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  “The truth!” he crowed, “from a lady with a million reasons to lie. I like you already, and I’m weakening my bargaining position by telling you that!”

  “I am flattered that you sought me out,” Morgan spoke carefully, “but I’m not entirely sure that I am the woman you are looking for. What sort of deal am I being offered here?”

  “You have concerns,” he said sympathetically. “This is understandable. What must you do to earn your pay? There is a uniform to wear, and it is revealing. The methods of the trainers are rather extreme, I sometimes think unnecessarily so, but I can’t argue with their results. If you agree to undergo training, it will mean submitting to their will. The discipline is strict, and you will be required to abandon any notions you have about your rights to personal privacy and sexual entitlement, but those who finish the program are stronger and more self assured than they were before.”

  “Sexual entitlement?” she asked dryly. “I’m sorry, but I don’t speak euphemism very well. Could you be a bit more specific?”

  He smiled gently. “You are a mature and attractive woman,” he said. “I assume that you are sexually active?”

  “I have had a few boyfriends, but I didn’t exactly play around. Mom died before I finished high school. Then my brother got married, and shortly after that he got sick. My Aunt took me in for awhile, until I was old enough to be on my own. It meant moving, losing old friends, giving up a lot of dreams, and accepting the fact that I was looking at a lifetime of hard work and low pay, earning my way without a degree. After that there was never enough time and energy for any kind of a real social life.”

  She watched his face to see if he was aware that she was dissembling. Brian had sent in a report of some sort, but she didn’t know how much detail he had provided his employer. It had obviously been enough information to lead to this interview. Had Brian been sent just to rate her qualities on the track, or in the bedroom as well? Perhaps he had reported their encounter in his motel room, not to betray her, but only because he considered it relevant information.

  If Mr. Frisk knew anything about their night together, he didn’t let it show.

  “Sometimes the world is too much with us,” he agreed. “I suppose that is why we need to escape into a world of fantasy from time to time. Did any of your sexual partners play games in the bedroom?”

  Morgan squirmed a bit. She had asked him to be blunt, now she was finding herself uncomfortable with the personal turn the conversation was taking. She looked up and smiled shyly. “There was one boy who liked to play at being a pirate with a captive princess. I thought it was rather silly, but it seemed to turn him on.”

  He nodded. “Exactly—sports, hobbies, all amusements are frivolous. Yet there are those who take them seriously, establish rituals, hierarchies, and protocols that are strictly observed by any who wish to participate. If a football player took the field without his helmet, he would be ejected from the game.”

  A perplexed frown wrinkled Morgan’s brow. “I thought we were talking about sex.”

  “We are talking about your job description,” he said. “The trainers insist that the women under their tutelage submit themselves in all ways. Naturally, there are safeguards against unintended consequences and serious physical harm, but as long as you are a participant, you will surrender the right to refuse their sexual demands as well. The requirements of this sport are unusual in many ways, that’s why the rewards are so great. You must decide if the prerequisites are too extreme for you before you enter the program. Personally, I hope they aren’t. It would be a tremendous waste of natural talent.”

  An old joke was nagging in the back of Morgan’s mind. A man asked a woman if she would have sex with a stranger for a million dollars. When she confessed that she probably would, he offered her ten dollars. Outraged, the woman said:

  “What sort of girl do you think I am!?”

  “We have already established that,” he answered. “Now we are haggling over the price.”

  What was Morgan Mayfield’s price?

  She realized that she was biting off one of her fingernails, a habit she thought that she had overcome as a school girl. Disgusted with herself, she dropped her hands into her lap.

  “I know this isn’t an easy decision,” he said. “There have been too many disappointments in your life, and trust comes hard. Things that sound too good to be true usually are. You had a brief moment of glory in high school, collecting newspaper clipping for your scrap books and talking to college recruiters. All of that was snatched away through no fault of your own. I’m saying that you can hear the crowd cheer again, Morgan. You can still be someone special, with all of the rewards that you rightly deserve.”

