Ride 'Em (A Giddyup Novel) (11 page)

After another few seconds he moved his thumb, drawing a slow, steady circle on her clit. Her face squeezed in, her brows drew together. . . then she exhaled slowly, shakily, forcing her shoulder down as the air left her. Processing the pain, figuring it out, reaching for the pleasure.

Her next sound was another soft cry, a rising note, almost like music. Really, almost like . . .

Ariel
.
Oh, fuck a duck
. He bit his lip to keep from laughing. But after a second it was hotter than it was funny.

When he took his hands away, she stared after them avidly. Longingly. But aside from that, she didn’t move a muscle.

A bloom of pink spread where he’d pinched her. It was nearly the same shade as her pussy lips. Nearly the same shade, when he looked up, as her mouth—which was starting to curve into a soft, dreamy smile.

Detached. Businesslike. Functional. Practical.
Bullshit
. Logan leaned in and kissed her.

* * *

Mindy tried to breathe, tried to sort through the sensations. The pain was sharper than she’d expected this soon, but sweeter, too. She’d been ready for a flogging, maybe a riding crop. All the touching was a pleasant shock. Hands were so personal.

Mouths, in a way, were even more so. They’d kissed before, but this felt new. Logan was turned on, she could see his erection in the loose pajama pants, but he kissed her like there was all the time in the world. Like it wasn’t a question of overwhelming passion, but
intention.
Why that should be so hot, she had no idea, but it made her even wetter.

Being naked, even partially naked, felt almost
too
good. It had taken all her common sense and willpower not to yank the robe off earlier when he’d suggested it. Now it was a huge, unwieldy presence around her, hindering her from the exposure she craved. Common sense was leaving her. If he ordered the robe off now, she’d shed it in a heartbeat. In another few minutes, she suspected, he could order her to walk naked through the barnyard and she’d do it, thunderstorm and guests be damned.

She fisted the folds of the plush robe, working to stay still as he plundered her mouth. He’d told her not to move, and she was good at following orders.
So
good at it.

He drew back, nibbling at her lips, and she didn’t even have to fight the urge to chase him down for another deeper kiss because she knew what her job was here. Not to move.

Her brain made room for that one idea, holding it, pushing everything else back. That single directive shone steady and bright, in a wide-open space ready for more orders to fill it. She’d been resisting this for days—in the barn, around the ranch, in the toolshed. Now the cumulative effect of all that forbearance came into play, hard. A little bit of pain, a little bit of privacy, the knowledge that tonight, nothing was stopping them . . . these were enough to undo her now.

Logan released her lips slowly. A puff of shared air, hot and sweet and redolent of brisket, washed her face. Then he raised a finger to her forehead and ran it down her nose, tracing her lips, pushing slightly inside her mouth. She flicked her tongue over his fingertip, tasting herself on him before he pulled the digit away and continued on his path over her chin and down to her throat.

He slid his hand around her neck and held it there, heavy and warm. Not constricting her throat, just laying claim. His face was thoughtful and stern and beautiful and angelic and she realized she was already falling into subspace a second before he spoke.

“Time to go upstairs.”

“Mm-hmm.”

His gaze shifted to her face and he smirked in a way only sadists knew. “You’re already starting to fly, aren’t you?”

She couldn’t shrug—he’d told her not to move—so she smiled back. Because he really was the dreamiest thing. “Mmm. Sir.”

“Oh, God. This is gonna be good.” He stood, shoving the rolling chair back, and put his hands out. A clear enough directive. She took them and let him pull her up from the couch. He let her go once she was standing, and nodded down at her chest before heading toward the hall. “Tie that back up. You weren’t wrong about the privacy concerns.”

After a second of confusion, she realized he meant the robe. She fumbled for the loose ends of the sash, tugged the lapels tighter, and belted it back into place as she followed him out of the office. He stopped for a few seconds at the front door, looking out the window. There was still a lot of rain, some thunder and lightning, but nothing like an hour earlier.

