CHAPTER ONE

 

The woman knelt submissively on the floor, her pale blue eyes downcast. She was naked, except for a pair of calf-hugging, soft black leather boots reaching to within an inch of her knees. Across the white, bent back were several long, pink weals, laid diagonally from the right shoulder to the left hip. She looked up at the tall dark-haired woman standing over her, a black bull-whip trailing from her hand. Her eyes filled with tears.

"Please love me. Merle," she pleaded, her voice thick with emotion. 'I'll do anything you say."

Merle dropped the whip and grabbed a handful of the kneeling woman's straw-blonde hair, yanking her head back.

"Look at me, silly little Greta! Beg me some more and make me really want you in bed." Merle, too, was naked, except for black silk stockings and black patent leather shoes with impossibly high heels.

Greta obeyed, clutching at Merle's full-fleshed thighs. "Please -please. Merle! 1 love only you - there will never be anyone else. Let me show you how much I love you." Her lips began to slobber wetly at Merle's thighs.

Pulling Greta by the hair, Merle walked sensuously to the big double bed, dragging Greta after her. She let go of the blonde hair and threw herself on the bed, lying back, big, firm breasts upthrust and powerful nipples a dull red and erect with the emotion roused by the domination of the docile Greta.

Greta's fair body melted over hers as the two women embraced, lips moist and hungry, hips grinding together, mashing their crisp pubic hair. Merle's hands traced down the weals she had just inflicted, enjoying the winces and little gasps of pain this produced.

Greta rose to her knees and bent over her beloved torturer; Merle said nothing as Greta covered her body with tender, passionate kisses, letting her tongue dip into the dark well of her navel, sending fire through every vein. Greta's blonde hair fell forward on to the other woman's body, caressing it better than any touch could have done; she had to bite her lip to keep from moaning how good it all was. Greta's mouth moved lower, tongue licking down the heaving stomach and through the dark pubic hairs, to delve between the soft white thighs, splayed open for her.

Merle's breath hissed as the probing tongue gave a long, slow lick right down the open furrow of her sex to where the division of her buttocks started. "See how much I love you?" Greta whispered, stroking Merle's sleek sides.

Her head bent again, willingly, reverently over the naked body beneath her, lips and tongue following the curve and line of every pleasure zone. Merle quivered convulsively, her breath coming quickly. She grabbed Greta's shoulders, pulling her up to cover her own body again; her legs bent and locked about Greta's hips, grinding her clitoris against the plump, blonde mount, holding the willing body closer.

"Ah!" gasped Merle, jerking herself upwards, punishing her sex against the woman's crisp hairs. "Again - again. Move your hips, damn you!"

Greta closed her eyes and clung to Merle, heart pounding as she moved obediently.

"Do you like me now?" she whispered, kissing Merle's neck and shoulders. "Please say you like me, my darling."

"There! Uh-uh-ooh-that's good!" Merle was beyond even hearing the plaintive question. "Again! Now - move faster - faster. Rub - rub that mound of yours into me! Harder!" Her thighs tightened about Greta's moving hips, her body stiffening suddenly as ecstasy flowed through her loins. Then, for Merle, it was over.

Greta twisted her body painfully against Merle's again, hoping for a similar flash of love; but for Greta there was nothing and she allowed herself to be pushed roughly away, lying prone on the rumpled sheets.

Merle lay quietly, tension leaving her body, peace filling all the dark comers of her mind, lost to the world around her and to the nervous, huddling woman with the long blonde hair in disarray, crying with frustration.

Merle slept, then, while Greta got slowly out of bed and lit a cigarette, puffing desperately on it, trying to drag contentment out of it and into her lungs.

She walked to the window and looked out on to an exclusive dude ranch high on an isolated plateau in the Catalinas. It was beautiful, prosperous - and in her name. She really had everything money could buy, but - not quite everything.

Greta looked back at the bed and the nude, sleeping body of Merle, the highly competent manager of her range. Tears came back to her eyes, scalding down her cheeks, as her body shook with wracking sobs.

"Why?" she whispered to herself in agony. "Why is everyone against me? Why do they hate me?"

But there was no answer from the bed, the world outside the window, or from inside Greta's bewildered head.

 

An hour later, Greta Pedersen paced the floor of the Double R Ranch house, still dragging hungrily on a cigarette. It was tasteless and she flung it into the huge stone fireplace that filled one end of the rustic bedroom.

"Where is that girl?" She whirled on Merle Hendricks, sprawled unconcernedly on the low couch. Greta bit back a cry of pain as the movement stretched the skin of her back, pulling the long weals of her whipping under her doeskin shirt. "She's supposed to be here by now; the guests arrive tomorrow and - what's her name? - Helen - isn't here - we'll be short-handed for the whole of the season."

"For God's sake, Greta, quit whining!" Merle snapped back, highly annoyed as she smoothed the black leather of her tight jeans over her long, tapering legs. "I'm the manager of this dude range - let me worry about the hired help. Even if you do own the place - it's me who keeps the whole operation running smoothly and profitably."

"What'll we do if we haven't enough help?" Greta shot back. "I have a big investment in this and I'm not going to risk losing it just because you fell for a pair of big breasts or cow eyes, when you should have found out how dependable she was before you hired her. How do you know she'll work out at all?"

