Kelsey and I like to rent a suite in downtown Cleveland from time to time. There are still luxury hotels downtown where businessmen stay who have business in one of the several giant skyscrapers that loom over the core downtown area. And wherever there are wealthy people, there is entertainment, so there is always something to do.

And of course, there is always The Cleveland Indians who play in what may be the best ballpark in the world, Jacobs field. Too bad having a good ballpark doesn't get you into the World Series. Not that I follow sports much. Even so, an evening at the ballpark is fun from time to time (and hot dogs always taste best in a ballpark, don't they?). In the winter, of course, entertainment downtown is movies, plays, and nightclubs.

While Cleveland had a reputation when I was growing up as a renewal city that was getting back on its feet after the death of the steel industry and the gradual decline of the railroads (for Cleveland was at one time the central rail hub connecting the northeastern states with everything to the west, earning it the slogan it still uses, "The Best Location In The Nation").

Powered by high tech and by being the home of a number of large companies and conglomerates, it seemed to be on the rise, but in the last decade or so gone all the way to rock bottom, having been declared recently the poorest of the major cities.

Even so, going downtown for a weekend in a luxury hotel is a nice little mini-vacation that my boss and fuck buddy Kelsey and I do from time to time. I always call her my "boss," because where we work that's what she is, but in reality she's my best friend and there is no superior-subordinate aspect to our friendship. She likes the taste of my pussy as much as I like the taste of hers. At the same time, at work I play the role of subordinate completely, so as not to tip off anyone that we are anything other than coworkers at work and casual friends outside of work.

At about 30, she's still at her physical peak, much of it owing to the fact that as an ex-model she knows how to take care of herself and present herself. Add on to that the fact that she actually does take care of herself and of how she presents herself, and she's my inspiration.

I love her.

Six feet tall, she once modeled clothing in Milan, Paris, and London, but as she grew out of her teens and become more interested in her health, her breasts became too big for fashion work and she refused to even consider reduction surgery. I think she might have switched to adult modeling because she's totally blasé about nudity and just as sexually uninhibited as I am. She might, that is, had she not gotten a job with our company first.

A couple weeks ago, late November, we had checked into one of the top hotels. The nights were already very cold and crisp, and the hotel restaurant had a good Michelin rating, so staying out of the cold and just cocooning ourselves sounded like a very pleasant option.

Since we fuck each other, when we're out like this we cater to each other's tastes. I love her boobs so she often treats me to a plunging neckline. She loves my legs and ass, so I often wear a skirt or dress that shows these features off to best advantage. She was wearing a gray herringbone pattern suit cut just above the knee. The only departure from normal business decorum was a blouse that she left open enough that at a certain angle she showed quite a bit of bazoom. Even though her boobs are a large C, bordering on D, they are very firm and perky and she has almost no fold under them. They are crowned with nice puffy nipples that all but scream "Play with me!." I haven't seen a better pair anywhere.

Now as for her, she goes nuts over the schoolgirl look, and while I would have looked silly going to a movie or restaurant in a totally fetishistic Catholic or Japanese schoolgirl getup, I did dress up in an outfit a coed might wear on the campus of an eastern Ivy League college or university. The pleated skirt was the standard schoolgirl green plaid, reaching not even halfway down my thigh so that if I did a "touch my toes," my ass would pop into view. On top, I was wearing a thin and snug black wool sweater that buttoned up the front. A bulky sweater would have hidden the curvature of my back. This curvature is essential to showing off one's ass and you can't have a great ass without one. You may have butt cheeks that look like a pair of soccer balls pressed together, but without that curvature, your ass doesn't stick out and you've got no game, as a guy might say. Here's a photo showing the skirt (different top) and making the point about back curvature and ass shape:

I think you can see, a flat back isn't my problem. I've even seen girls with small butts but lots of curvature who look terrific! Below I was wearing opaque black wool stockings that came up only to just above the knee, leaving about half my thigh exposed. My shoes were Mary Janes which further fed Kelsey's schoolgirl fetish.

After our check-in in the late afternoon, we went to see Casino Royale in one of the Terminal Tower theaters. It was 8:30 by the time we walked into the restaurant. You could just about hear the "schwing" of stiffening peckers as we walked up to the hostess. She (the hostess) addressed Kelsey, probably because of her business attire and the fact that she looked a bit older. Kelsey explained that we had no reservation but hoped they could find a table for us. This young woman was pretty but businesslike. She made no attempt at all to be charming and simply told us if we'd wait in the bar, she could probably fix us up in 10 or 15 minutes. And so we walked over to the bar and had two Spanish Coffees. (Now, for a lot of women, Spanish Coffee might as well be named Spanish Fly, since warmed alcohol is absorbed even quicker than cold alcohol. Oh, and by the way, odd fact: Did you know that Spanish Coffee wasn't invented in Spain? It was invented by a barman at Huber's Restaurant in Portland, Oregon.)

It took more like a half hour to be seated, and by then we had had two drinks each, which because they were warm drinks was more like three. In other words, we were, as a friend of mine often says "just flying low." The drinks had tempered our hunger somewhat as well, so we just had a couple large salads, no entree, though we surprised our waitress by giving her a tip as though we'd ordered full meals (I can't stand people who get cheap with service people.)

On the elevator back to our room which was on the 12th floor, Kelsey molested me in the elevator, slipping her hand under my skirt and right into my white cotton schoolgirl briefs, where one of her long fingers slid quite easily into my very well lubricated snatch. From about the 6th floor to the 12th she finger-fucked me hard. When the elevator door opened, I pulled away and sprinted toward the room. Stopping with my back against the door, I watched her as she approached at a pace somewhat slower than normal so as to taunt me.

But when she got to me, she changed back into the sex-crazed tigress from the elevator, dropping to her knees, yanking my panties halfway to my knees, and put her mouth to work on my pussy. Not the best position, granted, so I thrust my pelvis forward to provide better access. Everything about Kelsey is long, including her tongue, so soon I was enjoying the feelings she was giving me with the alternating lunges and caresses of her tongue.

Suddenly, we heard activity through the door across the hall. Knowing that that door might open at any moment, Kelsey shot back up to her feet and provided cover for me as I pulled my panties back up and made myself look decent again. As the door opened and an elderly couple emerged, we tried to look normal, though I'm sure both our faces were flushed. They had to know that something had been going on!

Kelsey had the card key and let us into the room, where she continued to molest me. "Goddamn you, you're so hot," she said as she pushed me onto the couch. She got down next to me and kissed me deeply as she caressed the skin of my upper thighs and rubbed my pussy through my panties.

Long experience with me told her what I wanted, so she stood up and took everything off the top so I could have fun with her tits. And while she was disrobing, I removed my panties and my sweater. Soon I was having my G-spot pretty nicely massaged while I was sucking on her tits. She brought me near orgasm several times, but held back as much to save me for better things as to tease me. By then, I had started massaging her crotch as well, which she keeps unshaved (but bikini trimmed). She knows a hairy pussy is one of my own fetishes, despite the fact that I myself shave. And she likes them shaved, so we're a good match for each other in this and so many other ways.

After a while, there was a pause while we both collected ourselves for what we knew would be much more, and she said, "Remember I said I had to go to the store before picking you up?" "Yes." "Want to see what I bought?" I really wanted to fuck, but sometimes with a lover you have to play along or you'll really kill the mood, so I said, "Sure," hoping to get this over with quickly.

She sprang up and walked into the bedroom area getting rid of her skirt and panties as she did so. I followed suit until I was attired in nothing but stockings and Mary Janes to match her thigh-highs and heels.

She returned with a sack and I was preparing to see the latest blouse or skirt or bra/panty set when she dumped the most outrageous collection of sex toys I've ever seen on the couch next to me. "Wanna have some fun?" she asked. I'm sure I looked like a kid who's just wandered into a candy store as I just said "Wow...yeah!"

She slammed the toys back into the sack they came from and took my hand, leading me to the huge California kingsize bed. She had been preparing for this, because all of the toys had been taken out of their packaging and loaded with batteries if batteries were required.

She started off small with one of those lipstick-size vibrators, also called a "pocket rocket." Instead of applying it directly to my clit, she just cupped it in her palm and let the vibrations travel down her fingers to my vulva. Only after she got me going that way did she apply it directly. Despite their size, those little vibrators are powerful. I had no idea...

While she used the pocket rocket, she kissed me passionately. I've already mentioned her long tongue, so I was having my pussy massaged at one end and my tonsils massaged at the other.

I pushed her off when I was about to orgasm, and from the smug little smile on her face it seems she understood why I'd done it. We cuddled a bit.

Next up was a long clear-plastic dong with some sort of spiral reinforcement inside. Instead of kissing me, Kelsey kept all of her energy for the toy, at first sliding it in slowly and then working it like a piston while I gripped the bedspread with iron-like claws because it felt so good.

Once again, I was on the verge of cumming, and pushed her away at the last second.

She kept me in ready mode by kissing and licking my upper thighs just up to but not quite at my pussy. She knows this drives me nuts.

When I was ready to go again she let me pick out the next toy, and since I'd never used the kind of vibrator called a "rabbit," I wanted to try one out. I wasn't prepared for the sensation which almost had me jumping out of my skin. The rabbit is shaped like a vibrator and this part is inserted into the vagina. But it also has a little (what to call it?) finger or flange or nib that touches the clit. Now, I guess there are different designs. This one didn't just vibrate. It had a knobby core that rotated under the skin of the part that goes into the vagina. In addition to this, the finger part vibrated and rotated in a circular motion, and Kelsey concentrated to keep this finger on the clit.

I'll tell you right now, I went right out afterward and got myself a rabbit, and it can make me cum almost too quickly. As it was, I had to stop her after about two or three minutes, once again because I would have cum so hard I would have been totally wasted afterward, a smoking heap of sweaty and quivering flesh.

After a little breather, I turned the tables and used the rabbit on her for a while, and she could take it a bit longer than me, but finally had to push me away as well. After that, I just slowly licked her pussy for a while, enjoying the feel of her pubes on my tongue.

Then we kissed a bit more and just ran our hands all over each other's bodies until Kelsey looked at the toys again. I didn't have to ask which one she was looking at. It had to be the same one I was looking at, and the next logical choice for upping the orgasmic ante. It was a very large double-ended dong made of a soft red gel. It was a bit girthier than the ones I'd seen so many times before.

My smile told her everything. She smiled back and asked, "How about we both use it at the same time?" I told her that was a great idea, and so she grabbed a bottle of lube that was nearby and got both ends ready.

Now, one of the best ways to use a double-ender is for both girls to get into a doggy position because this give both of them full use of their hips. Normally, what's done next is to insert each end into a vagina and off you go. However I guided my end into my asshole since I hadn't had a good assfuck in a little while (and you know how much I like to pleasure my ass). Kelsey, who's not into anal quite as much as I am, opted for the more normal insertion and off we went, finding a rhythm that worked for both of us, although it was more important for her since when I assfuck, it's the masturbation I do along with it that really makes it happen.

And so I just got into a doggy position, working with Kelsey who didn't want to cum early, so we must have fucked each other like that for a good 20 minutes before an increase in the rhythm and a familiar change in Kelsey's breathing and quiet vocalizations told me she would be cumming soon.

I kept myself on the brink until I was sure she'd be cumming any second and I let myself go. We came just about simultaneously, I would guess. I'm not absolutely sure because it was a mind-blowing orgasm that took me on a little trip into my own head for a while. When I became aware of my surroundings again, the toy was no longer in my ass and I was laying on my side as Kelsey was laughing at me. Why was she laughing? Because I'd squirted, soaking her and half the bedspread. I think I've soaked more bedspreads and sheets than just about anybody.

We yanked the bedspread off and luckily it hadn't soaked through to the sheets underneath. By then, it was still only about evening news time. This suite had an in-room hot tub and Jacuzzi which we filled up with water and bubble bath soap. Have you ever tried to do a bubble bath in a Jacuzzi? We discovered that if you turn on the jets, the water foams up so much it starts flooding out of the tub, so we had to stop the jets and just soak ourselves.

Okay, so now it's about midnight, we're squeaky clean, and the fact that we had had a sparse dinner has caught up with us. We're hungry, but we agree that we don't want to get dressed to go out on a potentially futile search for food, given the hour. So, we turn to the room service menu. Now, room service food is grossly overpriced, probably because the hotels know it's a tax deduction for business travelers. If you travel and go to dinner in a restaurant, you get a 50% deduction. Order room service, though, and you get a 100% deduction.

I wanted a burger and fries and Kelsey wanted a BLT and potato salad, so we placed our order and, dressed in the robes the hotel supplied, waited for the food to come. In about 30 minutes, there was a knock on the door, which Kelsey answered. A cart rolled into the room propelled by a cute guy in a silly hotel service uniform, jauntily tipped pillbox hat and all.

