Prize Bull Ch. 07

Author's Note: Dara is a single mother of a college sophomore working as a nurse and running a dairy farm that has been in the family for more than 100 years. After being burned by a cheating husband, Dara vowed never to be involved with any man who isn't submissive to her, and in the first six parts of "Prize Bull," she seduced and trained Travis, 19 years old, handsome, and naturally submissive. As their sexual relationship grew, so did their emotional attachment, but at the end of his year-long contract at Dara's farm, Travis left for college as planned.

-CarliePlum

"Tim, this place is absolutely gorgeous," I told my son. I didn't know what to admire more, my dinner companion or where we were dining. My son had matured so much in the past year. He was dressed for dinner in a gorgeous suit and matching tie, his shirt starched and ironed. So far from the slob in the Keens and tie-dye who had left home for college three semesters ago, he was almost unrecognizable. Finding this internship at the Inn at Ruby Valley had really steadied him. All around the sumptuous dining room hurried waiters in black bow ties, the room twinkling with white lights reflected off of silver glass ornaments. From our table, we could see the breathtaking giant tree in the lobby, at least 12 feet high, all done up white lights, silver ornaments, and hundreds of red velvet bows. I had hung a wreath on the farmhouse door and baked a few batches of gingerbread cookies for the mailman, my friends at work, and so on, but that was it. It was a pure pleasure to be in this holiday wonderland.

Snow fell outside the windows, and I worried for a moment about the farm and how Bob was getting along. The herd had grown to 30 dairy cows, and it was a lot more work to keep everything going. Thankfully, Fred had come out of retirement for the fifth, or maybe it was the sixth, time. Whatever the number, he and Wanda had been on the verge of divorce or a murder-suicide again when he called and asked if I needed any part-time help around the place, just enough to keep him and the Mrs. out of each other's hair a few hours a day. I knew everything was fine with Bob and Fred in charge, but if it kept snowing all Christmas day, I would have a hard time making it back on the 26th, and I had a doctor's appointment early on the 27th I couldn't miss. Absentmindedly I fingered the necklace Travis had given me last Christmas. I had pulled it out of the back of my jewelry box and packed it when I drove the four hours to spend Christmas with Tim at the inn, located near State University where he was enrolled. The season had made me a little nostalgic. I could feel the tiny jeweled flowers of the necklace. Had it really been just this past spring that I had taken Travis out to the back pasture and had him strip down, then "tied" him up with strings of wildflowers we'd picked? It had been supposed to be sexy and decadent when I sat on his back as if he were my horse and flicked him lightly with the crop and pulled on the makeshift reins I had devised. Instead I had gotten the giggles and fallen off him, lying laughing in the grass. . .

"Pumpkin or pecan . . . Earth to Mom . . . pumpkin or pecan?" Tim's voice snapped me back to the here and now.

"So sorry, I was just thinking about the farm," I said as I eyed the silver dessert tray, which did indeed have both pumpkin and pecan tarts, before choosing an apple torte.

"You're always thinking about the farm, Mom," he chided me.

"And you always aren't," giving him a fake punch in the arm to make it clear I held no hostility for his decision not to be the next member of my family to take over Hollydale Farms. "But seriously, I do need to talk some farm business with you. I made some changes you need to know about, but first, Merry Christmas," I slipped an envelope across the table. Tim opened it, looked at the check inside, then at me to see if I had a "ha-ha, just joking" look on my face, then at the check again, giving a low whistle.

"I know you said the mineral rights under the extra parcel might be worth a bit, but this is a lot more than a bit," he finally managed.

"Well, it turns out the natural gas rights were worth quite a lot. I got Brett Farley to negotiate the deal; he's done quite a few, so he did a great job for me, as usual." Brett had saved the farm for me when Tim's dad Randy had tried to steal it in the divorce, and he'd taken care of the matter of Randy selling the truck I'd bought for Tim by having his new girlfriend forge my name on the title. People griped a lot of about lawyers, but I was nothing but grateful to Brett. "You'll get a check every six months as long as your grades stay up and you keep working toward your hospitality management degree, since that's clearly what you were meant to do. It will keep you on time on your car payments and hopefully you'll put the rest away to get you launched when you finish school." I had watched him around the inn since my arrival, before he had clocked out and taken me to the hotel's restaurant for Christmas dinner. He looked like a total pro, and I'd told him so.

