Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
Poppy
For the second time in less than a week, Poppy found herself in front of the doors that led to Master Derek’s sprawling office.
Though this time, instead of simply barging in as she’d done on Friday, she sat on one of the plain, wooden benches that stretched alongside the wall outside his office. Certainly, walking in on the scene she previously encountered just a few days prior, was one way to cement the fact she needed to knock before entering a room.
Sniffling, she rubbed at her raw, red nose with a tissue that was well past its prime. Soggy and crumpled between her fingers, she couldn’t let it go, knowing she would likely be crying again within the next few minutes.
Ideas of what was about to happen to her swirled through her mind and she felt the tell-tale signs of anxiety sneaking in. Shaky hands, a cold sweat, and breath she felt like she couldn’t catch. Poppy knew something huge was about to happen and she had a sinking feeling she wasn’t going to like it one bit.
“Don’t worry,” Sadie told her from where she sat next to Poppy, her feet swinging back and forth as if she didn’t have a care in the world. The young woman had found Poppy where she had hidden back in the safety of her dorm and after much convincing, Poppy gave in, following Sadie back to the resort building—this time through the warmth of the tunnel system—with a look of defeat on her face the entire way. “My Daddy only wants what is best for us, Poppy. Sometimes, we just need a firm hand to remind us of that.”
That wasn’t what Poppy was worried about.
On the surface, she knew she could handle any punishment given. In fact, there’d been a time in her life where she’d even thought she might like to be spanked.
But that had been a long time ago, before she came to the Ranch seeking a safe place for a new start. Before relationship after relationship left her broken and alone instead of safe and sated like the few men in her past had promised she’d be.
Poppy glanced from Sadie to the door as it opened, her eyes locking with those of the woman from the cafeteria. She’d changed her clothing and now wore a pair of simple denim jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, Poppy took a split second to study the slim build of the woman before averting her gaze. Immediately, heat spread across her cheeks, the embarrassment and shame of what she’d done in the cafeteria making her feel no more than two inches tall, while a different heat spread curiously low in her belly at the same time.
She wished she could speak to the woman—to offer a sincere apology that would certainly never be enough—but Master Derek was behind the woman, speaking before Poppy ever had a chance to open her mouth.
“Sadie, angel, would you be a wonderful hostess and keep CJ company for a few minutes? Maybe you could give her a tour of the artwork in the lobby.” Without waiting for confirmation from his wife, he continued. “Poppy, please follow me into my office.”
Poppy gulped audibly, the sound causing her eyes to widen as did Sadie’s, already up from her perch on the bench, and all but pulling at the still silent third woman’s arm with the enthusiasm of a puppy with a brand new toy.
And with that, Poppy took the final step into the office—her entire future hanging precariously in the balance.
For some strange reason she didn’t understand, Poppy couldn’t help but chance a look backward. Only to find the curious brown eyes of the woman from the cafeteria looking back at her as she was led away from the Ranch owner’s office.
Entering into the grand office, Poppy and Master Derek each took the same places as they had a few days before.
A strange sense of déjà vu settled over Poppy, as if this was where she’d known her future was headed—to an oversized office where she was likely about to get kicked out of the one place that had truly felt like home for the first time in possibly her entire life.
A myriad of memories played across her mind. None of them pleasant and all of them a staunch reminder of what a mess she truly was. Thoughts of when she tried—and failed—college the first time. All the jobs she couldn’t hold on to because of the constant dread that settled over her entire body like a cement blanket from such a young age that sometimes made it impossible to do something as simple as get out of bed each day. College the second time around, another failure under her belt. Even brief flashes of her dad and brothers as they looked at her with disappointment with what she felt was on a near constant basis.
As they filled her head, her eyes welled with tears, and before she knew what was happening, she was speaking. “I’m so sorry, Master Derek. I know I screwed up again. And we just talked on Friday about my future and being more responsible and I already messed it all up.”
She pushed up from the couch, ready to bolt for the door. “I’ll just go back to my dorm room and pack my things.”
Derek’s hand on her shoulder gave her pause. “Ms. Miller, let’s take a moment to calm down and regroup. Whatever gave you the idea you would need to pack your things?”
With the smallest bit of renewed hope, Poppy turned to look at the Ranch owner. “Because that’s always what happens when bad things happen too many times.”
