Caged (7 page)

From what he’d seen, it didn’t do to coddle them too much.  They needed to be treated as if they were absolutely fine so as not to set their minds too comfortably into a pattern of nothing but terror that they could never quite get away from.  So he spoke to he sharply.  “Rachel, I need you to get up, honey, and come to me.”

She continued to rock.

Knowing what he had to do and hating it, he leaned over the bed and grabbed a hold of her shoulders.  “Rachel!” he yelled.  “Do as I tell you!  Get up and come with me.”

Her eyes, which had looked troublesomely hazy when he’d first seen them, seemed to clear a bit and she nodded, albeit slowly.

Cage helped her over the bed, grabbed her dress and put it on her, noticing that it was badly ripped at the same time she did, but it put her over the edge into hysterical weeping.

“Rachel, do you have another dress?”

She was crying so hard he didn’t think she’d heard him.

This time he shook her a bit as he asked the question.  “Rachel, do you have another dress to wear?”

As if his words had gone right over her head, she suddenly turned to him and said, “You ripped my only dress!  I don’t have anything to wear or any means to repair it—this was not my good dress, it was my
only
dress!”

No wonder she had been so troubled when he’d destroyed it yesterday.

“That’s not a problem.”  He shrugged out of his shirt and put it on over the top of her dress, and she was quite well—if unusually—covered.  “We need to leave this place.  Take what you can and we’re going to be off.”

“Leave?  I can’t leave here.  I’m safe here.  What if he finds me?”

“He who, honey?”

She gave a look that chilled him to the bone.  “Mr. Hemmingway.  Or–or,” she grew unbelievably whiter and quieter, which he wouldn’t have thought was possible, “my father.”

Cage took her hand, unable to bear how lost and frightened she looked.  “You don’t have to worry about either of them any more, honey.  You’re with me and I’ll keep everyone you don’t want to see away from you.”

Leave it to her to want a loophole.  “But what about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who do I have to be with to not be with you?”

Surprised at how her timid question struck at his heart, Cage smiled softly.  “No one, honey.  I’m it for you.  Better get used to that.”

He hadn’t intended to make such a definitive statement to her—not that it was one of undying love, but it was a commitment to her that he hadn’t really even known he was interested in making, only now he had, and it felt somehow right to him.

But not, apparently, to her—not that he should really be surprised, considering the circumstances of how they’d met, and how he’d treated her over the past two days.

“No,” she said stubbornly, planting her feet and refusing to go any further with him.

Cage was not going to put up with that.  He tugged her arm hard and made her crash against his chest.  “I wasn’t asking, I was telling.”  He arched an eyebrow down at her.  “Unless you’d like to get your little bottom blistered before we leave?  That can certainly be arranged.”

“No!”

“Good, then do as your told and I won’t have to give you spanking.”

He made it sound so easy, when Rachel knew it couldn’t possibly be.  Nothing about life was easy.  There was always a price to be paid.

She gathered up a few things she still held dear—she’d certainly had to pare that list down when she’d fled her erstwhile husband—into a gunny sack and followed him out of the house, uttering a horrified gasp when she saw the damage that had been done to her place.  She began to take a few steps towards the barn but Cage grabbed her upper arm and hustled her towards one of the horses the men had ridden in on.

“But–But Sissy and Cleo–”

Cage’s face was grim.  “We need to get going before someone else shows up.  Let me help you mount up.”  A thought struck him.  “You do ride, don’t you?”  He imbued the question with just enough of tinge of teasing insult that she reacted indignantly, just the way he wanted her to, stopping her from perseverating over much less pleasant things.

“Of course I can!’ As he helped her into the saddle, she didn’t mention to him that she had only learned to ride astride a few years ago when she’d left the East in such a hurry, since her old-fashioned father had insisted that a lady only rode sidesaddle, if at all.

At first, he took the reins of her horse rather than allowing her to go have a look-see at things he didn’t want her to have bad memories of, but once they were well away from the house, he gave them to her, saying as he did so, “It’s even more important now that you obey me without question.  There’s no telling who we’re going to meet along the road, and we’re going to need to do some things that might irk your conscience, but I don’t want an argument from you about any of them.  Am I making myself perfectly clear?”

