Sold!

by Carolyn Faulkner

Chapter One

Carolyn tugged against the rough, dirty bonds that held her wrists together. Despite the fact that the rope was also only loosely looped around the saddle horn, but there was no give in them at all. They were leaving angry, scratchy red marks in her formerly pristine skin.

They’d been riding for what had seemed like forever for her – and she fancied herself somewhat of a horsewoman. Of course, it didn’t help that he was forcing her to ride astride like some hoyden, the stiff leather rubbing obscenely between her legs. She’d tried to loop her leg over the horn to approximate the proper sidesaddle position as closely as she could on this barbaric Western saddle, but he’d pushed her leg back over every time, the last time slapping his palm down hard onto her thigh, even reaching beneath the skirt of the dress she’d insisted on wearing over these scandalous breeches he’d forced her into so that he she had less protection against the sharp sting of his hand as it cracked down onto her leg.

“Stop wiggling,” he growled against her ear.

It was abominable how close this gauche, dirty fur trader was to her. He didn’t deserve the honor of being ground under her heels, much less hoisting himself up behind her on his horse, his thighs cradling hers, his crotch pressing shamelessly up against her buttocks, because he’d insisted on bunching her skirt up between them. She could feel the animal warmth of him plastered against her back – and she knew it literally was animal warmth, since his entire ensemble seemed to be comprised of various furs of various animals.

If it wasn’t so blasted cold – already, and it was only September – she wouldn’t have been wearing the coat he’d given her that was made of much the same materials. He’d discarded the gorgeously fashionable one her father had presented her with two years ago, and slapped it out of her hands when she’d tried to rescue it from the pile that was obviously going to be left behind.

She was still trying to deal with her stepfather’s betrayal. She’d known that the business hadn’t been doing as well as it should have – it was hard to miss, considering that since her mother had died he’d spent the majority of his time either drunk or sleeping. Carolyn had done as much as she could, but since her mother hadn’t allowed her to learn anything about Kenneth’s business, she was pretty much at a loss.

But she’d never thought he’d sell her into slavery! And at such a shamefully low price! When he’d asked her to accompany him to the town square – such as it was – last night, she was surprised. No woman interested in retaining her virtue ventured outside in Shepherdstown at night, especially not during their pale equivalent of the Rendezvous that happened further east. Once a year, the town was even more overrun with insolent and ill mannered but armed to the teeth traders, drunk on the riches of their labors and unbelievable quantities of alcohol.

But she had assumed that Kenneth would protect her, and he had. Right up to the time he finished squabbling with who she now knew was the slave trader that was going to be conducting the auction that concluded the town’s Founder’s Day festivities. Carolyn had assumed that he was bargaining for some sort of goods the man had that the store needed.

She had rapidly learn to stop assuming when the smelly man grabbed a hold of her arms, bound them together behind her and threw her into a rickety wagon to await her fate. No amount of calling after Kenneth brought him back to her – in fact, she watched through tears as he walked directly into the saloon to drink away the tidy profit he’d just made.

The slave trader was barely understandable and paid even less attention to her ranting than Kenneth had. Finally, swollen eyed and hoarse to the point of whispering from screaming, Carolyn quieted, huddling in on herself and eventually caving in and using one of the disgusting blankets she found there.

The next day, not a lot past the crack of dawn, which she had never seen before in her life, the auction began, and she had to wait through the whole thing. Apparently, the auctioneer/owner had some small amount of business savvy, because saved the best for last. All of the other women – and the few men – had trudged up the steps and onto the makeshift stage – which also doubled as a gallows, when necessary – without much fuss. But Carolyn threw such a fit she had to be carried on, and all the crowd did was laugh. She knew most of the people there, and wished she could have melted into the floor or at least dropped dead on the spot, but instead her wrists, that were bound behind her, were anchored by a long tether to a bolt in the wooden floor made just for that purpose, and her legs were fitted into the rusty iron shackles that were used for every slave presented there.

