Ringer by C.J. Duggan

satisfaction
as he announced he was coming in, I waited for my moment of glory.
    And, oh, don’t get me wrong: it had been
glorious, for about ten seconds. The one lesson I never thought to learn from
the shearers’ practical jokes was, were the ten seconds of joy really worth the
torture of what may come?
    And I knew what was coming; I could as good
as read Ringer’s mind as he pulled me towards the large water trough that
caught the overflow of the shearers’ quarters. Cold, murky and usually had some
animal slurping out of it: my mind froze with horror thinking of my four-hundred-dollar
Italian leather boots.
    “Ringer, don’t. I mean it,” I pleaded
quickly.
    He spun me around, catching me by my wrists
and leaning me precariously back as my butt rested on the trough.
    I put on my best sad, pleading eyes of
mercy. “Please, don’t,” I said.
    Of course, I was talking to the one person
I had almost ran over, flipped off, told to fuck off, woken up, accused of
being a pervert, all before drenching him with water, and stomping my heel into
his foot. Yeah, I’m sure batting my eyelashes would get me out of this one.
    Ringer just smiled, slow and wicked, as he
shook his head—as good as saying not a chance. He went to loosen his grip, but
I hooked my legs around his thighs.
    “Hang on, hang on, wait a minute, will you
just wait a minute?” I blurted out, his brow cocking with interest.
    My breathing was shallow; I felt like I was
on borrowed time as I nervously glanced backwards. He probably wouldn’t listen
but I still had to plead my case.
    “Look, you can turf me in as many times as
you want, but my boots are really expensive, and …”
    “Your boots?” He laughed.
    “Yes.”
    “The ones that have their heel imprinted on
my foot?”
    I grimaced. “Yes.”
    Ringer looked down at me for a long, broody
moment, before a smile pinched the corner of his mouth.
    “Chicks and their shoes,” he said, shaking
his head. “All right then, it’s more notice than you gave me, but you can keep
your bloody boots dry.”
    My body visibly sagged. Until he moved my
hands to his shoulders.
    “Hold on,” he said.
    Seeing as the grip on his shoulders was the
only thing that was preventing me from tumbling backwards, I did so without
argument. I dug my fingers in, finding purchase in the corded muscular sinew.
    A dimple creased on his right cheek when he
smirked, and I wondered how I had never seen it before. He lifted my leg up and
without breaking from my eyes once, he unwrapped my laces, roughly yanking at
them one by one; it seemed oddly sexual, the way his eyes burned into mine, how
each tug and unravel of his fingers felt like he was undressing me. I blinked,
probably for the first time when my boot fell to the floor; he then worked on
the other. I swallowed, trying not to think about the strength in his broad
shoulders, the way they felt under my fingers that were white from the
intensity of their hold. My other boot thudded to the floor and I blinked out
of my daze, met once again with his hazel eyes. Okay, the boots would live to
see another day, and my eyes dipped to my black sheer top; that had not been
cheap either, I remembered, biting my lip as I took in the silken fabric.
    Ringer reached out and bunched the fabric
in his hand at my rib cage; my head snapped up in alarm.
    “Do you want this off too?” he said, with a
wicked glimmer in his eyes.
    “NO,” I said quickly.
    Ringer sighed, letting go of my top.
“Shame,” he said, before, without even a moment’s warning, grabbing my legs and
flipping me backwards. I plunged into the gritty depths, clawing at the water
that was turning into white foam as I coughed and spluttered, trying to find
purchase on the bottom with my now bare feet.
    I wanted to yell obscenities at him, to
call him every name under the sun, but as I wiped the water from my eyes and
locked onto him, I thought better of it as he stood by holding my boots.
    I couldn’t control myself