Savage Impulses (4 page)

He moved away from her focusing on tending to
Tamu, ignoring her.

Furious, she stomped up, finding her corset
and fastening it again with quick, angry movements. “Hypocrite,”
Marigold snarled. “It's not like you were.”

“I never said I was,” Jake snapped. “I will
tell you that I cannot abide a liar, and you, miss, that's all that
you are.”

She was struck silent by his harsh words, and
when he boosted her up on Tamu's back again she started to cry
silently.

Mounted behind her, he gave no indication
that he had even noticed, and they started back for the ranch.

They rode back to the ranch in silence, and
then, for a small amount of time, she was alone. There were chores
to be done, she supposed, and he left her with food enough. She
ate, and then because she could never bear to be idle, she cleaned.
She cleaned the hearth, she swept, she took the homey old rugs out
and beat them.

As she worked, aware of what a sight she must
be in her disreputable finery, her rage built up and up. She was
aware of a tension and soreness between her legs. Her virginity,
something that was meant to be given to the man who would be her
mate forever, had been bought, sold and gambled away, and the grief
of it was that the man who had taken it thought she was a liar. The
thought simmered and festered.

When Jake came back through the door at dusk,
he was met with silence. If he was discomforted by it, he gave no
sign. She served him his dinner as silent as a servant, but when
the time came to put away the dishes, she couldn't restrain herself
any longer.

“I was a virgin,” she cried, slamming the
plates into the wash basin. It was a miracle that the plates didn't
break. In the silence of the prairie, it seemed that the echo of
her violent motion was very loud. “I was, damn you...” Marigold
supposed that a sweet girl would be on the verge of tears, but all
she could do was get angrier and angrier. Her face was flushed and
even she could hear a defensiveness in her tone that made her sound
like the liar he thought she was.

“You seemed to be just fine today,” Jake said
acidly, leaning back in his chair.

Insolently, his gaze raked her from head to
toe, taking in the corset that pushed up her breasts to the bare
shape of her hips and her thighs under the slowly shredding
silk.

“I thought virgins bled,” he taunted her. “I
thought they begged and pleaded...”

Something inside Marigold snapped like a dry
twig. With an angry shout, she flew at him. She knew that she
couldn't hurt him, not really, but she needed to flail at him, to
scratch at him, to batter her fists at his chest.

For a moment, he allowed it, but then he
simply wrapped one large hand around her slender wrists and pulled
her up short.

“Some restraint you've got,” he said
mockingly. “I've known whores who behaved more sweetly.”

“Do you know many?” she spat. “Is that all
you know? Is that why you don't know when you've had an honest
woman?”

He laughed, and, to her shock, he started to
drag her to his bedroom.

“I think you want more of what you got at the
watering hole,” he told her. “I just think you don't know how to
ask.”

She had been thinking about what he had done
all day. All it took was the barest ache from between her legs or
the scent of the prairie coming through the house on a sweet breeze
to make her think about it all over again. Her embarrassment was
revealed in the red flush of her cheeks.

He laughed out loud. “I can tell that it is.
I think what the little hellcat needs is a lesson in restraint.” He
tossed her onto his bed.

It was a wide four poster, a piece of
furniture that was at odds with his Spartan lodgings otherwise.
That was all that she caught before he threw her on her stomach
onto the yielding mattress. She struggled to get up, but, before
she could, he was on top of her, pressing her down and making sure
that she felt the length of his hard body against her back. She
could already feel the bulge of his cock as he nudged it gently
against her buttocks.

“Against all wisdom, I like you,” he muttered
in her ear. “You've got spirit and God above knows you've got
beauty. You're one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, and
I've been all over this country.”

Almost against her will, she felt herself
warming to his praise. She had heard whistles and lewd comments
about her body since she was a girl, but the sincerity in his voice
struck her deep in her heart. Some part of her had always wanted to
hear those words whispered in just this way.