I could tell he was making Kelsey hot, because she engaged him in conversation and let her bathrobe open up enough to give him a glimpse of Heaven. Turns out his name was Jesus (pron. "haysooss"). He was Puerto-Rican. Chatting him up, we found out his shift ended at 1 a.m., in about a half hour. She invited him to return and he said he would. There was an outside chance he was just working for his tip, but we gave him a good tip, he wrote on our food bill, and we crossed our fingers.

We waited as we ate and...no Jesus!

Eventually, I picked up the dishes and put them back on the the tray Jesus had left us. That was when I saw the bill. I handed it to a puzzled Kelsey who read it and let out a huge guffaw.

On the note he had scribbled, "Thanks for the great tip, but I'm gay."

I'm sorry if I'm boring anyone with these memories. I know in some ways they aren't as blazing hot as some of my more recent escapades, but especially for the other girls out there, I'm sure they have memories of their own they can relate to mine. It's been great getting some of these early memories out of my head. It's a way to relive them and for me the rediscovery of events and facts that had been lost has been wonderful. Soon, I'll be on to more recent adventures, and then later on perhaps I'll get into some of my experiences while in college...

The next summer, I also worked on Seth's horse ranch, which he ran with his virtual wife, my Aunt Maggie. She was much like her sister, my mom: very close in age and very similar physically. Both of them curvy women out of a Marilyn Monroe/Bettie Page mold.

I had been hoping that Larry would be back, since I'd turned him into a pretty comfortable fuck, and I'd become ever so much sluttier in my behavior and attitudes during the intervening months. This was the year leading up to my high school graduation where, if you'll remember from a previous story, I'd let a nerdy guy I liked redeem his masculinity by letting him fuck my ass in front of a number of our classmates on Prom Night. That made him famous and respected by our peers, which was just as I had intended.

Anyway, when I arrived I was told that Larry, who had started at an Ivy League college, would be interning in a Washington, D.C., law office over the summer. To my disappointment, it was going to be another girl my age who was the niece of another rancher. An L.A. girl, I was told.

Leslie turned out to be a short little gal, a bit on the chubby side. Like a lot of girls in that age group, she had decided that she wasn't terribly pretty, so she would be interesting. (And I'm using the word "interesting" in a special way to mean fascinating in the sense that a piece of roadkill or a giant purple turd might be, not fascinating like super string theory or an elaborate and gorgeous Navajo rug.)

She had the obligatory dyed-black hair of the goth chick and really outdid herself in the makeup department, looking for all the world like Rocky Raccoon. She wore the tightest, shortest denim skirt I've ever seen. While punk and goth are style cousins (goth being an outgrowth from punk), she was poised in between somewhere as though she couldn't decide to hate The Man or worship Beautiful Death.

Her attitude was worse than Larry's had been when he started the prior summer. Worse because instead of simply holding back from helping, she acted like everything you asked her to do bothered her. I overheard Seth and Maggie talking and he, usually quite emotionless and nonplused, said something I could barely hear about taking her out back and putting her out of her misery. Maggie laughed, knowing, no doubt, that he wasn't really serious and that what was really funny was that he had displayed his attitude toward Leslie with such intensity. For her part, Maggie was pissed at Leslie enough to even complain to me about her, but all I could do was shrug. I had no defense for Leslie and was just about as frustrated, because most of the work Leslie managed to leave for others to do fell to me.

One morning while Leslie was watching me clean out the stalls, I heard Maggie yelling. Well, actually, it was more like screaming. Seth had been thrown by a horse (which, believe me, would have to have been one vigorous horse: Seth had been a good rodeo rider a decade or so earlier). Anyway, as luck would have it, he wasn't thrown to the ground, which might have made him sore or at worst might've knocked the wind out of him. Rather, he was propelled toward a water trough and had landed on his side, breaking at least one rib, as I could tell when we got him back to the ranch house and helped him get his shirt off. I could tell he had broken a rib because a rib bone was protruding from his side. And his side was a very distressing color as well.

Maggie is not someone who panics easily, and so it was a shock when she got nearly hysterical and yelled at me to get on the phone and get a helicopter out here, so I called the State Police and they said a chopper would be out as soon as they could get one there, which took the longest half hour of my life, because Seth was showing every sign of getting worse. Nobody said it, but I am sure that Maggie was worried that she was about to lose her lovely and gentle non-smoking Marlboro Man.

When the helicopter landed, sending the horses into a tizzy, a pair of paramedics and two troopers came into the house. By then, Seth was no longer speaking. "He's gone into shock," said one of the parameds. "Let's get him out of here NOW!!!" said the other one. In a flash, he was on a stretcher and headed for the helicopter where, they said, they could better treat him, and that it was best not to waste any time getting him to the hospital.

Maggie asked if she could come along, and they said she could. She quickly grabbed her purse and a jacket and really didn't have time to grab anything else. As she left, she quickly turned and, bless her, she apologized for yelling at me. I told her never to mind: I completely understood why she had. Looking at both Leslie and me, she said, "You girls are running the ranch for a while. Maybe a day, maybe longer." Then she left. I looked at Leslie, who was white as a sheet and, covering her mouth, went to the kitchen sink where there was an explosion of multicolored vomit.

Now, if I had had to run the ranch on my own it would have been bad enough, but to have to run it and babysit Leslie, too, made it unspeakably worse.

I thought what still had to be done in a typical day on the ranch and made a list. I then put it on the table and underlined some of the simpler tasks and told Leslie, "I'm sorry, but farting around time is over. This is a ranch and there are things we need to do to keep the horses healthy and alive, and I can't do them all myself."

She nodded which I guess meant she knew things had changed.

"I'll make dinner for us when the chores are done," I told her, just to punctuate that she had to do them. I tried to sound cordial, since I realized things were unpleasant enough without any more personal antagonism.

While she hadn't done much work in prior days, she must have been observing, because everything I'd asked her to do, she did fairly well. I did have to tell her how to do this or that a bit better, but she got most everything basically right to my total and utter surprise. She even turned out to be a strong little thing, and some of the tasks I thought she might need some additional muscle to accomplish, she did entirely on her own.

Because of being short-handed, the chores weren't done until 7:30 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. and so I got a late start on dinner. I was pretty bushed myself, so I slapped together a meal of canned corned beef hash with fried eggs on top, canned lima beans, and garlic toast. Totally impromptu and totally unhealthy for anyone who hadn't done a hard day's work, which we had. We followed it with with some warmed-up apple pie a la mode.

"You've been a big help, today," I told Leslie as she scarfed down her food. I added, "Thanks."

"I guess I've been an asshole," she said.

"Not to put too fine a point on it," I replied with no small hint of sarcasm, followed by a sympathetic laugh, for I was coming to like this girl.

She looked at me and laughed back. I took the opportunity to ask, "So what's your problem, anyway?"

"Where to begin: My mom and I hate each other. My dad left years ago, probably chased away by my mother's sour attitude. He has had a series of girlfriends, each worse than the one before. I'm ugly and everyone laughs at me. I don't like the music most of the kids like or the things they do to entertain themselves. I just never feel I belong."

I stopped her and said, "You're not really ugly, but you're not doing much to make yourself attractive. How many guys sit around wishing they could meet a girl who looks like a raccoon?"

"Now, I've seen some fabulously beautiful goth chicks, but they are the ones who really know how to use cosmetics. How about after dinner let's go and play with makeup?" "Sure," she replied gamely. I suddenly realized what her problem was: nobody was taking an interest in her, so she had adopted an approach to life that explained that situation while getting her attention. Even if it was negative attention.

She helped with the dishes and with generally tidying the place up and then we went back toward the bathroom. "Get that stuff off your face and meet me back at the kitchen table," I said.

I got my own cosmetics out and a mirror from Maggie's room.

The first thing I realized when I got a good look at her face was how naturally pretty she was. In fact, I was stunned that she was hiding this gorgeous face behind some of the silliest makeup I'd ever seen.

"You're beautiful!" I declared, and I'm sure my sincerity came through, because when she said "Really?" it was with more than a hint of surprise.

Then she went (as teen girls often do) into a lament about her faults. She was short (about 5'2"), her boobs were small, her hair had to be worn straight because it couldn't hold a curl, and besides it's just mousy brown anyway which is why she dyes it black...

"Hold on," I said. "Don't kid yourself that every guy is looking for a six footer who needs DD cups. Stop looking like you hate the world and everything in it. Your problem, I think, is that you look unapproachable. You don't look like you're available at all. Let's see your boobs."

She took off her top and her bra. I laughed when I saw them. At first she seemed hurt, but then I said, "No, here's why I'm laughing." I took off my own shirt and showed her that my boobs were smaller than hers. "Oh," she said with a big smile. I added, "I've been having lots of sex this last year and believe me, my 'A' cup size hasn't been a problem. And yours...my God, what gorgeous puffies you have!" She didn't even know that there were names for different kinds of nipples, and that puffy nipples were regarded by many as especially sexy, so I told her.

I said, "Show me the rest. Take the rest of your clothes off. It's just you and me, don't worry." She took off her clothes and I had to level with her. "You are a bit soft. You could stand to lose about 10 or 15 lbs. But there's good news, too." "What's that?" "A few weeks of hard work will probably take them off, and without any unhealthy and risky dieting. You're just a few weeks away from a brand new you." "Think so?" she asked. "No doubt," said I, adding, "But you're cute as is. Still, I assume you'd rather not be mainly of interest to 'chubby chasers.'" "No, I wouldn't," she admitted. "I've met those guys. Mainly middle-aged men who've come on to me. It's embarrassing. I want to tell them 'What the fuck, you ignorant shit. Can't you see I'm a goth...not to mention underage? Get outta here before I call a cop!'"

We both laughed hard, she because she was having fun and I because when she came out of her shell, she was actually a lot of fun to be with.

And I'm not kidding you or exaggerating for the story. Aside from being short, which only kept her from being a fashion or runway model, she had lots of potential for being hot. And as for her size, sure, some guys want leggy six-footers, but a little woman can be hot in her own way. And I've never understood the obsession with tallness when it comes to women, anyway. Aren't we the smaller sex? So being extra small would be a super-feminine characteristic just as being large and muscular might make a man a super-male.

So, I went to work on her face showing her several different looks she could have, from one that looked natural but was anything but, to one she could use when out clubbing. I showed her how to build up makeup in a way that keeps you from overshooting the mark. The best way to reduce makeup, frequently, is to take it all off and start over. I showed her what to do with zits and other blemishes. She made a list of stuff she needed to buy.

I asked her if she had any more practical clothes to wear than the gothic getup she'd been wearing at all times. She said her mom, typically, had packed her some clothes she thought would be useful here at the ranch. I said let's take a look. Sure enough, she had jeans, shirts, socks, and even a pair of leather hiking shoes. She even had another denim skirt of a more modest length and a much better fit that still showed plenty of leg without threatening to her ass cheeks peek out. I said, "You know, these are a lot more practical than your miniskirt and fishnet stockings, though I always had to marvel at how you were able to get around with those red patent leather boots of yours, with their 3-inch heels." "Years of practice," she said with a smile.

The phone rang and it was Maggie calling to say that Seth was in pretty bad shape, but would probably recover completely, though the next few days were going to be rough. They had had to open him up, repair some tears and ruptures and all that while dealing with several broken ribs and a broken arm no one had even noticed at the time. He would not be 100% for quite a while.

Then the subject turned to horses. She asked about each and every chore and seemed to grow less worried as I assured her that all had been done as usual. "Then I can stay here with Seth for now?" "Yes, of course. By now, I know what needs to be done, and I think I can recognize a sick horse. If one gets sick, I'll give you a call and if I can't reach you, Doc Marshall's card is taped to the fridge." "Great, then just take down this number and call me if you need me, but I'd really like to be here with Seth for now. He hasn't been awake since we left the ranch in the helicopter and I want to be with him when he wakes up, because he'll be in a strange place. It'd be nice if a familiar face is there to meet him."

"We'll be okay," I said. I was about to bid her good-bye when Leslie indicated she wanted he phone. "Hi, Maggie," she said. "I hope Seth gets better. Jill and I have everything under control." Maggie said something, Leslie smiled and handed the phone back to me. "Was that really Leslie?" she asked. I affirmed that it was. "Wow," she said with a chuckle (the first sign of good humor since the accident), "First you rehabilitated Larry last summer and now Leslie. You need to open a clinic for kids needing an attitude adjustment." I laughed and said I'd think about it.

There's a very refreshing ethic in rural and backwoods places that neighbors support one another, even if they are otherwise competitors. And this is how Maggie and Seth ended up with Leslie. Their neighbors to the North are also horse ranchers. The owner, a lovely 30-ish redhead named Cherish, asked if Maggie and Seth could use a cheap summer hand. She was already fully staffed and couldn't really take Leslie.

