Bob
was dressed and lying in the sun, trying to get warm after his icy
bath, when Brenda got back from her climb. She looked a little
bedraggled, with dirt smeared on her face. She wasn't really in
shape for a serious climb, and slumped a bit, looking tired.
Dammit scampered over to get her ears scratched, and Brenda squatted to
do just that.
Bob
made a production of sniffing the air, and then pinching his nose
closed. "Now it's you who needs a bath," he commented.
"Are
you going to climb while I do that?" she asked. The climb had
been glorious, and she'd loved every second of it, even though it made
her hot, sweaty and tired. The water looked inviting, rather than
cold, now.
"No way, Jose," he said, smiling.
"Well, I certainly can't take a bath with you sitting here," she said.
She stood up and Dammit sat down to lean against her leg.
"It's still as cold as it was," he said, covering his eyes with his arm. "I won't watch," he added.
"I thought I was sexy," she pouted, uncharacteristically.
"You are," he said, his eyes still covered.
"So if I'm so sexy and all that, you'll probably try to peek."
"Probably," he said.
She
stood there, uncertainly, her shirt sticking to her sweaty skin.
The mist felt cool and inviting. Her climb had included
more components than just the physical hauling of her body up and down
the rock face. She'd thought a lot too. While she didn't
recognize the fact that she'd had an orgasm in those last few wild
seconds of the morning ride, she DID recognize that she thought about
Bob in a way that was different than she'd ever thought about another
man.
He
had seen her naked ... or almost naked. But that wasn't the
thing uppermost in her mind. What she continued to go back to was
the thing that was even more important to her. Part of the
nakedness he had seen was her head. While Brenda had pretty
well come to grips with the fact that people would pity her, despite
how she hated that, she could live with that part. She had never
been able, though, to be comfortable with people seeing her
baldness. People couldn't control the almost shiver of distaste
when they saw a bald girl. It made her disease ... visible ... in
a way that made them uncomfortable. She went to great lengths to
ensure that nobody but her doctors saw her without a wig on. Even
at home she kept one on her head.
But
Bob hadn't shivered, or pulled back. He hadn't averted his
eyes. And somehow, she knew that he was being truthful when he
said he found it a little sexy ... that he found HER to be sexy
looking. While she climbed, she had experienced again, the rush
of joy she'd felt when he hadn't treated her any different without the
wig. The feeling of gratitude she felt toward this man, whom she
had known only a few days, was almost physical.
As
he lay before her on the grass, looking like he was relaxed and almost
asleep, she knew that, if she really did take off her clothes and get
into the water, he probably WOULD peek at her. Only a day
or two in the past, had she contemplated this, she would have been
scandalized ... would have thought of him as a pervert. But
now ...
She didn't so much "make a decision" as she just acted.
"You promise you won't peek while I'm getting in?" she yelled.
"Will it make you feel better if I do promise?" he countered.
"Yes."
"OK, I promise."
Still,
she turned her back to him to remove her shirt. She felt naughty
again as she felt the fabric slid over her shoulders where a bra strap
had always been, but wasn't right now. She wondered if she
should push both her jeans and panties down at the same time, and then
felt foolish for even thinking about that. She bent, and peeked
herself, between her left arm and her body. He was
still lying there, his arm firmly over his eyes.
She was surprised to feel a little miffed that he wasn't peeking.
But
then, the thought that he MIGHT be peeking drove her to run to the
water. It was a serious mistake. Her toe caught a
rock and she pitched headlong into the icy pool.
The
first thing she had to think about was just breathing. The
water was so cold that it paralyzed her whole body. The shock was
like being hit by a truck.
Bob
had tried hard not to peek, but lost that battle easily. He saw
her push her pants down, and his eyes fixed on her smooth, slim back,
where it came around to where he could barely see one hanging breast.
When he saw her head start to look at him, he lowered his arm again,
and raised it only in time to see her pitch headlong into the water.
He knew very well how cold that water was, and what it would do to her.
When
he sat up, all that was visible amid swirling water was a pair of apple
shaped buttocks, so white that they stood out starkly against the
background of greens and browns behind them.
