The Breaker (Erotic Country #1.) (3 page)

In the darkness of her
room she took one last look at his silhouette. His hands on the magazine no
longer turned pages. His chin was lifted and she saw his lips mutter something.
And although she couldn’t see his eyes, she knew they were on her window.

She slept naked. Or at
least she tried to. The thought of him watching her undress only made her ache
for him more. But she wouldn’t let this guy control her. If he wanted her, he
would have to earn her. Not just take whatever the hell he wanted.

* * * * *

When Sophie sat at the breakfast
table the next morning, Brett ignored her again. He sat at the table with a mug
of black tea in front of him and twisted a small screwdriver into a set of
rowelled spurs. A small nut fell and the rowel dropped off the shank. It rolled
over the table like a tiny tractor wheel. From his top pocket he pulled out a
new set. These rowels, she noticed, had a wheel of sharp, pointy spikes. They
were nasty. Not something she would ever use on a horse.

While he busied
himself fixing the sharper rowels onto the back of the spurs, Nancy brought him
a plate that was heaped with food – bacon, eggs, tomatoes and anything else one
could possibly think to include in a hot breakfast. The spurs sat on the table
while he ate, again chewing slowly and carefully.

Sophie helped herself
to the usual stale coffee and cold toast and sat as far away from him as
possible. She downed her coffee. It tasted terrible.

Mick finished his meal
and took his plate to the sink. On the way out he commented on the spurs. ‘Got
a young colt to sort out?’

‘Filly actually,’
Brett murmured in a dark voice.

It was the first time
he had spoken to one of the other men. Mick raised his eyebrows, cast a glance
at Sophie and smiled, then left the room. Sophie left the toast on her plate and
stalked from the room, jamming her hat on her head on the way out.

Outside, Jim yelled at
Paul and Pete to get to the cattle ramps. They were loading steers as they
branded them, ready to take to the finishing paddocks at Bangaloo Creek.

‘Load any green broke
horses onto the other truck and they can come out too,’ Jim called to her. ‘You
can show Brett around the other property.’

Sophie nodded and made
her way to the horse shed. She tossed out hay and had the breakers into the
round yard before Brett made it out to the shed. He walked in, nodded a cursory
good morning and opened the gate to the round yard.

‘We’re taking some young
horses out to Bangaloo Creek,’ she said. ‘These ones will have to wait until
this afternoon.’ She paused. ‘You could fill some water buckets if it’s not
beneath you.’

She left the shed
before she could gauge his response, and took some halters to the horse
paddocks, where the six young geldings she had started last month grazed. She
caught them one by one and tethered them to the horse truck. Then she went back
to the shed.

To her annoyance,
Brett had totally disregarded her directions. Drafted into the round yard were
the same three breakers he’d worked yesterday. He was starting with the
side-lines again.

‘We don’t have time
for that.’

He looked at his watch
briefly and got back to the horse, running his hand over its hind quarter, down
its leg and reaching for its hoof. It kicked out at him and he calmly started
again, pushing the horse around and around until it willingly stood still. He
took the leg and deftly strapped the leather cuff just above its hoof. Then he
left it kicking and complaining in the yard. Each time it tried to put its back
foot on the ground, it stumbled and nearly fell over.

Sophie watched the
young horse trying to work it out. Her father had taught her to use a side-line
too. The horses eventually worked out that it was easier to just submit and
stand quietly. If they ever got tangled in something more dangerous, like a
barbed wire fence, her dad had explained to her, horses that had been
hobble-trained wouldn’t panic and hurt themselves. More likely they would stand
patiently until someone came and untangled them. It was better than ripping
their legs to pieces.

She glanced around the
shed and for some reason felt irritated again when she noticed that the water
buckets had been filled. Why did that bother her? She’d asked him to. She headed
over to the harness shed to get some saddles.

It was a fantastic old
shed. Along the open timber struts of one wall hung hundreds and hundreds of
rusty, disused horseshoes. She always imagined where those shoes had been and
what cattle they’d chased. Some had caulked heels, others had rolled toes,
extra clips or had been banged out flat. She imagined all the different horses
that had galloped over the granite soils of Stoneleigh over the past hundred years.

