Nowhere Ranch (20 page)

I shouted and slammed at gates, pushing deeper and deeper into the ranch. Past the barn, out into the pens we had sorted the pregnant ewes into. I didn't even check on them. I just kept going. There was this whisper gnawing on me, asking me where the fuck I thought I was going, but that just made my chest tighter, and I shook my head, clenched my teeth and whispered, “Nowhere. I ain't going nowhere.”

Then I realized I was already there. I was such shit I fucked up nowhere.

I started to run. I ran past the sheep, past the horses, all the way out toward the cattle wintering pasture, past it all, past the road Travis took for his rides and headed out into the hayfields. I had no fucking plan and no coat and nowhere to go, so I just ran. I ran from the past and from the pain I had set myself up for the second I'd walked into that bar in Rapid City. I ran and ran and ran and ran. I ran until my lungs were burning and my legs were wet and screaming and my hands and ears were numb. I ran until I fell down into the snow, and then I stayed there on my hands and knees, staring at the snow while that voice and everything in me ran around in a panic, wondering, what now? What now? What now?

And then I heard the snort of a horse and the muffled sound of hoofbeats against snow.

I didn't turn around, didn't even get up off my hands and knees even though my skin was burning from the snow. Actually, it was starting to feel warm. I was relieved and panicked that he'd followed me, but I still didn't know what to do, so I stayed there and waited.

He hauled me to my feet by the belt loop of my pants, and he grabbed my arms and turned me hard to face him. I looked up at him, dizzy and scared. For a second I thought he was going to kiss me, angry and hard. Something soft broke and leaped forward inside of me, silently begging him to.

But then he swore, yanked off his coat, and wrapped it around me.

He put his gloves on me too, and his hat. When I tried to tell him not to, that he'd be cold, his eyes got mean, and he made this really garbled furious noise, and I shut up. “On the horse,” he ground out and hoisted me up onto Chaucer. Then he came up after me.

We rode in silence back to the house. I moved as little as possible, and I kept my eyes on the pommel. I was aware of blue night all around me, and I felt him shiver, and I shivered too, but I kept still as much as I could. I didn't do much more than breathe until we were back in the barn. I kept still until he helped me down.

He fucking tied me to a bolt on the wall.

He took my hands in his, and I held still because I thought he was going to say something to me, but the next thing I knew, he had rope wrapped around and between my wrists, and then my hands were up above my head as he cinched me up good.

“Hey!” I shouted, and then he gave me a look of fury, and I shut up and held still again.

He said nothing else, just let me hang there while he saw to Chaucer. He fucking took his time too. But he was still pissed, because when he came back to me, he still wouldn't look at me. He cut me down, but he didn't untie me, just grabbed the end of the rope and led me like a calf back to the house.

The dogs were barking at the door, but Travis told them to go lie down, and they did, going silent in a way they rarely did. They looked at me nervously, but I just gave them a nod and tried to show I was okay.

I hoped I was.

He led me to the basement.

I had mentioned I'd found the locked room in the basement and eventually gotten into it. In the time between that first tour and the night he found his presents, I had gotten several other and much more intimate tours of it.

I thought of it as the sex room. It wasn't very big, and it was clean and nice, but yeah. It was a sex room all right. That was where that fuck bench had come from, and it wasn't the only one. We'd had many a kinky night in the sex room. God, the toys. One of my favorites was this impaler thing. He'd chain my wrists and ankles, and then he'd put me on the impaler. I held on to the sides so I didn't fall over, but my legs were spread and I was standing over this probe thing. It went up your ass, which is fine, but it is deliberately set a little too high. When you're on your tiptoes, it's okay, but if you relax your legs, it starts to get uncomfortable. Doesn't hurt you, just rubs you not quite the right way. Travis would put me in this thing, then sit in front of me and ask me all sorts of dumbshit questions, usually about sheep or cows or who had been in at the cafe that week when he'd gone for lunch, which he always did no matter what I left out for sandwiches. And the game was I pretended I wasn't being impaled. Eventually though he'd ask what was wrong, and then I had to tell him, graphically, about the thing in my ass. Then he would ask me what I'd rather have in there, and he'd show me all sorts of fucked-up implements. He wouldn't let me off the impaler until I said yes to at least three. And he picked up some scary shit, usually on purpose. He
always
picked up a baseball bat, because he'd seen me freak out at one of the movies when that had gone up somebody's ass. He was never going to use it on me, we both knew that, but he liked to toy with me. And I liked being toyed with. It worked out.

