0 comments/  20386 views/  2 favorites

Panic Ch. 01

By: SlickTony



I told my boss that I never took work with me when I went camping, but she didn't listen to me. If she had, she'd never have sent her son and his fiancée out to my campsite in order to give me the packet of material I'd already told her I wasn't going to look at until Sunday night. But she did, and it led to nothing but trouble.

She knew that I did this at a set time every year. I'd put in for the time off months in advance. This group has been meeting in the Blackwater River State Forest for twenty years. What, did she think I was going to take my laptop out there? The conditions are very primitive--no electrical hookups, no water hookups, no showers, no toilets. More importantly, cells and Blackberries don't work there. Wi-Fi? Ha!

That's the way we like it. As soon as we arrive at the site, cell phones and wristwatches are ceremoniously removed and stashed in the glove boxes of our cars, not to be donned again until camp has been struck and we're returning to the outside world. 

It's a beautiful site—reached by a long, winding, red dirt road and flanked by a creek with swift, tea-colored seventy-degree water. The campsite itself remains the same, but not the creek. Sometimes it is very low, sometimes high after a year of heavy rains. But the water is always cold, and there are always shifting pebbly sandbars with tangles of driftwood that shine silver in the sun.

For once I managed to get it together early, taking off from Houston shortly after midnight, and I and made great time on the road, so I got there at midmorning, before it got really hot. Even so, Karen and Del Hannity were there before me. They do live within a few miles of the forest, after all.

We hardly ever correspond during the rest of the year, but we're always glad to see each other when the time comes. Melea Plauger had come from Atlanta, and there were Mike DeCastro and his wife and daughter, who had come all the way from Pompano Beach.

Karen and Del and I greeted each other with hugs, and Karen said that no one had yet put dibs on the space next to their tent. I pulled my tent, air mattress and sleeping bag out of my car and slung them down there, before parking it out of the way.

"Where's your truck?" I asked Karen, for I didn't see their big old Dodge Ram truck anywhere around. Before Karen could answer, the truck in question came up the road leading in and stopped in the clearing in front of the tents. A tall, lean young man got out, came to the back of the truck, and let down the tailgate. He had clear sallow Mediterranean skin overlaid by a bronze tan, curly dark hair, and a fashionable stubbly beard. He was shirtless, but wearing those stupid looking pants that young dudes still like, that make them look like little boys who stole their dads' Bermudas. He even had the print boxers showing above the waistband of the pants, which were riding low; on the other hand, it revealed a nice portion of his taut, flat lower belly, even to where his crotch hair was trying to climb up into his navel.

"Mm-hmm, who's that?" I said.

"That's my nephew, Jesse," Karen said. 

"Ah, come on, since when did you have a nephew?" 

"Well, a sort of nephew. A step-nephew? He's my sister's stepson--her husband's from a previous marriage. Don't mind if he seems kind of down while he's here. Sheryl got us to bring him along to take his mind off things. He's a drummer, and the band he was in just replaced him. He's kind of bummed out."

"Well, no wonder," I said. "Poor guy. Say, all this history and genealogy is nice, but what I'd really like to know is, is he legal?" Thinking: young and pretty and dark-haired and a musician. Jackpot!

"Legal?"

"I like looking at young stuff, but I enjoy it more if I can be sure that I am not committing statutory rape in my heart."

Karen rolled her eyes. "He voted in the last presidential election," she said. "I know because my car was in the shop and he drove me to the polls. You can meet him. By the way, it's always Jesse, never Jess." I raised an eyebrow of inquiry. "His last name is Picken. Yeah, I know. Groan. I don't know what his momma and daddy were thinking." She started toward the truck and I flexed my chest muscles, sucked in my tummy, and followed her. "Hey, Jesse. I want you to meet a friend of mine, Esmé Trent from Texas."

Merry green eyes crinkled at me as he took the hand I gave him to shake. It was big, long-fingered, a bit rough, and cold because he was handling bags of ice. 

"Glad to meet you, Ms. Trent," he said. When he smiled, the sun flashed on a silver bead in his mouth--was that a tongue stud?

"Esmé, please. Ms. Trent is what I am at work. Tell me, does that hardware in your mouth ever get in your way?"

"Not so far."

"Jesse, I want you to put ice in the coolers that have food in them," Karen said. "And drain out that one that has mostly water and put a full bag in. And please, be gentle with the beer. I'm gonna open one as soon as I've got things set up."

Karen put Jesse to work, and I set up my tent. It was one of these new tents that are so easy to set up that they practically go up by themselves. I staked it down, plunging the slender steel pegs into the sandy dirt, and arranged my air mattress so that the valve was next to the door. I hooked it up to my hand pump and had gotten the mattress about half inflated when Jesse came back.

"Let me finish that for you," he said. I thanked him and let him take over, while I got my sleeping bag out of my car. I plead guilty to letting guys follow their chivalrous instincts, especially if it involves something that calls for upper body strength or is likely to strain the back. Take tires. I am perfectly capable of changing a tire, and I've done so, but if I get a flat in the daytime out on the interstate and a human being with testicles comes along while I'm getting the tire off the lugs, I'll let that human being take over every time. And now this air pump. I got the rest of my stuff out, and then unfolded a camp chair to sit down and watch how Jesse's muscles moved under his skin.

There are always a certain number of kids at this campout--it has been happening long enough to where some of the kids that came at the beginning have grown up and have kids of their own. I wish I knew the art of establishing rapport with rug rats. Oh, I can get along with them--my college friend Sidonie asked me to be godmother to her two kids. I had fun sending them birthday cards with money in them and attending their games, programs, graduations and weddings, but I'm very glad that nothing happened where I had to raise them. They, and their parents, sometimes came to this event, but not this year--there was another wedding in the family pending and everybody was heavily involved with that.

The pack of young kids asked if they could go into the creek, and their parents said they could, if someone would watch them. A young teenage girl undertook to shepherd them, and they scrambled down the steep bank like little goats and disappeared. One could hear their shouts and splashes faintly over the rushing of the water.

Now Karen and Melea produced pre-rolled joints and fired one up. We drew up camp chairs in a little circle, got ourselves drinks, and the joint started to come around. This was practically the only time I smoked reefer anymore. I did my share in college and in the years after, but you know how it is—your friends, i.e., your connections grow up and grow old and quit, and it's not worth the effort to drum up new ones. Connections, that is.

The rush hit me sometime between the second and third time the doobie came around, and as usual, I felt like laughing. Then the other effect of the herb started to kick in. Pot, if it's any good, tends to make me ferociously horny. All my sexual thoughts come stampeding to the forefront from every corner of my mind, like a houseful of cats who hear the can opener. Naturally I want to find some man and jump his bones, and in absence of that, there's always solo flight... The sensations are more sensational, and the orgasms are O-ier, and seem to last for minutes instead of seconds. My nipples pointed up under the tank and light-weight bra I was wearing, just thinking about it, and my pussy started to ache--in a good way, of course.

Young Jesse was close at hand, looking quite frankly delectable, despite the silly clothing. I didn't know what his attitude toward older women was, and for all I knew, he could have a girl somewhere, although he didn't bring her and Karen didn't mention one. But I could dream, couldn't I? I could look at him through half-lidded eyes and take in some of the details I hadn't noticed before. Like his cute pointy quarter-sized nipples; how they'd feel under my tongue, and was he the kind of man who liked having them messed with, or was it merely a reaction of erectile tissue that he could take or leave alone? I was glad to see that they were not pierced, because the very thought made me want to clap my hands protectively over my own. His wide angular shoulders; the thin skim of hair on his chest; the way the skin on his belly went into fine folds like puppy skin when he leaned forward, because there was virtually no subcutaneous fat there. Nice long legs--I don't generally admire the long-waisted, short-legged look some men have, no matter how attractive they are otherwise. It does not age well. Look at their fathers and be warned. I wondered what kind of package he had, and felt nostalgia for the good old days when guys wore pants that fit and you could take a guess.