Because people out there can't survive without the help of their neighbors, who still chip in to help their neighbors build a barn or harvest a crop before it spoils, you can expect a number of calls asking if they can help in an emergency, and we got several, but the first was from Leslie's Aunt Cherish. Leslie got on the phone for a while and handed it to me. Cherish said, "Leslie says you're okay. Now, I know from Maggie that you're good and reliable. Is Leslie a help or a hindrance, and is there anything I can do to help you? I'll come right over if you like." I said no help was needed and that Leslie was pitching right in. "Really?" she said. I could see that Leslie was rolling her eyes.

It was getting dark and we had earned some relaxation time. As I have probably made clear, the ranch is rather austere, the kitchen is the living, dining, and family room all rolled into one. It's heated by a wood stove, which I stoked. The stove has a mica window in the door providing a nice orange-amber light when you turn the lights out. I stoked up the stove, for the evenings get cold even in the summer when you're at a goodly elevation.

Leslie and I turned out the electrical lights and lighted up a couple kerosene lanterns. Between the stove and the lanterns the room was bathed in an pleasant and warm orange glow. I suggested we change into nightwear, and so we were soon both in flannel nightgowns and slippers.

For evening entertainment, the ranch had a TV which is neither large nor small, a satellite dish, and a collection of VHS tapes (by now, they have DVD's, I'm sure, but then it was tapes). I've always liked thrillers and I saw Dressed To Kill in their collection. Leslie didn't really care what we watched, so I popped that tape into the VCR and pressed PLAY.

There is a love seat in the main room and we sat there at first trying to stay awake as we watched the movie, but soon we were all scrunched up, hugging our knees, pressed against each other, for it quickly becomes a creepy, surprising, and scary movie. And I couldn't help thinking how great Nancy Allen looked in heels and hose.

Leslie's skin felt great against mine. As the end credits of the movie started rolling, I looked at her to find she was looking back. Her eyes closed as I moved in for the kiss. As our tongues touched, I became aware that my panties had become a tropical rain forest.

"I'm not gay," she said. Even so, she kissed me back. "Neither am I," I replied, kissing her furiously as I reached under her nightie to find her clit. She was just shockingly wet. The lubrication allowed me to give her plenty of pleasure with very little pain. I just loved the sounds she was making. They excited me all the more!

I was aware that she admired me, and I didn't really want to take advantage of this, assuming it was a vulnerability. One thing I figured I could do was not to become the leader, so I gradually stopped taking the initiative. Before long, she was the one savaging me. Believe it or not, she gave me some of the best head I've ever had.

Then she crawled up and we kissed some more. Kisses full of the taste of my own pussy! As we did so, and after grabbing some of the wetness of her pussy, I pressed my "fuck you" finger into her asshole, which greeted it by momentarily tightening. She stopped and looked into my eyes. "It's all right," I said. "It's an interesting feeling. Give it a chance."

She kissed me with renewed vigor and slowly my finger slid in until the first two segments were in. I maneuvered her onto her back and pushed her knees up until they almost touched her shoulders. Now, I am built to contort, but her tiny little body was not, but even so we got her knees back far enough that I could get by then two fingers in her ass while I licked and sucked and kissed all around her pussy. She liked it. She liked it a lot. And the more fingers I got into her ass, the more she liked it, too! She came hard. Very hard. And I mean that in the best way. I could tell she'd never had an orgasm like that before.

While this was early in my sexual life, by that summer I'd already had sex with several female classmates, and I'd gotten past the "am I gay?" question by remembering how much I loved playing around with boys. The previous summer at the ranch had been my sexual awakening, and boy had I become awake!

Leslie talked excessively (or maybe a better word is "obsessively" is a better word) the next day as we went about the chores, which included feeding the horses, making sure they had fresh water, cleaning their stalls, and seeing that they got grooming and exercise. I guess talking was a way for her to relieve her tension over wondering if she was gay.

While we were back in the ranch house having lunch, the phone rang and it was Maggie. "Seth finally woke up, but he's not out of the woods yet, the doctors say. He suffered a lot of damage to internal organs which will take some time to heal. He faces dangers from blood clots causing a stroke or embolism, and while there are drugs to reduce clotting they can promote bleeding, so they are just letting Mother Nature handle it. We all have our fingers crossed. How's it going with you guys? Is Leslie really chipping in, or are you covering for her."

Leslie was right there, and I didn't want to embarrass her by swearing on a stack of Bibles that she was pulling her share (which she most certainly was). So I told Maggie simply that everything's fine and that Leslie and I had everything under control. She knew it was more than a one person job, so that told her in a subtle way that Leslie was indeed helping.

I reiterated that I would most certainly not hesitate to call with any questions and I reminded her that I'd already been through one entire summer there and that she knew I knew how to do almost everything. I also reminded her that the veterinarian's number was handy in case of a veterinary emergency. None of the mares were due to foal anytime soon and short of a cougar or bear attack (very unlikely), she had little to worry about.

"Oh, there is one more thing," she said. "Today we're supposed to do some breeding. I know you've handled it before as far as the mechanics. Today, you'll have to handle the business side as well." She told me where to find a contract, which I looked for while she waited. After I found that and several other pieces of documentation, she told me basically how handle the transaction. When I heard how much money I was collecting, I just about crapped my pants, but it explained how they could afford to run the ranch.

When she was satisfied I understood, she said, "I don't know anyone else I'd trust with this. You're our #1 ranch hand." I laughed, being their only real ranch hand. Leslie was a help, but still basically a visitor.

"What was all that about?" asked Leslie. When I told her about the breeding, she just about flipped. "Don't worry," I told her, "I've been involved in dozens of them. You can watch or I'll find something else for you to do."

"I'll watch," she said.

The man we were expecting was a guy who'd been to the ranch a few times before. He was known to one and all as Sven. A big late middle-aged Danish blond with bulging biceps and what couldn't have been more than a 32" waist (which, for you gals who don't know, is a very small waist for a large man to have). Despite his being as old as my dad give or take a few years, I regarded him as a hunk and could easily have worked up some interest in finding out what his pecker looked like and what he could do with it.

It was about 2 p.m. when his familiar yellow pickup rolled in, white horse van in tow. I was going over to greet Sven when something else stepped out of the van. What do I mean by "something else"? I mean, "Is this a man or a young god?" That's what I mean.

"Hello, I'm Lars" he said. "Is Seth here...or Maggie? My dad couldn't make it..." "I'm Jill," I said interrupting him. "Seth had an accident and he and Maggie are in town at the hospital, but I can take care of things for you. We're ready."

Now, how to describe Lars... I can't think of a movie star he resembled. A little like a taller version of Seth. A hunky young Marlboro man, only taller, and with perfectly white hair. Not yellow blond...pure white. As white as the snow atop the nearby mountain peaks.

Now, I was pretty scruffy from the work I'd done that day and Lars had pretty much stepped out of a gay Gentleman's Quarterly. I say "gay" because he was so far beyond being merely handsome and was well into the beautiful category, but without losing any masculinity. (If you think being a gay male is all about limp wrists and effeminate ways of behaving and talking, you need to check out gay porn, which frequently is about beautiful and very masculine-looking men. Sure, there's the sissy side of gay, but there's also the hyper-male side of gay as well.)

Poor little Leslie, with her low self-esteem. I could almost feel her pain. Many things might have been rolling through her mind. For one thing, having just established me as a sex partner, in rolls this god-like vision of young manhood. For another, she didn't feel very physically attractive, and by that time I had established in my own mind that I was very physically attractive. I'd never met a man who gave off any other kind of vibe who wasn't, in fact, quite gay...and even a couple gays said they found me tempting! (But they might have been pulling my leg.)

I gave her the friendliest smile I knew how to give, devoid as possible of any hint of pity. She managed a wan smile in return, but the general impression was of the deer in the headlights. I would have to tread lightly or she might be crushed.

After the paperwork and payment, we got the mare out and led her into what we lovingly called "The Bachelor Pad," because it was where a lot of the breeding took place. The mare's nickname was Ginger (we give horse's nicknames because their legal names are generally a mouthful). She was one of the most beautiful palomino mares I've ever seen. She was to be paired up with one of our palomino stallions, Little John, so nicknamed after the giant in the Robin Hood story. He was about as large as a good palomino Arabian can get.

More important to me than Little John's size, was his demeanor. To say he could be a handful was an understatement. He could be quite mean, in fact. I explained this to Lars, who said "Let me come along, just in case." Without objecting to this excellent suggestion, we took off for the stables with Leslie in tow.

Well, true to his reputation, once he was all prepared to be led out of his stall, he decided he didn't want to go and got as obstinate as a mule. Now, what's a horse weigh? A ton? Little old me at about 100 lb (back then) didn't stand much chance of muscling him out of his stall. I wasted a good 10 or 15 minutes seemingly just trying to get him to notice me. He wasn't even actively resisting. He didn't need to: simply ignoring me was enough.

At last Lars said, "Let me try. Sometimes it's better when you're a stranger to a horse: someone he hasn't pigeonholed or figured out. Step back out of sight." So, Leslie and I went around a corner where Little John couldn't see us. About a minute later, Lars was leading the horse out of his stall and so on we went to The Bachelor Pad with Lars in control of Little John.

Now, I hate to spoil anyone's fantasies about horses, but they are not very smart. In fact, I'm told the smartest barnyard animal is the pig, followed very closely by a good herding dog like a Border Collie and a goat. But horses have good memories, so they can learn tricks. They also recognize places, so as soon as Little John saw we were taking him to The Bachelor Pad and not the glue factory, he perked right up.

Nature took it's course and Little John's cock was fully extended by the time we got there. I noticed that Leslie's eyes were on it. I guessed she was suffering from Horse Cock Fever, the way I had the first summer when I really got to see one close up. I tried not to smile, but I was smiling on the inside. I was past Horse Cock Fever by then and my thoughts were all about how to get Lars's cock out where I could do something with it.

We put Little John in a pen next to Ginger to see how they reacted to each other. Sometimes a mare will take an instant dislike to a stallion and one has to go the artificial insemination route. At first she didn't even seem to notice him, but after a little while they were making very friendly gestures to each other. We put them together and to make a short story much shorter, Little John was "in like Flynn." It was just after 5 p.m. when we were done.

I knew that Maggie and Seth often let customers spend the night rather than have them risk driving a precious animal a long distance in the dark with the possibility of falling asleep at the wheel at 2 a.m. out in the middle of nowhere. "It's kind of late for heading back," I said. "We'll put you up for the night."

"Thanks," he said. "How can I repay you?" "Well, we're a bit shorthanded with Maggie and Seth away, and what with losing about three hours with the breeding, we're way behind in the chores. Why don't you and Leslie exercise the horses which still need it. Leslie knows which ones." I didn't want Leslie to feel so left out. Even so, Leslie said with dismay, "But I don't ride!" (True: she had led horses around, but hadn't gotten around to learning to handle a horse from the saddle yet.) Lars looked at her with a kindly smile and said, "We'll fix that."

While I did other things, they exercised the horses. I'd stick my head around a corner from time to time and quite soon, I saw Leslie on one of our friendlier palomino mares, Lars on the back of our most valuable black stallion, a feisty critter that was behaving like an old mare in his hands. Lars was a natural horseman. He was also refreshingly ego-free for such a handsome guy, and really seemed to take teaching Leslie pretty seriously.

At about 7, I was totally done with what I had to do. I had gone back to the ranch house and was watching a Miami Vice rerun when Lars and Leslie walked in a bit later. "All done!" she announced with a huge smile.

Before I could say anything about dinner, Lars asked, "It's about 45 minutes into town, if I remember right? The last town you pass through before taking the cutoff to your ranch." "Yeah, maybe a bit less," I replied. "How's about I buy you gals some dinner?" he suggested.

I thought for a bit: That would leave the ranch unattended. The little Devil on my left shoulder said, "Do it! What could possibly happen?" The little angel on my right shoulder said, "Maggie and Seth never leave the ranch unattended. Don't do it!" Unfortunately, the little Devil won by suggesting that perhaps we might end up doing some dancing to the jukebox after dinner. Like all teen girls, I lived to dance back then.

Lars unhitched the horse carrier and soon we were scooting along the road to the highway. Leslie sat in the middle and I rode shotgun. I was glad to find that Leslie no longer felt like the odd person out, and in fact, although she didn't realize it, I'm sure, I could tell by Lars's amused glances that he, like me, felt she was being just a bit too Chatty Cathy. But she was such a lovable little gal and was riding a bit of a high that I couldn't hold it against her. As for Lars, he seemed a very tolerant, hard to ruffle guy. I think he didn't want to burst her bubble, either.

As soon as we got into the cafe, I knew it had been a mistake to come into town. The owner, a very skinny and haggard old gal who probably should have been dead of lung cancer a decade ago asked in a rasp, "How's Seth, honey?" Realizing now that our little sojourn into town would almost certainly get back to Maggie, I explained the medical situation.

We got a bucket of chicken and Seth got a pitcher of Bud or Miller or PBR...some cheap "by the bucketload" beer (no Pilsner Urquell out in these small boonie towns), and we holed up in a booth in the back where he could share it with us. We had ordered some ginger beer, made right there in the cafe (and quite delicious it is, I might ad), but we dumped it and grabbed a pair of clean glasses while nobody was looking.

