Her Montana Master: An Alpha Male BDSM Contemporary Western Romance (Stateside Doms Book 1) Read online

  Her Montana Master

  by

  Maren Smith

  Copyright © 2019 by Maren Smith

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

  reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

  means, electronic or mechanical, including, but not

  limited to, photocopying or by any information storage

  and retrieval system, without permission in writing from

  the author. [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, locales, and

  events are either a product of the author’s imagination or

  are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

  places, and events are purely coincidental.

  Cover Artist: Allysa Hart at Allycat’s Creations

  Editor: Maggie Ryan

  Dedicated to Todd

  my husband, lover, and Dom

  Also, to army of people who have helped

  behind the scenes with every book I write.

  Nanette, Saskia, Mary, Renee, Ally, and Rayanna

  I would not be half the author I am without

  all your help.

  Chapter One

  “What the hell,” Madden Briggs said, yanking his truck so far over that he wasn’t even on the shoulder anymore. He damn near went sideways down in the grassy ditch, but velocity and a lead foot on the gas were his best friends. He lost half a stack of lumber out of the back of his truck, but he got it horizontal and back up on the road. Only then did he cast a hard look in the rearview mirror at the flashy black and white Mustang speeding off in a cloud of unpaved road dust.

  Jasper Mulvaney.

  “Someone ought to kick your ass,” he muttered, adjusting his cowboy hat in irritation. If he was still this annoyed when next he ran into the blowhard back in town, that someone might just be him this time. And that would be sad, because he didn’t really have money to waste on bail. Not even for the personal satisfaction.

  Venting his frustration via manual labor, he reloaded the wood back into his beat-up Ford pickup and once more headed for home.

  Less than two miles later he found the reason for Jasper’s high-speed hightail out of the area. Clover Harris marched along the roadside in a torn white summer dress—in the middle of the worst heatwave in thirty years, no less—stiff as a board with her jaw and fists tightly clenched.

  “Oh hell.” Madden cruised to a stop just ahead of her and watched her come. Clover always had been a runner. Seeing her walking with Jasper driving off in the distance was not an uncommon occurrence. Still—he checked the neon-green temperature display in the corner of his rearview mirror; 108 degrees—in this weather, she had to be out of her mind. As soon as she stalked close enough for him to roll down his window, he told her so. “You’re crazy.”

  She didn’t acknowledge him. For a girl that blonde, she had one heck of a redheaded temper. She always had, all the way back into their childhood when she’d punched Tommy Delaney in the nose for peeking up her dress on the monkey bars. She’d have punched him too, out of sheer association. He and Tommy used to be good friends, but Madden hadn’t looked. He also ran faster.

  An all-too grownup Clover marched past his open window without a word. If it weren’t fifteen miles back to town and already hotter than the Devil’s oven today, he’d have respected her unspoken request to be left alone and continued on home.

  But it was hot, and it was fifteen miles. And aside from still being a fast runner, Madden liked to think he wasn’t a dick.

  Putting the truck in reverse, he slowly backed up until he was even with her once more. “Come on, Clov,” he cajoled. The heat was already getting to her. Her face was pink, although that was probably equal parts heat, exertion, and temper. “You know you don’t want to walk to town in this heat.”

  He tapped the brakes when she abruptly halted. Slapping hands to slender hips, she glared down that long, straight Montana road. Huffing a sigh, she glared at him next, and eventually cast her baleful, blue-eyed scowl skyward, where the sun beat down on them both and where it would continue to do so for at least another eight hours before setting. Even the breeze was hot, billowing over them, stirring her dress and her hair, and bringing with it the dry, dusty smell of the dirt road they were on and the pastures surrounding them.

  “No,” she finally admitted. “No, I don’t.” Still, she made no move to get in the truck.

  “You’ll spend the next three days red as a lobster,” he warned.

  Her weight shifted to her other foot. Her jaw clenched, jutting slightly as she considered her very limited options.

  “Fine,” she said, but then stabbed at him with a grumpy finger. “But just because I’m getting in, that doesn’t mean you get to ask me any questions.”

  Refusing to smile, Madden held up surrendering hands. “It’ll be a question-free zone.”

  He followed with his eyes as she circled the front of his truck to get in on the passenger side. She must have taken a tumble. Her white sundress was torn, once at the babydoll waist seam and again at the right shoulder strap. She’d tied the torn shoulder parts together in a way that might have passed from a distance, but as she climbed up into the truck, her dishevelment was every bit as obvious as the dirt stains on her knees.

  The truck rocked as she slammed the door. That wasn’t a fit of temper. This was his farm’s work truck and he’d had it since he was fifteen. By now, Clover had been in it enough to know that door was heavy, awkward, and liked to stick.

  “Seatbelt,” he reminded when she smoothed her skirt down over her knees and then just sat there, glaring out the window.

  Her mouth still set in a line that left no room for wondering whether or not she was still fuming, she obediently buckled up. The second it clicked into place, she muttered her standard answer to that particular edict. “People who wear seatbelts get burned up in car-crash fires.”