  “How much time do I have to think about this?” she asked.

  “The next training session begins in two weeks,” he said. “You will be given a copy of the contract to review at your leisure.”

  She realized that the interview was at an end. A thousand thoughts clamored for attention, things that she would need to sort out before she made any decisions, but one question was uppermost in her mind.

  “What’s in it for you?” she asked.

  Mr. Frisk smiled sadly and raised one of his metal canes as though it explained everything.

  “I need to watch you run.”

  Chapter Four

  The cowgirl lowered her newspaper and looked up over her sunglasses in a brief study of Morgan, then unfolded her long denim clad legs and clopped across the inlaid stone floor of the terminal.

  “Mayfield Morgan?”

  “Morgan Mayfield,” said Morgan, realizing that the cowgirl had probably read her name from an alphabetized file and remembered it that way. “That’s me.”

  Morgan started to offer her hand, but the cowgirl was still looking across the top of her sunglasses, a bit suspiciously now, as though wondering whether or not to take affront at having been corrected, and Morgan let her hand drop.

  Morgan used the opportunity to observe the cowgirl as well. She was pretty, in a tough, weather worn sort of way. Her hat was sweat stained and frayed at the brim. Her small, pert breasts were prominent beneath a faded tank top. Her bare brown arms hinted at a wiry strength. Morgan assumed that she had been sent to pick up some tenderfoot at the airport, and wasn’t pleased with the chore.

  “All right then,” the cowgirl sounded bored. “Truck’s out front.” She pivoted on a well worn boot heel and strode toward the door. Morgan snatched up her flight bag and jogged a few steps to catch up.

  No tip for her, Morgan decided.

  It was an ironic though, of course. Morgan had read the contract several times before she signed, knitting her brow and biting her lip at language that was at once politely euphemistic and brutally clinical. As a school girl, she had often wondered aloud with her friends what she would be willing to do for a million dollars. Now she faced that choice for real. Perhaps the deciding factor for her wasn’t the hope of eventually joining the idle rich, but the opposite attraction of a simple purposeful existence. Earning enough to help her brother had been the sole focus of her life for over a year. She was grateful for his recovery, but it had left a void. In her mind, agreeing to undertake this training was a final discharge of debt and duty, but without it she only would have felt empty and adrift.

  She knew by now that she wasn’t on her way to a dude ranch, and carrying her own bags would be the least of her new obligations. The experience that she had come to think of as her pre-induction physical had erased any illusions she might have been clinging to. The doctor had been coldly impersonal as he interrogated her about her sexual history and attitudes while probing and exploring every orifice. When she asked him if any of this was really his business, he informed her coldly that she was free to leave, but as long as she remained he would expect answers, and those answers had best be truthful and polite.

  The hot wind hit Morgan as soon as she stepped out of the air conditioned terminal. It swept across the parking lot and li
fted her hair. She looked swiftly around as she hurried toward the six wheeled diesel pickup that the cowgirl was disappearing into. The parking lot was nearly empty. There had been few passengers on the commuter plane, and few to greet them. The terminal and tower stood alone between the runway and the parking lot. The only signs of human habitation were the nearby rooftops of a town Morgan’s atlas had identified as Ambleton, population six hundred fifty four. Beyond that was a vast stony emptiness.

  Flight bag bumping her legs, Morgan reached the shotgun side of the pickup and opened the door. Several paper sacks filled with groceries were resting on the seat. The cowgirl wheeled her head swiftly and fixed Morgan with a cold eye.

  “In the back,” she said.

  Morgan set her bag in the pickup bed and started to reach for the groceries, but the cowgirl shot an arm across the seat to block her.

  “No! You! In the back!” She sounded impatient, as though she were being forced to explain something that should be evident.

  Morgan flushed, and nearly rose to the challenge. She had mentally prepared herself for a job description that would include times of discomfort and embarrassment, but she hadn’t expected her new life to begin without prelude, and she hadn’t expected deliberate humiliations.