The man’s eyes softened. With ease, he guided Poppy back to the couch and knelt on the rug in front of her, meeting her eyes with sincerity. “That’s not what happens here at the Ranch, darlin’. In fact, many times, what might seem like a bad thing is actually something good just hiding in disguise. So let me assure you again, Poppy Miller, Rawhide Ranch is your home for as long as you’d like or need. Now, with that out of the way, can you tell me what happened this afternoon in the cafeteria?”
And that is exactly what Poppy did.
She rambled on about how she’d accidentally set her alarm for PM instead of AM. How she woke up extra late and realized that she hadn’t showered after going to the indoor pool the night before. Embarrassed to attend a meeting with the owner of the Ranch with such a disheveled appearance, Poppy had decided it was better to be late than to arrive smelling of chlorine and caked with sleep. Only when she’d finally arrived at Derek’s office, his receptionist Erika informed her that the man had already left for lunch with his wife in the cafeteria. Instead of rescheduling, Poppy had thought it would be easier to chase after Derek to explain to him in person why she missed her appointment earlier that afternoon. That she had been running up to profusely apologize to him when she slipped on a grape that had rolled off a nearby tray and sent her careening into the woman who had been standing nearby.
Tears still occasionally slipped free, earning her another of Master Derek’s cloth handkerchiefs. At this point, she thought to herself between small hiccups and sobs, she was going to have to buy stock in the silly things.
“It happens all the time,” Poppy confided with a sigh. “Like my body just moves on its own before I can logically think about something. I do things I shouldn’t without thinking them through and sometimes, I even say hurtful things. And that’s the thing, I know afterwards they are hurtful, but in the moment, it doesn’t even dawn on me I could be hurting someone else’s feelings, just as much as they might have unintentionally hurt mine.”
Master Derek never strayed from offering slight comforts to Poppy as she talked through everything that had been weighing her down. They came in the small, reassuring squeezes he gave to her hand that wasn’t still tightly holding the handkerchief, in the tiny nods as he encouraged her to continue her stories, and in the way he offered to truly listen to her. It only added to Poppy’s tears when she realized she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had allowed her that precious and most basic of human interactions.
And when she finally finished baring her soul to the first person to truly listen to her in several years, it felt like hours had passed. Her body ached to crawl into her bed and sleep for days. She yearned for soft, familiar pajamas and her favorite snuggly blanket.
But the pair still had more to discuss.
The Ranch owner gave her a few minutes to compose herself, briefly stepping from the room only to return a few moments later with a bottle of ice-cold water. Pressing it into Poppy’s hand, he motioned for her to drink as he took the place next to her.
“To prepare for the meeting we were supposed to have earlier this morning,” he began.
Poppy expected to hear the bitter disappointment she often heard in people when she missed a deadline or forgot to do something she had promised. Yet none of that laced the tone of the man sitting across from her.
“I had a look at your file.”
She knew it was common practice for Master Derek to know what was happening with all his guests and residents of the Ranch. Not only did it help to keep everyone safe, but he truly had the best of hearts and wanted to see everyone thrive. His position had allowed him to see and hear backstories encompassing some of the worst of the worst. Anyone who knew the man, knew those stories broke his heart each and every time as if it were the very first time. Poppy knew despite all the years he’d been running the Ranch, he’d never become numb to the pain and suffering of others, instead used it to continue to shape the Ranch into the perfect haven for those often mistreated or thrown away by the rest of the world, like herself.
If anyone had asked Poppy to her face, she would swear her history of emotional abuse wasn’t bad. That so many people had it so much worse than she ever had.
But Derek seemed to know that despite her assurances, emotional abuse could leave scars at least as deep as physical abuse could. And that wasn’t just limited to well-planned, deceptive behavior on the part of romantic partners that could leave permanent damage, but good-intentioned parents and friends who were hurtful, even when they had no intention of causing harm.
Poppy’s big, green eyes looked up at Derek, awaiting his next words like she was starved for her next breath.
“Your previous relationship that ended with you coming to college at the Ranch, was it ever part of a dynamic like what is predominant within the BDSM community?”
Of all the questions Poppy expected from Master Derek, that was not one that had ever crossed her mind. “No, Sir.”
