Chapter 5
Penelope
She didn’t know what to do. What to say.
Rachel was standing there, all sultry looking even after a full twenty hours of traveling and asking Penelope for the one thing she didn’t want to give. And how fair was that, for either Rachel or Penelope?
No.
Rachel wasn’t in the wrong here, Penelope was, and from the look on Rachel’s face as the silence dragged out, she clearly thought that she’d made a mistake in coming here.
“It’s fine, Penny, I’m sorry. I’ll crash on the sofa tonight.” Rachel leaned over to grab a piece of pizza, and she looked so dejected that Penelope found herself speaking before she even knew what she was going to say.
“My friend Mina came here.”
The pizza slice paused, halfway to Rachel’s mouth. “To Rawhide Ranch?”
“Uh huh.” Penelope went back to her pizza, which really was startlingly good. “She met her partner here; he trims cow hooves.”
“That sounds very… ranch adjacent.”
“Yeah. And she liked that because—” The words caught in Penelope’s voice. She wasn’t sure if she could say the next bit out loud. All she could hear was Cristina’s voice, ridiculing, laughing, and it made her want to cringe away from Rachel.
But when she lifted her head, it wasn’t Cristina looking at her. It was Rachel. Rachel with her soft, deep brown eyes, and a gentle encouraging smile.
“—well, Mina’s into hucow fantasies.”
Rachel didn’t respond.
Penelope had no idea what that meant. At least she wasn’t recoiling in disgust, but nothing? It was a little intimidating.
Something must have shown on her face because Rachel pulled out a chair at the table and sat down next to her. “Hey, Pen, it’s okay. What is it about a hucow fantasy that Mina—it is Mina, right?” Penelope nodded. “What is it about hucows that Mina likes?”
How to answer that? There were so many things that Mina loved about it, from the auction she’d asked Rawhide Ranch to organize for her, to the lactation that she’d finally manage to induce in herself.
But those weren’t the things that Penelope had been drawn to. Not entirely.
“I think that everyone’s a bit different,” she said, finally. “The things that Mina’s into and explored here aren’t necessarily what I’d…” She tripped over the words, stumbling at the first hurdle, but Rachel was there, holding her hand and squeezing reassuringly.
“Is this something that you’d like to explore?”
The question ripped away everything that had been stoppering the dam of Penelope’s emotions and words came rushing.
“I know it’s weird, and I don’t want to lactate exactly, but the idea of being milked and being a good little cow and maybe even mooing…
it all makes so much sense to me. I wouldn’t have to think anymore, I could just be. ”
She didn’t dare look into those dark eyes and see the inevitable rejection that would be there. Instead, Penelope grabbed another slice of pizza and bit into it enthusiastically and tried to pull up as many walls about her as possible.
There was a long pause before Rachel said softy, “Would you like to be my pretty cow, Penelope?”
A shiver ran down her spine, and her eyes jerked up to see the Domme’s fixed on her calmly. “Wha?—?”
“I can’t pretend that I’m as up on all this as you are, but it’s not so beyond the pale as you seem to think I’ll find it. You’re pretty and cute and have an incredible rack; I can only imagine that they’d be considered a benefit in some milking play.”
She wasn’t joking.
She wasn’t laughing at her.
She was being serious.
And she was still talking. “I’m not sure whether I’d necessarily want to be called Farmer Rachel; that might be a little difficult for me to take seriously, but we can try out other honorifics if you like.”
“I like Miss Rachel.” Penelope’s voice sounded remarkably calm. She had no fucking idea how the hell she was pulling that off.
“Me too.” Rachel smiled at her and squeezed her hand again. “Thank you, Penelope. I think I understand a bit better why you were nervous about telling me.”
Penelope’s stomach plummeted. “Because it’s weird?”
Rachel laughed. “What’s weird? There’s such an array of kinks in the world—you only have to look at the website for this place to see that—why should this kink be any different?” Her smile was gentle though, reassuring. “But I know you. And I know that opening up is a big deal for you.”