I stretched languorously, extending my legs in front of me, tensing my quadriceps. Something about flexing that set of muscles always makes me feel sexy, because it involves tilting one's pubis up. Suddenly I looked across and saw two of the women in the group looking my way; one said something to the other in a low voice and they laughed. Another one of the effects of weed is paranoia. Also, I noticed it was getting hot. 

"I think I'll go for a dip," I said. "I need to cool off." I stood up and put my Coke can, which I had emptied, into the trash bag we reserved for aluminum cans. 

One of these days I am going to get a tent big enough to stand up in. If there's anything that's awkward, it's changing clothes while sitting on the ground. Hardly anybody looks graceful doing it. It's worse than having a mirror on the bathroom door while you're sitting on the toilet. I got out of my shorts and tank top and into my tankini, wondering if it was time to think about retiring from the cougar game. I put on surf booties against the gravel and mysterious sharp objects at the bottom of the stream and descended one of the narrow twisting ways down the bank to the water, not as quickly as the children had done. Once the water had gotten past my ankles, it felt wonderful. I took up handfuls of water and splashed my upper legs, to make going into deeper water easier, and my face, which felt hotter than usual. Further upstream, there were some deep-water holes. I came upon the first of them unexpectedly--I mentioned that the creek changed from year to year and season to season. I went from knee-deep to hip deep all of a sudden. It must have rained up north, I thought. The creek bottom sloped less precipitously as I went on, and then the creek got shallower. I got the feeling that someone was behind me, and when I turned around, it was Jesse. He had changed out of the rapper pants into Hawaiian print swimming trunks. 

"Hey."

"How come you up and left so fast?" 

"Felt hot," I said.

"I was just about to suggest we come down here when you got up." 

"Well, here we are. Karen told me about your change in employment. What a bummer."

"Yeah. Well, these things happen." We started talking about the music scene, which I didn't know much about firsthand, but enough to make conversation about. We were still walking through the water as we talked, and I started and nearly fell. Jesse grabbed my arm instinctively.

"Thanks. I thought I was stepping on a stone, but then it squished underfoot," I explained. "I thought it was alive. It's probably just a lump of that computer-colored clay we have around here. The kids like to make stuff with it." He slid his hand down to mine, and didn't let go of it. We continued that way a little further. 

"I didn't come out with you just to talk about bands," Jesse said. "I wanted to be sure I was reading your signals right."

"Signals?" I gave him a sidelong glance.

"Karen warned me about you," he said with a wicked grin. "She said that you were a cougar who dragged young guys off to her lair and devoured them. True?"

"You could come to my lair later on and find out. Right now, you can show me what it's like to be kissed by a man with a tongue stud. I've never done that."

We stopped and he put his arms around me. The kiss wasn't deep; it didn't need to be. It was sensual and complicated. He rolled that silver ball around on my tongue and brushed the insides of my lips with it. I started chasing it around with my tongue, and after we'd done that for a minute or two, I was weak in the knees and my cunt felt as if it weighed a pound.

"Wow," I said. "That was different. What else can you do with that bit of jewelry?"

He smiled, bent down and pulled down the strap of my top, exposing a breast. He gently sucked on the nipple and rubbed it with the stud at the same time. It hardened and the sensation went straight south. "The other one's jealous," I growled. He exposed my other breast and used a rapid flicking movement. "Good Lord. I think my thing just melted and started running down my leg."

Jesse grinned wider and without warning he slipped two fingers inside the leg band of my swimsuit bottom. I felt them sliding over my clitoris for just a few seconds, and surged toward his hand, but he withdrew it. "Nope, it's still there." 

I pressed against him again, slipping my tongue between his lips. He nipped at it playfully. I'd noticed his cock hardening; when I bent my head to lick one of his nipples and flick the other one with my thumb, it swelled and leaped against my belly. I just had to touch it. It was a good handful, long, and steely hard. 

"Damn shame there's so much traffic going up and down this creek," I said, still giving his cock firm caresses through his swim trunks. "We can...carry on this discussion further tonight. Um, your tent or mine?"

"Yours," he replied promptly. "Mine is a one-man tent." He pulled me close again, and I had to let his tool be trapped between us. He thrust it against my belly. "I wish we could go there now," he said. "Think we could?"

"We'd probably better not. This outfit isn't very prudish, as Karen will probably have told you, but there are kids around. It would be kind of gauche for us to gallop into the main campsite and dive into my tent in broad daylight with everybody sitting there eating lunch."

"Too bad. It's so simple and direct. Well, let's get into deeper water and go for a dip. Got to chill this thing--" he indicated his cock, which was making an unseemly tent in his swim trunks. So we did, splashing each other and getting completely wet. He would go under water and sneak up on me, tickling me or grabbing my ankles. He had the advantage over me. It's not that I can't swim; it's that I can't open my eyes underwater. I just had the one pair of contacts with me, which I was wearing, and if I lost them, God knew how I'd get home. After a while, Jesse said he was decent enough to face the public and we walked back down the creek.

When we strolled into the main campsite, Karen was putting together ham and cheese sandwiches.

"Just in time for lunch," she said. "How have y'all two been getting along?"

"Swimmingly," I said.

"Huh," Karen said. "Well, take good care of him. I promised his stepmom I'd return him in as good shape as I got him."

We didn't spend every minute of the afternoon together; he talked with the other guys, and helped gather and cut up wood for the big fire we'd sit around in the evening. He undertook to teach some of the kids the art of skipping stones, and I wanted to hang out with the women friends I only saw at that time. But I was looking forward to the evening.

Ordinarily, after dinner is my favorite time of the day when I'm with this bunch. The six-string guitars come out, although sometimes someone will bring a wooden recorder, and there are usually a few eggs, and we have a good old-fashioned jam. We sing mostly the good old songs--lots of Neil Young and Eagles stuff, and real folk songs, and anything else that's compatible with that. Karen and I sang the high part of "Seven Bridges Road" and I sang the high part of "Southern Cross," like we've done for several years, and we would go on until we were sleepy or out of voice. Sometimes the soft strumming of guitars would go on until nearly daylight

This time we also had Jesse, who had brought a hand drum that was suitable for playing in an acoustic gathering like this. As far as I could make out, he was good; I don't know why his band decided to get rid of him and take on someone else. But I do know that bands fire people all the time and it's not necessarily to do with their ability. I mean, look at the Beatles. I hoped that Jesse would not end up working in some obscure government office, the ambitions of his youth crammed into a small closet in his heart.

Usually I'll hang out with the late night musical crowd as late as possible unless I'm with someone. Sometimes I come alone, and some years I have brought a friend; this was the first time I had taken up with someone I'd met during the weekend. Jesse sat very close to me during the jam. Occasionally our eyes would meet and he would give me a warm, somehow secret smile, and his green eyes would glance in the direction of my tent. As the evening went on, he would reach under the arm of my camp chair to give my thigh a stealthy caress. More reefer had gone around, but I would have been ready even without that. When it was late enough so that the moon stood high in the sky, I said I was going to bed. The other people said good-night, some of them looking speculatively at Jesse to see what he would do. 

I had brushed my teeth as best I could under these circumstances, and I crawled into the tent. In just a few minutes, I heard the sound of the door being unzipped, and Jesse came in and zipped it up behind him. We had stayed in our bathing suits the rest of the day, so there wasn't much to remove. We lay close together--you can't do much else when your bed is 54" wide. 

"Before we get much further," I said, "do you have any bad sleeping habits?"

"What do you mean?"

"I snore. If it wakes you up, nudge me and I'll quit."

"I steal covers. If you get cold, grab 'em back from me. But we're not going to sleep yet, are we?"