She found herself again averting her gaze, looking away from Derek as if ashamed that she had lived at the Ranch for over three years while never having a dynamic prior to her arrival.
Truthfully, she still hadn’t.
When Poppy left her old life, it had been out of necessity. It was a means to an end. A way to survive.
Alone and afraid, she’d ducked into a twenty-four-hour diner late one night on the sleepy streets of Johnson Creek, North Carolina, scrounging in the bottom of her purse for enough change to have a hot cup of tea. By the time she’d left the diner the following day, the sun had risen, she had been well-fed, and had been handed a new start at life with the help of an all-expense-paid full scholarship to Rawhide Ranch University.
The older woman working at the diner was the type of person who hid in plain sight but always had a handle on the customers who walked through the door. With her teased too-high hair, raspy smoker’s cough, and a red lipstick that was all sorts of wrong for her skin tone, she didn’t look like any sort of guardian angel, but Poppy knew that if angels existed, that waitress simply had to be one.
It was Vera from the diner who’d served Poppy her tea that night.
It was Vera who’d slid into the booth right next to the stranger Poppy had been and hugged her as she cried when Poppy discovered she was still just a few cents too short to pay her tab, forgetting there was a different sales tax in the small town she had stopped over in. Vera had held her as she sobbed, as she word-vomited all over the older woman, telling her how afraid she was, how lonely she was, how alone she was.
All night long, the two women had sat in that booth getting to know one another. Vera had shared her own struggles that brought tears to Poppy’s eyes, struggles that still made her sick if she thought about them too hard. They’d talked about Vera’s life now—married for nearly forty years to a man she called the Daddy of her dreams.
And when Poppy had asked, confused as to what the older waitress meant by Daddy, Vera had introduced the young woman to the concept of BDSM and confided that Rawhide Ranch was the very place that not only had helped her escape a violent and abusive path, but helped her to find the gentle, kind man of her dreams nearly five decades earlier.
As the sun rose that morning, Vera had called the Ranch’s college on behalf of Poppy, securing her a tuition-free college experience. And now, three years later, she was still at Rawhide Ranch University where, in exchange for completing various assigned tasks, she received an accredited college experience on her own timeline at no cost.
Derek brought Poppy back to the present with his voice, the memories of Vera fading into the background as the office came back into focus. “Poppy, I know it’s often hard to believe, but there is nothing in this world you need to be ashamed of when speaking with me. People move and grow at all different speeds for all sorts of reasons, that’s just a part of life. I know you’ve done many of the basic lifestyle classes here at the Ranch outside of your coursework at the college. I also know you haven’t taken it any further and there is nothing wrong with that. But I can’t help but ask, are you truly interested in experiencing a dynamic or learning more about the different facets of what a dynamic can offer?”
She nodded her head before the words were out of his mouth. “Absolutely, Sir. I just haven’t found the right person yet.”
It was Derek’s time to nod his head, agreeing with Poppy that it was important to build a dynamic based on trust and understanding. “I understand and respect that. It can be hard to trust someone to take care of you and provide for your needs and desires, especially when you have experienced situations in your past that have been hurtful. But, Poppy, I can see you have so much promise . You just need a little bit of help getting on the right path. Would it be okay if I made a suggestion? And please know you can say no without any repercussions.”
He waited patiently for permission to continue. Poppy took several moments to consider, afraid of what the Ranch owner was about to say but equally curious. She was so tired of constantly feeling defeated. Of feeling like she could do no right no matter the circumstance.
She weighed the options in her head, deciding that nothing could possibly be worse than keeping her life on the same trajectory she was on now. Poppy was tired of not only feeling like a letdown, but tired of letting herself down as well. With a renewed determination she only partially felt but was determined to foster, she looked Master Derek in the eyes. “Yes, please, I would like to hear your suggestion.”
Derek began to speak and Poppy’s mind started to race. Not for the first time today, the owner had managed to stun her into near silence. She had expected Master Derek to suggest she needed to work harder. That she needed to learn to focus and double down on her efforts to exist as a student and future member of whatever workforce she decided to enter.
Instead, words she’d never expected to hear from the owner entered the air and she almost laughed right in the man’s face. “Have you ever thought about trying out a Caregiver and Little dynamic?”