ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories)

by Jane Prescott

  I softly caress the red velvet couch with my right index finger. Yes. It will do very nicely for that part of the evening, reflecting the ruby tones of the wine I have.

  What’s next? Oh, there are just so many options! It makes me a little giddy to think about it, but I reign myself in. I have control over the situation; they are my pack, and I will make the decisions here so that they can know what exactly is expected of them. That’s the real fun here.

  In his contract, George specified that restraints would be something that he is willing to try. So I think I’ll shackle him to my favorite one. While he stands there, weight coming off a little at the wrists—not too much, I have no desire to loosen any of his joints, I’d like to keep my new pet—I’m going to have Hank indulge in one of his fantasies. And what are those, you may ask.

  You see, Hank is about as straight as they come, but what he really wants to do is to be forced to take another man’s cock into his mouth. Since he and George have known each other for years, I figure, whose cock better to try than his? A smile slips around my lips as I think about this. I’m going to tell him exactly what to do. My idea is that George needs to earn his release, so at first, Hank is just going to tease him. He’s going to lick him up and down, but not take him into his mouth. No, no. Before he can do that, George must recite the tenants of Basic Crew Training that we learned during SEAL camp. It’s my little nod to the Navy, so sue me. If he gets them right, I’m going to let Hank slide George’s cock into his mouth, but if he gets it wrong, he’s going to feel the end of my crop across his thighs and have to start again.

  The crop has a little heart at the end of it, and I know from personal experience that it stings. George is really going to feel the love, so to speak.

  Mmm. This is quite delicious to picture. Hank is going to bury George deep into his throat for as long as he can; I just love the sounds he’s going to make, those gasping, guttural noises that you emit only when something is truly obstructing your airway. And when he has to draw back from George’s cock, I’m going to give him exactly two seconds to recover before he has to ask for more.

  And yes, he has to ask for more if he wants to continue playing. In fact, he has to say, “More, Mistress?” No, not mistress. What is it they call authority figures in the Navy?

  Oh yes. More, Commander? it is.

  Yum.

  Man does not thrive on sensation alone, so to titillate the visual cortex, I think I’ll give George a little striptease while Hank sucks on him. I’m going to start by running my hands over the silk of this costume. Whoever said that BDSM is all about pain clearly does not know the sheer sensual pleasure of cool silk weaving its way around your body. I’m quite naked under this because I like the way silk feels against my nipples; I feel like a baby cat getting scratched across the belly as it stretches, and this never fails to make me a little moist between the legs.

  The clothes will come off slowly. Didn’t I mention? George has to earn it, too. He’s got to watch what his lower half is doing while Hank has his lips and tongue on him. If he can’t control himself, my clothes stay on and he’s going to lose his place as being the taller of the two men. Height equals dominance, in case you didn’t know. So here’s the thing—SEALs are all about that control, and he’s got to prove himself. Oh, you thought it was me with a mission? No, darling, no. If George can contain himself for long enough, he gets access to me, the main prize of the evening.

  I don’t give myself to just anyone. I give myself to the man who can control his cum for long enough not to disgrace himself in front of his team. I mean, really, we’re all professionals here.

  I step in front of the glass cabinet that would ordinarily hold booze in any other place. Here, instead, it houses an array of lube and different scents, for those who like to play with that stuff. I pick up a bottle of grapefruit-flavored lube, my little nod to Master Slick; truly, he was the one who taught me everything I know. It’s going to come in handy for the next portion of the evening.

  Playing to my new subs’ tastes, George is going to have his wrists and ankles tied together next. I’ve got this lovely little contraption that I’ve been meaning to put to use, and now I’m finally going to be able to. I’m very excited. Basically, it keeps a person in place when they’re tied up like that so they don’t have to worry about their balance and can focus on doing something else.

  In this case, it will be my pussy. And he will be attending to it with his mouth.