He’d brought his horse around next to hers, reaching over to grab its bridle.

She stubbornly refused to answer him.

“Rachel,” he fairly seethed, “this is no time to act like a spoiled brat.  I will have your answer, and I’ll remind you at the same time that at the cabin, while I was trying to save the both of us and after I had told you to keep quiet, I heard you calling out to those men who most assuredly would have hurt you, given the chance.  And I’m going to blister your behind tonight so you’ll remember that I mean what I say and that you have no choice but to do as I tell you to.”

Her wide eyes offset the stubborn line of her grim mouth.  “Yes, yes, I understand.”

“Sir.”

“What?” she couldn’t have looked more surprised if he had asked her to call him Santa Claus.

“Sir.  I want you to call me Sir.”

She was positively gaping.  “I don’t usually balk at respectful terms of address, but I can hardly imagine how you think you’ve earned that particular title.”

He leaned towards her.  “I saved your life.  Those men entered your cabin with guns drawn.  What, did you think they were going to calmly sit down and discuss the situation with you over tea?  That they were going to rescue you from me?  They wouldn’t have wanted any witnesses left to tell the tale of what they had done.  They’d killed everything else on your little plot of Heaven and, since you were easier pickin’s, you were next on their list before they came for me.”

Her soft sobbing and even her subdued, “Yes, Sir,” which had been his goal, were like ashes in his mouth.  He hadn’t intended to confirm what she must have already guessed—that her animals hadn’t survived the gunfight.  He’d wanted to leave her with that one last illusion intact, but he hadn’t been able to do even that small thing for her.

They rode until they came to a clearing, which was the homestead of her nearest neighbor, who likely
was
actually out hunting.  Where his wife was on their property she didn’t know, but Cage left her with a hissed warning to stay put, and she could see him sneaking about the place, stealing both a shirt and a dress from the line of laundry that stretched between the house and their barn.

When he returned, he was wearing the shirt and he gave her the dress.

“You stole these!” she accused.

“You would prefer to ride around with a half naked man, wearing his shirt to cover your one and only dress that’s torn nearly to shreds?”

Her face became even more pinched than it had been before and she made no move whatsoever to don the dress.

“Put it on.”  

Cage reached up and tugged her down to stand—a bit unsteadily—before him.  When she hesitated, he reached over and pulled his much too big shirt over her head easily, tucking it into his saddlebag.

As she stood there, unsuccessfully trying to shield herself from his avid gaze as her dress gaped at every possible fold and rend, he grabbed her arm and turned her to stand sideways before him, bringing his palm down on her cringing behind.  “Do as I say, or I’ll strip you right here, right now and take my belt to you.”

Sobbing softly even after he let her go, Rachel reluctantly put on the dress, which fit her reasonably well and was in much better condition than the one she was foolishly trying to cling to.

Cage snapped up the old, torn one and put it in his saddle bag, too, then he moved her to his horse, putting her up first, high on the saddle, then swinging up behind her to kick his heels into his horse’s flanks while keeping a tight hold on the other one’s reins.

“This is uncomfortable—why can’t I ride my own horse?”  She was bumped obscenely against him with every movement the horse made, and she could clearly feel his excitement pressed against the bottom that he had already cruelly told her he was going to punish this evening, making her have to dread the event the rest of the day.

He didn’t answer her.

They made surprisingly good time, although that was mostly because he was practically running the horses into the ground.

They were headed east, she knew, and that only added to how unsettled she felt.  He kept them well into the outskirts of any town, keeping them in the woods for the most part, avoiding even the less traveled roads in favor of maintaining as much anonymity and keeping as much cover as they could.

That first night, he wouldn’t even allow them to have a campfire.  They ate the meager rations she had wisely rescued from her larder, supplemented by a few nuts and berries he was able to scrounge before it got too dark.

But he didn’t let either their primitive conditions or the lack of light deter him from doing exactly what he’d said he was going to do to her.  It was a cloudless night and there was nearly a full moon, more than enough ambient light to set her butt afire for disobeying him—and in a situation that could easily have cost her her life.

She was exhausted, and he knew it, but that wasn’t going to earn her any leniency, either.  He was at least that tired or more so, because he was still healing, and bouncing along on that horse wasn’t his idea of a restful recovery.

