Ponyboy

James Williams

1.

“Mr. Benson?” I said. “ I don’t know any Benson.”

“No, sir,” Clyde answered over the intercom, “not Benson— Benten, B-E-N-T-E-N. He says he’s here to talk to you about horses.”

“Oh! Benten! Yes, I can see Benten.”

I punched off the intercom and spun my chair around. Today was going to be a high point in a most miraculous year. I stood up and walked to the window, and made sure my shirt was well-tucked, my cuffs shot to the ruby links, my tie knot settled. Twenty-eight floors below, San Francisco was spread out before me like a virgin eager to get laid. I could see great mountains of fog retreating back over the Marin headlands to the Pacific like ethereal, white-whale ghosts. We’d have clear air everywhere by dinnertime. I took it all as a good omen.

October 29. One year ago I was still a married man, a slave in principle to a gorgeous wife who didn’t turn me on in a marriage of convenience I could not afford to leave. I had the old family name her daddy wanted, she had all the money I wanted—and then she had all the money, period. When my picture showed up in a local gay paper the week before the Folsom Street Fair, I was summarily escorted out of the family business: Oops, so sorry. It had all been such a joke! Except, of course, the joke was on me. I’d been to the Fair a few years before in shades and cap and vest with my buffed chest and biceps bulging and Richard on my leash wearing the littlest excuse for a codpiece I thought we could get away with. He’d been a big hit at Mark I. Chester’s annual photo show, and we even got invited in to Dr. Tech’s private bash across the way so people could eyeball Dick up close. I never saw anyone take our picture, but obviously someone did: with Richard bent over a barrel sucking Charlie’s Angel while I pumped him with my fist halfway up to the elbow.

Credit where credit is due: The paper didn’t run the picture for three years, and when they did the photo was set as part of a nostalgia collage they had the good sense (or taste) to crop. But anyone who knew me knew it was me, anyone who knew Richard knew he was Gloria’s brother, anyone who knew cock-sucking and fist-fucking knew what we were doing, and whoever sent the clipping from the paper to my father, my wife, and my father-in-law knew all of the above.

Shit, you might say, hit the fan. Shit happened. Shit fell on Alabama like stars. I was up shit creek without a paddle. I was in deep shit. In less than three days I was legally disowned, and everything but everything was in Gloria’s name. I couldn’t buy a newspaper without begging for a dime. For two years I suffered in silence, or my best whining imitation of it. I even fucked Glory from time to time. I thought I needed her forgiveness, and a hole’s a hole for all of that.

October 30 last year, Glory died in an auto accident. Bye-bye.

Sorry. I don’t mean to make light of this: family tragedy, personal tragedy, succesful youngish woman with still lots to live for, and so forth.

But you have to understand: It changed my life.

A week later, November 6, four days after the funeral, I was sitting in the house on Broadway wondering what I was going to do with my life when the lawyer called, and the rest, as they say, is mystery. My story.

What everyone had overlooked was that Glory hadn’t changed her will, so I was still the beneficiary and heir unap-parent to the last dregs of the Robber Barons’ ungodly bank accounts. No trillions, no billions, but many many many millions: enough for me to roll happily in spare change for the rest of my self-indulgent life. And the house, of course—30 rooms with a lot of history. I sat down in my leather chair in the library off the formal dining room and put my feet on my leather ottoman. I stared out the window down the hill to the marina and the Bay. I rang for Chives—his name is Larry, but I’ve always called him Chives—and had him pour me some of the better calvados.

The intercom buzzed, and Clyde opened the door for Mr. Benten. I let Clyde close the door, then took two steps in the direction of my guest with my hand stuck out.

“Mr. Benten, a pleasure.”

“Mr. Townsend.” His voice was quiet, soft, and low as a slow cat’s-purr. “Call me Preston. Please.”

“Edgar. Refreshment, Preston? It’s nearly evening.”

“Thank you, Edgar.” He rapped his leather portfolio twice with his knuckles and smiled as if deferentially. “Yes. One is for ‘no,’ two is for ‘yes.’ A cognac?”

