Saddled, chapter 27 (Patreon)

John sat in his car outside Clive’s house. Two weeks ago, he’d parked his car down the road and walked up to this place. He’d been terrified about the deal he’d made to sell his body, assuming that a dick up his ass was the worst catastrophe since his knee injury. Instead he found he liked that part. If it weren’t for the kidnapping, he might have angsted about how much he enjoyed it.

However, his relationship with Clive had brought a whole set of dangers he had never expected. How was he supposed to deal with someone who knew his family—knew him. This was uncharted territory, made worse by Noah’s claim that Clive cared about him enough to hurt if John wasn’t careful with him. John didn’t know how to be careful. Logan had gotten one thing right in the last week—he had nailed John’s ability to get obsessive and misread social cues in relationships. So how was he supposed to avoid hurting Clive?

He wished he could skip all the awkward greetings and skip right to the stable where he knew the rules. He wanted the bit because it would rule out any heart-felt conversations. The irony of that was killing him because he had hated the idea of putting that damn bridle on. But now he would prefer to be in harness where the best way to avoid hurting Clive was to try to stomp his toes. John knew those rules. Instead he had to ring the bell and talk to Clive.

John felt more than a little pathetic given that he knew how to be a stallion more than he knew how to be a descent human being. He might have spent too much time on the sea. Never one to postpone the misery, John got out and headed up to the door. The house was just as impressive on a second visit with two-story windows and polished stone. John could see Clive’s personalities in the precise lines that rose straight up—the columns and tall windows. Some sort of coating made the windows look mirror-like so the interior wasn’t visible from outside. Instead the house reflected the gray sky and towering trees.

John strode up and rang the bell. This time the instructions hadn’t come with directions to walk in uninvited, and John wasn’t about to take more liberties than the contract allowed. That contract was one thin piece of paper between him and utter insanity.

Clive immediately opened the door. “Good morning.” He stepped aside, tacitly inviting John into the house. 

John walked into the corridor. “Morning.”

“Would you like something to drink?” Clive paused at the door to the study. John flashed back to that first day when Clive had forced him to expose himself. The humiliation had nearly driven John out of the house. Only his own stubborn determination to never give up on a challenge had kept him in place.

“I would prefer to get right to work,” John said. He stuck his hands in his pockets to stop any tremors from showing. He hadn’t felt this awkward since his years in teenage purgatory.

Clive paused for several seconds. “Work. Interesting word.” His voice was so utterly lacking emotion that John knew Clive was hiding some strong emotion, although he could only guess at which one.

“You’re paying me,” John said. He refused to feel guilty about keep a little emotional distance.

The small flash of dark emotion that flitted across Clive’s face made John feel like an ass. But all he said was, “I’m paying you quite well.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it,” John added. Hopefully Clive understood it was an apology. From the confused look Clive gave him, that might be wishful thinking.

Clive passed the sitting room and headed down the hall to the kitchen. “Let’s head to the stables. Have you recovered from Robinson’s rough treatment?”

“I’m fine.”

Clive stopped with one hand on the kitchen island and turned to study John. “Will you continue to be fine when tied up?”

“Yes.” John clamped down on the anger he felt at having his mental health questioned. Clive then made it worse by raising his eyebrows. 

John crossed his arms over his chest. “Elena sent me to Noah to make sure I was okay in a harness.”

“Noah?”

“Her pet psychiatrist.” John tried to keep the anger out of his voice because Noah’s warning kept echoing in his head.

“Elena has a psychiatrist on staff? I don’t know why I’m surprised about that, but I am.” Clive’s face grew more expressive as he ended with a grimace that made his opinion of psychiatrists perfectly clear.

“You met him.”

“I did?”

“He was the plain looking guy who was with Elena when you tracked them down right before the rescue,” John said. The other option for phrasing that would have been right after Clive left Logan’s hotel room, but John found the idea of Clive talking to Logan more upsetting than his own capture. He’d been beaten up a number of times, but he’d never had to deal with Logan in such a smug mood before. John was lucky their mom was distracted or she would have zeroed in on all Logan’s shitty comments.

“I hadn’t realized that’s who he was.” Clive frowned for a second, but then his emotionless mask was back in place. “So she took a psychiatrist to recover you? I’m impressed with her planning.”

“Elena is thorough.”

“Very.” Clive headed out the back door and John followed him down the path to the stables. “I am sorry my abysmal taste in business partners put you in such a dangerous and difficult position. I never would have done anything that put you at risk.”

