Mastering Melanie Read online

  Melanie forced the idea from her mind. She was a different person now. Whatever he had known of her yesterday, whatever she had been on the road beside the stagecoach, it was gone now.

  “Take this,” a voice commanded, pulling back Melanie’s hair and forcing her mouth open. In her present state, she could not be sure which of the two tormentors it was. All she knew was that the thing in her mouth was not flesh, but polished wood, slick and covered in her own fluids and scents. It was the stick that had possessed her and now it was defiling her lips, her cheeks and tongue as well.

  Melanie took it deep, climaxing yet again as she did.

  The Fortesques had her till dawn, she told herself, and then they must bring her back to the saloon. If her fragile, shattered will survived the night, that is.

  Chapter Four

  The Fortesques dropped Melanie off at the saloon an hour before sunrise. She was wrapped in a horse blanket, her body sore and covered with her own dried juices. Gretchen was there to meet her, helping her directly upstairs and into the tub. Fortunately there was no one about to see her in her disheveled state. Gretchen was soft and soothing, the washcloth working wonders in her soft and knowing hands.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Gretchen kept saying, reading the woman’s confusion and shame. Melanie did not trust herself to speak. In her mind she kept seeing her uncle, the tears in his eyes as he bid her goodbye at the train station, knowing that letting go of her was the only way to protect her from certain arrest. Try as they might to tell each other Cavanaugh hadn’t won, for all intents and purposes, he had. Patricia was dead—at the hands of his henchmen, no doubt—and her own life was in tatters. She and Uncle Martin had stayed awake all night, going over in their minds the possibilities. Stay and fight, retaining a good defense counsel, thereby facing a raft of falsified evidence—not to mention the prosecutor and Judge bribed by Cavanaugh—or else make a run for it.

  They’d chosen the latter for her. She’d come this far, all the way to the territories, and already, in a few short days, she’d suffered things worse even than her cruel fiancée had desired for her. What would happen next? How much worse could it get?

  “Let’s get you to bed, baby,” crooned Gretchen, toweling her off. “And don’t you worry about school today. We’ll talk to the Judge and get you the day off.”

  Melanie was more than happy to lay herself down on the clean, dry sheets. She was even happier when Gretchen stripped off her clothes and offered to get in bed with her. Gretchen was a natural as a nurturer, what with her soft breasts, her smooth stroking hands and her tender lips. Closing her eyes, she let the sensation soak through her, her cheek pressed to Gretchen’s luxurious bosom as the woman held her tight. It was almost like being home again, in the arms of a mother she couldn’t remember.

  “Gretch?” she asked dreamily, a question popping back into her re-awakening mind. “What was the sheriff talking about last night?”

  “About what, sweetie?”

  “When he said you were the Judge’s special pet. What was that all about?”

  Gretchen chuckled, the sound coming from deep inside. “He was just spouting off, that’s all. It’s nothing, really. The Judge has needs, things no one else knows about him. Sometimes I help him. Every man needs a woman who knows his secrets and with whom he can be himself.”

  Melanie considered her new friend’s words. “Is that why you can say pretty much whatever you want around here?”

  “I’d do that anyway, sweetie,” Gretchen stroked the hair from her forehead. “It’s my nature.”

  “Do you think I’ll ever know a man’s secrets, Gretch?”

  Gretchen tousled her hair. “And of course we have no idea whose secrets you’re thinking about, do we?” she teased.

  Melanie laughed in spite of her brooding mood. “All right, I admit it. I’m thinking about Trent.” There was a moment of silence and then a sigh passed from her lips, emanating from deep in her womb. “A man like that must have lots of secrets.”

  “No more than any other man, sweet heart. They’re all a mystery, every last blasted one of them.”

  “Life’s a mystery,” Melanie said, not sure if she was saying anything profound or just filling the empty space. “Or so the philosophers say.” Sitting up abruptly, she asked. “Do you think I’m evil, Gretchen?”

  Gretch took her face in her hands. “Baby, why would you say that?”

  Tears danced at the corner of her eyes. “The minister...and his wife, they said so.”

