On Monday, Mary said, “Chance, can I come over after classes this afternoon?”
“I hope you will.”
“Will you be there?”
“I´m not sure right now. You just let yourself in.”
“Where do you hide the key?”
“No key. Just enter your birthday on the keypad.”
“You´re kidding. My birthday? How come?”
“It´s been set for that ever since I found it out. I won´t be much later than, say, four. Make yourself comfortable. You want to stay?”
“Yeah.”
.oOo.
The house was behind a high wall that surrounded the property. Mary realized she´d been lucky the gate had been open when she went running there almost a week before.
She tapped in her birthday and opened the gate, then the door. ‘I never saw a thing while I was here before,´ she thought. ‘Except him.´
The house was U-shaped with a big patio and pool in the center. The high ceilings were supported by heavy timber posts and wooden beams. The outside walls were mostly solid, covered with stucco that looked a little like adobe. The space inside was incredibly open, the walls to the patio were glass that looked like most of it would slide open in good weather.
There was a sort of entry where Mary had attacked Ken and left her clothes on the floor. The bottom of the U was a huge living and dining room with a good, integrated kitchen. The glass walls gave the feeling you could see everywhere in the house.
From one end of the living room the left wing was visible through arches to a bed on a raised platform at the end. ‘That´s where we made love for three days and nights,´ Mary thought. ‘I hope he gets back soon, I want some more.´
Through one arch was the library, where books lined the walls and light came in from the patio. Through the next arch was the bedroom, the bath a part of it with a huge tub and separate shower. A small, sky-lit room held the toilet.
The other wing had two bedrooms and a bath between, the bath completely open as on the other side, the bedrooms separated from the patio and from each other by a low brick wall and a glass partition that did nothing to hide the big, raised beds.
Mary hung her clothes in the entry and wandered around the house, looking in closets, bouncing on the beds, looking at the books in the library. She took a dip in the pool and stretched out on a lounge in the sun. The yard between the patio and the wall was, as at Still Waters, mostly wild grasses and flowers. She relaxed and dozed. When she heard Ken open the door, she ran to him.
“Now. Hurry ... Right here.”
.oOo.
“Who was your first lover, Chance?”
“The daughter of our cook at the ranch. She was a year younger than me, and we started making love pretty early. I found her swimming naked one day and we made love on the grass. Then we made love in the barn, and in her bed or my bed almost constantly until her mother got married to one of the hands and moved away. She was hot and eager and full of adventure. We tried everything we could think of, and then she started asking me about my friends until I brought them around. We quit that after a while, though, because she didn´t want to get a rep. Not that she wasn´t willing, just not willing to take the consequences if someone shot off his mouth. Some of the guys brought their own girls, and that was fun, too.”
“And later?”
“I´m like you, Mary, I think. I love sex, want as much as I can get. But I´m choosy about who I screw. I have to like them, respect them, be able to treat them as friends. I´ve never screwed a woman I didn´t like, and there are a lot of them I wouldn´t touch. On the other hand, if I like a woman, you can be sure I´m going to try and screw her.”
“You´re right. I am like that. I just haven´t been getting much adventure lately – my mind´s been a little bent out of shape with my Mom and all ... And what have you been doing for sex since you moved here? You haven´t been sitting here waiting for me.”
“No. I´m not into pining away for the sake of love when I can get laid fairly easily. There are some women I know who enjoy having me visit. Some of them are married to my school or college friends and we like to get together. I think you might like some of them.”
“I´ll bet I will. And if I do, I´ll take them to bed, too.”
.oOo.
One of Will´s nudes of Mary hung on the wall of the living room.
“That´s one of my favorites. You bought the original.”
“The minute I saw it in the catalog, I called Sigrid and ordered it. In this, you´re sex incarnate. It´s exactly you as I´ve always seen you.”
“Even mucking out stalls?” She rubbed her breasts on his stomach. “Will drew that from studies he did when Tom and I were screwing one day. Tom was taking his time and he made me come at least three times. I was wild, and when he finished, I jumped Will and made him do me, too. Will just left Tom out of the picture.”
“I know. I can hear you laughing when I look at it. Only, I didn´t know about that before.”
“I´m going to ask Will to do one for the bedroom. Hang it over the head of the bed.”
“What do you want him to do?”
“I want him to do a pastel of you putting your cock into me. Close up. Just your cock and my cunt and maybe a little more. I want it to look exactly like you and me.”
“If you put it over the head of the bed, you´ll be able to see it from here.”
“I hope so. I´ll tell him to make it big ... What´s with the glass walls on the bedrooms? You can see what anyone´s doing.”
“That´s the idea. I love watching. I like being watched. Do you?”