  “People who don’t wear them get thrown out the windshield,” was his standard reply as he turned the truck around and headed back to town.

  He had no idea what she was wearing, but now that she was sitting beside him, within half a mile he started catching whiffs of lilac perfume. It was soft and subtle, and he liked it way too much for a guy just giving a ride to a damsel in distress.

  And just like that, here they went again.

  Driving with one hand, he braced his elbow against the door and rubbed his forehead just under the brim of his tan Stetson. Dude, he told himself sternly, get over it already. He was twenty-eight years old. She was twenty-five. He’d known her since she was two and just beginning to toddle around his best friend Kyle’s living room.

  Kyle had moved to Texas to live with his father after his parents separated. Clover had stayed with her mom.

  Exactly when Kyle’s little sister had become his little sister too, he didn’t know, but she sure hadn’t stayed that way. Not by a long shot. By the time he was in high school, the only thing he really knew for sure was that while his feelings for her were changing and deepening, her feelings back put him strictly in the like-a-brother zone.

  Also, Clover had horrible taste in men. Maybe that should’ve made him feel better, but it didn’t. Instead of returning his affection, she seemed to have a thing for losers. Jasper was only one in a very long line of men Madden wouldn’t have minded feeding his fist to on a damn near regular basis. It was hard watching a woman he cared so much about be so badly treated. And yet, he couldn’t say a damn thing to her. It wasn’t his place, and Clover was no wilting flower. She was strong and she was stubborn. And right now, she was making the entire cab of his truck smell fantastic.

  “You don’t have to let him treat you like that,” he said.

  “You just can’t help yourself!” she softly exploded, clenching her fists up by her face. “I knew it! You always do this. This”—she indicated the whole of the cab—“was supposed to be a question-free zone.”

  “It wasn’t a question,” he pointed out. “It was a statement of fact. And it doesn’t change anything; you still don’t have to let him treat you like this. It always surprises me when you do.”

  “Oh my god, if this is what it’s like living with you, it’s no wonder that Trish—” Clover caught herself, shock at her own callousness waging instant battle with anger for control of her face. Anger won out, but she did have the grace to blush. “I’m sorry,” she said slowly, as if uncomfortable with apologies and unfamiliar making them. “That was low.”

  Yes, it was, but Madden let it go. He stared down the road ahead of them, drove his truck and pretended as if Clover flinging his ex’s name in his face didn’t bother him. She’d been gone for two years now. Some things a man just had to get over.

  Folding her arms across her chest, she glared out the window. Her leg began jiggling up and down. “Anyways,” she continued lamely, “you always do this.”

  He adjusted his hat. “I do not.”

  “You do!” she accused. “If it were up to you, I would live out my life in a plastic bubble, wrapped in protective bubble wrap, forever sheltered from the world and all the nice guys out in it.”

  “You wouldn’t know a nice guy if he kissed the back of your hand,” he said dryly, already trying hard to
pretend the image of any guy kissing her—hand or otherwise—didn’t rankle him.

  Great. Now not only did he want to punch Jasper, he wanted to punch Mr. Hypothetical Nice Guy for getting too fresh too fast. He looked at her hand, folded across her chest, wondering if it smelled like lilacs, too.

  “Jasper is nice,” she insisted.

  “Jasper left you walking fifteen miles back to town on a dirt road at high noon in the middle of summer.”

  “For your information, he didn’t leave me,” she said, jostling along to the bumps of the truck as they bounced in and out of the weather ruts. “I got out and walked.”

  “That wasn’t Jasper who ran me off the road about twenty minutes ago and half a mile back?”

  “Well, yeah,” she acknowledged, “but he didn’t leave-leave me until I got out and walked. That’s the important thing. I told him to go fuck himself, and I’m pretty sure that’s what he’s doing right about now.”

  As if that was supposed to exonerate him.

  “I would not have left you like that,” Madden said.

  She snorted. “Yes, you would have.”

  It annoyed him that she sounded so damn sure of that.

  “No,” he replied, every bit as hotly. “I would not.”

  “Oh, you look me in the eye,” she started, but she stopped, her mouth clacking shut so fast that her teeth knocked together when he caught her by the chin and locked her eyes with his.

  Half watching her and half watching the road, he said, “I would not have driven off. I would’ve followed behind you, two miles an hour if that’s what it took, all the way back to Cypress Flats. I’ve got sunscreen in the back. I’d have made you stop long enough to put it on. I’d even have slathered you up myself, if necessary, but I would not have driven off and left you like that.”

  “Even if I told you to go fuck yourself?” she repeated.

  “No, ma’am, I’d have busted your butt for that,” he said flatly, then repeated, “but I would not have left.”

  Her startled look became a startled laugh. “See?” she said, as if that explained all.

  “But you would never have told me that.” Letting go of her chin, he pinned her with another stern look as he put both hands back on the wheel. “First, because you know it would end with you sitting tender. And second, I wouldn’t have deserved it.”

  Sarcastic smile dying, she set her chin and folded her arms defensively. “What makes you think he did?”

  He looked pointedly at her dress. “That thing get torn on its own?”