I buzzed, two hots and a trot. Clyde came in with the tray, poured, and left. Preston said, “No need for small talk?” I smiled and shook my head. He sat on the couch and opened his portfolio, and spread some photos out. I sat down beside him, picked one up, and felt a rush go through me like the days of wine and poppers. The boy was stunning on his hands and knees: naked, smooth, well-built, and well-hung, wearing a full head harness complete with bits, reins, and bridle, and a big fluffy ponytail just the soft brown color of his hair arching like a fountain out of his ass. The next boy was saddled, with very short stirrups, and the standing man holding him close on reins was wearing shiny lizard cowboy boots with rowels on his spurs. There were saddled boys standing up with hoof-shaped boots, standing boys harnessed in traces pulling sulkies and carts, ponyboys in poses, ponyboys at ease. They all seemed to be five or ten years younger than I, as Preston was probably that much older.

“When?” I asked Preston.

“Saturday. Come for the afternoon, stay for dinner. You’ll enjoy the company.”

After Preston left I buzzed for Clyde again. “Close the door,” I said when he entered, “and take off your clothes.”

“Sir?” he asked.

“Take off your clothes. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“Yes, sir.”

I never understood why people are obedient, but Clyde did as he was told. Not bad: he could use a gym, but he was young yet. I said, “Get me some ties.”

“Ties, sir? Yes, sir.”

“And a harness.”

“Yes, sir.”

Clyde was clearly puzzled, but his naked ass shimmied as he stepped to the closet and brought me a leather harness dotted with cone studs and a handful of Monday-go-to-Meetin’ ties. I cinched the harness tight around Clyde’s chest, put his back to the side of my desk, strung four of the ties together with bowlines, and ran the thousand-dollar rope I’d made through the O-rings in the back. Then I climbed up on the desk holding the two ends of the rope like reins.

“Now: pull,” I said. “Lean into the harness and pull. Strain, damn it, let me see your muscles work.”

And he did strain, pulling at my huge, landlocked mahogany desk as if it were a lightweight cart on wheels.

Clyde is such a good boy. His shoulders bunched, his rib cage heaved, his back bulged, his thighs and ass cheeks crimped, and he set his jaw so firmly I thought the desk might even move.

I like to see naked men at work. I leapt right down on top of him and threw him to the floor. Before he could say a thing I had my pants open and was fucking him right there without condoms, lube, or anything. I came very quickly, and almost immediately felt his sphincters clamp around my dick a half dozen times. Clyde turned his head around to try to see me over his shoulder.

“Edgar!” he whispered.

One is for “no.” I rapped his skull once with my knuckle. “Shush,” I told him. “Relax. It’s only lust.”

2.

Saturday I left home earlier than necessary and made a slow drive up into the wine country, consulting the map Preston had given me. I had to get off the Silverado Trail and follow the county road a little less than three miles. A quick right, an obscure left, look for the orange Road Work sign, turn left, and the rest would be apparent.

And it was. Two private guards who were decked out to look like Royal Canadian Mounted Police sat their exquisitely turned out horses—real ones—before a rustic wooden gate. I had the top down on the Quattro, so over my windshield I sang out the word Preston had advised. The Mounties parted like a bright red sea, and the gate swung open like an obedient boy’s mouth. I drove in and followed the trail to a tree-shaded parking area full of Boxsters and Benzes and Lexi and one bubble-gum pink Bentley convertible, where more

RCMP look-alikes were stationed this side of a huge burgundy velvet curtain. The velvet was artfully suspended between the tops of a couple of telephone poles and draped with old gold ribbon. It had to be thirty feet high and twice as wide, and was perfectly designed to block from sight whatever was on the other side of it. I heard distant music as one attendant took the keys to my car and another passed me through the curtain. On the other side, the world was altogether different.

