But they did not separate the two of them. There were no empty stalls, for one thing, and Emily's attention was entirely distracted a few days later, because winter arrived all at once. It came late, preceded by the usual mutterings about global warming. The pot-bellied stove kept the ponies surprisingly warm in their stalls, and Sirius was glad to be fairly near it. When winter showed up that November, it came down special delivery. An intense cold front moved in, shaking three feet of snow out of the sky in only two days. Snow blew in through the cracks in the barn-boards, and Tomas had to come out on the night the blizzard began, to set up two additional space-heaters among the pony's stalls.
The next morning, in sub-zero weather, Emily seemed almost gleeful.
"The Canadian Defense Department has just revamped their frostbite charts!" She announced. She hung one up on the outside wall of the office, new and shiny, next to the indoor-outdoor thermometer that she read compulsively. "And it's so much better than the old American ones! Look, it's fifteen below, and we have a good strong breeze out there, and: Little risk of Frostbite!" She read it triumphantly. "Little risk of frostbite. My old chart used to say 'frostbite in 40 minutes.' Which is correct? Obviously this one!" She kissed the chart, doing a little dance of joy. The ponies looked at her wonderingly. "Thank you, defense department!"
"All right, Tomas, Ingrid. Spread the word. From now on it's winter harnesses, muzzles, and ear-pieces. And every pony spends twenty minutes in the warming room before they go outside. Got it?"
"We got it."
"If there's no wind, you'll find you can leave them out there two hours, unless it's really cold. Otherwise go by the chart." She slapped the chart joyfully and skipped off.
In the next few days, Sirius found out what all this meant. The winter harnesses had a single chest strap that covered his nipples - on the ponygirls, it was two very elegant straps forming an X, like a bandolier. Another strap ran between his legs, neatly pulling everything there forward and covering it up. It split into a Y around the tail, and rejoined at his bound hands, which were enclosed in a sort of fur-lined leather sleeve. The muzzle covered his chin and lips and nose, and stuck out to make all the ponies look much more horse-like, as did the ear-pieces, which stuck up a bit above the crownpiece of their bridles. Thus dressed, none of the ponies most vulnerable skin was exposed to the staggering cold outside.
The "warming room" at one end of the barn was misnamed. It was more like a sauna, or even an oven. After five minutes in its sweaty, fragrant heat, Sirius could hardly stand upright, but had to lie down on the cradle-beams. Coming out into the snow-bleached pasture, glistening with sweat that was quickly swept away by the crystalline air, Sirius could not feel any cold at all. Only after pulling the cart for an hour did the cold begin to seep back in through the fleece-lined leather and his jangled nerves.
Emily was training Sirius and Chessy on the little coach. They took many stinging blows from her whip whenever their hooves were not in synch, and Emily never seemed to care who was at fault. She treated the two of them like an engine, and - being a very simple mechanic - if the engine was not running properly, she banged on it. Sirius was better at keeping his gait than Chessy, and he would often glare at him, tears welling in his eyes, as they rounded a corner with their buttocks burning for miss-steps that Chessy had made. The gelding would give him an apologetic glance and then turn away.
Once, though, Chessy made a mistake that was purely his own. The winter harnesses covered their cocks completely, and did not give the ponies their usual freedom to piss willy-nilly, like the animals they were. For a whole two hour run, in bone-chilling weather, Sirius watched Chessy's stomach double and relax as he fought this need. Hannah had given them all coffee that morning, one of her rare treats, and it had gone right through him in the cold.
Finally, on what seemed to be their last lap, Chessy seemed to regain his composure. But Emily did not take them back to the carriage barn. Instead, she had them ride up the driveway and onto the patio of Maxon's, where she tied them to the hitching post.
"I'll be back in a second," she said, and went in to find Maxon, or raid the refrigerator, or some other human errand. A second turned into minutes, and soon Chessy was groaning. Finally he stopped torturing himself and gave in. The little stream of gold stained the snow at Chessy's feet, but first, of course, it stained the leather of his winter harness. And for that, obviously, he was doomed. But doom did not seem to hurry - Emily took twenty minutes doing whatever she was doing, and came out looking quite satisfied. Momentarily. She looked at Chessy, and he winced. She didn't say anything, simply untied the traces and climbed back up into the coach.
