AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What would help is a clear conscience,” he said.
“How can I possibly have a clear conscience?”
“Accept facts. You knew what you gladly, willingly did last night.”
“And that was wrong. If you expect that I’ll change my mind about that, then you’re a foolish man.”
He scowled, hating the fact that it might take another night and perhaps many more before he’d have her completely broken. The prospect was suddenly a very dreary thought and he hated her all the more for another fit of useless remorse.
“Well, then, you can have the punishment you want so much, you demented harlot!” he glowered. He leaned over her and slapped her breasts hard, back and forth.
Hannah bit her lip. She was afraid of his venom and afraid of her own response to it.
“You like this, and you know it,” he spat, once he stopped and backed off the bed.
He moved to the hallway and called for Eldon. The young man came running in moments later.
“Bring my whip!” he roared, “and string her up on the fence post.”
Hannah hung naked in the out of doors on a cool crisp day. Her entire being shuddered, all but that inner, unquenchable fire that seemed to flame at the very thought of punishment. Oh, she deserved to be punished. But in this way? Somehow, it did not make sense now. Not that it had made sense the morning before. Someone else but this wily villain in her crime of passion should be wielding the whip, someone with the virtue and the moral right to punish her.
The bullwhip cracked against the morning air with a sound that would waken the dead. All the stable hands and trainers, all the brutes and fancy men lodged at the ranch gathered in. It was a show none would miss—and a good one! This was Cain’s revenge. When the bullwhip struck her back side Hannah thought she’d die; although she screamed from dread more than pain.
To her surprise the strikes were not at first as mean as she expected they might be. The vicious weapon could tear the flesh from the body and open wounds that would take months to heal, but even with his rage brilliant and flowing freely, Jarrett Cain did not whip her to such a damaging degree. The end of the bullwhip filleted her skin in tiny measures, sometimes meanly cutting in a manner that would leave small welts, at other times, it merely teased her flesh.
Like so many other tortures she endured, this too she found filled with that twisted shock and surprise she’d known before. As the fall of the whip danced about her flesh, she danced and jiggled with the erratic stimulation. She moaned as if part of her loved the torture. But when the strikes became more frequent and more cutting, she b
egan to beg, ‘Oh, sir, please, no more!’, Jarrett responded with a particularly nasty strike against the plump round of her ass that nearly broke her skin. She screamed first, then sobbed despondently.
For reasons beyond anyone’s understanding, Jarrett Cain suddenly seemed surprisingly tired of the task, even disgusted. His exhilaration had vanished; his eyes were coldly vacant. He watched dispassionately as her body heaved with sobs and her flesh shook in uncontrollable spasms. The evil man in him could go on delivering more of this brutality, but Jarrett Cain was ruled by many things, and at that moment, there seemed little fire left in him for this vengeful show of authority. To punctuate this display of dominion over the helpless woman, he gave her a last and particularly vicious strike that cut into her side enough to bleed. Then he threw the whip toward Eldon, saying, “Let her sleep it off in the stables.” Hannah collapsed into the wooden post and wept.
When Hannah finally awakened again, it was late in the afternoon. The shadows were long and mellow casting a golden glow inside the stables where her bruised body rested in a bed of straw. One of the stable hands noticed her stirring and opened the gate of her stall.
“I have to pee,” she looked up at him beseechingly. Even after all she’d been through, she still blushed as she admitted this to a near stranger.
The young man lifted her from the straw and led her to the outhouse not the metal bucket—a welcome relief from the endless humiliation she’d endured before a stream of gawking males. She had assumed that another nightmare of torture awaited her, but now she wondered if this act of kindness meant something different.
While completing her toilet, Hannah discovered that her time of the month had come. Reporting the fact to the stable hand in as delicate a way possible, she finally got him to understand her need. Not knowing what else to do, he took her to the house, where she was allowed to clean herself. A dress and underwear quickly appeared. Perhaps she’d been saved further abuse, at least for a time. While she waited to know her fate, Hannah settled into the bed where she’d been previously tethered. She still wore the cuffs on her ankles and wrists, but otherwise she looked very much like any modestly attired woman. The russet colored dress was a bit too big for her small size, but it felt wholesome and comfortable, like something she’d make for herself.
Later in the day she was brought before Jarrett Cain who was pouring over his accounts in his study with such close attention that he didn’t seem to know that she was there. She waited for several minutes on the verge of speaking when he finally looked up briefly, his eyes cold, his voice crisp.
“Your time here is over, at least for now,” he said.
“Are you saying this is it?”
“What? You want more?”
Bewildered, she shook her head.
“Maybe you want to stay. Is that it?” He looked mildly amused.
“Oh, heavens no!”
He sneered. “Humph. I thought perhaps you liked spreading those pretty thighs for men like me.”
“Well, you thought wrong!”
“When the liquor is working through your body, you tell a different story.”
