Manties in a Twist

by J. A. Rock

  I tried to glower at him, but I couldn’t keep a straight face. “If you don’t tell him about this, I promise I won’t tell him you enjoyed the renaissance faire.”

  D hesitated. Licked mustard off his thumb. “David is aware that I enjoyed myself at the festival.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

  “We are practicing a greater degree of honesty in our relationship. Have some fries.” He motioned to his plate.

  “Fine.” I leaned over to grab some fries. “But still don’t tell him.”

  D was staring at my midsection. I realized my T-shirt had ridden up, and my jeans had ridden down. Which left a little bit of red lace exposed. I sank back into my seat, pulling my shirt down.

  He met my gaze again. Nodded briefly. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  And I knew it would be.

  That afternoon, I got “Snow Wanderer” pretty much set. I made a couple of recordings on my shitty laptop recorder, but wasn’t totally happy with either of them. So I called one of the other guys I knew who played at Pitch sometimes. He worked in the Hymland College library, in their media center. The media center had installed a recording booth a couple of years ago. He said it was booked pretty much till the end of the semester, but he could try to get me a spot.

  So that made me happy.

  Then the Pegasus Sheath arrived, which made me double happy. I walked around with it on and, like, swung it around in circles and stuff until it was time for work.

  And then that night, Ryan’s friend Dan came over in an SUV and dropped off a pony cart. We parked the cart on our deck. It was kinda patchworkish—bicycle tires, what looked like a piece of a workout bench, and one of the shafts was slightly longer than the other.

  “Where’d this come from?” I demanded.

  “Dan works in a bicycle shop.”

  “How does that explain anything?”

  “Maybe some evenings when I was ‘working late’ last week, I was actually at the cycle shop with some guys who like to build shit.”

  I stroked the left trace. “You made this?”

  “I had a ton of help.”

  I looked up at him. “What’d you tell the guys it was for?”

  “I said my mom had just gotten a Shetland pony.”

  “That’s one of those stories that sounds so fake it might be true.”

  “Knowing my mom, it could be true. Speaking of which . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “My parents want us to drive up there for brunch on Sunday.”

  “Awesome!”

  “We’ll lose a whole day of practice,” he warned.

  “Dude. There is time in the montage for brunch.”

  “Good.” He looked relieved. Had he honestly thought I’d be upset about missing practice to go see his family?

  We carried the cart up the back steps and put it in the laundry room. And then I showed him the Pegasus Sheath.

  He was literally speechless.

  We had sex with me wearing it, which was a little weird, but hey. This house was a judgment-free zone.

  Ryan took Tuesday off work. I mean, no kidding, called in and did the fake cough and everything. We went out to D’s property to practice. The cart didn’t exactly fit in my car, so we had to do some creative things with tying the trunk half-shut so the shafts could stick out. But I was feeling awesome, and Ryan let me blast “Man in Motion” from St. Elmo’s Fire on our way there.

  The property was just a few acres on the edge of a suburb, off a dirt road. D had given me GPS coordinates, since there wasn’t a technical address. I had a feeling he’d expected me to find it by compass or something, but I just plugged the coordinates into my phone, and it worked out okay. There was a meadow surrounded on two sides by woods, and the grass looked like it had been mowed recently. I wondered who D got to take care of his land. And whether Ryan and I risked running into, like, the caretaker one of these days.

  We parked along the edge of the dirt road. Unloaded the cart and the gear, dragged it into the meadow, and tacked up.

  This time, Ryan put the hooves on, then hooked my wrists behind my back with padded leather cuffs.

  I shifted. I felt a little off-balance, but nothing horrible.

  He stepped back. “Looking good.”

  If you say so.

  He spent a while hitching me to the cart. He had to pull up videos on his phone a couple of times, but eventually he got the shafts secured to my harness. He led me around in a circle so I could get used to pulling the cart. It creaked a lot, but it wasn’t heavy or anything.

  He picked up the reins and whip, and went around to get in the cart. It was actually easier to be a pony with my hands cuffed—like, it really hit home to me that I didn’t have to make choices. I just had to follow cues.

