Rising Trot

From Blushes 12

It seemed that she’d come every day since the holidays began.  Walking down across the meadow in the afternoon sun or dodging the potholes in the lane on her bike after tea, leaning on the gate of the paddock and watching Tregowan Evergreen being led out for exercise and cantered and galloped around the field. She brought sugar or a carrot or an apple and the horse had got to know her, wanting to walk across to the gate for the titbit when exercise was over.

He’d got to know her as well, had got used to seeing her bicycle propped against the fence and her sun-bleached hair catching the light. Her long legs and her tight little bum in faded jeans or snug shorts.  She’d been coming for a week, a week of polite ‘Hello’s’ and ‘How’s Evergreen’ before she’d asked — not really asked, knowing the answer would be ‘No’, more like just said it, let it pop out, as if she’d simply had to say it or burst.

‘I’d love to ride him, Mr Walters — I’d just love to!’ she said it with a little smile, then bitten her lip, as though she’d regretted letting the thought out; but he’d known, of course, all along.

‘I c’n ride, Mr Walters — I c’n ride very well, some people say.’

He’d seen her at gymkhanas, fair hair pinned up under her hard hat, tight-buttoned jacket, young bottom bobbing in close-fit jodhpurs, spinning her pony on sixpences and putting him at fences full tilt, her eyes bright and heels kicking on, full of nerve. He’d seen her behind the marquee, tears on her cheeks when she’d come second instead of first, but it hadn’t been self-pity, just want-to-win frustration.

‘No,’ he’d said, and said it again when she’d asked the second time, but she’d still come every day, until he’d asked if she’d like to earn some pocket money, mucking-out and grooming, and she’d jumped at the chance to work near Evergreen.

She’d arrived on her bike the first morning at seven o’clock, an hour before anyone else was about, her face so bright and full of excitement you’d have thought she’d been selected for the Olympic team.

And she’d worked hard, and he’d let her curry-comb Evergreen and she’d just stood and looked when she’d finished and said, in a quiet but utterly determined voice, that she just had to ride him, and in a competition, or she’d simply die!

He’d told her about his plans for the horse; county shows and small events, and schooling, schooling, schooling, and then next year he’d try him out against better competition and work with him and build him up into a really good horse — and then, the following year, the chance might come. He wouldn’t take any offers, and there would be offers; he’d just keep on, working and schooling, until Evergreen was right — and then there’d be no stopping them.

She’d listened and looked up at him and asked all the right questions, except the one thing she really wanted to ask, and he’d seen it in her eyes and pretended he hadn’t.

Then he’d talked about riding, and she’d put her hands deep in the pockets of her jeans and listened, hung on every word. He’d talked about self-discipline and dedication, and they’d walked around the paddock until the sun went down, her cheeks pink with fresh air and her young hips lilting saucily from side to side, and he’d said that anyone who would ride Evergreen would have to be really special, not just good. Not just “good, some people say”.

She’d made a little girl face. ‘I’d be willing to learn, Mr Walters — I’d work so hard!’ and he’d said that the learning might be a painful process, knowing what he meant, and she’d said it wouldn’t matter, not at all, if she could even be considered as a possible to ride Evergreen in a big competition. And he’d walked along beside her in the grass and put his arm about her slender waist for a moment then patted her firm young bottom and said, ‘OK’.

----//----

It had been one of those long, hot August days — hardly any wind and the sun beating down. In the barn it was humid and warm and Charlotte was absorbed in the task of tidying up the floor. He’d stood in the doorway and watched her, stooping, bending, standing with her weight on one leg and brushing her hair from her face with the back of her hand — he’d watched her, the tightening of her rolled-up shorts around her bottom, the creases pulling up between her buttocks, the strong, tight muscles at the backs of her legs. He’d felt in charge of the situation, and in charge of her. ‘No knickers,’ he’d said, and smiled as she’d turned, surprised, top lip bloomed with perspiration.

‘P-pardon?’ she’d said, confused.

‘I noticed — you don’t seem to be wearing knickers — under your shorts.’

‘Oh —’ Bewildered, she’d almost apologised. ‘Um — it — it’s hot’ she’d said. ‘It just seemed cooler this way —’

Her nipples pushed soft little peas in her blouse, knotted high under her breasts. She looked embarrassed, but her eyes met his still, wide and blue.

‘Don’t mind —’ he’d said. ‘Wear what you like. Make it easier, anyway.’ He’d scooped up a stool and plonked himself down on it, amused at the dubious look on her face.

‘Um — make what easier?’ she’d said, tongue peeping at her lips for a moment.

‘Come here —’ He’d patted his knee. She’d come warily, standing in front of him with her bare midriff on a level with his eyes and the swell of her pubes plump and sweet and accentuated by the pull of creases across the tops of her legs. ‘Self-discipline is everything.’