So, we had a fine old time there in that booth for about an hour, with Lars mostly telling us about his various adventures with horses. Leslie and I listened, and I'm sure her little pussy was just as moist as mine.

We had gotten a bit tipsy (speaking for Leslie and me) when someone yelled "Fire!" With that, the cafe cleared out as people ran out to see where it might be. By the time we were out front, people were already coming back in, knowing that the fire wasn't anywhere in their direction.

When we got there, however, the owner saw me and said, "I think it's coming from the direction of Seth's ranch. Is anyone there?" My non-reply was her answer. I fairly screamed at Lars that we had to get back to the ranch right away. We made a mad dash back to the truck and I'm sure we hit 80 mph a good deal of the way, at least to our turn-off. The drive up to the ranch isn't perfectly smooth, but he did a creditable 50 mph, I'm sure, which is probably about 20 mph over any reasonably sane speed for that stretch.

All along the way I was thinking how bad it would be on so many levels if the stable or ranch house were on fire. I couldn't imagine what could start a fire. Had I left anything electrical running? The wood stove was already cold by morning. Still, the glow in the sky was of smoke well-illuminated by a fire at its base, leaving no doubt of a big active fire going on in the general direction of the ranch.

Unfortunately, the way the drive winds around, the last part of it is out of sight of the ranch. I was totally hysterical, and so was Leslie. I'm sure we were both thinking primarily of the animals being roasted alive and secondarily of having to face Seth and Maggie to explain how it had happened and why no one was there at the time to save the animals.

We rounded the last turn and the ranch came into view. It was not on fire. The fire (which I later learned was a bonfire to celebrate a wedding), was over the ridge in the next valley. I got out of the car and dropped to my knees in tears. I don't think I've ever felt so guilty in my life.

Bless him, Lars said, "It's my fault. I shouldn't have suggested we go into town. That was real stupid of me."

"No," I said, wiping tears from my eyes, "I'm in charge here. There was no real need to go into town. I can see now that I risked everything for no good reason. But thanks for the offer to take the blame."

This time it was Leslie who was comforting me. "Come on into the ranch house," she said. "Let's have some coffee." "Yeah," said Lars. "I could use some coffee myself."

I was amazed: Leslie went in and actually knew how to make a pot of coffee. Lars stood around looking sheepish. I knew what I had to do: I called Maggie and confessed everything. After a long silence, Maggie said, "Thanks for telling me. I'm a little bit pissed at you, but you've obviously learned a lesson here."

"I have," I said tearfully. "I will never ever risk the horses and ranch again."

"I'm sure you won't." Another long pause. "...But Lars is pretty incredible, isn't he?"

That changed the mood and we had a good laugh.

"I trust you," she said. Relieved, I asked about Seth again, and she said he was becoming talkative and seemed unconcerned at leaving me in charge. She added that she would have to tell him what happened someday, but not while he was in recovery. I told her that I was glad for that.

Off the phone, I found the other two already working on their mugs of coffee. I had a full mug waiting for me as well. They were apparently waiting to see how I felt, and were relieved at my own apparent sense of relief. We turned on the TV and watched it on and off for a while until I switched it off so we could play some poker.

Lars is a super poker player and I'm still not sure Leslie understands the hierarchy of hands, but even so we had a lot of fun.

Lars had some Jim Beam in his truck, which he brought in. To his credit, he told us we could have one shot each and no more, which at our age was just fine. It was something we needed that day, which had turned into a very rough day indeed.

Leslie can't hold her liquor very well, which Lars and I found amusing. She was slurring her words and giggled inappropriately from time to time and even she knew she was drunk and laughed right along with us.

Until, that is, she fell asleep on the floor.

I looked at her then at him. He was looking at her as well, and when he noticed I was watching him he gave me a slight grin. Turning my way, he looked into my face and apologized once again for luring me off the ranch, and one more time I told him not to worry, that it was my fault for not declining. Then, I got a wee bit bold and said something like, "I thought going into town with you sounded like fun. I just chose a bad time to do it, probably because I thought there wouldn't be another chance."

I closed my eyes and he came in for the kiss. Well...he had kissed before. I knew that right away. He was fairly expert at opening a girl's jeans with one hand, too! Before I knew it his hand was deep inside my jeans, into my panties, and on my crotch. He knew what to do down there as well, spending a good while just massaging my clit and vulva before letting a finger wander into my vagina, which was so wet I was afraid it'd spook him.

It did the opposite.

"Wooow," he said when he found the moisture. Pulling his hand out of my pants, he stood up and pulled my jeans off. I didn't wait for him to help me with my panties. I all but tore them off. He wasted no time, either, and slid out of his jeans and jockeys revealing a cock that was of the long and slender variety.

Grabbing him by the hips, I pulled him to me and took him into my mouth. The flavor of his dick betold a day of hard work and of pissing several times and of leaking precum.

It was a good taste, and I knew that once his mouth was on my pussy, his mouth would be flooded with a pungent mixture of pussy and sweat as well.

He took his blow job standing for a while, but I could tell it made him weak at the knees from time to time, so I beckoned him down onto the couch next to me, where I blew him harder still, intermittently licking on his sandpapery scrotum and sucking his balls into my mouth one at a time.

If you look at a cock on its own and forget what it's attached to, it's like almost nothing else on earth, except perhaps for some kinds of mushrooms I've seen in books. Mushrooms that are long and slender with small crowns.

After a while he tapped me on the shoulder to indicate that he wanted lick my pussy, and so the next thing I knew, his head was between my legs with his tongue doing rather amazing things.

At one point, he pushed my knees up, baring my asshole, and I could tell he was going in to lick my asshole. I rolled off to one side and stood up saying, "How about a shower?" If he was going to do that, at least I wanted to be clean for him.

"Sure," he said. We trotted back to the bathroom where I started the shower running. When I turned around, he was totally nude. His young body was virtually hairless except for the patch above his dick. He wasn't heavily muscled enough to pass as a bodybuilder, but he was very well defined, revealing not only where one muscle ended and the next began, but even some of the striations in the muscles, too.

He stepped into the stall first. I would bet Maggie and Seth made love in there many a time. It had been built more than large enough for two. When I stepped in, he pushed me against the wall under the showerhead, dropped to his knees and started in on my pussy again, while I held his head in my hands, running my fingers through his hair.

Just when I thought I might go mad with pleasure, he stopped, grabbing the nearby bar of soap, and pulled me out of the shower stream. He ran the soap all over my upper body, rubbing it in gently with his large hands, kissing me from time to time.

As he did this, I was holding his dick, kneading it in my fingers.

Then, he started again below my waist, but this time he started at my ankles and worked his way up deliberately, until he reached my pussy, which he massaged as he pulled me back into the stream from the showerhead again.

Next, he turned me around and washed me yet again, touching me with his cock as much as he could. This time, his efforts ended at my ass after washing my shoulders and back first, then the back of my legs, and finally my ass cheeks.

He spent a goodly while not just soaping and cleaning between the cheeks, but fingering my asshole. I was happy he was fingering it far enough in that I was pretty sure it was further than his tongue could go. This made me happy because even after he did what I knew he wanted to do, I wanted to kiss him without worry of a bad case of stomach cramps.

When I was well rinsed, he guided me into a position where I was leaning forward into the wall under the showerhead, the water hitting my lower back, and with my feet set in a fairly wide stance.

He started by licking my pussy again. By the time his tongue found my asshole, I was almost desperate to know what it felt like, for I'd never had analingus before, which I have since learned is also called "tossing someone's salad" for reasons I don't totally understand. Some things one simply has to accept.

Analingus is one of the weirdest feelings. It's not intense, but it's very intimate and warm. Well, I guess it is intense, but in a very special way. I like it. I don't often get it, so it's a special treat when I do, and that was my first time, so it's locked in that special place we all have in our memories that we reserve for first experiences.

While analingus feels good, it's never made me cum. Not like a good fuck in the pussy or ass, so after enjoying it for a while, I made him switch places with me so that I could suck his cock again.

I was enjoying having his cock in my mouth when he tapped me on the shoulder and pointed toward the bathroom door. Leslie was standing there. Transfixed.

"You're awake!" I said. "Get naked and come on in. Join the fun."

I looked up at Lars's face. He looked a little surprised, but not disappointed.

Breaking her gaze with a twitch, she said "Uh...I don't know."

I knew what the problem was: It was her feelings about her body. "Come on," I repeated. "Don't worry." I gave her the most reassuring look I could manage.

He spoke up: "We're just having a little fun. Come on in and get wet!"

This was what she needed. I'm not sure if she wanted to or whether it would have been too embarrassing to decline. Whichever it was, she took off her clothes and stepped into the stall.

We embraced her and took turns kissing her. While one kissed her, the other would soap her up and wash her. A little on the plump side, she really didn't look all that bad. Not as bad as she had thought.

Once while kissing her, I whispered in her ear, "Grab his dick. Go ahead." It's hard to describe the look of horror in her eyes. But I reassured her that it was okay. But a few minutes later I saw her little hand slowly reach toward his half-erect cock and just form a little cup in which she held it. Then, slowly, her thumb crossed over the top to actually grip it lightly.

"Tug on it. Jack him off," I whispered. Soon she was giving him a pretty creditable stroke job and his pecker looked like a missile about to take off.

"Let's dry off and go out to the couch," he said. It sounded good to Leslie and me, so out we went. As we dried ourselves off, I whispered to Lars to get started with Leslie and as soon as I'd stoked the woodstove, I'd join in.

I took my time with the stove and of course then I had to wash my hands. I did my best not to look at the goings on on the couch until I was actually ready to join in. I wanted him to get a good start with Leslie.

When I finally got there, I found that I had had little to worry about. Leslie was laying on her back with her butt right on the edge of the couch with Lars on his knees between her legs, pumping away. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open and her little hands gripped Lars's wrists where he was bracing himself on her legs.

I sat down next to them on one elbow and played with her cute puffy nipples, rolling them in my fingers, she opened her eyes, looked at me, and smiled. Closing her eyes again, she was soon in the throes of orgasmic ecstasy. And, frankly, I was nearly there myself just from watching.

Done with Leslie, and still not having cum himself, Lars pushed himself between my legs and, not to put too fine a point on it, proceeded to hump the shit out of me. Leslie, coming out of her post-orgasmic stupor, was watching is with a vague and appreciative smile.

Like her, I just went inside myself and went with the flow until I had one of those sneaker orgasms. I have them now and then. Very little of the build-up, or maybe just hanging on the brink, and then you feel like a bucket ice water is thrown on you and you have an explosive orgasm. Those are the real mind-blowers.

I tried to push him out of me, but he resisted and kept pumping and I had a long series of aftershocks. It was by far the best orgasm a guy had given me up till then, and in the better part of the year since the prior summer where I had lost my virginity, I had wasted no time getting fucked as well and as frequently as I could, and by as many boys as I could manage to get into my cunt.

I was grateful to this lanky blond cowboy and wanted to give him something special as a reward, so I said, "You can fuck my mouth." With that, he straddled me and I opened my mouth. In came his cock and I used every trick in the book that I had learned in my two years or so of giving blow jobs. I even let him gag me several times, and each time he looked concerned, but I told him not to worry, that I didn't mind.

You can often tell when a guy is about to cum by a subtle change in your mouth as the cock sends up a small burst of precum to lubricate the urethra. And sometimes they're nice enough to warn you in case you'd rather paint your face with the ejaculate than have it delivered into your mouth. But I wanted it in the mouth. Quite frankly I had started masturbating when he went to work on my face, but at some point Leslie had dropped to her knees between my legs, pushed my hand aside, and was licking my pussy in a very loving and, I must say, effective way.

Thus, when my mouth flooded with Lars's sperm, it set off another orgasm of epic proportions and I spasmed, just about throwing Leslie onto her ass. As Lars fell off me, I swallowed his load, and closed my eyes to just savor what had happened. As I regained my consciousness of my surroundings, I found Lars dozing and Leslie giggling. She had obviously had the time of her life.

As we collected ourselves, Lars said he needed to get an early start. We slept together in Maggie and Seth's big bed that night with Lars in the middle.

Somehow, he managed to get out of bed, load up his horse van, and take off without waking Leslie or me, and while my memories of the day he spent with us are fond, I haven't heard from him since.

I quietly got up to take a shower, for the horses needed my attention. I would let Leslie sleep as long as she could, I thought.

I was under the showerhead taking water into my mouth when I felt hands go around my chest. It was Leslie hugging me from behind. Leaning her head on my shoulder, she said in a soft voice, almost a whisper, "Thank you." "For what?" I asked.

She didn't reply. She didn't have to. As for me, it was just nice being held.

My Aunt Maggie lives on a Horse ranch in Northern Washington State, The High Cascades. The mountains in this area are higher and steeper, on average, than those in the Oregon or California Cascades.