Beneath the shade of a white canvas tent-top big enough for a modest circus, a lawn party was in full swing, composed of well-turned-out men of a certain age dressed in casual silks and linens who would not have been uncomfortable one way or another with my bank account. Sculpted, undressed, and scrupulously shaved rather younger men about my age, wearing bright chrome collars with understated locks, circulated among the guests with trays of food and drink, while a small clutch of strolling musicians played gentle melodies. I took a flute of bubbly off a passing tray and cruised the lawn, taking its measure. I was curious to see a politician I would not have expected to be so bold, and a publicly conspicuous neighbor of mine whose hands on the help appeared to be as forward as his magazine tongue. But a different kind of movement at the lawn’s far side caught my eye, so that was where I went, and that was where I found what I had come for.

Beyond the backs of a couple dozen serious connoisseurs, the stock was being put through its paces. Lawn chairs were strewn here and there and some were free, but I found a comfortable tree to lean against and watched the show from the shade that it provided.

Among several ponies, each with his own handler, the boy who took my eye completely was the very definition of horse-dick, cut by Michelangelo from warm Sienna marble and hanging lower than the five-pound disk of lead weight swinging from balls so swollen they looked like a bulging pairs of chestnuts sheathed in fascia shells. He was got up with silver, blue, and white streamers pinned to his silver bridle, and his arms were locked behind him with his elbows stretched around a chrome bar that matched his collar and pushed his shoulders high and forced his breasted chest forward. He lifted his knees one after the other and brought his feet down with great precision so his fat cock looked like a third leg, while his handler held the owner’s end of a ten-foot lead and paced him in a circle where the wide swath of lawn was just beginning to show dark stains of hoofwear. He didn’t even glance to the sides, though he was wearing no blinders. He really knew how to prance.

The boy had started to perspire, and the weight kept bouncing up and down just above his knees. Even though it had to be causing him some kind of pain every time he took a step, his handler made him jump a couple of bars, which he did very gingerly, then stopped him, whispered in his ear, removed the arm bar, and led him away. Everyone else was engaged by a couple other show ponies, but I was so attracted to this boy I wanted to know more about him. I pushed off my tree to follow where his handler led him.

Almost immediately beyond the tent-top they passed a big yellow sign that said No Entry, walked through a gate with automatic locks, then passed a second, similar sign. I slipped my wallet into the gate latch so it couldn’t close completely, and when the handler and boy had disappeared I pushed the gate open, retrieved my wallet, and went on after them while the gate closed behind me.

Handler and boy had gone past a structure that looked as if it had once been a small barn, but now seemed like something from a surreal 1960s movie. The wind had torn the roof off long ago, some of the walls had gone with the roof, and what remained was irregular anyway because whole boards and slabs of wood had fallen off, holes had been ripped out here and there, and whatever glass had once stood in the large window frames must have turned to dust long before the ponyboy was born. Inside the remaining weather-whitened fragments a dozen men lounged on leather furniture much too fine for the ruins and watched two well-muscled boys Greek wrestle. The handler had taken his ponyboy behind the structure, and I could see at my distance where a split-rail paddock held a dozen other ponyboys more or less like the first who all stood nearly motionless in the shade of a stand of black oaks. I watched from beside a small thicket of madrone.

Inside the corral the handler bent the ponyboy over a sawhorse and pulled out his tail, stuffing it dildo-end down into an obvious bucket of disinfectant. He rubbed the pony from head to hoof with a towel soaked in so much witch hazel I could smell it where I lurked, gave him a pail and let him drink, then chained his hands behind a smaller elbow bar. He lifted the weight suspended from the boy’s dark balls, slid it into a narrow slot in the fence in front of the boy, and closed it, then took up the reins of two other boys. He bent first one and then the other over the same sawhorse, and tailed them with ponytails that matched their own hair, then led them out toward the lawn with the same kinds of big weights swaying from their balls.

I waited until the handler had taken the boys away, then moved closer to the fence. The boys saw me, but none of them moved and none of them talked. All their hands were locked behind them and they all wore the same kinds of weights that were pushed through slots to rest on shelves at about thigh level in a way that was designed to relieve the ponies and still secure them. In effect, I had before me a dozen pretty ponyboys, hobbled in the paddock by their balls. None of them could move. No one was going anywhere.

