I’m well into Act 3 now.  Queen Majel has made her appearance.  Lady Blackmyre has visited with Wellington and survived without killing the old hag.  Really, the only thing left is the huge happily-ever-after threesome.  🙂  Yes, it will be epic.

My pace has slowed to about 1K a day with Vicki’s release, but I’m definitely in the home stretch!  Shooting for 35-40K before it’s all said and done.

Snippet:  this pretty much follows the last one where Arthur ignored Lady Blackmyre’s commands and she turned her back on him.

As though she didn’t have a care in the world, she strolled away from Arthur.

He snorted, trying to draw her attention, but she ignored him.  If the pony doesn’t listen to my commands, dear boy, the pony doesn’t exist.

Leaning casually against the railing she waved a hand at Dottie, inviting her to come down for a chat.  “What’d you think?”

Her eyes were so big that Violet couldn’t help but chuckle.  “I’m astounded.  But what happened?  Are you done?”

She tapped her friend lightly on the arm, drawing her gaze away from whatever Arthur was doing behind her.  Smiling, she pointed at herself and lifted her chin, trying to keep Dottie from even looking at him.  “Oh, most definitely.  When the pony misbehaves, he’s punished.”

Dottie gasped and fluttered her hand in front of her face like she needed air.  “Oh, dear, that sounds dreadful.  Are you going to beat him?”

“No.  I’m punishing him much more severely.”

“I hope I didn’t offend you with my ignorant comment.  Of course you wouldn’t hurt him.”

Violet let out a husky laugh.  “Oh, I would certainly hurt him under the right circumstances.  If he wanted me to give him pain for his own gratification, I’d be perfectly willing and able to deliver his most painful wishes.”

“You would enjoy it?”  Dottie asked in a small voice, lacking any sort of condemnation but revealing only honest curiosity.

“Yes, I would, if he were enjoying it too.”

“Then why didn’t you whip him just now?  I don’t know a thing about horses but even I could tell he was deliberately disobeying your commands.”

The hair prickled on the base of Violet’s neck.  Although she didn’t hear his stealthy approach, she didn’t need the faint quiver of her friend’s glance behind her to know he was close.  She could almost feel his body heat burning her back.  “If he looks me in the eye and begs me to whip him until he cries like a baby, I’ll give him exactly what he requests.  But I won’t be manipulated into giving him anything.  He doesn’t want me to hurt him so he can enjoy it.  He wants me to hurt him so he can lump me in with every other woman who’s betrayed him and I shan’t do it.”

Is still an incredible blazing speed.  Her story is up to 22.5K+ this morning.  I didn’t make it Dark & Early after a long weekend, but hopefully I can get some nice wordage tonight.

I’m definitely in the dark moment now.  Time is running out and she has to push Arthur harder than she really wants to.  It hurts her to break him as much as it hurts him to fall apart, but it’s necessary.  Even though I’m deep into this darkness, I think I’ll still have 10-15K to get through.  This story feels like at least 35K, if not 40K by the time I wrap up all the plot strings that are still dangling out there.

This snippet is from the first time Arthur runs in the ring for her.

She lifted her chin, expectation forming in her body before her order came, and he found himself tensing, alert and ready.  If he’d had horse ears, they’d have been perked toward her, awaiting her command.

“Very good, Arthur.”

In the space of a few minutes, she’d already praised him more than any mistress he’d ever worked with.  Yet he wasn’t fooled into thinking she was soft.  The warmth in her voice was there, but underneath, the icy core waited.

“All I’m going to do today is put you through your paces.”  She paused a moment and gave him a smile that was nothing of warm encouragement and everything to do with the cold determination to bend him to her will no matter what it took.  “I won’t be so easy on you again.”

Her right arm flicked out and the tail of the whip slithered across the ground.  Nowhere close to striking him but he flung up his head and raced in the opposite direction anyway.  Too much energy blazed in his body to settle into a staid trotting about the ring like Cole had done.  God, he felt so strong, so invincible.  Like he could gallop for days, leap any obstacle, race like the wind.

The whip cut him off and sent him charging in the opposite direction.  He didn’t mind.  The slide of his boots in the loose dirt of the ring felt too good to complain.  In the center of the ring, she trotted along with him, her face as hard as porcelain with supreme concentration.  He tried to turn back but she caught him with the tip of the whip right in his flank.  It stung enough to make him growl.

