Free The Whip by Karen Kondazian Page A

he released it, it was a moan. “Oh, Char—”
    He took her shirt and ripped it all the way down the front. He put his hands on her naked body and began to knead her breasts.
    “No, no,” he muttered. “You’re not a girl.” Then he brought his mouth to her nipples, sucking so hard it hurt her.
    She could feel his rough lips moving across her skin. She felt her breath, her body, her will, snap into a paralyzed stillness. She felt herself watching it all from far away.
    He lifted his head and met her eyes. “Oh, you’re gonna get it now.”
    Holding her eyes he dropped his hands to his belt and began to undo the buckle and the buttons on his pants. “Gotta do it Char—gonna break your cherry.”
    He pushed himself between Charlotte’s legs, slamming her against the stall door. She could feel the hardness of him pushing inside her. It was starting to hurt. But she didn’t resist.
    At that moment Beelzebub began to squeal and scream, trumpeting biblically on his hind legs. Then the whole stable was in an uproar—horses whinnying, neighing, thrashing. Beelzebub, king of them all, continued to rear and pound his feet on the ground. He lunged at the stall door with pinned ears, mouth open, head shaking and teeth glistening.
    The sound was tremendous; the whole stable reverberated with it. Lee lost his grip and Charlotte fell to the ground. He scuttled backwards.
    Pushing open the stable door in alarm, Jonas was shouting, “Charlotte…what the hell is going on?”
    He covered the distance to her in a moment. She was pulling herself up from the hay-strewn floor. She pulled her torn nightshirt together as she stood up…breathing hard, her body, her breath, her will, crashing back into her. Lee had vanished.
    “Are you alright Charlotte? What happened?”
    But it had all been such a blur; Charlotte, not certain herself, could not say.

Twenty
    Charlotte sat next to Jonas on the wagon as they rode into town the following morning. He seemed distracted, lost in his own thoughts with a rare angry expression on his face. What was it he was feeling? She could not make it out. Something she had not felt from him before. His face was closed and his manner was stern. She wished he would talk to her now about the horses, the weather, or her chores. She wished he would scold her, though he seldom did that. She wished he would hum a little song to the horses or sing to her, like he always did. Anything. Anything to keep her mind off the events of last night.
    Last night…she hadn’t known what to say to Jonas. Thank God he hadn’t pushed the matter. He had just made her some tea while she cleaned herself up. But this morning she felt embarrassed, sitting there next to him, still not knowing what to say.
    Jonas flicked his wrist and the whip unfurled over the heads of the horses with a reverberating snap. As they approached a crossroad, he stopped the wagon. He turned his head toward Charlotte. In the sunlight, it somehow looked to her as though there had been tears in his eyes. She felt her heart make a jump in her chest that pained her. He must have seen this because he smiled at her, a spark of familiar mischief lighting up his face. She sighed with relief. She must have been mistaken; it was going to be alright—he was going to be playful.
    They entered the crossroads and with little effort, Jonas played the four reins, guiding the team of horses into a perfect ninety degree left turn.
    “Now how did I do that?”
    “You didn’t do anything,” she teased. “The horses know the road, is all.”
    “That so?” He laughed.
    He turned the team around in the middle of the road, then handed her the reins. “You do it, then.”
    “Sure.” She gave a confident sidelong look at Jonas. This was not the first time he had asked her to do something new and when she did it well—and if it had to do with horses she just about always did it well—he would shake his head in mock amazement. “You beats all, missy,” he’d