Page 1 of Petting Penelope
CHAPTER 1
Penelope
Penelope and Rachel had been traveling for nearly twenty hours.
Twenty.
Hours.
It wasn’t that Penelope didn’t like visiting new places—she very much enjoyed the end result of flights and car journeys and fucking buses—but traveling itself? Hell.
Especially when that journey included a transatlantic flight, a stopover where she barely had time to grab some food, and then another flight.
Rawhide Ranch had better be worth it.
She glanced over at where her Domme sat on the other side of the cab, perusing her phone. They’d been scening together for a couple of months now, and when Penny’d decided that she wanted to come visit Rawhide Ranch, Rachel had seemed like the obvious choice to bring with her. Short, dark brown hair curled softly around her face. Penny flushed and looked away.
Of course, she wanted Rachel here—it meant that she wasn’t going to have to scene with a stranger, and Penny had found out the hard way that it was always a good idea to play withsomeone who came recommended—but it also brought with it complications.
Because Penelope hadn’t told Rachel the reasonwhyshe wanted to come to Rawhide Ranch specifically. It came highly recommended by Bex, who was best friends with the co-owner of the kink club she and Rachel frequented back in London. But it had also been recommended by Mina.
Mina, whose hucow fantasies had come to life at Rawhide.
She’d regaled Penelope with every detail, along with the other three women who were part of their weekly calls—Layne, Vicky, and Amanda. If she was being honest with herself, the four other women were probably her best friends, never mind the fact that they all lived in the US whilst she lived across the Atlantic in the UK. They’d met on a chatroom for kinksters, and it was that which had morphed into their weekly Zoom.
Penelope snuck another look at Rachel, and then seeing her fully occupied, took out her own phone and opened it to the hucow romance that Mina had raved about.
It had been Penelope’s first introduction to the idea of hucows, and ever since, she hadn’t been able to banish the fantasy from her mind.
Not that she’d told Rachel, of course.
Rachel was the perfect Domme. In scene, she told Penelope exactly what she expected of her, and Penelope obeyed without question. Out of scene, she was kind and friendly, and they got on very well indeed. It was exactly what they both needed.
What theydidn’tneed, however, was some unfortunate fantasy rearing its head and disrupting what made their dynamic so very good in the first place.
Therefore, Penelope continued with her good-girl routine and made sure not to mess up.
An unfortunate memory assaulted her then, and she screwed her eyes shut and her left hand curled up in a fist so tightly that even her shorter-than-short nails dug into the palm of her hand.
She hadn’t thought aboutherfor a long time.
Well.
Penelopetriednot to think about her.
Somehow her ex-girlfriend managed to worm her way into her consciousness more regularly than Penelope was entirely happy with. But apparently that’s what trauma did. It didn’t matter how much therapy you did—and Penelope had done alotof therapy—there was always going to be a part of your psyche that would want to retread old paths. Worn neuropathways that seemed so much more tempting than any of the new ones she’d fought to create.
Trauma was a bitch, and whilst it didn’t completely derail Penelope’s life anymore, she also wasn’t prepared to give it even the slightest foothold in her soul.
So Penelope didn’t date. Didn’t share her life with anyone. She had her friends and her Domme and that was all perfectly acceptable. But nothing more.
More was far too dangerous.
Too disruptive.
Because Penelope wasn’t sure if she’d survive her life being turned upside down again.
The cab pulled up to a pair of wrought iron gates, and Rachel leaned out of the window to speak to the security guard on duty and show their papers. Penelope leaned to look up and felt a wave of eeriness wash over her.