He
bounced up convulsively, and got his boots wet as the buttocks in the
water slowly listed to the right and she rolled. Big bubbles were
coming from about where her head would be, and he knew that all the
breath in her lungs was being explosively expelled from the shock of
the cold water. He was reaching for her left arm when her
bald head broke the surface, her eyes and mouth wide open. Things
seemed to go into slow motion for a few seconds, as he saw clear water
drain from her mouth, and her eyes blink twice.
Then
things speeded up as she took in a gasp of air and, unfortunately, a
little water that was still in her mouth. He pulled at her rigid
body, which was frozen as if in full rigor mortis, and it collapsed
into a loose bag of bones as she started coughing and gasping. He
heard the staccato tapping of teeth, even over the sound of the falls,
and saw goose bumps pop out on her shoulders and arms. Her
body came unfrozen and she scrambled to stand, still coughing
forcefully, as he dragged her to the grassy bank. Lacking
anything else, he bent to pick up her shirt and began running it over
her body to get the water off of her, dragging her into the sunlit
portion of the glen around the pool.
She
hugged her body with her arms and trembled, standing there miserably,
as he knelt to run the now damp shirt over her legs and
buttocks. He noticed, in one part of his brain, how there
was no hair anywhere on her body ... anywhere.
His
intent was to stand and get her something dry to put on, but when he
did, she all but attacked him, pressing her body to his, her arms going
around him as she searched for the nearest source of heat. His
hands went to her back automatically, her damp shirt still in one of
them. He dropped it and stroked with his rough palms, fast and
hard, creating friction that would help warm her.
Her
coughing slowly tapered off and she tried to burrow into his
chest. His hands came perilously close to those apple cheeked
buttocks, but with a will he kept them off of that portion of her body.
"I t-t-t-tripped," she stuttered, her lower jaw jumping up and down rapidly as she shivered.
"We
need to get you into dry clothes," he said. She held on tightly,
instinct insisting that letting go of him would take away the warmth of
his body. He had been lying in the sun, and the front of
his shirt was warm. She felt something else warm on her calf, and
looked down to see Dammit licking water droplets off her
skin. Her tail was wagging, and Brenda wanted to laugh, but
was shivering too hard at the moment.
Bob
held her for another half minute, and then repeated that she needed to
get dry clothing on, and she finally let go. She didn't
move, though, her arms trying to cover everything at once, so he went
to her saddle bags and opened them. He pulled out jeans
first, by chance, and turned to toss them to her. She was
wiggling into them, her still damp legs making it difficult, and her
breasts bobbing as if they had a life of their own, when he turned
around with another shirt. As she tugged and jumped
around, he couldn't help but watch as her breasts wobbled beautifully
in the sunlight. Bob felt his traitorous prick begin to
stiffen again, and he went behind her to hold the shirt open so she
could slide her arms into the sleeves.
The
difference, to Brenda, was astonishing. She went from being
completely frozen, one second, to being caressed by warm clothing the
next, and it was so wonderful that she moaned with the happiness of it
all. She fumbled with the buttons of the shirt, her fingers still
stiff, and turned to him.
"M-m-m-my f-f-fingers w-w-won't work," she stammered.
Bob
pulled the shirt over her breasts, and buttoned it. His fingers,
moving between her naked breasts, made him even stiffer and he wanted
to groan. She hadn't been able to button her jeans either.
He had to move around behind her to do that, and he felt her suck in
her belly as he pulled the cloth together. As soon as he
was finished, she moved her legs around, almost marching in place, as
she tried to get her circulation going again.
"Wow," she groaned. "That didn't w-w-work out well at all!"
At least her teeth were only chattering part time, now.
"You're not supposed to just jump in," said Bob from behind her.
She turned to him, feeling suddenly shy and nervous. This time he had seen her completely naked.
"I told you ... I tripped."
"You're not supposed to do that either." He grinned.
"Well,
I'm not all hot and sweaty any more, that's for sure," she said, taking
his jibe cheerfully. She decided to give him some back.
"Thanks for saving me, even if you peeked while doing it."
He
laughed. "You just made me promise I wouldn't peek while you were
getting in. You didn't say anything about when you were getting
out."
