Chapter Two
The event that had become the basis for her obsession had occurred one sunny afternoon just after her fifteenth birthday. She had been in the loft of her family’s small barn, hiding from her mother’s constant nagging attention. She’d been lying on a great pile of hay, with her library books around her when Jake had come in from the field.
At eighteen, he was tall, lanky, and more beautiful than anything she’d ever seen. A friend of her older brother, he’d been staying in their barn that summer, doing some work around their modest farm to earn his keep. There was still a bruise, high on his tanned cheekbone, from his last altercation with his domineering step-father who bullied him unmercifully. That final fight had drove Jake out of his home and into the Foreman’s barn. There just wasn’t room in their tiny home to accommodate him there, but her family had done what they could to make him feel welcome.
When he entered the barn, she held her breath, hoping to avoid detection. If he saw her up there he’d tell her mother where she was and then she’d be forced to go back to the kitchen to learn how to be a “proper wife.”
She had zero interest in being a farmer’s slave/mate, but her mother still felt it was her mission in life to demonstrate to her daughter what was required of a woman living in their rural Alberta community. As far as Kayla was concerned that meant a lifetime of drudgery and poverty, without any relief in sight. A two bedroom house with six people sharing a single ancient bathroom was not her idea of living.
Even at 15, Kayla, or Katie as she was known then, did not want to emulate her mother’s meager existence. She wanted money and power, and she wasn’t going to get that by learning how to bake the perfect pie crust, or how to get cow manure stains out of area rugs. Education was the key to her future, so she spent every spare moment absorbed in the books that introduced her to new ideas and other worlds. Bigger, more important worlds than the dismal one she currently occupied. The only bright spot in her tiny town was Jake, and he was completely disinterested in her.
Looking down through the cracks in the floor, she saw him pass directly beneath her. He had taken off his hat, and his blonde hair was dark with sweat. Dust motes swirled around him in the late afternoon sunshine as he walked with some urgency toward the small pallet he slept on in one of the empty stalls. There was a small, blue pitcher on a table there and he dipped a rag into it, raised the rag over his head, and dripped water onto his upturned face in an attempt to cool off.
She watched as he dipped the cloth into the pitcher again and brought it to the back of his neck and then inside the collar of his plaid work shirt. Impatiently, he ripped open the snaps on his shirt and threw it on the pallet. Leaning down, he picked up the water container, strode to the middle of the barn floor where there was a drain, and dumped the water over his head. It sluiced down over his tanned, smooth skin and she drank in the sight of him, shiny and slick with moisture.
She’d watched him at the local watering hole this past summer, and she certainly wasn’t the only girl there who’d noticed how broad his shoulders had gotten or the way golden hairs had sprouted below his belly button. But seeing him here was different. More intimate. Like he was performing just for her. She felt an odd tightening between her legs as she heard him sigh in relief.
He shook his head like a dog and his shaggy hair sent droplets of water flying around him. Reaching for the clean, but threadbare towel hanging over the side of the stall, he rubbed his chest and shoulders with it as he walked back into the stall where he’d left his shirt. He set the pitcher down on the table and turned toward the wall.
She expected him to leave at this point, but instead he seemed to be taking an unnecessarily long time drying his body. When she performed this task it took all of 30 seconds, but Jake was prolonging the act of toweling off for some reason. His back was to her, so she couldn’t see his expression, but she imagined he had that quiet, concentrated look on his face that she knew so well. The same look that overcame him when he was performing a task that needed his complete focus, like mending a fence or feeding an animal.
In the complete silence of the barn, the sound of a zipper going down was unmistakable. She nearly giggled, thinking he was going to change his clothes right in front of her, but he didn’t remove his jeans. Instead he seemed to be reaching inside them. Is he going to urinate right here in the barn? She wondered, shocked. That seemed an odd thing to do when there were all kinds of bushes out back. But she didn’t hear the distinctive sound of urine hitting the floor. Wildly curious, she moved out of her nest of hay so she could get a better view of what he was doing. She perched on a bale, and peered down from directly above him, glad he seemed too distracted to notice when some hay she’d disturbed fell around him through the cracks in the loft floor.
The first thing she noticed from her new position was the harsh, almost pained expression on Jake’s angular face. His white teeth were clenched and his gaze was focused on the wall in front of him. She angled her position and was able to see a picture was taped there. She couldn’t make out the details, but it looked like a snap shot of Jake’s girlfriend, Hannah, in her stupid, red and white cheerleading uniform. Hannah with the enormous chest and complete disinterest in her boyfriend’s tragic living conditions.
Looking down from Jake’s transfixed face, she allowed her gaze to touch on his naked chest, the tiny brown nipples and the ripples of his tight abdomen. Then she noticed what he was doing. She could see his penis. He was rubbing his hand up and down the shaft in gradually quickening jerks. He was masturbating. She had three brothers, so she had heard them talk about ‘spanking the monkey’ before, but she’d been totally grossed out by the thought of them doing that. Seeing Jake touch himself, however, was shocking and wildly exciting. Watching him, sharing this with him, even without his knowledge, she felt that tingling between her thighs intensify and she pressed her palm there to relieve the pressure.
It didn’t help, so she experimented with cupping the mound between her coltish legs. She mimicked the motion of Jake’s fist as he boldly pumped his penis faster and faster. She pressed her fingers as deep as her denim shorts would allow and it felt divine. Up and down his hand went, and she watched hungrily as he flexed his hips in rhythm with his palm. She widened her stance on the bale of hay and was delighted when this new position allowed her better access to that odd sensitive spot she’d never really noticed before but which now demanded her attention.
Jake was making sounds now. Grunts and harsh exhalations that were both animalistic and beautiful in their urgency. She found that she was fighting to hold back similar mewling sounds in her own throat as the pleasure between her legs intensified.
“Oh God!” Jake cried, throwing back his head. His hand was moving so quickly that she could barely track its movements and his flesh made a sharp slapping sound as he pumped his fist wildly.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a car door slamming outside, and she could hear her brother, Robert, calling Jake’s name. She immediately yanked her hand away from where it had been buried in her crotch and edged as far away from the ledge as possible. If her brother saw what she had been doing she would die of embarrassment.
Below her, Jake stopped touching himself and froze like a rabbit scenting a predator. “Yeah, I’ll be right there,” he called, his voice surprisingly normal-sounding considering what he’d been doing just seconds before. He hung his head and took several deep breaths. When he was calm, he tucked himself back in his jeans with a pained expression on his face and rearranged the tail of his shirt to disguise his aroused state.
She watched him leave, silently bereft at being left alone in her own fevered condition. Closing her eyes, she could still see him there, touching himself and making those oddly arousing sounds in the back of his throat. Lying back on the hay, she moved her hand between her thighs again and wondered what it would be like if Jake ever kissed her. She squirmed in delight as the thought sent another wave of heat rushing through her. Clasping her thighs tightly together around her hand, she ground herself against her fingers and felt something wonderful loosen inside her, and then pleasure washed over her. Her quiet cry of exultation echoed in the dim barn, and she rolled to her side, thinking of that lonely boy who never once thought of her.
“I think I want him to be turned on by it,” Kayla said, looking at Miss Bright with challenge bright in her green eyes. “Yup, he should like being watched. A lot.” Why hold back? It was her fantasy and she needed to communicate what she wanted. This Miss Bright seemed uncommonly intuitive, but she couldn’t read minds. Or could she? Nothing would really surprise her about this woman.