When they’d finished with their dinner, such as it was, she reached into the gunny sack and produced a sheet and her coverlet, putting the sheet down over the ground and getting under the coverlet for warmth, fully clothed.

Cage checked the horses one more time, wishing he had grain to feed them, considering what he’d put them through all day, but it wasn’t to be for another few days, at least.  He figured that was about how long it was going to take to get them closer to civilization, closer to his father and safety.

Then he took off his boots, put his gun where he could easily get to it, near his head and tucked himself under the coverlet with her.

Rachel didn’t even bother to acknowledge him and Cage didn’t allow that to bother him in the least.  And when she expected him to pull her over onto her back, he instead pushed her onto her tummy.

“What do you think you are doing?” she asked sounding every bit as indignant as some grand dame.

“You know exactly what I’m doing, Rachel,” he responded calmly.  “What did I tell you I was going to do because you disobeyed me yet again this morning?”

Rachel was silent on the matter, fully expecting that he was going to begin to spank her, her body already tensed in anticipation.

But instead, Cage’s hand reached not to smack soundly down onto her bottom, but rather to burrow down between her legs, forcing them to admit his presence as he slipped his hand into the open slit in the fabric and right up into her, two fingers claiming her rudely, abruptly, not stopping until he could feel the end of her as she gasped and clawed at the sheet beneath her, desperately trying to get away from him until his other hand came down on her lower back to keep her pinned in place for his lewd explorations.

She wasn’t dripping, but she was definitely wet.  He slid into her with relative ease, although Cage wasn’t at all sure that she would have put it that way.  She was so slick and hot and tight that his cock raged against the confines of his pants—it knew its home, knew how crazy she could make him, and he very nearly gave into that urge.

But instead, he removed his fingers and brought them up to her clit, tugging her hips back so that she was on her knees with her bottom in the air, a deeply humiliating position that inspired Rachel to try again to get away from him.  Cage had come prepared, though, and he didn’t hesitate one moment to find and secure first one then the other of her naughty hands, and once he’d done that, he’d murmured in the quiet, almost regretfully, “If you keep trying to escape me it’ll be the belt for you from now on.”

He ignored her roar of impotent rage as his fingers continued to brush insistently over that trembling peak.  “What did I say I would do to you because of your misbehavior this morning, Rachel?  Tell me.”

She opened her mouth to do so—desperately wanting him to stop touching her like this, to stop making her feel like this, but all that came out was a mortifying groan that had her practically sobbing at the end—not from the pleasure he was bringing her but from the mortification.

Ten hard, crisp swats fell onto her unprotected rear end, making her yelp loudly with each one, wiggling her bottom furiously in a futile attempt to avoid the swats, not that she was successful in the least.

Then those fingers, the wet fingers that had left damp impressions on her behind, returned to that spot between her legs to torture her even further by not only flicking and pinching her, but also patting her there quite forcefully, almost swatting her.

“Oh–Ohh, no!  Stop!  Please!”

“Answer me, Rachel.”  Cage was relentless and unbending.

“You said you were going to spank me for not being quiet while they were there,” she practically hissed at him, expecting that that was going to halt the torture he was putting her through.

But she was wrong.  Very, very wrong.

“And what do you call me, Rachel?”

She keened softly at that, at being required to call him a term of deference that she distinctly didn’t feel he’d earned in any way, saying nothing.

So the spanking began again, only this time each swat was delivered much harder, such that she was crying before he’d barely connected with her already well-heated flesh three times.

“Sir! Sir!  Sir!” she yelled, and yet he continued to punish her, bringing that open palmed hand down again and again, covering every inch of her bottom multiple times, until there was no iota of unseared territory left.

“Say the entire thing again,” he ordered when he finally ceased.

Between choking sobs, she barely got out, “You–you said I’d be spanked tonight be–because I wasn’t quiet, S–Sir.”

He might have stopped spanking—for the moment—but his hand hadn’t left the territory it had been chastising.  It continued to rub over skin that it had just singed badly, making Rachel add deep moans to her heartfelt sobs.  “Yes, you disobeyed me, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Rachel agreed, correcting herself quickly, “Yes, Sir.”

“And now you have to be punished.”