Maggie is my mother's younger sister, and I worked for two summers on the same farm that employs Maggie. I say "employs," but since she is the live-in girlfriend of the ranch owner, Seth, she's a lot more like a wife in many ways that a mere employee or girlfriend. They're far beyond dating and seem so comfortable with each other that they may as well be married.

In those two summers, I learned more about my mother than I ever learned from my mother herself, just as I knew more about Maggie from my mom than Maggie ever told me about herself. I called Maggie my mother's "younger" sister, but their true age difference is less than two years, so by that time of life, they were practically contemporaries. A year and nine months difference in age is vast when you're under 10, or even an early teen, but put a few decades on and it's nothing at all.

The ranch specializes in Arabians, those large, muscular horses which probably exhibit the physical characteristics of horses more beautifully and in better balance than just about any other breed. They're fast, they're strong, they have unbelievable stamina. If you close your eyes and imagine a horse, it's likely to look an awful lot like an Arabian. Some people would call them The Ultimate Horse. Seth's ranch is best-known for black and palomino Arabians and he owns horses from several of the major bloodlines. He also has some minor bloodlines possessing characteristics he uses to improve his own lines and to minimize the risks of inbreeding. Breeding for specific characteristics without too much inbreeding (mating closely-related animals) is a tightrope every breeder has to walk, no matter what creature he's breeding, be it a horse, a fish, or a green bean.

Several times a month, a customer would arrive pulling a horse carrier with one or two magnificent Arabian mares inside and the attempt (usually successful) was made to bring their mare or mares together with one of our well-known studs for breeding. Of course, a lot of breeding is done without bringing a mare together with a stud, often to preserve the health of the stallion. A mare who isn't ready to be bred can kick the stud with dire results. Sometimes the owner of the mare is given fresh semen and the mare is inseminated separately from the stallion. Often, chilled or frozen semen is simply sent to the owner of the mare, so that neither horse has to be exposed to the dangers of transport.

A lot of breeders still prefer that things happen "the Old Fashioned way," and so I watched horses fuck many a time.

My own sexuality was burgeoning at that time, and the first summer I worked on the ranch I was technically a virgin. By that, I mean that my hymen was unbroken. I'd been humping my pillow for years and early boyfriends had brought me to orgasm by putting their hand in my crotch while we kissed. I believe, if I remember correctly, that I'd given a couple blow jobs by then as well, mostly to do something for a boy I'd brought to a state of white hotness. When sucking cock back then, I finishing the boys off by hand. I certainly hadn't taken a load in my mouth or been fucked in the ass. Two concepts which I'm sure would have appalled me before that summer.

I'll never forget the first time I jacked a horse off. Now, there are a variety of techniques for collecting semen from a stud horse, but sometimes the only (or best) way, for a variety of reasons, involves simply masturbating the horse into a jar.

Prior to visiting the ranch, my "experience" with horses consisted mostly of riding them, and in retrospect, most of that experience was with mares. Maybe I was in an asexual stage of life, but back then I didn't think much about horse penises. My room was full of My Little Pony goodies, unicorn statues, and other girlie-girl horsey things. At that time, a stallion was just a boy horse and beyond that I was mostly concerned with their beauty, not their sex lives.

Then boys started to occupy my thoughts more than horses, and I did start to think about cocks, but the cocks I thought about were attached to a boy, not a horse.

So, wouldn't you know, one of my first tasks the first day was to help Maggie jack off their top stud. I say "help," but in truth the jacking off was done mostly by me. I'm sure they wanted me to, so to speak, "jump in the deep end" and get past the shock.

"How do you do it?" I asked. "Surely you have some experience with boys," Maggie both stated and asked. "You've masturbated a boy, haven't you?" "Sure," I said, based on perhaps two or three faltering experiences, during which my confidence had been bruised by being told I was doing it too hard or not hard enough. Later on, I came to realize that feedback isn't criticism and is an essential part of good sex, but back then I was still sensitive about such things.

Seeing I was having a hard time getting off the dime, she instructed: "Stoke his cock, dear." And so I squatted down and started rubbing his penis. "Harder and more vigorously, Jill. He can hardly feel that." I grabbed it more firmly and yanked harder. Before I knew it, it started growing. I really mean growing in the sense of extending. When I started, only about three or four inches were protruding from the sheath it's in, but with stimulation, it extended rapidly (or so it seemed to me) until it was at least a yard long.

At first repulsed, my repulsion gradually turned to fascination. The tip of a horse cock widens considerably and looks rather like a cigarette tip that's been put out by being mashed into an ashtray. There is no real glans in the sense that a boy has one. I remember it had veins running down it at least as big around as my fingers, dividing and subdividing into ever smaller veins like the roots of some giant tree.

"It won't be getting any bigger" said Maggie with a hint of amusement in her voice. Obviously, she could read my mind. Or maybe she was just reliving her own first experiences with horse cocks.

She jumped in and showed me how to finish him off. We collected the semen, froze it, and then went out for a ride. I couldn't get horse cocks out of my mind, though, and riding that day was almost like masturbating. Which is exactly what I did when I finally could find an excuse to go to my room. I think I told them I need a nap before dinner, but I humped a pillow so fiercely it made my little teen pussy sore. Riding, as you might guess, was painful for several days.

My favorite activity that first year was riding out with Maggie into the mountains and camping out under the stars. We were usually camping at a fairly high elevation for Maggie liked to use the horses to climb. Even in otherwise warm weather, the nights get colder the higher you go. We always took a tent in case of foul weather, but seldom had to use it and mostly slept under the stars. Seth never came with us because someone needed to be there for the horses.

The first truly cold night my summer weight sleeping bag simply wasn't doing the job and I was miserable. Aunt Maggie apparently heard my teeth chattering and said "Come on, let's sleep together. Get out of that bag." As I stood up, shivering, my skinny teenybopper arms crossed tightly, she took my bag and unzipped it most of the way down, then she put it open side facing down inside her bag and we both climbed in, getting the benefit of both sleeping bags and combining our body heat. It was like sleeping under a super-thick quilt. She held me just like my mom would have and not only was I warm but I was comfortable in the truest sense of the word, both physically and psychologically. We only slept that way when it was very cold, but those were the nights I liked most and remember most fondly. (And no, despite what some of you are surely thinking, nothing weird happened between us.)

A couple times, we slept in an abandoned mining camp's bunk house. It had been refurbished and was mostly used in winter or when dangerously foul weather rolled in any other time of the year.

My riding skills returned to me that summer and actually improved drastically. I was riding spirited stallions at full gallop and had only fallen or been bucked off a horse four or five times, and only when pushing myself or the horse to extremes.

Seth had a nephew named Larry who came by for two weeks or so the end of that first summer. He was a fairly good-looking blond boy, scrawny much like I was (scrawnier, actually) and with shoulder-length hair that looked perfect no matter how unkempt it might be. He wasn't good at chores, or I should say he wasn't good at pitching in. He didn't do anything unless asked or told to, but then he'd do a creditable job. You just never felt he was part of the "team."

I'm not clear on his exact age, but I think he was about a year older, maybe two. Like a lot of the nicer teen guys, he was shy around girls. Pair this with the fact that he probably felt inferior to a truly manly guy like Seth and you can imagine how out of it he must have felt. Now I know I haven't described Seth yet, so here goes: if you imagine a long and lanky Marlboro Man in tight-fitting well-worn (and certainly not acid-washed) blue jeans you'll have an approximation. Oh, and you can subtract the cigarette from the Marlboro man image: he doesn't smoke and even hates the smell of tobacco. He was an older man to my mind, so I didn't think of him sexually. Besides, he was clearly Maggie's. Ethical to a fault, he would never have made a pass at me.

So, it was uncomfortable to have Larry around the first few days. I could tell that Seth in particular had had his fill of the boy and despite the fact that Larry had done precisely nothing to ingratiate himself to anyone, I had come to almost pity him for his awkwardness. I had fit in immediately, here already two or three days, he was still a stranger to us.

It was over a hearty ranch house steak dinner that Seth suggested I might take Larry camping. Larry looked around during the impending silence. I really wasn't too keen on the idea, but when I realized that if I said no, it would really be a disaster, I tried to look as enthusiastic as possible as I said, "Sure...sounds like fun. I'll take him up to the lake by the old mine." Larry only said, "Okay."

Maggie smiled and winked at Seth. Suddenly I knew what it was really about: She and Seth needed some alone time. The ranch house was not very large: three bedrooms, two baths, and one "everything room," and all three bedrooms were near each other in the same short hallway with one thickness of wood between the rooms. You couldn't hump someone in there without the person in the next room listening in. I bet they hadn't fucked all summer long, unless it was on one of their rare trips into town for supplies. Maybe they pulled off the road somewhere for a quickie. Otherwise, I can't imagine when they could get their rocks off. I was near one or the other of them almost all the time.

I guess it didn't dawn on anyone to ask if Larry could ride. So, to everyone's surprise Larry asked how long a hike it'd be. Seth just stared at him. I think I covered my mouth to hide my shocked expression. It was Maggie who finally said, "Larry, this is a horse ranch. You do ride...don't you?"

"Uh...no," he said quietly and with ill-concealed embarrassment.

"I'll teach him the basics," I said. "There are still a few hours of sunlight."

So, I got out two of the better-behaved riding mares and taught him how to ride. He wasn't ready to handle a spirited stallion just yet, but to my surprise he learned quickly and finally showed some enthusiasm for something at the ranch. He seemed a bottomless pit of questions about horses, equipage and tack, and riding techniques.

The next morning, after the four of us devoured a large mound of scrambled eggs with home fries, bacon, and toast, we went out and loaded up two trusty trail-experienced horses. Maggie said that if anything happened, these horses knew the way back and would probably return, prompting a search and rescue.

Before we left the ranch, Maggie and Seth got very parental with us, offering us caution after caution and giving me a portable radio to use in case of trouble. I quietly assured them I would stay on the main trail all the way and that they could be sure I'd return Larry in one piece.

We rode off. I took one last glance over my shoulder and saw Maggie and Seth walking back to the house. I also saw Seth firmly grasp Maggie's ass. She brushed his hand off, but not very convincingly. They stopped and kissed. I smiled.

It was still well before Noon, and as was often the case, a haze hid the Sun. We rode higher and higher as the trail gradually rose and, as before, Larry was full of questions, not just about horses but about the area, about the flowers and trees, about whether there were bears and cougars. (There were, of course, and we'd be taking precautions against the bears. Cougar attacks actually tend to happen more in areas where suburbs encroach on wild areas. Out here in the wilderness, cougars would be keeping a good distance from us. We'd could count ourselves lucky even to see one.)

Eventually, we were actually above the clouds, looking down into a valley blanketed in impenetrable mists. I looked at my watch after a while and saw it was a bit after Noon, so I proposed we stop for lunch. Larry agreed. Like most boys, even skinny ones, he had a bottomless appetite and never resisted any opportunity to consume food.

As I recall, Maggie had packed not sandwiches as I'd expected, but sliced ham, sliced Swiss cheese, and Ry-Krisp crackers, with crisp sweet apples for dessert.

Larry grew quiet as he ate, just taking in the wild surroundings. I realized all of a sudden that I really knew little about him. To break the silence, I started asking questions. It turned out he was from Minneapolis. His father, Seth's brother, had taken a different route from Seth. Where Seth had majored in animal husbandry, Larry's dad had gotten an MBA and become a stock broker. Larry lived in a downtown apartment and went to a private boys school.

His parents had broken up when he was about 10 and for some reason his father had gotten custody. He suspected it was because she abused pain medications. His father refused to talk about it. To me, coming from a home full of love, this all seemed very appalling and I felt I was coming to understand Larry and actually sympathize with him.

Then, as can happen in the mountains, the clouds—which had gotten thinner—were now virtually gone except for the occasional tuft, and we could see down into the valley far, far below. Larry, coming from a city set in a very flat part of the country, was almost overwhelmed. He'd seen mountain vistas in books, but he'd never been in one. Despite his father's wealth, he'd never really been far from Minneapolis before. It turned out that visiting Seth had been his idea, not his dad's. He didn't say so, but I suspected it was an act of desperate rebellion on his part.

In turn, he asked probing questions about me and my life, and it was clear he coveted my life. I had grown to like him, actually, and if I could have waved a magic wand at that moment, I would have made him my older brother.

We must have spent an hour there talking before we remounted our horses and pressed on. It was well past 5 p.m. before we reached the lake. It's a beautiful spot. I think Larry had been expecting a pond. This lake is a true lake, large enough to sail a boat on, though all we had available to us was a canoe put there by Seth and Maggie and a few of their friends. It was laying by the shore of the lake upside down, which is how you leave a canoe if you don't want it to collect water.

At various places on the lake, they had also put lockers for campers to leave food and other belongings where the bears couldn't reach them, for there are both black and grizzly bears in this area. Black bears are dangerous; grizzlies are unimaginably dangerous. A black bear can kill you in an instant. A grizzly can dismember you in the same amount of time.