Unfortunately, instead of dying outright or at least fainting out of the most mortifying situation of her life, Carolyn blushed so hard she thought she was going to faint and then she realized, to her horror, that she wasn’t going to, and the situation just kept getting worse. The owner was doing his little almost unintelligible patter, as he did about every poor wretch he put on the block. “Female. Nineteen.” He squeezed her arms, just below the shoulder. “Do a good day’s work for ya’.” Then laid a hand on each hip. “Got breeders’ hips.” He paused for emphasis and grinned lasciviously at the crowd. “Virgin, too, her Poppa said.” He put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, but apparently everyone knew what he’d was saying by the murmur that rippled through the crowd.

Before she could say or do anything, he had taken out a wicked looking knife and slit the seams of her dress and chemise together, letting the front of it fall to her waist, completely exposing her breasts to the crowd. Then he’d reached over and hefted one of them, squeezing tightly until she cried out. Carolyn was fighting her bonds with everything in her, until she realized that all that did was incite the rabble by making her firm breasts dance before them.

So she stood stock still, but refused to look down at her feet, as the others had. She kept her head high, and, while her cheeks burned with shame, she stared daggers through every man who dared place a bid, constantly trying the strength of the knots at her wrists. She had fed some of them in her own – well, her mother’s and Kenneth’s – fine parlor. Why, Bud Smith, who was old enough to be her father, put in one bid, and so did Lance Gautier, who was only a few years older than she was and had been her suitor until Kenneth had begun losing money, and she’d begun losing status in the community, despite the fact that they still inhabited the largest house in the community.

Carolyn might have sunk as low she could at this point, but her glare could still set some men back on their heels. The auctioneer wasn’t at all happy – he wasn’t getting anywhere near the price for her that he wanted – just barely above what he’d paid the old sot for her. She was worth a lot more than that. Thinking the men in the crowd might like a little more of a show, he pinched her nipples sharply, hard enough to make her scream and lean over to sink her teeth into him, drawing an outraged yell from him as well as a quick, ruthless backhand that caught the side of her cheek, leaving both a smudge and an ugly bruise there for all to see.

“That’ll learn ya’ for bitin’ me, girl, and ‘ere’s more whir that came from.”

Dizzy now, her head buzzing strangely in a way it never had before, she thought he was a mirage of sorts at first, until the crowd began to part as he made his way through it, hefting a small leather purse in his hand that jingled with coins.

“Fifty silver dollars,” the man said, throwing the bag onto the stage at her feet, quite confident that he’d bought and paid for her several times over.

And he had.

“Sold!” cried the auctioneer, still rubbing the spot where she’d nipped him. He couldn’t wait to be rid of the bitch, and untied her wrists from the bolt to hand the rope over to the obviously wealthy man, who immediately used a fur to cover the young woman’s nakedness. Her former owner cracked a black toothed smile, cackling to himself that he wouldn’t want anyone else getting a good look at her either, if he’d bought the baggage himself.

Carolyn found herself tugged along behind a man who was near big enough to blot out the sun, especially from her. She only topped five feet by an inch or two, and barely weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds – she’d used the big grain scale in the mercantile to weigh herself once, when she was wondering. This man was at least three times her size – maybe more. He was broad as a barn and so muscled that she could see them rippling beneath his shirt and coat, both of which he wore completely open, as if it was the middle of July instead of coming on to what promised to be a very nasty winter. And that didn’t take into consideration how indecent it was that every time he turned to her, she saw a flash of light chest hair covering a very muscular, tanned chest.

She’d never so much as seen a man’s ankle, much less his chest hair! It was downright shocking, and she’d had enough shocks for one lifetime in the past two days.

“Would you please button your shirt?” she asked as he dragged her along behind him; his strides covered three of hers, especially in her skirt.

He did not deign to reply to her query, no matter how often she repeated it; apparently he was too busy trying to run her into the ground getting to what must have been his horse and mule that were tethered outside the saloon. Carolyn’s head was down just because she was trying to make sure she didn’t trip and kill herself being force marched across the muddy, rutted street, and all of a sudden she came up short against the back of him, and felt as if she’d run into a brick wall. No wonder none all of her struggles had gotten her nowhere, except almost face down in the mud on occasion when she stumbled. But he’d always caught her, wrenching her shoulders none too gently until she was upright again and fit to drag some more.

