April, Dani - Raven's Ranch (Siren Publishing LoveXtreme) Read online

  Mosquitoes nipped at her bare legs as she walked through the weeds that came up to past her knees. Her footfalls seemed to scare little creatures out of their weed-covered hiding places. She heard things scurrying away from her as she approached, not sure if what she heard were large bugs running from her, or maybe field mice. Whatever they were, she knew she was being foolhardy to walk through the weeds with no shoes on, and almost half naked. Next time she would know better, she told herself and bravely kept going.

  When she got to the structure, she realized that the wet cement was caused by a small stream of water that was running underneath the tarp, covering the lean-to. It felt good to have her bare feet touch the cement and her legs free of the scratching weeds of the yard. However, this only felt good for about a minute. Then as she walked about the structure to inspect it, she realized that the cement was getting uncomfortably warm against her feet, forcing her to high-step across the patio that led to the entrance.

  There was a loose hanging flap in the tarp that apparently served as a door for the lean-to. Feeling awkward about just barging inside, she hesitated for a moment in front of the flap.

  “Hello?” she called, but got no reply.

  The bottoms of her feet were beginning to sting from the heated cement, and she decided she was foolish to be so timid. After all this was her land and so this lean-to, whatever it was, also belonged to her.

  She pushed back the flap and cautiously stepped inside. It was dark in there. No widows were cut into the tarp to provide light. The only light there was came sneaking in underneath the tarp and this was only barely enough at first to see by. After a couple of minutes her eyes adjusted to the change from the bright sun outside to the dreariness of the inside.

  The whole area under the tarp roof was damp, and Raven instantly realized she had found what she was looking for. Back to the end of the structure was a partition, and behind this were half a dozen tiny shower stalls, the musty odor of shower water and soap pervading the enclosure.

  Though Raven had been looking for a place to take her morning shower, this was not exactly what she’d had in mind. As she stepped down the row of shower stalls, she tried to imagine herself taking a shower in any one of them and just could not bring the image to mind. Only a slight partition separated each one, giving merely the hint of privacy without actually providing any.

  Outside the row of stalls was an area to hang towels and a long row of wash basins. She noticed that each of the wash basins had a mirror hung over it and this would be convenient to comb your hair or brush your teeth in, but she wanted to laugh when she saw that each mirror gave a perfect view into the shower stall that was opposite it. So forget about taking a shower in private, she told herself.

  This arrangement would not work out for very long. She would have to speak to the ranch hands about changing things. Obviously a bunch of range-toughened ranch hands weren’t too modest around each other, but that would not work out for her.

  No one was around right now, however. The hands were all out on the prairie, probably five or ten miles away. This would be a good time to sneak in a shower. She desperately wanted one. Not having taken one the night before, she still felt mucky from the long road trip.

  Taking one last walk around the entire shower area to ensure she was the only one there, she satisfied herself that she was truly alone. She chose the stall all the way back in the corner, hung up her towels outside, and took her T-shirt off over her head and kicked off her panties.

  Stepping into the stall, she had to fumble around for a few minutes to determine how to start the water flow, and also where was the shower head? At last she looked up and saw a long jet nozzle placed overhead on a rack. She lifted this down and found a knob on it that controlled the flow of water. She gently turned it on and was given a rude awakening when water came roaring out into her face in a strong stream that was mountain cold, the spray jetting over her face and matting her hair.

  “Goddamn!” she swore, and held the nozzle away from her, water spraying outside her stall and running across the cement floor toward the outside drain. Her whole body went tense as it was hit with the cold water.

  It was a few minutes more before she got the hang of operating the nozzle. She was able to get the volume of water turned down to a comfortable level for her shower, but unfortunately she could not find how to bring forth warm water from the spray.

  Slowly she let her body get wet and started to wash her hair. A ledge inside the stall held a fairly new bar of soap along with a small bottle of shampoo that looked as if it had never been opened. Squinting through lowered eyelids, with water running down her face, she reached for the shampoo and brought a liberal amount to her hair.

  The shampoo actually wasn’t of a bad quality and had a good scent to it. She used it to wash her body, and after she got used to the cold water, she started to enjoy the shower and felt herself waking up completely from her long sleep. She even heard some birds chirping outside and found the shower was bringing new energy and eagerness to start her first day on the Lazy L.

  “Goddamn that is shit!” said the voice of a man, loud and angry from just outside.

  “Go on back up range and wait for me. I’m just going to take a shower and get this washed off. I won’t be long!” came another man’s voice from outside, this time closer.

  Raven froze in her stall. Someone was coming inside the shower area with her and she was standing there dripping wet, as naked as a newborn. Immediately she tried turning off the spray, but she realized there must be some trick to it she had not yet discovered, as all she did was increase the intensity of the jet when she turned the knob back to the resting position.

  “Hello!” Raven shouted out above the spray of water against her body. “I’m in here now! I’m using the shower! Please wait just a minute and I’ll be out!” she warned, but was not at all sure her voice had made it above the noise of the water spray.

