Page 3 of Sadie's Little Christmas

The second time she’d regained consciousness, she was being lifted out of the snow onto a gurney, then loaded into the back of an ambulance.

So… yeah. She’d been assaulted… kind of, although ithadstarted out consensually enough. And she’d been raped… kind of. She hadn’t agreed to that part and never would have let him do it had she not been flying so deep in subspace. She had also very nearly died… because she’d been stupid, and everyone knew it.

So now, here she was.

Sadie hugged her duffel bag to her chest and did her best to paste on a smile she didn’t feel.

“Hi,” she greeted back, which finally made the horrified woman who’d frozen on the steps abruptly clap her mouth shut.

“Uh…” she said, so startled she’d forgotten her spiel. “Uh, welcome to Rawhide Ranch.” She winced an uncomfortable smile. “I’m Erika Lane, and I’m, um… here to show you… to sh-show you…”

She ought to just get back in the cab and leave again, Sadie thought sadly, which was when she suddenly noticed the tall,broad man who’d come out of the resort and stood at the top of the steps, his broad shoulders bare inches from brushing the evergreen Christmas wreath decorating a porch post, watching them. When her gaze landed on his, he came down to greet her.

“Thank you, Erika,” he said as he neared them. “I’ll take over from here.”

How she hadn’t noticed him before now, Sadie didn’t know, because the man was nothing if not noticeable. Unbelievably tall, he filled out the jeans he wore like a cowboy straight out of a movie. They weren’t tight, but they weren’t loose, just like his white, long-sleeved, button-down shirt. It wasn’t tight, but it wasn’t loose. It fit him as if it had been molded to his broad, muscular frame, and she was more than a little embarrassed at herself for the way she kept staring. But with each sauntering step he took to close the distance between them, blossoms of embarrassing heat unfurled in the pit of her belly like a slow blush. One would think having been through what she had, attraction was the last thing she’d be feeling.

Shame burned at her, making her take an automatic step back as he came to stand on the bottom step. She didn’t know what was wrong with her, but she definitely wasn’t right.

He held out his hand. “Derek Hawkins,” he said with a gentle smile. “I’m the owner here.”

That tiny sizzle of inappropriate attraction shot straight through her core when she let her hand be engulfed by his. His was huge, swallowing up her fingers in his warm grip.

“Let’s see if we can get you settled in,” he said before ducking down to look at the cab driver through the front window. “Have you been paid?”

“Tip and trip,” the driver confirmed. “Taken care of by a fellow named Stark.”

“Good man. Watch out for deer and black ice on the way back.” Patting the top of the cab, Derek faced her again. “Can I help with your luggage?”

“I’ve got it, thanks.” Sadie hugged her duffel bag to her chest. By the time the cops converged on her panicking roommate’s apartment, he had disposed of almost everything she’d brought here, which hadn’t been much to start with. This duffel bag carried literally everything she had left in the world—a change of clothes, tooth and hair brushes, her waterlogged wallet they’d pulled out of the trunk of her car, which, as far as she knew, was still at the bottom of the lake they’d found it in, and Spankles, the soft white kitten she’d bought for herself at Build-A-Bear. The only reason she had this much was she’d packed the duffel to take to the dungeon with her, just in case, then accidentally left it there. A good thing, as it turned out, or she’d have nothing right now but her wallet. Her very wet, very empty wallet.

“Right this way, then,” he said and smiled. Like he meant it. Like he hadn’t even noticed her bruised face.

Like he didn’t even know that she was only here because that lawyer fellow had called in a favor, so she would have a safe place to go once the hospital released her. A place for young ladies not so very different from you, he’d said, and while she hadn’t understood exactly what that meant at the time, she’d spent pretty much the entire cab ride looking up the Ranch online. Her stomach had quivered the whole way here. Not because she was scared or unnerved by what she’d read, but because she’d been aroused.

Beat up… raped… and still aroused. She bowed her head, hugging the shoulder strap of her bag as she followed Derek up the front steps and through the resort’s wreath-decorated double doors.

“Wow,” she said, stopping just inside the lobby, her eyes wide as she gazed at the luxurious décor. Everywhere she lookedsaid the place was a ‘working Montana ranch’ but in a very upscale way. The white walls stood in attractive contrast with the exposed wood tree-trunk-like beams that ran the length and width of the ceiling. The pictures on the walls, the knick-knacks on the tables, the rugs on the floor—all had a warm and natural wild-west theme, matching Derek himself to an absolute ‘t.’

“I’m glad you think so,” the man beside her said, grinning as he joined her in looking around. “This place has been in my family for generations, and some of these pieces are at least as old as the original house.” He tapped her shoulder when she started toward the massive check-in desk. “It’s all right. I took care of it when Uncle Jared called.”

Falling into step with him, they crossed the lobby, heading toward a wing of hotel-style residential rooms.

“I didn’t know he was your uncle.”

In retrospect, that struck her as a weird thing to say. Until he walked into her hospital room, Lawyer Jared Stark had been nothing more to her than one in a sea of people she’d been introduced to that night at the dungeon. She didn’t know Derek at all, apart from what she’d read about him on the internet.

“He’s not,” Derek said with a laugh. “He’s more like the favorite Uncle of every Little boy and girl who makes the Ranch their home. He visits upon occasion, but he also remembers us at holidays… especially Christmas. A gift can make a world of difference to a lonely Little who doesn’t feel he or she has anyone else.”

Sadie said nothing. She knew exactly how that kind of loneliness topped by an unexpected gift felt.

Reaching the end of the hall, he used a keycard to unlock another set of double doors. He held one open for her. “This way,” he said cheerfully.

She stepped through, only to stop again when she saw the abrupt change in décor. Gone was the Montana/western ranchfeel. Instead, she found herself standing on stark white marble flooring, surrounded by bright, boldly colored walls. Before the door could swing shut behind Derek, a line of seven people came filing out of a room marked Library.

The whole way in the cab, Sadie had researched as much as she could find on Rawhide Ranch. She’d been so astonished any place like this could exist, she’d read the backstory three times, almost memorizing it. Although started as a safe haven for women founded in the 1890s, the Ranch was now a… well… a boarding school, she supposed, but for kinksters who identified as Littles. Sadie had only the vaguest idea what that term meant. She’d heard the term enough to know it related to a subgenre within the roleplaying aspect of BDSM, but she wasn’t much for roleplaying, so that was as far as she’d tried to understand it right up until she was in a cab and on her way here.

There was no definition of Little on Rawhide Ranch’s website, but it did mention its nursery, playground, classrooms, and training ground. World-class training ground, it had said, sending the butterflies in her tummy fluttering so hard, standing here now, and seeing it all firsthand, she could feel the echoes of those flutters still vibrating. It hit her right alongside a quiver of longing she wasn’t at all prepared for.

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