Mastering Melanie Read online

  Gretchen came forward without a word. Where was the proud, headstrong girl? Melanie thought. Where was all her fire now? Dropping to her knees, Gretchen peeled down the silk stockings, pausing to remove the shoes, one by one. Melanie was obliged to lift each of her legs in turn as she was stripped bare.

  “Melanie,” whispered Gretchen, looking up at her with imploring eyes. “Don’t fight this. Just bide your time.”

  “Spread your legs apart,” commanded the sheriff when Melanie was completely nude.

  Melanie complied, lowering her eyes.

  “Gretchen, take your own stockings off and your shoes. Then put your hands behind your back, too.”

  Soon both girls were equally naked and equally manacled. The sheriff made them wait like this while he went through the Judge’s desk. Melanie did not think this was proper, but she dared not say a word. They were in enough trouble as it was. She watched as he removed several papers, all of them official looking documents. A number of others he threw in a waste paper basket, which he promptly lit on fire with a matchstick.

  “You two didn’t see anything, did you?” he grinned.

  Gretchen lowered her eyes submissively. “No, sir.”

  “No, sir,” mumbled Melanie in kind.

  “Better not,” he threatened. “Or you’ll both be mighty sorry.”

  “Ever been buggy whipped, little missy?” the returned deputy whispered unexpectedly into her ear.

  Melanie gasped in shock; she hadn’t even heard him come in. “N–no, sir,” she sputtered as he wormed a finger between her exposed buttocks, the tip of it settling between her thighs.

  “Gretchen has, haven’t you, you smart mouthed whore?” The deputy slapped Gretchen’s arse cheeks hard, making her flesh tremor and roll.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I have.”

  The deputy nuzzled Gretchen’s neck, wrapping his hands round her waist. The girl made no effort to resist him. “You talked pretty uppity while you had the Judge wrapped round your little finger, didn’t you?”

  Gretchen arched her neck. The rough treatment seemed to be exciting her, but she was fighting it as best she could. “Zechariah’s in charge now, Homer,” she defied. “You’ll have to deal with him.”

  “You let us worry about the golden boy, okay sister?” This was from the sheriff who was busy fanning the flames of the tiny conflagration.

  “You won’t get away with it,” Gretchen hissed, attempting to squirm from deputy Homer’s grip.

  Harkin nodded to Deputy Homer, who pulled a strip of rawhide from his belt. Wrapping it round Gretchen’s neck, he fashioned a collar and lead. With a sharp tug, he brought Gretchen to her knees.

  “Kiss the deputy’s boot,” he commanded.

  Gretchen turned on all fours and spit rudely on the dusty leather.

  “Take her to a jail cell,” Harkin said. “Teach her some respect.”

  “My pleasure,” he growled, his eyes hot with anger. “Come with me, slut.”

  The deputy pulled hard, compelling Gretchen to shuffle forward on hands and knees. It would have been easier for her to rise, but the man was keeping his grip low, forcing her down.

  “Did I miss something, Sheriff Harkin?” drawled the doctor, his lanky frame filling the doorway only just vacated by the deputy and his lovely prisoner.

  “Only a murder,” replied Harkin, lighting a cigar with one of the flaming papers. “Only a murder.”

  Chapter Eight

  Melanie was marched naked across the street. She begged to be clothed, even in a rag or blanket, but the sheriff refused, on the grounds of her being a state prisoner. This despite the fact that Doctor Lassiter had examined the body, and declared it to be a clear case of a heart attack.

  “We’ll see,” the sheriff grumbled. “We’ll see.”

  There were ladies about and several gentlemen. Melanie hid her head in shame as she passed them, her hands bound in steel, her nude body bearing the fresh marks of the Judge’s cane. She could hear the whispers, the disgracing remarks. Her tenure as teacher was through here, and everyone knew it. It remained to be seen now, what form of new career she’d be allowed, if she were granted any.

  Perhaps it was the gallows the sheriff intended for her. He now had a choice of false charges. He could pin this supposed murder on her, or the one in New York, neither one of which bore the hand of her guilt. The dust blew into her eyes, and over her body. Her thighs were moist, and to her further shame, the particles were sticking there, adhering to her moist girlish opening.

