Nowhere Ranch

by Heidi Cullinan

  So close. It was so close in the cab of the truck. I could feel his breath on me. I could feel his hand on me. I felt the clinging vinyl under my ass, felt the rough brush of jeans against my thighs. His cologne was a fog around me now, and I could smell sex: sweat and precum and cock, my cock, stirred up by his hand. I knew this was just the opening act, knew I would face tomorrow sore and raw and spent, and I was ready. Ready for rough. Ready for the ride.

  I was not ready for his kiss.

  Not like he gave me. Not like that. I could have handled him grabbing my chin, forcing me open, and diving inside. Hell, he could have spit into my mouth, and I'd have shivered. But it wasn't that kind of kiss.

  He came in slow. Real slow, real fucking slow. He had his eyes on me the whole time. They were hard and strong, which was the only thing that kept me from turning away. Until the last second I thought he was going to do something kinky, like bite me or lick my lips. That would have been fine. But after he bent down, after hovering a few seconds, feeling my unsteady breath against his mouth, he just kissed me. Soft. Sweet. Achingly gentle. And then he did it again. And again. It made me feel jangly and strange. It made me ache. It made me hurt. It made me want to turn away, and I started to.

  That was when he opened his mouth over mine, sealed our lips together, and stole inside.

  Not forced. That would have been okay. He snuck in there. Teased his way in. When I started to fight him, he lured me back. When even that became too much, I tried to pull away again, but that was when he dragged me onto his lap.

  Then he got smart. He kept kissing me, kissing me deep and tender like a lover, but his hand molested me with a roughness that gentled me. Real quick I figured out that if I wanted dirty, I had to give him sweet. If I kissed him back, if I let my mouth fall open and my body go soft for him, and above all if I didn't flinch away from sweet, drugging kisses, eventually he would slide over and nip at my chin or pinch my nipple or let his hand slide back along my taint. He had me feeling so crazy, like any second I was going to blow up, nervous and excited and uneasy all at once.

  Eventually he stopped kissing me, and he spoke into my ear, whispering and nuzzling, all the while with his hand working me over below.

  “The thing is that, much as I want to fuck you, much as I want to tie you down and get out the crop and smack you until you're beet red all over your body—much as I know you want that too, that you'd be game for all of it—I can't shake the feeling that the more we do this, the more likely you are to leave Nowhere. That the more I take you to rodeos and out to dinner and invite you to use my kitchen, the more likely it is that pretty soon I'm going to be looking for another ranch hand who knows something about sheep.” He paused for a beat, his finger pressed against my opening. “You want to tell me I'm making this up?”

  Fifteen minutes ago, this discussion would have made me feel panicked and trapped, but all I could think about was how if I was good, I could get that damn finger. “I won't leave,” I vowed.

  The finger teased but didn't enter. “You lyin’ to me, boy?”

  “No, sir.” I shut my eyes and tried to press down on him. “Please.”

  He wasn't going to relent, though, not until he was sure. “I've got your number, cowboy. You just want a fuck. You want an escape. You want a job, and you want some sex on the side, maybe. You'd rather the job and the sex weren't in the same place. But they are in the same place, Roe. And I want to be your friend too. I'm not asking you to move in. But yeah, I expect you to take care of my cattle and sheep and occasionally have conversation with me as well as let me tie you up and fuck you blue. You man enough to deal with that, or are you going to run as soon as we finish tonight?”

  My head was spinning, and my body ached, it was so taut. But Jesus H, he had my balls to the wall. Man enough. He'd said that on purpose to get my goat. This was bullshit.

  But it was good bullshit. He had me dead to rights, which was why I answered him honest. “I don't know.”

  His hand at my shoulder gentled. “I say you are.”

  I shook my head, keeping my eyes shut. “You don't know me well enough to know that.”

