Today’s my blog day and I didn’t have a clue what to say until I read Samantha’s post. So I decided to post a little from the first chapter of a piece I just finished and am now editing with the help of the butterscotch martini girls…
This piece is going to Triskelion, since they wanted me to do a cowboy shape shifter. I struggled with it as a long manuscript, but as a short story, it flew out my computer.
Chapter One
Manacles? Rachel stared in disbelief at the leather and metal shackles attached to a steel frame. The dim light coming from the doorway made her squint for a better look. Did she dare turn on a light?
“Do you see anything interesting?” Ray Wilde stood in the doorway, which led into the stock compartment of the fifth-wheel horse-trailer.
Rachel tensed. She had no business in his tack room, especially no business seeing this contraption. “I heard you like to control your women, but isn’t this excessive?”
She considered leaving and tamped down the urge to walk away without getting what she needed from him. Maybe the cost for learning the truth would be more than she could physically or emotionally pay. However, this might be her only chance to unearth answers about her missing sister from one of the two known sources.
“I can honestly say I’ve never had any complaints.” He reached to the wall to touch the leather binding.
Rachel and her best friend, Pam, had plied him with alcohol all night in the hopes he’d invite Rachel to his trailer for some alone time. Did she have the guts to see it through even if it meant sex? Or had she just wanted an excuse to sleep with him? She’d wanted him long before she discovered the truth about him and his complicity in Sarah’s disappearance.
“Why so quiet? You want something from me…I know that much. You and your friend weren’t exactly subtle.” He leaned in nearer to her, but held back like a man who didn’t like to get too close to anyone. Dark angles, dark hair and firm muscles invaded her space. At least in the dim light of the trailer, his eyes weren’t the pale, almost colorless hazel that mesmerized her earlier in the bar. The man turned heads, whether on the back of a rank bull or walking by his lonesome through a crowded room. He wasn’t the handsomest man in the world, but he gave that distinct impression, and then some.
“Maybe I just want your bod. It’s all about meeting someone new for me, the initial attraction. I’m like a junkie and crave the delicious spark of getting together with someone I’ve never been with. It makes for unforgettable sex.” In this case, she could almost believe her ridiculous statement. He was tall for a bull-rider, well over six feet and on the lean and lanky side. The fact he went eight seconds more often than not, attested to his strength.
“That must make it hell on your boyfriends.”
“Having a boyfriend would be counter-productive. I only get the rush, the heart-pounding, palms-sweating, warm-all-over feeling when I’m with someone I’ve never been with before.” Rachel told a half-truth. She had all of that and more for bull-rider, Ray Wilde. However, as a rule, she didn’t do one-night-stands. Until tonight, that is.
Ray picked up the leather manacle dangling from a heavy chain. “And you’re interest in becoming my love-slave for the night.”
Rachel could tell by the sarcasm in his voice, he didn’t believe her. Did she have the courage to agree? She held an arm toward him. Hell, yes!
He sucked for air as if she’d punched him. “Before you go too far, take a closer look around. These walls are steel reinforced too. What if I chained you and didn’t let you go?”
He flipped a switch on the ceiling. The small light receptacle didn’t offer much illumination, but enough. Not only were the walls made of steel, there were a second set of manacles on the floor for her ankles. He’d told the truth. Once he put them on her, she’d never get out of them on her own. She dropped her arm.
Ray chuckled and gave her backbone a nudge. Rachel raised her hand a second time.
“I may’ve had too much to drink. I think I’m hallucinating. I didn’t figure you for the kind of woman who’d summit so easily.”
“Trust me, I’m not.”
“All the better,” he said.
Why did those words and the inflection in his voice worry her so much?
Ray reached up to flip the light off. Only the light from the door leading into the tiny bathroom kept them from complete darkness. The living-quarters in Ray’s horse-trailer would be far more comfortable than the tack room, but she’d already seen it and it was nothing like this. If Ray was into bondage and domination, Rachel needed to know how far he’d take the game. Could that have been what happened to her sister?
“What if I scream? Could someone hear me?”
He paused to give her a dark look. “If they were close enough to the trailer…maybe. Are you afraid I’ll hurt you?”
“I thought dom’s get off making their submissives fear them?”
“So you’re saying you want me to scare you? Lady, be careful for what you wish. This time, you just might get it, in spades.” He took her hand in his. The thick calluses on his palms gave her goosebumps. He had strong hands, the kind she liked on a man…the kind she liked touching her naked body.
Instead of binding her right away, he ran his other hand up her other arm and stopped to circle her neck. “Are you sure you want this?”
With his thumb at the front of her throat, he more than likely knew she’d gulped at his question. “Yes, I want it.”
When he brought his other hand up to her throat, she nearly pulled away. Then he began to undo her scarf. Strange place to start undressing her.
“I’m using this to blindfold you.” He removed her scarf and tied it around her head to cover her eyes.
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