Private Lessons Chapter 2
Private Lessons is an explicit erotic romance with a horse-lover flavor. I will be posting consecutive sections on Tuesdays until the whole thing is posted. Then I’ll post it as a free pdf on my website. Do not click the link to read more if you are offended, or bored, by adults in explicit sexual situations.
Chapter Two
Dee knew it was silly to assume she would never see Sandra’s handsome cohort again. After all, if they were indeed a thing then of course she’d see him again. One of the few good qualities she was willing to admit Sandra had was her love of her horses. A day at the barn without Sandra showing up to ride, or just check in with her animals was unusual. Since the horses where such an important part of Sandra’s life, no doubt they would have to be an important, or at least tolerated, part of her man’s life as well.
So Dee wasn’t at all surprised when she heard tires on the gravel the following Monday and moments later Mr. Handsome walked into the office, where she was working on horse assignments for a group of young riders that were advancing to a new intermediate class. She saw him out of the corner of her eye and refused to give him her full gaze.
“Sandra isn’t here right now,” Dee said. “She came in to ride this morning, before all the classes started.”
“I didn’t come here looking for Sandra.”
He sat on the couch, managing to take up the entirety of the space between the refrigerator and the filing cabinet, and look like some sort of sexual buffet while he was doing it. Poor Dee, without a plate, she thought, looking up at him.
She knew what the couch felt like, she’d spent plenty of time eating a quick lunch or even napping on it during the winter or on slow, rainy days. What she couldn’t help thinking as she tried to look anywhere but into his eyes, like following the line of his legs, the solid length of his arms and the width of his T-shirt-covered chest, was what he would feel like, if she sat on top of him and looked down. If her face was flushed he didn’t appear to notice. Dee tried to focus on the dry erase board of horse assignments instead of on the piece of masculine candy so close to her.
“What can I do for you? Mr…”
“Ben.” He smiled. Damn him, Dee thought, sitting in her office, looking like he belonged.
“Ben. What can I do for you Mr. Ben?”
“Just Ben,” he said with a touch of laughter to his voice.
“Yes, we’ve established that part. What can I do for you, Ben?”
“Are you having another bad day?”
Dee took a deep breath and tried not to hold it against him that he was the arm-decoration of someone she envied and disliked. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m being short with you. What can I do for you?”
He smiled again and Dee was relieved. He leaned forward, onto the edge of the couch. Dee was suddenly aware that he was fully focused on her. She wasn’t sure how she liked it. “Your sign outside. It says you offer lessons.”
“You need lessons?” Dee let too much surprise into her voice. He’d looked quite capable the other day, riding off on the back of Sandra’s mare.
“I would like to have them. If you don’t feel we’d be a good match, I could look elsewhere.”
Dee felt the urge to blush again. She could think of several ways they could be a good match. She cursed her libido, and her internal dialog which wasn’t usually so randy, and tried to be businesslike. “We have a group with the owner, she’s retired from the show circuit. She wasn’t an Olympian or anything, but she’s tried her hand at just about everything you can compete at on horseback, so you could say she’s experienced. She mostly does private and semi-private, that’s two to three people at a time, lessons. I take care of the summer camps and the beginner and intermediate groups. Do you have any experience with horses?”
“Well, I rode that brown one the other day.”
Dee bit her lip in an effort not to chuckle or worse, correct him. Anyone who’d ever spent a summer on their grandpa’s nag would never refer to a chestnut mare worth just over fifty thousand dollars as “that brown one”. It was usually the kids who said things like that, and learned how fast even the slightly more experienced riders would jump on them in an effort to correct them.
“Did I say something wrong?” Ben asked. His face was adorable with the lack of understanding. If he was smart as a turd he was the cutest turd Dee had ever seen.
“Phantom’s Dancer, the horse your rode the other day, is chestnut. That’s what we call that red-brown color. She’s also a mare, that’s a girl, and she’s worth about fifty six thousand dollars.”
Ben looked appropriately surprised. “Fifty..? That much?”
“According to the man who insures her,” Dee said with a nod.
“That’s more than my car.”
Dee laughed. It was like he knew how often she thought that. She stood up from the desk and looked down at him, looking up at her. “I have a bit before the next group comes in, why don’t I get you in a saddle and see what you can do?”
He smiled at her, on the verge of laughter, not moving. Dee turned red.
“I, I mean…” she stammered and she couldn’t stop. Not with him looking up at her, eyebrows raised and smiling so cocky. She couldn’t stop once she started and the heat, the color in her face, refused to go away.
“Let’s start with the horse first,” Ben said standing, and still smiling like he enjoyed seeing her flustered and shaken. If it was true, he must be enjoying the hell out of every moment they’d been interacting, because it seemed like she was always flustered and blushing around him.
The barn was mostly empty at just a bit after noon. During the summer Dee arranged lessons to give the horses the hottest part of the day off. Even the smaller arena with the roof didn’t do much to help the heat some days. In the beginning there had been one twenty stall barn for the stable-owned horses and a second sixteen stall barn for the boarders. But people, and horses, came and went and before long everyone was mixed up together.