Over another wall, tangles
of ropes and leather and metal hung like messy bundles of spaghetti. There were
disused spurs, rusty iron bits and leather quart pots, plus bridles and limp
woollen blankets folded to the size of a horse’s back. There were battered
helmets and every imaginable thickness of rope – hemp, cotton or nylon – coiled
and strapped into neat bundles or woven into makeshift reins.

The stock saddles,
which were in constant use, sat in row after row, stacked on short timber posts
jutting from the wall, all leather with big knee rolls and lined with blue or
gold felt. Carved into one of the old timber beams behind one of the saddle
racks was a quote she loved:
Love all, trust a few, but always paddle your
own canoe … Ted 2/4/63

She sometimes fantasised
about who Ted 2/4/63 might have been.

There were whips: short,
long and every size in between, some cruel, some merely persuasive. Short batons
for jumping, long slender ground-training whips and elegant dressage whips.
There were 12 foot long lunge whips and plaited red hide stock whips. An old
leather bull whip also hung among them.

Then there were the
hobbles: cuffs of leather, lined with white waxy skin cells chafed from the
horses’ fetlocks and secured with strong steel buckles and lengths of chain.
Some were designed to restrain a horse’s two front feet; some were for the
knees; and some were spider hobbles, made to shackle all four legs. There were
breeding hobbles to stop a mare kicking; and more cruel harnesses that were
used to stretch a horse’s hind leg back until it hurt. For the life of her,
Sophie could see no point in that.

Most of the hobbles
had hung on the wall gathering dust since the day she took over the
horse-breaking at Stoneleigh. She noticed now that they had been disturbed. From
Brett using the side-lines, she guessed.

She took the saddles
and gear that she needed and put them in the truck.

By the time Brett
joined her, the cattle trucks had pulled out of the long dirt driveway with
Mick, Jim, old Sam and the two young cow hands hanging their elbows out of the
windows. The Bangaloo Creek boys stood on the back of the farm ute, clinging to
the roll bar while it fishtailed on the dirt behind them. They blasted the air
horns and Nancy waved out the kitchen window.

‘What, am I the
strapper?’ she snapped at him when he sauntered out of the horse shed and began
untying horses to load them. Sophie hit the button on the side of the truck and
an electronic winch whirred, lowering a narrow ramp.

She snatched the rope
from the horse he held, tossed it over its mane and pointed its nose up the
ramp. It walked straight up the ramp and she went in after it and bolted a
dividing rail alongside it.

She trotted back down
the ramp and took the next horse from Brett, who gave her a sneer. Prick. By
the time she got to the fourth horse, she heard footsteps behind her.

She chose to ignore
him. Until she felt his warm body wrap around hers and take her by the wrists. His
arms were huge and strong and they spun her around and wrenched her hands
behind her back.

She glared up at him.
‘Well, good morning to you too,’ she said. ‘Mind if I have my arms back?’ She wriggled,
but it was futile.

The corners of his
mouth pulled slightly and something decidedly sinful glinted in his eyes. With
both her hands in one of his, he reached for something behind his back, and she
heard the unmistakeable sound of a chain links rattling together. He leaned into
her and ran his mouth seductively over hers, pulling gently at her lower lip
and breathing into her mouth. ‘Those arms are mine,’ he whispered. Leather,
three inches wide, wrapped tightly around her wrists and she felt cold steel
buckles against her skin as he drove the pin into the eyelet and fastened them.
He stood back and ran his eyes over her.

She pulled at the horse
hobbles in which he’d shackled her. ‘What the hell,’ she hissed, horrified and
furious and scared all at once, twisting her wrists and trying to slide her
hands out. ‘I’m not into this sort of thing, Brett. I mean it, let me go.’