"Gee." She said, popping the whip. They descended, and carefully backed the coach into the carriage house. Sirius thought it was possible - perhaps - that for some reason Chessy would not be punished for this infraction. Chessy seemed quite convinced of the opposite, and he was right.
"All right then, over here." Emily detached him from the shafts and led him back to the big ox-cart that sat on blocks in the back of the barn. Sirius was still connected to the coach, but he managed to half-turn, so he could see what was going on.
Emily was tying the gelding to one of the ox-cart's huge wheels. She tied the hames and girth-strap of his harness to two of the spokes, and then rotated the wheel, dragging his feet off the ground. With a few quick cinches, she tied his feet to the hub, a yard apart, so that his tail projected as if it was an extension of the axle. He moaned hopelessly.
"All right, Chessy. You think that because you have a ring through your cock, you can piss on your tack? You think Kevin sits up all night making you a harness so you can foul it? Oh no. No."
She grabbed the hub with both hands and gave it a heavy spin, so that Chessy started to rotate, groaning mournfully. Then she returned to Sirius, letting him spin freely, and grabbed the buggy whip. The gelding must have known what was coming, because he began to whimper more vigorously, in protest. Sirius watched wide-eyed as Emily began delivering ferocious lashes, rapid-fire, sounding like popcorn on the stove. But they were all delivered to almost exactly the same place, a point in the air which Chessy's shoulders and thighs would periodically rotate through as the wheel spun relentlessly around. He bellowed terribly, especially when he was upside-down, and Emily was lashing the backs of his legs. Sirius turned away, not wanting to think about how this must feel. Now and then, he heard Emily stop to spin the wheel again. Finally she gave up, and left Chessy, his head at four o'clock, to take Sirius back to his stall. It was already dark out - the early nightfall of the northern winter - and Tomas and Ingrid were feeding the ponies already.
"Hey, Em, you're back." Said Ingrid.
"Yes, we had some trouble. Can I take over on the feeding?"
"Sure, what can I do?"
"Ah, Chessy's over in the carriage barn, I think you should whip him."
"Right, of course." Said Ingrid, and bustled off to repeat the torture. Sirius slunk back into his stall, where the oats in his trough were already cooling. There but for dumb luck, go I...
Within a few weeks, the snow was so deep that David had put away the carriages and broken out the sleighs. This made cornering a bit more of a challenge, and it made backing up impossible. Everything had to be learned anew, which meant Sirius's back and buttocks were striped anew. David was leading Sirius out for one of these frigid lessons when they were interrupted by Emily. Sirius was in a wool blanket, David was just buckling the surcingles when she came charging in.
"Guess who I just got off the phone with."
"Tomas?"
"Nope. Melissa."
David looked blank. "Melissa who?"
"Melissa McMahall, ah, shit, you weren't here that day. She's a student at the university. She and her boyfriend came out here by mistake - they were doing some kind of paper on the barns of Alberta. She was terrified, of course, but I could see what she wanted. And she's gorgeous, and she moves well, and I think she'll break easily. So, I gave her my number. Then Hannah bets me she wouldn't call."
"Oh yes, I think I heard about this. If Hannah won, Sirius would get to cover Turquoise."
"Right. But now - get this -" Emily did a little drumroll on the top of the stable gate. "Hannah has to ditch her pimpmobile."
"She has to sell that godawful car?"
"Hey, a deal is a deal."
Sirius looked down pensively as the two grooms savaged Hannah's ride. He felt hopeless with loss. He had been so desperate to mount Turquoise - he could almost feel the curve of her back under him, the cold band of her cruel little belt. He would have been gentle, he would have taken all the time they gave him. Oh, god. His cock rose just thinking of what he had lost, and poked absurdly through the flap in the blanket. Emily grabbed it, pinching the rosy tip, and laughed.
