I figured I’d finally get to go to Chicago, though I didn’t really see that fantasy making much sense at this point, or how he’d fit it into our current intensive training schedule. But just then an alarm went off on his Mac to remind him that it was time for me to go for yoga, so he unbuckled my collar and shoved me out of the room.
He was very quiet and intense that evening, though, and didn’t mention any changes, not that I’d expected him to. In fact, he was oddly affectionate, if you can call fucking me just about every way possible affectionate. I was exhausted, nearly swooning; though he did beat me, it was rather lightly, with his belt, before he sent me to bed early.
The next morning, however, after I’d brought him breakfast and eaten some myself at a plate at his feet, Mrs. Branden brought a man I’d never seen before into the study. He was different from anyone I’d ever seen visiting Jonathan, I thought. He was fat and late-fiftyish, in a buoyant, Sydney Greenstreet kind of way, and he wore corny light blue polyester pants and a yellow alligator shirt. Jonathan had me kiss his shoe—white loafers!—and called him “Sir Harold.” Oh, right, I got it. This was one of his porn movie friends, or something like that anyhow. One of those silly-looking guys he respected so much. Well, the man was for sure silly-looking. As for what this was actually about, well, we—or I, really—would just have to wait and see. Not that there was much I could do about it anyway.
He sat down in Jonathan’s armchair. Jonathan sat in the straight chair opposite, and I knelt at attention, my shoulders in front of Jonathan’s knees. Mrs. Branden brought in coffee and rolls. Sir Harold dunked his rolls, wolfed them down, and talked. He was expansive, affectionate, fatherly almost, toward Jonathan, and Jonathan was very, well, respectful. There was some chatter about “business,” about how the good old days were, of course, better than these benighted times, about how Kate was doing in Napa. I couldn’t tell much from the conversation, until finally it seemed to turn to the matter at hand, which seemed to be me.
“Anyway,” Jonathan was saying, “it’s wonderful of you to help at such short notice. I would have had to take her with me, which wouldn’t have worked out at all, or send her to Kate.”
“Would’ve been fine to send her to Kate, you know,” Sir Harold rumbled, finishing the last of the rolls. “Don’t know why you’re so set against that.”
Jonathan winced. “Well, she’s busy. She’s got some big deal going this week. Some emir or a senator, or both maybe, I don’t know.”
“Don’t give me that, Jon,” the fat man said. “Kate can always handle one more little girl, no matter what she’s got going. You don’t want to send her, fine, I’m glad to help. But that’s your call. Anyway, let me have a look at her.”
Jonathan patted my shoulder. “Stand up, Carrie,” he said. “Let Sir Harold look at you.”
I stood up and walked over to where Sir Harold was sitting. “Turn around, girlie,” he said. I did, slowly.
“Legs look okay,” he said. “Rides a bike, you said? And ass, too. Well, more than okay, poetic, even. Kind of ass that talks to you across a crowded room.” Block that metaphor, I thought, and I could see that Jonathan was a bit nonplussed by it as well, even as he nodded, somewhat shyly.
“How’s the mouth?” Sir Harold continued.
“Pretty good, I think,” Jonathan said. He’d regained his cool. “Try it, why don’t you? Kneel down, Carrie.”
“Unzip me, girlie,” Sir Harold said, “and put it in your mouth.” His cock wasn’t totally erect, but it grew, rather spectacularly, as I sucked on it, and he pushed, insistently, for the back of my throat. He made some guttural, moaning noises, but I could tell that he was seriously checking me out all the while. I could tell that Jonathan was nervous. I did the best I could, though I was nervous myself. What was all this about?
Rather than come, though, he pulled out and grabbed my shoulders. “Turn around,” he said roughly, pushing me as he said it. He was very strong, and his big hands were very sure, and he quickly had me turned around with my ass up. I was surprised, but Jonathan clearly wasn’t, because he was ready with the ottoman. And when I was quickly positioned on it, he parted the cheeks of my poetic ass himself.
Sir Harold finished fucking me up the ass, groaning and bellowing. It hurt, and I had tears in my eyes by the time he was done, but I figured I’d done all right, whatever that might have meant.