  Did I mention I have a throne to sit on? It’s not like the one at Westeros; this one is very comfortable to sit in, get eaten out in, whatever you happen to fancy.

  As for Hank’s role, well, I’ve promised him that at some point, my friend Carlos will come to pay us a visit. He asked me when that would be, and I asked him what the fun in my telling him would be. Isn’t that the whole point, I asked, drawing one of my fingernails across his thighs, that there’s a chance you could be caught all night. It could be with a cock in your mouth, or it could be with your cock in another man.

  Does he know I’m a SEAL, Hank asked me, shivering a little at the scrape of my nail against him.

  Yes. He knows all about your staunch, standup upbringing, I told him, bending close to his ear so that he could feel my breath on it. And he’s going to be very, very upset if he finds you in a compromising situation.

  Hank closed his eyes and suppressed a moan.

  That cock in the ass bit? I forgot to say, didn’t I? While George uses his tongue to pleasure me—and he better do it well, too, or I’m going to ridicule him like no tomorrow, Hank is going to be making sweet, sweet love to his dirty starfish. That’s what all that lube is for. He’s going to plunder the depths of that round, sweet little bottom with his fat cock as I watch, locking eyes with him throughout the whole time. He gets the supreme gift of watching me as I come, and the pleasure of knowing I know. There are no enemas in my dungeon, no sir. When Hank removes his cock from his fellow SEALs’ asshole, I want it to be stained with filth and with his own cum. I want him to know that in the end, he couldn’t control himself, that he couldn’t keep away from his deviant desires any more than I could.

  They call me Mistress for a reason. Little Iliana always gets her way.

  THE END

  Her Untamed Cowboys

  All of time and space exist somewhere, but her world is narrowed down to one pinprick of space on the skin of the universe. There is nobody in any place in all the world that can hear her, nobody from her past or her future. In fact, there is nobody to hear the stifled screams of her inner horror but her own mind. Her mouth is pressed into the bed, the springs around her squeaking with his exertions. Her arms, well-muscled and dark, but still too weak to fight him off, are bound behind her back, and the inner sanctum between her thighs is being invaded. She tries to clench her muscles, to block him off, but he is ramming into her like a weapon of yesteryear. This is what his ancestors did before they plundered and pillaged whole villages—they took great armies of men, great, angry men, who used the strength of their bodies to lift huge battering rams and take down the fortresses of cities. White men, blood made thick in their veins by years of inbreeding, the same kind of inbreeding that they forced upon the thousands they enslaved, treating them no better than mating animals.

  They bred them, putting the cloth of ignorance over their eyes until those that they subjugated to their rule become one unwashed mass of creatures. Children with their parents, mothers with their sons, brothers with their sisters. In a litter of rats, humans are shocked to find this kind of incest, but this time, the time that is now, is the time in which humans do it to other humans, whites doing it to the black they own. If you are less than human, then all of this is easier to impose, easier to imagine, the kind of perverse experiment that will be repeated over and over again throughout the course of history until at last, the world can stand it no more.

  She can stand it no more. Master has spread her buttocks and is ripping her. It hurts, it hurts when
he thrusts into her dry soil, racking the inner walls of her with pain. He grunts above her, allowing himself the sounds that he has robbed her off, and she can feel his saggy white paunch on her back, dripping sweat onto her, shaking it off his face, wiping it off with a hand and smearing it against her shoulder blades as if she is nothing more than a towel, a thing for his use. It is not the first time, and it is not the last. Her mind, which has created a version of herself to watch from the outside, talks to her.

  Perhaps he will be finished quickly this time.

  She knows better. She knows that although his time is limited, that his wife may come upon them at any second, this is common practice amongst all of his buddies. Nobody care about her, and she has gone numb, anyway. Her man, Jim, will know about it, of course, because Master will swagger about her while she is in the house, strutting like a peacock, claiming his territory as if she was a post he had peed on.

  Isn’t that what he’s doing now?

