He set the harness over her shoulders and reached around her body to fasten the straps. "Can you talk?" he whispered into her ear, afraid of being overheard. He doubted there were hidden mikes—that would not be economically feasible for a retarded technology like this—but other farmhands could be in the area.
She lifted her arms to facilitate the tightening of the clasps. A thick strand of hair curved around her left shoulder and the inside arc of her left breast. She was not as scantily endowed as he had thought at first; he had merely become acclimatized to the monstrosities of the milkers. She was clean, too, except for the feet, and there was an alluring woman-smell about her.
"Can you talk, Iota!" he whispered more urgently. "Maybe I can help you."
She perked up at the sound of her name. Her breathing became rapid again. She rested her forearms against his shoulders and looked into his face. Her eyes were large, the irises black in this light. But she did not smile or speak.
"You can trust me, Iota," he said. "Just give me some sign. Some evidence that you're not—"
She closed her arms gently around his neck and drew him in to her. Again her breasts touched him; again her hips nudged his groin. The woman-smell became stronger.
Was she trying to show him that she comprehended, or was it merely a more careful sexual offering?
What difference did it make?
He had fastened the straps long since, but his arms were still about her. He slid his hands across her smooth back, down to the slight indentations above her buttocks. She responded, putting increasing pressure against him.
What the hell.
Hitch looked about. There was no one in the stable, apart from the cows in the special stalls. He tightened his embrace and carried her upright into her own compartment. "You want to get bred, OK," he muttered.
He put her down in the straw. She yielded to his directions, eager to oblige. He kneeled between her spread legs, released his belt and opened his trousers, watching her. Then, unable to restrain himself any longer, he put his left hand on her cleft to work the labia apart. The entire area was slick and hot. He transferred the hand to his own loin, supporting the weight of his body with the other hand as he descended, and guided himself down the burning crevice and in. He was reminded strikingly of the manner he had placed the thermometer not long ago. There didn't seem to be any hymen.
He spread himself upon her, embedded to the hilt. He tried to kiss her, but the position was wrong and she didn't seem to understand. What opportunity would she have had to learn about kissing?
He had expected an immediate and explosive climax, but was disappointed. Iota had a dismayingly capacious vaginal tract; he could neither plumb the well to its depth nor find purchase at its rim. He realized belatedly that cows would naturally be selected for ready breeding and birthing. Entry had been too easy; there was no internal resistance, no friction.
After all his buildup, he couldn't come. It was like dancing alone in a spacious ballroom.
She lay there passively, waiting for him to proceed.
Angry, now, he pulled back, plunged, withdrew and plunged again, his sword impaling only phantoms.
And felt his weapon growing flaccid. "Bitch," he said.
But it was the bovine, not the canine, image that had unmanned him. It just wasn't in him to fornicate with a placid, mindless cow.
She looked up at him reproachfully as he disengaged and covered up, but he was too disturbed to care. "Get up, animal. You want bull, you'll get bull."
She stood up and he took hold of the harness leash and jerked her forward. "Move," he said firmly, and she moved. There was, it seemed, a trick to handling animals, and he had mastered it out of necessity. He was becoming an experienced farmer.
They traveled down long dim corridors to the bullpen, she tugging eagerly at the leash and seeking to poke into side passages. She had forgotten the frustration of the recent episode already. Obviously she had never been in this section of the barn before, and curiosity had not been entirely suppressed along with intelligence. She was stupid, of course; otherwise he would not have failed with her.
He didn't know much about lobotomy, but this didn't seem like it. Yet what technique...?
The bull was a giant of a man, full-bearded and hirsute. His feet and hands were crusted with calluses, and there was dirt on his belly. His tremendous penis hoisted, derricklike, the moment he winded Iota, and he hurled himself around his large pen. Only the stout double harness and chained collar that bound him to the far rail inhibited his savage lunges. He stank of urine.
Hitch loosed Iota and shoved her into the pen. He was anxious to have the bull cover up any guilty traces of his own abortive gesture.
She was abruptly hesitant, standing just beyond the range of the man-monster that reared and chafed and bellowed to get at her and bucked awesomely with his tumescence. She wasn't afraid of him, though his mass was easily twice hers; she was merely uncertain how to proceed in the face of so much meat.
She made as if to step forward, then withdrew. She was trying to flirt! Hitch found quick sympathy for the bull, allied with his own apprehension. "You idiotic tease, get over there!" he cried at her.
Startled, she did.
The bull reached out and grabbed her by one shoulder, employing the same five-fingered mitten-grip Hitch had observed with the cows. Iota spun under the force of it, thrown off-balance, and the bull caught at her opposite hip and hauled her to his chest backwards. He clubbed her so that she doubled over and rammed his spurting organ into her narrow cleft, thrusting again and again so fiercely that her abdomen bowed out with each lunge.
That was the treatment she had been waiting for! She hadn't even been aware of Hitch's effort, thinking it only the preliminary inspection.
Then Iota tumbled to the floor, stunned by the impact of the courtship but hardly miserable. She was in heat, after all. and now that she had found out what it was all about, she liked it. She lay on her back in the soiled straw, smiling, legs lifted, though Hitch was sure she would suffer shortly from terrible bruises inside and out. What a performance!
The beast was on her again, this time from the front, biting at her breasts while trying to get into position for another assault. His organ glistened moistly, still erect.
"Get that heifer out of there!" someone shouted, and Hitch started. It was another farmhand. "Want to sap our best stud?"
Hitch ran out into the pen, wary of the bull, and caught hold of one of Iota's blissfully outstretched arms. It was obvious that she would happily absorb all the punishment the creature chose to deliver. A festoon of white goo stretched downward from the bull's penis as he made a last attempt at the vanishing target. Then Hitch hauled Iota across the floor until they were entirely out of range of the monster and stood her on her feet. She was still dazed as he reharnessed her, not even wincing as the strap chafed across the deep toothmarks on her breast.
The other farmhand glanced at him as they trooped by, but did not say anything. Just as well.
About halfway back, Hitch remembered that he had forgotten to post the time of service on the bull's chart. He decided not to risk further embarrassment by returning for that errand. The bull seemed to have sufficient pep to go around, anyway.
Iota was dreamily contented as he returned her to her stall, though there was a driblet of gluey blood on one leg. Apparently there had been a hymen... Well, she was out of heat now, she wasn't a virgin heifer any more!
There was trouble in the final stall. He had been so occupied with the prior chores on the schedule that he hadn't bothered to read ahead, and now he regretted it. He had just witnessed, per instructions, a copulation, and it was as though gestation had occurred in minutes. This next cow was delivering!