A Short Leash (2 page)

“That collar of yours looks tight,” he said after some time. “Come over here and I’ll take it off.”

Her collar was uncomfortable, but she had gotten used to it. She had been wearing it for so long that it was like a part of her, the thick fabric webbing tight against her throat.

“That collar links you to your owner,” he further explained. “If you are found with that on, you may be returned to him.”

That was motivation for Sierra to leave her box. She climbed up and over the edge, setting foot on the grass. It was heaven to feel the soft green blades beneath her feet, but once she realized she was now without any kind of protection, she lost her nerve and pressed herself against the side of the crate.

“Come here,” Kade said, pointing to his feet.

Sierra stayed where she was, eying him suspiciously.

“So you haven’t been trained at all,” he observed. “I suppose I should not be surprised.” He stood up and began to move toward her. Sierra was not pleased by his movement. She leaped back into the crate and made a growling sound as he approached, warning him of her inherent fierceness.

“You can cut that out,” he said. “I don’t tolerate aggression from my pets. You save that for the hunt.”

Sierra growled louder, a feral snarl emerging from her throat as he stood over her crate, his hands on his hips.

“You came to have it removed, so I’m going to take that collar off,” he said, withdrawing a knife from his belt. It looked sharp enough to cut the sun and did not make Sierra feel any safer. “Make sure you stay still,” he said. “We don’t want you getting hurt.”

He made a motion toward her. She shoved herself into the very back of the crate and snapped at him, flashing her teeth.

“Now you know better than that, don’t you?” There was no anger or fear in his response, just a relaxed tone. He was not impressed by her. He was not afraid of her either. Sierra was used to citizens treating her as if she were dangerous. The citizen who owned her had trembled every time he came into her presence. She sensed no such tremors in Master Kade.

“Put your head down and let me take this collar off you,” he instructed.

Sierra did not put her head down. She would not take her eyes off him; doing so went against every instinct she had.

She watched him and he watched her. For long moments they sized one another up, trying to work out what would happen next.

“You’re going to have to come on out of there,” he said. “I know you’re scared, but there’s really nothing to fear here.”

“I’m not scared. You should be scared,” Sierra spat back at him.

“Mm-hmm. Now you’re starting to misbehave. I don’t tolerate misbehavior. Come on out of there, Sierra. You’re not an animal and you don’t need to act like one.”

“Not an animal? That is all I am.”

“Animals don’t string together sentences the way you do. Come on out now, girl.”

He was seeing her as she had not been seen since before being trapped, looking at her with eyes that saw her not as a commodity, but as a person. Strange. Very strange. Sierra was very confused by this man.

“I’m going to help you out,” he said. “Don’t do anything silly.”

He reached into the crate. Before he could make contact with her she bit him, her teeth sinking into the fleshy part of his hand.

Nothing happened. He stared down at her, those iridescent eyes drawing her in as she sank her teeth into his flesh just shy of hard enough to draw blood. She was being cautious. He was completely unmoved; it was as if he didn’t even feel the grip of her jaw.

“So you think biting works, do you? Not here, my girl. Not here. Let go. Now.”

Sierra didn’t let go. She’d committed to the bite and usually she never let go until the citizen screamed and ran away. Master Kade didn’t seem inclined to scream and he hadn’t moved an inch. He hadn’t even moved his hand away. He was just letting her have it, demanding that she control herself. She could see the powerful set of his shoulders, the thick brawn of his arms. He could have beaten her into next week, but he didn’t seem inclined to violence.

“You have three seconds to let go,” he said. “Before your hide pays the price for this.”

She did not let go. This was the testing point. This was the defining moment that would shape their relationship. If she let go, she would be acknowledging that he controlled her. If he broke first, then she would be back to the antagonistic relationship she’d had with the citizen who claimed to own her.

“Three… two… one…”

He reached down with his other hand, clamped it around the back of her neck, and pulled her up from her hiding place with her teeth still on his hand. Sierra could not resist his grip; her muscles moved at his urging as he eased her up and out of the crate.