  She set her chin even more stubbornly. “This is a question-free zone,” she reminded and glared back out the window.

  The inside of his cab still smelled like lilacs, but the air had turned oppressive, heavy, and angry on her part; and almost depressed on his. He drove, now and then shaking his head. She was worth so much better than Jasper; he wished he knew how to make her see it.

  Chapter Two

  Clover sat on the passenger seat of Madden’s truck, mad as hell. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this angry, at herself, at Jasper, hell now even at Madden. And it wasn’t because it had never happened. Rather, it was because it happened all the time.

  She woke up angry; she went to bed angry. Constant fury tangled inside her chest like knotted barbed wire, constantly pricking at her. Anymore these days, it was the size of a softball, and she couldn’t begin to figure out how to cut it out. Today hadn’t even started out being an angry day, but now look at her—scuffed and torn and furious all over again.

  “I want to do something special for our anniversary.” That’s what Jasper had said over the breakfast table, and like magic words opening up a rainbow box, today had started out good. Which was amazing, because things hadn’t been good between them, not for a very long time.

  If she’d had any money or anywhere to go, she probably would have left him long before this. But once upon a time, he had been her white knight, charging in with his Ryan Gosling good looks, to rescue her from… what, she couldn’t even remember anymore. But it had seemed important at the time, and they’d been together now for going on four years. Jasper was the reason that she didn’t have a job.

  “Because no wife of mine is going to work,” he had said, and even though they weren’t married, he’d started that rule, and she’d been more than happy to follow it. It wasn’t like her waitressing job at Cypress Flats’ only part-time diner kept her mentally stimulated, or her bank account happy. Jasper worked at his father’s construction company, and even though he was only a year or two older than she was, he still made a lot of money. Or at least, it was a lot of money for the folks of Cypress Flats.

  Still, they had their own trailer (Jasper’s actually), on their own stretch of land (Jasper’s father’s, actually), the excess of which Jasper had rented out to a neighbor to put three horses on which, as far as she knew, his daddy still didn’t know about. Jasper wasn’t a fan of horses. He was a fan of four-wheel-drive and sand buggies, fast cars, big boobs, his big screen TV, and the speakers he had set up all over the house, so that no matter what he wanted to watch, it boomed in surround sound like a movie theater.

  That’s where Clover lived, all day every day, in his house, washing his dishes, doing his laundry, vacuuming his floor, picking up magazines featuring half-naked big-boobed women, and pretending to be a wife without a ring on her finger and the constant angry dread in her chest that he’d someday ask her to be.

  She’d probably very stupidly say yes, too. At this point, it was so much easier to stay than it was to leave. So much easier to keep right on pretending that she didn’t care when he told her she couldn’t cook right, or clean right, or that her boobs were too small and her ass was too big, and that her skin didn’t crawl every time that he rolled over late in the night to pull her in close to him and whisper, “Who’s your daddy, baby? I want to hear you say it.”

  A person didn’t live with someone for four years without knowing what their triggers were. Jasper definitely knew hers. Once upon a time, ‘who’s your daddy’ had been one of them. ‘Let’s do something special for our anniversary’ still was. At least until ‘something special’ turned out to be nothing more than a long drive out on an old country road to the very same make-out spot where, on their third date, she finally let him shimmy her out of her jeans in his backseat. That’s where he’d shivered her for the very first time with that immortal phrase, ‘who owns this pussy, baby’ as he’d touched her… down there.

  She hadn’t been a virgin back then. That hadn’t been her first time. But it had been the first time she’d come more than once, and she had done it twice with his hand on her throat, whispering in her ear, “Don’t come until Daddy says so, baby. Don’t you fucking dare.”

  His whispered ‘daddy’ had hooked her like a worm hooks pond trout. After that, she had been so convinced that he was the one.

  The problem was, he wasn’t, and by the time she’d realized it, she was well and truly stuck. Without a job, without money of her own, and without a car or driver’s license.

  No freedom. No way to get free.

  Trapped.

  And angry.

  For some reason, running into Madden just made it all that much worse. She didn’t know why that was, except that she’d had such a crush on him when she was younger. Yeah, her and every other girl in this dying town. He was lean and sexy, built like a stripper, with dark brown hair and midnight eyes, and a way of smiling that melted a girl all the way down to her panties. From the moment he’d hit his first growth spurt, girls had looked at him. Before he’d had his last, Clover began to realize she simply wasn’t good enough to compete with that.

  Bouncing along in the passenger side of his truck, she watched the countryside go by, the rocky ranchlands they passed a constant blur of green and brown grass, gentle hills and rocky outcrops, ponderosa and lodgepole pines. And all the while, she just kept thinking, why did the heart do that? Why did it make a girl fall in love with someone who would or could never return it, and when stupid crushes happened to stupid kids, why did they never grow out of them?

  Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She’d had a major crush on the Backstreet Boys back when she was twelve, and she’d gotten over that. Of course, the Backstreet Boys didn’t live in Cypress Flats. Those miles of separation between Montana and wherever the hell her once-favorite boyband now called home, had made a world of difference when it came to outgrowing her infatuation.