Page 5 of Petting Penelope
Rachel wanted to know what those could be, and all the coaxing in the world didn’t seem to be having an effect.
“How about you tell me what you want to do,” she suggested, and Penelope’s ever-sunny smile dimmed just the slightest bit. “I mean, there must have been a reason why you wanted to come here, of all places.”
Penelope flushed and looked very intently at her pizza.
“Come on, Penny, we’ve traveled all this way. What’s the point if you don’t get out of it what you truly want?”
The other woman took another bite of pizza and then returned it to the box, leaning back to look at Rachel. A blonde curl fell down from beneath the turban, and she slipped it back distractedly. “What doyouwant, Rachel?”
The “Miss” was very deliberately missing.
That felt good.
“I want you to be honest with me. I’m not interested in fucking about in a dynamic where only one person is being authentic. You’re fun to play with, that’s always been true, but I wantmore. I want to hold space wherein you can explore your deepest desires—where you feel safe enough to truly let go.That’swhat I get out of being a Domme.” Rachel took a deep breath; her hands were trembling and she realized that she hadn’t known how much she was holding back. “I don’t give a shit about how pink your arse turns when I flog you; that’s not why I’m here.”
CHAPTER 5
Penelope
She didn’t know what to do. What to say.
Rachel was standing there, all sultry looking even after a full twenty hours of traveling and asking Penelope for the one thing she didn’t want to give. And how fair was that, for either Rachel or Penelope?
No.
Rachel wasn’t in the wrong here, Penelope was, and from the look on Rachel’s face as the silence dragged out, she clearly thought that she’d made a mistake in coming here.
“It’s fine, Penny, I’m sorry. I’ll crash on the sofa tonight.” Rachel leaned over to grab a piece of pizza, and she looked so dejected that Penelope found herself speaking before she even knew what she was going to say.
“My friend Mina came here.”
The pizza slice paused, halfway to Rachel’s mouth. “To Rawhide Ranch?”
“Uh huh.” Penelope went back to her pizza, which really was startlingly good. “She met her partner here; he trims cow hooves.”
“That sounds very… ranch adjacent.”
“Yeah. And she liked that because—” The words caught in Penelope’s voice. She wasn’t sure if she could say the next bit out loud. All she could hear was Cristina’s voice, ridiculing, laughing, and it made her want to cringe away from Rachel.
But when she lifted her head, it wasn’t Cristina looking at her. It was Rachel. Rachel with her soft, deep brown eyes, and a gentle encouraging smile.
“—well, Mina’s into hucow fantasies.”
Rachel didn’t respond.
Penelope had no idea what that meant. At least she wasn’t recoiling in disgust, but nothing? It was a little intimidating.
Something must have shown on her face because Rachel pulled out a chair at the table and sat down next to her. “Hey, Pen, it’s okay. What is it about a hucow fantasy that Mina—it is Mina, right?” Penelope nodded. “What is it about hucows that Mina likes?”
How to answer that? There were so many things that Mina loved about it, from the auction she’d asked Rawhide Ranch to organize for her, to the lactation that she’d finally manage to induce in herself.
But those weren’t the things that Penelope had been drawn to. Not entirely.
“I think that everyone’s a bit different,” she said, finally. “The things that Mina’s into and explored here aren’t necessarily what I’d…” She tripped over the words, stumbling at the first hurdle, but Rachel was there, holding her hand and squeezing reassuringly.
“Is this something that you’d like to explore?”
The question ripped away everything that had been stoppering the dam of Penelope’s emotions and words came rushing. “I know it’s weird, and I don’t want to lactate exactly, but the idea of being milked and being a good little cow andmaybe even mooing… it all makes so much sense to me. I wouldn’t have to think anymore, I could just be.”