"I should hope not." His skin was warm and smelled a little of the creek's dark water, and his nipples were almost as hard, when I licked them, as the silver ball in his mouth. If I could not see him in the daylight, I could find him in the dark and learn the shape of his body with my hands, my mouth, my skin. And he found me. He fluttered his silver-armored tongue against mine, on my lips, my nipples, and I had all I could do to keep silent. I twisted around until I was in a position to get hold of his thick phallus. It felt as big as a flashlight, and not one of those that take AA batteries, either. I licked the salty drop of precum that had welled up in its eye and twirled my tongue around the head and that little flat spot just underneath the tip. When I touched it or licked it, the whole cock lurched wildly and its owner give stressed little gasps.

He pulled out of my mouth. "You asked me what else I could do. Let me do this for you," he whispered. "I know you'll like it." He kissed his way down my belly, and then kissed the insides of my thighs. Then south of my landing strip, there were the other lips he wanted to kiss, achingly swollen and glazed with lust. I felt the soft prickle of his beard on the outer of those tender lips, then his warm lips, and then...oh, God, that silver-studded tongue sliding in the grooves between my inner labia and clit, flicking around and over it, dipping lower into my vagina, returning to touch the hooded tip of my clit and along the left side that has always been the most sensitive, and it was too much. I thrust against his mouth, choking back a scream as an orgasm roared through my body like a fire through a room full of flammables. There was nothing in the world but those contractions, the clenching of not merely my cunt but ass and abdominal muscles; I panted, grimacing, because I couldn't cry out.


Panic Ch. 01



At last he quit and turned around to face me. I pulled his head down and kissed him, licking my juices off his lips. "God almighty," I whispered. "That was damn good." I half sat up and reached for his cock, which was still hard. "That's going to be a hard act to follow."

"You don't have to follow it. I need to fuck you. Hard."

I parted my legs and guided his cock into me. Between my arousal that had been building up all day and having just been licked out, I was as slippery-wet as a young girl. He stretched me out and filled me up, lying still above me for a few seconds; then he backed out and returned like a battering ram. "Ah!" I exhaled sharply as he slammed it into me again. 

"You all right?"

"Yes!" I arched under him and squeezed him with my vaginal muscles to emphasize my point.

"I bet you're a screamer at home."

"Guilty as charged." 

"I want to hear you in full voice some time." 

"Maybe that can be a—" He began a series of long, firm strokes that massaged the anterior side of my vagina and tickled my sweet spot; I held myself in place so as not to disturb that perfect angle. "Yeah, Jesse, just like that, fuck me just like that, that's just right—" A few more just-like-that strokes, and the tickle, which had expanded to a golden column of pleasure in the center of my body, flooded all through me and I went over the edge, and again I was reduced to imploding contractions. A tiny whimper escaped my throat, and Jesse shut my mouth with his so that nothing else could come out. 

His thrusts gained momentum and I could tell that he was near the edge himself. I reached down and massaged the tense flesh between his cock and his asshole. He released my mouth, whispering, "Gah, Esmé, I—" His breath came hard and deep as he spilled into me

I felt the strong pulsations inside me and under my fingers. He laid his head on my pillow. His wavy hair tickled my face. As our hearts and breathing slowed, he lifted his head and looked down at me. It was dark, but I could tell he was smiling.

"This weekend is starting out much better than I thought it would," he said.

I hadn't put the rain fly on my tent, so I could look straight up and see the outdoors. It seemed to be still dark; on the other hand, it would take the sun a long time to put in appearance over all these trees. I put on a long t-shirt, unzipped the door and exited as silently as I could, so as not to wake the man sleeping next to me. Sure enough, there was something in the quality of the darkness that suggested that morning might be on the way, but it I still needed a flashlight to go into the woods out back. I grabbed one of the community shovels and a wad of biodegradable tissue and made my way to the facilities, such as they were. When I came back and eased myself on to the bed, Jesse moved close, fitting himself behind me like a spoon.

I was next awakened by kisses on the back of my neck and shoulders, fingers lightly caressing my breasts through my t-shirt, and something very warm and very hard pressing against my back. By now, it was light. Outside, people were starting to stir. I felt a current of arousal so strong it was almost painful. There is something about sex in a tent...hearing voices outside, knowing that there is just a layer of nylon or Dacron or whatever they make tents out of between you and the world. I can't pass it up. I moved against his thighs, and in case he did not interpret that as welcome, I reached behind me and got hold of his cock. He moved down, repositioned my top thigh, and in one hot slick move, there he was. He did not shave his pubes, but he trimmed, and I felt slightly prickly hair, not unlike his beard had been when he was kissing me, on the skin of my ass. 

"Mmm, so hot inside..." he was murmuring. I began scratching my lustful itch on that steely young cock, and we moved together. His hand wandered down to my pussy and he bracketed my clit with two fingers. I was thrusting between those fingers just the way he was thrusting into me, and oh fuck it felt nice...

Neither one of us was a short person, and one of us, probably Jesse, had a foot pressed against the wall of the tent, which naturally caused it to move. First I heard a few snickers, and someone saying, "If this tent's rockin'..."

This was followed by a woman's voice saying urgently, "Melissa, take Jeffy out back and see that he goes potty. Give him time to poop."

"Oh, shit..." I began to shake with laughter. We curled tighter, making sure that no part of us touched the wall of the tent. It was no use stopping, after all. So we carried on. I came with my face buried in a pillow, and very shortly thereafter Jesse followed, trying to breathe into my hair in a controlled way.

After we disengaged Jesse found his swim trunks and put them on. I cleaned up with the panties I'd worn the previous day, and put on my tankini. Now we would have to come out of the tent.

"C'mon, Esmé, we can't stay in here the whole weekend," Jesse said. "They'll talk that much more...besides, I'm hungry." The smell of Cornell Settle's famous cheese eggs, a potential heart attack on a plate but oh so delicious, wafted through the door of the tent when we unzipped it. 

"Good morning," everyone said, trying to suppress grins but not entirely succeeding. 

We ate a hearty breakfast, after which we picked up any trash that we found in the clearing. That was the last ordinary peaceful meal we were to have. Some time in mid-morning, trouble came bucketing through the woods in a white Jeep Wrangler, and after that everything changed.



Panic Ch. 02



I'd known my boss's son, Kyle, for a long time—I remembered when he was a young teen and used to intern in the office during the summer when school was out. He was a pleasant young man. His fiancée I distrusted on sight, and nothing she did afterward altered my opinion of her. She was a pretty little thing—fair, with a sprinkling of freckles, curly brown hair cut in a sort of mullet, and blue eyes. Her name was Kymilla—yes, K-y-m-i-l-l-a. Before she'd been there an hour she managed to make it known it was spelled that way. She was wearing one of these two-piece dresses where the skirt rides so low on the hips it looks like it's about to fall off, with her cute little bisque-colored tummy showing between it and the top. Hey, I'm not petty. I swear that I did not dislike her because she could sit relaxed in that outfit and not have to consciously suck in her gut. She provided plenty other reasons as the morning wore on.

I had really expected Kyle and Kymilla to stay for a few minutes, maybe have a Coke, then turn around and leave, so they could accomplish their original mission, which was to meet Kymilla's parents in Tallahassee. That was why my boss had sent me the project she wanted me to begin working on—she figured they could just drop it off and be on their merry way. I think she must have envisioned my campsite as one of those places you see right off the Interstate, like a KOA campground or Jellystone Park. As it was, the kids had to ask for directions to the campsite when they were in Munson. Melea, who was the nearest thing to a leader in our group, thought that as long as they had gone to all this trouble, they should hang around and have lunch. God knows why—I wasn't in favor of it at all. I did not want Sophia's kid hanging about crimping my style.