  Not having any luck in getting the nozzle shut off, she finally gave up on it, not having enough time to play with it anymore, and set it down on the cement floor, the jets of water pouring out across the floor in torrents and heading for the outside drain.

  She turned around for her towel but found it was just out of arm’s reach. To her horror she heard footsteps outside. She wasn’t for sure if they were up front beyond the partition or back in the shower area. The acoustics of the building were weird and thrown off by the pounding stream of water coming from the nozzle at her feet.

  She quickly tiptoed outside the stall. No one was there, thank God. The intruder was still up front beyond the partition. She made a grab for her towel and had it in hand, but then dropped it from shock as Chip rounded the corner and stepped into the shower area with her. He was as naked as she was.

  From the look on his face he was obviously more surprised to see her than she was to see him. Raven thought for a second that he was either going to fall to the floor and faint or run from the building screaming at the top of his lungs. He had been transformed from a tough, sure-footed ranch hand to a bumbling coward in the blink of an eye, and the only thing to account for it was her wet and nude body in front of him.

  His body was smooth, hairless, well-tanned, and tight, and she could barely keep her eyes off his cock.

  Raven quickly bent to the floor and recovered her towel, wrapping it around her body in a quick motion. Chip was slower to react because he apparently was still in shock. After about three seconds where he stood in front of her naked, he recovered his senses enough to run to the other corner and grab a towel of his own.

  “Hey, Chip,” Raven greeted him with a smile, trying to keep this as if nothing had happened. “How are you this morning?”

  “Oh, my God, Raven,” he said, securing the towel snugly around his flat stomach and stuttering badly. “I am so sorry. I didn’t know you were in here. I heard the water running, but I just thought one of the guys had left it on from earlier. If I had known you were using the shower, I would
never have come in here to bother you.”

  “That’s okay, Chip,” she reassured him. “No harm done. I guess I’m going to have to get used to some different living arrangements now that I’m living here, but I don’t want you guys to have to change anything just because I’m here and I’m a woman. I’m sure you must have walked in on my granddad quite a few times when he was showering.”

  “I did,” Chip said and took a deep swallow. “But like you said, you’re a woman, and I really feel stupid right now. I hope you’ll forgive me. I certainly didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Chip, there’s nothing to forgive,” she told him and walked up to within a couple of feet of him, well aware that both were covered only in their towels. “You seem like the politest guy in the county. I know you would never do anything to make me uncomfortable.”

  “You see, I fell into bullshit out in the west corral. I mean I literally fell into bullshit out there.”

  Raven took a sniff and realized he was telling the truth. He smelled horrible and was in bad need of a shower.

  “Let me get out of here and leave you to your shower,” she told him.

  She ran back to her stall for her shirt and panties, clutching the towel to her breasts. Her shirt and panties had fallen to the floor and were now drenched with the water. She bent to pick them up, and placing them under her arm, she turned to run out of the shower area.

  “Have a nice shower, Chip,” she called to him as she ran past him.

  “Thanks, Raven,” he told her. “You’re the best.”

  “Get cleaned up. I’ll see you later.”

  She ran back outside, her wet hair a tangled mess about her head. The sun was even higher in the sky by this time, and the cement beneath her still bare feet was even hotter. She clutched the towel protectively around her body to hide her nakedness.

  Roy was standing right in front of her. She hadn’t seen him in her hurry to get away from Chip and crashed into him with a thud, almost knocking her towel off and causing it to drop embarrassingly low down her back.

  “How are you, beautiful?” Roy asked.

  His eyes bored into her, and she was well aware that she was naked except for the towel, and that it was about to come undone.

  “You’re wet,” he told her. “How’d you like to go back into the shower with me and get even wetter?”

  She turned around to get away from him, but Bran was just coming up the other side of the shower building, blocking her escape from that avenue.

  “You sure you don’t work out, Raven?” Bran said and laughed, his hulking form looming above her. “Your body sure does look tight!”

  “You’ll have to excuse me, guys,” Raven told them. Horror overcame her as she realized her panties had fallen from her clutch onto the pavement at her feet. “This just isn’t my morning so far. You guys ever have a day start off like that where nothing goes right?”

  She bent to pick up her panties, wincing because she knew Roy, who was still a few feet behind her, was getting his eyes full of her butt as she leaned down to the pavement.

  “You’ll be giving me those panties soon enough, baby,” Roy told her.

  “Roy,” she said, turning back to him and pulling the towel around her breasts, “if I didn’t know you were kidding, I’d be offended.”

  “Who said I was kidding?”

  “Just back off, Roy, and give her some space,” Bran said in his deep voice. “But, Raven, you’re going to have to stop walking around here without your clothes on if you want us cowboys to ever get any work done for you.”

  “Trust me, Bran. I didn’t plan things this way.”

  “I’m not going to have anything on my mind all day except that cute little butt of yours,” Roy said, reaching down and giving her a slap on her backside.

  That did it for Raven. No more standing here and talking with these two. She gave a little squeal and ran past Roy, hoping that nothing else would fall until she got back to the security of her trailer.

  “Don’t touch!” she shouted over her bare shoulder to Roy as she ran for safety.