  Gretchen made a face. “The Fortesques are a pair of sick old fools, Melanie. Haven’t you figured that out?”

  Melanie turned her face away, not wanting the tenderness. “But I was aroused, Gretch. When they – when they did things to me.” Her words came haltingly, in a downward spiral from a downcast mouth.

  “Look at me, Mel.” Gretch held her chin up. “You’re a woman. You have desires. That can’t be helped. I have them, too. That’s right, I do. The Fortesques took me out to their barn once, too. They made me strip off all my clothes, then they put me on all fours in the pigpen. I had to crawl at full speed round this tiny enclosure, over and over while they sang hymns at me and snapped at my back and buttocks with a long, nasty bullwhip.

  “Then I had to insert a corn cob up inside myself; they made me pull it from the slop first. They forced me to pleasure myself like that for hours, the whole time shouting out whatever sick things they wanted to hear me say. Things like, ‘I’m a whore,’ and ‘I’m a filthy slut; look at me profane myself like a dirty animal.’ Over and over and over again. When they got tired of this, they made me beg to be taken by the reverend’s cock while I slapped the ground with my buttocks. ‘I’ll beat you for that, whore!’ Mrs. Fortesque bellowed, brandishing her whip, but I couldn’t help myself. I was so tired and so aroused, I just kept whimpering and pleading to be allowed to have the disgusting little man’s cock inside my mouth and cunt and even my arse hole. He never so much as showed it to me that whole time, although I’m pretty sure he went off in his pants. That was the funniest part, I thought.

  “The Mrs. sure didn’t like my laughing, though. I ended up with a good whipping over that one. Plus I had to confess to a whole new batch of sins, including my supposed hidden desire to be taken by the couple’s horses and dogs. What really aroused me was the dirty talk; being forced to lie in the mud and say filthy things in front of perverted people. I’ll say one thing for the Fortesques,” Gretchen declared, breathing a deep heavy sigh. “They surely do bring out a person’s savage desires.

  “Take Lyla, for example. She was always a handful, the life of the party, but when she had her night at the farm, she turned positively feline. No inhibitions at all anymore, that one. From the moment she got back, she was rubbing all over every man, wanting nothing more than to be pleasing sexually. Show her any weakness, though, and she’ll scratch your eyes out. But if you put up a firm hand, she’ll purr at your feet for hours on end. You talk about being aroused by the whip? Lyla’s been known to fetch a riding crop in her teeth on all fours and lay it down in front of a man.”

  Melanie clenched her thighs, staying the sudden rush of heat. The image of the delectable Lyla offering herself up for domination was almost enough to push her over the edge. The picture combined in Melanie’s mind with that of Gretchen herself, screaming out her pleasures in the thick dung of a pigsty under the mean and prodding eyes of the Reverend and Mrs. Fortesque.

  Was this the nature of woman, Melanie mused. To be little more than a pleasure seeking animal in need of seduction and subjugation by the cold and calculating males? If so, what about Mrs. Fortesque? Wherein did her pleasure lie? Was it vicarious? Did she wish it were she herself being stripped and demeaned, forced to acquiesce to mind-blasting ecstasy?

  “Melanie, what’s the matter, honey?”

  Gretchen’s voice sounded hollow and far away. Melanie herself seemed to be drifting, caught on the edge of memory, hope and fear. The Fortesques’ foul words, th
eir penetrating faces were pervading everything, making her rethink her own history. Was Cavanaugh right? Did she have the natural need to submit? And if so, in fighting it, by spurning the one man who had stepped forward to master her, had she cost Patricia her life?

  “Gretchen, will you chain me?” she heard herself ask. “Will you force me down and leave me no choice?”

  “Is that what you want, Melanie?” came her smooth, melodious voice in reply.

  Want? What did any woman want? Security. Safety. A man to love and look up to the way she’d looked up to Uncle Martin. He was disappointed in her now; he had to be. As much as he’d denied it, claiming it was sheer folly to blame herself, she knew it was her doing. If she hadn’t come into the man’s bachelor life in the first place, burdening him with her tiny, unruly life as a four year old, she would never have grown up to bring him shame and worry, not to mention possible prosecution for his role in helping her escape.