Seth told a tale about the days of animal baiting in England. Typically, a lion was pitted against a tiger, or a pack of fighting dogs against a lion or tiger. Apparently, this one time a tiger was pitted against a grizzly and the grizzly killed the tiger almost instantly, practically decapitating it with one swipe of a huge paw. The crowd, at first awed, grew angry, for they had expected to see a fight.

Tourists and hobby campers like to camp on the edge of a river or lake, and that's what Larry was probably expecting, but as I explained to him, Maggie called such locations "Brother Bear's Pantry," and camping in such locations was an open invitation to a bear encounter, so we'd be camping a couple hundred yards away from the lake up in the woods where I knew there was a nice clearing. There, we'd be much more likely to see a deer than a bear.

Neither one of us was particularly hungry, so I proposed we tie up the horses and do a little canoeing before dinner. Larry agreed and soon we had righted the canoe, revealing the paddles and a pair of life vests, which I insisted we put on, though Larry made a show of not needing one. I, playing Mother Hen, made it clear we were not going out on the lake without wearing them. I felt I had to play Maggie's role in her stead, and she would certainly have made me wear a vest. Laughing and rolling his eyes, Larry donned his vest and soon we were out on the water.

The tables were now turned: Larry knew how to handle a canoe and taught me how to paddle. In the past, when I paddled a canoe, I had found them difficult to control. If you paddled on one side, it turned the canoe in the opposite direction, and the only way to correct that, I had thought, was to change sides and paddle on the other side. The result was a canoe that zig-zagged. Maggie was no more canoe-wise and so we tended to switch sides frequently, which wore us out rather quickly.

He taught me to paddle in a semicircular or U-shaped stroke that cancelled the tendency of the canoe to drift away from the paddling side. Between that and having the bow and stern paddlers paddle on opposite sides of the boat, a canoe could become quite controllable. These skills, he told me, he had learned when he and his private school buddies had gone on paddling trips near home. Minnesota and even moreso Wisconsin, are dotted with numerous lakes, large and small. Switching ends with me to let me steer the canoe, he also taught me how to be the sternsman, who does most of the steering in a canoe. Occasionally, the bow paddler has some duties other than straight-ahead paddling, but that's mostly when docking the canoe or when maneuvering in whitewater, he told me.

Larry was looking more manly to me now. Recently, I saw that funny Napoleon Dynamite movie where the actor announces that "Girls like guys with skills" (if that's not exactly what he said, consider it a paraphrase). While that's a ridiculous line in the movie, it's also true to some extent. We like guys who exude confidence and can handle themselves. The problem with Napoleon was not that women didn't appreciate his skills, it's that for most of the movie he really didn't have any. Larry really knew how to handle a canoe.

We fooled around in the canoe until maybe 7 p.m. when we both agreed that we were hungry. I knew what Maggie had packed for dinner: a nice flatiron steak. I knew because I had asked for it. Now, I had never heard of a flatiron steak before visiting Aunt Maggie. I've researched it since, and it's the most tender cut of meat cut from the part of a cow called the chuck. Chuck is not very tender when cooked like good steak meat. By contrast, though, the part which has come to be called the flatiron steak is quite tender when cooked rare, and besides being quite juicy and flavorful, is also probably the tenderest part of the cow besides the tenderloin when cooked properly. Not well known in the Eastern half of the country, it's become fairly popular in the West and is widely available in both restaurants and markets. A flatiron steak is, like the Chateaubriand, big enough for two.

Anyway, in addition to the steak, Maggie had also packed two large Idaho potatoes in foil and four ears of corn also wrapped in foil. I told Larry if he would get a fire going in the nearby barbecue pit, I would take care of getting everything cooked.

Luckily, previous campers had left enough unused firewood around that at least we didn't have to scavenge up wood for the fire. And Maggie had packed a cigarette lighter. We gathered up some dry grass and twigs as kindling and before long, Larry had a good fire going. After it died down a bit and I had some coals to work with, I started the potatoes, turning them frequently by rolling them around on the barbecue pit's grid. I let them cook for a good half hour, then I put the corn and steak on the grid, turning the corn frequently while letting the large steak brown, first on one side then on the other.

We had put a few cans of pop in the icy cold water to cool off and so soon we were eating steak, potatoes, and corn off plastic plates, while drinking cola.

Larry had become quite talkative and we talked quite a bit about music. He liked music and was quite fascinated by both my knowledge of music and the yarns I was spinning about musicians I had met in person or stories my father had told about musicians he knew or had met. He (Larry) particularly liked a juicy story I had heard my father tell about a party Miles Davis had attended. After a while someone asked "Where's Miles?" My father didn't say anything, but he knew that Miles had met a beautiful young college coed at the party and in fact was boning her under one of the buffet tables, hidden behind a white tablecloth. My father was apparently standing in the one place, due to the fact that the cloth didn't cover the end of the long table, where one could see under it and where, my dad said, he could quite clearly see the jazz legend's bare ass going in an unmistakable motion between this lovely girl's widely spread caucasian legs, giving both him (my dad) and her a memorable story. He made it clear, though, that this wouldn't be a major memory for Miles, who had women throwing themselves at him wherever he went. Having been on tour with Miles in Europe once, he knew this for a fact. Miles often had sex more than twice a day. He not only had "one night stands," he had stands in the mornings and afternoons as well.

I disagreed with Larry about a lot of things. His taste was different from mine. However, our disagreements were friendly and just led to spirited discussion.

The sun was getting low. I hadn't been mindful of the time, and looking across the lake I saw something that gave me chills. A grizzly. I pointed it out to Larry who fairly shat his pants and clearly was extremely uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping outdoors.

"Back by the mine," I told him, "there's a bunkhouse once used by the miners, but Maggie and Seth and their friends have fitted it out for sleeping. It's all fixed up inside and while it's mainly intended for use in winter or when the weather turns bad, it's secure. It has barred windows and very strong doors. It's bearproof." (Of course as I said this, in my mind I was saying to myself, "I hope.")

Larry was relieved, and to tell you the truth, seeing the bear had made me a lot less enthusiastic about sleeping outside as well. I would be quite happy to sleep indoors.

There was also a small barn next to the mine. One which could be closed at night so that the horses would be safe from the bear as well. We first got the horses safely into stalls and then trotted over to the bunkhouse. I had been shown where the key was hidden, but in the dark it took a few minutes to find it. Once inside, we unpacked our sleeping gear. It was getting quite dark. I found a couple kerosene lanterns and lit them. In this dim light, we saw that there was some cordwood next to the rough fireplace. There were also some old newspapers. Larry asked me if he could build a fire. I said it sounded like a good idea to me. I was feeling a bit chilled, actually, and the thought of a fire offered the prospect of some welcome warmth. Besides, it gave Larry something to do.

In no time, he had a good fire going. I had raided a closet and found a bunch of thick woolen blankets. I laid a few of them out on the floor in front of the fireplace and wrapped myself up in one to cover my back. The heat from the fireplace took care of the front of me and warmed my toes.

Larry laid down on his side in front of me, his head supported on the hand of his bent arm. We continued the conversation we'd been having about music.

I don't know if you remember when you were this young: I was about 16, he perhaps 17. How awkward things can be when you're attracted to someone. How long it can take to make a move. How unintentionally disastrous and damaging a botched response can be to one party or both. I was both wishing for and dreading a "move" on Larry's part.

After a long silence, he got up and sat next to me. I knew something was about to happen, but I didn't know what.

When it finally happened, I laughed. Instead of doing something, he said, "Jill, I'd like to kiss you. Can I kiss you?" This is when I laughed, but I immediately saw that he was crestfallen. It had taken a lot of courage on his part just to blurt that out, so I set about trying to undo the damage.

I took him by the hand and looked him in the eye and said, "Larry, don't ask a girl if you can kiss her. Just kiss her. She may kiss you back. She may push you away. She may even slap her in the face. But don't ask permission."

"Why?"

"It's hard to explain." In fact it was. As I said those words, I didn't actually have an answer in mind, so I spent a little while thinking about it while he waited patiently.

At last I said, "Well, the girl wants to feel desired. She wants the guy to be passionate. Yes, she wants to feel that she's so desirable that they guy can't control himself, that around her he's overcome with desire and passion."

After a momentary pause I asked, "Does that help?"

He never replied. To my surprise, he was all over me. I was flat on my back and I was being kissed like I'd never been kissed before. Part of me wanted to fight him off and slap him silly, but that part of me was overruled by a part of me I didn't recognize. Maybe it was the big horse cocks. Maybe it was the way Seth's jeans fit. Maybe it was just me coming of age, but I decided to go with the flow. As Larry kissed me, I kissed him back with equal passion, for his kisses were more passionate than any kisses I'd known before.

This wasn't fooling around because everyone else was doing it, Larry really wanted to fuck me, and that felt good!

Soon his hands had pulled my shirt out of my jeans and were undoing the buttons as we kissed. My own hands were all over his body, eventually finding their way to his belt, which after a few faltering moments I managed to open.

As he fondled my tiny "barely there" breasts, I found his cock. My hands knew what to do with a young man's cock, and I went to work as he kissed me. Then, something new happened. He had undone my own jeans and his hand had thrust down deep and was right on my vulva, massaging it in a most pleasurable way. This was the first time I'd let a guy put his hand under my panties, and because I had allowed this to happen, something new happened: two of his fingers slid deep into my vagina, causing a sharp pain.

I yelped. He stopped, pulling his fingers out and apologizing profusely.

"Did I hurt you?"

I reached down and felt myself, finding a little blood on my fingertips. "Well...yes...but no."

"What happened?"

"I just lost my 'virginity.' You broke my hymen. You popped my cherry."

"Oh..."

By this time, I was laughing. He was distressed, not knowing if he'd done something bad...and was I laughing at him?

I couldn't leave him out on a limb like that so I snuggled up to him, laying my head on his chest, and said "Don't worry about it. I'm not mad at you. It had to happen sooner or later. I always imagined it happening the first time I had sex, though."

I was actually quite happy. The thought of losing my virginity had been a bit stressful and full of foreboding. Now it had happened and as it turned out, it was no big deal, though it did hurt. And so I found myself bonding somewhat with the guy who'd taken it, even if he'd done it with his fingers and not his dick.

I actually felt like rewarding him, so I started massaging his cock and kissing his tummy. He relaxed and hardened considerably. I examined his pecker. It was beautiful. I still dream of it. Large, not huge. Uncut. It was the first uncut cock I'd ever seen. I enjoyed watching the tip pop in and out of its sheath as I jacked him off. It took my mind off the stinging in my vagina.

Larry had calmed down and was relaxed. Now, instead of watching his cock as I tugged on it, I laid my head down on his belly, closed my eyes, and was gently jerking it as I let my tongue slowly but constantly circle it's tip.

In time, I tasted his jizz on my tongue. So I took the tip entirely into my mouth and let him cum there until he was done when, with a slow motion of his hips, he pulled it out and gently stroked my hair as I swallowed his load.

We spent another half-hour or so just laying in front of the fireplace in each other's arms. I have seldom felt so comfortable and relaxed. When I remember it, in my mind it looks like a scene from a Playboy or Penthouse magazine. Those magazines often do fireplace scenes which look so warm and comfy (as well as sexy), and that's how I remember it.

This relaxed scene was interrupted by noises outside. We looked at each other and ran over to the window next to the front door. From there, we could clearly see the form in the moonlight of a huge grizzly bear trying mightily to get at the food in the locker several tens of yards away. We felt we were safe, but this put an end to any more eroticism that night. So, Larry and I climbed into one of the bunks and slept together snug and warm under doubled-up sleeping bags in the cabin which cooled off rapidly as the embers in the fireplace died.

When I woke up, Larry was already up and had retrieved the food from the food locker and was in the process of scrambling some eggs. It was probably the aroma of the bacon Maggie had packed that actually woke me up. Mixed with that was the aroma of the coffee Maggie had packed. Somehow, the inexpensive house brand percolated coffee they served at breakfast out in the wilds was more delicious than the $3 lattes to be had from the espresso shops back home.

He looked at me and said, "Breakfast is served!"

I was impressed and told him as much. "I have to take care of myself much of the time back home," he explained. "Usually, Dad is gone before I wake up and it's either make myself a good breakfast or grab a granola bar before I go to school. I do the granola bar thing often enough, but now and then it's nice to sit down to a good hot breakfast."

We had a quiet breakfast during which we engaged in small talk. It was comfortable small talk, which was very nice. No reference was was made to the lovemaking of the night before. None was necessary. That was behind us. We both knew it would probably happen again.

While he cleaned up, I got dressed and realized that I had neglected to call the ranch the night before. I had told Maggie I'd try to remember to do so, so it wasn't a promise, but even so I knew she would want to hear from me.

When I did get through to her, I apologized for not calling the night before and told her all was well.

"He's not being difficult?" she asked. "No, not at all. He's really opened up. He's having a great time."