He didn’t comment on the weather. He turned and headed up the stairs, and Mindy floated after him.

Logan’s bedroom was at one end of the long upstairs hallway, and under different circumstances Mindy might have stopped to look around and appreciate the restoration work once he’d flicked on the bedside lamp. Tonight all she cared about was the enormous brass bed, the blinds that looked adequate to block anybody’s view, and the black duffel bag Logan pulled out of his closet.

He spared her a quick look while he was unzipping it. “Strip.”

“Oh. Yes, sir.” She dropped the robe and relaxed into the warm, humid air of the room. Naked was so good. Naked was almost always better.

“Here’s what I have.” Logan pulled things out of his toy bag, lining some of them up on the long, dark wood dresser, putting others back into the duffel. The winning objects included a lovely, heavy, well-conditioned flogger, a crop, two sets of leather cuffs with buckles, what looked like a collapsible spreader bar, a box of condoms, and a large bottle of lube. A few carabiners and some safety clips, and a pair of short horse leads that looked like they had been liberated from the tack room.

Certainly more than enough to be going on with.

She was losing a bit of her buzz, but she didn’t mind. “I love looking in people’s toy bags.”

“I don’t have much in here right now. So much stuff in storage. All my clamps and dildos, almost all of my whips and canes, my knives. A ton of rope. A big vibe.” Logan pulled out a long, slender, transparent Lucite shaft, swishing it through the air into his palm in a practice stroke before laying it next to the other equipment. “It’s actually a venetian blind rod. It might break, I don’t know. But I wanted to try it out. It’s new to me so if I use it, I’ll go slow.”

“M’kay.” Canes were evil, but she could easily reach a point where she didn’t mind the evil.

He shot her a look. “I’ve lost my ‘sir.’ We need to fix that.”

She had been fine until he pointed it out. Suddenly there she was, naked and self-conscious in his bedroom, looking at the stuff he planned to beat her with, and the sheer insanity of it bubbled up as fast as a shaken soda bottle. He knew her parents. He’d been her math tutor. His kinky cousin the sheriff wanted to run her out of town. How could this be her life?

“Sorry. Sir. I don’t know . . .” What to do with her
hands
. Where to
look
. What to
say
. What to
think
. She twisted her fingers together in front of her and eyed the robe on the floor. She could grab it, be out of here in an instant.

Logan stepped toward her and put his hands on her shoulder, pressing down, smoothing her knotted muscles. “Hey, now. Whoa. Easy. I didn’t mean to bring you back up and strand you. C’mere.”

She obeyed the pressure of his fingers, leaning into his chest, letting him enfold her and tip her chin up. His kiss was a fixed point of certainty, a port in a storm. And when he took her bottom lip between his teeth and bit down until she moaned, she felt as much relief as pain.

Her tongue was next, captured and tortured and released after a dazzling moment of too-sharp, sickening pain that made her squeal and pant. She didn’t
like
having her tongue bitten, but it was effective. Like a jump-start for her stalled endorphins.

One of Logan’s big, soothing hands found its gentle way to her breast, the one with the bite mark on it. He pinched the flesh there and kissed her sweetly and, when she whimpered, stroked his other hand down to her butt to press her closer. His erection was hard, pushy, pressing into her lower belly like a demand. She wanted him, almost more than she wanted the scene. But the scene was what they both needed.

He lifted her onto her toes, pushing a knee between her legs the way he had in the toolshed, and her urge to flee evaporated in a rush of renewed desire.

“Now, this is good,” he murmured in her ear as he coaxed her into a familiar rhythm against his thigh. “This is how I would’ve liked you yesterday. Naked, and leaving a wet mess all over my pants when you rub off.”

He gripped her ass, squeezing each time she thrust, digging his fingers deeper into the bruise he’d left by pinching her the day before. How did he know exactly where it was without even looking? Magic? Pain radiated from his touch, then heat, pure and vital.

