Chapter 6

The moment Kate drove into the driveway after coming from the Grange Hall she saw that Cole's pick-up was gone. Gone again to that woman! Her nerves were already shot and she felt them tighten even more. After their neighboring ranch foreman, Sandy Gayman, had forced himself between her nakedly spread legs down by the pond and emptied his passion into her she had come wearily back to the house, showered, and slept for the rest of the afternoon. A sleep that was like the sleep of the dead. Then she'd rushed around making a huge dinner, baked the blackberry pies, and did the last minute things she did every day to feed a lot of mouths. She was feeling shaken but composed enough to be just coolly silent with Cole when he finally came in. Every time the guilt had begun gnawing at her vitals she'd looked at her husband and remembered what he had done with the Meacham girl, and what she herself had done with Sandy. Thank God there'd been the Grange Hall to decorate. This had been one evening she couldn't possibly have spent at home... not after what had happened. All the way home from the Grange with Eric she'd wondered how she was going to face Cole. Now that he was gone she could be relieved and angry at the same time.

Work, she told herself, as she marched into the kitchen. Get the pies done. You'll be so tired by then you can fall into bed and not think. She looked up at Eric lounging in the doorway as she got the flour and sugar and pie pans out of the cupboard. "Don't you want to watch television?" she asked.

"Rather stay here with you, Mrs. Sutherland."

"How about letter writing. Don't you have a girl back home?"

"Never even had a date... maybe if I could find one like you..." He looked down at her shyly.

She smiled. "Well, you look around a little and you'll soon find someone. Meanwhile, you can help me with the pies. How about peeling some apples?"

The giant blonde youth seemed pathetically grateful to be allowed to help, and Kate's heart went out to him. He was so nice... a nice clean-cut boy. Then she forgot all about him as she began reliving the scene in the blackberry thicket.

"You worried about something?" Eric asked as he stood by the sink, washing the apples.

Kate looked up startled, her hands covered with flour. The big breadboard was covered with pastry rings she was rolling out. "Why... oh, I don't know, Eric. I guess we all have worries from time to time..."

"I think maybe our being here, I mean Angel and me... may have caused you some trouble with Mr. Sutherland. He seemed like... well, he keeps going off. I mean, it doesn't seem natural, seeing as how he's been gone so long. I wouldn't want to cause you any trouble. You've been so good to me. I'd like to live here... just stay here forever."

"That's sweet of you, Eric. I'm glad you like the ranch so much. As for Cole... well, he's busy and he had a lot on his mind. That Limousin bull cost an awful lot of money and he's just worried, I'm sure." Why was she reassuring the boy, she wondered. He couldn't really care one way or the other. But she knew it was herself she was reassuring.

Eric turned to her and looked straight into her eyes boldly. "It's not the ranch I like so much, Mrs. Sutherland." It's you. You are the most wonderful woman I've ever met," he ended softly.

"Oh... well... you'll find a wonderful girl--someday, Eric... After all, you just needed some mothering and... that's the one thing I seem to be good at," she ended, her voice dying away in her own reverie, her brows knitting in confusion.

"You're good at everything!" Eric protested fervently. "You're kind and good and... I can't stand it when you're unhappy!"

Kate looked at the blonde giant of a boy, touched that he saw such saintly qualities in her. It was more his age than anything else. At eighteen everything was either terribly good or terribly bad. All black and white. No compromises, no grey areas. Yet, she knew that life was mostly made up of the grey... with very few really black or really white moments. She thought guiltily of this afternoon with Sandy... so charcoal grey as to be black... but so pale and beautiful as to be almost white. Oh God... what a mess she'd made of things! Kind and good Eric said... and he believed it, his eyes blazing loyally. She could never be good again. She was an adulteress! No matter how she tried to justify it... that's precisely what she was!

"You're good and wonderful," he repeated, persisting.

"Don't say that!" she admonished sharply, rolling the dough energetically.

"Say what? That you're good... that you're unhappy... that I..."

"Oh, stop it, Eric! I can't stand it. I'm not good! I'm anything but!"

"You were crying this afternoon. I saw your eyes when I came in. Whoever it was made you cry... I'd like to kill them!"

"Please Eric!"

"If you were my wife, I would!" he insisted stubbornly.

Kate steadfastly refused to discuss it any more. When the pies were finally done, it was almost midnight. Cole hadn't called and she kept listening, but no sound of a car. Her nerves were pretty shot. Eric's talk about her goodness had unnerved her and brought back the afternoon's guilt ten fold.

"It's terribly late. I think I'll turn in. You'd better get some sleep, Eric."

"But the pies... don't they have to cool and be put in the freezer?" he asked desperately, trying to think of some excuse to keep her with him a little while longer. It was the first time he'd had a chance to really be alone with her for more than a few minutes.