She’d nodded — he’d said that before.

‘It doesn’t demonstrate self-discipline when you leave a saddle unbuffed and a bridle uncleaned.’

‘I — I was going to do it — when I’d finished here.’ Her thighs had been pressed together, childishly, a little keyhole of sunlight between the very tops of her legs.

The toggle at the waist of her shorts needed only a tug for the bow to come undone. She’d stood still but trembly as her shorts came down, the warm scent of girl-sweat close to his nostrils; her thighs had pressed closer as he’d ignored her muted, respectful ‘Please — please don’t —’ and her hands had moved to cover her pubic hair — moved, but had held back, a little gesture of submission that had told the whole story: Charlotte would get her bottom smacked and cry, perhaps, and bleat in protest , but she would accept it, for whatever reason. He’d not bothered, then, about leading her into it; once across his lap she’d gasped a little ‘Oooo — Please!’ but he’d taken her hands and held them firmly behind her back and slapped the bare satin skin of her legs until she would lift her bottom up and stick it out, as she was told to do.

She didn’t cry, not for a long time, but she was going to cry — she was going to be made to cry because he knew that if she did she would either go or stay after that, after allowing him to extract from her that token of feminine surrender. If she went, then she went — if she stayed she would do so on the intuitive understanding that she would be spanked again, knowing that she was giving him the upper hand, and that knowing of hers would be precious to him, the knowing yet still staying.

He’d spanked her, firmly and without any sympathy for her pathetic gasps and snatches of her buttocks away from his descending palm, and she’d hung on, her breath panting between defiantly compressed lips, her body tense, her thigh muscles taut, her toes digging into the floor. Her fingers clutched at his, her wrists turning in his grasp, trying to pull away, but he sensed that it was the being held there across his lap that made her do it — not so much that she would have scrambled off his lap if she could have.

Her bottom had heated up, growing rosy and twitchy and squeezy-cheeked, and her knees began to pull in under his legs, jerky snatches after the harder spanks. She tossed her head and gasped little meaningless sounds which meant, taken together, that her brave efforts not to burst into tears were costing her dear.

Leaving her bottom to toast in the heat he’d spanked into it, he’d slapped down the backs of her thighs, harder even than he’d smacked her bottom, and she’d begun to kick, not the kind of let-me-go kicks that might have been expected but spasmodic, involuntary thrusts of her legs and hollow thumpings of the toes of her boots against the floor. Her hips wriggled frantically, kicking and wriggling becoming two parts of the same thing, while her wrists tugged and twisted in near panic. Her breaths were becoming uneven, frantic gasps in-between mewing, won’t cry sounds.

But she would cry. Her bottom had swerved vigorously across his lap as he smacked her trembly bum-cheeks again, and several more spanks had her spluttering between gasps, then gasping between gulps and ‘Blubs’ and ‘blooo-ooops’, legs tight and quivery, toes braced for all she was worth against the floor. And then, all at once, half a dozen sobs, blubbered out together, shut off by a breath-holding refusal to let him make her cry before the sobs came again, suddenly loud and sounding very helpless, and then she couldn’t help it anymore and she was all tears and great gasping sobs and squirmy-bottomness.

After that he spanked her thighs again, still as hard as before, and she tucked her legs in under his and gulped a deep breath and tried to control her sobbing, but the sounds of her distress wouldn’t be bottled up any longer and fresh spanks on her wriggling buttocks demonstrated that fact to her, brave as she was, and finally, with a last frenzied twisting of her wrists in his hands, she had to give way, to give in.

Then she blubbered — really blubbered, and she half gave up her struggling too, squirming her bum after each spank but lying almost quiet between, all the expression of her humiliation going into her hopeless weeping and — eventually — snotty, spluttering, in-between-sobbing pleas for ‘N-no more — please — no more!’

He didn’t let her pull her shorts up; instead he made her stand with her face turned away until she should be able to control her weeping, which took her several minutes. Then he lectured her, making her face him and put her modest hands behind her back so that she was left with nothing with which to hide her semi-nakedness, her eyes, which had been so wide and frank before, cast down to the incongruous wellington boots.

He’d taken her shorts away, after that, knowing that he’d overcome her defiance, and he’d made her finish clearing the barn naked from the waist down. She’d come and asked for her shorts, humiliated blushes suffusing her tear-streaked cheeks, and he’d let her have them, and told her that tomorrow there would be the first of her riding lessons.

‘Riding lessons everyday from now on’, he’d said, and let her see the cane hanging behind the door, not telling her that it was for her bottom but letting her realise it for herself.

‘And I think you’d better ask your mother if you can move into the house — this house — at weekends from now on.  There’s no time to waste if we’re going to get you ready for next year.’

‘No,’ she’d said, meaning that there was indeed no time to spare, and ‘Y-yes — I will,’ meaning that she’d ask her mum that very evening.