She shifted her angle, bringing her clit more firmly against his warm, flannel-covered thigh. A mindless tempo, a simple goal. A weight lifted from her shoulders, her thoughts and body started to soar—

And Logan hoisted her back a step by her armpits, smirking again. “Better. Much better. Now we can get to the good stuff.”

I
t was always harder with somebody new. Feeling out boundaries, learning soft limits. Mindy had been there many times.

All the things that couldn’t be stated. The things you only knew about yourself when somebody else discovered them—those elements were absent with a new partner. You only had what you’d told each other, and what you could pick up on the fly. And that was often fun, but sometimes it meant there wasn’t any flow.

She needed the flow to get into subspace. She needed subspace to take more pain. She needed more pain—more
handling
—to get the most out of the scene. She hadn’t expected any of that with Logan tonight. They’d basically just been flirting up to this point. From Mindy’s perspective, this was really the first time. She’d counted on that detachment, that mild dissatisfaction. Counted on things not going perfectly. Because that would be easier to walk away from.

And yet . . . she knew Logan. They came from the same place, and had taken the same things away from it. And now they were both back here, for whatever reasons, feeling like they had unfinished business. When he directed her to stand by the bed, to hold out her hands for the cuffs, the choreography was as smooth as if they’d done this dance a thousand times.

He buckled the cuffs, checking carefully to make sure they weren’t too tight, then clipped them together around one curved railing detail of the metal footboard—which wasn’t brass, as Mindy had originally thought, but heavy wrought iron. When she tugged, it didn’t budge at all. She knew the cuffs were fastened to the railing with safety clips that she could unhook at any time if she liked. But the illusion of being bound was so strong she struggled for a moment by instinct. Logan pressed on her shoulders again, making low noises in his throat as if he were gentling a fractious horse. Once she’d calmed, his hands drifted lower, exploring. Like magic, he left tingling awareness everywhere he touched, forging a path of shivering anticipation from her waist to her knees.

“Let’s see . . . you still have a nice stripe here from the switch . . .” He raked a nail across her lower back from left to right, stinging the tender skin. “Close to the kidneys, I need to watch that. Sorry. And then
this
bruise.” His thumb dug into the pinch mark, and Mindy winced at the deep, aching jab. Then he scratched over her butt with both hands, all the way down to her upper thighs. “And
two
pretty welts down here. Wow, I’d like to get you on a horse now and watch you trot all over this ranch. Or maybe I’ll wait and do that after I’ve added a bit more.”

He slapped each upper thigh, each cheek, a quick back-and-forth. Startling, not painful. Mindy giggled nervously, tried to cover her mouth with her hands, was hindered by the cuffs. The panic had left her, though. The restraint felt good. Necessary. She was anchored by the bed frame. Held together by the cuffs.

Logan moved behind her, selecting something from the array on the dresser. She expected a blow next, and was startled by the gentle, thick
flump
of leather flogger falls over her shoulder. She buried her nose in the leather for a second, overwhelmed by the smell as always.

“You like that?” Logan pressed up behind her, gathering her hair in one hand and tugging lightly.

“Mm-hmm. Smells good, sir.” It smelled intoxicating. Probably because she was conditioned to know what it could do for her. But the reason didn’t matter. The leather was butter-smooth and thick, possibly elk, beautifully worked. It looked and felt expensive.

Logan pulled her head back by his makeshift handle, stealing a quick kiss. “Next time you need to wear a ponytail or something.” He smoothed the twisted hair to the front of her shoulder.

She nodded, not thinking about the “next time” until he’d already released her and backed away with the flogger. The first slap of the falls against her butt drove all thought out of her mind.

It was a good warm-up—mostly thud, a hint of sting, enough to set her skin humming and clear her head completely. Logan knew what he was doing, starting with a light rain of blows to her butt and shoulders, then working his way up and down as he increased the intensity. Hard, harder ... then almost too hard, and both of them grunted at each blow, until he released a wallop against her upper thighs that made her yelp and flinch away.

“Two more like that,” he said quietly. “Grab the bedpost. Stand still.”

Breathing through the pain, Mindy fumbled her wrists around in the cuffs, wrapped her hands around the cold iron, and concentrated on holding still.