  She shuts her eyes as his thrusts intensify, and tries to imagine the song they sing when the end of the work day is done, the only time she feels relief. It is hard, because the bed pumps with Master’s pumps, but she almost manages to lull herself away from reality when he lets out a loud groan and spills his seed inside of her.

  Better hope he doesn’t get you big, girl.

  She closes her eyes and feels her lashes wet against her cheek.

  Better hope, indeed.

  * * *

  Selema’s body is the last thing on her mind, but she cannot help but notice the stares. Damn men. Always looking to see if they may touch. Well, they can’t.

  This town is quiet, much too quiet after growing up in a busy city like Chicago. You can literally see the dust settle on the air as the mail carrier’s horses pull up the mail wagon to the post office. It’s a town that must seem rough to others, but to Selema, it is nothing compared to the urban jungle; maybe, however, she just doesn’t know its intricacies yet and shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Maybe those stares at her breasts, hips, and face aren’t nearly as intimate as she thinks they are; they could very well be glances of a darker nature. After all, it was not so long ago at all, two and a half decades at most, that slavery was abolished. From the glances she now recognizes as hostile, Selema thinks that perhaps word has not caught up with the fine folk of the west just yet.

  That’s just fine. She’s not there to make friends, anyway.

  The horses nose at the ground and stomp their hoofs lightly. She pats them gently on the neck before stepping into the post office. The withered gentleman behind the counter is sorting through mail by hand and looks none too friendly as he spots her. It’s unusual for a woman to be strutting about town alone, she figures, but even more unusual for a woman of color to be doing so. Never mind that her green gown, bustled in the back in the latest fashion is of a higher quality than most of the women’s in town—maybe that’s even what’s contributing to the intenseness of the stares—never mind the fact that it offsets her green eyes. She carries the mark of double indemnity on her person like a stamp made from permanent ink, the kind of ink that never washes off.

  Selema’s searching for the root of being yaller, not trying to hide it. But it looks like being this color here won’t earn her any favors, judging from the post master’s expression. Well, she’s not one to be daunted by an old white man, Selema decides, and steps up to the counter, settling her satin bag on it and resting her gloves on top.

  “I’m looking for Misters Lee and Roberts, if you please.”

  The postmaster looks her up and down. “I don’t please, ma’am.”

  She regards him coolly, knowing the full measure of her glance. “I’m gonna be here a right long time, mister,” she says, her voice soft and dangerous. “And I reckon’ it’s better to be friendly than enemies.”

  The postmaster weighs her words for a moment, then turns to the myriad of little boxed-up spaces behind him, heavy with the protection of the metal around them. “They live in that there ol’ plantation, the one ‘bout a mile down the center road.”

  She smiles, as if to say, “Now was that so hard?” She turns on her heeled boot and is almost out the door when the postmaster calls out to her. She looks over her shoulder.

  “Whatchu want them for, anyhow?”

  The smile on her ebony face deepens, and the postmaster notices two dimples in either cheek. It would be a nice smile if it wasn’t exactly like a cat’s, sly and self-satisfied. “Oh,” she says, as if the taste of the word in her mouth is a surprise, “We’re neighbors.”

  And what exactly that means, only she knows. The bell clangs above the door as she exits the post office.

  * * *

  Somehow, Selema is not surprised to find that the plantation down the main road seems to be somewhat abandoned. Two men living together, seems like it would be fairly quiet to begin with. It’s always the women making the noise, filling homes with sound.

  “Hello? Anyone there?”

  She lifts her skirts as she pushes open the white-washed door. The house is neatly, if spartanly kept. She knows that the two men who live here are cowboys, but she has planned her visit carefully to make sure that they are not out on the range at this time of year. Upstairs, she hears noises, and surmises that they have not heard her come in. No time like the present to make her arrival known. She climbs the stairs and hears a sound like an animal in pain and quickens her step. The door to the room is locked, but through the keyhole, Selema catches sight of something wholly unexpected.

