The Reprogramming Farm Ch. 01

Note to readers: This is an edited and updated version of the original Reprogramming Farm. Sorry if you already read. There were some typos and inconsistencies in there that were making me crazy. Thanks for reading and...maybe don't proceed if you have a hard time with non-con sex. This treads into some dark territory, though it will have a happy ending.

*****

"WHAT IS THIS PLACE?" I stare through the car windows as a white farmhouse slides into view.

Jay doesn't answer.

He just keeps on driving past the house, down a bumpy gravel drive, past a barn with peeling paint and a pair of tractors sitting beside it, to a long stable. It too is white, with a low dark roof, and a series of stall doors.

He parks behind it.

The gray sky washes the color out of everything, turning the grassy hills a sullen gray green. It's not cold, but it isn't hot either, and as I step out of the car, I tug my baggy sweater closer around my body.

"I don't like this, Jay. Why don't we just go home and talk."

"You agreed to come here, Tara. This is for our marriage."

I swallow, twisting the sleeve of my sweater with my thumb. All morning I've been jittery, on edge, uncomfortable in my skin, in my clothes. Hot but cold at the same time. Fevered. "But what is it?"

He drops his arm around my shoulders, his brown eyes warm, but his jaw stays firm. "A way to save our marriage."

"Our marriage isn't all bad," I say, knowing it's a lie.

"It's bad. You know it. You're always angry, always anxious. You hate sex. You hate me."

"I don't hate you." It kills me that he thinks that.

And it's not true. I just hate that he never takes the garbage out on his own, and that he's always trying to have sex with me or get me to give him blowjobs. I hate that he's always working late or expecting me to cook. I hate the naggy, needy, cranky person I've become. "If you just took out the trash or put your shoes away on your own, I wouldn't have to nag."

He rolls his eyes. "You agreed to therapy. It's this or divorce. I need a wife who's happy."

I try to form the words 'I am happy' but I can't do it. He's right. I'm not happy. I'm anxious all the time. I'm angry all the time.

I glance back at the stable. Some of the stall doors are open, but I can't see inside. It's too dark. "This doesn't look like a therapists office."

"It's holistic. I don't know. They do things differently," he says, wrapping his big hand around mine, and tugging me toward the broad doorway into the stables. "They're going to completely reprogram how we interact with one another. We're here for two weeks."

"Two weeks?" I dig in my feet, clutching at his arm. "I didn't pack anything. Who's going to water the plants, or take the mail?"

"I took care of all that. It's part of how it works here. We arrive with nothing but the clothes on our backs. They give us everything we need."

I open my mouth, I want to argue, I want to say no and run away, but I can tell my the look on his face that this is the end. It's this or divorce. "You should have told me."

"Trust me." His hazel eyes go wide and imploring. "You'll be happy when we leave. And if you're happy, I'll be happy. Everything is going to work out. You just have to listen to the therapists here."

I don't say anything, staring back and forth from the car to the stables, wanting desperately to just go home. But he's right.

My shoulders sag, I squeeze his hand. "Okay, I trust you."

I'M NOT SURE WHAT I EXPECTED but maybe something that looked a bit more like a therapist's office. A sofa, box of tissues, coffee table and a few chairs. But inside, this place is just a raw wood stable with few lights, a dusty floor, and a line of stalls stretching in either direction.

There's a man in one of the stalls nearby. I'm not sure what he's doing. The half door is closed, so I can only see him from the waist up. He's got on a flannel shirt, cuffed at the wrists, a long, bristly beard and a big bald head. He turns when he sees us, the strangest look on his face and tips up his chin. "You Jay?"

"Yes."

"MIKEY!" the man bellows, and then returns his gaze to the floor in front of him, his head dropping back and his brows drawing together like he's in pain.

Somewhere, someone grunts. I hear heavy breathing, gagging, rustling motions.

Something prickles along my skin, a warning maybe, but Jay holds my hand tight. There's a smell in the air that I've smelled before but can't name, something electric that calls to me, stirs my blood, sets my hair on end.

A man—Mikey—I presume, pops his head out of a stall. "Good timing. I was just getting everything ready for you."

The sight of him has be standing straighter, arching my back, angling myself to my best advantage. The second I recognize that response, I tamp it down, unable to comprehend what's come over me. I'm acting like a slut.

I frown, squeezing my hands in fists.

"What do we need from a stable?"

Jay shurgs.

"A horse maybe?" That wouldn't be so bad, to spend two weeks riding horses together in the country. That would do us some good, but Jay doesn't respond.

Mikey strides toward us. He's not the tallest or the handsomest man I've ever seen, but there's something about him that commands my respect. The set of his shoulders, the look in his eyes. This is a confident man who is used to people taking his orders. And with the hard body of a man who works with his hands, the weathered skin of a man who spends most of his time outside, and the dark hair that curls around his neck, he's not bad to look at even if he is just the slightest bit mean looking.