  The cowgirl stared back with a dangerous set in her thin lips and narrow grey eyes.

  “If you’re going to be trouble,” she said. “The airport is back there.”

  And there it was. This was the real moment of truth for Morgan, not signing a contract in a plush office, but accepting abuse from a surly cowgirl in a parking lot.

  She lowered her eyes. “Yes Ma’am.”

  Victory softened the cowgirl’s voice. “That’s better. Maybe we’ll get along after all. Now get your ass back there”

  Morgan followed her flight bag into the back of the truck and sat behind the cab where she would be shielded from the slipstream. The back of the truck was nearly filled with paraphernalia already; toolboxes, bundles of rope and harness leather, and a saddle.

  Baggage, she thought. I’m nothing to her but one more bit of baggage.

  The truck leaped forward and left rubber on the pavement as it turned on to the highway. Morgan braced her hands and feet against the sides of the truck bed to avoid being thrown about.

  Ambleton was low and flat and colorless, a cluster of stores and houses gathered around the junction of two highways. It receded swiftly. When even the water tower had fallen below the horizon, the truck turned off onto a narrow gravel road and slid to a halt.

  Morgan coughed at the cloud of dust that rose up around the truck, and saw the cowgirl standing beside the truck looking at her as the wind cleared the air.

  “Get out,” she said.

  Morgan stepped out of the truck and just stood there. She wondered if she was being ejected for some unknown fault, and whether or not she should retrieve her bag.

  “Strip.”

  Morgan wasn’t sure that she had heard correctly. “Excuse me?”

  “I want to see what I have to work with here. Show it to me.”

  Morgan glanced around. There was no sign of human life, only rocks and sickly looking vegetation she couldn’t identify. This was no calendar picture desert of buttes and giant cacti. It looked more like NASA transmissions from Mars. They were alone, but completely exposed under the pitiless sun and open sky. This was hardly a romantic setting. Nor was this unfriendly stranger anyone that Morgan wished to display her body for.

  “Here?” she said incredulously. “Now?”

  The cowgirl sighed and unbuckled her tooled leather belt. “I knew you were going to be trouble.”

  Morgan began to unbutton her blouse, recognizing in some way not yet fully grasped that she was being threatened. She stood clutching her blouse for a brief moment of confusion. She hadn’t worn a bra, and was suddenly naked from the waist up.

  “Where?” She held up the blouse.

  The cowgirl pointed vaguely toward the pickup bed. If she was impressed with the view, she gave no sign, but began to slide her belt free of its trouser loops. It made a sound like a snake moving through heavy grass.

  “Hurry up.”

  Morgan tossed her blouse into the truck and skinned out of her jeans as she kicked off her shoes, suddenly impatient to get this over with, to deny this woman the pleasure of any lingering strip tease. She looked up a bit defiantly, but her face fell when she saw that the cowgirl had wrapped the belt once around her fist, leaving several inches of leather tail dangling at her side.

  She is going to beat me with her belt! Even as she gave form to the thought, Morgan couldn’t actually believe it.

  “I did what you wanted,” she said. She didn’t intend to sound petulant, but fear made it come out that way.

  “I asked you twice,” the cowgirl said without rancor. “The back talk isn’t helping either. Socks.”

  Morgan realized that she was ridiculous standing there in only her socks, like a porn star between takes. She ripped them off and tossed them atop the pile.

  “Turn around.” The cowgirl dropped the truck’s tailgate with a bang. “Put your elbows on that.”

  Trembling, expecting the worst, Morgan obeyed. She was wondering if her courage would fail her so soon. Would she even arrive at her destination before she washed out of this program? Bending over, she was uncomfortably aware of the way she was forced to present her most private parts.

  The touch of the woman’s hand upon her thigh was unexpectedly gentle, and Morgan flinched a bit before she caught herself. She realized that she was being assessed, not as a potential sex partner, or even a victim. The woman was judging her like horseflesh.

  “State record in the mile?” said the cowgirl.