Reading between the lines, she said, "All of a sudden, I'm wondering if it was very bright of us to send two teens out alone without a chaperone." I told her not to worry, that nothing had happened. (A bit of a lie, to be sure, but since she was probably mostly concerned that I not go home "in the family way," she really didn't need to worry. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her, I reasoned.)

I told her about the bear, and suddenly that concerned her a lot more than her niece being boned out in the boonies. I assured her we were being more than careful.

"Okay," she said, sounding placated. "You'll notice that I gave you more than enough food for one day. I told her I had noticed that.

"If you're having a good time, stay another day," she said. I told her that sounded like a good idea and that we'd probably do that. If not, I'd call her to let her know. She indicated that was fine with her.

Of course, Larry was happy to spend another day at the lake and one less day doing chores at the ranch. And I was quite happy to spend another day with Larry.

We decided to go and explore the far end of the lake where, on a prior visit with Maggie, we'd spotted a split-rail fence at the top of a rise. We had planned on going back sometime to see what was up there. Now it turned out it would be Larry and me, not Maggie and me. After packing some food and storing the rest in one of the lockers, we went down to the canoe and shoved off.

And so we paddled out onto the lake, which as most mountain lakes are, is much longer than it is wide, being flanked on two sides by mountain slopes. In fact, almost all large mountain lakes are just mountain valleys filled with what water can't drain into a river.

Larry taught me considerably more about canoes and canoeing. I learned, for example, that while The Great Unwashed will prefer a flat-bottomed canoe, in fact the most stable canoes have round (or, more correctly, somewhat U-shaped) bottoms and possess low initial stability. Get out in waves of any size, however, and the round-bottomed boat settles into the churning water, tending to keep itself and he paddler more upright, whereas the flat-bottomed boat tends to lean this way and that because it conforms itself to the surface of the water, and if the water is at an angle due to a wave, the flat-bottomed boat tends to go along with it.

Since Maggie and Seth and their friends had supplied the camping/staging area with a rather round-bottomed boat, I gained a little respect for them. At first I had thought them nutty for choosing a canoe that felt so wobbly. Seth showed me, though, that this distressing wobbliness was pretty illusory. The boat may have wobbled, but it did not want to tip over. Even with the explanation, however, I was a bit edgy the first ten or fifteen minutes out. Even though I'd been out in the canoe before with Maggie, it was Larry who helped me feel safe and at home in it.

The Pacific Northwest, defined roughly as Northern California on up to Alaska, is still very wild. I know from my several trips to Portland that, according to the locals, it's still one of the few cities in the U.S. where mountain lions sometimes wander into town and mix it up with dogs, often with tragic results for both the dog and the lion, the latter ending up being shot by police who are sometimes forced to take lethal action before someone can arrive with tranquilizer darts. That simply doesn't happen in Northern Ohio, although from time to time coyotes are spotted in suburban and rural communities. At worst, a bobcat.

Did you know that the North American mountain lion may have been the most successful large predator in the world, with a range encompassing all of North American, basically, from Alaska and Northern Canada down into Mexico. In many areas, they've been hunted to extinction, which is kind of a shame. To me, they are the most beautiful of all the big cats.

Another odd fact about Mountain Lions (all of these facts by way of Larry, of course): they are the largest cat that can purr.

What I was starting to say was, along the (and after I got past constantly obsessing about the canoe tipping over) we saw tons of wildlife. A female deer with a fawn, a lone bull elk with a gigantic rack of antlers, several osprey, some red-tailed hawks, and a bald eagle. Much of the time, it was Larry who spotted these critters. He had a sharp eye and knew lots of odd facts about most of the species he identified.

As well-informed as he was about animals, he was almost totally lacking in knowledge about plants. I even had to tell him that not all of the evergreen trees around us were pines, and that in fact the bulk of the trees were in fact Douglas firs and cedars. He didn't know that Douglas firs were the #1 wood producer in the Pacific Northwest or that cedar wood tends to be in various shades of orange, not yellow like most other woods. (God, had he never seen a "cedar chest"?)

I chimed in when I knew a fact he apparently did not, or when something he said wasn't exactly correct, but mostly I listened. This Larry was so different from the Larry who first appeared at the ranch. He was outgoing and interesting and funny, and boy, do we girls like a guy who can make us laugh.

I don't watch afternoon ladies' talk shows like Oprah as a rule. Not even back then, but from time to time I end up at someone's place while one is on, for example, and I end up watching a bit of it. I do remember seeing one show which was about "Knockout gals with average-looking guys." What attracted you to this guy instead of any of the hunkier guys I'm sure you attract?" In just about every case, the reply was "He makes me laugh."

What with stopping from time to time to rest or watch some wildlife, it took about an hour and a half to reach the far end of the lake. Sure enough, there was the split-rail fence up the hill that Maggie and I had seen on a prior excursion.

There was also a very new-looking pier, and at the shore end of the pier was a rack that could hold four canoes, although it held only one. We pulled our own canoe up onto the gravel next to the pier.

"Let's grab our packs and walk around a bit," I said. "I'm up for a hike," said Larry. We donned our packs, turned the canoe over onto the paddles, and headed up the path that opened up behind the pier.

The hill was steep and so whoever had made the trail built it in the switchback style, so, to go up maybe 100 feet took about 500 feet of walking, but we eventually did find ourselves at the top and at a gap in the fence. This told us that the fence was decorative and not particularly designed to hold animals in.

It was easy to tell that at one time this area had been clearcut. There were stumps everywhere. However, they weren't new stumps. Between their dark discoloration and the fact that moss and other plants had found a home on or in them, it was clear they were decades old.

We kept walking up the hill. The higher we got, the more clearcut we saw, and just as old.

Finally, we reached the top and there everything changed. Suddenly, we were on the verge of the grounds of some large house with a manicured lawn and professional landscaping.

The house had a verandah, and in the distance we could see someone beckoning us toward them by alternately waving their arms to get our attention and then just gesturing us in their direction. We looked at each other and quickly decided to investigate.

As we got closer, I saw that someone else was sitting in a deck chair. Still closer, it became clear that there were two kids about our age, but in reverse in both age and sex. She looked just a bit older than her brother.

Under his breath, Larry muttered "Preppies." "Preppies," I repeated. I guess he knew. He was the one who went to a private school, though he didn't seem very prep school to me.

The girl, a honey blonde with a deep tan stood there in a white tennis skirt and deck shoes. She had on a heavy wool sweater. In this part of the country, and at this sort of elevation, if it's going to warm up at all, it typically happens after noon, and sometimes well after noon.

Even back then I was pretty severely bisexual, and a pretty girl turned me on just as much as a great-looking, studly guy. Her legs were just fantastic. Long and shapely and the skin was flawless.

Her face was very cute. I find that there are two kinds of cute: One is babyface cute: roundish features, proportionally large eyes...that sort of thing. The other kind of cute is the pretty person with the endearing flaw: the gap in the front teeth, for example. In her case, her endearing flaw was a slightly crooked smile.

As we got closer, she was kind of bouncing up and down off her heels, which just made her fabulous calves look even better. I'm guessing from her bounce that she had done some cheerleading that had really been formative. I knew, because I had been on the Spirit Squad the previous term in high school.

Her brother, though younger, made something of a show of acting more controlled and mature than his sister as he stood up from his chair, just watching us approach.

Larry laughed under his breath and said, "If her name is Buffy and his Skip I'll croak."

The "Buffy" figure more or less pogoed down the short flight of steps from the verandah to the lawn and said, "Hi, I'm Pepper." I looked at Larry and got a look that clearly implied "Not Buffy, but just as preppy."

We introduced ourselves and followed her enthusiastic lead up the steps to where her brother was waiting. He was wearing white slacks with white leather loafers and argyle socks in pastel browns. His sweater was very similar to hers.

"Corky," she said to her brother, "I want you to meet Larry and Jill." "Corky?" repeated Larry, to his credit without irony or sarcasm, for I knew that Corky is every bit as preppy as Skip, if not moreso.

Corky shook our hands with a surprisingly (and perhaps studiedly) firm grip and said "Pleased to meet" to each of us in turn. When done, I noticed that he wiped his hand inside his pocket.

"So, what brings you here?" she asked. I explained that we had been camping and canoeing and were curious about the fence and what was up here.

Pepper explained that this was one of their dad's houses. It turned out he's one of the ones who made big money off the big electronics boom of the 90's. His name, while perhaps not exactly a household word, would be if you were heavily into stock investments and read Forbes and The Wall Street Journal religiously, or traded heavily in stocks. He had made many people rich, not the least of whom himself.

"Would you like something to eat?" Pepper asked. We were hungry and it was about time for lunch anyway, so we agreed. "Umm... Shoes off first," said Corky. Pepper looked at our scruffy hiking boots and said, "Oh yes, shoes off."

When we entered the house, which on the outside looked like a very large plains farm home with a verandah all around, on the inside was considerably more modern. It was impossible to tell at first if the floors were some dark hardwood or a very cunning synthetic floor material. Unable to find any repeating patterns, and also due to the sounds our feet made as we walked on it, I determined it was indeed wood.

On the walls were paintings all of a modern bent. By "modern," I mean 20th Century ugly art. There was some late impressionism, but there was more expressionism. I thought I saw an original George Grosz. I looked at it closely: It wasn't a printed simulation (which can sometimes be initially quite convincing). It was done by a painter, so even if it was a copy, it'd be a very expensive copy.

Observing my interest, Pepper said, with a smile, "It's real. Daddy wouldn't have a fake. And besides, he can afford originals of just about anything."

"Is he around somewhere?" asked Larry. "No," said Corky. He's on a 'round the world cruise with his girlfriend. Pepper chimed in with, "We were invited, but Chandee is so..." "Tiresome," said Corky, finishing her sentence, adding "So we decided to stay behind." Pepper jumped back in: "So he plopped us here where we couldn't get into trouble." They both smiled at that.

By then, we were in a huge kitchen with not one but two islands, one topped with wood and one topped with stone.

Pepper flung open cupboards exposing canned goods of all kinds from soups both familiar and obscure to canned tuna and sardines to has, beef stew, baked beans, and so on. Meanwhile, Corky had pulled a large foil-covered object out of the capacious fridge. It turned out to be half of one of those sugar-encrusted hams. Another foil object turned out to be a hunk of roast beef. These were followed by cold cuts galore. Everything from mortadella (the original Italian version of what we have come to call bologna) to real Swiss cheese (by which I mean cheese from Switzerland, not Swiss-style cheese as most of us know it).

Pepper had gone to another fridge and was retrieving condiments and such sides as cole slaw, a half dozen sorts of pickles, and a big head of lettuce still in its shrinkwrap. After getting three or four loaves of artisan bread out and showing us where we could find the plates, silverware, knives, and so on, Pepper and Corky took the lead, making selections and building lunch for themselves.

Once everyone had a plateful, we were led to what I gather was a family room of sorts, which had the best sound system I'd ever seen by that time in my life as well as the largest screen I'd ever seen on a TV. It was a flat screen TV, probably LCD. Screens of that type and size were not common at that time.

"Music?" Pepper asked. "Sure," I said, speaking for both myself and Larry. "What have you got?" "What haven't we got is more like it," said Corky. "I like jazz," I said. This got Corky's attention. "What kind?" "Oh...the classic stuff from the 30's through the fifties, mostly," I replied. His interest turned to delight, and soon we were listening to a mix of Coltrane, Modern Jazz Quartet, Charles Mingus, and Thelonious Monk, among others.

Mostly we listened, not talking much. After a while, Pepper asked, "Anybody like swing?" "I do," I said. "Cool!" Soon we were listening to some fabulous swing music, some of it old and some new. A few songs in, Pepper got up and asked her brother if he'd dance. Obviously, he'd done it before, but I think he was hesitant to do it in front of another male.

"I'll dance," I said. "You know how?" she asked in seeming surprise. "Is it so amazing?" I asked. I had been taught to swing dance by one of our jazz musician visitors when I was an early teen. I doubt if the early inventors of swing music had intended for a 12 year old white girl to be dancing with a 50-ish heroin-addicted black man, but that was how and from whom I learned. I learned the swing moves the black people did.

So that's why I had a lot of swing lore to teach Pepper, who was actually quite good. So good, in fact, that even though I knew more, she could have become a professional dancer had she the desire. She had the body for it.

I'm not entirely sure when I discovered my bisexuality, but I do remember looking at her gorgeous legs as she danced, and wondering to myself what she might look like without benefit of even that tiny white skirt she was wearing, and the white panties she showed whenever she twirled.

The boys were looking a little embarrassed, and refused several invitations to join in, probably because we were giving them prodigious boners. I say "We," because it was Pepper who had the bare legs and was showing off her undies.

Not wanting to let Pepper be the sole center of attention, I complained that my hiking gear was constraining me, so I took off my rather loose-fitting camping pants and my flannel shirt until I was attired in nothing but my own snug undies and a jog bra (which I didn't even need, because I've never had large enough boobs to prove uncomfortable even on a pogo-stick).