His eyes bore into mine.

I shrink against Jay.

"You signed all the forms online?"

"Yeah," Jay says.

"You give her the injection?"

Injection? My mouth drops open. I glare at Jay. "What d—"

"While she was sleeping. Last night."

Mikey nods. "Good. That outta be working on her already."

I gape at them, their exchange tearing through my mind. I lurch away from Jay, stagger toward the door, unsure what my goal even is. Adrenaline in my system demands I run far away from here.

But I don't make it.

Mikey takes my arm, spins me around and before I can even react, he closes a pair of cuffs on my wrists with a metallic clink as final as a locked cell.

The sound echoes across the stable.

I tug at my arms, disbelief stealing my words. With my arms behind my back, I am helpless.

My heart beats wild in my chest, my breath too fast. My husband drugged me?

Mikey pulls me against him so his lips are at my ear, his unshaved jaw scraping against my cheek. "Listen to me, in this place there is nothing to fear. I am your therapist and I will take care of you. All you have to do is what I say. You can let go. There's freedom in that release."

I laugh at that, because how else am I supposed to react? Nothing to fear? I'm in fucking handcuffs! Every cell in my body screams that this must be a joke, they're about to start chuckling and the camera men will come out of the woodwork. But that doesn't happen, instead he wraps a hand around my body, brings his hand up to cup my breast in his palm, his thumb stroking over my nipple. I'm so unusually sensitive there that I arch against him.

"See, I'll take good care of you. And when this is over, I promise you, you'll know peace."

Peace? I'll know peace when they are behind bars.

"This is abduction." I stare at my husband, but he doesn't move a muscle.

Dread and outrage and fear roiling in my stomach, calling prickles of tears to my eyes. "You asshole."

"No, no, no, no," Mikey whispers in my ear, still pawing my breast. "We don't use names. In this place, if you make a lot of noise, it tells me you need something in your mouth, and it's my job to make sure all your needs are met. So if you get loud, I fill your mouth up."

The hand leaves my breast, comes up to my lips, pries them open, touches a fat forefinger to my tongue.

I feel a moment of blinding satisfaction when I bite him, and he curses. Blood fills my mouth with a taste like old pennies. The satisfaction is short-lived though, because a second later, he throws me over a scarred and dented table nearby. My forehead hits the surface with a thud, my hip bones slam painfully against the edge.

A palm comes down to pin my head against the desk's surface. "You don't bite here."

His voice is so calm, so relaxing, so not angry, and he uses his other hand to stroke my back so gently. It keeps me on edge. I don't know how to process my emotions when he keeps turning the tables on me. Violence and silk.

"You just earned yourself a ring gag, Tara. Do you know what that is?"

I don't say anything, just struggle against his iron grip. Where is Jay? Why doesn't he stop this? My throat tightens.

A hard slap lands on my ass, making me cry out. "Answer me. Do you know what a ring gag is?"

I can't think. Tears pour out of my eyes. Jay did this. He knew this was coming. He brought me here

Mikey tugs my skirt up, tears my panties down, and now I'm crying too hard to answer. I am exposed, naked. "This is illegal."

Another slap to the ass, so hard I sputter. I don't want to be slapped again, so I finally manage to answer him. "Yes. Yes, I do."

"Good girl. Now, open your mouth wide."

I don't. Why would I?

He slaps me harder.

That's why.

I open my mouth.

"Wider."

I sag against the desk, accommodating for now, because I know one thing. You can't keep a human in handcuffs forever. I'll find a way free. I'll find my way out of these cuffs, I'll find the police, and I'll watch with glee as Jay and Mikey and that fucker behind the half door, spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

"Very nice," he fits the gag between my teeth, then strokes two thick fingers into the back of my throat.

I gag against it, shame and helplessness holding me captive as much as the cuffs and the gag.

His free hand strokes my ass where he just hit me, his thumb sliding down so it rests on the bare skin of my pussy. My underpants fall to the floor around my ankles, as soft as the wings of a moth.

Two fingers invade my pussy.

In and out.

I choke around the fingers in my throat, drool pours down my chin.

"Your wife is very wet. She like being spanked?"

"She never has before." Jay's voice, that fucker. How could I have been married to him for four years and never, not once, seen him for what he truly is. A monster.

"Sometimes fear gets them wet. Other times...I think they sense that what we're about to do is good for them." Mikey's fingers keep sliding, as slow and steady as his musing voice.

"That look on her face..." Jay's shoes scuff on the ground. Somewhere else in the stable, someone grunts.

"What?" Mikey's voice is lower now, gruff.

"She looks so serene."

"She is. Don't worry, man. You'll learn how to get her like this too."

His fingers hit some place deep and he rotates them, wiggles them inside me. I let out a prolonged moan around the thick fingers sliding into the back of my throat.

"Go on up to the farmhouse, Jay. I'll report in this evening after I have a chance to get to know Tara."