River Rafting

Initiative to KK.

In the brilliant moonlight, she stood just outside the blue tent's mosquito-net flap. The scene was, she thought, positively surreal. The landscape was lit with an uncanny white light, a perfect full moon at its absolute brightest pouring liquid silver down through the high-desert air, light so intense she could see colors, something she'd thought impossible by moonlight.

The broad expanse of the river, the little group's highway for their trek, was visible through the poplar saplings. A mirrored Japanese reflecting-pond, immense, perfectly quiet water but flowing strongly beneath the calm. Likewise the air, calm. Sounds of night-singing insects off in the distance. A little cough from another camper somewhere far off among the trees. Earlier there had been coyotes singing. And several shooting stars. Signs and portents? If so, then of what?

Bright the moon might be, but not enough to give reflected light to relieve the shadows it cast. Surreal indeed: every shadow was absolute, impenetrable inky black. Sharp random intersecting strokes of silver and black only, intricately intermingled like pick-up-sticks tossed by a giant cosmic child, from her feet to the horizon.

Overhead, stars shimmied, danced, joyful at the release of their distant brother's energy from the sand. The air stirred, was so clear she could see a star on the horizon wink into and out of existence behind the edge of the earth with her every heartbeat.

Internal surreality too. Heartbeats? Yes, indeed. Fast. Very little breathing to go with them, though. Shallow intakes, forced into perfect silence. This wasn't her own tent she was standing beside. Minutes ago she had left her own territory, left her two companions sleeping soundly, unaware of the night-time beauty around them, of the sky-show overhead.

Certainly (she hoped!) despite their not-so-gentle teasing of late, certainly they were equally unaware of this knot, this living internal thing, this twisting, roiling burn way down deep in her belly. That little animal was what had set her feet softly on the path to this doorway. And she was scared, of herself, of what was going on inside her: this was very odd behavior, unexpected, irrational in the extreme. It carried an edge of fear, to spice the other thoughts.

Having arrived, she hesitated, even now unsure as to what she was doing here, what she either meant or wanted to do next. She stood quietly, feeling her own heart pulsing, sharply aware of the trickle of sweat down her sides from her pits. It wasn't heat-sweat, for the scalding heat of the desert day was long gone.

Especially she studied the shadow that covered the tent's doorway. The door might as well have been a cosmic black hole, no light came from it, not the least glimmer. An entrance to a different universe, for she could see nothing there except void, no fabric, nothing beyond the shadow inside the tent. Presumably, there was an inside, wasn't there? Even if the entrance was somehow dimensionally shifted for the moment?

What to do?

She took one more careful, silent step towards the nothingness, stopped again, now within touching distance of the fabric. A spasm of nerves, or maybe common sense, hit her. She tensed her muscles to turn, to retrace her steps into the safe company of her sleeping girlfriends.

Then, the initiative slipped away. Out of the void came a hand. One hand, made of silver, slowly growing an arm behind it, an appendage not appended to anything. She nearly screamed, bit her lip instead, didn't move. Her heart skipped several beats, felt like a knot being pulled tight within her. Whatever HAD she expected, anyhow? Despite her stealthy approach, he knew she was there. Was he just sitting there, inches into the void, watching her? Had he been watching her all the time as she picked her careful, silent way across the sand to stand here? Was he waiting, expecting her? Did he somehow know in advance that she would be compelled to make this mad little journey?

"This is crazy. I am crazy!" she thought, but she didn't move an iota. She watched as the arm grew just long enough to let the disembodied, floating fingers touch her ankle.

The touch nearly undid her.

With a felt 'whoosh', her belly loosened, went all slippery. Fingertips circled her ankle, contact so light she wasn't absolutely certain it was a touch, but a ladle full of gasoline couldn't have fanned her belly-knot into brighter flame. She kept hold of her lip with her teeth: the sharp tingle provided a sensory anchor, proved that she hadn't slipped entirely the bonds of reality, at least not yet. Fingertips moved up her calf. Inanely, she thought how glad she was that she'd shaved just that afternoon. She had never had so many simultaneous goose-bumps, and had her nipples ever been this hard in her life? Or her pussy this swollen and wet, beneath her loose canvas canoeing shorts? This was, indeed, crazy!

"Come inside."

