The Stallion (14 page)

She drank in the feel and the smell of him. Then she detected another smell, then the sound of a twig snapping. She started. The faint aroma of expensive tobacco carried on the breeze.

‘My, my, Stephen. You really are quite a stallion. And you, Miss Bennet, are quite a mare!’ Penny, still naked except for her crumpled white blouse – which she pulled on hastily – spun round and found herself face to face with Nadine. A half-smoked cheroot hung from the corner of the tall woman’s lips.

It was difficult not to blush. But Nadine had a bold look about her. There was a sneer around her mouth. The pale grey eyes stared and made no apology for so doing.

Penny glanced over at Stephen. He was already getting dressed, though not rushing it.

Penny bent down and picked up her clothes, aware at the same time of the scent of sex upon her and the glistening droplets of her own bodily secretions that clung to her nest of pubic hair. She was also aware of Nadine eyeing her naked belly and thighs. They glittered with undisguised pleasure and more than a hint of desire.

Stephen went silently, as though his service had indeed been done and there was no need for him to stay.

Nadine folded her arms across her chest. Penny reached for the rest of her clothes.

‘Never mind your clothes.’

Penny froze and clutched her shirt around her. Her breeches dangled from one hand. Nervously she glanced towards the gap in the trees.

‘But there are people around. What if they should . . . ’

‘See you . . .?’ Nadine’s eyebrows arched in the manner of an old-fashioned headmistress. ‘It didn’t worry you just then. Why should it worry you now?’ Her voice was hard; hollow, even. Her sneer only half-disturbed her face.

Penny shivered. Passion induces heat, but spent passion tends to leave one feeling cold, she thought, especially if it has been spent outdoors. Goose bumps were erupting all over her body.

Penny held Nadine’s gaze for just a moment of defiance before she remembered all that was at stake and lowered them. But the wager and her place with the Beaumont team was not the only reason Penny lowered her eyes. Just the fact that Nadine was here, that she had spoken, was enough to crush Penny’s spirit and to make her feel as though her will was not her own and neither was her body. Strangely enough, the combination in her character of sensuality and the desire to please added an odd thrill to the experience. Even now, with Nadine eyeing her naked pussy, she wanted to show her more, wanted her to
do
more.

‘I’m getting cold,’ she said at last and shivered.

Nadine ignored her comment, but seemed pleased to see her suffering.

‘You do not mix professional considerations with pleasure. Never!’ barked Nadine. She swung a silver-headed cane against her side as she spoke. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

Penny bit her lip, her eyes still studying the ground, before she got up the courage to answer. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think a little lovemaking in a wood would affect my performance. After all, I had finished my round. I know I’ve got a place, but the presentation isn’t until four . . . ’

‘Then you’d better get dressed.’

Penny lifted one leg to pull on her breeches.

‘But first,’ said Nadine suddenly, her hand gripping Penny’s shoulder, ‘you deserve a little punishment. Just a little tingling to remind you as you ride in the jump-off that you must concentrate. I think that would be a good idea. Don’t you?’

Nadine’s smile was full of teeth and stiffly held.

Penny trembled beneath Nadine’s cold gaze. A rope seemed to knot in her stomach and a tingling centred in a warm spot between her legs. She knew she had no choice but to accept this punishment. Both Nadine and Penny’s own yearnings required it.

Still shivering, she let her clothes drop to the ground and trembled like a flower beneath Nadine’s gaze as her eyes strayed to the tangle of rich, dark pubic hair that graced the top of Penny’s thighs. Nadine sucked in her breath between her teeth. She tilted her head to one side as her eyes travelled up to Penny’s face then back to the clutch of curls.

‘What a pretty pussy!’ she said in a light and sing-song voice that hardly seemed to belong to her. ‘In fact, I think it is quite the prettiest one I have ever seen.’ Her eyes were half-shaded by the broad brim of her hat, but Penny knew they were devouring each nipple before sliding with intimate familiarity over each curve.

Penny glanced briefly at her own soft silky pubes gently blowing with the breeze. She didn’t say anything, but a chill excitement was sending shivers of apprehension down her spine and over her skin. Nadine had power over her, and Nadine
would
chastise. To her own surprise, her body was responding. It was almost as though it were no longer hers, but was floating along on some never-ending stream in dreamlike fantasy. Nadine was in charge of most things at Beaumont Place. For the first time since her arrival, Penny realised that Nadine was also in charge of her.