I took a bag of chocolates from my jacket and approached the fence, closing in on the ponyboy I’d first seen prance. I admired his companions, and admired him in particular. I opened the bag and nibbled at a little mint.

“You pranced very well on the lawn. Are you hungry?”

It was a little like talking to a real horse. Some of the other boys snickered and one cleared his throat with a kind of luffing warning sound that horses make with their cheeks, but my ponyboy said nothing. Why would a young stud show off his muscle this way? I figured maybe he got off on all the attention, so I gave him some.

“I’d like to see you really run,” I said. “I’d like to see you straining at a cart that I was riding in. I’d like to drive you, see your muscles growing taut, see you pulling on the harness, see your veins bulge out, see the sweat run down your back and in between the cheeks of your ass. You have such gorgeous legs, I’d like to see how fast you run. Do you like buggy whips? They feel so elegant in the hand, they sound so vicious in the air, they really sting, they hurt like hell, but the marks they leave are gone in a day. Unless you cut the skin with them. Draw blood. You could really mark a ponyboy with one, you know. Do you like to pull a cart?”

I held a chocolate out to him the way you’d hold a piece of sugar toward a horse, but he was having none of it. He didn’t come and lip it up the way real horses do. He couldn’t turn or move because of the hobble, but his eyes seemed to widen as he leaned away from me and turned his head. I moved closer to the fence and made the chocolate last.

“So I guess you’re not supposed to talk with the buyers, is that right? To let us make our minds up on our own? But how can a man know what property he wants unless he has the chance to get to know it. Can I count your teeth at least?”

I finished the chocolate finally, reached out and took his hair in my hand, and tried to turn his face toward me. I don’t know now if I really wanted to count his teeth or if I was just goofing around with him, but he held his head back with a kind of stubborn equine pride. I shook his head by the hair.

“Don’t make me angry, boy. I might just buy you.”

“Edgar,” I heard Preston’s soft voice behind me, “let go of my pony, please.”

3.

I dropped the boy’s hair as if I’d been shocked, and turned around. “Preston! Well, hello! I didn’t know he was your pony. He’s such a handsome lad, and he prances so well—you must be an excellent trainer.”

“Thank you,” he said in a cool, matter-of-fact tone. He wore jodhpurs and a riding blouse, and slapped at his bootleg with a crop. “I’ve had experience.”

“And you give excellent directions, too. I found the place first try.”

“How good,” Preston said. The voice I had thought of was as warm as a cat’s-purr just a couple of days ago now sounded feline in a different way: Deep in his throat it was almost predatory. “Edgar, how do you come to be back here in the paddock area?”

“Here? I just followed the handler when he brought your boy back from show.”

As if on cue the handler appeared from around the Fellini barn, but this time he had no ponyboys in tow. Instead he had a handful of tack, and was accompanied by a couple of Mounties. Preston turned to the handler.

“Gardiner, did you bring Mr. Townsend back here?”

The handler looked at me and back at Preston. “Mr. Townsend? Why, no, sir, I don’t bring anyone. That would be against the strictest rules.”

Edgar turned back to me.

“I didn’t say he brought me, Preston. I said I followed him.”

“Past the No Entry signs? Through the locked gate?”

“Well, yes. I was just so enchanted with the pony that turns out to be yours.”

Preston closed his eyes and seemed to meditate on his feet, and time slowed down for me, the moment stretching out so I felt I filled an hour just taking and releasing a single breath. When Preston opened his eyes he was already walking toward the paddock, but when I turned as if to follow I found myself hemmed in by Gardiner and the Mounties. For the first time I felt a wave of apprehension.

Preston went directly to the ponyboy, who was clearly glad to see him: He smiled and bent his head to nuzzle at Preston’s touch. Preston spoke a few words to him and actually kissed his pony, then he turned and rejoined me.

“I think, Edgar, you have misunderstood my invitation.”

“Excuse me?”