"You're just a nasty old pervert," she said, sticking her tongue out at him.
"I don't blame you," he said, grinning. "I wouldn't want ..."
"I
know, I know," she cut him off. "See! That proves how
much of a pervert you are! All you think about is ..." She
tapered off, not knowing what to say. She'd almost said "sex",
but that seemed so foreign to her that it sounded wrong.
"Sex" was something she had no experience with, even if she'd heard the
things that all young women hear, from friends, on the internet and
things like that.
"Stuff!" she blurted, just to finish her sentence.
He
frowned. "I'm sorry," he said, unsure as to how upset she
was. He HAD seen her in a very intimate way ... twice
now. He didn't want her to think he thought about her that
way.
He
didn't want to think about her that way, for that matter. He
looked up, as if Dannie's spectral face would be there, frowning at
him. Instead, his imagination saw her face ... sticking her
tongue out at him.
It almost unnerved him, and he turned around to go fiddle with his saddle bags.
Brenda
stood there, staring at him. Their conversation, despite the
embarrassment of the whole situation, had been light and happy, and
then he had frowned and turned away. She felt suddenly
guilty for calling him a pervert. He had helped her, and
she had repaid him with an insult.
"I don't really think you're a pervert," she yelled.
"If you only knew," he said under his breath. He turned around. "You ready to go on?"
The
quiet seemed almost deafening, once they rode away from the
falls. The steady sound of the crashing water had become a normal
part of nature, while they were there, and the lack of that sound now
sounded alien, somehow. Brenda could hear birds chirping, and
limbs rubbing against each other as the breeze tickled the tops of the
trees. She could hear the creak of leather in the saddles, and
even the panting of Dammit as she trotted along beside Bob and Ranger.
When she spoke, her normal voice sounded like a shout to her own ears.
"What are you going to show me today?" she called up to him.
He looked over his shoulder. "Don't know for sure. Maybe nothing."
"What does that mean?" she complained.
"Don't know if we'll see anything," he said, maddeningly. "You'll just have to wait and see."
Brenda
sank into a tiny pout. She didn't understand what he had
said. She was warm again, finally. She took stock of
her body, and, again, felt her nipples scraping across the shirt she
was wearing.
The
horses hit a flat spot, and Bob made a clicking noise with is
mouth. Both horses jumped into a trot, and Brenda made
unconscious adjustments to the rhythm of the horse under
her. She suddenly felt pleasure between her thighs, where
her crotch was hitting the saddle in a measured beat.
Now
that she wasn't unprepared, she recognized the feelings of pleasure as
the same thing she had felt before. It was delicious, and
the ball of warmth in her belly was welcome this time. She
began, almost unconsciously, to experiment with how she held her body,
and had just found the perfect position to maximize the almost electric
sensations as her pussy impacted the saddle, when the horses slowed to
a walk again. She sighed, discontented, as the feelings
went away, until she leaned forward, and felt them again.
Now,
for the first time, she recognized what she was feeling as something
vaguely sexual. It wasn't as intense as it had been, but by
shifting in the saddle ... just so ... she found that it rubbed the
spot that the saddle had been bouncing against so
deliciously. She felt heat suffuse her cheeks as she
realized what she was doing, but it felt so good that she kept doing
it. Her belly got tight, and she began to wiggle in the
saddle, to accentuate the feeling. The thought
flitted through her mind that she was masturbating. She'd
heard of that, of course. Some of her friends claimed to do
that. But she'd never given in to the temptation to try
it. She'd heard other things about masturbation too ...
that it wasn't good for you ... that it could cause bad things to
happen. She told herself this couldn't be
masturbation. She wasn't touching herself. It was
just the saddle, making her feel good, somehow.
When,
fifteen minutes later, they trotted again, her reservations about doing
something decidedly naughty, flew to the winds as the bouncing came
back. This time she could feel it building, deep in her
belly, and when the waves of ecstasy washed over her, she was, more or
less, ready for them.
"Ohhhhhhhhh," she groaned, as an orgasm wracked her young body.
Bob looked over his shoulder. It sounded like she was in pain.