So softly said. Impossibly soft. She knew she heard it, heard it correctly, yet didn't believe she

could

have heard something so close to silence itself. Not a command, neither quite a question. More the sigh of an opening door, the fluttering of possibilities. She would have to choose to go into that inky void. Free will. Could she, would she? Wasn't that, actually, the point of this exercise? She shivered violently, briefly, considering. She wanted to, didn't she? Yes, of course, you bet!

Initiative back to KK. Her choice now, stand or flee? A dive into the icewater. As she pondered, suddenly, unexpectedly, she had to pee. Urgently. Foiled by physiology. Was that what was really going on in her belly, after all this? Had she been fooled, led through the moonlight to stand here, by bladder pressure in drag, all gussied up and disguised as lust and need?

She couldn't move or speak, but then the whole hand circled her ankle like a smoke-ring and gripped her gently, just solidly enough to prove itself corporeal after all, and to send little lightning bolts up the conductor that was her leg. Seconds passed, until she got moisture to tongue and lips, re-established the connections twixt brain and vocal cords. Just as softly, she responded. "I have to pee!" Quiet though it was to the outside world, the words thundered through her own head. How idiotic! Banal. Pedestrian. Was this a cop-out?

No sound from him, but the silver hand slipped gently upwards along her leg. She shivered in anticipation as it left trails of tingling nerve-endings in its wake. Whither? To what end did it move? The hand caressed her thigh, fingertips disappeared into her own black shadow. There, invisible but felt, they worked at the buttons of her shorts. Expertly. Silently. One, two, three. Four. Done. What might he make of her lack of panties?

The hairs on her neck were on end, something she had never believed really happened. She was very nearly coming already: how could that be? And who held the initiative now? Even split? Then the hand, still an other-universe intruder devoid of body, slipped her shorts downwards. Unbidden by either his voice or her own consciousness, she helped. Wiggled a bit. A shift of weight, the tiniest knee-flex, and they dropped to her ankles.

Now the moonlight flooded her belly, her breasts, lit up her forested mons as she shifted, turned, presented herself full-frontal to the void, the one-armed void. The void with hidden eyes. Eyes examining her. HER!

She did a tiny stutter-step that left her standing with feet apart. She knew for a certainty that her inner thighs weren't touching -- which meant that her whole crotch was open, on view. Did this mean she was taking the initiative, or yielding it?

At any rate, thank the gods for such still air! Otherwise, surely the scent of her heat would be calling in every downwind male coyote for miles, to investigate her. Imagine those cold hard noses, prodding, bumping. She was actually shaking, more internally than externally, almost to the point of slight sea-sickness. Juices seemed ready to drool down the insides of her thighs. Should that embarrass her, or please her? What did he think? Was she, to him, equally a void, a total mystery?

Initiative shifted to the void, as the fingertips traced tiny circles in her pubic hairs: each stirring of a root in its follicle was a miniature explosion. A muffled nerve-blasting 'pop' resembling the subsurface mini-grenades used for avalanche control. Tiny stimuli, but releasing unpredictable, unimaginable results.

The fingertips caressed once, agonizingly slowly, carefully, down the long wet length of her rise, from belly button to coccyx tip, fingernail-deep the entire journey. She had never been so wet. She shuffled slightly, widening the space between her legs to give him more room. Only the fingertips touched her, fingertips and the hairs of his arm brushing the insanely sensitive skin of her inner thighs.

She actually gasped aloud as one finger, and ONLY one, returned to slide over the top of her clit. The thought flashed through her, raising another crop of goosebumps: "I've got a gourmet, not a glutton. Thank you, gods!" Did that thought, without action, reclaim the initiative? She found out, "no", because thought and fingertips together were gone as the hand dropped to her feet, guided her. In a moment she was out of her river-runner sandals: they and the shorts went scooting out onto the flat sand. Momentarily useless, the metal buttons and snaps of her shorts glittered silently, like grounded stars built of moonlight. Used moonlight.

"Here."

She was puzzled for a moment, then the hand flattened against the ground between her feet, swept the sand smooth, reached up and took gentle, authoritative possession of her entire crotch, pulled her down into a squat. Not so much pulled as guided. Shared initiative in the motion. The hand cupped her mound, flattening her bush. Knowledgeable fingertips spread her lips apart. She was so wet the fingers slipped, stopped to take a different purchase, more secure yet more sensitive. It was embarrassing, most unsettling, this level of knowledge on his part. How had he come by it, how did he know precisely where and how to touch her for this intimate purpose? And atop that, she just COULDN'T do this... this peeing on command issuing from a single arm! No way. Could she?