Master Kade did not speak again as he drew her across open ground to the bench where he had sat before, one hand on the back of her neck, the other still firmly lodged in her mouth. Neither one of them was prepared to give any quarter, it seemed. Kicking, squirming, and squealing through her teeth, Sierra did not know what his intention was, she just knew she wanted him to give way first.

It wasn’t until he sat down and used his grasp to angle her down and over his thighs that she realized she might be in some form of trouble. Giving way didn’t seem to be on his agenda; instead he held her prone body across his lap, wrapping his free arm around her waist whilst she continued to bite the other hand.

“This is going to get quite painful for you if you don’t let go,” he informed her calmly. “I don’t want to have to discipline you, Sierra, but you’re not leaving me much choice.”

Sierra didn’t listen to his words. Words were meaningless. All that mattered was the fact that she still had her toothy grip in place and he had not managed to dislodge her. She fancied she was winning.

Without further warning, Master Kade slapped her on the bottom. It was not a hard slap, but it was enough to sting. Sierra was wearing a long shirt and short shorts, both made of silk. They were the only fine things about her. The citizen had always insisted that she wear nice things so that anyone coming to visit might be able to admire her shock of violet hair and pale blue eyes. The clothing provided precisely no protection against the hard flat of his hand as it began bounding off the rounds of her cheeks with rapidly increasing intensity.

Sierra yelped around his hand and almost let go. Almost. Her mouth came off for a second as she let out an old swear word then clamped back down again.

“You don’t want this to go on much longer,” he informed her, his deep voice rumbling down at her. “It’s going to start burning, and it won’t go away any time soon either. The longer I smack your bottom, the longer you feel the effects.”

It was fair warning, but Sierra did not much appreciate it. The strong man could not be allowed to think that he could control her with his bulk, or with the striking of his hand. He had to know that she was unbreakable. Her jaw was starting to ache from the effort of sustaining the bite, and her bottom was much warmer than she liked it to be, but she persevered through the discomfort with the aim of impressing him with her resolve and puncturing him with the sharpness of her teeth. His skin was holding though. It was much tougher than the hide of most citizens, more conditioned to withstanding a bite from a wild thing.

Sierra began to squirm to try to work some of the discomfort out of her cheeks and avoid some of the slaps that seemed to land in the same place over and over by design. The motion brought with it a new sensation, something pleasant at the apex of her thighs where her barely clad body met the hard muscular length of his leg. A slow grind turned into a writhing as Master Kade picked up the pace.

The pulsing between her thighs grew with every slap, propelling her hips against his leg. She let out a small moan, which was lost in the sounds of spanking as Kade propped his thigh up a little higher and set to spanking her harder and faster.

Never before in her life had Sierra been so completely lost in a whirlwind of sensation. The slaps came with a burning heat that was not entirely pleasant, but her body was taking the pain and turning it to pleasure almost as fast as Kade could deliver each swat. This was what she had needed for a very long time, to unleash fully on someone and to be held through it. To find some hard limit that could not be trespassed against. She seemed to have found one in Master Kade.

Though she continued to bite, Kade showed no signs of wanting to reject her. With one leg wrapped around her own, he was pinning her to his body and delivering a sound thrashing. Even as the slaps rained down, Sierra felt no malice or anger in his touch. It was simply a reaction to her action, a consequence as natural as the sun in the sky—and damn near as hot.

She bucked her hips in an attempt to dissuade him, but all she succeeded in doing was tightening the muscles low in her belly and lifting her bottom to his palm. Bolts of excitement shot through her with each and every slap as he continued to spank her seemingly tirelessly.

“I think you might like this, pet,” Kade drawled as the sting set in deeper, tingling through her bottom to the hot, increasingly wet places between her thighs. The smooth silk of her attire made it easy for her to slide back and forth between his palm and his thigh, pleasuring herself in spite of the wicked burn.