She had no idea what he had in his hand.  It wasn’t his belt because she hadn’t heard the buckle click as he took it off.  It was something that she learned very quickly, however, was just as bad, if not worse.

It was a switch that he had cut when he’d been scrounging close to their camp for wood.  She was so busy being petulant and ignoring him as much as possible that she hadn’t even noticed when he’d reached up and cut the thin, green length from the willow tree.

Now Cage brought the doubled over, makeshift whip down, slicing two thin, abominably stinging lines down on that beautiful behind of hers. He didn’t stop until the switch was broken and bent just a bit up from where his grip was, and, even in the dim moonlight, he could see the raised evidence of her punishment in stark relief on her bottom, the undoubtedly painful trails overlapping and crisscrossing over every inch of her.  The switch was so flexible, so malleable that he knew from her yelps that it had also occasionally dipped down into the usually well-protected area of her tender cleft.

Rachel was beside herself.  She didn’t know what to do to try to cope or comfort herself.  She couldn’t run like she wanted to—he would catch her within a few steps and then she would have consigned herself unnecessarily to further punishments only with the belt.

As much as she wanted to take her right then and there, to snug her well-punished bottom tight against him as he drove into her, his curiosity overrode that desire for a moment and he let his fingers return to the part of her they had laid claim to before he’d switched her good.

And what he found made him smile so brightly his teeth shown in the dark.  She was wet—much wetter than when he’d made his last foray down there to wet the tips of his fingers just prior to reaching for the switch.

He had no doubt that the punishment he had meted out had hurt her.  She was crying real tears, sobbing, chuffing, still sometimes having to drag big breaths of air into her lungs as she wept.

But here was the evidence that although she might not have liked it, the rest of her did.

A lot.

He filed that very interesting tidbit of information about her away for another time and moved to kneel behind her, arranging his legs between hers so that she had no hope of closing them, and also so that she was spread before him whether she wanted to be or not, still on her knees, her head down on the sheet, wrists conveniently out of the way at the small of her back.

His cock was twitching and itching to get inside her, and he wasn’t of much of mind to deny it.  Rachel, who was so wrapped up in her own misery that she barely even knew he was there, nonetheless rose to attention the moment he pressed himself into her.  Cage chuckled a bit when he abruptly found her back pressed to his front, but when she would have jackknifed back down, he held her up with a big hand on her tummy.

“No, stay here,” he whispered into her ear.  “Then I can play with your titties while I fuck you.”

And he did, hefting each generous globe—for someone who was so skinny everywhere else, her proportions were still quite generous where it counted, her breasts and her behind were nicely rounded—and working her nipples roughly as she did her best to avoid him, but there wasn’t much she could do. 

And, with her hands tied behind her back, she was forced to arch it and press herself into his palms, even though his fingers were much less gentle than they had been—and she liked it.  She hated it, but she liked how he was handling her—the slight rough edge to it.  She might have thought that it would remind her of the way Mr. H. had handled her, but it didn’t, for some reason, perhaps because, unlike him, discomfort wasn’t the only thing that Cage required of her.

Of course it wasn’t just her nipples he was teasing. One hand reached down to cup her womanhood, a big finger slipping over that greedy, throbbing bit, teasing, flicking a bit, rubbing some, then, with his other hand holding her open, he swatted her sharply once and she squealed, trying unsuccessfully to bring her legs together, to give herself any kind of protection at all against that happening again.

“No, Cage–”

“Who?” he asked, smacking her most private, sensitive part even harder this time.

“No, please, Si–Sir!”

Another flat fingered smack landed directly atop her clit.

He slid himself all the way out of her then drove himself back in as he peppered her little nub with sharp smacks that had her almost howling, until his hand clamped over her mouth.  “Just like this morning, you have to be quiet, Rachel.”

Cage nearly came right then when she responded almost submissively, “Yes, Sir.”

“Good girl,” he praised, rubbing fingers over the area they had just insulted as he continued to fuck her hard.  “I want you to cum for me, Rachel.”

“What?”

He’d forgotten she didn’t know the term.  “That pleasure you feel, building within you until it breaks open inside you in the most amazing way?  That’s called having an orgasm, or cumming.  I want you to cum, Rachel.  Cum on my fingers like a good girl.”