Until he’d stopped dead in his tracks nearly in the middle of the street. It wasn’t until she peeped around his broad back, and spying someone she’d never expected to see again. Kenneth, shoving one of her bags at him. “Here. They’re hers. Or they were.” He didn’t so much as look in her direction, as if she was beneath him now, when he was the one who’d married up by marrying her mother.

The man gave Kenneth, who was small and slight, a curt once over and an even more curt response. “Merci.”

Kenneth turned and left without a second glance.

She didn’t know why that exact moment struck her so, but Carolyn burst into tears, which were, of course, completely ignored by her captor, who rummaged through her things, leaving most of them in the bag. She spied the small, silver framed picture of her mother that had graced her nightstand in the only home she’d ever known, and cried even harder, especially when she realized that he intended to leave anything he hadn’t selected behind for whoever wanted them.

“Please – please – could I have the picture?” she asked, never having heard herself sound so cowed in her life. How the mighty had fallen. She knew she wasn’t going to get it – he hadn’t so much as spoken to her or acknowledge her or any of her requests, but was delighted when, after physically lifting her up into the saddle and retying her hands in front of her, he did find the picture and tuck it into one of his already bulging saddle bags. She couldn’t help but repeat her thanks hoarsely over and over. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

It was one of the few things she’d have to remind her of who she had been at one time, along with a very few of her dresses.

But now, after riding in front of him for so long, she thought her legs were going to fall off. “Can’t we stop?” she whined for the thousandth time.

He didn’t answer, as usual.

She had to admit she was somewhat surprised by him, though. The few mountain men she’d had the misfortune to run into in town announced themselves loudly by royally offending the noses of anyone within a five mile radius. But he didn’t – thankfully. And she was looking for reasons to hate him. She’d always thought that it was only the lowest of the low who would pay for a human being. Carolyn had kept her mother from contracting for an indentured servant from Ireland, in favor of just hiring someone in town because she thought the practice totally barbaric.

Now here she was.

Because of his refusal to stop some time later, her right thigh began to cramp, and she found herself literally screaming in pain. He still didn’t slow the horse one iota, but he did reach under her billowing skirts to rub her leg, which felt at once horrid and wonderful – more shamefully wonderful than anything. She liked the way his strong, sure fingers massaged away the pain. But she didn’t like the way they then proceeded to find their way up her flanks to her bare right breast, which bobbed gently against his palm from the movement, as if it was pressing into it then back out again.

He stopped that movement by cupping first one, then the other of them from behind, holding them tightly but not painfully.

Carolyn twisted one way, and then the other, almost falling off the horse several times, but never accomplishing her goal of dislodging those hard, possessive hands. Until this morning, no one had ever seen so much as her ankle in all her life, and now, within the space of less than a day, she’d been stripped to the waist and had her nipples pinched, and now this man – who probably thought he owned her but from whom she was going to run at the first opportunity – was making free with his hands, and there was literally nothing she could do about it.

In fact, because of the way her wrists were bound in front of her, she was actually forced to present her breasts to him, her arms framing the two generous mounds and squeezing them into greater prominence. She supposed that she should be thankful that at least he wasn’t hurting her, but that seemed like small consolation. She almost wished he would hurt her – it would be another invection she could heap upon his head as she screamed at him for taking such liberties with her body.

“Get your hands off of me, or I shall scream!”

She craned her head around and leaned over enough that she could see the nasty grin that settled over his face. “Please do.”

Although the fact that he was so eager for her to do it should have given her a hint, Carolyn did, only she had little voice left from screaming all night in her jail at the auctioneer’s. Try as she might, she couldn’t even come up with a decent croak, and all she accomplished for her troubles was to give him a good belly laugh. And he continued to hold her breasts in his callused palms as if he owned them.

