Free Saddled (The Stables Trilogy #3) by Penny Lam

name is Malcolm Reece. He is going to paint you to promote your equine aesthetic and increase your desirability amongst wealthier bidders. I've been doing this for several years, and I can assure you the paintings bring in quadruple the offers that a basic portrait would.
     
    “Mr. Reece knows how you are supposed to act. If you speak to him, he will tell me, and our contract will be terminated.”
     
    Maple wasn't sure she believed that J.B. was right about Reece. He liked secrets too much. Especially ones that dealt with his stoic rancher friend. Most likely he would encourage the girls to talk, and they would, and J.B. would be none the wiser.
     
    As they all were dressed in tails and tack, Reece took Brie’s reins and led her from the stable. Maple burned with envy, worry, and hate.
     
    With Brie gone, the other ponies looked around, shuffling in their discomfort. They looked to Brie for cues on how to act. It wouldn’t end well for them, Maple thought, when they were sold off as individuals. Without Brie, they’d have to learn all over again.
     
    J.B. misread their unease. “Mr. Reece is a professional.”
     
    And then it was time for exercise. He hooked them up to small carts. In the carts were a few twenty pound bags of grains. The carts looked small, but with the added weight, they were difficult to pull.
     
    After he snapped the final pony girl into a cart via her harness, he pulled a whip off his wall. Maple cringed. She used to enjoy whippings, but that was before she’d lost so much sleep.
     
    There’s a reason sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture; it breaks you down fast.
     
    Now the lick of the whip was just another wound her body no longer had the energy to heal, much less indulge.
     
    “Let’s go,” he barked, and all of them were off.
     
    Maple’s shoulders strained as she tugged. The leather of her harness, usually soft and floppy, pulled taut and sharp against her skin. It cut in as she pushed, pushed, pushed with her legs, grunting with effort. Finally, reluctantly, the wheels on the cart began to turn.
     
    Getting it to move was the hardest part. Pulling it? Well it wasn’t easy , but it didn’t require everything she had.
     
    “Maple, you’re already behind,” J.B. snapped at her. The crack of the whip rang out, and she felt the lancing pain of it on the back of her thigh.
     
    “Ponies, not all Masters want to see pretty little ponies prancing about. I’ve explained this to you! Many of them want to see you work. They want to laugh at your straining bodies. They’ll work you until you collapse on the ground, and then they’ll fuck you for it. We train so you can bear this. We train so you make them proud. We train so you earn your selling price. So stop loitering and pull those fucking carts!”
     
    The heat of the stable quickly caught up with her. It was sweltering inside. Outside, she knew it would be dry heat-- the sun and arid air making her skin feel crispy. As they grunted and heaved inside, though, the humidity of humans at work began to build. It, along with the sweat dribbling down her body, created a sogginess that she felt in her limbs and lungs.
     
    Soon the leather was chafing, sliding in her salty sweat in irritating channels on her skin.
     
    “Damnit, Maple!” Another crack of the whip and her skin burst in electric pain on the backs of her thighs. Something wetter than normal trickled down, tickling the backs of her knees, and Maple knew he’d broken skin. More painful than that, though, was the sheer volume of disappointment threaded in his tone. Disgust, really.
     
    The fact that she could repulse J.B. broke her heart and shattered her drive.
     
    Finally, when the other pony girls were struggling as much as she was, he stopped them. His face was dark and stormy as he unhooked their harnesses and took them off, leaving everyone in bit, bridle, and tail.
     
    Each girl looked warily at the red rashes forming where the harness had been.