"I can do that in the morning. Put out the lights except for the office light, will you?"

"Mrs.--Mrs. Sutherland... ?" There was a plea in his voice that made Cole's wife turn at the foot of the stairs.

"What is it, Eric?"

"Would you come downstairs for a second there's something I want to show you.

"Can't you show me tomorrow? I'm terribly tired."

"It can't wait, Mrs. Sutherland." His handsome young face was agonizingly earnest and he seemed quite desperate... as though he were hurting inside.

In the bunk room downstairs, Kate turned to him wearily. "All right, Eric. What is it you want to show me?"

His whole body was tensed to the breaking point. Somehow he had to do it. He had to find the courage. With no warning, he forced himself to reach out and grab her, crushing her beautiful body to him and finding her lips awkwardly. She smelled of apple pies and a delicate flowery perfume and her lips were soft and full under his. A surge of power went through him! He was kissing her! Jesus! He actually was kissing her!

Kate gasped as she felt his arms go around her, pulling her against his hard young powerful body. His lips were soft and then desperately hard and passionate. Oh God! She should have guessed. He had a terrible case of puppy love! How stupid of her not to see it. She knew how damaging her laughter could be to him at such a vulnerable age. He was feeling everything so acutely. It hadn't been that long since she had been a teenager and she remembered vividly the agonies of adolescence.

She pulled away gently. "Eric, no... you'll find a girl your own age..."

"I don't want a girl my own age. I want you. Oh, Kate... !" His brain felt as though it were going to explode! He'd kissed her and for a moment, just a moment, she'd kissed him back! Oh, Jesus, his whole groin was on fire! It had never been so bad! A strangled whimper tore out his chest and he pulled her to him roughly, pressing her whole delectable body into his, feeling the fleshy fullness of her soft breasts mash into his heaving chest. "Please, just let me kiss you again... I've never kissed a girl before."

Before Cole's wife could stop him, she was imprisoned in the young giant's powerfully muscled arms; his warmly eager mouth followed her twisting face till he caught her lips again. Moans were coming out his massive chest and in his eagerness he was almost whimpering in pain... the exquisite pain of holding this older woman in a deeply intimate embrace.

The first time, he had said. A surge of pity swept through Kate, remembering the agony and sweet need of being eighteen. And because of this, she responded unthinkingly, parting and softening her lips under his and wrapping her arms around the trembling young giant's slim-hipped waist. After all, it was only a kiss, and what harm can it do? She was totally unprepared for the boy's fervent reaction or for the strange thrill of forbidden excitement that abruptly shot through her gradually awakening body. I'd better stop him, she thought, then decided to give him just five more seconds. She started mentally counting the seconds, but only got to three before she stopped counting and tightened her arms around his waist.

"Oh, Kate," the boy moaned, "let me be good to you... let me love you. Mr. Sutherland doesn't care about you. He's awful to you and you re so wonderful. Let me be good to you... oh God!"

His hotly zealous young mouth was suddenly sliding down her throat, blazing a trail of sensation so wildly intense that Kate was stunned by its impact. Oh God! She knew she must stop him at once, but yet she felt an overpowering reluctance to break this ill-advised embrace. Kate could feel her nerves and skin deliciously tingling, and her suddenly hungry loins were beginning to ache. He was so hard and strong, and his young male body was setting her own wanton flesh alight! "Depraved slut," she mentally told herself. Letting a young boy like this kiss her... leading him on... being too nice to him... using him as a decoy to get her way with Cole about adopting a child! She must be mad! Her head was whirling and her bones were turning to jelly as the young boy held her crushed against his huge maleness.

"Stop... no, Eric... it's wrong. Oh God... let me go... we mustn't... we can't!" she whispered, not moving her arms from around his waist.

"I'm never going to let you go... never... Oh, Kate!" Eric felt her beautiful lips open wide under his mouth, and thrust his tongue into the warmly wet cavern where he tasted her moans and womanly sweetness. Abruptly, kissing was no longer enough. He had to hold her big, wonderfully soft tits that were mashed against him! His hand timidly pressed between their bodies and closed over the heavy roundness that was her woman's flesh! Oh Christ! It was so hot and firm and full; he squeezed it hard, wanting to crush its loveliness to his watering mouth! Even through the cotton shirt and bra he could feel her rounded globe quiver in his hand, and the nipple growing hard and erect.

Kate moaned as she felt the boy's hand close over her breast in a rapturous clasp. His touch sent sensually thrilling licks of flame spiraling from her nipple outward, and the fire was setting her vagina ablaze as well! No! No! No! The word screamed inside her skull in an insistent shriek but her flesh was wantonly ignoring it, quaking and swaying under his clutching hands and tenderly fucking mouth! Oh God, she was a slut to let this teenage boy... to lead him astray... and yet... it was so sad that his young masculine giant's body was so deprived... that he'd never even kissed a girl before! There was a strange vanity in being the first... in initiating such a strong virile young bull! Oh God! Stop it! Stop thinking about it!