Try as she might – and she exhausted herself trying – she could neither get away from nor dislodge his big paws.

Only when he’d felt her relax back against him – all the fight gone out of her and limp with the exertion – did his fingers reach for her nipples and begin rolling them with excruciating gentleness.

“No – No! You mustn’t!” she whispered raggedly, putting her hands over his to try one last time to pry them off.

“That’s right,” he whispered in his lilting French accent, “cup your hands over mine so I’ll hold you that much tighter, cheri . . .”

His suggestion had the expected – and opposite – response, of course, as Carolyn’s hands dropped to her lap as if she’d been scalded, and he chuckled softly into her ear, his lips making lazy trails up and down her slender neck. “That’s it. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’re mine, and I will have you in whatever way I please. And it pleases me – some times – to please you.” His fingers plucked her nipples somewhat less than gently, tugging them with just the right pressure, making them feel horribly good as he hurt them just a bit.

He’d lied. It didn’t please him only sometimes. He’d known from the moment he’d seen her, standing straight and proud on the block, rather than cowed and cowering like the others – that he had to have her. He spent more than he should on her, but then, he intended to get more than his money’s worth from her, if only by indulging his every sexual whim. He had been too long without a woman. It had been at least two of their Founders’ Days since he’d been willing to part with enough money to buy a whore. He had more important things to spend his hard earned silver on.

But he could no more ignore her than he could the raging hard on he’d gotten a soon as he’d seen her – and the glimpse at her breasts had more than clinched it. He would have paid four times the amount the old geezer was asking to have full ownership of this one, despite the grubby face, and the bruise the man had lain on her cheek, which had darkened rapidly into a purple blotch on an otherwise pristine face. Her hair was still up, and her dress was immaculate, and he had a good idea that she was a patrician who was down on her luck, and that was confirmed when that older man brought her a box of her things.

He’d seen the man in the saloon last night, drinking himself into oblivion quietly in the corner, and he knew that whatever money he’d gotten selling this young woman into slavery was going to be spent the same way.

But none of that was his problem. In fact, he considered himself extremely lucky to have found such a rare gem among the usual rubbish, squeezing her breasts along with her nipples, as if proving to himself that she really was there, really was his, and wasn’t just a product of his feverish need.

“Ow! Stop that immediately!”

He could tell, though, that she was starting to like it. Her nipples stayed hard between his fingers, despite the way his calluses rasped across and around them as he twisted and pulled. Her breathing was very erratic, and he knew he’d caught the beginnings of moans she’d managed to stifle.

If she was truly a virgin – and he tended to think she was – then she wouldn’t have any idea of what was happening to her. Or what was going to happen to her. Or any of the things wonderfully degrading things he could do to her body. But he intended on enlightening her. Slowly, so that he could enjoy more than just her body’s helpless reactions, but could enjoy the true and complete satisfaction of awakening her, and, of course, training her to his own, personal tastes.

“I’m going to make you do more than just scream,” he whispered. “When we get back to my cabin, I’m going to take away your clothes, and keep you naked so that I can sate myself on your beautiful body any time I want to. I’m going to lick and touch every inch of your body, and I’m going to suckle at these beautiful titties until they’re ruby red and raw. I’m going to spank you until you think you’re going to faint, then I’m going to revive you and do it all again. And I’m going to fuck you, here,” he grabbed her between the legs with both hands, groping and squeezing while she tried to jump up and away, but couldn’t get any purchase with which to raise herself, so she kept settling that very private part of herself back down into those eager hands.

Carolyn gulped hard. “No, you don’t have to do this. I – I have cousins – my mother’s cousins – they’ll pay money. They’ll pay a ransom, I promise. A big one. Lots of gold. Just for you, for my s-safe return. Untouched.”

He laughed cruelly, dashing her hopes for the idea that had flitted into her brain in desperation. She wasn’t at all sure her Mother’s cousins would pay anything for her, but it sounded good. “I don’t need their money. I bought what I want. And you’re not going to be untouched for long, that I can promise you, woman.”