I should say in all fairness that I don't think the girl was expecting to find herself this deep in the woods. But she had luggage with her—she could have looked through it and found some jeans to change into. She did not have to sit around in her white gauze dress and little cream linen espadrilles, trying to avoid picking up dirt. But what really got me was that twice she wanted to use the restroom and she made Kyle drive her into Munson. Each time this happened, I prayed they would not come back. Further, she smoked Capris and dropped the butts on the ground. Karen brought her an empty soft drink can to use as an ashtray, but half the time she forgot to use it.

All right, I did find it annoying that she sat there like Scarlett fucking O'Hara at the Twelve Oaks picnic, with the young guys buzzing around her like fruit flies around a banana peel. Especially as Jesse was one of the guys who was buzzing. True, I hadn't expected anything from him beyond this weekend. But I was anticipating the whole weekend, damn it! I wished that young Kyle had a bit more of a commanding presence—here were all these guys hanging around his girl, and he was just putting up with it. Was he that secure in the relationship or was he just being wimpy? 

At one point, when I got what I thought was a minute alone with Jesse, I said, "You know, she is engaged."

"Yeah, and we aren't," Jesse retorted. "Geez—one night and you're telling me who I can talk to?"

"I'm not doing anything of the sort. But you might consider that if something makes Kyle unhappy, it'll make his mother, whom I work for, unhappy, and if she's unhappy, she'll do her damnedest to see that I'm unhappy. You can talk to anyone you want, sweetie. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself falling between two stools later on."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Before I could answer, fifteen-year-old Jamie Travis, who was absorbed in a Gameboy in indifference to the non-electronic spirit of the weekend, piped up. "She means," he said, busily manipulating buttons with his thumbs, "that you might find yourself sleeping alone tonight after Miss Kymilla has gone and Miss Esmé is sufficiently pissed at you. I believe it's a British expression."

"Jamie!" said his mother. "Remember we talked about boundaries and appropriateness? That was not your conversation."

The boy flushed. "Sorry, Miss Esmé," he said. "It was none of my business. I'm sorry I listened in."

"'s all right," I said, unable to help smiling a little. Without looking at Jesse, I went to the tent and got my surf booties. As I made my way down to the creek, Mike DeCastro, who had gotten his guitar out and was just noodling around, started strumming the chords that just about everyone who hasn't been living in a cave recognizes as the theme song from—wouldn't you just know? The Young and the Restless. 

I waded into the creek and splashed cold water over my head and my burning face. When I came back up, Jesse was still in the group of young people surrounding Kymilla. I got a bunch of grapes and a novel out of my car and sat down in a camp chair near the edge of the creek bank to read.

If Kymilla had stuck to the type she'd been playing when she arrived, things might have turned out differently. But it had apparently come out in conversation that she played softball—and was a pitcher, at that. To me, this did not compute—judging from her demeanor in camp, I couldn't imagine her in a million years sliding into a base when her team was at bat. In the absence of a ball, she demonstrated her aim by throwing empty cans at a half-submerged tree in the middle of the creek. But the wind blew them off-course, and they fell in the creek and floated downstream. 

Melea frowned at her. "We do not do that," she said. "In all the years we have been coming here, we have taken pride in seeing that this campsite was in better condition when we left than it was when we arrived. Please don't throw any more cans in the water."

Kymilla shrugged charmingly. "Sorry," she said. "I can't do anything about the wind. I need something with a bit more weight to it." And before we could say anything else, she picked up an empty beer bottle and tossed it. This time she hit her mark. The bottle landed in a tangle of dead branches.

I gave Kyle a dirty look. Why aren't you keeping this child in order? "Kymilla," I said severely, "since your future mother has seen fit to use you to deliver something to me, even though I asked her not to, I am in a way responsible for your presence and your conduct. We are asking you nicely to not litter. We're not asking very much. I believe we have some horseshoes—you want to show off your mad pitching skillz, you can play with those."

Some of the guys set up the horseshoes, and the situation was defused, or it seemed to be. I went back to my chair and my book.

The trouble with reading in the sun is that the light bounces off the white page and right into your eyes. Every now and then I had to raise my eyes from the book and rest them by looking at something else. Out on the creek, the sun danced over the water. I thought what I saw next was the light from the book and the water affecting my vision.

In the middle of the creek, near the tree where Kymilla had thrown the bottle, the water seemed to pour in shining walls down the sides of something huge that was rising to the surface, the way it pours from a surfacing submarine or a whale—something that shouldn't have been there, because there wasn't room for it. It was abnormal and so out of proportion to its context as to induce nausea for a few seconds, and then the something huge resolved itself into what appeared to be a giant human figure, standing in the stream. Just as quickly as that, this impression vanished, and the male who waded ashore and made his way up the steep bank as if he were merely coming upstairs, was only a little bit larger than life. And that was when everybody else saw him.

Water dripped from his olive skin and mane of curly black hair. He wore only a loincloth, and since it was wet, it molded itself translucently over a penis that even flaccid, made impossible promises. He was broad-shouldered, heroically built, and something about him suggested decades of maturity—while he reminded me just a little of Jesse, he made that young man look like a stripling. Also, he had the hairiest legs I'd ever seen.

In his big hands, he held the cans that Kymilla had thrown into the creek and the bottle she had hit the tree with.

"Is the one who threw these present among you?" His voice fit him—it was rich and dark and resonant. But there was something about it that gave me a chill.

I have to hand it to her, she did step forward. 

"I did—I was just messing around," she said. "I won't do it anymore."

"I'm sure you won't." The man looked around at all of us. "I've been observing you all morning. (From where? From where?). I can't believe you've let this unmannerly child flummox you as she has been doing—I thought you had more of a sense of community than that. The second time she did not obey your wishes, you should have set her on the road. It's clear she neither belongs here nor wants to be here."

"She was leaving after lunch anyway," Melea said. "Would you like her to—say, who the fuck are you anyway? It's more than fine with us if she leaves, but who are you?"

"That doesn't matter now," he said. "Anyway, I've changed my mind. I think I'd like the pleasure of her company for the weekend. Maybe I could teach her to appreciate nature a little more than she does." He sat down on one of the sturdier camp chairs in the clearing and said, "Come here, girl."

As if in a trance, Kymilla walked toward him and stood before him. He beckoned her a little closer, so that she stood near enough for her skirt to brush his hairy knees, and he passed a long brown finger over the tender bisque skin of her belly that showed between the two pieces of her outfit. Once, twice, and we could all see how she reacted to his touch: how her eyes glazed and the lids drooped, her lips parted, and her nipples suddenly poked through the thin material of her top. "You think you'd like that, little one?" Kymilla seemed incapable of human speech; she just gazed at him, her breath coming short and fast. She widened her stance so that she stood almost spraddle-legged, as if her pussy had become so swollen that she couldn't put her legs together. Like mine had felt, after Jesse had first worked me over with that silver ball in his tongue, even though he had only kissed me.... Finally she nodded. The visitor spread his thighs enough to give Kymilla a good view of his crotch. His penis, under the drying loincloth, twitched and sprang long and erect very quickly, so that the cloth slipped away from it. It was uncut, which was not surprising, and so big as to seem unreal, which wasn't surprising either, given the size of the man himself. Kymilla gave a little gasp and swallowed, never taking her eyes off him. "I think we're going to get along fine," he said.

I couldn't seem to stop looking at the sight either; it wasn't until the visitor let his cock subside—as if he had complete control over it—that I was able to look around for Kyle to see how he was reacting to this. He was looking much as you'd expect a mild-mannered, civilized young man to look who'd had his woman bluntly commandeered away from him by a man of obviously superior power: desperate and pissed; afraid, but trying not to show it. "Sir, what do you think you're doing? That's my fiancée."

