Another Roll in the Hay

Author's Note

As this is my fiftieth published story on Lit, I thought I would reintroduce some old friends by way of fleshing out the back-story of one of the minor characters in my 'Beth's Summer Break' series.

Leo appears in chapters eight and nine of the story, where he is taken advantage of by Josie and Beth at his aunt's stable yard. There, his part in the tale is told by Beth.

Now he gets to tell his side of events as they unfold over a tumultuous few months.

The story can be read completely standalone from the original series.

One

It is quite a sad thing to say, but I always preferred the company of horses to humans. I was never the most confident of people anyway, but a sudden, very violent attack of acne in my middle teens destroyed any chance of me pursuing a fledgling interest in girls at the worst possible time.

Equine quadrupeds did not judge me on my appearance. Female humans did, and though it is fair to say that male humans also found me rather unpleasant to look at, I was more concerned with being shunned by the fairer sex.

More often than not, I ignored the stares or the pitying looks I garnered. Occasionally, I took exception to a barbed remark from a schoolmate and lashed out, much to my shame. Even overhearing two girls saying that I would be a real looker if it were not for my misfortune did little for me, and while my friends bragged about their latest conquests, I sat there thinking, 'I wish.'

Even when the toxic tide almost miraculously receded when I was seventeen, my confidence was shot to bits. All I could think of when talking to girls was my face as it had been - a map of a volcanic region of some distant, uncharted planet. The ignominy of having to wear jumpers, even in summer, lest the foul mess across my upper back and shoulders showed itself to an unsuspecting world through my shirt never left me.

Luckily for my sanity, my Aunt Megan owned a very successful and high-profile stable yard. I had ridden since I was able to walk and being on horseback was second nature to me. I had no desire to compete, although I was a decent show-jumper. I just loved the animals and it soon became apparent that, for some reason, they loved me.

Aunt Megan was, and still is, a formidable lady. A twin to my Mum, she is completely different to the genteel and refined lady that gave birth to me. Soon after I began working in the yard at weekends and during school holidays aged fifteen, she took me to one side. At first I thought I was in for a severe bollocking for something. I wasn't a stranger to being told off, so I expected the worst, especially at her first words.

"Leo, how do you do it?" Her stentorian tones echoed around the empty yard as we were about to close up one chilly autumn evening.

"Erm, do what, Auntie?"

I had never heard my mother swear in my life, but her forty-eight year old twin sister was a different kettle of fish. Hands on her hips, her ample bosom thrust out towards me, I was almost lifted off my feet by her response. Brian Blessed would have cowered at her ear-shattering volume.

"The horses, you daft bugger. I have some of the most vicious, nasty, downright evil little fuckers in the county on my books, but they eat out of your hand like new-born foals. You, my dear boy, are a fucking miracle. You are a horse-whisperer. I've worked with horses for thirty-five years and I've never seen anyone with an empathy for them like you. Whatever alchemy you perform on them, keep doing it. It's fucking incredible."

She turned to go as I stood open-mouthed, then turned back to me. "And if you tell my dear sister what I just said, leave out the fucking 'F word,' got that?"

I grinned back at her. "Fucking got it, Aunt Megan."

I thought I was in for a volley from her, but she grinned back at me. "Good lad." She then stood for a moment and cast her eyes about the yard. "If you want it, all of this will be yours one day, Leo. You're a natural." Her voice became almost wistful. "One day soon, when you're old enough. Since uncle Frank died, it's not been the same."

Stunned, I watched her retreating back as she headed towards the red-brick farmhouse in the centre of the yard that she had called home since she took the place on from my grandmother in her early twenties. She had never married 'uncle' Frank hence she and my mother were still both 'Downes'. It hit her hard when he passed some six years earlier and I knew she sometimes found running the yard alone a challenge.

I went home in a daze and by the end of the evening, my bewilderment and disbelief had turned into an all-consuming rage.

What fucking use was I to anybody as a horse-whisperer? I wanted to be a girl-whisperer, but some cruel twist of fate meant that if I got close enough to a girl to whisper in her ear, she would be repulsed by my moonscape of a face.