‘Lovely!’ Nadine exclaimed with a sigh. ‘But ripe for punishment.’ With her silver-topped riding cane, Nadine pointed at the fallen tree trunk.

Adopting meekness, head bowed and her arms still wrapped around her chest, Penny walked to the tree trunk and placed her hands on the rough bark, bottom in the air, just as she had with Stephen. Her sex was tingling, her heart racing.

‘No,’ said Nadine sternly. ‘Full-length along the log.’

‘But it’s rough,’ Penny protested, looking up at Nadine as though she truly disbelieved what she was telling her. But Nadine was smiling; she knew it was rough. She would take pleasure from knowing that Penny’s softness was lying on that coarse trunk. And Penny would take pleasure from it, too, enjoying the favour that was disguised as punishment; the pain that could so easily be pleasure.

Nadine’s smile was faint and her eyes glittered. She said nothing. Again she pointed at the log. Her mouth returned to the hard line it had been before.

Penny eyed the hard, dry bark before she obeyed and lay herself full-length along the trunk. Just as she had supposed, the bark was rough against her breasts and belly. There was a knot of wood where a small branch had once been. Nadine manhandled her body as though she were made of rags, until the protruding knot of wood was pressing pleasurably between Penny’s legs.

‘Legs astride,’ ordered Nadine in a clear, dictatorial voice.

Penny’s breathing quickened as Nadine’s cane tapped at
each
leg then pushed in between them so they divided and fell either side of the log. Now the knot of wood was pressing a very familiar spot and that spot was reacting in a very familiar way. Penny held her breath and swallowed the moan of pleasure. A pleasurable response was something she would need to hold on to, to store and use to counteract the stinging burn she knew was to come.

Peering through her tangle of flying hair, Penny could see Nadine gloating with pleasure as her eyes and her silver-topped cane ran over her naked back and trembling buttocks. The breeze now blew unabated around her open cleft, which Nadine appeared to be studying with avid interest, prodding the cane against the soft lips and open portal. The cane tapped each buttock. Penny tensed. Then it tapped against her open portal, which was already moist with a new yearning.

‘A very pretty pussy.’ Nadine said the words as though she were purring them, delighting in pushing the cane close up against her vulva and between the cheeks of her bottom. ‘But it won’t get you off,’ Nadine suddenly added sternly. ‘You deserve punishment for fouling that jump, and punishment is what you will get. And I’m the one to give it to you. Am I right?’

Penny’s own hair blew across her face. Her hands gripped the log.

‘Yes,’ she murmured, lacing her words with fear and impatience rather than the longing she really felt.

‘Say it louder, pretty pussy,’ said Nadine in a mocking voice, her cane tapping an arousing rhythm against Penny’s damp sex.

‘Yes!’ Penny cried.

‘Good,’ said Nadine slowly. ‘Good.’ And the cane tapped her sex again before Nadine raised it and placed a stinging blow across Penny’s buttocks.

Penny gasped. Her fingers gripped clawlike at the rough bark;
almost
as if someone had pressed a button, her nipples swelled against the rough, dry wood.

Her bottom stung and burned with the kiss of the cane. Her pelvis had pushed down with the blow. Her mons had pressed harder against the knot of wood just as Nadine had reckoned. In turn, her hidden bud had burst into bloom, sensing that another orgasm could be had.

‘That was just a test,’ Nadine said suddenly. ‘I will give you six. You will count them. Are you ready?’

‘Yes,’ answered Penny, a glow of tingling delight spreading upwards from her willing thighs, though her voice trembled, ‘I’m ready.’

‘Good,’ Nadine purred. ‘Then we shall begin.’

The air swished as the cane fell.

‘One!’ cried Penny as her buttocks clenched and stung beneath the blow. The knot of wood firmly kissed her secret rosebud, and her rosebud responded.

‘One,’ repeated Nadine.

The air swished again. Penny gasped again. Her bottom began to glow. The rough bark beneath her scratched her naked flesh.

‘Two!’ she cried. The smooth knot of wood delved more deeply against her brazen clitoris.

‘Two,’ Nadine repeated.

Again the cane flew threw the air. Now she was almost wishing for its stinging caress and for the pelvic movement that accompanied it. She pressed herself more firmly against the protruding knot of the tree-trunk.