Fine.  Your direction, Your Grace, but my speed.

He ran harder, pumping his arms, digging his boots in so deeply that he flung clods of dirt up on her clean white shirt.  He tore about the ring, forcing himself harder, faster, ignoring the burn in his lungs, the sweat stinging his eyes.  Outrace her.  Tire her.  She can’t possibly keep up for long.

But he was wrong.  She didn’t have to keep perfect pace with him, not with the whip in her hand and central position of command in the ring.  As he began to tire, she pushed him harder, using the tip of the whip to remind him to keep moving.  As long as she was moving, he had to move too, in the direction she told him to go.  He ignored the stitch in his side.  The sweat blinding him.  His fool pride demanding that he outlast her.

Faltering a moment, she coughed.  He took the opportunity to explode back in the opposite direction, hoping to catch her unaware.  Yet the whip came in and snapped a warning on his thigh perilously near his groin.  Arousal throbbed through him, inflamed by the small pain.  Whip me again, Your Grace.  Give me the pain that will allow me to hate you.

With the bit clamped hard in his teeth, he kept charging against her command, ignoring the threat of the whip.  But the pain didn’t come.

In fact, she didn’t even try to stop him.  Slowing his headlong charge, he risked a glance in her direction and what he saw drew him to a halt.

Lady Blackmyre had turned her back on him.

Her Grace’s Stable is up to 18.5K – in four days!  I know, that’s an insane pace, but she’s relentless.  I think I’m almost 2/3 of the way through the story.  The Dark Moment is ahead.  Plot-wise/journey-wise, I’m definitely on the verge of beginning the final act, but I’m not sure in word count if I’m truly near the last 25% or not.  I believe there will be a massive smexy scene near the end that might take up way more words than I can guess. 

This is Arthur’s first trip into Lady Blackmyre’s stable.  Squick warning:  pony play in action!

“Welcome to Lady Blackmyre’s private stable,” the man said in a low voice, motioning Arthur inside.  “I’m Dain, a friend and colleague of Her Grace.  This is the only entry to this part of the stable, and I’m locking the door behind you.  No one else has a key but Lady Blackmyre and myself.  What happens here stays within these walls.”

Arthur hoped his eyes weren’t bulging from their sockets and that his mouth was appropriately closed instead of slack while he gaped like a fool.  Dain was clearly a horse master, dressed in the same riding clothes as Her Grace.  He gazed at Arthur with the same calm, steady appraisal that he’d devote to a new horse at market, as if he didn’t need words at all to access his wellbeing and comfort.

“Come, Arthur, I’ll show you to your seat.”

In a daze, he followed the man, trying to see everything all at once.  The high roof soared above the ring and boxes had been built in two concentric rows, just as a small theatre.  She might have meant him to sit and enjoy the scene, but he paused at the rail, unable to look away.

Cole ran… no, trotted… about the ring completely naked.  The recent mauling Arthur had given him was evident in an angry-looking bruised bite mark on his shoulder.  The man wore a simple leather headpiece… er… bridle.  And a tail.  That part made Arthur swallow hard, though he couldn’t look away.  It looked authentic.  The way Cole carried himself…

Head high, neck arched, he picked his feet up quickly and smoothly with a little sashay that sent that tail swishing back and forth across his thighs.

Arthur could almost feel the prickle of long hairs down his legs, and he wondered… God help him, he wondered exactly what it would feel like for his arse to be filled up while he trotted, moving about the ring, with that hair tickling his flesh.

He swallowed hard again, his throat aching, and he clenched his hands on the rail.  The longer he watched, the more he felt like he was sinking.  Drowning.  Losing himself into the steady slapping of the pony’s hooves on the ground, the gentle flicker of the whip, and the cool, still mistress at the helm.

Blowing hard, he backed away from the ring.  From her.  The vision of the pony–Cole!  His name is Cole!–sucking him under, rolling him down to deadly depths.  A place of darkness.  I’m losing myself.

“Steady now, boy.”  Dain slapped him lightly on the shoulder, a sting of comfort that shook some of the suffocating fear away.  “This is a place of safety.  No one’s ever hurt or terrified here.”