"Now!" The soft voice emerged from the void once more. It stripped away her free will. 'Couldn't' evaporated, turned into 'did'.

Peering intently into the blackness, following the ramp that was the arm, still she could see nothing. Didn't his eyes, at least, have whites? She drifted through random thoughts as the hot urine gushed from her, across the hand, soaking into the dry sand. Would some desert plant get a year's worth of nitrogen from it? Would the scent perhaps amuse a coyote or two, wondering what in the world had invaded their territory? She had peed before she lay down (to sleep? HAH!). So, where had this amount of fluid come from, so fast, so fast? More importantly, what if this bladder-fullness really WAS the reality, what if when she finished peeing there was nothing left of that delicious junket-inspiring furry abdominal beast of hers?

She needn't have worried.

A last spurt leapt from her and she left the infinitely-porous sand only barely damp, no puddle. Then his finger slid gently inside her pussy. That resolved the question of 'cause' perfectly. She bit her lower lip again to encourage silence: she squatted on that bone-filled fleshy hook, barely breathing, as it explored her. "It" versus "he": which was it? Both. He owned this 'it'. Shivery. She chose — "HE", not IT. There were too many "its" in her life already. He was again entirely too knowledgeable, and let his palm deal with her clit for the moment: the fingertip had more important things to investigate. He clearly knew exactly where he was going, slid deep inside her.

The initiative seemed, oddly, to be hers once more: after all, she could just stand up, un-moor herself, leave. Couldn't she? Good theory. Proven wrong: the finger found her deep special spot, pressed.

Instead of leaving, she exploded.

Initiative back to the void. A tennis match in moonlight and without equipment.

As she came, the hand with its hooking finger tugged her forward, softly, not urgently. Like his voice, that action was so gentle it was much more of an invitation than a command. Nearly hypnotized, in a frenzy of silent orgasms, she duck-walked two short steps, up against the half-unzipped flap. The arm shortened in front of her as she moved, as if her crotch was pushing it back into its home dimension. But the dimensions were linked: the finger kept up the most delicious wiggling inside her.

The thought crossed her mind that maybe, just maybe, this wasn't the worst dare she had ever taken herself up on. Her knees disappeared into the shadow-void, too, then her hands. Painless amputation? She hurried now, suddenly in a rush, to purr the entry-zipper upwards all the way to the peak of the opening. It ran out of teeth, stopped. Now there was a door, a real one. She had made it happen. Initiative to KK again? Scary, this development: a door through which she could actually pass.

Guided, cajoled, encouraged by his finger, she knee-walked through the door and into the void. Her nipples led her, like porpoises leaping before the bow of a ship. Long, tapered, ebony-black, darker even than the rest of her. Her personal pride and joy: her babies. Back when she had a sex life, any man who paid them the right attention, and in the right amounts, held a first-mortgage on her sexual soul. They should have glowed brightly, like headlights, illuminating the arm-owner. How aware she was of them, and of her areolas, her whole breasts, all hardened, gone to concrete, set so firmly that they didn't bounce or jiggle as she moved.

Oh God, oh God, oh God!

Now, from outside, only the soles of her feet remained for the world to see.

Her head was spinning: how was it that she was here?

She flashed back, the whole review probably took a second, seemed like minutes. Months ago, her divorce had gone final. She insisted on blaming herself. Wrongly, but no matter that. Hurting, KK had hidden herself away in intentional numbness, Novocain for the soul: celibacy, girlfriends, running, work... these were all her universe now. Her two best girl-friends were worried about KK: each had been through similar turmoil. KK was too close to her own pain, so the girlfriends understood more deeply than KK possibly could what she was going through.

At their weekly dining-out-together, their support meeting, Marcy had suggested going on a radically different outing together, they could be the three-musketeer-ettes. A river float trip, the Colorado, in canoes through the desert. Eight days. Calm flat, not white-water. Extended lazy-time, time to giggle and talk and reflect and renew. She timed the suggestion right, and knew they all had vacation available. KK and Annie agreed. A junket!

They met the big high-windowed scenic-cruiser Greyhound at the bus parking lot. Forty people, milling about, doing introductions. A truck with twenty canoes on a carrier, two junketeers per hull being the plan. Inflatable rafts for the guides and cooks and supplies. Lots of room for baggage.