But tonight was different. Tonight he was angry, and I was all fucked up. And I was coming down the stairs already tied up. Warning bells were going off in my head, different ones than the ones which had been clanging since he'd shown up in the kitchen with the box. These were deeper, from a place that had stayed calmer through all that, but it wasn't calm now. That place was saying, firmly and clearly,
Maybe this isn't such a good idea.

There are rules about playing. I break the one about don't be drunk a lot. I learned my lesson about being high, and I keep that one. But the big one is you don't do it pissed off at the other person. You don't play around with punishment stuff when you're actually angry. I guess I could see it in a relationship where you were okay and it was the way you dealt with a fuckup or misunderstanding. But we were fighting
about
the relationship. Or whatever this was. This was a bad, bad time to play pony or puppy or anything at all.

I was working up to say something when Travis turned around, slid a pocketknife through the binding of the rope, and let the pieces fall to the floor. I was standing just inside the door, and he turned away from me, walked across the room, sat in his chair and looked at me.

“Take off your clothes and sit on the bench.”

He waited.

I did too. That deep voice was really going at me now.
Turn. Go. Get out. Leave. Leave now. Go, get in your car, and go
. It made a good argument. Except I couldn't seem to move. I just stared at Travis, sitting deep in his chair. He wasn't going to get up and come after me. If I left, he'd let me. Somehow I knew that without being told. And I could tell too that if I said no and stood there, he wouldn't argue. That was still my “safe word.” But it wasn't even needed. He'd given me an order, but he was waiting to see if I accepted it.

We weren't playing. Yet. He was, in his way, asking if I wanted to.

I can't tell you why I didn't turn and go. That voice was still carrying on, and I knew,
knew
this was not what you were supposed to do, but I couldn't look away from his face, and I couldn't go. And some deeper part of me that didn't have words but knew how to move my body rose up, carried me forward, took off my clothes, sat me on the bench, and kept me there until he rose and came over to me.

I wanted him to give me sex. I wanted him to open his fly and give me his cock. I wanted him to kiss me, lick me, fuck me, suck me. I wanted to pretend this hadn't happened. I wanted him to make it go away.

He gave me none of it. He just reached for a paddle, held it up, and asked, “How many do you want?”

It wasn't a command. It was like he was holding out cupcakes, asking how many I wanted. Like I could say I didn't care for any, thank you.

I swallowed hard, and then I said, “Four.”

Nodding, he stepped back and gestured to the spanking bench. I shook a little as I walked over to it and knelt in place, but though I put my ankles and wrists against the restraints, he didn't close them. He just waited until I was settled, then touched my lower back so I knew where he was.

“Ready?” he asked. I nodded.

The first hit came down.

Paddles feel like blows. Like you should be shooting across the room, which is why, actually, you need the restraints. It was hard to not have them now. Not only did my whole body jerk and rattle as my ass bloomed into flame, but I felt like I was going to fall. After the second one, I summoned up enough breath to rasp, “Please tie me down.”

He did, but the loops were so loose that it wouldn't take much for me to get out, and they weren't fastened. I got the message. He wanted me to be able to go. But they kept me in place enough to receive the last two. My ass blazed. My body shook. But when he lowered the paddle, I felt empty.

“More, please,” I whispered.

“How many?” His voice was both dispassionate and kind at once. It was strange.

“Four.”

He delivered them with patience and skill, and I counted them out. My whole body pulsed when he finished. I didn't feel empty, but I didn't feel okay, either.

“More, please.”

This time he hesitated.

“Please,” I said again. “Just four more.”

He didn't gentle them, but there was less urgency about these. The first four had been angry. The second four had bled his tension out of him. These were for me. But between blows, he touched the small of my back again. Asking me to please be done.

Either twelve was the right number or the touch pushed me over the edge. In any event, when he finished the last one and lowered the paddle, all I said was, “Thank you, Travis.”