  “A little time behind bars will do you some good,” the sheriff told her, forcing her bound body against one of the open cell doors. His thigh pressing her buttocks, he released one of her manacled wrists then pulled both her arms overhead. Running the chain through one of the cross bars just above her head, he was able to secure her on tiptoes.

  “Move back nice and slow,” he recommended as he swung the door closed. Melanie backed up painfully on the cold, hard floor until the door clicked shut with a woeful, mechanical sound. She was helpless now, her breasts displayed prominently between two of the bars, her sex thrust hard against another.

  “I can smell you a mile off,” sneered Harkin. “You’re like a bitch in heat, aren’t you?”

  Melanie averted her eyes, steeping herself in denial. It wasn’t what he thought. There was no way a lady such as herself could ever receive pleasure from such treatment.

  Harkin seized her swollen left nipple, twisting it hard. “I asked you a question, you little cunt. I asked if you were a bitch in heat. Do I have to check for myself between your legs?”

  She shook her head painfully. “No, please don’t. I admit it; I am aroused. But it’s not what you think.”

  The sheriff took a handful of her nether fleece, golden yellow hair, inducing from Melanie a pitiful whimper. “You think I don’t understand little she bitches like you? Believe me, I know your kind. You talk like haughty queens, but let a man lay one little touch of the whip to your naked body and you’re at his feet, kissing and licking like a collared pet.”

  “No,” cried Melanie, “it’s not true.”

  “Oh?” snorted Harkin. “Let’s try a little test, then, shall we? I’ll tell you what I’m going to do to you, and you see if you can not react to the idea.”

  Not bothering to await permission, the sheriff put his hand inside of Melanie, seizing her moist and supple womb. Melanie’s protests, though intended to be vehement, sounded laughably half hearted.

  “Hotter than a pistol already, aren’t you, little whore? Well this is just the beginning. You’re going to stay like this all night. First I’m going to fuck you, then Homer’s going to fuck you. After that, you’ll hang up here and wait. Assuming it’s a quiet night, either Homer or I will come back and whip you about two or three. If we’re busy, we won’t have time. But don’t you fret your pretty head about being lonely. This right here is the drunk tank, Melanie. If anyone gets thrown in here tonight, well it’s gonna be like Christmas for ‘em, cause they get you as a bonus. You’ll do whatever they want, Melanie, or else you’ll be tasting the whip. If you want to know what that’s like, multiply the cane by about ten.”

  Melanie sucked on her lower lip. She was gushing all over the sheriff’s hand, revealing herself to be every bit the whore he’d accused her of. Worse, actually. “I…I understand,” she managed, nearly breathless.

  Harkin twisted his fingers very slightly, the motion bringing her to the brink of orgasm. “How about if we try, ‘I understand, master.’ Consider it practice for down the line.”

  Melanie pressed her cheek to the bar. She wanted release so badly; she’d rub, she’d beg she’d do anything. “I understand,” she flushed, her voice a hot, confessional whisper. “Master.”

  The words rolled coolly and easily off her tongue, frighteningly so, given the radical debasement the term implied.

  Harkin withdrew his hand, leaving her on the razor’s edge of fulfillment. “Lick,” he commanded, holding
his wet, soiled hand up to her lips. With tears in the corners of her eyes, feeling aroused and stimulated beyond her wildest dreams, Melanie cleaned the juices of her own submission from the sheriff’s invading hand.

  When she had abased herself to his satisfaction, Harkin gave a parting, humiliating tweak to each nipple. “You’re learning, my little slave girl. There may be hope for you yet. As a reward for your obedience, I’m going to give you something to heal up those marks on your backside. You may thank me in advance.”

  “Thank, you,” Melanie heard herself say. “Master.”

  The cream was soothing and cool on her skin. It soaked readily into the angry places, bringing instant relief. The feel of it was delicious, especially as applied by the hand of a strong man.

  “You may thank me again, slave.”

  “Thank you,” Melanie gasped, her backside unwittingly pushed out as Harkin inserted a finger into her defenseless rectum. “Thank you…master.”