Soon, Pepper and I were dancing again, and not only could I tell I was getting plenty of attention from the boys, now...I was also getting it from Pepper, who after a bit of dancing with the now much more sparsely-attired me said, "Great ass!" The boys agreed loudly.

That was when the day took its first blatantly sexual turn.

We danced until mid-afternoon when I suggested to Larry that if we were going to make it back to the ranch by dark, we had to leave very soon. He agreed, but Pepper said "Not so quick." She was looking out the window and we all walked over to see what she saw.

As anyone who's spent time in the mountains can affirm, changes in the weather can happen suprisingly quickly, not so much because the weather changes quickly, but because you can't see those changes coming. One moment it's sunny, next a dark cloud is coming over the ridge and in five minutes it's pouring down rain, which is exactly what happened.

An hour later, with rain still pouring down, I lamented that we'd never get back to the ranch before dark now. We could get back to the camp, but I didn't relish paddling several miles in cold mountain rain without so much as a parka to protect me, and I said so. Larry agreed.

"Don't worry," said Corky. "You can stay with us as long as you need." Pepper agreed.

"We'd better call Seth and Maggie, though," said Larry. Glumly, I admitted that I hadn't brought the radio with me, I also admitted how stupid that was. It was back in the bunk house.

Pepper laughed and said, "Don't worry about that." "Why, do you have a radio?" "Daddy has everything. If I wanted to talk to him right now, I could. And he's...where, Corky?" "I imagine his ship is anchored somewhere near Koh Samui right about now." A place I'd never heard of at the time. It's an island off the coast of Thailand.

It took a little while and a few calls around to learn how to contact Seth and Maggie, but at last I had Maggie on the line. After assuring her we were in no peril from the weather, I told her it'd be impossible to be home before dark and she said, not to worry, to just stay in the camp another night.

"Actually, we're in a house. Remember the fence up the hill at the far end of the lake. We're probably going to spend the night here." All of a sudden she became concerned. I explained the situation and allayed her concern some, but only some. Once again, I'm sure, she was worried she's be sending me back to mom and dad pregnant. I did my best to placate her and assure her I'd be a responsible girl, and finally she let me get off the phone. She was irritating when she was that way, but I understood: she was in loco parentis. My mom would have been equally annoying.

So, the huge TV came on. It was a satellite TV and there was seemingly no end to what we might watch from sports to Mexican soaps or British pro wrestling to hard-core porn. I let Larry ask for the porn. I was curious but was too shy to ask at the time. I didn't think it was something a girl would ask to see.

When Pepper asked, "What kind?" even Larry was taken aback. I think we were both naive enough at that age to think that porn was porn and that was that. No thought that there might be sub-categories.

Corky helped: "Straight? Gay? Solo girl? Solo guy? Two girls and a guy? Two guys and a girl? Group stuff?...How about anal? There making more and more anal porn now."

Pepper hugged herself as if she was cold and said, "There's some even wilder stuff..."

I was already agog. Wilder than what had just been described? I wasn't sure I wanted to even hear about it. Corky smiled slyly and asked, "Ever heard of fisting?" "Er...no." "It's when someone sticks their entire hand and sometimes even part of their arm all the way into a pussy or asshole." "Is that even possible?" I asked. Like most girls, I really couldn't even conceive of giving birth, though obviously Mother Nature helped you with that. Something as unnatural as fisting gave me shivers. Perhaps that explained the way Pepper appeared to have the chills.

"It doesn't stop there," Pepper added. "People having sex with dogs and horses."

Corky didn't wait to be asked, saying, "That's not on satellite. That's in my private stash." Soon he had produced a dozen or so VHS cassettes and we all sat back and watched. I was seeing stuff I'd never dreamed of, or had heard of as almost mythical or legendary, and yet here were people doing it. I remember one German fisting tape where the guy was fucking some middle aged women in the pussy. A second woman stuck her hand into the first woman's pussy and jacked the guy off. He finished in the second woman's mouth!

Even more shocking was the bestiality stuff. I saw beautiful girls sucking dogs off and being fucked by dogs in the pussy or ass. I saw women blowing horses and taking what must have been a pint or two of horse semen in the mouth. He also had Brazilian porn: beautiful college age girls shitting in each others' mouths. That's when I first learned the word 'scat.'

My pussy was lubricating furiously even though I hadn't touched it at all. Luckily, only Pepper noticed and said, "Jill and I need to powder our noses, don't we Jill?" I agreed, and so we trotted upstairs. "I'll lend you a pair of undies." "Thanks." "That stuff's pretty wild, isn't it?" "Yes," I replied, not knowing what I could add to that assessment. She showed me to a bathroom and left, saying she'd be right back.

By then, I had stepped out of my panties and Pepper had returned holding a pair close enough to the ones I'd been wearing. She didn't hand them to me, though, but instead set them down on the counter, took me in her arms, and planted big, wet tongue kiss on my mouth while simultaneously slipping her hand between my legs and sliding a finger right into my sopping wet pussy. Nobody, male or female, had ever been so brazenly bold with me. I felt a sharp pain and pushed her away.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Not very bi, I guess. I misread the signals." I'm sure I blushed as I explained that I didn't mean to reject her. She had just hurt me since I'd only lost my virginity the night before and certain parts of me were still a bit sensitive.

"Oh my golly! You lost it yesterday. How precious. How absolutely cool! We must have a party." Suddenly, I realized that I really liked this girl. Her mannerisms were a bit strange, but I liked her. And I wanted her. So, this time I was the one who took the initiative and we spent a good five minutes kissing and groping, but she kept her fingers out of my pussy.

I didn't really want a party celebrating the loss of my virginity, especially since I'd lost it to an ignominious finger instead of a cock, but Pepper was obviously a force to be reckoned with, so I kept my mouth shut.

When we arrived back in the family room, she got the boys' attention and said, "I've just learned that Jill lost her virginity only yesterday. Both Pepper and Corky looked at Larry and gave him the opera house clap, a silent tapping of the fingertips of the right hand on the palm of the left.

Larry looked at me silently as if to ask how much detail I'd given out. (I suspect he was happy for them to think he'd fucked me, not so happy if they knew he'd done it with his fingers.) I did what I could with facial expressions to convey that our secret was safe and that they were probably imagining "The Stupp of the Century."

When I said Pepper was a force to be reckoned with, I wasn't kidding. She took absolute charge and set about creating a festival atmosphere. She had Corky and Larry go off to make some computer-generated wall posters and banners. She took me down to the basement where she rounded up balloons and pastel-colored fringed steamers and festive tablecloths along with party plates and napkins.

I followed her around, my arms gradually filling. When she saw I could hold no more, she grabbed a few more items and we headed back upstairs, depositing them on a long table in the house's large dining room which could easily seat more than 20, I'm sure; 25 if they were crowded a bit.

"How are you at cooking?" she asked in a serious voice, her hands on her hips. I laughed. "So, I have to cook for my own party? Actually, I'm pretty good." I was. My mom believed that even a girl destined for a lucrative career in business should still know how to do a roast, bake a cake, or make macaroni salad.

By this time, Pepper was making for the kitchen. When we arrived, she said "It's all yours. I'm very adept at microwavery and making coffee and I can do a scrambled egg. Beyond that, I'm afraid I'm a bit lost. So, you go to town and I'll be your helper. Make something good." The boys came back and she ordered them to decorate, so they disappeared and I went to work with Pepper's assistance.

The first thing I did was to do a quick inventory of what was at hand and available. The freezer was chock full of great stuff that'd never be defrosted in time: At least 10 beef roasts of various kinds, two turkeys and a half dozen chickens, pork chops might be quickly defrosted. Ditto for some ready-made hamburger patties. I noted them in case I found nothing else to work with.

In the fridges, the main things I found were the aforementioned ham and beef roast. Looking around more, I found everything I needed to make scalloped potatoes, an easy dish but a hearty one, too, and fit for a rainy evening. That plus some veggies and drinks would do for dinner. I found another smaller freezer with frozen baked goods, including some frozen pies and cakes. Also there were some brownies in a flat pan. I knew those would defrost within an hour or so, so that would be our dessert.

Pepper really didn't know much about cooking, for when I asked her to make about two cups of white sauce for the scalloped potatoes, she looked at me sheepishly. I told her how to make it and watched her every step of the way to make sure she didn't make a mistake. Meanwhile, I was dicing ham and slicing onion for the scalloped potatoes. That done, Pepper helped me peel and slice potatoes. She was a very good potato peeler, but not very quick, so I ended up doing about 3/4 of the potatoes.

While Pepper melted some butter and soaked some bread crumbs in it, I arranged the scalloped potatoes ingredients in a big oval roaster. I let Pepper sprinkle the crumbs over the mixture and popped it into the oven.

Next we set about preparing some green beans, which prompted a question. "Pepper, there's a lot of fresh food here that's almost certainly been here less than a week. Where does it come from?" "From the sky." I looked at her more intently to convey the idea that she really hadn't answered my question. So, she explained, "Daddy has stuff flown in about twice a week. Whatever we need or want. Within reason." "Within reason?" "I don't think Daddy would pay for a hooker for Corky. Not that he'd need to." "What do you mean by that?" "Never mind," was all she said and I dropped it, thinking perhaps it was just a joke that had fallen on its face.

"Oh (pause) my (pause) GOD!" Pepper exclaimed. "What with you guys arriving and the rain, I forgot: we're getting a shipment today. Oh, well, I'm not going out to get it in this weather. She'll just have to bring it up." Shrugging, she said, "Oh well, no big deal. She's done it it before." "She?" "Yes, Cass is a woman. She's a bush pilot who moved down from Alaska. She was up there doing nudie bar dancing and saved enough up for flying lessons. Then, she assisted a pilot by doing his milk runs for him while took on the more interesting and risky assignments. Eventually he died on one of his trips. Strangely, not a plane crash but an encounter with a Kodiak grizzly bear. He was killed within sight of his plane. Anyway, it turned out that he had no relatives he cared to will anything to. He had willed it all to her, and totally to her surprise. She ran his business for a couple more years, then sold it, keeping only one of his sea planes. Now she drops off provisions for a number of the more remote sites in Northern Washington."

Dinner was approaching readiness when Corky and Larry appeared, each with two bottles of champagne, which they quickly put into the fridge.

"Dinner ready soon?" asked Corky. "Another fifteen or twenty minutes, probably." "Well, guys, come on our and check out the decorations." They boys had done a bang up job. It looked like a wedding reception was about to be held, or the return of a soldier from years at war.

A knock at the door. Must be the pilot, I thought, so I quickly pulled on my pants and put my shirt back on, not bothering to tuck it in. Corky trotted over and let in a rather large figure in a big green plastic poncho with a hood. She had an expedition-size backpack on her back and was carrying what appeared to be two waterproof duffles as well. Pulling the hood back, I saw the face of a rather large woman with a bush of curly hair on her head and a big smile on her face. "How are you guys?" she asked as she dropped her load on the big rug inside the front door and hung her poncho up on the nearby coat rack. "I almost didn't come. Between the rain and the clouds and the dark, not the safest flying weather. But...I know these hills like the back of my hand, and I knew you guys would want your magazines. So, I just flow low enough to be able to pick out where I was and keep my bearings."

There she was, dressed like Paul Bunyan, a good six feet tall, her big mane of curls bouncing on her head, and a jolly grin on her face. All I could think of when I saw her was Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters. Big and sexy in an almost manly way. A woman, bigger than life, with (I was starting to notice) a killer body. The shirt may have been baggy, but it couldn't hide the fact that she had quite a rack. Her tight-fitting jeans didn't hide much at all!

"Hey, stick round for dinner," said Corky. Looking around, Cass asked, "What's the occasion." I know I must have been blushing so much I might have glowed in the dark. Pointing to me, Pepper said, "She lost her virginity to that guy over there," and she pointed at Larry. Cass laughed. "Sounds like a cause for celebration, though some would say it's the guy who busted the cherry who should get the party, but I'm into it. Congrats to both of you!" Remembering her manners, Pepper introduced us to Cass.

Her muddy hiking shoes now off, Cass walked over to Pepper and me and said, "Well, girls. Need any help in the kitchen?" "Not really," I said. "We're just waiting for the main course to finish cooking. Maybe another five or ten minutes."

"Let's build a fire in the fireplace," suggested Corky. "Sounds like a plan," said Pepper. "We need wood," said Corky. "Well, let's get some, then," said Cass. With that, she and the two guys headed down a hallway to where, presumably, the firewood was stored. Cass was in the lead. Obviously, she knew her way around the place.

Pepper indicated that we'd better stow the stuff Cass had brought, and so we spent a few minutes stocking the pantry and loading stuff into the fridges and freezers.

I couldn't quite gauge Pepper's attitude toward Cass. A little jealousy, perhaps? Born of what? While she was trying her best to be cordial, she certainly wasn't going out of her way to be nice. I realized she