“But I will
not
tolerate liars,” Jake
hissed. “Liars have been the bane of my life since I was a child,
and beautiful women, I have found, are among the worst.”

That only sparked her anger again. Futilely,
she bucked up against him, groaning through gritted teeth. She
never even budged him, however.

He laughed at her struggles. “If I didn't
manage to teach you anything this morning, you can be damn sure
that I am going to teach you something tonight.”

There was something so menacingly enticing
about his words that she went still.

He laughed again. Even with the thread of
cruelty through it, she thought that she could become accustomed to
how sweet it sounded in her ear. That was before he slid his hand
over her rear.

There was no longer any pain at all on her
rear, but he didn't seem intent on smacking her again. Instead, he
squeezed her round buttock gently, making her purr with
pleasure.

Still keeping the skirt between their skin,
he went between her legs. After a little bit of careful
exploration, his silk-clad fingers found their way between the
folds of her drawers.

She moaned to feel him through the soft
fabric. There might as well have been nothing between them, and to
her humiliation, she realized that she was soaking the fabric
around his fingers. She couldn't help it. Every touch of this man's
fingers made her want more, and she couldn't do anything but
thrash.

When he withdrew his fingers, his laugh was a
little more hoarse.

She could tell that she affected him as
strongly as he affected her, and there was something entrancing
about it. He could do things to her, he could make her sigh and cry
and moan, but even as he did, she was holding him in thrall. It was
a power of a sort, but before she could think anymore about it, he
pulled back.

“Take your clothes off. You won't like what
happens if you make me do it, miss.”

She knelt up, not looking at him. As she
undid her corset, something occurred to her.

“Marigold,” she said stiffly. “My name is
Marigold Morgan,” she supplied archly. For a moment, she thought
that he was going to laugh at her again. For some reason, that
would have hurt worse than the spanking she'd received. She braced
herself in anticipation of it, but his answer was gentle.

“Marigold,” he echoed. “It's a fine name. I
am glad to know it.”

There was something almost courtly about his
behavior, as if they had been introduced at some fine lady's party
or a church picnic, and it almost made Marigold laugh. He had just
learned her name, he was even being sweet about, and right now, she
was shimmying her drawers and her stockings down and folding them
across the single chair in the room.

She started to turn to him to see what he
wanted next, but he kept her turned from him.

“You have no idea what kind of effect you
have on me, Marigold,” he said softly. “You drive me out of my head
and you make me want... well, never mind what I want.”

Before she could question him further, she
found herself pressed down hard on the mattress again. She couldn't
predict this man at all. Perhaps that should have frightened her,
but it only served to thrill her instead.

“I think I should be very afraid of you,” he
growled. “I think a good man has a great deal to fear from a woman
as beautiful as you, don't you think?” He held her down with a knee
pressed to the small of her back and reached for a few lengths of
rope that were hanging on the wall close to the bed.

She moaned softly as he wrapped a few loops
of rope around her wrist and hauled her arm out flat. Before she
could struggle up, he had tied that arm flat to the bed by lashing
it to one of the posts then he straddled her and repeated the
process with each of her other three limbs until she was roped to
the bed. He stuffed a pillow under her hips, lifting her rear up in
the air, and then he stepped back.

“Now that's just beautiful,” he said.

“What, a helpless woman?” she retorted.

Instead of being angry, he only laughed.

“Careful, Marigold,” he said, saying her name
with surprising love. “I can rope you down like a calf, and I can
gag you, too.”

Before she could think of a response to make
to that, his hand was tangled in her hair, massaging her scalp
roughly before trailing down her back. She had never understood
before that her back could be so sensitive, and that was before he
even raked his blunt nails down her flanks, making her yelp.

“That didn't hurt,” he laughed.

When she thought about it, she realized he
was right. She tried to twist her head to see what he was doing,
but he had tied her too well. She could turn her head to lie it
flat on the mattress, but that was all she could do, lay down and
experience the sensations he was giving her.