  “Yes, Gretch, it’s what I want. I want to be chained down and used. Used for sex. Like a whore; a she beast. Pretend to be a man, Gretchen. Pretend to be a dozen men. Put me down and rape me. Make me squeal and come, make me writhe in shame. Take away my rights, Gretchen, my freedom, my ability to control even my own body.”

  “Snap out of it, Melanie.”

  The older girl’s hand smacked cleanly across her cheek. It was an act designed to stop her prattling and clear her head, but it had the opposite effect on Melanie, awakening her nerve endings for more abuse. Craving it, longing for it, Melanie thrust out her chest. “My titties, Gretch, slap them, too.”

  Gretchen threw her down on the bed in disgust. “If you’re taken by me,” she declared, “you’ll know it’s being done to you by a woman—not any pretend man.”

  “Yes,” Melanie cried through clenched teeth, her neck angled sharply back. “You are a woman. Take me, then, as a strong woman. Punish me for being a silly little twit – a nymph who craves to be played with like a doll, a man’s toy.”

  Gretchen growled as she dragged Melanie up, so that her wrists were at the top of the bed. Employing the chains, she secured her wrists and ankles. Melanie’s docile body yielded at once, showing instant conformity. The woman’s first kisses came along the raised welts, the reddened outlines centered by angry blue-black hash marks.

  “It makes me hot,” Gretchen confessed, “to see you marked like this.” More kisses, a fiery tongue that somehow eased and aroused all at once. “I’m jealous I didn’t do this to you myself.”

  Melanie shuddered, the stated intention falling upon her like a fresh blow. Was this her fate, then, to raise with her soft, quiet skin the most predatory of desires – and in men and women both, no less?

  “Beg for it, Melanie. Beg to be opened and pierced.”

  “Remember I’m a virgin,” she breathed heavily.

  “I know,” Gretchen doted, clasping a nipple in each hand, ripe bits of fruit put there for display, consumption. “Now beg.”

  “Oh, yes,” she concurred. “I do need it. I need to be filled.”

  Gretchen mounted her midsection, the aggression of her action belied by the gentle way she began touching the girl’s cheeks. “You’re afraid people will think you’re a slut, Melanie,” she soothed, “But you already are. You’re not hiding anything, so be proud of who you are.”

  Melanie felt the spasms overtake her, and she stated again her needs, bald faced, no mincing of words. “Fuck me, Gretch, now. Use your dildo.”

  “If I take you, sweetheart, it’ll be with this.”

  A gasp expelled itself from Melanie’s throat as she beheld the upturned fist, defiant and ominous. Would Gretchen try to put that inside her? Was such a thing even possible?

  “Relax, Melanie, you can take it. You need to take it.”

  Melanie lowered her buttocks once more to the bed passively. “Yes, Gretchen,” she whispered, opening and closing her own tiny fists, damp with sweat, helplessly bound.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take it slow. One finger at a time.”

  The feeling was exquisite. Like being alive for the first time. So many fingers, one after another, bearing down on her. Could she take them all? Fear tickled at the back of her mind, mingling with the sweetness.

  “You’re such a beautiful little thing,” Gretchen exclaimed, kissing her forehead, the hand working its way deeper and deeper, a delightful contradiction. “Tell me, Melanie, tell me what’s going on in that pretty head of yours right now.”

  “The robbers, Gretch. The robbers. I’m thinking of them,” she wailed. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to think of you instead.”

  “Hush, baby. You don’t have to feel guilty. You’re in my hands now. We’ll work through it together.”

  Gretchen must have shifted her fingers slightly. There was a swelling, a bittersweet bursting. “You’re the first, Gretch,” Melanie said with all the force of revelation. “I hadn’t thought of what that means till just now.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “Oh, Gretch…have you…did you…?”

  “I’m in you all the way, yes. My fist is clenched. Now I’m going to work it up and down. Tell me about the robbers, Mel.”

  Melanie shuddered from deep within, her bound body straining and begging for touch. “They…they were hideous, Gretch. Foul and dirty. Mean, with drooling mouths and cold eyes. I have nightmares, every time I sleep. I feel...I feel...”