“I think you expected to enjoy the flesh of other ponyboys.”

“Of course I did. What else would I expect here?” Suddenly I felt hollow. “What do you mean, ‘other’ ponyboys?”

Preston nodded, and I could not have counted to “one” before I felt Gardiner pinning my elbows from behind and a Mountie slipping a halter over my head.

“Do not cause trouble, Edgar, and I think you will not be unhappy with the outcome. Or, of course, you can rebel and pay the price.”

Gardiner was enormously powerful: If I were to judge by this one encounter, he could have wrestled genuine horses and won. Over my protests he held me gently but firmly as the Mounties lifted, twisted, and handled me bodily until they had stripped me naked and set me on the ground among them. To my horror I found myself extremely hard, a fact that Preston did not miss.

“You respond to discipline quite favorably, Edgar. That’s a good sign. Get down on your knees. The time has come for a little change.”

“Preston!”

“Do not cause trouble, Edgar. I can be very patient, but I am not always.” Preston slid his crop across his thigh. I heard blue jays squabble. The first Mountie returned from leaving my folded clothes in a neat pile well outside the circle the four men made. Reluctant and peevish but confused by my combination of growing alarm and mounting excitement (because by now I was sporting a raging hard-on), I knelt facing my host, which gave me a chance to notice the delectable bulge in his cavalry twill jodhpurs. Apparently Preston too responded quite favorably to discipline.

“Good boy,” Preston said to me. Good boy? “Now, kiss my boot.”

“Preston!”

“Kiss my boot, Edgar.” He moved so quickly I did not even see the crop slash through space, and the stick whipped the back of my thigh in exactly the spot that allowed the crop to keep on flying and slap hard against my balls. “Now.”

With the fresh sting racing around my tingling nerves, I nearly fell on my face to obey his command, and as I did I felt rough hands take me from behind. I tried to sit up, but Preston’s crop on my other thigh stopped me cold.

“Not a peck, Edgar. Not a little buss. A kiss. You know, with your mouth open, and your tongue wet. Kiss my boots, Edgar. Both of them. Wash them nice and clean.”

I tried to comply. Really I did. But those rough hands worked my ass and started to open me with a slick, smooth, relentless pressure. For an instant I felt sharply stretched and I cried out as if I were being torn, then the dildo sank home and I knew that I’d been tailed. One of those same rough hands worked the dildo until I felt that deep-down need for release that has nothing at all to do with cumming, then the other grabbed my balls and stretched them back like salt water taffy, making me ache so that I started to buck.

“Kiss my boot, Edgar,” Preston said again, and I felt his crop land fast on one cheek and then the other, back and forth even while the dildo pumped my ass and the big hand that squeezed my balls now like silly putty punched them into the deep root of my cock and I tried to say, “Yessir,” but it sounded to me as if I were drowning in a grilled cheese sandwich when I suddenly realized it was Preston’s fine, supple, well-grained, tawny, casual riding boot I was sucking off as if I could get the whole toe of it in between my lips and down my gullet.

Gardiner took my head in his strong hands and pulled me away from Preston’s boot. I smelled the thick aroma of deeply soaped tack-leather, very different from the soft, fragrant scent of a well-kept boot. With consummate smoothness he slid a full bridle over my face, cinched it tight, and locked it into place. It braced me across the forehead and held my jaw in a soft pocket sewn to straps that ran up the sides of my face and met at the crown of my head. There, one cross-strap ran down in front and split in two around my nose, and became one again at the jaw pocket. The other continued down the back of my neck and locked on a collarpiece that extended from the bottom of the jaw pocket and closed at the back of my neck.

Complete as the bridle was, it was designed to keep my mouth accessible. Now Gardiner forced my mouth apart and pressed a hard, narrow, rubber bit between my teeth. Then he kissed me, right over the bit, and while Preston and the Mounties laughed I finally stopped struggling. I was ready to do whatever Preston said. I felt defeated and I didn’t like this feeling, but at the same time I felt thrilled in a way I had never felt before. Naked, on my knees, bridled, a little bit worked over, and helpless at the command of these four big men, my cock so hard it ached, and I wanted to kiss Preston’s boots, and Gardiner’s, and the Mounties’. I fell forward, but a hard tug on the bridle kept my head suspended.