Merle Hendricks sat up slowly, a smile crossing her face, wrinkling the comers of her wide-set brown eyes.

"Jealous again, eh?" Then she laughed nastily. "You weren't talking to me like that an hour ago, when I was laying the whip about your back, or letting you make love to me, were you! The whip is only over there, you know!"

Greta looked over to where the vicious bull-whip lay coiled like a black snake on the bed; she shivered, half in fear and half in erotic excitement. Then her chin came up stubbornly and she turned back to Merle.

"Whatever intimacies take place between us in our private lives should have nothing to do with the running of the ranch."

"Don't worry - Helen is probably stuck on that lousy rut-and-rock path you call a road - she only has an old rattletrap car to make it in up here. If it's worrying you so much, I'll take a run down in the jeep and see if I can locate her - it's almost twenty-five miles from town and mostly rock, so I guess she probably is stuck."

Greta looked out of the window again, brushing back a long strand of taffy-coloured hair, and peered down over the valley below, searching for dust-devils on the narrow road that linked the ranch with civilisation.

"All right - see if you can find her. Remember, too, that she's your responsibility - I'm not sure I like the idea of hauling an innocent kind in on this operation. She may not fit in with us and our friends - she could be trouble."

Merle laughed openly and pulled on a pair of shiny, knee-length boots that stood at attention at the end of the couch.

"A wet-nosed little college kid cause you and me trouble? Come on, Greta - you know as well as I do that we can keep her under control. Anyway - none of the other four girls who work here for the sea-son have ever complained about the way we - ah - treat them."

Merle laced the boots tightly across instep and ankle, then rapidly and expertly criss-crossed them up to the knees with the thong lacings, smoothing the boots over her calves as she went. Finally, she knotted the laces in a double bow just below the knees and stood up, shaking the leather jeans down over their tops.

"I'll drive down the trail and see if I can locate our little friend-to-be. And don't nag me, Greta - you should know by now that I'm apt to get touchy and you also know what you can expect when you want to make love again."

She pointed again to the bull-whip. "In fact, I might not wait! You know perfectly well that if I ordered you to strip now and stand still while I whipped you, you would not be able to refuse me." Merle paused, grinning, as Greta swung away from her, face darkening with colour. "I signed Helen Madison to a three month contract, all legal and - if you will pardon the expression - binding. She has agreed to work here as an entertainer and general resort hand for three months. She'll get salary, room and board, less uniform expenses, just like the others."

"Yes, Merle - but the others know what we're doing up here. For example - Judy has been coming back each season for the past four years and loves it, but what's your little blue-eyed baby going to do the first time she falls foul of the regulations, or balks at something I tell her to do? She'll go running home to momma and that will be that!"

"Without her ordinary clothes and over twenty-five miles of wilderness? Anyway - no one would let her run home until the season's over."

"Will she understand our clientele?"

"Good God, Greta! You look for things to worry about - you've made up a whole list, haven't you! Well, stop whining - by the time our little gal knows what's happening up here, she'll be in too deeply herself to want to go running home to anyone. Besides, she's going to have a job; she wouldn't tell me the reason, but I gathered she was pretty desperate."

Greta was silent against Merle's knowing arguments; Merle always had known what was best, she told herself. Ever since Greta inherited the ranch from a crazy uncle who had insisted until his dying day that the area was rich in gold, Merle had helped her. It had been Merle's idea to set up the dude ranch for people who could afford to indulge in their unusual interests.

"All right. Merle," Greta sighed. "But I hope you know what you're doing."

Merle turned on the red and black patterned rug and stood towering in the doorway on her five-inch heels.

"I am always right, Greta - remember that!" And her voice carried a crack like the bull-whip she had earlier used on Greta's back. "I hired Helen for the season and I'll see that she stays and works it out, even if I have to tie her to a plough! Remember, Greta - I'm never wrong!" Then she stalked out, heels clicking on the rough-hewn porch floor and down the wooden sidewalk to the jeep.

Greta stood with her back to the window, listening to the engine start up outside, wanting, yet not wanting, to look at the Woman who had the power to make her crawl; the woman who, with little more than a look, could - and did - make her bare her body and lie, stand or kneel in utter submission to be thrashed with that bull-whip or any other such instrument of punishment it might be Merle's whim to use on her. She wondered how she would keep Helen - their newest recruit - happy, or at least submissively working, on the ranch. With a long sigh, Greta decided that Merle would find some way of doing it ... "even if I have to tie her to a plough ..." Merle's words echoed still in the high-beamed room. Greta smiled tightly to herself- that was quite an idea.

In spite of her leather clothing, the doeskin shirt hugging her body and the heat of the whip-marks on her back, Greta felt the room suddenly empty and cold without Merle. She turned back to the window.

"Hurry back, Merle," she whispered to the empty driveway. Then a gleam of pleasure lighted her eyes and she headed for the kitchens.

She forced a stern look on her face and squared her shoulders as best she could with the smarting stiffness of the stripes on her back.

Now it would be her turn to make someone cower in fear of punishment; to watch the nervous starts and trembling lips, the heaving of full breasts and the shifting of high-heeled feet.

"Judy!" she shouted. "Judy! Come here this instant or I shall add another demerit to what you've already accumulated in the short time you've been here this summer! Judy!"