Saddled, chapter 31 (Patreon)

John gave the harness a hard tug. The cart resisted for a second, gravity and the uneven ground of the forest path conspiring against him, and then John pulled harder and the wheel came free with a jolt. Despite the hard, physical labor, John figured he had the more pleasant end of this trip because the cart Clive was sitting in had no shocks. The simple red cart with polished wood trim looked like a modified rickshaw. It had oversize wheels and a seat large enough for one. Two if they were scrawny and didn’t mind squeezing together.

However the similarity ended there. Instead of holding onto the pull bars, Clive had attached John to the cart with buckles and straps. John wondered if this was the sort of cart Noah had pulled. John still hadn’t decided which was stranger—a psychiatrist being into kinky bondage or that Noah’s form of bondage had come without sex. Personally, John would have demanded huge amounts of money to play someone’s horse if he didn’t get the deep satisfaction of occasionally kicking Clive’s ass and getting great orgasms.

“Gee,” Clive called, and John took a sharp right onto a slightly narrower path. It led up slightly, and John felt the burn in his calves and thighs. 

Bushes and tall weeds slapped at the wheels as John pulled the cart. The afternoon sun was low in the sky and the light slid between the trunks of the birch and red spruce. Stripes of light laid across the path, hiding the unevenness of the ground, and the toe of John’s boot caught on a branch. John raised his knees high to avoid tripping. That would end the outing, and Clive’s guilt would probably condemn John to walking in a circle for the near future. He much preferred the outdoors.

The day was warm enough to warn that summer was coming, but the ocean breeze whisked away the worst of it. It helped that John was naked except for the plethora of straps and harness pieces that locked him to the cart. A few birds called, but for the most part, they were alone with a skittering of leaves and the buzz of insects. 

“Haw!” Clive called when another fork in the path appeared. He’d stopped using the reins as much, which John appreciated because the corners of his mouth strung. The rein practice had left him a little raw.

It was strange. A month ago he would have assumed the whip marks on his back and legs would be the worst of it. A month ago he certainly questioned the sanity of the various clients who hired him to give them a good whipping. But John got it. The whip woke the skin. It made John feel more alive, more restless and needy and horny. 

And his inability to jerk off forced him to ride the sharp edge of desire much longer than he would have chosen. Yet John knew he was going to enjoy his next orgasm even more because of the wait. 

“Whoa,” Clive called as he pulled gently on the reins. John stopped. While Clive climbed out of the narrow one-person cart, John stretched his neck and shoulders. Pulling used a much different set of muscles.

Once Clive had come around to the front of the cart, he studied John. Since he couldn’t say anything, John raised an inquisitive eyebrow. Clive grinned.

That was never a good expression. He might as well cackle in an evil Snidely Whiplash voice while he twirled his non-existent mustache. John raised his eyebrows more.

“You’ll be fine here, won’t you boy? Good Spirit,” Clive crooned as he tied the reins to a low branch. John narrowed his eyes. Clive was asking for an ass kicking. Then the asshole had the audacity to pat John’s hip before he turned toward the cliff. Even from a distance, the view was stunning. Between the tree trunks, the sky was jewel blue and the horizon was a bright blue line that divided it from the darker sea. Clive sat on a low bench and stared for a time before he took out his phone.

Asshole.

The bastard was honestly going to read his phone, leaving John to stand around with nothing to do. And with the damn reins tied to a tree, John couldn’t even make trouble.

Or could he. He eyed the knot Clive had used before taking a step back and tugging at the reins. The leather loop tightened around the branch before loosening again the second the tension eased. This was going to be too easy. John rocked back and forth, watching the knot shift and twist. Fishermen lived and died by their ability to tie a knot. As a boy, his father had him practice on bits of scrap rope. Clive, however, was under the mistaken understanding that any knot worked in any situation. He was about to learn better.

John grinned, and the corners of his mouth stung.

While Clive obsessed over his phone, John worked to loosen the knot. Despite his sore feet, he rocked back and forth. The harness tightened and sweat gathered along his spine and ran under the leather straps, but John continued the tedious work. It gave him something to do while Clive read. It took time and patience, but John had both to spare. The sun came through the leaves, leaving a dappled pattern on the ground and on John’s bare skin.

Eventually the leather loop slipped free of the branch, and John slowly backed away. The wheel hit something and a loud cracking sound broke the silence.  Clive twisted around, alarm evident in every tense line of his body, John started backing up quickly, but the harness didn’t allow him to turn, so he didn’t get far before the cart hit something. A tree, most likely.

“John!” Clive shouted. He must be startled to use John’s real name. John pulled the cart forward, changed the angle and tried backing up again. He made it a few feet this time, enough room to turn around. If John could take off and leave Clive to walk back alone, that would be well worth it. However, Clive was too close. As John tried moving forward, Clive grabbed at the reins.

John changed tactics. He rushed forward, stomping the ground. Clive stumbled backward before his toes could get crushed, and John pursued. Clive’s back hit a tree, and John tried to pin him, but the damn wheel caught on something, slowing John enough that Clive darted to the side and took shelter behind the tree.

Returning to his original plan, John tried to turn around. Clive lunged at him. If he got his grubby little hands on the reins, John would have to play nice. His mouth couldn’t take much more jerking around. John kicked, his boot landing on Clive’s thigh with a distinctive thud. However, that left John off balance. He tried to shift his center of gravity, but his boots lacked traction. He slipped. 