  I was aware of every tiny sensation—the tail brushing my bare legs, the plug pressed deep in my ass. The harness straps rubbing against my T-shirt, the bit pushing down on my tongue. Sweat trickling under the bridle and drool running down the sides of my chin. The slight tension in the reins as Ryan gathered them. The fucking Pegasus Sheath hanging out of my pants. The fact that I couldn’t see anywhere except right in front of me, thanks to whatever ass lesion had invented blinkers. I pulled nervously against the wrist cuffs, but they didn’t give.

  I held my breath as I waited.

  He flicked the reins lightly over my shoulders and clucked. I jumped forward into a brisk, half-panicked walk. Was jerked back by the cart’s resistance, but then I leaned forward and got it moving across the grass. The tail swished against my calves, and the plug shifted inside, making my dick try to rise in its sheath. Stallion power, motherfuckers.

  “Easy.” Ryan tugged gently on the reins. “Where’s the fire?”

  I smiled around the bit and slowed down. I still didn’t really get what this game did to me. I knew it made me feel really self-conscious, which was weird, because self-consciousness had never been my thing. I’d always liked making people laugh, and the best way to do that was usually to make a complete idiot of myself. But now I was doing probably the most ridiculous-looking thing of my life, and for once, I didn’t want anyone to laugh. Even though I totally understood why they would.

  Ryan had asked if I was gonna tell my friends about the pony play, and I’d been all like, Duh—but then I’d made D keep it a secret. And I got kind of terrified whenever I imagined doing this in front of an audience. So what was up with that?

  But the people who go to a pet play thing probably aren’t there to make fun of the pets.

  Probably.

  He tugged the left rein, and I turned, careful to make a wide arc so the cart didn’t tip. My skin vibrated the way it used to sometimes at tennis practice when it was hot out and I didn’t hydrate enough. This should have been easy. This was just Ryan telling me what to do and me paying attention. But I felt like I was treading water in the middle of the fucking ocean. Like, how could it be as simple as turning left when he pulled the left rein? Didn’t I have to act like a horse? Make my stupid horse noises or something? Fight him once in a while?

  And how fast was I supposed to be walking? How high was I supposed to be lifting my legs?

  He’ll tell you.

  But maybe Ryan was as nervous as I was, because he hardly said anything to me.

  We made a circle, and then I stopped suddenly.

  “You okay?” Ryan asked.

  “Ahhh Erhh dohhhn ihh riiiihhh?” I asked around the bit.

  He dropped the reins, jumped off the cart, and came around to stand in front of me. He unclipped the bit and eased it from my mouth. Held it, slobber and all. “What was that?”

  “Am I doing it right?”

  “Sure. I mean, I think so. Why?”

  “I feel weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  I couldn’t explain. And he didn’t try to make me. He just stood there patiently and waited.

  “Embarrassed,” I said finally.

  “You? Embarrassed
?”

  “I know. But at first pony stuff was funny, and now I actually want to be good at it.”

  He grinned. “Me too. And we will be.”

  “But I feel awkward.”

  “You’re wearing a butt plug tail and a bridle and you’re hooked to a cart. Of course you’re gonna feel awkward at first.”

  “I’m also getting a boner. Again.”

  He laughed. “Aww.”

  “It’s from the tail. I don’t even like it, but it’s turning me on.”

  “You want me to take it out?”

  “Hell no.” I angled my hips toward him. “See it? See my giant stallion boner?”

  “Gross. Do you want to take a break?”

  “We barely did anything. I want to keep going.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Really, I want to do this.” I pulled against the cuffs again. “Can you, um . . .”

  “Yes?”

  I shifted my weight. “Talk to me more? I know it sounds dumb, but, like, I don’t know how much to turn or how fast to walk. And that one time you told me to slow down, that was great for me.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  “Is that . . . Does that work for you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t look sure.”

  He laughed again. “This is all new to me too. I’m just trying to figure out what to have you do, and what to say to you and all that.”