I had meant to say “sir,” but his name has slipped out. It made his hand come down again, and he stroked me lovingly. Then he set the paddle down on a table and came to crouch down in front of me. He looked tired. And sad.

“You never ask me about Riley,” he said. “You only did that once.”

Shrugging is hard when you're strapped to a spanking bench, but I did my best. “Not my business.”

That was supposed to be polite, but it seemed to wound him. “Why isn't it your business?”

I sensed a trap, but I couldn't read him properly. I faltered. “He was with you before. Nothing I know about it changes anything between us.”

Oh, and here he was, pissed again. “The same way your family treating you like dog shit doesn't change anything between us?”

I tried to jerk up at that, but of course now I was restrained. I frowned instead. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“What the fuck is you saying everything you do is shit supposed to mean? What is this crap about you being shit? Is
that
what you think of me? That I'd share my life like this with someone I thought was shit?”

In the trap. Fucking in the center of the trap, and if I moved, it would close. I tugged at the straps again, forgetting that if I turned my hand I could undo them. “I meant that you shouldn't get pissed off that I don't want to—” I was going to say, “give you my garbage,” but I caught myself in time. I let out a frustrated sigh. “I am not as good as you or anybody else. Okay? I get that. I always have. Everybody's just too nice to—” I broke off. This wasn't coming out like I meant.

His eyebrow went up. “Call you a piece of shit to your face?” He had been joking, but when I lowered my head, embarrassed, he reached out and lifted my chin. I gave in and looked at him again. He was surprised. “You really mean it. You really do think you're garbage compared to other people.” When I tried to turn my head away from him, he held my chin fast. “Roe. Monroe Harold Davis. You are not a piece of shit. You are not garbage. You are not less than anybody. In fact, I think you're probably better than most people I know. I know for a fact you're a better person that me.”

I jerked hard away from him and pulled hard on the straps until they hurt. “Stop! Stop!
No
!”

The word echoed in the room. I'd never used it here. Never used it with him at all, not in a game. Not in sex. Not to tell him to quit.

I said it again. “No.
No
. No, no, no! Let me out! Let me go! Let me
go
!”

“You can undo the straps. They aren't tight.” But he reached forward and undid first one hand and then the other just the same. “Except I'm not playing, Roe. And you can't toss a safe word at me when I'm telling you that you aren't crap. You don't get to tell me no when I'm telling you that I care about you. You don't get to say stop when—”

“I love you.”

It took me a few seconds to realize that had been me that had spoken, that I'd said that. Out loud. To him. Now. Fucking now, here with me naked over a bench, after I screamed at him for telling me I wasn't garbage. I hadn't even said that to myself, that I loved him. I didn't even really know it myself until then.

I panicked. I tried to push back to my knees, but my arms wouldn't move. I looked at Travis, who was just staring at me, looking... I don't know. Just looking. Looking weird. I panicked more.

“I love you,” I said again.

I felt small. I didn't ache or hurt—outside of my ass—but I felt so small. Like a slight wind could knock me over. Like it could make me dissolve and fly away, up and out and over the fields. I didn't say it again. I barely breathed. I just waited. Waited for him to speak. To move. To kiss me. To touch my face. To tell me he loved me too. Something. Anything.

He sat back on his heels. “Riley ran.”

Okay, to say something that wasn't that.

“Riley ran,” he said again. “I went down to Grand Island to pick up a part for a tractor. When I left, he was sulking in bed. When I came back, half the house was cleaned out, and there was a note on the kitchen table. All it said was, ‘Since you hate my drama, I won't put you through an exit scene. Best of luck with the ranch.’ And he signed his name. And that was it. No number. No address. He'd changed his e-mail and his cell phone. If I wanted to be a stalker, I could maybe track him down through the university, but that wasn't the point. He wasn't trying to hide from me. He was giving me ‘quiet’ like I always told him I needed. My space. Space without him in it. And he did it that way because he knew it would hurt. He knew I'd have to explain to people. Knew it would hurt me. And it did. I lied to you. I did want him around. I did love him. At least, I wanted to. I loved the idea of a partner out here in Nowhere. It hurt to have the one I'd chosen leave, especially like that.”