Just as she had wished, it came again. Her buttocks quivered, warmed beneath the burning touch.

‘Three!’ she exclaimed, and felt the fires of orgasm spreading through her loins and homing in on that very sensitive spot that was pressed so tightly to the tree knot.

‘Three,’ Nadine repeated, then ran the coldness of her long
fingers
over the burning flesh of Penny’s reddening bottom. ‘How hot your bottom is, my pretty pussy. How pink it is, and how it will tingle when you ride in the ring again. How it will remind you to concentrate. But I will take care of you. I will finish this punishment, then I will punish you again later. And then I will soothe your burning flesh. I will rub cream into you, soothe your aching muscles and ease your tired limbs.’

The cool hand patted each buttock as if it were a pet animal, twin pink lap-dogs that quivered at the coldness of her fingers and her voice.

Penny had held her rising need in suspension and swallowed her deep murmurs of pleasure as Nadine’s hands fondled her buttocks. Now, as she heard the swish of the cane again, she let it go.

‘Four!’ she cried with accompanying groans. The bark of the tree held her breasts like scaly hands. The knot of wood pushed its hard, smooth head firmly against her clitoris. Her climax was rising and not far off. Her bottom quivered; it was redder and warmer now, tingling as much from sexual longing as from Nadine’s cane.

But Nadine had not finished. The cane fell again through the air, and Penny moaned again.

‘Five.’ Her voice was shaking as the first waves started, quivering through her parted labia and causing her empty vulva to shed its moist fluid so it dripped down and on to the log.

The final blow of the cane would come now. She craved it, longed for its burning kiss on her behind so her pelvis would thrust one more time – just once more – before the flood of orgasm washed over her.

It came.

‘Six!’ she cried, and pressed herself tight against the wood knot, riding it in small sharp spurts until the last eruptions of her orgasm had melted away.

Laughing at her shameless exhibition, Nadine tapped rapidly at Penny’s jerking buttocks until she lay supine. The goose-bumps had gone. A light film of sweat covered her, and Penny’s hair covered her face.

The cool hands that had caressed her earlier now caressed her again. She moaned beneath their touch, welcoming the coolness spreading over her hot buttocks, and the gentleness in Nadine’s long, slim fingers.

‘You enjoyed that too much, my pretty,’ murmured Nadine between quick, sharp breaths. ‘Much too much. I can see I will have to deal with you again; use you to everyone else’s benefit so you know exactly what is expected of you. Don’t you agree?’

One of Penny’s tingling cheeks was gripped by long fingers and talonlike nails.

‘Yes, Nadine,’ said Penny.

‘Say it again,’ said Nadine in a cruel yet oddly affectionate way. ‘Say it again and mean it.’

‘Yes, Nadine. Whatever you say, Nadine. Whatever you want. I’m in your hands.’ Her buttocks clenched tightly in the strong hands. She almost wanted her to do it all over again, so she could enjoy once more the mix of pleasure and pain, the contrast of hot and cold, the smoothness of her own flesh against the scratching roughness of the tree bark. But the claws released her, and she let out her breath. The hand that had tortured now patted her bottom like it had before.

‘Yes, pretty pussy. That is just what I wanted to hear,’ Nadine purred, and she kissed one rounded buttock. ‘That’s exactly what I wanted to hear,’ she repeated, then kissed the other, her lips soft and gently sucking on Penny’s warm flesh. ‘You are in my hands,’ she said before sucking at the other again. ‘You are most definitely in my hands.’

6

WHEN THE HORSEBOX
returned to the stable yard at Beaumont Place, the sun was turning bright orange and the clouds were marbled with purple and gold.

In good-hearted mood, riders mucked in with stable-lads to get the horses groomed, fed and watered. Nadine supervised, barking her orders and aiming hefty whacks at the stable-lads if they gave her any backchat. Judging by their cheeky grins and laughing eyes, her actions were enjoyed rather than feared. They almost offered their bottoms for the slap of her long white hands, and rubbed up against her suggestively when she grabbed them by the drooping necks of their sweat-stained T-shirts. There seemed to be some sort of competition in progress as to who could goad her more, and who could get away it.

The stables were quiet once they’d all left.

‘Stay here, Penny!’ Nadine ordered in a harsh and demanding voice. ‘We have unfinished business if you remember rightly.’