John sighed. He really would love to skip the emotional blood-letting. “Your shitty partner never would have targeted me if Elena didn’t have a traitor running her front desk.”

“Which makes me worry about how much I trust her to handle my business. Not only do I want to keep you off the radar of any enemies, but I need to protect the reputations of the actors and performers who trust me.”

After what Noah had told him about Elena’s new assistant, John didn’t think that would be a problem. “Let’s just say she’s not going to make that mistake a second time.”

Clive didn’t say anything. When he reached the tack room, he unlocked it and stood to one side. John passed him and found the cart waiting with the same equipment as before. John knew these rules, and he was almost relieved to start stripping off his clothes. He’d gotten over being body shy years ago, but two weeks had made a world of difference about how he felt about stripping in front of Clive. Before, the contract and his trust in Elena’s screening process were his only forms of protections when he was allowing a man to take away almost all his power.

John had less faith in Elena’s omnipotence at this point, but he believed that Clive would never hurt him. John glanced at the whip hanging on the wall. John put faith in what he saw for himself, and he’d seen Clive’s competitive streak and the great care he took to make sure that he never abused the situation when he won. He was the opposite of Robinson who never thought about who he had to hurt or destroy to get his way.

After stripping, John sat on the floor to pull the hoof boots on. His time with Noah had improved his gait, and he hoped to get out of the damn stable this time. Walking in a circle was boring as hell, but Clive had a beautiful property and John wouldn’t mind exploring a few trails. John looked up, and Clive clutched the frame of the door so hard that his knuckles were white. Resentment clawed at John’s chest. He wanted to get past all the awkwardness and enjoy some damn good sex. “Do you want to put the bridle on?” John asked. He willed Clive to focus on the kink and get over whatever guilt he had in his head.

Instead Clive turned and power walked out.

“Clive!” John called. His attempt to leap to his feet ended when he tripped over the toe of his boots and crashed down on one knee. “Davidson!” John yelled. Silence answered him. Fuck. John curled his fingers into hard fists and silently chanted a whole string of fucks before he unbuckled his boots again.

Getting dressed angry led to a small rip in the arm of his shirt and underwear wedged in uncomfortable places, but John ignored that in favor of searching for Davidson. He wasn’t in the house, not even the second floor. John poked his head into stately bedrooms and marble bathrooms and fucking ridiculously large closets and unless Clive was hiding under a bed, he was not in the house. By the time John looped back around to the kitchen, his anger had given way to uncertainty. He debated calling Elena, but he didn’t want to aggravate the problem. Elena did one hell of an impression of a nuclear explosion.

Well, since Clive wasn’t in the house, John headed outside. The day was warm and by the time he reached the tree line, his shirt stuck to his skin, but at least it was early enough in the season that the undergrowth hadn’t yet turned into an impenetrable tangle of thigh-high weeds.  John strode to the top of a rocky rise. By the time he climbed the hill, his thighs burned from the effort, but he had a good view of the property. A ragged cliff defined one boundary of Clive’s property. The road was at the bottom, but the height of the cliff hid it so the property overlooked the sea. 

The water was dark, marked with long lines of white-tipped waves that rushed toward shore. To the south John could see a clearing and some sort of fancy gazebo. It looked like the perfect place for a rich person to contemplate their navel and get tangled in their own thoughts.

And of course it was on the opposite side of the property. John silently cursed Clive’s name as he headed for the gazebo. For the life of him, John could not figure out what was in Clive’s head, but he couldn’t get Noah’s words out of his. Sometimes clients got too close to assistants and Elena had to pull them. She always said that when clients got tangled in their own emotions, they were in love with the fantasy, not the person.

Maybe Clive loved Spirit, the human stallion. However, he’d only had one long weekend with him. On the other hand, Clive had even less time with John the person. All he had were Elena’s stories and an apparently hostile conversation with Logan. By the time John spotted Clive’s back, he was too confused to know what he thought.

Clive sat on an ornate bench staring out over the ocean. John stepped on a stick, breaking it. He figured that was the best way to announce his presence. Clive didn’t even twitch. John was not good at words, so if Clive was going to be a silent bastard, John could match him. As soon as John stepped under the shade of the gazebo, the temperature dropped a few degrees. He settled in on the stone bench a few inches down from Clive and stared at the ocean.

A sluggish breeze stirred the air, and John wished he felt comfortable enough to take his shirt off.  Considering that John had planned to spend the weekend naked and tied up, the iron was killing him.

After a long silence, Clive said. “I thought you would be halfway back to your house by now.”

