by Desiree Holt
“I can be what you need,” she assured him. “I want to. Please, Master.”
The little vibrator in her ass was doing its job, the pulsations rippling through her.
“Remember the rules,” he reminded her. “No orgasm until I give you permission.” He grinned. “Let’s up the game a little, shall we?”
He opened the drawer and took out another dildo, this one a little smaller. Opening the flushed lips surrounding her opening, he slid it into her waiting channel, giving the end a little twist to set it on low vibrate like the other one.
Zoe’s eyes widened, and her teeth bit into her lower lip. This would be a test of her control, but he knew she would use every effort to maintain it. She had no intention of disappointing him. She had told him as much.
Next, he took the small bottle of scented oil from the table, poured some into the palm of his hand, and began to massage it into her body. He had learned over the years that preparing his subs for punishment this way often prevented hard bruising or marking on the body. A side benefit was the opportunity it gave him to run his hands over every inch of his sub’s body, Zoe’s body, kneading her breasts, sliding his fingers through the slick flesh of her pussy, lightly raking his fingernails down to send a faint shiver racing over her skin.
He applied the oil slowly over every inch of her body, his body reacting to the contact so strongly even his slacks and boxer briefs had become too restrictive. He divested himself of the slacks but kept the briefs on, determined to have some control over his wayward dick until he was ready for it.
Lifting the little whip from the table, he ran the very thin strip of leather across Zoe’s thighs and belly. By the time he was finished, she would be covered with an intricate pattern of red stripes and they’d both be ready to explode.
He studied her body, admiring how well she kept herself in shape. Wetting his lips, he stared at the totally bare flesh around her cunt then lifted his gaze to her face. Unexpected heat flashed in those hazel eyes, the flecks of green darkening to emerald. Rich, full lips glistened as she ran her tongue over them, and her breasts with those rose-colored nipples lifted and fell with her accelerated breathing. Her pussy begged for his mouth or his cock. He nearly came just from looking at her.
Fuck! What was she doing to him? He took a step back, closed his eyes again, and drew in a deep breath. She was the last female he’d expected to indoctrinate into his lifestyle, expecting her to run like a scared chicken, screaming at the top of her lungs. He had counted on the fact that while she might have gotten older, she was still little Zoe the pest. Only that wasn’t the case at all. Not even close.
Get with it, Cameron.
Fiddling with the tuner, he found some hard-edged rock music. The thumping of the bass pumped through his already heated blood in time with the thudding of his heart. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so completely aroused.
He walked back to the cross with Zoe so temptingly displayed, her body shimmying from the effect of the dual vibrators. Expertly, he cracked the short whip in the air, once, twice, then moved closer.
“Thirty strokes,” he told her. “You can take it.”
She let out a little sigh. “Yes, Master. As you wish.”
Jesus! Just hearing her utter those words made his balls ache and his cock threaten to self-destruct. He applied the whip in measured strokes, beginning at her breasts and working his way down her body.
Slap! Crack! Smack!
The kiss of the leather on her flesh resounded in the room, the strokes applied to the rhythmic crash of the music, the screeching of a guitar providing a counterpoint to it. Wade forced himself to count. He’d told her thirty, and he was always a man of his word. But watching the blossoming of red lines and the spreading of the dark flush along her skin made his cock throb and his balls ache. Zoe’s nipples had beaded into harder points. Juices seeped from her pussy, shimmering in the spotlight focused on her.
When the count reached the thirty mark, the need for release raged through him like an out of control fire. Tossing the whip aside, he stripped off his boxer briefs, grabbed a condom from the table, and rolled it on as quickly as he could. He couldn’t believe his hands were actually shaking.
Carefully, he eased the dildo from Zoe’s pussy, but he left the one in her ass. Straddling the cross, he spread her lips and slowly eased his engorged shaft into her more than ready channel.
“Look at me, sub,” he commanded.
She lifted her gaze to his, the rampant hunger in them arousing him even more.
He moved his hips, slowly at first then faster as her cream slicked his way and the pounding beat of the music accelerated. Harder. Faster. He drove into her fully, over and over. He was a disciplined Dom who liked to prolong bringing both he and his sub to climax, drawing it out until the agony was so exquisite it caused him pleasurable pain. But this time, his body demanded satisfaction. Waiting wasn’t an option.
Sliding his hands beneath her hips to cushion them, he increased the tempo of his strokes until he finally reached the end of his control.
“Now,” he ground out between gritted teeth. “Fucking damn, come right now.”
As if waiting only for his urging, Zoe exploded beneath him, her walls contracting around him and dragging on his cock. He thought for sure his balls would burst as he poured himself into the thin latex sheath, the orgasm enhanced by the constant tremors of the vibrator in her rectum.
The explosion rocked them both. Beneath him, against the hard wood of the Cross, Zoe’s body shook as shudders raced through her. She bucked beneath him as much as her restrained position permitted, her cries of satisfaction mingling with the music that filled the sex-infused air of the room.