Excited, they stood in a little knot beside their pile of gear. That was when he approached: red-blond, shorts snug across his butt, equally tight tee-shirt, golden hairs glistening on arms and legs. He introduced himself as Brian: smiling, he offered to help them load the pile into the bus. He'd done this trip once before, he told them, then complimented them on their gear selection. The others gave Annie full credit: she was their resident camping expert.

As they were loading, Annie went aboard the bus, came back excited: there were fold-down tables, she said, with fore-and-aft seating. Four seats to a table. You could hold a bridge tournament! She'd put her daypack and cooler on the best one to hold it, but hurry... after all, it was a five-hour ride to the river.

Annie it was, who did the noble thing: would Brian like to be their fourth, to join them at table for the ride? He demurred nicely: sensitive of him, for he said it looked like a ladies' expedition and he didn't want to be a fifth wheel. They pooh-poohed the idea, told him they wanted to pick his brains about the route since he'd been there once. They had a map. He agreed, seemed pleased. They all watched his butt as he climbed into the bus ahead of them. Marcy saw KK watching, nudged Annie: together, silent conspirators without needing to utter a word, they maneuvered in synchrony so that KK sat next to Brian. KK got the window seat.

He walked them curve by curve through the 300 miles of their float-trip. An amazing memory. Annie fed them all bagels and lox and beer from her cooler.

The foursome disappeared into its own little world, very private. It was a warm world: the afternoon sun baking through KK's tall window conspired with the exhaustion of her last night's excitement and packing: she'd gotten precious little sleep. KK drowsed off, despite her best efforts.

Indeterminately later, KK came awake with a start, yanked from the first genuinely sexy dream she could remember in years. It was the bus lurching off the highway onto the gravel road, for the final two miles to the staging area, that woke her. It took her several seconds to get oriented. The first thing that registered were Annie's and Marcy's Cheshire-cat grins, floating above their seats. Then she realized what caused the grins: she was snuggled... no, really, more like PLASTERED, tightly against Brian's chest. His arm was around her shoulders, comfortable, familiar, somehow quite respectful. Her left tit cushioned her weight against him, a perfect bumper.

Even through her awakening haze, from beneath her blouse and inside her jog-bra, her nipple let her know how happy it was with the arrangement. She flushed, furious at herself, pulled up and away. Brian let her go gracefully. Marcy and Annie giggled, then reassured her: "Relax, KK!! Brian's been a perfect gentlemen, and we've been chaperones. We wouldn't let him take advantage of you. At least, not when you couldn't tell what was going on. Not even if you wanted him to! Besides, he TRIED to be a gentleman and pull away, but you insisted on cuddling." She paused, smiled, and finished up with "So apparently you really needed the ... um, er, sleep!"

KK glanced at Brian, expecting to see a smirk or at least amusement. She was surprised at the air of gentle care and concern: that got her even more flustered than a leer would have. She looked away. Things settled again, fairly gracefully, as they resumed a four-sided conversation. But to the end of the ride, KK's nipple tingled.

The foursome disembarked together, Brian volunteering to collect their gear into a pile again. As he stepped away, Annie elbowed KK gently in the ribs and said with a grin "Hey! Kiddo! Go Gettum! He's obviously all yours if you want him!"

KK flushed again, muttered "Hunh! As if I wanted or needed to..." but Marcie stopped her with a brush of a fingertip across KK's torso.

With a sly grin, Marcy said, "A woman's nips NEVER lie, KK! Look at yours!" KK sputtered, then drowned the protest in a short giggling fit. Annie and Marcy eyed one another and grinned: "Yep, there's life in the old girl yet!" said Annie.

The three set up their tent, with Annie's guidance and experience to help. KK noticed Brian setting up his own tent, anti-mosquito blue, a bigger-than-one-person version. Yes, he really was solo: and quick too, because he tied their three-person time for setting up. Everyone else, except KK's own threesome, was obviously paired off.

Bacon!

In the brilliant early morning light, with no sounds at all from the morning desert scrub, KK came awake with a start. The universe was filled to the brim with BACON! She had slept like the dead at first, then tossed and turned for a while, pestered by a return of her bus-induced erotic dreams. Tossed until her companions had commented upon it. She was disturbed at herself, at her lack of self-control over her unconscious mind. She knew that was silly, but it bothered her nonetheless. Why erotica? Hell, she couldn't even remember the last time she'd masturbated: perhaps THAT was the root cause? She had forced her thoughts into other channels, and finally gotten back into real sleep, much to the relief of Marcy and Annie.