  “A beautiful woman in a towel is sure a nice way to start off a man’s day!” Roy called back at her.

  “I hate to admit you’re right, man,” she heard Bran comment to Roy. “We need to see more of that ass around here.”

  And both men gave catcalls that trailed her across the yard.

  Her feet left muddy tracks by the weeds as she ran through them, and she realized that her feet were now much dirtier than when she first stepped in the shower, but at least the rest of her was clean. She was also dripping wet because she’d had no time to towel off. Starting off her day by seeing a naked man in the shower with her, not to mention two rough-and-tumble cowboys outside seeing her practically naked, was something she was not used to, and although she had made light of it with them, her heart was beating heavy in her chest.

  The sound of more scrambling bugs and varmints in the weeds greeted her as she ran through them. Soon she was back on the gravel path, and her sore feet were being abraded by the stones and pebbles again.

  At last she made it to her trailer and felt relieved to shut the door behind her, discovering there was indeed a lock on it after she threw it and then fell down on her bunk bed breathing a sigh of relief. She had just made it through her first adventure on the ranch. She was alive and in one piece, her feet were a little dirty maybe, her pride slightly bent out of shape, but still all was well.

  Now if she could only get the sight of Chip’s long cock hanging down between his thighs out of her mind she might be able to get on with her first day on the ranch.

  Chapter Six

  When Raven left her trailer next, she was dressed and ready for her day. She wore jeans and a plaid, button-down shirt, and having no boots to wear, she chose some old but comfortable sneakers and decided she would have to invest in a pair of boots as soon as she got into Masterson to do some shopping.

  There was a strange truck in the yard, and Raven came out to investigate. Again the trailer yard was deserted. The ranch hands were out working on the land with her herd. She walked down to the last trailer at the end of the lot where the truck was parked.

  Tyler Wells came out of the trailer and he and Raven saw each other immediately. It had been over ten years since she had last seen him.

  “Tyler!” Raven called to him.

  “There you are!” Tyler shouted back.

  She came to him and they hugged each other. Here was a friendly face from the past in the middle of all the uncertainty of the present.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you last night when you got in,” he told her. “You all got in late, and I had to be up at the crack of dawn.”

  He was still just as handsome as she remembered him. He was ten years older than she was but still had the young and rugged face of a cowboy, and his body was lean and hard. He had a full head of curly black hair, thick eyebrows, and a firm jaw, plus a self-confidence that told you he could do anything he set his mind to doing.

  “It’s so good to see you again, Tyler,” she told him.

  She walked with him as he worked. He was carrying some boxes of some kind of equipment from the side of his trailer and loading up the bed of his truck.

  “Let me help you with that?” she asked him.

  “No, you’re the ranch boss now. I’m your hand. Anyway you’ve got too many other things to think about on your first day out here than wire for the south forty fences.”

  “Tyler,” Raven said seriously, not knowing how to begin with him. “Connor told me about what happened to your wife. I want to tell you how sorry I am…”

  “Thanks, Raven,” he told her, but she could see a dark cloud pass over his face when she mentioned the death of his wife to him, and she remembered Connor told her that he wasn’t really over it yet, even after three years. “That’s in the past,” he said, “best to forget about it and move on.”

  “I want you to know how happy I was when I
found out you were one of my ranch hands.” She smiled at him and tried changing the subject. “I remember you from when I was young. You had your own ranch back then.”

  “Yeah,” he said and stopped to wipe sweat off his brow, tilting his hat back on his head. “I was the youngest rancher in the county back then, probably about your age when I started.”

  “You were always so sure and confident. I know my grandfather thought the world of you, and I thought you could do anything.” Raven laughed and decided to come clean with him. “To tell you the truth I always had a little bit of a schoolgirl crush on you. I guess that sounds pretty silly, huh?”

  He nodded but didn’t laugh. “Raven, we have to talk,” he told her. He had just finished loading up the last of the boxes into his truck.

  “Sure, Tyler.” She wondered what on earth he could have for her on her first day.

  “Is that little dirt bike parked down there yours?” he asked, nodding back down the road to her trailer.

  “Yes, that’s mine. It really isn’t a dirt bike. It’s a Kawasaki. I used that to get around the city, and Connor packed it in the bed of his truck for me when he brought me out here. That’s the only item I had in the city that I couldn’t have parted with.”

  “Why don’t we take a walk down there and you show it to me. I’d like to see it, and we can have a talk.”

  “Okay.”

  He put his hand on the small of her back and escorted her down the long gravel driveway, heading back toward her trailer.

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing out here, Raven?” he asked.

  “What do you mean, Tyler?” She looked up at him and had to fight to keep the hurt out of her eyes.

  “Just what I said.” His voice was firm and hard. “What is a young and beautiful girl like you, and from the city no less, doing out here on this dirty, old ranch?”

  “My grandfather left me the Lazy L in his will.” Raven swallowed and felt she had just been struck by him.

  “Raven, this ranch is dying,” he told her, and she looked up into his face to see his honest but hard eyes staring back at her. “Hell, the Lazy L has been dead for years. Now that George Spencer is dead she’s not going to last the rest of the summer.”