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Morgan calmed a bit.

  The muscles of her back and shoulders were kneaded. “Upper body looks a bit weak though. We’ll have to work on that.” The hand strayed beneath to squeeze Morgan’s pectoral muscle, then her breast. Morgan gasped as her nipple was pinched hard. The cowgirl just chuckled and tugged it playfully.

  The hand moved down, over the lower back muscles, the sacral dimples, a trailing, teasing finger toyed with Morgan’s crack. Then the examination returned to the legs. “No injuries, shin splints, blown knees, foot troubles?”

  “No Ma’am.” Morgan stared ahead into the back of the truck, realizing that the tree of the saddle in there was too narrow for any horse’s back, and the rider’s seat tilted up at an impossible angle for riding a four legged mount.

  The hand stroked upward and dallied between Morgan’s thighs. A sharp slap on the thighs warned her as she instinctively drew her legs together. The toe of a boot rapped the inside of her ankles painfully.

  “Spread.”

  The cowgirl outfit should have tipped her off right away, Morgan realized, but it was too dusty and worn to be mere costume. This cowgirl wasn’t assuming a role just to play the butch. The hand between Morgan’s legs was knowing and skilled in the art of pleasure, but it was a hand callused from the real work of ranching and familiar with the ways of rope and leather. Just looking at her, Morgan sensed that this cowgirl could ride hard, lasso a maverick, or gentle a fractious mount. Morgan knew without having seen it that there would be a bullwhip hanging beside the cowgirl’s bunk.

  A hard finger entered Morgan’s now damp slit and explored deeply, making her gasp. It was different from Brian’s touch. He had been making love. This was more like the Doctor’s examination, indifferent and clinical. She began to quicken in spite of the circumstances, riding the slow thrusts of that finger with a gentle rocking motion.

  “That took long enough,” sniffed the cowgirl. “Most gals are wet before I get their clothes off, but they don’t get here by being hotshot jocks.”

  The finger slipped out, and Morgan began to relax, thinking that the worst of this might be over, then the finger was back with a partner, and the two of them were working her, seeking all of the places that made her whimper. The finge
rs withdrew and moved back to the tighter hole, finding Morgan resistant.

  “Relax!” The cowgirl smacked her again, this time the blow splatted.

  Morgan realized that the entire examination was being conducted with one hand, that the cowgirl’s other hand was still clutching her belt. The threat still hovered.

  “Please!” Morgan pleaded softly as a damp finger forced her.

  “You’re tight,” observed the cowgirl. “We will need to work on that as well.”

  She spoke with a husky purr now. The bitch was enjoying this, delighting in Morgan’s hurt and humiliation, getting off on her fear. There was anticipation in her voice. The finger wiggled impudently, teasing Morgan’s tight channel until she clenched against it, then it wrenched free so abruptly that she whined a bit with quiet alarm.

  Two fingers entered her this time, hurting, twisting. The back window of the truck reflected Morgan’s stunned face.

  The cowgirl wiped her hand on Morgan’s thigh. “We’ll clean you up properly when we get you home.”

  A hard hand smack on Morgan’s rump punctuated the comment. The smack on her other cheek was presumably for maintaining symmetry or perhaps just for fun.

  Morgan was hanging her head in shame, still distracted by the rude way she had just been examined and invaded, when the first stroke of the leather fell. She jerked upright and threw a shocked glare at the woman behind her, silently communicating the impossibility of standing still and taking any more of THIS!

  But a hand in her hair forced Morgan back around and down until her face nearly hit the tailgate. She threw her hands flat to prevent the collision, leaving her rear undefended. Another stroke swept across her ass. This one was harder.

  “Don’t! You! Move!” hissed the cowgirl.

  Morgan spent the next five minutes clenching her teeth, clawing the bed of the pickup, and making very undignified noises as she tried hard not to let this woman know just how much this beating hurt.

  What made it worse was the insouciant way the beating was administered. The strap sailed in with practiced and measured strokes.