When I finally did find a girl I could converse normally with and relate to, any fleeting thoughts of a roll in the hay with her were firmly dashed a few weeks after she joined the yard as head lass.

Daisy was a typically blunt and bluff Yorkshire girl. I immediately took to her as she was one of the first girls that knew me after my eruptions had subsided, so there was no 'prior'. Big, earthy and robust, I harboured fantasies that she would be the first to make a man of me. I was then eighteen and she was in her mid-twenties. Many a night, I thought about us closing up the yard and retiring to a vacant stall for a rough and tumble in the hay.

A few weeks into her tenure, that thought, like so many of my other fantasies, was shattered. Having closed up, we walked across the yard; me to my mountain bike, she to her beaten-up old pickup. She opened the door, which looked like it would fall off if she pulled it too hard.

Her broad Yorkshire accent was so warm and comforting. "Sithee tomorrow then, Leo. I'm off for a well-earned few ales. Off to see yer girlfriend are you?"

As ever when the 'G' word was mentioned, I cringed. "No Daze, just off home as usual." I cringed even more at my next line. The lie mocked my craven uselessness with the opposite sex. "Sort of between girlfriends at the moment."

Yeah, like you've ever even kissed a girl, you fucking loser.

Her mouth dropped open. "What, a good looking lad like you? You're bloody kidding, aren't you?"

Tears welled up in my eyes and I hung my head. Somehow, I just felt compelled to confess to her. "Yeah, I'm bloody kidding Daisy. But only coz I've never had one."

Her pose reminded me of Aunt Megan. Hands on hips, she looked at me in amazement, her breasts thrust out. "Right, well that surprises me, I can tell yer. I might prefer me bed partners to be the same sex as me, but I know a looker when I see one, and you are a right looker." She narrowed her eyes. "Yer not... gay, are yer?"

Despite my discomfort, I had to laugh. "No, Daisy. Not as far as I'm aware."

She shook her head. "Shame. Some lovely lads down the Tanner's Arms would be in like Flynn if yer were."

Anyone over the age of sixteen that lived in Amberdown was fully aware of the reputation that the Tanner's Arms carried. I had only been in once as me and a few cricket club mates had decided to see if the rumours were true. We never even got as far as the bar before we beat a hasty retreat to jeers and laughter and ended up back in the more genteel world of the cricket club, where we were at least allowed under-age drinks and would more than likely get home unscathed.

Maybe it was the shock of Daisy's revelation, but I felt compelled to tell her why I was still an eighteen year old virgin. It all came tumbling out in a rush. Unfortunately, her reaction did not help matters and as she engulfed me in a warm, inviting embrace, I felt for the first time what it was like to enjoy the press of a woman's breasts against me. Her unruly tangle of straw-coloured hair hung down over my face.

"Aww, yer poor lad. Bloody hell Leo, I know what it feels like to be alienated. Took me a long while to come out. Don't worry, lovely lad. There's someone just down the road waiting for yer. It'll be special when it happens, honest."

It was too much for me and I felt myself harden at the soft give of her breasts, her earthy aroma and her strong arms around my shoulders. I expected a slap, but she stepped back with a grin on her face.

"Sorry, that were my fault. If it were me girlfriend Rachel with her strap-on pressing on me tummy like that, I'd be over that hay bale with her in seconds. Tried it twice with lads, I did. I knew full-well I were kidding meself." She took my face in her hands. "You don't want yer first time to be with a big old lessie from Barnsley, do yer? The right lass is just down the road, as I said."

That road still seemed a million miles away as I watched her drive away from the yard. Whatever she said, I still had a 'big old lessie from Barnsley' firmly in my thoughts as I relieved my discomfort in the stall in which I had hoped to lose my virginity with her.

When it did happen a few weeks later, it was neither the 'right lass', nor was it particularly special. But at least I had a monkey off my back. We were on a cricket tour to the North-East and one of the clubs put on an after-game party for us. Whatever fantasies I had dreamed up for my first time were nowhere near fulfilled with a girl called Jaz. It may have been short for Jasmine, but I never got to find out.

She had everything I had never looked for in a girl. Short, slightly plump, with dyed blonde hair and eyelashes that looked like dead spider legs. She smoked, had a Newcastle accent that could strip paint and tattoos up her arms and across her back.