Wade had no idea how long he lay on top of her after the last spurt of come surged from his body. It took him longer than usual to regain his breath and ultimately his control. At last, he forced himself to his feet and slowly unfastened each of the cuffs holding Zoe to the St. Andrew’s Cross. He slid the dildo from her ass, turned it off, and put it on the table for cleaning. Lifting her from the frame, he carried her to the padded table against one wall and began his usual aftercare process.
Cleansing with a soft cloth. Massaging with a scented cream, every part of her body, including her rectum and her pussy. Applying a healing salve to each of the marks on her body front and back.
“I think I could curl up here and sleep for hours.” Zoe’s voice had a satisfied softness to it.
“Not here.” He stroked her cheek with the tips of his fingers. “Let me help you dress, and I’ll take you home.”
Home. Now he was thinking of the fucking ranch as home? It was increasingly clear to him that he needed to get his brain straightened out and get the hell out of Sagebrush.
Wade woke with a start, his body covered with sweat, heart pounding. His cock was so swollen and rigid it tented the sheet covering him.
Fuck and damn!
He sat up and swung his kegs over the side of the bed. This was driving him nuts. Now he was having dreams about Zoe? With her as his sub?
No, no, no. That can’t happen.
But it did, and he needed to fix it. Fix his brain. No way was he opening the door of his life as a Dom to Zoe Hampton, because he knew for fucking sure he’d never get her out. Of all the women he’d met in his life, she was the only one who had the ability to unlock his buried emotions. He could see her as a permanent part of her life, and, despite the vaguely unsettled feeling that had begun to plague him, that would only hurt both of them, but especially Zoe. No matter how great it might be in the beginning, it would never last. Max Cameron had destroyed his ability to have a permanent relationship with anyone. And he would not put her through that.
Tomorrow, he’d call John Morrison again. The financial records told him a devastating story. All he had to do was wait it out, let the bank call the note, and have a buyer step in. Logic told him he could always sign over his half to Zoe, but then she might feel grateful to
him, beholden even. And for his own sanity he had to cut these ties cleanly. He’d leave it in John’s hands and haul his ass back to New York before he got into emotional waters over his head.
But right now, he was going to take the coldest shower of his life.
Chapter Three
“John, this is absolutely ridiculous.” Zoe paced back and forth in the kitchen of the house where she’d grown up, cell phone glued to her ear. “He has no grounds to contest the will except his own miserable meanness.”
“Calm down, Zoe.”
She wondered if John’s voice ever lost its tone of reasonableness. How did he do it? She could hardly contain her own turmoil. “I don’t want to calm down. I want to get on with the business of Big Spur.” She paused. “I met with the bank, you know.”
“Yes, I got a call from them.”
She twisted a lock of hair in her fingers, a nervous habit left over from her childhood. “How did the finances get so bad? According to the records on my father’s computer, they’ve had three very good years in a row.”
“We’ve talked about this, Zoe,” he reminded her. “The disaster with the herd four years ago, not to mention what happened with that overly expensive bull. Again, I want you to know I cautioned him against borrowing too heavily to invest in new stock. You couldn’t count on beef prices rising enough and they didn’t. That’s why there’s still money owed on the loan.”
“No kidding.” She heard the bitterness in her voice. “Wade says that’s reason enough to sell what he keeps calling ‘the damn place’ and get rid of the burden.”
“You know he also thinks that’s a lever to break the will,” John told her.
“What?” She swallowed her temper. It wasn’t John she was angry with. “How does he figure that?”
“Don’t get out a gun and shoot anyone,” he said. “Least of all me. But his theory is that Max obviously wasn’t in his right mind to put a thriving operation in debt. Therefore, he wasn’t fully alert when he wrote the will.”
“Damn it.” She stamped her foot, even though there was no one there to see it. “That’s a crock of shit, John, and you know it.”
He chuckled. “Especially since the will was made long before that. I did tell you that, right?”
Zoe frowned. “I’m sure you did, but I was so stunned not all the details registered. But now I’m remembering something about ten years ago. Is that right or did I imagine it?”
“No, you’re right. That’s when he did it.”
She picked up her glass of water from the counter and took a calming sip. “Did my dad know about it?”
“No. Max didn’t want anyone to know.” There was a short pause. “I asked him why he did it, but he never gave me an answer. Still, I had to tell Wade there wasn’t a thing wrong with his daddy’s mind when he did it.”
“So now what?” she asked. “I am absolutely not going to sell this place. He can’t force me to.” She paused. “Can he?”
John laughed again. “No, Zoe, he can’t. And as the executor of the estate I can’t approve anything that diminishes the value of it, much to Wade’s disgust.”
“So now what?”
“Have you tried talking to him again?”
“Are you kidding? I’d rather kiss a rattlesnake.”
“Well, I’m here if you need me,” he assured her. “Be sure to stay in touch.”
Yeah. In touch. Zoe disconnected the call and shoved the phone in the pocket of her jeans.
Before talking to John, she had finished another frustrating conversation with Clint Manning at Cattleman’s Bank, trying once again to restructure the loan. Apparently, however, since she wasn’t Max Cameron, he had no interest in talking to her. She should have remembered that about this small town.