  Harkin twisted the finger, making her writhe. “You see, Melanie, how kind I can be? You see that I reward cooperation in my slaves? It’s been a long time since I’ve had one of my own. The Judge was surprisingly old fashioned about a lot of things. He felt women should be honored and respected. Didn’t stop the old hypocrite from flailing them right and left, though. It’ll be different, now. I’m going to enjoy breaking you in, Melanie. And you’ll be real cooperative, too, unless, of course, you’d like to be sent back to New York. Would you like that, Melanie?”

  “No, master,” Melanie moaned, half mad with desire. “Please…please, master, touch me…touch my other…opening.”

  “My pleasure, sweetheart.” The sheriff’s words were hot at her ear lobe. His cream wet hand moved lower, two of the fingers claiming her sex. “You’re sopping wet, Melanie. It arouses you to be treated like this doesn’t it?”

  She shook her head, still trying to deny the very needs she’d just announced to the man.

  A hand reached round to clamp her tit like he owned it. “Don’t lie, girl.”

  “You’re hurting me,” she complained uselessly. Then, a moment later, as the pressure on her breast mounted, “Yes! Yes, it arouses me!”

  “To be treated like a slave arouses you?” he pressed.

  “Yes,” she confessed, her voice a dark surrender. “It arouses me to be treated like...like a slave.”

  She heard the sound of the man’s trousers opening. Her heart quickened.

  “You may beg to be taken, slave.”

  Melanie licked her lips. In the dreamy half-light of her prison cell, in the torment of her bondage she felt the yielding, the deep and profound voices conflicting within herself. Later, she told, herself, she would fight. The sheriff was manipulating her, tricking her with his sudden kindness, inducing her servile cooperation, yes, but for now, it was enough.

  “Please, master,” she whispered, the echo of her scandalous words filling the confines of her jail cell. “Take me.”

  Harkin slid himself easily into her, sinking to the hilt in a single thrust. Melanie clenched and unclenched her helpless fists. Her feet barely on the floor, she felt herself moving against him. Harkin stood perfectly still, maximizing her humiliation, making her do all the work.

  “Fuck me,” she tremored, her voice betraying her whore’s belly. “Hard.”

  Harkin seized her hips, settling himself in as it pleased him. She could feel the brush of his pants on the back of her thighs, the gun belt at the small of her back. “Smooth as silk,” he muttered. “You’re a delicious little cunt, Melanie, did you know that? You may thank me for the compliment.”

  “Thank you,” she blushed hotly.

  Harkin took her breasts in his hands, hard and punishing. “But not very obedient. You’ve been forgetting to call me ‘master.’”

  “I…I…forgive me…” she teetered on the brink of orgasm. “Master.”

  “You’ll take my semen now, girl,” he said imperiously. “And when you do, you’ll thank me once again.”

  “Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, master.”

  “And one more thing, slave girl. You are not to come when I do. If you do, you’ll be whipped.”

  Harkin went at her furiously now, his chest puffing heavily as he slammed himself into his beautiful captive again and again. No pretense of pleasing her, Harkin moved as it suited him, cruelly spilling himself inside her cringing, shaking body. It was all Melanie could do to resist giving in to her female needs, but in the end, when he pulled himself free, she remained where she had begun.

  Hopelessly aroused, desperate for an orgasm.

  “Not bad,” Harkin slapped her ass as he zipped up his pants. “We’ll get a lot of use out of that hole yet.”

  Melanie dared not respond, nor did she ask if she was to be unchained.

  On his way out, he doused the gas lamp, leaving her as a prisoner in complete darkness. Just like that, she was alone. Initial shock soon gave way to a wave of sexual heat she could not deny. Beside herself with the need for a climax, Melanie began to rub herself against the bars. It was the action of a whore and Melanie knew it. She had no choice, though. Naked, abused, forlorn, she had naught but her own pleasure to seek. And what was wrong with that, given all the men she knew intending to take their own pleasure with her?

  A whipping or else sexual usage at the hands of drunken derelicts.

  That was her choice for the night, according to her jailor. Which should she hope for? And after this night, what lay ahead for her and for the vanished Gretchen as well? Could the man-boy Zechariah save them? Not likely, given his limited abilities. The marshal was her only hope. But would the man really come back, if not for her at least to check on the Indian negotiations? She almost felt herself wishing for Red Wolf to attack; at least then she’d be free of Sheriff Harkin.