  She is not quite sure she is seeing what she sees, but she has some theories. She saw something like this once before, in a seedy little bar on the end of Little Italy. Her father had some business to attend to, and he left her behind the bar with his friend Rudy, who was tending bar. It was early in the morning, before dawn, and she wondered what kind of men you find at a drinking hole that early. This was before her breasts and hips and thighs intruded on her life and made her less invisible, so she snuck out from behind the bar, sliding her back against the wood paneling of it, and began to wander. Behind the heavy oak door of the toilets, she heard the sounds of scuffling.

  She hears it again now, behind a door that is similar.

  A small push, and now there is a crack through which to view the happenings on. At first, there is nothing but a tangle of pale flesh, joints in odd positions, hairy legs sticking out from a seeming heap, and then the image arranges itself properly. Long moans are emanating from the two men sliding their bodies on each other, two men who are grasping each other’s cocks with their hands, their eyes locked as they stroke, over and over again, grunting out loud as only men can in the throes of something illicit, as if they are angry, but have given in to their true natures at last.

  The door creaks a little, and both men halt. Selema did not think it was possible, given how drunk they are on each other, but the tangle is untangling, limbs are coming straight, and suddenly, there are two forms frozen on the bed, their backs to each other. One is reddish-hued, with freckles all over his shoulders and chest, and a fine sprinkle of light copper hair on his body, and the other has soft, dark, thick curls cropped close to his head. There is something about both of the men that strikes Selema as just a little bit off; perhaps it is the dusky hue of the brunette’s skin or the overly full lower lip of the redhead, but she scarcely has time to dwell on these things because the men are jamming their limbs into their clothes and making fast headway to the door.

  She stumbles backwards and since she does not know her way, bangs her calf into a small table piled with shoehorns. She falls, and her ankle throbs with pain. She cannot run, and before she can even think of a good escape plan, the naked men are standing before her.

  My, but they’re glorious. Well-conditioned muscle, a fine smattering of hair everywhere, and those manhoods—well now, they’re just simply a part of them, are they not, like a long continuation of the very essence of their virile masculine souls. Selema’s mouth goes dry, an unlucky c
ircumstance considering the two men have a look that speaks of a fear that lends itself to anger, a defensiveness of an animal once it is cornered. For a moment, their eyes lock, something primitive passes between them, and nobody speaks.

  It is Selema who breaks the tense silence.

  “I take it the women of the house are not here,” she says, her tone glib.

  “There have never been any women here. Not since Ezrah’s mother died,” says the tall red-haired man, the dark bite of his gray eyes nicking at her.

  “You must be Jeb Lee, then,” Selema says, righting herself and picking herself up from the floor. “I’ve been looking for you. I never did expect to meet you under these circumstances.”

  Jeb stands with his powerful arms crossed over his chest. “How much did you see?”

  “Enough.”

  “Why aren’t you running off to tell the neighbors then?”

  “Because I know what loneliness is, and it is not my place to cast judgment on anyone.”

  She is from Chicago. Things don’t faze you once you’ve lived there.

  “So you don’t care?” asks Jeb, and there is a softness in his eyes that tells her that this is the point from which there is no return, the one where she can either create a lasting relationship of trust or one that will ultimately leave them at war forever.

  She fixes them with a steadfast look. “I don’t care.”

  “Then what can we help you with then, marm?” the darker one with soft brown eyes asks her.

  Selema shoots him a sharp look. “How ‘bout putting some pants on and offering a lady a seat and a cup of tea first?”

  In the kitchen, the dark one busies himself putting a kettle on, although Selema can feel the resentment rising off of him in waves. She can hardly blame him. If someone came in and disrupted her illicit lovemaking session and then refused to leave, she’d be mighty put out, too. Nevertheless, she settles down on one of the rough-hewn chairs and accepts the steaming cup they present her with.