Dee led Ben to the second barn, airier than the main barn, with a higher ceiling, and painted a sun-faded dark green. It smelled like hay and dust, and sunlight, if sunlight could have a smell. Ben trailed along behind her as she opened the small tack room at the back, releasing the smell of shampoo, rich leather and saddle soap. Without speaking to him, because she was still embarrassed over her slip up in the office, she pulled a saddle and pad down from its rack, sliding it onto her right arm. With her left arm Dee reached over to the wall of bridles and pulled the one she wanted from the pegs in the plywood. She studied the open boxes full of grooming supplies and leather bits on the floor. Anything to not have to look Ben in the face.
Dee sighed unhappily at her cowardice and finally made herself turn to Ben. He smile in a polite, and somewhat dim, way. Was he playing dumb on her behalf?
“Can I do anything to help?”
“Grab that green box with all the brushes in it.”
Ben obeyed and followed her back out into the wide hall. Dee directed him to set the box on a stack of hay bales. She set the tack beside them. “Stay there,” she instructed.
Dee attached a lead rope to halter of a thickly built, dark bay gelding. His head swung slightly as he followed her placidly out of his dark stall. “Ben, this is Dizzy.”
“Dizzy, eh? Is it brown?”
Dee smiled. “He. He is what we call a bay. He has a brown body, but see the black mane and tail, and the black on his legs? That makes him a bay.”
Dee had taught a lot of lessons at her time, but she never remembered lecturing another adult like this.
“Well then, Dizzy. You look like a lovable brute, don’t you?” The horse nodded, playing with the rope Dee used to tether him to the wall. “See, we’re getting along already.”
Ben whispered something and Dee blushed again, ducking to the other side of the horse to hide the color. She didn’t think he’d meant for her to hear that.
“You help out in my class,” Dee said. She passed brushes over the horse’s back to Ben. “Just brush him down, make sure there’s no mud or hay or anything but hair on him.”
They settled into a comfortable silence as they worked. To Dee there was a sort of peace to the rhythm of the barn. Time held still while the sun lit up motes of dust as they hovered in the air and the other horses moved in their stalls, occasionally snorting or stomping. Ben seemed to feel it too, his body relaxed as he worked, and Dee couldn’t help watching him. His muscles moved nicely under his skin, stretching and flexing with the strokes of his brush. Dizzy hung his head and cocked his hip, letting one of his hind legs sag. Dee half expected the horse to start snoring.
Saddling didn’t take long. Other than a wet spot from leaning against his water bucket Dizzy was still clean from being groomed for his morning lesson. Once all the straps were in place and tight Dee led her student and her horse out to the larger outdoor arena. It was a rough circle, with a four foot high, white painted fence. Inside the sand mix was marred with hoof prints, there was a wide loop along the fence that appeared well-used and low wooden jumps that stood unused in the middle.
“Okay, this is where you get back up there and show me what you can do.”
Ben saluted her and hoisted himself into the saddle. He didn’t seem to have much trouble, even though he didn’t make use of the mounting block to one side of the fence. Dee instructed him on how to hold the reins, and how to direct the horse, in case he had forgotten in the three days since his last ride, then she opened the gate for him and waited until horse and man had passed through before walking in herself. Dee stood where she could see him no matter where in the arena he rode. Ben and Dizzy walked along the fence, in the path drawn by countless circling horses before them.
“How are you feeling up there?” Dee called. She thought she saw Ben nod. He looked capable. His balance was good, he moved well with the horse. “Want to try something more?”
She definitely saw him nod that time. She opened her mouth to yell instructions, but Ben urged Dizzy forward on his own. The horse broke into a bouncing trot that looked too light for his hulking size. Ben rose and fell to the beat for a few moments then Dizzy stretched out and shifted into a quick, rocking canter.
Dee found her eyes lingering on Ben, instructions forgotten, watching his hips rock with the easy, fast gate. “Okay, okay.”
She’d yelled it mostly to herself, to the tightening she felt in her stomach and chest, and lower, that made her think of other times one might see him move that way. Ben turned Dizzy back and slowed him as they came back to face Dee.
Ben grinned down at her. “So do you know where to put me?”
Dee’s eyes narrowed. Being angry kept her from blushing again. She heard cars on the gravel. The first of the afternoon students, most likely. “I think I have an idea. Does tomorrow work for you?”
“I can wiggle it in.” Ben dismounted, still smiling in a way he probably thought was charming. Well, it probably would have been if Dee hadn’t been turning a few too many thoughts around in her mind.
“Good, I’ll see you them. Thanks for saddling Dizzy for his afternoon class.” Dee turned the horse and walked away, hoping Ben would get the hint and leave.
She couldn’t think right when he was around. She had been flattered in the barn, when he asked the horse to help him impress her. But if Mr. Ben Handsome thought his “huhuhuh, I’m just a dumb man that don’t know nothing about no horses” act could fool her after she’d seen him both on the ground and on horseback, he was gravely mistaken.
Dee might be oblivious to many things in the world, but she knew horses. And after today she knew Ben knew horses too.