Under the Rancher's Firm Hand

I was sitting in the back of my car, remembering something from her application. I’d tasked her with an essay question, a simple enough one-page thesis on what she wants to accomplish in the middle of a pandemic. And while everyone else had bored me with predictable wordy crap, kissing my ass, Harlee had delivered a response that startled me.

She was sarcastic, and I laughed out loud reading it. When I’d decided to hire her, part of me was expecting a punk wild-child with piercings and leather. Never would I have figured her, this girl who wears fluffy sweaters and thin pink scarves and red-nosed heels and really form-hugging skirts.

The trip would be an opportunity for me to get a little closer to my trusty new assistant. And I was hoping to get very close.

This need, this heat, couldn’t seem to be sated. Long hours at the gym or quick rubs off my dripping cock in the bathroom, or living room or kitchen, or back of the car, fuck, I just couldn’t get her out of my head and I couldn’t get enough. I needed a solution, and deep down, there was only one that I could think of to solve this ache.

One that involves her bent over my desk in one of those short, tight skirts.

Chapter 4 – Harlee

I found it easier to drop the lingerie idea than to entertain it. I mean, it was cute, considering the red and black soft panties, but even for a dream that would have been extreme. No one ever thought of me that way, and my boss was not going to be the first of none.

I was in my apartment and had my black and brown traveling bag on the bed, and it was wide open and waiting while I collected the contents to go inside it. I’d already gathered the essentials; toiletries like lotion and my own shampoo, a rather torn up smutty novel, three differently colored pens and pencils, a notebook, and meticulously folded up clothes. I chose not to go with the obvious choices the old me would have gone with; pantsuits for the work week or jeans and t-shirts if the weekend was upon me. Times had changed, and I needed to do the same.

For months before, when I was still living in Missouri, I had saved up almost half of everything I got from working odd jobs. Truth be told, I hadn’t put everything I’d done on the resume Caleb had read.

I didn’t put down on there that I had been a server at a strip club. Or washing cars for the creeps who paid extra to splash soapy water all over my scantily dressed body. Or my brief stint cashiering at an adult toy store.

Nah. Some things were better left unsaid. Although I suppose it’s possible he saw them anyway, I’m sure he ran a background check on me. Although maybe not, since he actually hired me.

Living and growing up were not easy with my kind of “blended” family. My dad had died when I was nine, from anaphylactic shock. My mother swore up and down that she hadn’t known about his nut allergy, but even as a kid, I’d just had this feeling that she was lying. But obviously I never had any proof.

She remarried, of course, and found her happiness with another man. He was a larger man than my dad, and I thought that was what she was after. Strength. Muscles. Hands that would pin her down and own her.

Hands that beat her nearly to death when he came back from his shift at the restaurant at midnight.

And those violent tendencies weren’t the only issues he brought with him. He had a son, and my new stepbrother was dangerous and exciting in a way that I envied. I wanted to be cool like him, so as a teenager, I’d followed in his footsteps, and he’d taken my life down a dark path.

I stole things. I robbed people. I almost went to jail. Shaken up and ashamed of who I had become, I’d turned over a new leaf. I’d changed my identity after that and ran. I bunked in cheap motels and switched forwarding addresses for my mail. It had been six years since I left, and life had never been better.

I never thought much of my past. It made me itchy, but the problem was that I liked that itch. I craved that itch, and it was dangerous. It was the kind of itch that made me want more, that made me reckless and stupid.

The kind of reckless and stupid that had me standing naked in front of my mirror while I mentally went over my wardrobe, trying to decide what to wear on the flight.

But while I was thinking, I was also appraising my body, trying to see it from an outside perspective instead of over-analyzing. Just because I was hyper-critical of every centimeter my waist gained didn’t mean that would be the first thing anyone else saw.