  His chuckle surprised me and put me oddly at ease. “Oh, I do. Better than you can imagine. And I say you can cowboy up and do this, Roe.” I didn't answer, just stood there as he stroked the sweaty skin of my neck. When he bent down and nipped at my ear, I shivered, but when he spoke, I went still. “You're worried I want to make you my lover? Well, I don't want one, Roe. I don't want a partner. I don't want a husband. I want a boy. I want a little slut I can order what to do. I want you in boots and spurs and chaps and nothing else, sucking on my cock with a tail hanging out of your ass.” I shuddered, but when he bit the soft flesh of my lobe, I went slack. “I want you to work for me and cook for me and talk with me. And then I want to fuck you, Roe. I want to fuck you so good I ruin you for anybody else. I want to make you mine. Mine. I want to brand you like the cattle. Not because I'm in love with you. Because I want you, and because I don't want anyone else to have you.”

  I went through so many mental somersaults while he said all that to me I lost track of what I actually felt. Relief. Fear. Hope. Terror. Arousal. Disappointment. Joy. Suspicion. I didn't even have a clue as to what triggered what. I just felt it all in waves that came one on top of the other. I had no hope of speaking. I was sure he was going to make me say something—I was waiting for him to demand I say I wasn't going to run, and I was terrified of that, because I knew I couldn't. I couldn't say that. And then he'd be angry, and this would be over, and then I'd have no choice but to leave—

  —and the thought made my chest get so tight that I hunched forward against the pain.

  But he didn't say anything more. He just grabbed my chin and tipped my face toward his with a force that made me open my eyes and look at him.

  We were tangled on the seat, my jeans sagging down, my shirt rucked up and half-open, my chin in his hand. For a second all I could think of was that we looked like some clutch on one of those romances my mom bought at Walmart, except Walmart was never going to have two guys. And I never read any of those books, but I'm pretty sure the heroes never wooed the women by swearing they were just after them for sex and a sense of ownership.

  But I kind of felt like one of those women on the covers anyway, and not just because he was holding me like one, though that helped. Nobody had ever held me like this. Nobody had ever gripped me like Rhett Butler and demanded some kind of accounting out of me. A couple of guys had tried to ask about having a relationship, but it had been a hesitant asking, which had terrified me as much as the word “relationship.” This wasn't any asking. This was claiming.

  I wasn't sorry. And I wasn't feeling like a sissy. I was feeling like all that crazy sea inside me was settling into a calm. He had drawn it all out of the bottle I kept it in, but when I looked up at him like that, it settled, because if my wild insides were a sea, those gray eyes were the world's biggest fucking bowl, and they held me. Caught me and held me and bore me up.

  I let him. I eased back, lifted my open mouth to his, and I let him claim me, let him inside my mouth, relaxed my ass even before he pushed inside there too. I let him have me, and for the first time since I could remember, I made love to a man without thinking of how I was going to get out of it after or how I was going to give us some distance once we were through. I just let him have me, let him make me feel good.

  Which means I claimed his claiming, which, let me tell you, takes a fuck lot more of man.

  He took me not to the house but to the horse barn, to the stalls underneath my apartment.

  There were about fifteen stalls here but only three horses. The horses we hands used were all out to pasture next to the sheep. The other stalls were empty.

  He shut me in one.

  Travis took my hands and placed them on the grill beside the door, and he tied my hands to the bars with stout rope. He took care to wrap it around my wrists at my shirt cuffs so it didn't chafe, but he t
ied it tight. I wasn't getting out.

  Then he dropped my jeans to my ankles and gave my legs the same treatment, spreading them as wide as the denim would allow. After that he swatted my ass and left.

  He was gone a good twenty minutes. I stood there, blood humming, cock at half-mast. We were gonna fuck. I mean, we were gonna fuck. The roughness of the rope he'd used excited me. The cooler evening air against my bare ass reminded me how exposed I was and made me want to hump at the wall. He kept me waiting on purpose, I knew, but it didn't freak me out at all. It made me more eager. By the time he finally did come back, all I wanted to do was suck on various parts of his body to show him how fucking happy I was with this. But then I saw what he had hoisted over his shoulder.

  It was some sort of bench, but it was crudely made. Part wood, part metal, part cushion, it had been designed and fashioned to someone's particular details and not by an expert hand. To my mind it looked just right for leaning over while you got your ass reamed.

  Fuck, yeah.

