He met her the summer he was working at the Sanders' ranch. She was a friend of Meg, the boss's daughter, which made her inaccessible to a ranch hand like him, but that only served to make him want her all the more. She had a little girl's innocence about her that made him think she might be a virgin and he wanted to be the one to change her status. With that ambition in mind, he began engineering situations in which he could get her alone. Despite his best efforts, however, most of his engineering collapsed like so many broken Tinker Toys. She and Meg proved to be frustratingly inseparable.
Watching her prance around the ranch in the briefest of outfits, he had secret fantasies of what all he'd do to her once he had her alone. But the fantasies were all he had to keep him warm at night, because that golden chance never seemed to come. He was frustrated as hell by the time July was half over, and he'd still not made any headway.
For all his plotting and planning, his chance finally came and, as these things so often happened, it was totally unexpected. She managed to wander into the stables one day, chasing some ragtag mop of a puppy. Fortune smiled and he happened to be there alone, tending to the horses, when he heard her enter. Peeping around the corner of the stall, he saw her coming toward him. The puppy was bounding toward the far wall where they kept the saddles, into the corner farthest from the door, and he realized with a slow frisson of pleasure that he could trap her between the corner and his own body if he came from the other side. Waiting until she passed the stall, he slipped out, following her. Her concentration was totally on recapturing the runaway puppy.
"Hi, I'm Ray," he said softly when she started to reach down to pick up the puppy. Jumping slightly, she whirled around, one hand over her heart, the puppy apparently forgotten.
"I--I really didn't know anyone else was in here," she stammered. "You scared me," she added, laughing softly. "I'm Suzanne," she said, offering her hand to him.
He shook her hand solemnly when all he really wanted was to push her down and take her right there. She shifted uncomfortably and he searched for something to say, but his mind seemed to be working on only one track. He couldn't talk about that, could he? In the awkward pause that followed, his eyes strayed to the top of her blouse and he could see the swell of her breasts. He was sure that she noticed what he was staring at and he thought he'd lost his chance. Chiding himself silently, he tried to drag his thoughts away from the one image they seemed intent on flashing in his mind.
Finally, Suzanne saved the awkward moment by saying, "You ride really well. I've watched you a lot on that chestnut horseβ¦"
"Would you like me to teach you?" Grabbing the opportunity instantly, he hoped she would accept.
"Would you really?" she asked eagerly.
"Sure, why not? It would be a pleasure," he said with a smile. "Why don't you meet me here tomorrow, at dawn. We could get it over with before anyone in the house rises. I'm not really sure they would approve," he explained.
"Okay. Tomorrow at dawn," she promised before walking away, the puppy forgotten in her enthusiasm. Picking up the little devil, Ray kissed it soundly before striding out with it, returning it to its mother.
The next morning Ray had already saddled the horse and was waiting for her as Suzanne came hurrying out of the house. Greeting her with a wide smile, he helped her up before mounting behind her, pressing their bodies intimately together. Fidgeting a bit uneasily, Suzanne asked why they were only taking out one horse.
"Since you've never ridden before," Ray said, his rehearsed answer sounding professional and smooth, "we will need to ride double. Once you get the hang of it, we'll see about getting you your own mount." He waited while the horse shifted impatiently under them, breathing a sigh of relief when she relaxed physically and he knew she'd accepted his reasoning.
The saddle was an old one with a fair-sized saddle horn, which she was clutching for dear life. After walking the horse away from the house, Ray gently pried her hands away from it, showing her how to hold the reins. Once she was handling them with some confidence and his hands were free, he slid his hands onto her waist and then slowly moved them around to lie lightly over her stomach. When she didn't say anything, he moved them down to her thighs. Tensing, she still said nothing. Resting his hands there for a while, he bent murmured instructions on how and where to lead the horse in her ear, his mouth tantalizingly close to her skin before moving them back onto her stomach, then upward toward her breasts. After sucking in her breath, she released it in a long sigh.