You don’t understand, he tried to cry out, but his throat was locked shut.  He was afraid if he tried to speak at all, only a desperate whinny would escape.  It wasn’t pain he feared.  Pain would drive him to the killing rage that would ground him back in reality.  He feared losing himself, all sense of humanity, all decency, all pride, forever.  God help me!

“Watch her, boy.  Look at the way Cole responds to her.  They’re one, woman and horse.  He’s so fully under her spell that he’d try to stop breathing if she willed it.”

Exactly.

(I’ll be back later today with some guest post links – I’ll be out and about this entire month to help bring Vicki out into the world.)

Lady Blackmyre is still riding me hard.  *snickers*  I’m just her pony hack at this point.  Her Grace’s Stable broke 15K this morning Dark & Early.  The story’s still going strong and it’s killing me every time I have to take a break and work or go to a band concert (last night).  Three huge days in a row and my wrists are holding up, though I’m definitely hitting the Motrin a little more than usual to keep inflamation down.

I had a hard decision to make yesterday that my beloved sis talked me through whether she knew it or not via texts.  I had to decide what to do with Cole.  One thing would be easier and definitely within my comfort zone.  The other option is something I privately had drawn a line at years ago.

Without formally deciding, I was already going the easy route.  I’d even played a few options in my mind for Cole.  Perhaps Dottie…  No.  That wasn’t right.

In fact, the more I thought about it, easy wasn’t right at all.

I have to be true to the story that’s driving me, no matter how much I balk.  Lady Blackmyre requires nothing less than the painful, awful truth.  It hovers like a gigantic impossible jump ahead of me, a black hole ready to swallow me on the other side, but she already gave me the signal to jump.

I’ll just have to trust that the story takes me over and onward.

“Have you been happy with him?”

Another man might have dropped his gaze and shuffled his feet in embarrassment, but Cole continued to meet her gaze levelly.  “No, Your Grace.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not there with us.”  At the stricken look that must be on her face, he quickly moved on.  “Besides, I don’t know that he particularly likes men.  I mean, he didn’t hesitate to use me at first because his need was too great to ignore.  But if he has his choice, I don’t know that he’d select me again.”

Surprised, she reached out to Cole and he came around her desk immediately to drop at her feet and bury his face in her skirts.  “You mean he hasn’t…”

“Only the time in the stable when I first found him, and then once after that when he was fully recovered.  He seemed… to regret it.”

“Oh, pet, I had no idea.  I thought you might be happy with him and I was perfectly willing to step aside.”

“I don’t want another man if I can’t have you too, Mistress.  I certainly don’t want a man who can only stomach the thought of touching me in a desperate moment of weakness better quickly forgotten.”

“Of course not,” she murmured, smoothing her hand through his hair.  “You deserve more than that, Cole.  I swore I’d take care of anything you might need, and I shall.”

“I don’t understand why you set me free in the first place.”  He kept his head buried against her, muffling his words, but each one sank like a barbed arrow straight to her heart.  “I don’t want to be free, Mistress.”

“You need more than I can give you.”  And I can’t bear to make you watch me die a slow, agonizing death.

“I need you more than another man, Mistress.  Please, you’re my sun and my sustenance, the very air I breathe.  Tell me to drop dead at your feet and I shall but don’t send me away from you, please.  Keep Arthur, I don’t mind.  Just keep me too.”

What could she say that might allow him some assurance?  The last thing she wanted was for this dear boy to waste away at her bedside while she coughed up her lungs and slowly expired.  Yet I can’t bear to let him think I don’t love him as much as I do.

“We shall see, all right?”  She cupped his cheek and pressed her forehead to his, letting him see the tears in her eyes.  “I love you dearly, Cole.  It’s hurt me more than I ever imagined to give you your freedom.  But I can’t explain the entire situation to you at this time.  Please, trust me to do everything I can to see to your wellbeing and happiness as long as I’m able.”

His eyes narrowed and she feared she’d said too much.  No one knew she was ill besides the Queen.  That’s the way she preferred it.  She wouldn’t have even told Majel, except no one refused Her Majesty without a death wish.  I have nothing to fear in that regard, for my death has already been signed, sealed and delivered.

“The Duchess of Blackmyre is able to do a great many things.  If you can break a wild stallion to your hand, then you can surely keep this mischievous pony in your stable, too.”