At last she tore her mouth away with a supreme effort. How could she even think such thoughts? Yet it had seemed so natural to kiss this handsome blonde giant who thought she was a saint! Saint? It was he who was the saint. Unsullied, virginal, clean... and strong. She was a slut... she knew that now... an abandoned harlot!

"Ohhh, Kate... I've never felt anything so good in my whole life... until now... Ohhhh, God... don't leave me... let me love you... I'll die if you don't... Please... ohhhh, please!"

Kate shook her chestnut hair, the breath gasping out her flared nostrils. She pushed hard against his great muscular chest. She had to escape this boy who had aroused her so violently. But physically he wasn't a boy... he was a man... a hard masculine, huge man!

"You're so sweet, so good... please don't leave me now... I can't stand it," he said, moaning into her hair.

"No, don't say that... I'm not good... I'm horrible... horrible to let a decent young boy like you kiss me and try to... Oh, Eric." Suddenly the tears came pouring out her eyes and the pain in her breast was a knife. "Can't you see that I'm just a... a rotten whore... or worse... Oh God... let me go!" Her head came down in her hands, and all the anguish and frustration and hurt came pouring out in scalding tears on her tightly clenched fingers.

Eric looked at her agony and made up his mind. It was as though something snapped into place inside him; he wouldn't ask her now. He would tell her! In one swift motion he bent and lifted her in his arms and turned toward his bunk. His cock was painfully beating, a huge enlarged second heart inside his tight Levi's, and every step was agony. He laid her gently on his bed. "Don't cry, Kate... it's all right, darling... shhh," he crooned to her softly, as he tore his clothes off and with shaking fingers swiftly unbuttoned her shirt. She lay sobbing as if her heart were splitting in two.

The young boy sat naked on the bed, his massive prick upstanding like a stone phallus except that it quivered and beat and was impatiently seeping at the tip of its swollen head. He lifted his boss' limply sobbing wife by the shoulders and pulled her blouse gently from her shaking shoulders, unhooking her bra as he went, whispering and kissing her while he worked. As her suntanned breasts popped free, his breath wadded painfully in his chest! Jesus! It was okay to look at tits in a magazine, but pictures couldn't begin to capture the warmth and lusciousness of the real thing. In reverence, both his enormous hands came out to gently cup them, and the warmly silken weights were heavy and beautiful in his hands. "Ohhhhh, God, Kate," he breathed, and burrowed his face between the heatedly trembling mounds, using his hands to scrape them against each side of his face.

Kate felt the sandpaper contact of Eric's beard stubble between her heaving breasts, and she moaned as wildly racing, jagged streaks of ecstasy began flashing across her quaking body! She felt as though her head was a mass of crossed signals and confused connections! The feel of the ardent young mouth between her breasts sent scintillating sensations raging through her, and strangely enough within the last three or four minutes, she no longer cared whether this was right or wrong.

She was already an adulteress, had already hit the bottom layer of hell... how much farther could she sink?

Her arms went out of their own volition and held the young boy close against her shaking breasts, and she lay for long minutes running her hands down his heavy muscled, brute-strong young back. She listened to his anguished whimpering and felt his hot hungry breath burning against her naked flesh, and felt sorry for him because he had never even held a woman in his arms before. Well, then, let him see it all, let him...

Kate dug down and found her skirt zipper. Frantically she jerked the skirt down and kicked it off her feet; then she arched her back, lifting her hips, and peeled the soft flimsy whiteness of her panties down.

Eric sat up, the breath coming out his mouth now in great gulps like a beached fish, staring at her as she suddenly lay nakedly in all her curvaceous splendor on the bed before him. His expression was as if all the treasures of the earth were spread out for his taking. "Ohhhh, Gooooddddd, Kate... you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Slowly, as if in a trance; Kate held up her arms to the young boy, her eyes holding his locked. With a deep groan he fell across her, his yearning mouth wetly enclosed her breast, and she jerked and arched her chest up to it fiercely. Young, but oh so good...

"Yesss, Eric, darling... Yesss," she hissed, feeling her full, firmly matured tits swelling even greater under his greedily devouring mouth. Ohhh God... whore, slut, harlot, Jezebel! She called herself every dirty name she could remember, but they were only words and words no longer mattered with her flesh in such fiery rapture!

The young boy sucked the warm silken nipple into his watering mouth, and he thought surely heaven was within his grasp! Kate! His woman... his first... he was going to have his first woman! He was going to be a man at last! No shit from anybody anymore... He was going to be a man!