Stabled (The Stables Trilogy #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

a mosaic on the floor. It looked Spanish, with blues that matched the chair in her room. When she squatted, Maple saw that each tile was hand painted.
     
    Whoever decorated for J.B. liked small, luxurious touches. The things in this room were worth more than everything she owned put together.
     
    In her bag were her toiletries, which she grabbed and took to the shower. Maple hadn’t worked that hard in a while and her muscles were singing with ache as she stepped under the hot spray.
     
    The soothing lavender scent of her soap, the hot water, and the quiet should have helped her unwind. Instead, in the silence, she could feel her brain kicking back into gear. It filtered through each look J.B. had given her that day. She replayed every gruff phrase until her mind had memorized the slow, gravel drawl of J.B. His smell. The way his muscles moved as he worked.
     
    The way he commanded her, without even trying.
     
    This is my punishment , she thought. This is what I get for trying to hide. She’d tried to leave home because farming hadn’t fit. She couldn’t see herself married and cooking and working the farm. She couldn’t see a white wedding dress or an antique bed with two dips and two feet of distance between them.
     
    She’d wanted city lights and books and foods and cultures. Maple had wanted men. This was one of the reasons she’d left. Silt Springs had three hundred and eighty nine residents. Her high school class had been composed of twenty people, twelve of whom had been girls. If she wanted prospects, it meant leaving home. If she wanted to avoid the Bible-thumping farmers, she needed to leave West Texas.
     
    So she’d gone to Louisiana, to Tulane. She’d found the lights, the food, the books, the cultures. She’d found men. Or, more fair to say, men had found her. One man in particular showed her exactly why rural girls didn’t belong with big city men. Tony.
     
    With his Adonis body and golden hair, he’d been the prettiest boy she’d ever seen. Too bad his outside was the only attractive part about him. She didn’t realize that until he’d snared her. Tony taught her to come hard, fast, and easy. His “sweet little country slut.” But he’d also tortured the pleasure out of her, the memories of which still made her tingle.
     
    Like that one time he’d choked her while he fucked her, his fingers squeezing until blood vessels popped in her eyes, her scream locked in her lungs by his fingers--
     
    Stop . Grabbing the knob, Maple switched the water to cold, as far as it would go. Ice peppered her skin in tiny rivulets, chilling her shut eyelids and hurting her bared teeth. Stop thinking about it. You learned your lesson. Move on.
     
    Maple ignored the needy ache between her legs.
     
    After everything, after he left her and she’d left Tulane, he still had a grip on her. He’d stoked the black flames in her, and given a choice between a marriage like her folks or someone like Tony, she’d pick the latter. Sometimes being consumed by fire was better than a lifetime of ashes.
     
    She shut the water off and grabbed a towel. It was fluffy and warm; she realized it was sitting on a heated bar. This seemed so ridiculous to her that Maple burst out laughing, able to step out of the shower and away from her toxic thoughts.
     
    Just be glad for the job.
     
    Fact was, she was lucky. Maple knew that, somewhere, though her conflicted feelings sometimes blurred that awareness. It was luck that Tony had cast her aside and luck that she’d made it to her parents unscathed. It was luck that no one came looking for her after she left Tulane, especially since she’d just drove home with no warning. Now she was here. She had a job-- a good job. It fit her better than she could hope.
     
    She’d have to pour over some youtube channels later and make sure she remembered everything to care for the horses. But when she’d been in the stable, it had felt natural. She just knew what the horses needed. It