“Follow,” Preston said, and I scrambled to follow the measured movement of his boots as he strolled around the area outside the paddock. He used the reins to keep my head exactly at the height and angle that would make my bearing appear proud, if “proud” is a word I could apply to crawling around in the dirt and praying I would have a chance to grovel for this man’s pleasure. He used the slightest pressure to let me know I was to turn to the left or right, and when he wanted me to stop he just tightened his fist on the reins so I felt the thin rubber bit against my cheeks. With every step I felt that dildo rubbing deep in my bowels, filling the cavity, and teaching my asshole to be hungry, as my hips and knees and shoulders and hands moved me along with greater and greater certainty, and the long horsehair tail brushed the backs of my welted thighs all the way past the insides of my knees to tickle my calves.

I had completely lost track of time when Preston brought me up before Gardiner and the Mounties. A pail of water was waiting, and when I tried to direct my head toward it, Preston pulled me up short and took the bit out of my mouth.

“I believe this new pony is thirsty, gentlemen. Does anyone have something for him to drink? Why, here’s something now.”

Preston pulled my head up sharply and turned my face to the side at once so that my mouth was at just the right height for a very long, slender Mountie cock with beautiful veins that looked like wide blue rivers laid out on a map of heaven. The lines and ridges and marks on its head were the intricate byways God had set up to make the sinner’s journey entertaining. I wanted to travel each little one-way street so slowly that I could come to a full stop at every twist and turn, but the Mountie with the open fly interrupted my reverie. He took my hair in one hand and his cock in the other, and jerked my mouth open and jammed himself straight past my gag reflex and out, and in and out, and he never even stopped to find out if I could handle meat that long, and by the time I could cough for the first time he was cumming so far down my throat I never even tasted him till he pulled out gradually, like a hungry snake reluctantly leaving the warmth of its sun-spotted burrow, wiping the head of his dick on my tongue as he passed.

I was gasping more than the Mountie, but I was getting the hang of it: If this was going to be the future, I started to see how I could have some unexpected fun, and I was ready for Mountie number two. He was thick as a plug, but I clamped him in my lips like a hose in an O-ring and sucked up a vacuum that must have yanked his balls straight up into his body and shot them out into my mouth, which is how he came, one-two. His mouth fell open but mine stayed shut, and I did not meet his eyes as I smiled to myself. I expected Gardiner next, but Preston put me in front of the bucket and I drank what ponies are supposed to drink.

While I drank I smelled something hot, as if a little piece of air was burning, and when I was through one of the Mounties threw a small piece of meat to the ground in front of me. Was I supposed to eat it? Preston stabbed it with a tiny iron, and it crackled and sizzled and smoked. He pulled the iron away and there was an arrow branded into the meat.

“I like the way you work, Edgar. That is a pleasant surprise. If you continue to please me, this meat might be you someday. If you continue. But today we have a different task. Stand up.”

Beyond the paddock was a hedge. As Preston led me toward it I could see the hedge was made entirely of holly maybe two feet thick and dense with hard, curled leaves that were so pointed that the hedge was effectively made of thorns. From closer up the hedge seemed curved, and in a few more steps I saw that its curve hid a gap perhaps twice the width of a real, large horse. Preston led me inside the hedge, and then I could see that it was completely circular, containing a grassy area half the size of a soccer field, with a second gap about the same size set directly across from the first.

Preston removed the reins from the bridle on my face. “You will wear the bridle and you will wear the tail,” he said, “but otherwise you will be free to run. If you can escape the enclosure through either opening before I capture you, I will bring you the ponyboy you seemed to admire so much, and put you out to stud with him for the weekend. If I capture you, however, you will join my stable and maybe pull a race cart that I will let him drive.”