"A fresh cunt to smell, eh, Sirius? Look how excited he is." She pumped his cock a few times, too fast for him to really enjoy it. Emily never let him have any fulfillment - as far as he could tell, she disapproved of any stallion except Orion getting to release his need. Now and then Emily let him come, though this had come to worry Sirius, because it seemed to be not so much a reward for good behavior as a pre-emptive consolation for some new torture Emily had planned the next day. So it was with no real expectation that Sirius let Emily's fingers slide up and down his shaft. He tried to enjoy the fleeting, hopeless sensation of it, thinking of how hospitable Turquoise's backside would be. And then he realized with a shock that Turquoise would think he was being aroused by the thought of Melissa.
"You'll have to wait." Emily was saying. "I told her I was busy, could she call back in three weeks? But you aren't the only one waiting, boy. I want to see her stripped and booted." Emily closed her eyes, in a personal paradise, "And I am going to have Kevin make her a tail of red ringlets, just like her hair. And I am personally going to teach her that it's hers. And that she's mine."
Emily sighed happily. Sirius' cock was now rock-hard, and he could not truthfully say that this was entirely due to thinking about Turquoise. Nor could he meet the filly's gaze from her corner stall, a mix of sadness and hostility. Goddamn it, Emily, you ruin everything. How can I make her understand now? But Hannah was tucking his cock back inside the blankets, and buckling the last surcingle to lead him out into the cold.
Ulie Higgins, Gigi's buyer, arrived in the middle of a blizzard, and came out to the barn with Maxon. He was a portly man with beard and sidebeards unfurled in the winter wind. He wore jeans and a rugby shirt with the "gg" brand embroidered on it.
"Now this must be Comet." Said the buyer, walking straight over to her stall. Emily opened it - she seemed uncharacteristically deferential around her boss and his client, Turquoise noticed with a smile.
"She's been a problem the last few weeks. She knows she's getting sold. Have you seen her before?"
"Yes, ah believe so." He had a Georgia drawl which Sirius thought he was playing up a bit. Make the Canooks think you're an idiot, and then go through their wallet. The old routine. "Could ah have seen her in Maui last year?"
"No," said Maxon, "You probably saw her sister, Foxglove. She's also a Dakota Strider, and they look a lot alike."
"That's right, that's right. And this is Comet. She's pedigree, ain't she?"
"Comet of Mercury of Talon of Desdemona." Maxon rattled off proudly. The jewel of his crown, in that regard, anyway, Turquoise thought.
"Shit." The buyer spat, although obviously he knew all this, obviously he had not driven a trailer across a continent without reading some dossier first. "Must be a lot of pressure to go into the pony business, huh, if you're fourth generation."
"Maybe," shrugged Maxon. "But Mercury had five kids after she retired. Only Comet and Foxglove became ponies. The others aren't even in the business, although I've seen them at shows."
"Yeah?"
"The oldest daughter, she works in Africa, she builds dams or leper colonies or something. One of the sons is still in school, and I think the other owns some restaurants."
"Fahve kids." The buyer drawled, stroking Comet's flanks. "Well, your dam had some incredible hips, girl, ah remember that from the old calendars." He pried open the ponygirl's mouth and looked inside it. "Y'all don't mess around on the silencers up here."
"Talking beasts are for children's books." Said Maxon sharply. Emily smiled.
"Now, the main thing ah gotta check." He cupped and lifted one of her breasts and carefully rolled the nipple, between thumb and fore-fingers. She squirmed, and stamped slightly. He repeated this meticulous procedure on the other side. "Gigi milks all her mares, see? Comet's bags ain't so big, but the real problem can be scar tissue"
"Comet's never been pierced." Said Emily firmly, perhaps sounding a little sad about it.
"Ah see that now. Had to check, see." He pinched her second nipple, hard, so she moaned, and then spoke directly to her. "These little bags of yours haven't done a day's work in your life, eh, girl? We'll soon change that, don't worry." The ponygirl whimpered slightly and bowed her head, anticipating new meanings, new roles, new surrenders. The buyer turned her around to inspect her backside.
"Ah approve of the tail." He said. "Who makes your tails?"
