Page 42 of Bound and Branded

“My dad is going to wonder what I’m doing.”

“You are twenty-four years old. Who the fuck cares what you’re doing?”

I can see that doesn’t work for her. That she feels so enmeshed with her father that she can’t do whatever she wants.

“Tell him you’re staying with me.”

“But he’ll think I–”

“Why does it matter?” I shake my head. “He’s a gambling addict. He puts you and your livelihood in danger all the time, and doesn’t give a fuck what you think. And you waste all this time worrying about what he thinks. More people should give a shit about disappointing you, Avery.”

I ride ahead of her on the trail, my heart pounding hard like we were having sex, not a conversation. This girl has me messed up. I’m not sure I want to put it back to the way it was before.

Chapter Nine

Avery

I can’t stop thinking about what he said out on the trail. He went back out to work afterward, and I decided to make dinner for us both.

I feel uncomfortable about the idea of talking to my dad. I’m not going to do it. But what he said about how people should be worried about disappointing me sticks with me.

I turn it over and over in my mind. He doesn’t come in for dinner, and I wonder if I should go. He mentioned that I could spend the night but I didn’t obey him as far as telling my father what I was doing, and I’m not sure if the offer stands if I don’t do exactly as he says.

My heart beats faster, my body feeling numb as I worry about whether or not I’ve done the right thing. About whether or not I’ll please him.

I’m standing at the kitchen counter, and I hear footsteps behind me. For some reason, I don’t turn. I just stand there, looking at the counter.

He walks up close, reaches around and grabs my arm, pinning it hard against my back. And just like that, I know. The reason that I didn’t turn when he walked in was because it was a scene. I could sense it.

I feel almost triumphant that I’ve managed to feel it. On instinct.

He grabs my other hand, pinning it firm against my lower back.

Very quickly, he ties my wrists, but these aren’t the soft ropes that he normally uses. These are rough, scratching against my skin, much more like a lasso, much more like I had initially imagined bondage with a cowboy to be.

It’s a quick, one-handed knot that does its job, effectively disabling me.

My hair is loose, and it hasn’t been this whole time we’ve been together. He brushes it to the side, wraps it around his fist and pulls as he angles my neck, and leans in for what I think is going to be a kiss. But it turns into a bite. “You need to be reminded,” he says. “Who decides.”

This is my punishment for yesterday. Yesterday, which was wonderful, but punishment doesn’t always come because a Dom isn’t pleased. It comes because there’s pleasure to be had from it, and I know enough about the dynamic between the two of us to know that’s what’s at play here.

He turns me around to face him and backs me up hard against the counter, the edge of it biting into my back, into my arms.

Then he reaches up, grabs the collar of my shirt, and takes it between both hands to tear it open.

He rips it to shreds, the only way that he can get it off my body now that he’s bound my hands. The ferocity, the feral nature of his actions, leaving me immobile and speechless.

He takes a knife off the counter and my heart stops as he presses it beneath the fabric of my bra, the blade cold against my skin as he turns it and slashes my bra free. It meets the same fate as my shirt, going into as many pieces as it takes but with the blunt edge of the knife rather than his hands.

My heart is fluttering like a trapped bird, fear and desire and shock all warring together. He’s found a way to make this even more than it ever has been. To shock me.

I like it. I like him like this, I realize.

Maybe you aren’t supposed to want your Dom out of control, but it feels like mine is right now, and I am living for it. “Get on your knees,” he says.

I obey him, going down to the hard kitchen floor as he wraps the rough rope around my neck. I gasp, arousal driving itself hard between my thighs as he ties a secure knot that makes it so the rope is loose enough around my neck, so that it isn’t in danger of choking me. But it rests there, heavy against my breastbone, the end of the knot pressing the base of my throat. A feeling of ownership, of intensity, making it feel like my heart might burst through my chest.

The floor is brutal against my knees, and I’m frozen there while he makes art with these torturous ropes that he’s brought to me. He lashes them down either side of my breast, and then on the other side, framing them and squeezing them tight, the blood flow concentrated now. The rope goes tight at my rib cage, my midsection, around my hips. He makes a harness for me out of those ropes. The placement of each and every cross and knot intentional. Pressing just so.

---