Next, she placed a call to Mickey Sandoval, explaining her situation.
“Why don’t you send me the accounts and the paper work,” he suggested. “Let me take a look at it and see if I can work some magic from this end. But first answer a question for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Let’s say we can get immediate relief, which I don’t think is a problem. What are your long term goals for Big Spur?”
Zoe thought about it for a long moment. “If possible, I’d really like to hang onto the ranch. Somehow get Wade out of the picture.”
“If that even turned out to be possible, could you handle owning a ranch and having a fulltime job? I don’t want to cut my own throat here.”
“There’s an excellent foreman here,” she told him. “And very good hands. I could work it out.”
She heard his sigh over the connection. “I guess if anyone could, it would be you. Okay, send me the stuff and I’ll take a look.”
She scanned some of the documents and emailed them along with the computer files. Others she faxed. Half an hour later, Mickey called her cell.
“Okay, I’ve got it all,” he told her. “I need time to look at everything.”
“But what do you think?” She was being impatient, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. The clock was ticking.
He laughed. “If you had clients this demanding, you’d tell me you were going to cut out their tongues. Give me a couple of days. I know you have a deadline, but I don’t want to get anything wrong.”
“I know, I know.” She sighed. “Thanks for even doing this.”
“Just get on the two clients I emailed you about, and we’ll be even.”
She spent the rest of the morning working on business for Mickey, soothing the clients and moving investments around for them.
After a quick sandwich for lunch, she decided to get out in the open and air out her head. She asked Will which horse she could take out for a while, which one wouldn’t be needed by the hands until tomorrow, and he brought out a pretty sorrel for her to saddle.
“Miss Daisy’s a lot feistier than her name,” he grinned. “She likes to kick up her heels when she gets a chance.”
“Me, too,” Zoe told him. “We’ll make a good pair.”
“We’ll be bringing in the calves pretty soon,” he let her know.
Every ranch did it differently, but at the Big Spur, they always let the calves winter over with their mamas, a practice that ensured good health all the way around. Weaning had already begun, and soon they’d be branding them. A lot of ranchers branded the calves when they were only weeks old, but Max and Jonas preferred to wait. The ranch was secure, the hands were always alert for thieves, and it always seemed, to her, they didn’t want to put the babies through it.
“I’ll be around for that,” she assured him and hoped she wasn’t lying.
The more time she spent out on a horse, the more she realized how important the ranch was to her and the more dedicated she became to saving it. Today, she rode across the two nearest pastures and through a copse of woods to a stream she always loved. Sliding from the saddle, she let Miss Daisy take a drink while she stood and looked around, inhaling the scented air and immersing herself in the environment of Big Spur.
How could anyone possibly give this up?
But what could she do about it?
Back at the barn, she finished wiping down the sorrel and was putting her in the stall when the sound of boots on concrete made her turn to see Wade striding toward her. Her nipples hardened, a fullness invaded her breasts, and the inner walls of her pussy quivered with need. Again, it bothered her that her body responded to him as if it had a will of its own. Which apparently it did. No matter how many times she told herself Wade Cameron had no interest in her, her hormones didn’t seem to get the message.
“I thought you should know I’ve got two buyers interested in Big Spur,” he said. “Enjoy your rides while you can because this place will be gone before long.”
The shocked look on Zoe’s face didn’t give Wade the pleasure he thought it would. Then, in a hot second, it was replaced by anger.
That’s what I want to see. Let her tell me to go to hell. I feel like I’m there a
lready.
She lifted a hand to slap him, and he caught her wrist, wrapping his fingers around it in a tight grip.
“Better rein in that temper, little girl. You might not like how I react to it.”
Or maybe I might fuck you. And that I’d like, damn it.
“Just like that?” she spat. “You haven’t found a way to break the will, and I have no intention of selling my half. How does that work for you?”
He shrugged, still gripping her wrist. “Doesn’t matter. I spoke to Clint Manning today. Less than four more weeks, missy, and the bank takes over. I already worked out a deal with him.”
Dismay flashed in her eyes. “What kind of deal?”
“I’m having the place appraised. He’s got buyers for just enough to cover the note and my share.”
Zoe was stunned. “But…but that’s wrong. Probably even crooked.”
Crooked? Not even a little. For a fleeting moment, he’d thought about just signing the Spur over to her, then discarded it. Somehow, it would still tether him to the ranch and to her. She’d be grateful. Want him to come back and see what was happening with it. Try to suck him into the destructive vortex.
He shook his head and released his hold on her. “What I’ll get is called the finder’s fee. I work deals like this all the time.”
She snorted. “I should have known whatever you did as a lawyer wouldn’t be on the up and up.”
“God damn it, Zoe.” He grabbed her again, that same tight hold. “You know nothing about me. I’m no crook. This is a perfectly legal arrangement.”
She glared at him. “Have you even taken time to get to know this place again? Learn about the operation? Your heritage?”
He made a rude noise. Learn about it? He knew more than he ever wanted to. “It’s only my heritage because Max chose to put my name on this as part owner. Haven’t you figured out yet I hate this place?”