But she came on to me and having scored a fifty earlier in the day and partaken of a few too many beers, I was not going to turn down the opportunity of finally getting laid. The first couple of times were short and not particularly sweet, but while she was no looker, she made up for it with an insatiable enthusiasm.

By the time I crawled back to my hotel from her flat as dawn broke, I could count - just - on the fingers of two hands the number of times I had made out with a girl.

I had nothing left, but at least I was on the board and by the end, I was managing to last quite well. I hated the fact that she smoked between our little bouts of passion but forgave her when she used her mouth on me to get me back in the game for rounds three and four.

As I left, she puffed on her cigarette. "Eee, six times, eh? Not bad. Wait till I tell me pals I shagged a posh lad from down south."

In her accent, it came out as "doon sooth."

At least the posh lad would return 'doon sooth' without the dreaded 'V' sign tattooed on his forehead.

By the middle of the summer, my count was up to three, and whilst I never hit the heady heights of six times in a night, I was more confident and the quality improved slightly as the quantity diminished.

But they were still just one-night stands. I had high hopes of Chessie, a lovely girl I met on a jaunt with friends down to Brighton one Friday evening. Just a short train ride away from Amberdown, it was a favourite weekend destination. When I asked for her number the next morning, she shook her head sadly.

"Sorry Leo. It was lovely and so are you, but I'm seeing someone. It was a mistake. Sorry to have led you on, but he's away at the moment and..." She trailed off, her head hung low. I barely heard her last, whispered, "So sorry."

At least Daisy was pleased for me. "See, yer getting there. Baby steps and all, eh? They'll be eating out of yer hand like the horses soon."

That all seemed a long way off, despite my small successes. I couldn't get Chessie out of my mind. She reminded me of a girl at the cricket club for whom I'd had the hots for years. Leanne played for the women's section of the club and once she turned eighteen and left school, began serving behind the bar most weekends and during our evening games.

She was a lovely, bubbly character with a gorgeous toothy smile that made my heart flip. The problem was, she was attached to one of the first eleven, and to put it mildly, he was an arsehole of the first water. Her best friend Tess tried to tell her, but for some reason she seemed smitten by him, even though most of us knew the things he got up to on tours and down in Brighton.

Leanne was one of the few girls my own age I had been able to talk to without getting tongue-tied. She too had suffered with her complexion for a while and was more inclined to sympathise with me than look away. As the summer went on, I found myself spending more and more time at the club, a lot of it propped on the bar talking to Leanne. At first, I thought it may have angered Ryan, her bloke, but at least it meant that he didn't have to talk to her and could get on with his drinking and regaling everyone about his prowess with a cricket bat and with 'the birds.'

Oh well, if nothing else, at least I was up and running with 'the birds'. Maybe by the end of the season, I might have a few more notches on my bedpost.

In the end, I did.

But if anyone had told me then how the next few months would unfold, I'd have laughed at them and said I never got that lucky.

Then my Aunt Megan introduced me to a lady called Josie Napier-Jones. At first, I thought all my bad luck had come at once.

Then my luck began to change.

Oh, did it change?

Two

When I first spoke to the woman who would change my life, it seemed strange to think I had known of her for a few years and seen her on many occasions, but never actually spoken to her.

Josie Napier-Jones was a forty-something redhead of diminutive stature but had a very large reputation around town. Once plain old Josie Jones, she was married to a pneumatic, drop-dead gorgeous Anglo-Chinese lady called Isadora. They had adopted their joint names on marriage and the Napier-Joneses became well known as the first same-sex marriage in the area, but also as the owners of a very fine cake-making business in the Town Square called Confection Confidential.

They also sponsored the women's teams at the cricket club and set up stalls selling their wares at most first eleven and women's games. They were an incongruous couple, but every red-blooded male from the first eleven down to the Colts had the raging hots for both of them. Judging by some of the looks they got at women's games, it was not only the men who fancied them.