John had never been a fan of polite conversation, so he went with his strength—blunt honesty. “I thought I would see what stupidity you were up to.”

Clive gestured at the ocean. “I’m enjoying my views.”

“The same views you have from your living room,” John said dryly. “You seem to be hiding.”

“A tactical retreat.”

John sighed. Clive wasn’t making this easy. “You clearly aren’t into playing this weekend,” he said, and then he stopped because he wasn’t sure what to say. This is why he hated conversation.

Clive turned toward him. “Which is why you’re free to leave. I’ll pay the forfeit.”

“To hell with the money,” John said. “Why did you call me up here? Is this some misguided attempt to get me more money?” If Clive was still wallowing in guilt, John was going to punch him in the head until that stupidity fell out.

“I used your time; I’ll pay the fee.”

John shot to his feet. “Fuck that. You didn’t enjoy one minute, and if Elena takes a penny from you, I’ll quit.”

Instead of answering anger with anger, Clive started to softly laugh. “You are exactly like my wife.”

The change of topic started John so badly that his anger fled. “You’re married?” Maybe John should go find the wife and make her deal with this stupidity.

“I was.”

“As stubborn as you are, I’m not surprised she divorced you.”

Clive’s expression twisted with pain. “She died.”

“Fuck.” The words hit John like a punch to the gut. He sat and rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I guess you didn’t Google me, huh?” Clive huffed.

“I trust Elena to know what’s real and what’s rumor and tell me what I need to know. I suppose she figured I’d be gagged so much I couldn’t stick my foot in my mouth,” John said. “I really am sorry.”

Clive shrugged. “It was a long time ago, and if she hadn’t died, she definitely would have divorced me. I keep falling for strong people who don’t need to be taken care of and then I marvel when they won’t let me take care of them. I need therapy.” He stood and brushed off his pants. “You don’t have to finish any contract with me. I’ll tell Elena that what happened with Robinson just soured things—no harm, no foul.”

John wanted to say something shitty about how he wasn’t the one running for the hills, but Clive seemed brittle. Maybe Noah had some psychiatric superpower that made his words crawl inside a person’s mind because John couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said. “I don’t mind it when we’re in the stables.”

“Don’t mind it?” Clive sounded amused.

“Fine, I happen to love what we both do in the stables,” John added. “When you fuss over me in there, it doesn’t make me feel weak because I’m actively trying to hurt you. When you get in the middle of my family shit and try and pay my bills…” John gritted teeth and tried to rein in the anger. “I don’t like feeling weak.”

Clive frowned. “You are the person I am least likely to describe as weak.”

John gestured around to the prime ocean views and the stone gazebo. “Look at this place.” Clive had power that John could never match.

“If you’re comparing yourself to the Maine coastline, you need therapy,” Clive said dryly. “More than I do.”

“Look at what you own,” John snapped. “Before I hurt my knee, I could barely keep up with a mortgage on a shitty house, and I’d took out loans against the boat I inherited from my father just to do repairs. I worked six, seven hours a day, and I couldn’t support myself, much less support a wife and four kids like my father.”

Clive tilted his head slightly to one side. “The world had changed, but that has nothing to do with your skill.”

“Skill.” John snorted. “The world doesn’t give a shit about my skills. Do you know how I fucked up my knee?”

“No.”

“The weather was iffy and no one wanted to go out and run the helm, but I didn’t have money for the mortgage, so I took the boat out alone. I couldn’t do the lobster pots, so I went out looking for herring.” John hated even telling the story. Another fisherman would recognize the sheer stupidity and arrogance, but Clive just looked confused. “A pulley broke loose in the wind, and I couldn’t catch it in time. It sliced my knee open and slammed me to the deck hard enough to stun me. I was out there alone, like an idiot, with a storm coming in. It took me twenty hours and the knee was infected before I limped into dock.”

Clive’s expression turned to sympathy, and that just pissed John off more.

“I would have lost everything to hospital bills if a charity hadn’t picked up my case. I became a charity case.” John whirled away and stared out at the ocean.

“That’s when you started working for Elena,” Clive guessed.

The energy went out of John’s voice. Dragging up the past made him feel dishrag tired. “A friend of a friend knew her and gave her my name. Lots of men like to challenge an alpha male—take his girl away. It’s a common enough fantasy that she kept me working.” 

“That sounds like a strong man who adapted.”

“That sounds like a fucking moron who took too many risks because he couldn’t fucking make it. And you sit here with a million dollar view, and if you corrected me and tell me how many tens of millions this place costs, I’ll throw you off the cliff.”