"Kevin Turnip."
"Yah, Turnip." The buyer nodded appreciatively. "I seen his work. Borrow your crop, miss?" Emily handed him the riding crop, and he laid two vicious strokes into Comet's ass, makes her prance halfway across the stall. "That's good color, too, that is."
He looked at the ponygirl at this distance for a while, then turned back to Maxon, tossing Emily the crop. "All right. Everything seems to be in order. Of course you've got her papers?"
"Yes."
"She have any stuff?"
"There's a valise somewhere up in the hayloft." Said Emily. "Hannah, could you fetch that?"
"Shall we say eight hundred?" Said the buyer, all smiles. Maxon seemed to twitch.
"I had thought…she's a fourth generation pedigree, my man. Her dam was Mercury."
"Oh, ah understand." The buyer nodded and raised his brow, commiserating. "And ah ain't saying she ain't a fine ponygirl. But half of what - all Gigi wants is this." He grabbed one of her breasts, still facing Maxon, and squeezed. "That's economy, ain't it. We make more off milking them then off the races. And, well," he chuckled disarmingly, "Comet's got ass, but she ain't quite got tits, huh? If you know what I mean."
"Still," Maxon said, "I rather thought we had been talking about a figure around one million.
"I tell you what." Said the buyer, dropping Comet's breasts, which now bore his white-on-red handprint. "Ah can go up to eight-fifty and no one's gonna get upset with me, see? Or think Max drives a hard bargain at Broken Oak."
"Eight-fifty?" Said Maxon, sounding a bit miserable.
"But ah can help you out. Ah go around, ah'm everywhere, I know who's got an empty stall and what they want to see filling it. Maybe ah even do some business for people on the side. So you show me around the barn, and ah can give you some free advice. Maybe even help you out."
"All right." Said Maxon, after a while. "Emily, draw up some transfer papers, will you? And put Comet in the man's truck."
"Heya, Turq." The buyer reached out to pat her. Old Ulie. Who purchased me himself from Thurim Ranch, a million years ago. And still smells like beer and bacon. She ran up, eager to see an old face, not caring if it was friend or foe, pony or groom. He stroked her cheeks and scratched behind her ears, and she whinnied happily. "Ain't you pretty as ever? You still got that slug of lead in your ass, girl?" She snapped her hips hard, tossing her tail up, so that he could hear the clunk-thunk of it sliding. He planted a sloppy kiss on her forehead. "That's mah girl! I was always afraid those Mexicans might have gone soft and taken it out. Well," he beamed, "it does me good to know you still got a piece of Gigi's ranch with you, buggerin' ya at every step."
The buyer wandered across the corridor to Sirius' stall, and leaned on the door, Maxon following him. Turquoise looked on a bit apprehensively.
"Now, this is a new colt. Sirius."
"Fine looking." Said the buyer, approvingly, and Sirius swelled with pride despite himself. "And hung pretty good, too, eh? Is he your next stud?"
"No, Orion is fine. We haven't even put Sirius on the phantom yet."
"Waallll," said the buyer, slowly, "You remember Sarah Pondlen from the movies?"
"Of course. I heard she was in ponies now."
"It's true. She's collecting geldings, and she sort of don't know what money's worth. So if you don't mind wrecking a fine cock like that, I'm sure she'd buy…what's his name?"
"Sirius."
"Sirius, right. But if I were you, I would give Gigi a chance to bid on him, because she might be interested. Never know. I'll take her a picture, if you don't mind."
"That's fine, of course. Although…actually I don't own a camera, Mr. Higgins. Anyway, I'm not thinking to sell him just yet, actually. I mean, we only just broke him in."
"Ah understand completely. Oh, it breaks mah heart sometimes, when we sell the good ones. That Turquoise there, she had just been blindfold for a hunnerd days, I remember it well. And when we took off the blindfold, it was like we had a new filly underneath. If Gigi's groom Lenora said 'jump,' she'd fly. Lenora said 'come,' she'd have the big O right on the spot. Lenora said 'milk,' and she'd start squirting into the pail."