"I wouldn't have known," said the visitor. "You seemed to have so little influence over her. Don't worry, she'll come to no harm—but you might want to take yourself to Pensacola and come back for her tomorrow. Or not." He looked upon Kyle with a bland expression. Everyone tried hard to look somewhere else while the young man spun around and ran toward his Jeep. A moment later we heard him start it up and drive away. Kymilla had not watched him leave, either. She was still staring at the stranger, still breathing with that shallow panting, her eyes glazed and lips swollen with arousal.

We'd all been standing around like a bunch of dummies, but at last some of the men—unlike Kyle, most were blue-collar working men, redneck hunters, some of them even ex-cons—started to act the way they thought they should. Earle Grafton stepped forward and spoke up.

"Look man, who the fuck do you think you are, coming here and taking that girl over like that? She doesn't have to go with you if she doesn't want to—"

"Watch this," the stranger said. But we were not meant to look at him. We followed his gaze out to the part of the woods that we traditionally used as the latrine area. John Tessier, who had been out in the woods on the other side of the creek and had missed most of this drama, had gone out there, no doubt to pee, since he did not take a shovel with him. We watched him follow one of the paths that led away to the left and disappear; in a few minutes he returned where we could see him...

"Watch this," the stranger repeated. 

Tessier came up the main path leading back to the central clearing, and then...he started, he looked around in sudden confusion, as if he had found himself in some place he could not recognize. But how could he not? He'd only been coming to this part of the woods for twenty years. Also, he worked as a hunting and fishing guide. Yet here he was, making frantic little sorties into the woods, crashing through the underbrush. He made an effort to calm himself and get his bearings, and then started up the path again. Finally he broke, and was running around in little circles, desperately bellowing "Where is everybody? Where the fuck am I?"

The stranger made a slight motion with his head, as if he had made his point, and whatever strange thing had gotten hold of Tessier released him. He realized where he was and ran full tilt up the path and into the clearing, nearly crashing into a couple of tents as he came. He skidded to a stop in front of the stranger. 

"What did you do to me? What the fuck did you do to me?"

The stranger stood up, moving the enraptured Kymilla aside, and put his hand on Tessier's shoulder. "Just relax, man. You'll be all right." Tessier looked at him dubiously and shook his head, hard, as if trying to shake snakes out of his hair. He sat down in one of the camp chairs and put his head in his hands. A few seconds later he raised his head enough to clear his eyes and looked over at the visitor.

"What the—who the fuck are you, anyway?"

The man from the forest looked around at all of us, a slow, penetrating but enigmatic look. "You have seen what I can do," he said. "You put it together."

We all looked at each other in incredulity and dawning fear, and I think that at this point I just checked out. I was raised by hard-headed, non-fiction-reading Episcopalians, and considered that I had a rational view of the world. Supernatural, woo-woo stuff rarely figured in it. This was more than I was prepared to deal with. I had to get my head around it, or leave. Maybe I should have left. But I decided to suspend my disbelief, come along for the ride, and see how crazy things got. 

Half the trouble people get into is because of curiosity.

As the day progressed, we tried to carry on our usual activities with the stranger from the creek among us, but it was hard for us to go about our business while always keeping an eye on him. Much of the time he stayed in the main campground, and he kept Kymilla close by him, always within hand's reach, Sometimes she sat on his lap, where she twitched and squirmed with such ill-concealed lust that it was embarrassing to look at her and we sent the younger kids up the creek to play. At least there was no question of anybody driving her to Munson so that she could go to the bathroom. She whined a bit about having to go out in the woods, but her captor merely laughed and gave her a light slap on the ass as he pointed her to the latrine area.

"There, that wasn't so bad now was it?" I said to her when she came back. 

"I—I guess not," she said.

"We've been doing it for years," I said. "You'll get used to it." 

"Maybe," she said, and her eyes sought the stranger, who was talking with some of the men. 

"You people need to get the sticks out of your asses," he was saying. "Don't mind me. I'm here to have a good time, just like you are. We're going to have a good time tonight—let's get ready for it. I know you have your biggest fire on Saturday night. Let's get us some wood to put on it." And sure enough, big surprise, he knew where there was a lot of it, and he led the guys into the forest. Presently we heard the whining of chainsaws, and a little while later the men emerged from the woods with big bundles of cut-up wood in their arms, which they brought to the clearing and stacked near where we always made the fire. 

Karen and Melea and I got together. "So, it looks like we're in for a party tonight," Karen said. "I wonder what all's going to happen."

"If there isn't flute music," I said, "I'll be disappointed."

"Ha. Ha," Melea said. "We've got a problem here."

"You don't say," As far as I was concerned, our problem had begun as soon as my boss's milquetoast son and his nasty little twitch of a fiancée had entered the campsite, but I didn't think that was what Melea was talking about.

"This is serious. What do we do with the kids?"

"We send them to bed early," Karen said. "Saturday night has always been for the adults anyway, what with the reefer and all."

"That won't do," Melea said. "I just have a feeling that this party is going to be different. The kids need to be out of here before the fun begins. In fact, I really think that anybody who's got kids under eighteen needs to cut the weekend short and get out of the area."

"Out of the area," Karen said. "Is that going to be possible? Will he...will he even let us? You saw what happened to John...I don't get it. We've been coming here year after year after year, and we've always cleaned the place up, and we've only ever burned deadfall, we've never cut a living tree, outside of maybe putting a temporary ringbolt for a hammock; you suppose we wounded one of his girlfriends by mistake? Why is he visiting himself on us like this? And for littering--so then why all the sexual stuff?"

"Personally I think he was picking up on emotional currents running through the group—her doing the southern belle at the ball thing with the young guys, and then Esmé being pissed at her because Jesse'd been her honey the night before," said Melea.

"That's right, blame me. He was just showing us what he could do," I said. "As for...why, it's a well known fact that the...the gods get pissed for not much reason, or at the wrong people, just like mortals do, and do things just because, like mortals do; if there's anybody here that plays the pipes, he'd better not play better than this guy; he might skin him alive, or give him donkey ears or something—no, wait, that was Apollo...As to getting the kids out, he might think it's a reasonable idea. Why doesn't one of us just talk to him?"

"Since you know so much," Melea said, "You just got elected."

"Thanks a whole hell of a lot," I said. "Where is he, anyway?" Neither he nor Kymilla were in the main site where they had been. Someone said that the two of them were down in the creek. I didn't see them there, but they could have gone upstream, as I had done the day before. Maybe I should wait until they got back. But I knew I was merely putting off what I didn't want to do, so I resolved to get it over with. I made my way down to the stream and started up it. The weather was as nice as it had been the day before, if a bit hot. I thought of how Jesse and I had walked up the creek together, and how excited his kisses had made me. I hadn't seen much of him since the woods-god had put dibs on Kymilla's company; he had spent most of the time among the other men. He had been in the gang the stranger had sent into the forest to gather fuel for the evening's bonfire. I remembered how badly we'd wanted each other, and all that had kept us from doing it right there on one of the sand flats was the possibility that some of the kids playing further upstream would decide to come back to the campground. I wondered where the kids were; probably at the swimming hole where they'd been the day before. They had not seemed to take much notice of the visitor. Probably the way he wanted it; had he been in a different mood, he might have muted his primal and outrageous sexuality to surround himself with the children, letting them climb all over him, singing them songs and telling them wondrous stories...




Panic Ch. 02



Just because Jesse and I had felt too uncomfortable at the thought of being interrupted did not mean that this would bother him and Kymilla...but that didn't mean it wouldn't bother me...maybe I should go back, after all, and wait for them to get back. I turned around and was proceeding downstream when I felt a sudden, powerful pull to keep going the way I had been. Knowing that it was the stranger's influence, I gave up trying to return to the campsite and followed the feeling. 

On the sand flat there lay an enormous fallen tree. Part of it lay in the water, where you were liable to get tangled up in its branches if you passed too close to it; the rest of it was on the shallow bank. Because it had been soaked in many creek risings, the trunk was free of bark and relatively smooth. The woods-god was sitting on the trunk as comfortably as if on a bench, with Kymilla curled between his legs. 

