodnight,
Melanie.”

***

My night is one long, vivid, erotic
dream after another. Quinn making me crawl and display myself for
him on the rough, wet pavement beside the pool at the graduation
party in front of all our classmates. Zach bending me over the
teacher’s desk in one of the classrooms at our old high school and
smacking my bare ass hard with a wooden ruler. Me dressed as a
geisha in a sleek private club, tucked away in the shadows on a bed
of pillows, Quinn and Zach on either side of me in their military
uniforms with their hands under my kimono prodding and pinching and
stroking me.

Getting out of bed, I feel like I
haven’t had an hour of sleep, like I’ve been out running all night.
It’s supposed to be another hot summer day, but it starts out with
a slight chill in the air. I’ve got horses to take care of while
Mom is headed back to do the breakfast and lunch shifts at one of
the restaurants popular with locals and with travelers passing
through on their way to the dam or up to the lake for fishing or
beyond that to one of the national parks in the area.

I’m not a morning person anyway, so
I’m in no mood when I march out the creaky back door to see a shiny
red pickup truck parked near one of the fences for our far pasture.
From the distance, I can just barely make out the blurry forms of
the two men crouched near one of the fence posts and the three dogs
chasing our smallest colt.

“
Too far, Peterson,” I
grate through clenched teeth as I storm into the barn. “Too fucking
far.” From a hook on the wall above a work counter, I grab the keys
to the chest tucked back into a corner. It’s where my dad kept his
guns when my mother said she wouldn’t have then in the house.
There’s enough common sense in me, I guess, that even in my fit of
temper I grab the shotgun loaded with birdshot instead of the
pistol.

My daddy had me out here shooting
targets pinned to hay bales before I was three feet tall—with a bb
gun, but still—so it’s no trick for me to stomp out the back door
of the barn into the green pasture, brace the shotgun, and graze
the hind-end of the biggest dog with a spray of the small pellets.
The men’s heads jerk up from their sabotage of my fence post when
the gangly black canine shrieks and streaks off back through the
fence toward Peterson’s massive log mansion hulking in the distance
like one of those ugly mega-churches they have all over the valley
floor. The other two dogs peel off, and it doesn’t take long for
the men to pile into the truck and tear away, tires kicking up
clumps of soft, grassy pasture dirt.

I stand my ground as I watch them
flee. It’s not as satisfying a feeling as I hoped. Maybe I’m too
tired, too frustrated. At having to be so watchful all the time. At
always struggling. At the thought of Quinn and Zach haunting the
back of my mind all day again today. At the questions hanging in
the air. At the need between my legs that hasn’t subsided since
yesterday.

It shouldn’t be a surprise when I hear
tires on the gravel drive soon afterward, followed by the hard slam
of two heavy truck doors. I’m out by the hay shed behind the barn.
It’s only enclosed by a wall on one side, the opposite side being a
swing-out gate in case I need to pull a truck up to load a few
bales, and the other two being low half-walls of pointed stakes
like picket fences.

I don’t go meet my visitors
or even turn to check who it is. Maybe I’m wrong, but I just
feel
it’s Quinn and Zach.
For a second I think I might be sick, from a mixture of excitement
at the thought of seeing them and dread at what they’re going to
say after I fired off a shot despite their warnings. I press my
hand over my tensed stomach under my knotted t-shirt, willing my
nerves to settle. My breath catches and my pussy creams when I
finally glance over my shoulder to see the men coming toward me out
the rear barn door.

They both look pissed off, especially
Zach, whose disheveled clothes—half-buttoned shirt under a denim
jacket—makes me think they called him out of bed for this. The
slightly mussed hair and squinty eyes suggest he had a late night
at one of the local bars. I’d estimate it’s not even seven in the
morning yet, so I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate me making their
on-call weekend their busiest so far this summer. Worst part is
that seeing them angry is kind of a turn-on, nerve-wracking but
thrilling.

Zach gets right up in my face, and
Quinn doesn’t move to stop him. “What did we tell you about letting
us handle this, trouble?” Zach demands.

Instead of blowing up with temper, I
fold my arms and pout. “Their dogs were harassing my colt. How do
you expect me to react?”

Quinn circles around me, a frown on
that handsome tanned face in the shadow cast by the brim of his
hat. “Maybe we didn’t make ourselves clear yesterday. You let us
deal with Peterson.”

I hang my head, just a little. I
wasn’t prepared for the tone of disappointment in Quinn’s voice.
“Yeah, I know. You’re the deputies, not me.”