  “What, Melanie? You feel what?”

  Melanie’s pelvis clutched and vibrated, sucking Gretchen’s arm deep as it would go. If a man were to do this, if many men were to come, they could have their way with her and she would not even fight, she’d be unable to fight, on account of her needs, her unstoppable needs.

  “I feel guilt! That’s it, Gretchen! It’s all my fault!” Tears poured free, emotion spilling amidst the physical rush. “All my fault!”

  Gretchen brought her to orgasm, holding her tight as she did, riding the crest with her and the inevitable crash, the plummeting into icy depths, a sea of blackness. At last, at long last, her hand gently disengaged, she put her mouth to Melanie’s ear. “Your fault how, sweetheart?”

  Melanie’s own voice came to her with an eerie calm. She scarcely knew if the words were hers or if she wished any longer to own them. “I have had fantasies, Gretchen. For as long as I can remember. Dark ones, the kind no woman should have, let alone a woman of breeding.”

  Gretchen cuddled close, kissing and licking, sending rivulets of joy up and down Melanie’s sore spine. “Tell me your fantasies, baby. Let them go.”

  “In my bed at night,” said Melanie, her eyes closed, her head pointed straight ahead, at the ceiling, like a prisoner beholding a gallows. “When everyone was asleep, I would think of them coming for me. Pirates, or highwaymen. Drunken, lust-filled, with nothing on their mind but spilling their seed in the depths of a warm, tight hole. A woman’s hole. My hole. I would picture them, their clothes, the lines of their face, down to scars and the color of their eyes.

  “They would hate me, or at the very least, not care at all. Three, maybe four at a time. Sometimes they wouldn’t say a word as they tore the nightclothes from my cringing body, one of their hands over my mouth. A blade at my throat would make it clear that if I did not cooperate, I would die. I would be told to spread my legs. Tears in my eyes, trembling like a leaf, I would shake my head, plead with garbled words. But I’d have no choice. I’d have to open for them. The leader would have me first. He would slam himself between my legs, hard and dry. His face would redden, his eyes would roll as he settled himself. Then he began to move. If I dared to open my eyes, I would see his slobbering, twitching mouth, his heaving chest pushing against me, and down below, his member. Or I might look behind him, to the others, their pants already discarded, their hands wrapped round their own shafts, nursing prodigious erections as they waited their turn.

  “The leader would grunt and thrust, rutting like a wild boar. My pleasure, my existence meant nothing, save that I was a warm, yie
lding receptacle, with a pair of tits to squeeze for added fun. A mouth to plunder and fill with whisky soaked spittle. I fight hard to feel nothing, to give him nothing but my cold and lifeless vessel. But then I would give in. Just like always. Sometimes in my fantasy it isn’t till the second or third that I begin to moan. Other times, the first man is able to make me come underneath him. The worst part is when I am aroused by them and not satisfied. This is the most humiliating part of all.

  “But the humiliation would have its own effect, like a secret and potent aphrodisiac. My smell, sooner or later, the scent of my submission, would fill the air, wafting to their nostrils, and I would know myself to be doomed. For they’d be aroused all over, being males in the presence of a female in heat.

  “He’d ask if I liked it, whoever was on me at the moment, and they’d make me say ‘yes,’ that I craved the roughness, being forced, being abused. Some nights I would even imagine being made to beg for their brutal hands on my ass cheeks, or their belt. Throwing myself to my belly, naked on the cool sheets, prostrate in my shame, I would pretend to endure the lashing, my richly pulsing cunt spasming again and again in contact with the stained and rumpled sheets…Oh, God, Gretchen, it’s so real…touch me; satisfy me again, please.”

  Gretchen obliged, inducing in Melanie the complex wailing of a woman tormented with her own desires, unable either to escape or to submit. “Don’t you see, Gretch? How it’s my fault? I invited what my fiancée tried to do, when he wanted to possess and enslave me. And the minister, too, he must have smelled it on me. And the Judge, and even the robbers, and the boy, Zechariah. They were only doing what I wanted them to, deep down.”