The stable yard was a couple of miles out of Amberdown in the pretty Amber River valley, on the outskirts of Amberside village. There were a few more Amber-related names in the area, which made for much confusion with deliveries. There was a lovely trail along the river back into town, which was a popular trek of ours and the woods and meadows across the river made for ideal hacking country. We had arrangements with half-a-dozen local pubs and our pub-lunch treks had waiting lists they were so popular. As the long, hot summer rolled on we were pulled out with everyone wanting to be out in the open air and Aunt Megan said she could never remember things being so busy.

It was a hot Tuesday afternoon when things began to change for me. Aunt Megan was usually in her office upstairs in the farmhouse attending to the admin while the rest of us took lessons, supervised treks and looked after the boarding horses. The phone had been ringing all day and I could imagine her fielding call after call, getting more and more agitated at being interrupted from her work.

There was a bell on the side of the house that rang out across the yard so that if no-one was inside, we could run in and answer the call. A few of us had tried to get her to embrace that new-fangled mobile technology, but as with her bashed-up old computer that looked like something from a science museum, she refused to move with the times.

On many occasions, I had been told that when it was all mine, I could innovate all I liked but while she was in charge, it was her way and her way only.

I was crossing the yard when the bell sounded and usually it was picked up within two or three rings. This time was different, and it kept on going. I dived into the utility room next to the kitchen and picked up the old-fashioned receiver.

"Amberdown Stables, Leo speaking. How can I help."

"I'd like to speak with Megan Downes please." Although I had never spoken to her, I recognised those slightly arrogant, haughty tones. When she went on, it sounded like James Bond introducing himself. "My name is Napier-Jones. Josie Napier-Jones."

Wondering what on earth the redheaded bombshell could want with my Aunt, I told her I'd go and find her if she would care to hang on. I bounded up the stairs and knocked on my aunt's office door. It was a surprise she hadn't picked up in the first place and even more of a surprise to find there was no answer. I fought down a momentary panic attack at the thought she may be unwell and pushed the door open.

The sight I saw, I would never be able to unsee. I quickly raced back down and took Josie's number, promising her a call back at the earliest opportunity. My aunt would get back to her -- once she had finished bouncing energetically on some unseen gentleman admirer.

Daisy's timing was impeccable. "Y'alright Leo? Look like ye've seen a ghost!"

No, I had just seen sixteen stones of my naked auntie, huge boobs wobbling, her head rocked back in the throes of orgasmic bliss. In less than two hours, I would be sitting on the sofa she had been trying to demolish for our weekly team meeting. I had no idea if I had been spotted -- she seemed to be enjoying herself far more than any of the three girls I'd had the pleasure of, and none of them had gone at it with such gusto with her nephew.

It had only been a split-second, but it would be etched on my consciousness forever. I could barely even remember the face of the second girl I slept with as she came, but I would never forget the look on my auntie's face and the thought terrified me.

If she had seen me, there was no hint of it twenty minutes later when she emerged from the house. She looked a little flushed, but otherwise there was no hint of her tryst and her lover must have left through the back door as there was no sign of anyone else.

"Sorry, been on an important call. I probably missed a few - any messages?"

Trying not to laugh, I gave her Josie's number.

"Bloody hell -- Jay-En-Jay, no less! Wonder what that old reprobate wants. Probably wants to sell her bloody cakes at the next open day. If she does, she can piss right off. She stables her horses with that fucking lot at Moss Croft."

If any two words in the English language were guaranteed to earn my aunt's ire when combined together, Moss and Croft did it every time. The rivalry between the yards was legendary and went back to well before the time of any of the current incumbents.

She went off grumbling to herself and I spent the next hour trying unsuccessfully to erase my lingering vision of her upstairs from my mind.

The staff meeting was as it ever was - brief, to the point and over in twenty minutes. Daisy, Helena and Rhys, the senior staff members, got up to leave but Aunt Megan gestured for me to stay behind. My heart sank at the thought of what might be coming my way as I wondered who's bottom had been on the very spot on which I sat as she had ridden him like one of her prize-winning mares.

She looked at me as if nothing had happened. "Right Leo. Don't know if you recall our little chat a couple of years ago. About you taking all this over some day."

I swallowed hard. I wasn't expecting that.

"Well, that time is not quite here yet, but it is getting closer. You've proven yourself invaluable since you went full time and to be honest, the way things have gone this summer, I couldn't have done it without you."