"Whoa, boy," he said softly, and Ranger slowed to a walk.
"Ohhhhh don't stop," she moaned. "Not yet!"
It
was too late, though. Buttercup had slowed automatically, when
the lead horse did, and came to a stop. She lowered her head
automatically to crop at the grass there, and Brenda leaned forward,
her hands on the saddle horn, to press her pussy against the base of
the horn.
"What's wrong," asked Bob, concerned. She looked faint and flushed, and her eyes were closed.
Now
Brenda was truly embarrassed. Whether she wanted to call it
masturbation or not, she realized she had just done something sexual,
and she felt like the whole world must know it.
"I'm sorry," she moaned.
"Are
you in pain?" he asked. "I forgot to have you use the paste
again." He turned his horse to face hers. "You
need to take a break?"
The
last thing Brenda wanted to do now was get off her horse.
She suddenly wanted to be riding again, with him facing away from her,
so he wouldn't see her shame.
"No ... it's OK," she said. "I just felt faint for a minute."
"I don't want you falling off your horse again," he said, concerned.
"It's nothing like that," she said automatically, wishing he'd just ride on. "I'm OK, really."
He rode up to her, his concern showing in his eyes.
"If you need to stop ... to rest ... I'll understand. We're out here to have a good time, not get you hurt."
She
looked away, feeling her face flame. "I can't explain it,"
she said shortly. "But I'm fine. I just got
some weird feelings ... that's all."
"Weird
feelings," he said. He saw her blush then, for what it
was. He had been afraid she was running a fever when he first saw
the crimson stain on her cheeks. It hit him like a ton of
bricks. It happened quite frequently, actually. Women who
hadn't ridden much, or even those who had, but not in the protracted
way that they rode on the ranch, got ... excited. His ranch
hands had laughed about it ... keeping count in a friendly competition
as to how many orgasms the women they tended had, without a man ever
touching them. Now this young girl had joined their
ranks. He remembered the long, drawn out moan he'd heard,
and felt his own face get hot as she sat, uncomfortably, in front of
him.
"OK," he said, trying to sound like he wasn't interested any more. He wheeled his horse around and continued on his way.
Both riders were in torment, in a way, as they went the last four miles of the day's ride.
For
Brenda, the ability to sit just so, and feel that wonderful massage,
made her think she had suddenly become a sex fiend. She had to
concentrate to keep herself from doing it all the time, now that she'd
discovered it. And, because she sat differently than she
had before, the saddle rubbed her raw in different places.
Several times she almost asked to stop ... to get out the salve and
apply it. But she remembered how deadened it made her skin
feel, and there was a part of her that she didn't want to deaden.
Bob's
torment was of a different kind. The vision of the juncture
of her legs, as he'd dried her after her fall into the pool, kept
popping into his head. Her pussy lips, completely bare, had
been pale, almost white, and thin, and tightly closed. The split
between the lips had seemed all the more visible to him, because the
shadow between them, where they dipped inward, made the lips seem more
prominent. Now he knew those lips were rubbing the
saddle on the horse behind his. He felt every jolt of his
own horse's movement, and he envisioned those lips as flushed and
thick, now, like Dannie's had been. Even before she had
Kyle, her pussy lips had been full and red, especially when she was
aroused, which had been a lot. She loved riding for some of
the same reasons other women loved it. He had spent
countless hours staring at those luscious lips, as she urged him to
continue lapping at them, and then pulled them apart to expose her
clit, to have it sucked.
He
knew he shouldn't think of Brenda like that ... laid out on a bed ...
legs open in invitation ... her pussy lips shiny with the liquor of her
arousal. He couldn't help but turn around to look at
her, and her movements only confirmed that she was, indeed, rocking in
her saddle, eyes closed, her lower lip grasped gently between pearly
white teeth. Those eyes opened suddenly, and he almost fell
off his horse trying to turn back around before she saw him staring at
her.
Her sexuality penetrated his hastily erected mental barriers easily, and he realized he was stiff as a board in his jeans.
"Ohhh
man!" he groaned to himself. In the nine months since she'd
died, he hadn't had the urge to do anything at all about the infrequent
erections that came over him, usually for no good reason.