“After this weekend, you need to ask?” she giggled, reaching for him. “Let me hold that. Yes, I love doing it ... Umm, Yummy ... And being watched ... Come inside again ... Knowing someone is looking, seeing me getting it and giving it ... Slowly ... And I love watching sex, watching other people doing it ... Oh, yes ... And feeling myself getting hotter ... and then I find someone to do it with me ... Yes ... Faster ... And coming ... and loving it ... You.”
Later, Ken explained, “If they want privacy, they can pull the curtains. I haven´t had a lot of guests yet, but none of them has drawn the curtains.”
“The bathrooms are great, too. I like watching people getting clean. Shame to hide it. People are beautiful.”
“How long you going to stay?”
“Forever. At least, until tomorrow. Really, as long as it stays good. Or, until you throw me out.”
“I´m a mean son of a bitch. Got witnesses.”
“Me, too. One day at a time. ‘Till it´s over. Okay?”
“Okay.”
.oOo.
“I´ve decided what I´m going to offer Sarah for the stables.”
“What?”
“Well, you said you weren´t going to give your friends away, and I agree with that. But maybe you´ll give me your opinion of what I have in mind.”
“Try me and see. I´ll certainly tell you if I don´t like it.”
“Well, first I want to buy her out completely. One hundred percent. But the price will be attractive.”
“Why not offer her a partnership?”
“As a partner, she´d have to come up with money to match anything I do with the place. I don´t want to put her at the end of the gun. She´s already been there a long time. I have a good idea what the place is worth and what she owes on it, and I can make an offer that will give her a good return. She could probably retire on it, but I´m hoping she won´t.”
“Steve won´t be retiring for a long time, yet.”
“That´s her lover? I´ve met him, he´s okay.”
“I´ve slept with him. He is.”
“That´s what I love about you. You stick up for your friends.”
“So, you buy Sarah out and she can go to pasture.”
“I hope she won´t. I want her to run the stables, the riding classes, your girl´s group – all of that.”
“She´ll quit. She´s got the tee-shirt.”
“I know. But I have an idea for her. Two ideas. First, I´ll give her options to gain equity in the place. I know she loves it, and selling it outright will make her move to Mexico just to forget how much she loved it. Maybe regaining part of it will help.”
“Umm.”
“That´s really just a payback for something else that´s a lot harder. We´re going to be buying in youngsters, yearlings or less, and we´ll be doing quite a bit of breeding. There´ll be foals all over the place. I need someone to rear them, to teach them that people aren´t all predators. Or, at least that people aren´t always a threat. That´s what I really want her for. I want her to be a second mother to those critters, so that when I get ready to train them, they´ll be half-trained already. She´ll have to learn how to talk horse, and how to act like a horse. And still be a person.”
“We. Who´s ‘we´?”
“You and me. As long as it lasts.”
“Chance, you probably have a deal.”
“I know.”
“God, I hate that.”
.oOo.
“Chance, there´s a problem with your breeding scheme, at least I think there is. What are you planning to train these horses for?”
“Most of them for Western Pleasure class. That´s really the market here. The ones with the talent for it, maybe Cutting and Reining.”
“No cows.”
“Huh?”
“I found out with Hero and The Bay. They´re smart horses. Hero was already well trained. But, no matter what I could do with them, they didn´t really cut it in competition. I kept getting beat by guys who had cow ponies. So, I took them out to Aunt Bessie for a few weeks and let them figure out what cows are and what it takes to deal with them. When I got them back, I started winning. You haven´t figured in the finishing touch, Chance ... I probably need to take Hero and The Bay out for a refresher.”
“You´re right. Any ideas? Forty-five acres – even here – isn´t enough for a cattle ranch, even if I wanted one.”
“Let me talk to Dan and Consuela.”
“Dan´s your Sidney cousin?”
“Yeah. and Consuela´s his girl. Between them they´ve got family with two of the biggest and best cattle operations in Colorado and New Mexico. Beth´s kick is running Bessie´s place as a cattle and baby ranch. Dan´s sucking hind tit, though he never minded any kind of tit I know of. Still, he´s a little at loose ends. And Consuela´s got brothers who´re probably going to run the Hermanos spread if they don´t get into a blood feud over it.”
“What do you want to do with two loose ends?”
“Make a rope, idiot ... Maybe we can work out a deal for them to take our four-year-old saddle-brokes and put them in front of cattle. Make real cow-ponies out of them. They get to offer the ranchers a reasonable remuda and we get our brokes cattle-trained. ‘Los Hermanos Rent-a-Horse´.”
“Who knows? It might even work.”
“I know.”
“Damn it, don´t you start that.”