The next strike caught one of her upper thighs in a smacking burn, like being punched with a beehive.
Too much, too much
. But
too much
was her catnip. She dove into the pain, let it take her over, felt the rush and the pulse between her legs as it quickened along with her heartbeat.

Whack!
On the other leg. The last one almost knocked her over, and she and Logan groaned in tandem with effort and effect. She could hear it in his voice, that it was good for him, too, and that filtered into the overall mix of how good it was for her.

Then he was behind her again, leaning in, his cock pressing against her butt, one arm circling her waist to support her. He kissed the top of her shoulder, the muscle leading from her neck to her arm, slowly working his way up to the tender spot behind her ear. His free hand roamed, first fondling one breast, then slipping down her belly to tease and tug at her pubic hair.

“Good warm-up,” he muttered into her skin; his breath heated the whole side of her body from that sensitive point. “You make some really good noises.” To prove how good, he ground against her, a slow press and release, press and release, just as he slid his fingers down to her clit.

Her body melted into unfettered lust, centered around the tip of Logan’s finger. He stroked a small, steady circle there, and between his fingers, the lingering pain from the flogging, and the shiver-inducing attention to the secret-weapon spot on her neck, Mindy was close to orgasm within seconds. So close. She needed it.

“Yesssss,” she whispered. Her hips moved despite her strict orders to them to stay still.

“Tell me when you’re almost there.” Logan increased his pressure a fraction, bit lightly on her neck.

“Oh God ...” And then she remembered.
Brinking
. Fuck. “I’m gonna come.”

He pulled his hand away. “Nope.”

“
Fuck
.”

“It must suck to be you right now.”

It did. It did suck to be her. The only consolation was knowing that eventually she
would
come, and it would be great, but that did nothing to satisfy the screaming id-monster in her brain that wanted to come
now now now
.

“That was a close one,” Logan said, way too cheerily. God, was there anything worse than a cheerful sadist? “I was gonna put you on the bed, but I don’t think we’re there yet and that won’t help either of us hold out. So I hope you’re good to stand up a while longer.”

“I’m good, sir.” She hoped her voice didn’t betray her uncertainty. It felt like they’d been there forever, but it was probably more like ten minutes. She been in sessions at the club that lasted hours. It was the up-and-down that was fucking with her stamina. The pauses and tenderness and kissing. And the knowledge, always threatening to pull her back from subspace, that the better things went with Logan, the more she was setting herself up for an emotional fall. She trusted Logan not to hurt her, trusted him completely. But she no longer trusted herself.

He chose the riding crop next. A
pop
here, a
pop
there. A rain of feathery, stinging taps against the flogger-reddened flesh of her thighs. Then he unclipped the cuffs, turned her back to the bed, resecured her with her hands behind her back . . . and started on her front side. A clean canvas, mostly.

After the first few whipping smacks to her legs, he made a time-out sign and rummaged through his bag again, finally coming up with a plain black mask. He chatted as he tucked her hair behind her ears and slipped the mask into place over her eyes, adjusting it carefully so it sat comfortably. “I have a really nice one in storage. Fitted, blocks out
all
the light. But this will work well enough so you can’t see where the next one’s coming from.”

More catnip. With her eyes covered, she let herself relax further into the scene. Into helplessness. Letting in the pain, becoming a sponge to absorb whatever Logan needed to pour into her. At first she waited, listening. He was doing something else by the dresser, and she heard some metallic
click
s. Then he returned, running a hand down her leg to her ankle and fastening a cuff there. Another metallic
clank
and scrape; something was attached to it. She figured out it was the spreader bar as he was securing the other ankle and nudging her stance wider.

“More,” he snapped, when she didn’t move her foot far enough. “I need a good two feet of clearance here.” Then she felt him clipping the cuffs to the bar. She used the bedpost for support, tested the new restraint. It was solid, holding her legs wide, making her more vulnerable.

Good
. So good.