Clive’s eyes grew large and he grabbed for John, but his fingertips only brushed John’s chest. The cart tilted and then John and the cart tumbled off the path. John’s shoulder slammed into a tree and then he slid down into the weeds. The harness dug into John’s flesh because the tipped cart put all the weight on one of the poles.

“Shit. Hold on,” Clive said as he pulled at the cart. He ended up practically standing on one wheel and bouncing on it to get the cart to straighten back out, and then the harness dragged John back onto his feet. “Just hang on.” For the first time since they’d known each other, Clive sounded genuinely flustered. He rushed to unclip the straps that attached John to the cart.

But in his rush, he fumbled and ended up taking longer than he had to clip John in. John barely avoided rolling his eyes. He’d fallen off a path, not off a fucking cliff. Clive reached up and unbuckled the bridle.

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine. I just slipped. Are you okay?”

Clive stopped, one hand still on the chest buckle he’d been working. “Am I okay? Am I okay?” The second time he asked, his tone went up about an octave. “I’m not the one who got trapped under the damn cart.”

John scoffed. “No, you’re the one who got kicked with the world’s heaviest boots.”

“Oh.” John might have taken offense at the implication that he was a pathetically bad kicker, but Clive reached down to rub his thigh and quickly pulled his hand away with a wince. “That might hurt.” He stopped and gave John a suspicious look. “Are you counting this as a win in your column?”

“I did get a kick in.”

“Before you brained yourself against the nearest tree.” Clive pulled the chest buckle free with enough force he nearly pulled John off his feet.

“That? No big deal,” John said with a shrug, and then he winced. “If you admit your leg hurts, I’ll admit that my shoulder is killing me.”

“Let me get the harness off.” Clive went back to work unbuckling leather straps, although now his movements were surer and more productive. 

He was working to get the back straps free when John said, “I have an itch right there on my shoulder blade. Right where you’re working.”

Clive scratched the right spot. “Here?”

“Yeah. Perfect.” John sighed as Clive finished giving him a good scratch before he took off the last of the harness pieces, leaving John buck naked in the woods. John eyed the ground, but Maine had far too many noxious weeds and bugs who liked human flesh for him to try it. Instead, as Clive put the harness pieces under the seat, John half-leaned and half-sat on the tilted cart.

Clive put the last piece in a box and slid it back under the seat before he moved to the spot next to John. “My leg and my ego are bruised.”

“You suck at tying knots.”

“Of course.” Clive shook his head. “I’m going to have to invest in fucking padlocks.”

“Either that or you could avoid ignoring me. I get bored easily, and I don’t like competing with a cell phone.”

Clive gave him a suspicious look. “So, if I had been sitting admiring you, then you wouldn’t have tried to get free?”

John pursed his lips. “You would have noticed quicker.”

Clive rubbed his face. “You are a menace.”

“When I’m bored, yes, yes I am.” John raised his arm and slowly stretched out his abused shoulder. While he hadn’t done any real damage, he was going to bruise if he didn’t get some ice on it. 

“I’m not sleeping on that stable cot tonight,” Clive said. “I vote for moving into the bedroom.”

John rubbed his sore shoulder. He should turn Clive down. The contract didn’t list sleeping together or slow, mutual handjobs. If John was too bruised to keep playing, the only out allowed by the contract was for him to go home. But he had already violated Elena’s precious contract once, and John found he wanted to share Clive’s bed again.

It was strange. He and Clive were so competitive outside the bedroom, and yet when they’d shared a bed or even now as they walked the path, there was a calmness to their relationship. John didn’t worry about who might come first or who had the bigger dick. “I wouldn’t mind a bed,” John said.

Clive pushed away from the cart. “Then we have two votes for a soft bed. Come on. Let’s get the cart back to the stable.” He took one of the poles.

John grabbed the second pole and they started down the path, their shoulders bumping because the cart wasn’t wide enough for both of them to pull. 

The last person that John had slept in a bed with had been Lily. She had been a long-term girlfriend and the one who had disabused John of his illusion of being a good lover. He’d always taken pride in making sure his girl friends came first and came far more often than he did.

Then during their last screaming match—the one that had ended their two year relationship—Lily had called him selfish and accused him of being too competitive to be a good lover. She’d told him that she had taken to faking orgasms just to get him to finish and get off her so she could get some sleep. She’d called him exhausting. John remembered the humiliation as the truth of her words had sunk in.

Since then he’d had sex with any number of women. As one of Elena’s assistants, he’d been in dozens of beds. But he’d never slept while in bed with clients. Lily’s words echoed far too loud for him to want that.

So he found it incredibly ironic that he let go of some of that competitiveness when he shared a bed with the second most competitive person in the universe. Noah had said their relationship sounded like hell because they were both dominants trying to score points off each other. They took pride in physically bruising each other. John had been in hockey games with less testosterone poisoning than their sex life. 

But now that he was tired and his feet hurt and his shoulder was bruised, John wanted to curl up in bed next to Clive and find that peaceful silence. Hopefully Clive felt the same because if he ever flung hateful words like Lily had, John suspected they would hurt far worse than any bruise or whip mark.

Chapter 32: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-21733699 

Chapter 33: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-21751005 

Chapter 34: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-21913468 

Chapter 35: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-22204867 

Chapter 36: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-22342250 

Chapter 37: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-22436580 

Chapter 38 (Epilogue): https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-epilogue-22779789