When he’d pulled out of my asshole, and was zipping himself up, relaxing, and catching his breath, Jonathan signaled to me to return to my original kneeling position, at attention. I did, and both of us waited silently a few minutes, our eyes on the fat man in Jonathan’s armchair.
“She’ll do,” Sir Harold finally said. “You’ve taught her a few things, I guess. I’ll take her with me.”
Jonathan made a relieved sound and bent to kiss my shoulder blade. “Get a coat, Carrie,” he said. Take me with him where?
When I had put my coat on, and some shoes as well, we walked out to the front of the house. There was a pickup truck parked there, and attached to the back was one of those carrier vans that they use to transport horses. You know, you see them on the freeway sometimes. They’re usually somewhat open, so you can see the back part of the horse, but this one was closed over. The shape was the same, though. On the side was lettered SIR HAROLD’S CUSTOM PONIES. My knees began to wobble, and I wanted to turn and run, but Jonathan put a hand at the small of my back, steering me toward the curb at a steady pace.
Sir Harold opened the back of the van, so we could walk in. There was room for the three of us, since the van was made to carry a horse. We stepped onto clean straw, heaped on the floor, and he closed the door behind us.
“Strip,” he said to me, “and then bend over.”
I handed my coat and shoes to Jonathan. The straw under my bare feet was disturbing. I bent at the waist, holding on to a horizontal bar in the front of the compartment. I could feel a greased dildo probing my asshole. I took a deep breath and Sir Harold shoved it all the way up, belting it into place with stout brown leather straps. And then I could feel a tickling against the backs of my knees and thighs. Hair. It was a long horsetail, attached to the end of the dildo. Sir Harold slapped my ass. “Up,” he said.
He fit a set of narrow straps over my head, buckling it in back. One of the straps bisected my face, down the middle of my nose, and two more angled down from the top of my nose practically to the bottoms of my ears. Together, they held a hard plastic bit in place in my mouth, stretching it widely and making it impossible for me to speak.
“May I see her, sir?” Jonathan asked timidly. Sir Harold nodded and slapped my ass again, indicating, I realized, that I should turn around.
Jonathan stared raptly at me, as though he’d never seen me before. He stroked my breast softly and then rubbed me behind the ear as though I were an animal, to be communicated with in this way. It was unbearably humiliating, the bit making me mute, the tail making me less than human. I clenched my bare toes against the straw and looked at him miserably. He continued to stare at me, one hand on my ass under the tail, the other touching my face through the straps. I lowered my eyes, but he slapped my breast hard, and I knew that meant he wanted me to keep looking at him. They’d speak to me, I thought, as little as possible while I was, as I realized, a “custom pony.” I raised my eyes, sighing and shuddering a bit.
“You’re making her skittish,” Sir Harold said, stroking my ass slowly with one of his big, meaty hands. Amazingly, his stroking did seem to calm me down. “Quiet now, quiet now, that’s it,” he crooned to me. They would speak to me, I corrected myself, but only like this, a kind of brief, phatic communication meant to elicit a physical rather than a verbal or cognitive response.
Sir Harold turned to Jonathan. “She’s a nice bit of flesh, see, but high-strung, like you. It’ll take some work, you know.” He attached a set of reins to brass rings at the ends of the bit and tugged. The pain in my mouth was echoed by stabs of feeling in my cunt and breasts and wave
s of shame. I remembered wondering how this would feel. It was new, and very frightening. I turned in the direction of the tug, away from Jonathan and toward the front of the carrier. Sir Harold attached the reins to the bar that I’d been holding. Then he nodded to my hands, and I held the bar again. I figured I’d need to do this in order to keep my balance once we got going. He attached the rings on my cuffs to rings on the bar, on either side of the ring where the reins were attached. Jonathan stroked my ass one more time.
“In a week, you won’t know her,” Sir Harold was assuring Jonathan as they stepped out of the carrier and shut the door behind them. Would I know myself? I wondered.
The pickup truck’s engine started. I held on tight. Pretty soon we were on the freeway, crossing the Bay Bridge. There was a little round window I could look out of at my side. At first I was frightened that people could look in at my bridled face, but passengers in cars didn’t seem to see me—not even little kids, who were staring extra hard, trying to get a glimpse of the pony. Finally I decided, with some relief, that it was a one-way window. Probably it looked dark or like a mirror from the outside.