"Surely you exaggerate." Not much, Turquoise thought. She remembered how, for a few weeks at least, she really could have an orgasm whenever Lenora told her to. She never understood that - it seemed like dark, terrifying, magic.
"Mebbe so. Anyway, it seemed like the Mexicans bought her the next frickin' day, you know? You trains 'em, and then you lose 'em. Waalll." He shook his head, and turned back to Sirius. His cock must have been hard (Because they're talking about me?) and Ulie pointed it out. "Lookit that. It would be a shame to let Pondlen get ahold of it, huh? But bullshit walks, ain't it?"
"Sure, sure. Well, thank you."
The buyer moved along to Scorpio's stall. Turq could see the blizzard of questions in Sirius' face. And some of them never get answered, handsome. That's the fun of it.
Maxon and the buyer were slouching off into the distance. He was pointing at Coral. "Ah tell ya right now, Gigi would give you five hunnerd for the bags on her."
Hannah put him in a simple Hackamore bit and took him out of the stables. It was a brisk, busy morning - Dolly and Ayesha were already out pulling a carriage. Coral and Turq watched him eagerly, and Turq seemed to nod her head approvingly, although Sirius wasn't quite sure. Hannah led him down the hall and up the stairs to the barn's third floor, where he only briefly been on the first day. It was a hay-mow, one side piled high with ancient straw, mow slumped like sod into the crazy shapes of mountains in a Chinese painting. More recent straw was stacked neatly in golden bales alongside it. On the opposite side of the bumpy but smooth-polished floor, there were three rooms clearly of fairly recent design. They were well-built, so they did not offend the barn's great age, but they were clearly too small for the space. They were stacked, like the straw-bales, along one wall of the vast hay-mow.
One of these rooms, Sirius realized, was a rather austere bedroom. That must be where the grooms went to catch a nap when they were out here. The second was a human bathroom, rather disheveled, with the door standing open. It was full of all the machines and luxuries humans used because they had no grooms: flush toilets and toilet tissue, and then a sink with different, bigger tissues in a wall dispenser, and a shower with twenty different kinds of scented detergent. Plus, Sirius noted wryly as they walked past it, there was no floor drain. So if you really tried to clean someone in that little boiler room, you would cause a flood.
The third room was a small lab, clean and brightly painted, with a tile floor that seemed quite out of place in the barn. Sirius' hooves clicked against it. There was a padded examining table in the middle of the room, with metal rings to tie uncooperative ponies down to. Hannah looped Sirius' reins to one of these rings, and then wandered off looking for someone or something.
He looked nervously around this room, which seemed more like the vet's office than any part of the barn. There was a big scale, big enough to handle quadrupeds, a granite lab counter with a sink and a little gas range, some draped appliances, various cabinets, and one little window facing the hills. On one shelf there was a battered collection of Homo Equis Quarterly, the journal he had sometimes seen Emily or David reading. The earliest copies were so old the spines had worn off, the first date Sirius could see was "Apr-Jun 1965; vol. 71 # 2"
On the wall beside them there was a poster of "The Two and Twenty Major Breeds of Human Ponies, as well as some exotic types." It was obviously out of date, since he had several times heard that there were thirty-one major breeds, and anyway, the "exotic types" did not include dragons. Still, Sirius perused it with some interest, although he could not get close enough to read the descriptive paragraphs below, in some tiny, how-many-words-can-we-fit typeface.
He was, as he knew, a Dakota Strider. The picture showed a gorgeous ponygirl, with jet-black braids, sharply jutting breasts, and shapely but powerful muscles, even in her pinioned shoulders. The caption read "Mercury, B.O.S., won St. An. End. '68, '69, '71." B.O.S. Broken Oak Stables. Our hero! For a moment Sirius was flushed with pride in his barn and breed. But it was more interesting to look at the others.
The ponies, he saw, were divided into three major categories based on their bodily configuration. The upright, bipedal Striders were by far the largest, with twelve different breeds. Some of these had their arms free, and others seemed to have their arms permanently bound back in tight binders - both options seemed to Sirius problematic and distasteful. Two other breeds of striders did not seem at all different from the Dakotas - perhaps a closer inspection of the six-point type would clarify that, but he didn't expect he would get a chance.