She squirmed as he ran his fingernails over
her back and her flanks, and then she gasped when she felt
something sharp prickle its way over her bare skin.

“That's a spur,” he told her. “My brother
gave them to me, but you know, I could never bear to wear them when
I rode Tamu.”

“Why- why not?” Marigold gasped as the sharp
prickles trailed across her back to run over the insanely sensitive
skin at the side of her breast. When she tried to roll even a
little to protect herself, it only exposed her flank to the second
spur, which had even more access to her body than the first one
had.

“Because Tamu is clever. She's a fine mare
who learns after only being told once, and she responds to a word
or a whistle. She's never been so headstrong that she needs spurs
dug into her side.”

On the last word, he pressed the spurs a
little deeper into her flesh. She knew that it wasn't deep enough
to draw blood or even to do more than to make her cry out, but it
was startling to her nonetheless.

“You're very lucky with your horse.”

Jake made an approving sound, and then he ran
the spurs from her shoulders to the curve of her rear, leaving two
tingling tracks in their wake.

“I am,” he agreed. “I don't seem to have
gotten as lucky with my woman.”

She might have protested being called his
woman, but then he was moving down her body. The spurs, which had
been just shy of unbearable on her back, became something more
pleasurable but also more maddening as he ran them over the insides
her thighs. He ran them down to her knees and then up again, and
she held her breath as he brought them achingly close to her sex,
which was already humiliatingly wet for him.

“You love a little bit of pain with your
pleasure,” he said softly. “Are you one of the women who need
it?”

She whimpered, but a memory flashed through
her mind, one so vivid that it was like she was there again.

“What?”

When she made no reply, he dug the spurs a
little more harshly into her hips.

She cried out, bucking up helplessly.

“I asked you a question,” he said, all silky
menace. “You're beginning to see what happens to spoiled little
mares who don't obey, aren't you?”

Marigold remained still, but she could
imagine him narrowing his dark eyes at her silence.

“Was it a memory of a past lover?” he asked
sharply.

“I didn't have one,” she said indignantly,
but that only earned her a brisk slap to the rear. She had been
wrong when she thought that there was no pain left. The sharp slap
woke up the pain there, bringing back a hot echo of what it had
felt like to be turned over the fence and swatted.

She whimpered, but it took a second sharp
prod with the spurs before she could finally speak.

“It... it was when I was working as a
charwoman at one of the inns in Bristol,” she managed. “I spent all
day going up and down the stairs, carrying buckets, changing
sheets, and seeing to things.”

“Seeing to things... like the men there?”

“No!” she cried furiously. “It was a clean
place, and, believe it or not, I was a good woman, or at least I
was before I came to America. Now do you want to hear me or
no?”

“I do,” he said.

She wondered if there was something contrite
about the way he said it. Perhaps he was beginning to believe her
protestations of virtue, but she doubted it. “One day, I was going
up and I heard.. I heard some people talking. It was a man and a
woman, and they were engaging in.. in...”

“They were fucking,” Jake guessed.

When she nodded, he rewarded her with a
gentle finger traced from the curve of her ass down to her slit. He
toyed with the wetness there for a moment, making her sigh and
moan.

“Keep going,” he said.

Marigold thought that there was something
soft and husky about his voice now, and she swallowed hard. “They
were fucking,” she repeated. “They... I could hear them, him on top
of her and their bodies slamming together. She was yelling like
anything, telling him that she would fair kill him if he stopped,
that she would die if he stopped.”

“A good woman,” Jake said with approval. “Was
that what caught your attention, dear?”

She shook her head, or at least she shook her
head as much as she could from the position she was in. Though it
had alarmed her at first, now she was startled to realize how
comfortable it had become. There was something that called to her
about lying stretched out for the gaze of this man, something that
warmed her and excited her, and it didn't hurt that his skilled
fingers were tracing along the lips of her wet slit with loving
care.