Now his balls hurt suddenly, and he knew he'd have to do something
about it that night.
When
Ranger walked around a rock outcrop he recognized, he felt almost giddy
with relief. He hoped that what he planned here would
distract him from these dangerous thoughts.
Brenda
was having serious second thoughts about not asking him to stop so she
could use the analgesic salve. She had had two more
orgasms, and she was in serious pain now from rubbing too
much. When Bob stopped suddenly, and swung down, she felt
relief wash over her. Stiffly she dismounted, walking a
little bowlegged as her jeans scraped tender flesh.
"Thank you for stopping," she said softly.
He
turned to look at her. The look on his face was guilty, but she
misunderstood it to mean he felt badly about making her ride too long.
"I was just about to ask you to take a break," she added, to make him feel better.
"We
might get to see something pretty neat," he said, turning to his saddle
bags. He pulled out a pair of binoculars. "We'll have
to climb twenty or thirty feet, though."
Brenda
didn't know if climbing would hurt or not. Right now, she
didn't want to get back on her horse until tomorrow, if possible
though, so she was willing to try anything else.
This
climb was different. They went up a crack in the rock,
stepping into it at the bottom of a "V" shape. He showed
her how to put her back against one side, and walk up the other, then
move her upper torso with her arms, stiff behind her. It
was strenuous, but she only had to do that for ten feet, and it took
her mind off the pain. He was there before her, standing on
a narrow ledge, and leaned down to pull her up beside him.
She looked down into the V, and felt a moment of panic. Ten feet
looked more like thirty from where she was.
"Hold
on to my belt in the back," he instructed her. She did, and
he started leading her along the ledge, which went upward and around
the face of the rock. Suddenly, they were standing on a
shelf of rock, about three feet wide, with a rock face on her right
that went straight up as far as she could see, and wide open space on
her left. She hugged the rock face with her back as she
turned to look at the emptiness. She was looking across a valley
at the side of another mountain, about a mile away. The
whole valley was spread out before her. The sun was behind them,
low in the sky, and it illuminated the opposite mountainside like a
spotlight. Parts of the valley were in the shadow of
the rock face she was leaning against, and it was so black there that
it looked like a thousand feet of emptiness, going down into the depths
of the Earth.
"Wow," she said, in awe.
Bob
had brought the binoculars, and lifted them to his eyes, and began
scanning the opposite mountain side. She saw he was looking
just below the tree line, and wondered what he was looking
for. He took so long that she leaned forward, to peek over
the edge of the ledge they were standing on. It went
straight down into darkness, and she leaned back, panting, fear eating
at her guts.
"Ahhh," said Bob, the binoculars no longer moving back and forth. "I hoped she'd be there."
"Who?" asked Brenda breathlessly.
He handed her the binoculars, and showed her how to focus them. Then he pointed.
"See that gray rock, up high, that's got pink rock on both sides?"
"Yeah ... it looks a little like an exclamation point," she said.
"OK,
focus on that, and go down slowly, until you're in the trees.
You'll see Spruce firs first. Keep going down until you see the
green change, just where the Douglas firs take over. A little
lower, you'll see the green change again, to the darker
Junipers. There's a big patch of raspberries, that have
much lighter green. Look around in the raspberries for something
black."
She
did as he said, finding the gray rock, and then dropping her field of
view. She saw the colors change, like he said they would,
though the trees looked almost the same to her. The lower
Junipers were easy to spot, and then she saw the lighter green of the
raspberry bushes.
"What am I looking for?" she asked, letting the binoculars go from side to side.
He was taking breath to answer her when she saw the bear.
It was black, and there were two cubs with her. She held her breath, and then let it out in a long sigh.
"It's a bear!" she sighed. "And it has babies!"
"She's teaching them to harvest the first raspberries," he said, his voice near her ear. "You've been in her den."
"She's
that bear?" Brenda watched as the cubs ignored their mother, who
continued to scrape branches into her mouth with her paw.
"Well,
this is her range," said Bob softly. "There are two
up here, that I know about, but the other one ranges South of here.