Then there were six kinds of Dancers, like Turquoise. Turquoise and Jasper, he deciphered, were Lazy K Dancers, the only kind with the little chains keeping her low to the ground. He was glad to see that Turq's breed had to endure that added restraint - it made him admire her all the more.
The third category, the Greysons, were much more punishing than even the Lazy K Dancers, but Sirius instinctively turned against them. The Greysons were all latex-clad to varying degrees, like Minka, and to Sirius' eye they looked unpony-like. He shuddered at the picture of the Vienna Greyson ponyboy, his entire body forever masked in latex, and his face hidden behind a pony mask, so that he could not even convey his sufferings though his eyes. Yet he could still be motivated; the caption read: "Donati, F.F.L., won Ber. 5k '92, '94, St. A. 5k '94, etc."
Sirius had moved on to the exotics, which were depicted in a small row at the bottom. There were the obligatory cats and dogs, lions and tigers and bears (Oh my!), centaurs and mermaids and several other things he did not recognize, and had no chance to examine, because Hannah was back. She had Emily and David with her.
"He's well rested." Hannah was saying, "And God knows he's ready. I think he'll perform."
"We'll see." Said Emily. David put some water on the range, and then wheeled out what appeared to be an overstuffed sawhorse, and undraped it. It was angled slightly. On top of the high end, there was a sort of radiator cap, and at the butt of the low end, there was a rubber gasket opening of some kind. A label embossed in the vinyl of the cushion read: "Markham AV 1200." So this is the phantom.
"A healthy stallion with normal libido," David said, "can collect every thirty minutes for two hours. We want to see every twenty minutes, though, isn't that right?"
"Yes." Said Emily, as Hannah untied Sirius and wheeled the table aside. "But Orion is averaging seventeen minutes for seven collections. I don't think this ponyboy is that perky."
"Well, let's get started and find out." Said Hannah. "David?"
David measured out some of his hot water and poured it into the top of the phantom, through the little cap. There must have been a thermometer on the other side, because he read out "forty-nine degrees. That should be fine. He took a little bottle of lubricant from one of the cabinets, and squirted it through the rubber gasket. It was, Sirius realized with a mixture of excitement and revulsion, an artificial vagina. AV. And the two women were quickly guiding him to it with a wide leather strap across his buttocks, just below his tail.
He needed very little encouragement. His cock, forlorn for days, rushed happily into the obscene, squeaky embrace of the phantom's rubber labia. It was loose, and sloshed with lubricant, but it was so warm, so much better than Hannah's teasing fingers. He grunted with delight, and achieved his goal in ten or twenty quick thrusts. He lay there panting on top of the cushion, spent and happy.
"Fourteen seconds." Emily said. She slid a crop along the inside of his legs, and tapped him just slightly, as if to say, "get going." Now Sirius labored more awkwardly, thrusting his limp cock into the black rubber lips which were too slippery for any real traction. To his left, he could see Hannah watching him eagerly, rooting for him. Her overalls had slouched at an angle, and through the fabric of her T-shirt he could see one of her nipples erect. That was all it took, and a moment later he was moaning with joy as Hannah patted his ass approvingly.
"Eight minutes twenty-one seconds." Said Emily.
Hannah added "Tom, why don't you add a little water? I think he needs more pressure."
Oh thank you! Sirius craned around to kiss her arm, and the grooms all laughed. David added a little more hot water and frowned at the thermometer. Sirius felt the rubber tighten around his cock, hardening it a third time. But now he was struggling. His balls felt emptied out, emaciated. He bore down on the cushion with his chest, rubbing his nipples into it, imagining that it was Turquoise. She would be looking back at him over her shoulder, tossing her braids in the wind, moaning. When she came, he would see the heavy rings in her nipples swinging as her frame shuddered. Yes! Oh God! Yes!
"Fifteen minutes, nine seconds."
"What if he beats out Orion?" Hannah asked.