Clive laughed. “Land in Maine is cheap. That’s why I have my big estate here. But this… don’t you dare look at this and assume I’m somehow better.” He moved to John’s side. “My wife was twice the writer I was, and if she’d lived, she would have turned into twice the director. A lot of this is built on her talent.”

“You’re trying to make me feel better, and unless you want me to break all your toes next time we play, don’t fucking patronize me,” John warned him.

“Twenty, thirty years ago when we were first starting out, directors and actors refused to read serious scrips from women. They were relegated to comedy or chick flicks. So I would put my name in front of hers.” Clive shook his head and his voice took on a dreamy, faraway quality. “She would get so angry.”

“She had every right.” If someone else took credit for John’s work, he’d take a crowbar to their shins.

“Yeah, she did. But my talent is in organizing talent. I’m a great producer, but I never would have had that chance without her work as a writer. The scripts that got my name into the right ears… those were hers. My name was there, but she did eighty percent of the work. Without her, I would still be a hack writer trying and probably failing to pay my bills.”

John studied Clive. He almost sounded guilty about his success. It wasn’t like he had beaten his wife down and stolen her work. “We both had real obstacles in the way of our talent. For you, I suspect it was the economy.”

“And fish farms and commercial fisheries and the fucking Canadians who don’t have to throw back the big lobsters. Assholes. And regulations in general,” John added. He’d had a lot of help failing.

“For me it was a lack of talent at the few skills newcomers were allowed and a plethora of talent in an area were no newcomer could enter,” Clive said. “I was lucky enough to overcome my obstacle because raging sexism worked for me instead of against me. I’m pretty sure I had racism in my favor too, but that issue is sensitive enough I wouldn’t mention it to anyone else. Just don’t ever ask me about Dwaine Lemont.”

“Who?”

Clive grimaced. “A man whose skill as a director should have gotten him the picture that turned out to be my first big break. You see this house as proof of my strength, and I see proof that I’ve been lucky.  I worked damn hard to take advantage of that luck, but plenty of people never had the chances I did.”

John turned his attention back to the ocean. Part of him wondered if Clive’s words sounded good because he wanted it to be true. John’s father had always said a person made their own luck and a good man could make a living with his hands. Clive’s words felt like an escape hatch. “You’re still doing it,” John said softly.

“Doing what?”

“Trying to take care of me.”

Clive shrugged. “Yeah, well, I do that. It ruined my marriage and pretty much every other relationship I’ve had. Either I get up in their business outside the bedroom or I want to control so much in the bedroom that they run screaming the other direction. The only people who want my brand of protection are weak. And I’m not attracted to weak. Never have been. Hence the use of prostitutes.”

John frowned. Clive was rich and handsome, with a wide streak of ethics. Men and women would line up if he made it clear he was in the market for a relationship. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Oh, it is.  And it’s hard baked into my personality.”

“My brother says that you’re a hardass,” John argued.

“If you needed your ass kicked, I’d do that. Caring can mean protecting a project by eviscerating anyone who threatens it. For example, I believe in the Unforgiven project, which is why I legally cockblocked Robinson on every front until he decided that kidnapping what the next logical choice. Moron.”

“But you’re letting Elena handle the revenge?”

With a sigh, Clive headed for the path back to the house. “Because at this point if I get involved, I’ll have to ask Elena for help covering up a murder, and that’s not a line I plan to cross. He had no right to touch you.” Clive whirled around and pointed a finger at John. “And before you say anything, I know I have no right to fight your battles for you. You don’t need to say it.”

“You’re assuming I was going to say something.”

“I was married to another dominate personality. I know how you think.”

John passed Clive on the path. “Maybe you don’t because I was going to say I’m glad you’re not involved because part of me wishes you would kill him, and that’s bad for my soul.”

Clive trotted to catch up. “Really?”

“I thought I was going to die. Since I don’t know how to fire a gun, I would be strangely fine with anyone who decided to murder him. So, since we’re both stubborn, dominant men who have trouble accepting our own failures and limitations, let’s make a deal. You pick where we’re going, and I pick what we do.” John silently prayed that Clive would pick the stables. If they could get back in their pony play groove, everything else would fade away.

“The main house,” Clive said.

John managed to avoid groaning. Since he did not want to spend all night talking about the same damn shit, he said, “To watch television.”

“Deal,” Clive agreed. They walked back up to the house in silence, but some of the awkwardness had drained away.

Chapter 28: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-20726684 

Chapter 29: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-20848455