"Oops, sorry—"

"No, it's all right." He gestured for me to come closer, and the feeling of being under compulsion increased. The girl crouched before him with one elbow resting on his hairy thigh, and the other hand gripping his enormous stiff cock. There was no way she could get much more than the head of it in her mouth, but she was giving it her best effort, sucking and licking it as if tasted like chocolate (maybe she was being made to think it did); she had secreted enough saliva so that the shaft was slick and wet, and she was making up for her oral deficiencies by jacking it with slow, firm strokes.

I'd seen fellatio in porn movies and had done it myself, but I'd never before stood and watched it happening with other people just a few inches away. I should have been embarrassed out of my mind, but instead I was getting turned on. It stood to reason he was having fun, but it even looked like she was—she was loving it up with her lips and tongue as if she expected the water of life to come out the end of it. I wondered if she did it for Kyle—she seemed the kind of girl who strictly rationed her sexual favors and used them as a reward. I didn't think she would complain of Kyle's dimensions after this—if they got back together after this weekend. 

Lord, but that woods-god had an incredible-looking piece of equipment. I wondered how it would feel inside me. I didn't see getting every last inch in, but if I stayed on top...it would have served Kymilla right if I'd pulled her away, said Thanks for wetting him up for me. Now go play...

"Did you wish to speak to me?" he asked in his warm dark voice.

I wondered what the rule of etiquette was for addressing this being. Bullfinch's Mythology hadn't said. I was damned if I was going to kneel or prostrate myself. I compromised with a sketchy bow that owed more to martial arts or Japanese business manners than the drawing room or the sacred grove, and said, "Yes, I did. It's about the kids, sir, they should not be here tonight. We raise our children differently than we did when—when everyone acknowledged you. If things get intense, if they get confused, and one of them gets hurt somehow, it would be a bad thing. A very bad thing."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Give them and their families safe conduct out of the woods and back to the highway. After what you did to John Tessier, most of 'em are afraid to get out of your sight, for fear it'll happen to them."

The woods-god looked down at Kymilla, who was still working on his dick. "A moment," he said, and he allowed himself to concentrate once more on what she was doing. "A little harder and a little faster with your hand, honey...ah, that's perfect. Keep it up just like that." Shortly thereafter he got this rapt, slightly stupid look on his face, and I looked down at the action just in time to see his balls tense up in their hairy sack, and his cock pulsate in Kymilla's grip. Her throat muscles moved as she swallowed as fast as she could, but she couldn't keep up; his spend leaked out the edges of her mouth and ran down her chin. When the woods-god had finished with a vast, happy sigh, she released him and pulled up the hem of her skirt to wipe her face, as unselfconsciously as a child. While she was doing this, I noticed that she had lost her panties somewhere. He replaced the loincloth on his subsiding dick.

"Sundown," he said. "They have until sundown. Remember that it's shadier in the forest. When a white thread can't be told from a black one, it'll be too late. Anyone left here after that must stay and take what comes or face the consequences."

I could imagine what the consequences would be. The moon had been almost full last night; tonight it would be full. The shadows in the forest were dark. I could imagine thrashing around in a world of silver light and inky dark, with no familiar path in sight, alone with no sight of friends, of man-made light, of fire...

"I'll tell them," I said.

"Get up and sit beside me, child; I need to talk to this lady." Kymilla did as she was told, looking at me with a trace of resentment. "Esmé, right?" I nodded. "Come closer. I won't hurt you. I think you know that." I approached him until I stood where Kymilla had been sitting. "Tell me—what would you have done if I had denied your request?"

"Made an offer, I guess." I was very conscious of the smell of him: male musk and earth, leaves, the tang of fresh cum..."Would you have wanted me to join this...this little twit in her punishment?"

"What an attractive idea. I wish I'd thought of it. But I've already granted your original request; besides, I think the young man you met yesterday might be hurt."

"After she appeared on the scene, we didn't get along that well," I said, aware that I was sounding like a sulky child. 

"It will be all right," he said. He reached up and gave my lips a light caress with his finger. "Enjoy your youth." What on earth did he mean by that? Did he mean Jesse? My youth was several years behind me. I stepped back and he got up and started down the creek, taking Kymilla with him.

While I stood there bemused and still aroused by what I had seen, Jesse emerged from behind another stand of water-killed trees. He came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders, tracing the edges and convolutions of my right ear with his tongue. "Esmé, I'm sorry I was such an asshole," he said. "I don't know what I was thinking—I mean that. Will you forgive me? Am I welcome in your tent tonight?"

"I suppose that hard-on that's poking me in the back has no bearing on the matter," I said, but I was ready to forgive him. Kymilla was out of the picture, and after what I'd seen I needed badly to be fucked, too.

"Come on, Esmé, give me a break," he said, barely touching my nipples through the thin cloth of my t-shirt. "I said I was sorry." 

My cunt heated and swelled. "I'll accept your apology if you'll fuck me now," I said. I stepped out of my tankini bottom and straddled the fallen tree where it wasn't so far from the ground, bending over and bracing myself with my hands. Jesse stripped off his swim trunks and positioned himself behind me, grabbing my hips in his large warm hands. "Unh!" I grunted as his thick hard cock rammed into me and filled me I couldn't help it. And then he was stroking firmly in and out of me, hitting my spot every time. I felt that suspenseful tightening up inside, the deepening and widening of that streak of pleasure, and—"Oh, fuck, Jesse—"

"Easy now, Es, keep it down—" 

I closed my eyes and shut out everything except sensation as I convulsed around Jesse's cock, shouting in a whisper. In a few more strokes, he caught up with me. When he was done, we unhooked, grabbed up our clothes and splashed into the creek. Beneath the surface, we let the cold water carry away our excess bodily fluids and wiggled back into our clothes. The current pushed me into his arms, and he caught me in a hug of simple affection. 

"You hear what we talked about? What the deal is?"

"I heard enough," he said. "We finished up just in time. Here come the kids." The tweens and littles who had been down at the swimming hole were splashing their way down the creek with the teenage girls who had been looking after them.

Melea took all the parents of young kids aside and told them what I had told her. Those who had little kids were frankly relieved to be able to get out of the campsite, but those whose kids were only months shy of their eighteenth birthdays had problems; the older adolescents took the news with very bad grace. They weren't quite sure what was going to go down—not that we were, either—but they had their ideas, and they greatly resented having to miss it. In an amazingly short time, the families had struck camp and had everything loaded up in their cars and trucks. There were the usual farewell hugs and promises to see one another next year. The woods-good stayed in the background with Kymilla, as we who were left stood in the front of the clearing near the road and watched the last vehicle out of sight. I think there were not a few among us who would have been glad to join the exodus, but we felt honor-bound to stick around for the sake of Kymilla, pill though she was. John Tessier didn't have kids under eighteen or any kids at all, but he left too. Earle and Mindy Grafton were loath to leave their twenty-year-old son, Robert Earle (known as BobEarl), behind, but he was of age to stay for the party if he wanted to, and nothing they said could change his mind.  

"You think you know what you're doing, but don't be too sure," Earle said to the young man. "There's been some unnatural, pagan goings-on today. God knows what it's going to be after dark. Take care, boy."

Almost immediately thereafter the weed came out. We rolled Cheech & Chong sized joints and smoked them almost frantically. It seemed strange to be doing it so openly; usually, we tried to be unobtrusive about it when the children were around; we liked to wait until they were up the creek playing in the swimming hole, or they had gone to bed. Out of respect, we offered a toke to the woods-god. 

"I don't need that," he said. "And neither do you. (Oh, yeah?) If you keep on smoking that stuff you'll fall asleep before the fun gets started. Are you folks as nervous as all that? Don't be. You'll live through this. You'll have the time of your lives." Almost immediately afterwards, we did feel less nervous. We were committed to whatever was going to happen; might as well follow it through. Kicking and screaming would not change anything.