Gardiner appeared in the gap behind us, leading an English-saddled roan that had to be eighteen hands tall.

“I’ll give you a little head-start,” Preston said, “but I have never yet lost this contest. Enjoy yourself. Run!”

I made the same mistake I suppose anyone would make just then: I ran. But instead of maneuvering for position at close range and plunging through the gap we’d just come through, where I might have really had a chance, I ran for the far gap, supposing sort of automatically that with the little head-start I might outrun him. Outrun a horse. A big horse.

The dildo stretched my asshole and wallowed in my rectum and almost brought me to my knees all by itself. The bridle cramped my face and restricted my breathing. My bare feet were exquisitely sensitive to the nuances of little divots and pebbles and gopher holes, and the searing points of dry grasses and nettle seeds nearly threw me to the ground repeatedly. My unsupported balls bounced more heavily than I would have imagined, and hurt surprisingly. Maybe this wasn’t going to be quite as much fun as I’d thought a little while ago. And only then did I realize I was a naked man with a bridle on my head and a horsetail dildo up my ass, running beneath the sky as if my life depended on it across an open, empty field. I turned my head to look behind me and saw Preston sitting in the saddle, leaning forward with his arms folded against the horse’s neck, laughing. Now he was the one having fun. Fuck him. Preston reined his horse and started it in to walk, and then to trot, and then to canter. I turned for the far gap and bolted as fast as I could.

Preston never meant me harm, I know: This was just a game for him, and I was learning to play. But I had never been so terrified in my entire life as when I heard the rapid beat of horse hooves pounding on the ground behind me, closer with every set of steps. My eyes were blurred with sweat the first time he swept past me and sliced the skin of my ass with some kind of whip. I’m sure I screamed, but I kept on running. He scribed a wide arc in front of me, swept around behind me again, and I felt the terror again as I heard him coming up on me at a dead run when the whip cut my ass again. The breath was rasping in my throat and I’d forgotten all my pain, keeping my eyes on the gap that now seemed miles away. I heard Preston shouting from behind, “Run! Run! Run!” and then a lasso settled over me and pinned my arms to my sides and the horse just stopped, jerking me to the ground.

Preston was on me as if I were a steer, tying my wrists behind me, binding my ankles, and trussing me up in record seconds. I was panting hoarsely, trying to catch some breath, and Preston’s shirt wasn’t even ruffled. That made me mad.

“If you were me I bet you’d fuck me now, wouldn’t you?” he whispered in my ear. At first I didn’t have the strength to reply, but he took my balls in one of his hands. “Shall I geld you, Edgar?” And then I found my voice.

“Please, Preston, no. Please, no.”

“Well then, what shall I do with you?”

Suddenly I had caught my breath. I was exhausted more from the adrenaline that had been coursing through me than from the run itself, and I knew that I would ache by morning. But I realized that Preston was lying almost completely on top of me, holding my balls in his hand, and looking into my eyes.

Lying beneath him naked and bound, bridled and tailed, I got coy and almost smiled. I made music with my voice as if I were an olde-time sweater queen batting my eyelashes at a butch. “Will you please brand me, Preston?”

Hah! I thought. He wasn’t expecting that.

But he didn’t miss a beat. “In time, perhaps, but you haven’t earned that honor yet, Edgar. This is just the first day of your training. Perhaps I’ll keep you or perhaps you’ll fetch a pretty price when I get through with you, but you’re an orphan for the moment. You’re in my keeping but you don’t belong to anyone just now, and you have a great deal yet to learn. And by the way, to you my name is Mr. Benten. But of course, ponies don’t talk, and you are not allowed to speak again. Do you understand me?”

I wanted to spit in his face and I wanted to kiss him, I wanted to rip myself out of my bonds and destroy him and I wanted him to beat my rebellion out of me with his whip, I wanted him to make love to me and I wanted him to crush my balls in his warm, soft, exceptionally certain hand. It was difficult, hog-tied as I was, but this was going to be even more fun than I’d thought. I lifted my legs together and let them drop on the ground—one, two: yes.