  Closing her eyes, Melanie shed a tear for the Judge. As cruel as he’d been, there was a sort of honor about the man, a kind of integrity. She’d never forget him, or the feelings he’d awoken inside of her. Dark feelings no woman, certainly not a woman of breeding should ever have.

  Hanging naked in the darkness, steel on her wrists, steel shoved against her breasts and against her thighs, Melanie tried to imagine what it might have been like if she’d accepted those feelings sooner, if she’d surrendered to Cavanaugh, for example. He’d have made her his wife, his cringing slave. He had a cane, with which he’d planned to mark her. And dark eyes, foreboding a life of servitude. The man had a temper; she’d seen it upon occasion with his family’s servants. But what a kisser, what a man of strength.

  What would he have done with her? Melanie wondered. Would he have kept her in chains, nude in their private chamber, her skin bearing at all times the fresh marks of her submission? Would he have given her to others, sharing her body with his friends and associates? If she had kneeled to him that day in the garden, if she had given herself into his hands, where would she be at this moment? Naked and bound in Cavanaugh’s bed? Strung up on some rack to receive a whipping? On her knees, her husband’s cock shoved to the back of her throat? Or maybe serving another man’s cock. A stranger’s.

  And what of her own pleasure? What kind of things would she have said and done to secure release at Cavanaugh’s hands? Would he have allowed her to come? As a reward for being a pleasing slave-wife, or simply for his own enjoyment? Or would he torture her as Harkin did, leaving her on the edge, a needful, desperate bitch, naked and in heat?

  Melanie felt a surge of shame for her arousal. The idea of servitude to Cavanaugh appealed to her and she found herself longing for the man, with a surge of pain and regret she’d scarce thought possible. It must be the ordeals of my torture, she thought. I am losing my senses, losing touch with reality. Had she been suspended like this an hour? A minute? A day? Shifting her toes painfully, she tried to ease the stress on her wrists.

  The sheriff was a beast. How could he call himself a lawman? She was so tired. So weak. So ready to go home. So ready to...Melanie’s thoughts dissolved as
she shifted her thighs, the surface of her skin slick with her juices and her sweat. She could think of nothing now but her need. She would do anything, say anything for release. She’d give herself to any man who commanded her – to a savage if necessary. To the wild eyed Red Wolf and his braves, even. She could only imagine what such a man would do to a fair skinned girl such as herself. She’d seen it in his eyes. The lust, the pure, unadulterated desire. Was it true what they said of the savages? That they made the stagecoach robbers look like gentlemen by comparison to their brutality against captives? Was it true, what Beauregard said, that they treated white women as little better than dogs, beasts of burden and sexual slaves?

  “Trent,” she heard herself whisper in the dark. “Won’t you save me yet?”

  The sound of metal scraping in the lock of the outer door awoke Melanie from her pitiful reverie. For a split second, she allowed hope to surge. Then she smelled him, the unmistakable rancid tobacco smell of Deputy Homer. Melanie stiffened. She’d nearly forgotten the sheriff’s cruel promise. I’m going to fuck you, then my deputy’s going to fuck you.

  Homer didn’t bother with the light. He opened her cell, let himself in and swung her back into place. “You been waiting for me, darlin’?” he crooned. “Sorry I took so long.”

  Melanie cringed as he ran his stubby fingers up and down the side of her. “Deputy,” she moaned. “I’m so tired. Can you let me down? Even for a little while?”

  Homer grabbed her pendulant breasts. “You got work to do right now, little missy. You got to make Little Homer happy. Think you can do that?”

  “No, please…”

  The deputy ignored her protests as he shoved himself between Melanie’s legs. He met not even token resistance from her thirsty, gaping sex as he took control of it. “Know where I’ve been, little schoolteacher? I’ve been with your friend, Gretchen. She got a smart mouth ain’t she?”

  Melanie felt her muscles close involuntarily round the deputy’s pulsing shaft. She was going to explode any second. “Oh, deputy,” she cried. “I won’t be able to hold back. Is it all right if I…”