"We-ell, I suppose I would switch them. Make Sirius the stud and put Orion back in the stalls, or maybe talk to Maxon about selling him. This isn't San Rafael. We only need one stud in this barn."
So if I can do this, Sirius thought, If I can really do this, I'll get to cover Turquoise. Every week. And she wants it! He was pumping his hips like a madman, like a wild pony. That's why she gave me that look this morning. She doesn't love Orion, she love me…She loves me…She loves me…Repeating this mantra, he came again, not an explosion but a trickle.
"Seventeen minutes, fifty-one seconds." Said Emily.
"He's collected four times." Said David. "Let's wipe him down."
And indeed, as Hannah and David washed him, Sirius realized that he was sweating from every pore. His sides and back were soaked, and sweat was beaded in the valley between his tail and his balls. Hannah lovingly washed his ball-sack in warm water, massaging some life back into it, and then continued down his legs.
But now he felt the task was impossible. He was panting desperately, humping the phantom fast and slow, with shallow and deep strokes. It was like pushing on a rope. There was less lubricant left, so he had a bit more purchase on the rubber walls of the AV, but he could not get it up. He remembered his embarrassment years before, when his cock had lain down on the job for a girlfriend. She wasn't any real sadist, but she had a domme's cruel streak, and she had just ridiculed him as if he were the embodiment of adolescent sexual insecurity. Now he was pumping his flaccid cock for two women, and a handsome young man who was heating up more water to help him out.
Finally he managed to close his eyes and shut everything else out, thinking only of how much he wanted to cover Turquoise. He came. Someone fed him sugar cubes, and someone changed the water in the AV to a much warmer temperature. Realizing he was closing his eyes anyway, they blindfolded him. He floated in the endless fuck of the warm, wet, embracing rubber. The phantom was his whole world; somewhere far off there were aliens washing his legs as he ejaculated a few agonizing drops of sperm. "Collecting" they called it; he imagined he was dropping a few pennies into a collection plate; it seemed about right.
Now the two women were using the broad strap on his ass to force him to thrust. In the end he was just repeating her name over and over in his head. Turquoise. Turquoise. Turquoise. Turq-uoise. Turq-uoise. Oh god, oh god, thank you…
"That's seven collections," Hannah was saying, from far away. "Want to keep going?"
"No, I think we're done." Said Emily. "That's an average of eighteen minutes twenty-five seconds. He's good, but he's not Orion."
"Orion has better balls." David said, prodding at Sirius' sweating ballsacks. "See, his are smaller, and they hang too close. A cock is only as good as what's behind it." Humiliated in failure, Sirius moaned quietly into his blindfold. Hannah must have noticed his lips quivering, and she bitted him, stroking his cheeks kindly.
"There, there." She was saying. "Shhh. You did very well."
"Yes, we could sell him as a stud sometime, if Maxon wants to." Said Emily. At this cheerful piece of news Sirius sobbed behind his gag. "I bet Thurim would take him in a heartbeat."
"You'd be sad to miss your little girlfriend, wouldn't you?" Said David, laughing. He slapped Sirius' ass with the crop. Evidently now that he had been checked out, there was no longer any reason to coddle him.
"You mean Turq, right, David?" asked Emily, who sounded like she was leaving the room, "Yeah, he'd be off his feed for a day or two. Then he'd see ten new fillies with theirs cunts smiling at him. After a few rounds at Thurim, I bet he couldn't pick Turq's ass out of a line-up."
Even Hannah laughed, and Sirius stopped paying attention. Nor did he meet Turquoise' eyes when they came back downstairs. But that Friday, with his cock still aching, he watched closely as Orion was led to each of the ponygirl's stalls in turn, making all of them - all of them - whinny with ecstasy. He spent about the same amount of time in each stall, and never seemed to falter. Only after Magda, who he covered fifth, did he even seem tired. Hell, thought Sirius, with sad respect, I can never compete with that. I'm just a ponyboy, of course, of course. I'm not the stud stallion at Broken Oak. And if I don't want things that aren't in my league, I won't be disappointed. But he couldn't stop dreaming about Turquoise' birthmark.