I didn’t have a watch, of course, so I don’t know how long we were on the freeway. Two hours, maybe? And the little window wasn’t really angled to let me see the road signs. All I knew was that it was hot and sunny outside—I could tell by the bright sun through the window and the warm air coming through the vents in the carrier. From the little I could see, it looked very rural outside—we were somewhere in the Central Valley, I supposed. The ride became bumpy as we pulled onto a gravel road, and bumpier after Sir Harold unhooked some gate and we went uphill for a few minutes on dirt and stones.
Finally we stopped. He came back into the carrier and, wordlessly, detached me and led me out by the reins. I blinked in the brilliant sunlight, stepping onto a patch of grass. A young man in jeans, cowboy boots, and an Aerosmith T-shirt was holding a pair of sturdy, thick-soled lace-up boots in his hands and grinning at me. He had dark skin and very white teeth, I could see as my eyes adjusted to the light, and he knelt to tie and buckle the boots onto my feet.
“Not bad, boss,” he said. He was short and solid, the T-shirt stretched against a broad hard chest and shoulders. “No experience, though. That’s pretty clear. What’s her name?”
“It’s Carrie,” Sir Harold said. “We’ll put her next to that blond, curly-headed one. Hey, is she named Carrie, too?”
“Cathy, boss,” the young man said, grinning again. He seemed easily amused. Maybe working all day with naked girls in bridles and tails had always been his dream job. The boots were tightly laced on my feet. They felt solid, making me want to stamp my feet. The young man gave my pubic hair a friendly little yank and then got to his feet. We were standing near a fenced-in ring of ground, maybe thirty yards in diameter, and he looped my reins over the fence.
Within the ring, maybe half a dozen girls, bridled and tailed like me, were going through various paces, supervised by a few guys in jeans with riding crops in their hands. The girls were all doing different things, so it was hard for me to get a fix on the general principles involved. One was jumping hurdles. A few others were practicing various gaits, walking, trotting, and a kind of slow run—a canter? Two were harnessed together, trotting in what looked to me like perfect precision. Another was goose-stepping. Yet another was marching, her knees very high. Unlike the rest of the girls, who wore boots like mine, she wore very high-heeled shoes. I winced as I watched her feet move over the uneven ground.
Just then I heard quick footsteps and a jingling sound. I turned in the direction of the sound and there it was, the whole deal, the finished product, coming down a path toward us from some rolling wooded hills. If they’d wanted me any more agitated than I was now, they couldn’t have done better at that very moment than to show me this.
It was a cart, a small one-seater on two large wheels, designed a bit like a plough, or a backward wheelbarrow. There was a man sitting in it, holding reins and a whip, and, running quickly but carefully, lifting her knees elegantly in front of her, a harnessed and bridled girl. Her bridle looked like mine, and the man in the cart was holding the reins. I couldn’t entirely make out the complicated arrangement of other straps that attached her harness to the cart, but I could see that her cuffed wrists were hooked to metal handles, which were like the handles of a wheelbarrow, and that this was where a lot of the pulling happened. It was, all in all, a simple but fiendish little contrivance, and it seemed to work well. I mean, they were going fast, and as they approached us, I could see that she was sweating and breathing hard and that the man in the cart was smiling broadly.
They weren’t seeming to slow down as they approached us, and I figured they’d just go past. In fact, I could hear the crack of the whip as the man used it to speed the girl up. But just some twenty yards from us, he pulled hard on the reins, jerking her head back cruelly. “Whoa,” he yelled, “whoa, Stephanie.” And she dug in her heels and stopped, almost on a dime, I thought, pulling up so close to us that I could see that her eyes were a violet blue.
The man jumped out of the cart, looping the reins over the fence not too far from me. I stared at Stephanie curiously. The bridle distorting her mouth and the dusty rivulets of sweat running down her face and body didn’t stop her from being supernally beautiful. She had long black hair, and to keep it from getting tangled in all the straps, it was done in a thick braid, near the top of her head, coming out through the straps of the bridle. But tendrils and curls were escaping everywhere, and you could see that when the braid was undone there’d be oceans of gorgeous black curls. They’d cascade almost to her perfect ass, crisscrossed with whip marks and bisected by a tail like mine and over her goblet-shaped breasts, which were heaving as she panted. Her peachy skin was flushed bright pink under the dust. I kept looking at her, transfixed, but she just looked straight ahead, consciously evening her breath, stretching and relaxing her muscles.