"This is nothing, Mom. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's a great place to work, and I'm so glad they took a chance on me, but it's only 24 rooms. If my summer internship comes through I'll be working at an Omni, very high class, with two restaurants, two bars, and almost three hundred rooms."

"I don't have any doubt that you'll do as great with 300 rooms as you have with 24. But I wasn't quite done with farm business, if you can bear it for a few more minutes. I had Brett put the farm in a trust. If no direct descendant of mine takes over the farm, it passes into a land stewardship. So it will be managed in perpetuity as open land, not divvied up into parcels and sold. If it's not a farm, it can't be used as anything other than a nature preserve."

We left it at that. I could tell by the look on Tim's face that he was already picturing trees and scrub taking back the pastureland, the barns falling into ruin. But I wasn't ready to give up so easily. I'd expected my gynecologist to laugh when I first talked to him about becoming a mother again. After all, my 38th birthday was just a few months away. He had laughed, but not at me becoming a mother, but at my fears that it was too late.

"You don't know how many women I care for who are having their first babies at 40. You're a spring chicken, Dara," he'd said, handing me the card for a reproductive endocrinologist at the county hospital in Avon. "Go get yourself checked out and see what your next step is." I'd already told him there wasn't a potential father waiting in the wings. "I'd make a joke about performing stud duties for you, but I'd rather hold onto my medical license," he'd said, laughing again as he headed out the door and down the hall to his next patient. I glanced out the window of the inn and willed the snow to stop falling. I had my first appointment with the reproductive endocrinologist on the 27th, and there was no way I was going to miss it.

I made it back to the farmhouse without a hitch. Bob had mounted the plow on the front of the Gator and cleared the snow right up to my front door. I changed into a pair of high boots and walked back down the hill to the small barn where we kept the herd, much diminished from the days before my divorce, but growing, slowly but surely. The money from the mineral rights on my other land would help with that, and I hadn't given up on my dream of selling raw milk, unpasteurized, the way my grandparents had, before the practice got so regulated that virtually every dairy farmer in the state had given up on it. I figured I was through eighty percent of the red tape, and I wasn't about to give up now.

"Hello, Bob; hello, Fred," I called as I slid the main barn door open a crack and slipped inside. I heard laughter from the cattle stalls.

"Oh, hello Dara, we were just getting some advice from your old farm hand. Apparently we've let the place slip. He was just telling us about how Tulip always gives more milk if you rub her behind the ears before you hook her up to the milking machine." Bob doubled over in laughter, slapping his knee.

The room seemed to be tilting as the men's loud voices suddenly sounded as quiet as the old inn had the night before when I'd woken in my room at 3:00 a.m. I felt like I felt then, confused. I saw Travis, heard him tell me hello, but it just didn't register. He wasn't supposed to be here. The locked cabinet where I'd kept my paddles and crops was gone from the wall, as was the picture of the farm house and the personal touches from the office I'd made for him in the barn when he'd come to work for me. We'd agreed when he'd left for school in August that it was better to make a clean break and not see each other again. Whatever that year had been, whatever our bond had been, it didn't matter. It was over. He was in college. I was moving on. So what was he doing in my barn, looking at me with those brown eyes of his?

"Do you feel alright Miss Dara? You look awfully pale." Travis rushed to get me a chair, while Bob held me firmly by the arm.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I protested. "It's just so hot in here and it was so cold outside. I got a little lightheaded from the heat."

"All the same," Bob said, taking charge, "Travis here can walk you back to the house and make sure you get inside okay. Me and Fred got to get busy rubbing cow ears," they were still laughing as they headed back to work.

"I can carry you if you need me to, Miss Dara," I heard Travis say quietly as he crouched down next to the chair.

"I can walk, and don't even think about helping me up the hill. I'm just fine. You start by explaining what the hell you're doing here. I thought our last conversation was nothing if not clear."

"Yes, ma'am." Neither of us spoke again until we were in the farmhouse. So many memories came crashing back, Travis, nude, setting the table, washing the dishes, kneeling between my legs with his tongue on my clit . . . I had to get him out of here before my emotions and my desire overcame my rational side. I hadn't been so dishonest with myself as to not admit that I missed him, but I surely hadn't let myself feel just how much.