Her legs began to part in an attempt to get more pressure on the rebellious bud that would not allow her to submit. It worked, but there was a price to pay. Kade found the sensitive skin of her inner thighs and began landing his slaps there, his fingers landing dangerously close to her heated pussy, which had become the focus of all her attentions. Demanding and greedy, she ground against him, not caring what he thought, hungry for the orgasm that was building under his palm.

“Eeee!” She let out a squeal as his fingers unexpectedly caught her between her legs, the sting of the tips landing across the entrance of her pussy cupped tight by the silk of her now quite rumpled garment.

“There’s not a place I won’t punish if you deserve it,” Kade purred down at her. “Especially if you present it to me.”

His hand left her bottom for a moment and she thought maybe the spanking was over, but instead he used the hand to grasp the fabric at the back of her shorts and pull up hard enough to let the silk strain taut over her pussy as her hips rose off his laps for a moment and she was more or less suspended by the fabric between her thighs.

Moaning, Sierra almost let go of her grip. She was no longer biting properly, she was almost suckling with need as Master Kade let her squirm and grind against her own gusset.

“You really are quite a prize,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want to let go?”

With the spanking at a pause, Sierra could feel the aftereffects of Kade’s discipline. It was like a hot aura around her behind, coupled with a burn that had sunk deep into her flesh and was not going to go away any time soon.

Sierra shook her head a little and he lowered her back down to resume the spanking.

“You’re stubborn. I’ll give you that,” he said as he palmed her bottom once more. “But I promise you I’m more stubborn, and I’ve been bitten by sharper fanged creatures than you before.”

His palm landed hard across her cheeks again and Sierra let out a squeal through her teeth. He was spanking her harder than before. She had not known that he could spank her harder, and she began to wonder just how hard he could actually hit. She suddenly had the impression that he had been gentle with her up to that point, and given the way her bottom felt she was deeply concerned for it if he were to stop being gentle.

If she’d had common sense she would have simply let go, but arousal was running thick in her veins, clouding her better judgment. She withstood the harder slaps, clenching her lower muscles as she ground herself shamelessly against his thigh, urging herself toward the climax that had been coming ever since he laid her over his lap.

Kade’s slaps seemed to be aimed low, against the very bottom and center of her cheeks. She would almost have thought he was spanking her there on purpose, firm swats landing one after the other in a rhythm that matched her wanton grind.

The climax came upon her in a rushing swell like no other, flooding her body from the center of her being all the way to every extremity. She trembled in Kade’s grasp, a loud and unmistakable moan escaping her as she convulsed against his body.

“Good girl.” His voice soothed her as did his palm, rubbing her bottom.

Sierra was so fuzzy from her climax that she did not know what he was praising her for at first, then she realized that the pleasure had distracted her from the bite. She had been so busy coming that her jaws had lost their grip and he had regained the unfettered use of his hand.

“If I’d known all I had to do to make you let go was make you spend yourself against me, I would have tried that first,” Kade chuckled. “A pet as responsive as you is a rare find.”

Embarrassed by her response to him and his discipline, Sierra took refuge in aggression.

“I am not a good girl!”

She tried to bite him again, but he would not allow it. Instead he took a very firm hold of the back of her neck and she felt cool steel run along her skin. A second later there was a release of pressure and the dirty old collar fell to the ground. He sheathed the knife before she could wrest it from him, but he need not have worried so much about that. Sierra jumped up from his lap, clutching at her throat as she felt the bare skin of her neck. It was tender and even the lightest brush of her own fingers made her wince.

“Don’t touch,” he said. “You have a small skin infection there by the look of things. You’ll need some medicine to clear that up.”

“I don’t want your medicine.”

“It’s not a choice.” He looked at her steadily, his gaze alert and searching. “You’re in my home now, Sierra. In my home, there is no biting,” he informed her. “In my home, pets know their place…”

He rose to his feet, towering above her by a matter of feet. He truly did seem to be impossibly tall and broad. He could have taken a bear down with his bare hands if he wanted to, or at least that’s how it seemed to Sierra. She shrank away, afraid of his imposing bearing and what threat it might hold.