Mornin', girl. How'd you sleep last night?

You're several ages older now, And your eyes have started showing how The little girl is growing now.

Mornin', girl. Was that you last night? Crying on the radio, Begging for a way to go Back to where love wasn't jumbled so?

Oh, no, things are different now Than they were before. You know love is more than kisses, A whole lot more.

Mornin', girl. Put your dreams away, And read your box of Cheerios, And powder-puff that pretty nose, And go out and find your man where the wild wind blows.

Mornin', Girl.

Amanda was riding her horse. On the day after her Senior Prom, she was on her new quarter horse, heading towards the mountain range that formed one of the boundaries of her Dad's ranch and was thinking, mostly about last night. Her thoughts jumped around, like the horse's steps on the uneven path.

It would be hot later, but the weather was cool now and she was enjoying the ride; even though she was breathing a little too deeply. It was early summer, almost the end of the school year in her small Montana town. The weather was perfect, but the horse and her thoughts were both bouncing back and forth along the trail.

Amanda Amelia Atkinson, eighteen, short, athletic, pretty, and a high school senior had gone to her Senior Prom the night before with Jerry (Jer) Keydoff. Except for their height differences, they made a great couple: he was six foot two and she was five foot nothing; she was the star of the girls varsity soccer team and the best swimmer in the state, he was the quarterback and the power hitter on the baseball team. He was incredibly good looking.

The date was like something in a fairy tale. He had knelt and handed her a dozen roses when he had asked her to the Prom. That night, he looked like a prince in his custom-fitted tuxedo, she felt like a princess in her hand-stitched ball gown. They had danced every dance together and they were voted the king and queen of the Prom. When the dance ended, Jer had helped her into his car and driven away, like a princess in her carriage.

After, when she didn't want him to go farther than touching her breasts, he ripped her dress and tried to rape her. Just before Jer succeeded, the cabin door exploded and in charged John Schmidt, a stable boy on her Dad's ranch, and the same age as Amanda. He practically knocked the door off its hinges and then knocked the football star unconscious with one punch. As usual, he wore baggy overalls, a white tee shirt, and work boots. She was glad to see him, in spite of that.

Working in the stable, mucking stalls, hauling hay, shoeing horses, etc., built up a lot of muscles. He was also deeply tanned and handsome, in a rough-polished fashion. Amanda had never noticed before, even though the boy had been living on her father's ranch since he was five, and working there since he was ten or eleven.

Her horse stumbled and she remembered, when she was five, her dad had given her a pony. She was supposed to take care of the pet, but most of the time, the boy did it. She helped him sometimes. He was nice. As she grew, he was always around.

When she outgrew the pony, her Dad gave her a quarter horse filly. It was smaller than most, but very fast. John was always there, helping with the currying, and carrying the heavy saddle and helping her with the rest of her tack. She now remembered that, when she had been a barrel racer (that had been between her eighth and sixteenth birthdays), he had attended all her competitions. And, in Junior High, when she had joined the swim team, he was at all the meets. She still swam competitively and he was still at every race. Now that she was remembering, she recalled how he had looked at her in the wet, skintight suit after the races. Was the sun getting too high? Amanda felt warm with the thought.

In the last two years, when she had worked her way on to the varsity girls' soccer team, he was always sitting in the stands for her matches, even though the games were played on Thursday afternoon; Friday nights and Saturdays were reserved for the boys' games, for Jer and his buddies.

After he knocked out the quarterback, Amanda just laid on the bed, embarrassed, because she only had on panties, but too drunk to move to cover herself. The torn dress held breast shields, and the useless material was wrinkled and piled next to her. John told her not to worry, he had seen more, and would not do anything about it.

When she asked about him seeing naked girls, he blushed. "I watched you many times when you and your girl friends went swimming."

Now she blushed even more -- she and her girlfriends had sometimes gone skinny dipping in one of the stock watering holes during the hot summer months. Once, they had even practiced kissing and touching each other, so they would know what to do when a boy wanted to touch them. Amanda had a small orgasm, from one girl who seemed to really know her way around her body. Then, at the girl's urging, Amanda licked between her legs until the girl had an orgasm, too.

Had he watched that? Amanda was mortified! And why had he been watching her swim naked? And how had he known that she needed help last night?

She hadn't even known where she was. After the prom, Jer had escorted her to his car, handed her a beer, and driven them to his father's cabin somewhere in the woods. She finished the first can before they arrived and he had given her a second as soon as they walked in the door. They had kissed and chatted for a while and he had given her a third beer, then a fourth. He started kissing and she didn't object, even when he stroked her breasts over her dress. But, when she had found him trying to take her dress off, she had told him to stop. But he didn't stop. Then she tried to tell him 'only above the waist.' That didn't stop him either. He had, probably because of his beer consumption, been unable to unzip her beautiful prom dress, so he had ripped it off of her, almost in half, and carried her to the small bed wearing only her panties and shoes. Amanda had screamed, and John and blasted his way in.

She realized that John had been watching her, ever since she was five years old. His help had come every time she needed it, but had been subtle and she had not noticed it before. Even last night, he had been watching, making sure she was safe. He must have followed the Jerk's car from the dance all the way to the cabin. If she had not screamed, she would never have known that he was there; he was like that -- always there when she needed him, supporting whatever she wanted to do, but never pushing her or stopping her from trying something new. John always knew the right things to do as far as Amanda was concerned.

And last night, Jerry, the football player and jerk, had known exactly what he wanted to do. He had gotten her drunk, then gotten her very horny, touching and kissing all the secret places on her body. So horny that, when John had knocked out the guy as he started to rape her, she had begged him to finish the job, even starting to remove her own panties.

John stopped her. He kissed her lips gently and stroked softly his rough fingers down her body, exciting her bare breasts and almost stopping her breathing when they moved over her panties and pushed between her labia and pressed on her clitoris. A few quick strokes brought her a peak higher than she had ever climbed before, and left her breathless from the rarified air at that altitude and from her pleasure. Then he had slipped her into some oversized sweats, bundled her in the blanket from the bed, and carried her out to his beat-up pickup truck. He disappeared for a few minutes, then returned to drive her back to her house.

"Where did you go?" she asked when he climbed behind the wheel and slammed the door.

"I tied the jerk up and left him naked." John laughed. "Do you remember the double loop knot?"

"I think so. It goes around a branch or something and keeps a tight hold, no slipping?"

"Right. Anyway, his dick was stiff, so I tied a double loop around it. By morning, he will be really hurting because with the knot on the stiffness won't go down. And his hands are tied so he can't reach the phone, or even touch himself. All he can do is sit there with it hanging out, getting more and more painful. Maybe he will learn a lesson, but I doubt it."

A giggle escaped Amanda. Either because she was drunk or because of the mental image of Jer the jerk tied naked with his stiff prick turning purple, and him helpless to do anything about it.

As drunk as she was, she fell asleep in the truck on the way home and he had to wake her to sneak to her bedroom. Immediately after her head felt the pillow, she was asleep again, still in the borrowed sweats.

She woke early, long before the sun, because she had to get rid of the beer she had drunk. John had warned her to drink plenty of water and juice, and take some aspirin when she woke, to help with the hangover. Amanda remembered that, and poured herself a glass of water and swallowed a few aspirins. As she was drinking, she was thinking about John and how he was always there for her. Back in her bed, those thoughts kept her awake until the sky started to shade gray. Finally, Amanda got up and sat at her desk, considering.