“I don’t want it!”
“Liar,” he chuckles.
SMACK
Again, the leather whips across my skin. Every time it lands, my resistance crumbles a little more. He knows. Somehow, he knows. I don’t understand how. This part of me has been secret forever, but a few minutes with Orion and he sees right through me.
I’m not going to be able to resist him. He’s going to extract every bit of sense from me and turn it into sensuality. I can feel moans rising inside me, my hips rolling in a carnal way as the belt lands with that slow, deliberate rhythm, one that will break me in the end — one I want to break me.
My fingers claw at non-existent sheets. My back arches. I present myself for Orion’s punishment, because it is what I deserve.
“You can trust me,” he lies.
I can’t trust anyone. Certainly not a man who has his reputation as an outlaw. The heat sinking through my flesh, finding the soft, tender parts of me, that’s going to become a hellfire soon, but my body doesn’t care.
SMACK
A harder snap of the belt reminds me there is still more power to be unleashed.
He thinks this is a battle of wills, but the truth is, I can’t say what happened to me. If I tell him, he’ll know that I’m both worthless and worth way too much. But there is a limit to what my body can take, and I think we both know I am approaching it now. If he were to drop that belt a little, rub it between my thighs, the leather would come away soaked with my juices. I’m the sort of wet and willing that gets a girl into trouble.
But Orion doesn’t take advantage. I might be writhing around like a cat in heat, but he wants answers, and he keeps that belt working against my rear until I finally gasp in compliance.
“Alright, mister! I’ll tell you what you want to know!”
“You will, will you?”
He lets the leather rest against my cheeks, a warning I guess not to lie to him. I’m not going to lie. I can tell he’s capable of stripping everything away from me, and I don’t see the point in holding back anymore.
Orion
God. She is gorgeous. Her ass is a beautiful glowing red, those cheeks of hers marked so thoroughly with my belt I know she’s not going to sit comfortably in the near future. It’d be easy to give into lust and shove myself between those thighs, but I’m not the kind of man who deflowers virgins in filthy saloon rooms, and frankly, her state of arousal seems to be the only thing keeping her compliant. Soon as she gets any kind of release, I’m betting she’ll be back to her old defiant ways. I’m keeping her on the edge of tears and orgasm at the same time, but she’s too damn innocent to know it.
“Tell me why you were on those tracks.”
“I woke up this morning being tied down by the man I married yesterday. He must have put something in my food. Made me pass out. When I woke up, I was on those tracks. He was tying me down.”
Her husband did this to her? No wonder she’s so full of rage and betrayal.
“He didn’t say nothing? He didn’t tell you why he was putting you there?”
“Oh, I knew why he was putting me there. He only married me so he could get his hands on what belongs to my Pa.”
“Hell,” I curse under my breath. If this story is true, she’s had one of the worst days I’ve heard about in a while. “Sit up girl. Put your britches back in order. We need to talk about this.”
She reaches back and snugs the rough canvas pants up over her flaming cheeks. I’m sorry to lose the view, but some things are more important than lechery.
“You know, once we got you off those rails, you were awful calm for a woman who was just betrayed by her husband that way. And you’re an awful good shot for someone who was living a normal colonial life until this morning.”
“It pays to be a good shot out here, no matter who you are,” she says. That’s true enough. Every man, woman and child knows how to shoot straight out here. It’s the difference between staying alive and being someone’s dinner. But the way she took aim and hit that bastard right between the eyes, that’s another level of good shooting. That’s readiness to kill, and you don’t get that from nothing but a lifetime of pain.
“There’s good shooting and there’s the kind of shooting you did.”
“It was a straight shot at less than twenty feet. It wasn’t a hard shot.”
“Practically point-blank,” I agree. “But that’s the sort of shooting most don’t have the stomach for.”