More crop strikes fell, lighting up her inner thighs. A sequence of quick, shockingly painful taps to her clit and pussy. Light, playful smacks on her belly—not enough to hurt, only enough to let her know where he was headed. He would back off every so often, though, then sneak back in with something unexpected. A hard strike to the leg or hip. A tickle at the arch of her foot, nearly making her fall over as she squirmed to get away from the sensation.

“Oooh, yellow, yellow!”

“Seriously?”

“No tickling, I don’t like tickling.” Her whole body crawled, as if her skin was trying to escape the abhorrent sensation. “It’s not hot. Please tell me you aren’t into it.”

Logan laughed, somewhere in the vicinity of her knee. She could feel the puff of air, then the brush of his lips against her quad muscle. He reached down to her foot and pressed firmly where he’d tickled, rubbing the spot for a few seconds until she relaxed.

“I’m not into it,” he reassured her as he let go. “Good to know if there’s ever a time for punishment, maybe.”

Whomp,
straight to the emotions. “This is a one-off, remember?”

He sucked air in sharply. “Uh, yeah. Right. Okay, where were we? Oh well, since I’m down here, I’ve been meaning to do this . . .”

He licked her inner thigh, flicking his tongue upward to the spot where he’d pinched her earlier. In his office, a lifetime ago. Pinching wasn’t enough, apparently. He suckled at the sore flesh, worrying it with his tongue. Then he rested his teeth there, making his intention clear, letting her anticipation build, before he started to bite down.

The pain deepened until a buzz shot up her spine, exploding brilliantly in her skull. The world’s edges faded; behind the mask, she saw stars. When he finally eased up, he moved his mouth only inches, humming a pleased note as he settled his lips over her clit and flattened his tongue against it. Worked it until she started to moan. Then he pressed a few soft kisses there and vanished again, leaving her in the dark with her pain and need.

She cried out—she was hoarse, she must have been making noise during the session and not been aware of it—and he stroked her flank. Soothing, gentling . . . then flicking one of her nipples with the tip of the crop. Then the other. Back and forth at random, sometimes the nipple, sometimes the sensitive flesh above or below. Avoiding the existing bite mark, so she knew he was building up to that.

When he finally whacked her there, it was hard and sharp and perfect and she swayed against her cuffs, almost falling over. He waited for her to recover, then smacked the same spot again. She jerked, and started to shake, but stayed on her feet.

He pulled the third blow, it was barely a hit at all. Or possibly that was just her spaced-out brain, turning the pain into something else. Funneling it into the great vortex of need that swamped her when Logan stepped close to her again and cupped her face between his hands.

“Nice,” he whispered, then kissed her slowly. Sweetly. If they’d dated in high school, he couldn’t have kissed her any more sweetly than this after a perfect first date.

That could have happened. He could have come back from college, they could have seen each other in Minnie’s and shared a look and a slice of pie and just
known
. They could have dated long-distance during college, then gotten married and had a house somewhere and babies. She could have gone to Houston. They could have been starting this crazy dude ranch enterprise together. All that could so easily be her life right now. Their life.

Would he still be kissing her like this, if that had happened? Would she still be cuffed to the bed? Or would the kink have fallen by the wayside with the onslaught of kids and mortgages and adult-ing? Would they have this same spark? Mindy told herself she was glad they hadn’t been high school sweethearts, because there was no way they would have this heat, this crazy energy together, if they’d worn it out on housework and talking about whose health insurance was better. But a flicker from deeper inside her told her another truth: If she had been his all along, Logan would still kiss her like this every damn day.

But that wasn’t their history. Now she would always be the one who’d tried to hoodwink him into a land deal. She would always have guilt about that . . . wouldn’t she? And he could only take so much of that back out of her hide.

She kissed him back, sighing softly into his gentle mouth, and when he pressed his teeth into her bottom lip again she started to cry. The mask hid the tears, but she couldn’t keep the sniffling a secret. Logan pulled the mask away, tossing it to one side, and brushed his thumbs over her cheeks, obvious concern in his face.