  “We can just go in circles for a while. Like those people in the video.”

  “Okay. Let’s try it.”

  “Sweet.”

  He fished in his pocket. Produced a small, wrapped candy. “Here. Have this.” He unwrapped it.

  “You brought Jolly Ranchers?”

  “Of course.” He put the Jolly Rancher—blue—on his palm and held it up to me. I leaned down and took it with my mouth.

  He gave me a minute to eat it, then held up the bit. I opened my mouth, and he eased it in, clipping it to the bridle once more. He patted my shoulder, picked up the reins, and stepped behind me again.

  Nothing happened for a moment.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Lost my whip in the grass.”

  Okay, so Cinnamon had like years of experience and the grace of a thousand ballerinas, and her handler probably never lost his whip in the grass. But that didn’t mean Ryan and I couldn’t go to this pony show and trample her—goddamn pun intended.

  “Found it.” Ryan picked up the whip and got up on the cart. I felt him adjusting the reins, shifting on the seat. Finally he flicked the leather over my shoulders. “Walk on.”

  I walked on. He tugged on the right rein, and I turned until he stopped pulling, trying not to walk too fast or too slow. “Good,” he said.

  Some of my tension eased. We made a wide circle. Then he tugged both reins. “Whoa.”

  I stopped.

  “Good boy.”

  Crushing it.

  He clucked. “Trot.”

  By the second circle, I was bored. I tried throwing my head forward a little, pulling on the reins. He took the hint and snapped the reins again, clucking.

  We made a faster circle.

  I had just turned to make a third circle when I became aware he was pulling on the left rein. I changed direction, and we made a figure eight.

  I was ballin’ at this. Also, I hardly noticed the tail anymore, and my hard-on had gone down a little, so that was helpful.

  He started steering me in all kinds of patterns: snakes and zigzags and spirals. He made me slow down or speed up or stop every minute or so. I tried to think like an actual horse, which was tough, because who knew what they actually thought about? Food, probs. Which, hey, me too. And they probably thought about the barn, and how much they wanted to go back there and sleep. And maybe they thought about other horses they found sexy?

  I remembered a video that said they got spooked easily. So possibly they spent a lot of time thinking about how freaky everything looked. Birds and trees and whatever. I thought about Belle, the human pony who’d freaked out about the wind chimes.

  I totally didn’t feel nervous or awkward anymore. But I was getting tired. I could have been nice and just stopped moving. But I was, like, having horse thoughts. I looked over toward the spot where we’d left our stuff. Turned and started jogging toward it.

  “Whoa! Hey!”

  Ryan pulled on the reins, but I kept jogging, trying to ignore the plug shifting inside me. I reached our stuff and whoa-ed abruptly.

  He hopped off the cart came around in front of me, shaking his head, clearly trying not to laugh. “Bad Thunder Canyon.”

  I glanced meaningfully at the car.

  “You’re checking out for the day?”

  I nodded.

  “Fine, then. But no more Jolly Ranchers for you.”

  I blew some snot on him.

  Because that was how horses rolled.

  He glared at me, and I grinned around the bit.

  He unhitched me. Took my bit out and held it by one ring while he wiped it off. He clipped the lead rope to a ring on my chinstrap. Then he picked up our bag and led me over to the trees. I didn’t talk, even though I kind of wanted to.

  He stripped off my harness and my shirt. And my shorts—it was an ordeal getting them off without disturbing the tail—leaving me, um, naked. Except for the tail. And the sheath.

  Well, this is new.

  He wrapped my lead rope around a branch.

  Then he put on the spiky-rubber-mitt thingy and started rubbing my back. Hard. I groaned, trying to press into the glove as he circled it across my shoulders and then down my lower back. “Oh God.” I sighed as he scrubbed the small of my back. “Oh God.”

  “Horses don’t talk,” he reminded me.

  “Mr. Ed does.”

  “You are not Mr. Ed.” He moved to my front and did my chest and abs, using a gentler pressure.