The music began after supper, the way it had always done. We sang everything we usually did. The woods-god joined in; we were not at all surprised that he knew all the songs we sang—he must have been listening to us for years. Nor were we surprised that he had a singing voice as mellifluous as his speaking voice. He complimented Karen and me on our harmonies. Then he said, "All of you have done well; I enjoyed it very much. I've enjoyed it all these years you've been coming here, except the time when someone brought one of those pesky electrical devices—I was glad that guy didn't come back. Since you have entertained me with your music, let me entertain you with mine."

I can't imagine where he could have kept it, considering that he had worn nothing but a loincloth the entire day, but he brought out a set of pipes. A Pan flute, of course—what else was he going to use? He looked at Jesse with a smile. "Will you do me the honor of accompanying me?" Of course Jesse would. This was a session he would never see again in his life. He scrambled to the Hannitys' truck to get his drum (he never had set up his tent). Then they began to play. The music was wild and sweet and passionate and primitive, and with Jesse's drumming wove an almost palpable web of sensuality over the company. Zamfir wouldn't have recognized it. I could feel its rhythm in my heart and in my pussy, and I could tell the other women felt the same way. Some of us got up and began to dance. Ordinarily I would have felt silly getting up and dancing with the younger women, but I didn't care now. I think those who danced gave the men a lap-dance, or something like it. When we came to where Kymilla was—next to her captor, of course—Terri Williams, one of the young women, grabbed her hand and pulled her up. 

"She's been hanging with you the whole day—let her move around a bit. It'll be good for her," Terri pointed out. She was wearing nothing but a short top that revealed her belly, and like many of us, a bikini bottom. When she paused in front of the woods-good, he stopped his playing for a minute while Jesse gave us a fine drum solo, and then—I swear I saw him reach out and pull down the front of her bikini to expose her half-shaved pussy. An impossibly long tongue, bifurcated at the end, snaked out and dipped into the top of her slit. I could just imagine how that prehensile, fleshy fork would feel passing over her hard little clit...whoa! I didn't usually think like that...at least not about anyone's hard little clit but mine..."Aieee!" Terri screamed, but she was giggling. The woods-god pulled her bikini bottom back up, looking as if nothing had happened. Kymilla scowled with jealousy, and resisted Terri's pull on her hand. "Don't be a spoilsport, Kym," Terri said. She put her arm around Kymilla's waist and drew her close, kissing her like a lover would. Kymilla, who had been kept in a state of constant arousal and must never have been allowed to get off, kissed Terri back and ground her pussy against Terri's. The men applauded, whooping and hollering. Then some of them got up to dance, too. We made the circuit around the fire, which was larger than it had ever been. When we were back where we had started, we were laughing. 

Except for Kymilla. In a fierce, intense tone, such as I could not have imagined her capable of before, I heard her saying to the woods-god, "I want it now." He quit playing and smiled at her, letting his cock rear its head and push his loincloth aside. 

"Let the games begin," he said. Kymilla undid the waistband of her skirt and let it fall to the ground. Then she straddled her captor's lap and slowly, deliberately, lowered herself onto his thick shaft. He cradled her ass in his hands and she began to move.



Panic Ch. 03



We took this as a sign that we might adjourn. Jesse and I scrambled into my tent. Jesse brought the drum with him and put it next to my stuff. We pulled each other's clothing off. Jesse took my face between his hands and kissed me, stroking my lips and tongue with his silver stud. "Missed you, sweet Esmé...I'm so glad I'm here with you...me, too, Jesse honey, oh you feel so good..." Again, the greedy and languorous finding of each others' bodies in the dark. Whatever might be going on outside my tent didn't matter.

"We've got the whole night," Jesse murmured, so we tried to take our time. I kissed my way down his body until I found his big hard cock. I looked forward to having it in me, but what I wanted first...I fitted my mouth around the head and went down as far as I could, thinking about Kymilla and the woods-god, down by the creek. I hoped she was having a good time now. "Lie down, Esmé. I haven't had dessert yet." Again he took himself out of my mouth and urged me down on my bed. His hands and lips and tongue caressed my body, not merely my nipples, although the things he did to them sent currents of sensation down to my already engorged cunt. His hair brushed against my inner thighs. His breath was warm. I felt the prickliness of his whiskers on my skin just before his mouth opened, covered me, his supple tongue dipping in to...

Oh yeah, Jesse. I like that. Lick me with that silver tongue. Yeah. That's it. Make circles around it. Oh fuck that feels good. Strum it. A little faster...ohhh...ah ah ah ah ah—AH! OH GOD OH FUCK oh...oh God, Jesse...that was...oh...oh...Jesse, what are you.—oh God I don't think I can...oh, do that some more...oh fucking CHRIST I'm gonna—I'm coming ag—ah—ah—ah--AAHHH!

Inside me, contractions and twitches rumbled through me like aftershocks. Outside the tent, there was thunderous applause, or what would have been thunderous applause if there had been more than a couple dozen people in the campground. "Whooee!! Go Esmé! Tell us how you really feel! Sing it, sister!" and similar comments. Shit. I hadn't just been thinking all that, I'd been saying it. 

"You weren't kidding when you told me you were a screamer," Jesse said, sitting up. "Wow. That really got me going. Here, feel this." He took my hand and put it on his cock. It was even harder than it had been before. "Brace yourself, Esmé—I'm going to give you the fucking you deserve." He parted my legs, put them over his shoulders. This position is never my idea, I don't think it flatters me at all, and I never think it's going to work and when it does I'm surprised. "But first—" he twisted back, felt among my things for the flashlight I'd been carrying. I watched in shock as he hung it from one of the little utility hooks that dangled from the tent ceiling and turned it on. His hair and shoulders were backlit by the light and again, I was reminded a little of the woods-god.

"God, Jesse, no!" I said. "Don't you know that with the light inside, everyone will see us?"

"Sure I do," he said, taking the light and hanging it from a different part of the tent. Now his face was lit goldenly, and his green eyes, but unfortunately, I was lit up too. "I want to see what I'm doing. I want to see my cock sliding in and out of your pussy. And so what if anyone sees us? They've already heard you."

I couldn't argue with that. So I didn't. I was too busy grabbing handfuls of bedding, and then, any part of Jesse I could get hold of while he rammed me, again and again. He was a little too big and came in a little too hard, and it shouldn't have felt this good, but the angle was right, and it did. When my next orgasm took me, and then another, and another, I didn't even try not to holler.

The guys outside were cheering: "That's it—fuck that hot pussy! Make her scream some more. Put some English on it! Fuck her—fuck her good and hard!"

A woman called out, "Send him over to me when you're done, Esmé!"

"In your dreams!" I yelled back. And then I just yelled. I felt in Jesse that electric tension of the body that indicated that he was approaching the point of no return. His eyes were dark-widened and brilliant as he looked at me, and at the action of his cock. "Yeah, Jesse," I panted. "You did me good. You're ready, aren't you? Come on honey—give me your pleasure—shoot me full of that stuff!"

"Unh," he said, and then shuddered in ecstasy as he spurted into me, his cock jerking and contracting inside me. Once again, the people outside the tent clapped and cheered. Jesse let my legs down and collapsed on top of me. 

The only problem I have with sex at my age is that I always have to pee before I feel up to going another round. Anyway, my doctor said I should. The latrine area was down the path behind my tent, but I still felt a little embarrassed that everybody had heard me, and then seen me, only a few minutes before. That's why I didn't look at anything or anybody on the way to the latrine area. While I was back there, I heard, faintly the sound of a truck or a car starting up. That's weird, I thought; have they forgotten nobody can leave? If it's a matter of needing liquid refreshment, our visitor was probably capable of conjuring a wineskin right out of the air. When I came back I had plenty of opportunity to see what was going on. 