"Since we don't have any sort of agreement in place, I'm going to speak my piece, and I'd appreciate it if you'd do me the respect of listening," Travis announced. I looked at him, nodded. Had I felt this weak when Randy told me he was leaving? The shivering pit in the middle of my stomach was certainly familiar. It was the sensation you get when the bottom of your foot sends the message to your brain that what you are standing on is quicksand.

"I finished my first semester of college. Got my grades already, straight As." Was I supposed to congratulate or keep listening? "I took some girls out. Nice girls. One of them nice enough to take my virginity off my hands, which was a relief. Although I imagine I had less virginity to offer than she imagined." He looked at me. I hadn't known what to say about his stellar report card; I sure as hell didn't know what the appropriate response was here. "I made some great friends, too. Keg parties. All the usual freshman stuff. I just want you to know all this so you don't think I'm running away. The girl, the one I slept with, she thinks I'm coming back. But unless you won't have me, Miss Dara, I'm not going back. I'm coming back where I belong."

"Travis . . ." He cut me off.

"You're going to tell me I need to move on with my life. That you're not the right woman for me. That you're too old for me. That I should go back to school and sleep with that nice girl, and some other nice girls, and then find one to marry, one who would like to be a farmer's wife. But you're wrong. Where I belong is here. Where I belong is with you. This isn't easy for me to talk to you like this, Miss Dara. You have to know that. But you have to understand, if I go back to school, I'm not going back to that nice girl. I'll go to my classes, and I'll go to the parties, but I'm not going to be happy until I find a woman like you. And that's what's so crazy. Because I found a woman like you, when I didn't even know you were what I wanted. So why shouldn't I be with you? Why should I pretend I'm not what I am and you aren't what you are?"

"Travis, tomorrow I have an appointment with a reproductive endocrinologist. Do you know what that is? It's a doctor who helps women get pregnant. Because if I don't have a baby, this farm is going to turn into a nature preserve. That's it. More than a hundred years of keeping this farm in the family, down the drain. That's what I'm going to be doing now, trying to keep that from happening. What happened with us is the past; I have to think about the future."

"And how are you going to do that alone? Who's going to take care of you? Fred? Bob? Why can't you accept that I love you? That I want to stay here and help you?" His voice broke on the last few words.

"You have to leave now, Travis. I have to think. I'll think about it. I promise I will. But you have to go, right now."

As he walked out the door he laid a piece of paper on the side table. His phone number.

A promise is a promise. Truth be told, I thought of little other than Travis' visit after he left, except for the two hours I spent at the RE's office, and even there, he intruded. The doctor looked at my ovulation chart, records from my recent gynecological exams, results of the blood work he'd ordered in advance of our meeting.

"Dara, you're in great shape, and I don't see anything in your records from Dr. Starr or your charts or the labs what would indicate you'll have any trouble getting pregnant. The $1,000 question, however, since the space next to spouse on your paperwork is blank, is whether you'll be doing this the old-fashioned way or using a sperm-donor."

"That's an open question. I'll have an answer in the next few weeks, I think." Travis? It was out of the question. You don't make a lifetime commitment to someone just because you share the same kink, do you?

"Okay, I'll ask my nurse Georgina to bring you the information on the sperm bank we work with, and the IVF lab. The hospital here doesn't do IVF, but there's a good center in Price, and that's only a two and a half hour drive. If you have a partner, we'll do three months without Clomid, three months with Clomid and intrauterine insemination, and then talk about IVF. If you're using a donor, we'll skip the first three months and go straight to IUI with Clomid. Just let us know as soon as you decide, and we'll get started." Dr. Starr's hand was warm and his grip confident as he shook my hand, "We're going to make this happen for you."

I was back at work at my own doctor's office, the one I worked at as a nurse, by lunchtime, the brochures and information sheets all tucked in a bag in my car. I longed for the ease of the past year, just balancing the farm work with life outside, and the days and nights spent exploring Travis. Now it was time to make decisions. Could I trust him to know his own mind on this? Was this a commitment we could both keep? And could I take responsibility for the farm, a baby, and Travis? Travis, who was so eager that he was waiting by my front door when I came home from work.