Aerosmith undid all the straps and buckles that attached her to the cart and then began rubbing her down with a soft cloth. When she was dry, he stroked her ear a little, crooning gently to her, “Easy, easy, goo-ood girl,” much as Sir Harold had done to me in the van. She seemed to need it a lot less than I had, though. Her breathing had quieted down and evened out, and she looked calm and serene—well, bored, actually. Aerosmith patted her breast—she looked off somewhere into the middle distance—and he sighed softly, took her reins, and led her down a path to some barnlike buildings, downhill from us. They disappeared into one of them.
Meanwhile, Sir Harold went to talk to the driver, a Mr. Finch, I gathered. Though Mr. Finch clearly had had the time of his life cracking the whip over Stephanie’s bouncing ass, you could see that the experience wouldn’t be complete for him if he couldn’t find anything to complain about. Still, all he could come up with was a small squeak in one of the wheels and his wish that the weather were not quite so hot. Sir Harold nodded sympathetically, with the easy confidence of a tradesman who has utter faith in his product. He opened a small compartment at the back of the cart and pulled out an oilcan, oiling the offending wheel until the squeak was entirely gone, then putting the oilcan back.
The cart, I could see upon closer inspection, was no glorified wheelbarrow. Though I figured that its body was actually made of some kind of light fiberglass, it was covered with a molded wood veneer and painted a glossy black with red and gold detailing. The spokes of the wheels were also gold, and the seat was soft dark red leather. There was a little brake apparatus over one of the wheels, I realized—otherwise, it would have run Stephanie over when she’d stopped so short. It was skillfully and practically designed, but it looked like a tiny fantasy coach, reminding me of fairy tales.
Sir Harold was telling Mr. Finch that in the future, if he heard a squeak, he should use the oilcan himself. Each cart, not to speak of each pony of course, he repeated a few times, got a thorough going-over between rides, but you never knew.
“It’s a tough
job,” he sighed, with some relish, “old carts, new ponies, always something needing my attention. Like that one over there, by the fence, fresh and green and unbroken. Took her on as a special favor to her master, nice boy from the old days. She’ll be all right, but she’ll take some work. You get to know the signals in my line of business. Nice body but likes to think too much. Not like that little Stephanie, who responds to the slightest tug, and you just lay the whip on for the pleasure of seeing the pretty marks.”
Speaking of Stephanie made Mr. Finch remember that he’d also paid to be blown by her and that she’d probably be cleaned up, groomed, and ready for him in the stable by now. He shook hands with Sir Harold and hurried down the path.
Sir Harold gave me a long look. It was the first time I’d been alone with him, and I realized that he frightened me intensely. He was onto me, I thought. He knew that, at least at first, I wouldn’t be good at this, that I need words, not strokes or slaps, to make me obey. He wouldn’t tell me anything directly—nothing meaningful, anyhow—but he’d managed, through his little speech to Mr. Finch, to communicate all this to me. I returned his look solemnly, trying to communicate that I understood what I’d have to work to overcome, and he nodded briefly, so I guess he was satisfied.
“Frank,” he now yelled, to one of the guys in the ring, “take this new one, name’s Carrie, down to the stable. Put her next to Cathy, feed her, and give her a nap. We’ll start training her this afternoon.”
Frank was tall, rawboned, freckled, quiet, friendly. I guessed they’d all be friendly. He picked up my reins and slapped my ass. “Nice girl,” he said briefly, “come on.”
We walked down the path at a good clip and entered the barnlike building I’d seen Aerosmith lead Stephanie into earlier. It was a stable, divided into stalls on both sides of a center aisle, with straw heaped on the floor. It didn’t look special in any way—I mean, I don’t think it had been built for girls being treated like horses. I think it had, at one time, actually held horses. Maybe the only modification was that the door to each stall was just high enough so that it came up to your neck. And they must have cleaned it out with great care when they’d converted it. It didn’t actually smell like a stable, but it did smell, a little—of straw, and of, well, of flesh, I guess. I counted seven stalls on each side.
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