  I craned my head around to watch as he set it up in the middle of the stall. He was setting up just beyond my line of sight, which I figured was on purpose. I could hear him clicking and banging on things, and I saw several flashes of rope, but I couldn't tell exactly what was going on. And then, with no warning at all, a knife was slashing the ropes holding me, and I tumbled backward into Travis's arms. I shook a little from surprise and anticipation, but he held me close a second and said, “You okay?”

  I nodded, then on horny impulse, turned my face to kiss him.

  But I stopped at the last second, realizing in this game I had to ask for that sort of thing. I let my eyes do the asking, though my lips did part a little in hope.

  Making a growling noise in the back of his throat, he bent down and caught my mouth in a hard kiss full of tongue. He took hold of my cock with his bare hand and jerked me a few times, making me moan into his mouth. His tongue slid deeper into my throat, and I let him in as deep as he wanted to go. But when he withdrew, I didn't chase him, just held still and waited until he told me what I was supposed to do next.

  I was going to be a very, very good boy.

  What he did next was bend me over that bench and tie me to the ropes he had rigged up on all the sides of the stall before lashing me to the bench too.

  He had clearly put a lot of thought and care into this arrangement, and some of it had been designed just for me. He'd dragged some sort of platform out from under the hay and put the bench on it, and before he tied me down, he made a few adjustments to the legs. He was tailoring it to my height, but he wasn't putting all his trust in it, either. That was what the tying me to the ropes was for. Mostly they were supporting me, but the bench was taking the stress off my lower back. I figured in a few minutes it was also going to be keeping my ass just where he wanted it, but right now mostly it was support and cosmetics.

  The ropes, though, were ones he'd brought from the house. They were nylon and designed specifically to be gentle on skin. You can tell the difference, and as one who is frequently acquainted with them, you appreciate the difference too. They kept me spread wide-open, trussed and helpless, but they didn't cut into my skin. I was all skin now, because as he'd removed the first rope, he'd removed my shirt too, and my jeans and my underwear.

  My boots he put back on. And he slapped a cowboy hat on my head. It was kind of a nice one, a chocolate brown felt, so dark it was almost black. All I had was a straw Stetson for working. It didn't rain much out here, but nothing fucked up a nice felt hat like a downpour. Felt was for show.

  Well, I was showin’ now.

  Travis didn't waste any time with words and got straight to the fucking. He kept his clothes on while he made an inspection of me, running his hands all over my naked body, though he was careful to avoid my asshole and my cock. He did pay some attention to my mouth, though, sliding his fingers inside. They tasted like rope and leather, and I sucked on them hard, running my tongue around them as they fucked me. I looked up at his face from beneath the brim of the hat and let him see how much I liked it, hoping he could see how much I wanted his cock in my mouth too. For a second I felt really proud of myself, because his eyes went dark, and he brought his crotch up close to my face. I nuzzled eagerly against the denim and looked up at his face as best I could. But all he did was pat my cheek and pull away, and then he was gone.

  He went around to the back of me and had a little party in my ass.

  First he rimmed me like I have never been rimmed. No warning, no stroking, not even telling me—he just pulled my cheeks apart and dove in fast and hard. And by in, I mean he went in. His tongue pushed inside me like it was some kind of cock. When I flexed against him, he slapped at my ass cheek, which made me jump, which made him slap again. Pretty soon he was licking and sucking and fucking and slapping, all as hard as he could, and all the while I humped against the bench and moaned, hoping he would never stop.

  His finger came at me with almost as little warning, and after three pumps, he pushed a second one in alongside me. That made me gasp and cry out, because it hurt just a little. But he kept pushing, so I kept taking, panting against the pain until it became a burn and then just became pleasure. I took him in dry until he got tired of it, and then I waited to see what was next.

  It turned out to be a big, fat dildo with a tail.

  He showed it to me first, and he had me suck it. It was purple and ridged, getting very fat at the base, but mostly what impressed me about this was how long it was. Well, that and the horse tail that hung down. But mostly as I took it into my throat, feeling it press alarmingly deep, all I could think of was how far that fucker was going to go into my colon.