This valley, and the one we rode through when we left her den are hers."
"Where's the daddy bear?" asked the girl, breathlessly.
"He's
probably down lower. She won't have anything to do with him
while she has cubs around her. He might hurt them."
"Why?" she whined. "He's their daddy!"
"Bears are bears," he said, unable to explain it.
"That's sad," said the girl.
"I was hoping she'd be over there, so you could see her," said Bob.
"The cubs are eating grass!" said Brenda.
"In
the Spring, that's what they eat," said Bob. "Leaves, grass,
bark. In summer time they'll move on to berries and small
animals. They'll eventually get down to the lake, and take
fish from where the streams flow into it. This fall they'll
eat acorns and such, as they move back up toward the den.
She had the cubs two winters ago, though, so I doubt she'll let them
stay with her next winter. They'll be on their own by then, and
she'll probably be pregnant again. I hope so, anyway."
"You WANT bears on your ranch?" asked Brenda, still watching the family of bears intently.
"There's
room for them, and they don't bother us," he said simply. "Time
to go. We need to make the cabin by sundown."
"Cabin?" she asked.
"It's
a line shack, really, at the upper reaches of the high meadows.
We have to drop another thousand feet to get there. I thought you
might be ready for a real bed by this time."
"Down?"
asked Brenda, dropping the binoculars. Down meant that her
pussy would be hitting the saddle horn again. She didn't know how
much more of that she could take. She made a very practical
decision. "I need to put on some more of that saddle sore stuff."
They
had to climb back down, which was a bit harder than getting up.
When they came to the last ten feet, Bob went first, and then just
stood at the bottom of the wedge and had her step down onto his raised
hands. She walked her hands down the rock face as he lowered
her. The bottom of her shirt hung loosely, and Bob was
thankful for the darkness in the wedge. He was quite sure he
could have seen all the way to her breasts. She ended up
sitting on his shoulders, her pussy pressed to the back of his throat,
and both of them were intimately aware of that fact, though nothing was
said. He knelt and she was able to climb off of him.
Once
they were back to the horses, and an unhappy Dammit, who hadn't been
able to follow them up to the ledge, Brenda got out the
paste. There was no bunch of bushes, or anything like that
for her to hide behind, so Bob simply turned his back as she pushed
down her jeans. Seeing herself with no panties on looked
odd to her, but that thought fled as soon as she smeared the paste
along her inner thighs, and over her pussy lips. The soothing
numbness replaced the feel of her fingers, stimulating her where the
saddle had rubbed, and she sighed in relief.
"That's better," she almost moaned.
"You decent yet?" asked Bob.
"NO!"
she yipped. She pulled up her jeans, feeling foolish,
somehow, for yelling like that. She sighed again as she buttoned
her jeans. "Though I guess it wouldn't matter. You've seen
me more naked than my parents have ... at least lately."
"Yeah," sighed Bob.
When
she swung up into the saddle, Brenda knew she had made the right
decision. Her whole crotch area was numb, and it felt like it had
when she'd first started the trip. She was able to look
around, and pay attention to the country they were riding
through. They went down steeply and quickly, and it was
easy to feel the air getting warmer. The forest smelled different
to ... a more earthy smell, with the musky odor of decaying
leaves. The trees began to thin out, and the same
Juniper bushes she had seen in the binoculars began to appear, along
with other low bushes.
They
rode between two big boulders, and suddenly there was a field of grass
in front of them, with trees on both sides. She saw what looked
like a tiny wooden shack off in the distance, with what looked like a
cloud of some kind hovering near it.
"What's that?" she asked, pointing.
"That,
my little filly, is our hotel for the night. It has all the
amenities. We can cook a real meal, and sleep on soft beds
... at least softer than last night. It even has a hot tub."
"You're not supposed to tell me lies until we're sitting by the fire," she laughed.
"I'm
not lying. There's some hot springs next to the
cabin. See the mist? The last water we had to bathe
in was ice cold. You have to ease into this water because it's
over a hundred degrees."
"Oh,"
said Brenda. Even though she'd taken a "bath" only hours before,
the thought of soaking in hot water appealed to her.