His expression was harsh
as he looked her over. He had her buckled tight and there was no one else on
the property except Nancy, who seemed to think the sun shone out of his boots.
‘Brett …’ She pulled at the hobbles. ‘Seriously …’

He stepped closer
until he was pressing against her. His skin smelled clean and raw and his
clothes smelled of diesel and leather. The horse behind her shifted and
nickered nervously.

‘Shhh,’ he whispered,
the stubble on his chin brushing the lobe of her ear. ‘You’re upsetting the
horse.’

Upsetting the horse?
Was he kidding? ‘Brett …’

His hand clamped over
her mouth and her eyes widened as he squeezed her face with a huge, powerful
hand. She whimpered.

‘You wanted to play
games,’ he said calmly in her ear.

Panic shot through
her. All she knew about this guy was that he had just done four years in
prison, because someone upset him. She was an idiot to play games with him last
night. What the hell had she started?

Brett took his hand
from her face and placed one finger on her lips to silence her, and then he
slowly began unbuttoning her shirt, starting from the top. When the last tiny button
squeezed through his fingers, he pulled her shirt back over her shoulders and paused
while he looked down on her breasts, which were pushed together by turquoise
blue lace.

His hands came back to
her hips and stilled, as though deciding what to do with her. ‘What games will
we play, Sophie?’

She ran her tongue
over her bottom lip to moisten it before trying to speak. ‘Don’t hurt me.’

‘No?’

She shook her head and
swallowed.

His fingers ran idly
along the edges of her shirt and she shivered. ‘Pain can be good, Sophie.’ He
slid the straps of her bra off her shoulders and curled his fingers under the
cups, pulling them down and lifting her breasts out, feeling the fullness of
them in his hands before rolling her nipples between his fingers and twisting
them.

Her breath caught and
a current ran up her legs, making her unsteady. He took his hands away and left
her, exposed, and stinging.

From the belt loop on
the top of his jeans, he unbuckled the spurs he had altered earlier that
morning, running a thumb over the sharp spikes, and then checking the tiny
indents they left on his skin. With one in each hand he reached behind her back
and under her shirt.

She squeezed her eyes
tight and gasped as she felt them spike along her lower back in one sharp
movement, making her bare breasts arch towards him. Holy fuck, she would never
use spurs on a horse again. That was just mean. He rolled them over her skin again;
downwards this time and a tiny squeal escaped her throat as she arced forward. The
sound of her pain made him smirk. It was the closest thing to a smile she had
seen on his face. Sadistic bastard. She vowed not to weaken again.

Brett leaned into her
and ran his mouth lightly over her neck, then traced his lips slowly over her
chest until he held her nipple between his front teeth. He pressed the spurs
into the middle of her back and she pushed into his face and pulled at the
hobbles. Her chains rattled against the steel divider she was shackled to.

That’s when he bit
down on her. Hard. He pulled, until the soft rosy skin of her nipple ripped
from his teeth, leaving a bite mark. Fuck, it hurt! She panted to stop herself
from crying out. Oh fuck. While she reeled, he took the other nipple between
his teeth and did the same thing. He bit down until she could hardly bear it,
and just when she was on the point of screaming, he let it slip from his teeth.

She closed her eyes
tight and tried to deal with the exquisite pain, while he ran his tongue over
the tiny bite marks, soothing and arousing them. They were so sensitive and his
tongue drove her insane. He ran his mouth back up her body and his lips played
over her ear lobe, his breath sending shivers up every limb. His fingers
kneaded her aching nipples.

‘Touch me,’ she whispered.

‘Where?’

‘Between my legs.’

‘Say please,’ he murmured
back, kissing her neck with his lips and teeth. His swollen cock, beneath his
jeans, rubbed into her hip and she ached for him to ram it inside her.

She swallowed quickly
and closed her eyes while she answered. ‘Please.’ Her voice was raspy. Between
her legs she was wet. Dripping wet. Her clit pounded greedily. She clenched her
muscles tightly to try to relieve the ache in them. With her hands still firmly
shackled behind her back, she was completely at his mercy. ‘Undo my jeans.’