  He smiled at me as he used it to fuck my mouth. “You're going to be a pretty pony,” he told me. I shivered, because he sounded wicked. It was hard to believe this was the nice guy Haley had beamed at in the bar, the fine upstanding rancher everyone in town admired. I couldn't imagine him right now teaching anybody anything, especially math in some college. Right now what he was teaching me was how deep I could suck on a purple silicone dildo, and I knew shortly it would go up my ass.

  He greased it in front of me, sitting on a stool. He took his time.

  “Where is this going to go, boy?” he asked me.

  “My ass, sir,” I said, not taking my eyes off it.

  He kept up his work. “How far is it going to go in?”

  “All the way, sir.” I shifted my hips against the bench in anticipation.

  “And then what will you be?”

  “Your pony, sir.”

  He smiled. His hand stilled against the side of the dildo, which was thick with grease, as was his hand. He looked almost sadistic. He made sure I saw just how much he was enjoying having me like this, how much he was going to enjoy ramming that dildo into my ass.

  I did my best to let him see how very much I was going to enjoy having all this done to me.

  The dildo was rough to take in, rougher than I thought. Those ridges were a trick, and by the time he had it halfway in, I was grunting and panting. But he didn't let up, didn't stop, and so I kept taking, and the next thing I knew, I felt the fine hairs of the tail brushing against my taint. He slapped my rump once, making me jump. Then he came around to my red, sweating face and held something up to my mouth.

  It was a bit.

  It was of some sort of soft material that didn't puncture when I sank my teeth into it but did give, which meant too that it was going to absorb the shock. The idea that I was going to need something like that really, really fucking turned me on. But best of all was that there were leather leads firmly attached to each side of the bit, and Travis gathered them both in his hands and pulled them back around the side of my head.

  He also let me see the crop in his hand. I shut my eyes and moaned softly in anticipation.

  “Keep the bit in your mouth,” he told me, “but if it gets to be too much, spit it out and tell me to stop. If you can't for some reason, shake your head
no. Other than that, I'm not going to stop. We're going to ride, pony. You're going to ride this bench hard and fast, and I'm going to hold your lead and whip your fine ass the whole way. Nod if you understand.”

  I nodded eagerly, though I didn't quite understand how I was going to “ride the bench.” I assumed he just meant that I was going to dry hump against it like a dog.

  Holy shit was I wrong.

  There was a hole in the side of the bench I hadn't known was there until Travis slid my cock into it. I was a little worried at first, because I thought that was going to chafe like fuck, rubbing against wood, but then he guided my cock home and I moaned around the bit. Jesus. It was like he was sliding me into an ass. It was even warm like one. He had one of those flesh things lined up at that hole, one of those fuck-tubes. He wasn't kidding that I was going to be fucking the bench. I grunted and thrust a few times because it felt so good.

  The crop came down hard against my lower back, and I yelped around the bit. And I stopped.

  “You wait until you're told, pony,” he told me, and I hung my head, ashamed. I should have known that. I was so excited, but I should have known that.

  He lifted up the cowboy hat and stroked my hair. “There now. You just hold still, and when I tell you to giddyup, you start riding. Understand?”

  I nodded and tried to nuzzle his hand.

  He let me, and then he put my hat back on. Keeping hold of the lead, he positioned himself behind me. He spread his thighs so I could feel his jeans against my legs. He kneaded my rump affectionately with his hand. Then he pulled the reins tight, lifted my head, and hit the other cheek firmly with the crop.

  “Giddyup!”

  I giddyupped. I thrust my cock into that bench and let that dildo fuck me as the tail swished against my taint. I moaned and grunted as the crop came down on my ass, first one side and then the other. I went faster. I nodded my head and bucked my hips and imagined I was galloping over the fields, carrying Travis wherever he wanted to go. And he beat my ass with that crop. There was no playing around, no nothing nice about it. This man was hard core. He slapped that leather against my cheek with a force that wasn't just going to be red. It was going to welt. He got so into it that he pulled back, straining my neck on the reins and moving away from my thighs as the crop whizzed through the air, all the while shouting “Hee-yah!” and “Come on, boy, faster! Faster!” I fucked and grunted and moved my hips in time to his will, and I let go. I let fucking go. I was his pony. I was his boy. I was his.