  “Thunder Canyon is way awesomer than Mr. Ed. Thunder Canyon would eat Mr. Ed’s heart in a death match.”

  Ryan smiled. “Shhhhh.” He used the mitt to pinch my stomach. Tossed the glove aside and picked up the soft brush.

  The soft brush was slightly less fun, because hi, ticklish. I kept jerking away, until he did the backs of my legs. Then my stallion hard-on came back.

  He whistled a jaunty little tune and nudged my legs apart. Then he brushed the insides of my thighs. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, trying not to air hump. “Good boy,” he said, like he knew exactly what he was doing to me. He patted my ass.

  The situation got worse when he swapped the brush for a comb and started combing my tail. Even though he held the tail by the base, each stroke of the comb pulled on the plug, making it shift inside me. I started bouncing back and forth a little as the boner sitch went up to DEFCON 1.

  “You could be more famous than Mr. Ed.” He tugged hard on a stubborn knot. “Thunder Canyon, the dancing horse.”

  “You’re an asshole,” I said, which earned me a slap on the butt.

  I watched him put the comb away, feeling suddenly very quiet and warm inside.

  He wasn’t an asshole. He was the guy who went on all the adventures with me, who had my fucking reins in his hand, and so who even cared if I didn’t know what submission “meant,” or whatever, because it probably meant different things to everybody. This guy. This guy . . .

  I’d already earned all the reward I needed.

  “Why are you smiling?” he asked suspiciously.

  I just shook my head and horse-snorted.

  He rubbed me down with a rag. Including, briefly, between the legs. I groaned and tried to move my hips in time with his hand, but he pulled the rag away.

  Offered me a Jolly Rancher.

  Which I almost choked on when he reached behind me and started pulling on my tail plug. It had been in so long that he had to work on it for a while—twisting it and thrusting with it—until it popped out. He wrapped it in the rag and set it aside. Untied the lead rope, took off the bridle, and looked at m
e. Got up on his toes and kissed me in a way that was definitely not approps for human and horse. “You can get dressed.”

  If I was going to talk to Ricky about the “Snow Wanderer” illustrations, then I pretty much had to talk to him about the Bill thing.

  This was gonna suck nasty sweaty sumo balls. I invited him to lunch at Mel’s, and he didn’t seem suspicious about my motives, so that was a plus. He also didn’t look tired or scared or anything that suggested he was in some kind of traumatic relationship he couldn’t escape from. In fact, he looked damn good—he’d filled out a little and was wearing his hair shorter. His guns were, like—the show probably wasn’t sold out, but you wouldn’t want to wait much longer to buy tickets.

  I tried the usual What have you been up to? shooting-the-shit kind of stuff. He told me about his job, and about Cobalt’s owners sending some weird email to all the members basically blaming them for the club going under, and about some cartoon show about a pigeon who gets a job teaching British lit at a high school, which I apparently needed to start watching yesterday.

  He sipped his Coke. “Dave was supposed to talk to me about being on a panel at the kink fair, but he hasn’t answered my texts in days.” There was a hard note in Ricky’s voice, almost a challenge. I was so used to him sounding like a giddy schoolkid, even if he was just talking about, you know, someone stealing his parking spot at work, that I was a little surprised.

  “Oh.”

  Ricky didn’t quit staring at me. “So you guys found out, huh?”

  I nodded, trying not to look judge-y or anything. “I saw your status.”

  He picked at his sandwich, finally dropping his gaze. “So are you here to lecture me?”

  “No,” I said honestly. “I believe you’re an adult and can make your own choices.”

  He looked up. “You hate Bill.” It wasn’t a question.

  I didn’t answer at first. “I . . . have a hard time with him.”

  “This isn’t because I don’t care about Hal,” he said sharply. “But Bill is a human being, whatever you guys think. And he honestly feels terrible about Hal. He pretty much never stops thinking about it. You guys think he’s some kind of monster, but—”

  “We don’t think that. Seriously.” I mean, maybe we did. I wasn’t sure anymore.