"I know you didn't call me; and I'm not here for an answer. I just came to leave you some things I put together. I know you're going to say I need to finish college. And I do. I can't be much help running the farm without more solid ag management training. I've been working with my advisor at State, and I can do the next three semesters as a distance learner. I'll take some of my classes online, and some at the community college in Price, but they'll all credit to my transcript at State. As long as I pay State's student fees and keep my grades up, I keep my scholarship. The last two years are going to be harder, because I can still do a few classes on the computer, but we looked at the schedule and I can get all my courses in on a Tuesday-Thursday schedule. That'll mean driving four hours each way, but I can't stay over Tuesday to Thursday and leave you with a baby."

Something snapped in me. I grabbed Travis' shirt and growled at him, "Get inside." The blustery assurance seeped out of him as I slammed the door behind us and kicked off my boots. "This isn't a game, Travis. We're not playing house. I was 18 when I had Tim, more than a year younger than you are now. It was exhausting then, working, going to school, taking care of a baby. It's not going to be all about sex games. There may be months that it's never about sex games. It's a life, not a lifestyle."

Silence, then, quietly, "I don't belong to you any less with my clothes on, Miss Dara." That rocked me back on my heels. Then the left hook: "I don't belong to this farm any less, and I work with my clothes on. I'm begging you Miss Dara. Please let me stay." And I knew it was true. I was the one who didn't know my own mind. I was the one who was afraid to make a commitment, because he would stay, and he would wait, and he would obey.

"Travis, if you take your clothes off now, there's no going back. You'll have your safe words and we'll draw up papers both legal and personal that will lay out rights and responsibilities, but..."

Travis' sweater hit the floor, followed by his shirt, shoes, jeans, boxers and sox. That body. He'd thinned out some at school, wasn't as muscular. But his skin was so pale. I liked that better than the summer tan, remembered like a photograph the beauty of the black leather restraints looked against his white skin.

"Set the table, Travis. I'll put dinner together." And just like that, the matter was settled.

Over dinner we set a wedding date, January 6. I watched out of one eye, as Travis, his erect cock bouncing as he moved around in the kitchen, clearing the table and cleaning up from dinner. Mostly I tried to focus on listing all the details that needed to be settled in the next week and a half. Nothing I had done since Travis had left had felt this right. When he had everything in the kitchen put to rights, Travis came to the living room, settling in on the floor next to the sofa where I still sat scribbling away on my yellow legal pad.

"Come join me on the couch, Travis."

"I'm more comfortable here, ma'am," he said as he rubbed my feet. We wouldn't be beginning at the beginning, but there were certainly some things he needed to relearn.

"It wasn't a request. Now stand up and turn around." He got the message, hopping up and turning so his back was too me. "Put your hands on the arm of the sofa and count."

"One, two, three, four, five." Travis counted the stinging slaps to his ass. With all the toys and gear locked away in a chest, I doubted a spanking with my bare hand hurt much, but I got my point across. When I had finished, he sat on the couch, waiting for what would come next. Before, I joined him, I unzipped my skirt and let it fall to the ground. He had no trouble remembering the rule that if he saw my panties, I expected to be orally pleasured to orgasm. I settled back as he stretched out on the couch, his face just inches from my crotch. My hair had grown in a bit from the close crop he was used to; we both had some getting into shape to do. He kissed his was slowly up my thighs, switching first from one leg and then the other, moving steadily higher until I could feel his breath on the wet core and the center of me. Hesitantly, he dipped his tongue into the opening to my cunt, moaning as he tasted me. "Oh, you taste so sweet Miss Dara. Thank you for letting me taste you." He went back to work with his tongue, plumbing deep into me. I grabbed his hair and pulled him higher, wanting his warm tongue on my clit, wanting his mouth surrounding me, taking me in. He didn't disappoint. One last dip to coat his tongue, and he began languidly circling my clit, his mouth warm against me. Each circle—long practice had made him an expert in just where to drag, just where to apply a little less pressure—made me more desperate for the next. I could order him to make me come now, and he would in a matter of seconds, but I wanted to wait for this.