"Holy pandemonium, Jesse," I said. "Have you had a look at what's going on out there?"

Jesse was lying on his side on the bed, occasionally looking out the door of the tent. "Some," he said. "By the way, I hope you don't mind, someone out there said they needed some lube. I found some of yours in your stuff. You had two bottles."

"Which one did you give them? The partly full one or the new one?"

"The new one. There were more of them than there was of us. I figured we could get by with the other one."

The need for the truck had become apparent: they needed a power source for the air compressor, so they could blow up another mattress—a queen sized one. This mattress had been covered with a blanket and placed in an area from which the chairs had been cleared, close enough to the fire to give light and some warmth. Kymilla reclined on it. Her top was gone, as well as her skirt; the cream linen espadrilles hadn't been seen since she'd gone down to the creek with the forest god. Her head and shoulders were supported on the knees and thighs of Terri, the girl she'd been dancing with earlier. Terri was playing with her perky little breasts. Kymilla's legs were carelessly spread; her open wet pussy glistened in the firelight. The little patch of hair on her mons was dark above it. There were no fewer than five guys crouched around her, all with stiff dicks. I looked at her face; she seemed to be enjoying the situation. I wondered how the woods-god was taking this. Very well, evidently; he must have turned her loose for the time being. He sat on the same sturdy camp chair he'd sat in that morning. He had the Morrisettes' nineteen-year-old twin girls on his lap, one to a knee, and they were both playing with his cock. 

The first guy to mount Kymilla didn't take long enough for her to get off, but the second one did. An ascending series of shrieks rose into the night. A third man entered her from a sitting position, and while he was thrusting into her, Terri slid out from under her, turned around, and straddled her face.

"It's wild out there," I said. Then, "Damn. Is that Del I see waiting for the K Train? I wonder what Karen thinks about that."

"She's cool with it," Jesse said. "Anyway, she's busy. You can see inside her tent." And if I stuck my head out of mine and craned to the left, I could see right in the door. The Hannity tent was illuminated too. I recognized Karen's straight hair and center part, even though her face was foreshortened by the angle I was seeing her from. Another woman lay on top of her, playing six to her nine. Karen's tongue lapped and twirled between the woman's labia. I didn't immediately recognize the muscular ass and tennis player thighs that framed Karen's face, but when the woman raised her head and roared, I knew the voice and the French braid. It was Melea.

"Damn," I said again. I looked back at the K Train. Now a man and a woman were lowering Kymilla down onto the cock of a guy sitting just behind her. But it wasn't her pussy he was filling. That was left to another man who had scooted as close to them as he could, contributing to some beast from Revelations: three bodies, three heads, many legs. They consolidated their position and began to move. 

Jesse reached up to tap me on the shoulder. "Yo, Esmé," he said. "How about paying some attention to me?" He took his rigid cock in his hand and gestured with it. 

"You don't want to be out there where all the group action is going on?" Thinking: suppose he does, what do I do then?

"Naah," he said. "I hate waiting in lines. What I want is for you to stay just like you are, on all fours, but you need to spread your legs more." He positioned himself behind me, curving his lean body over my back. With one slow, steady shove, he was inside me again. We crouched in the door of my tent. While we watched the show going on outside, he pushed the head and underside of his cock against my spot with tantalizingly slow strokes. My flesh engorged and clasped him as he thrust.

"God, Jesse," I said. "That feels good. But could you increase the speed a little?"

Jesse nipped at my ear. "Not yet," he said. "I want to see how slow you can stand it."

Kymilla seemed to be enjoying the double penetration, judging by the sounds she was making. In a little while this set her penetrators off, and the combination shook itself to pieces. They disengaged and lay in a happy, come-stunned heap on the mattress. Somebody brought them sodas, which they practically inhaled, as if they'd been on a thirty-mile bike run.

"Wow," Jesse said. "Take a look at Chloe and Danielle." The Morrisette twins were still with the forest god. Danielle had mounted him in reverse-cowgirl style. Her legs parted wide, she rose and fell leisurely on his shaft. Chloe, kneeling before the pair, leaned forward and spread her tongue over Danielle's clitoris. Danielle moaned. I could see her belly muscles flexing from where we were. 

"Fuck, Jesse," I gasped, backing against him. "Now! Please, now! Now—"

"Like this?" He stroked faster. 

"Yes! Yes! Do that—oh fuck! Do it, do it—unh...unh...ah! Oh f—-ah! Ah! AHHH!" Jesse's skin against my back turned suddenly damp, and his breathing deepened and quickened as he pulsated and spurted inside me. When he was through we collapsed on the bed. "Oh, Lord, Jesse, was that fun or what? Hey! Where's the applause?"

"They're all busy. So that's what set you off. You ever do that?"

"No, I've only ever done it with one person at a time. But it looks like it works beautifully. I mean, getting stimulation from the inside and outside both."

"Well, give me a few minutes and we can go out there. I'll bet either Chloe or Danielle would be glad to help you out."

"I don't think so. I've never done that. I mean, I know lots of girls experiment with each other, but I never did."

"Too bad, you never know what you might have missed. The rest of this bunch may be doing things they don't usually do, but if that was the first time those two ever diddled each other, I'm Mick Fleetwood."

"You weren't a slouch tonight on the skins, darlin'," I said, kissing him. "Hey, I've got to go outside again for a minute. Don't go 'way, I'll be right back."

I got done with my business and came back. The forest god was lying on the mattress now, and he was surrounded by girls: Kymilla and Terri, and the Morrisette twins. They were all either playing with each other or with him. I paused to watch the show.

A pair of wiry arms came around me from behind. Jesse pressed himself behind me, lipping at my ear. "You haven't forgotten me, have you?" I felt coolness between my legs, and realized that his embrace had caused my t-shirt to ride up in front.

"No, of course not," I said. Then, "Good heavens, Jesse—what are you wearing?" I could feel his long bare legs against mine, and his erection at my back. I felt frantically behind me, finding only bare flanks. 

"You, just now," he said. 

"I thought as much. God, Jesse, how could you? There's people about."

"Yeah, so?" Jesse's hands rose to my breasts, caressing the nipples through the cloth of the t-shirt, making them stand up. I leaned back and let him; it felt too damn good to tell him to quit. Then he reached down and slid his fingers into the grooves of my pussy so that my clit stuck out between them. I knew that if he moved them at all, I was going to come, right out there in the open with all these people around me.

The forest god looked at me, smiling lazily. "Take it into your tent, you two, or be prepared to share it..." Jesse removed his hand from between my legs, and pulled me backward toward my tent. 

He leaned back, holding his cock straight with one hand. "Come sit," he said. "No reason I should do all the work around here." I got ready to lie on top of him. "No, sit up. It's hot—and I want to see everything. Take your shirt off, too." He'd turned off the flashlight dangling from the top of the tent while I'd been out; now he turned it back on. I sank down on his cock, feeling it stretch me out. I had to find a comfortable angle to sit back at; he was a tad longer than I was deep. "You look hot, Es, all spread out like that. C'mon and fuck me. Start slow and stroke long." I did, and the longer I did it the better it felt. He drizzled some lube on his fingers and rubbed them gently on my clit. 

"Yeah, that's great," I panted. I felt as if I would explode any minute. He circled it with a slow considerate thumb while I rose up and down on him, and then he slid it over the tip and I went over the edge. He laughed delightedly as I shuddered and hollered, past caring who heard me or even saw me. And then he did it some more...

"Now, fuck me fast," he grunted urgently. "Fast and hard. Slam it down on me." The tent filled up again with noise, panting and the smack of flesh on flesh. "That's it, good and hard! Ah, fuck, that feels good—here I go—here I go—ah, YEAH!" 

There are few things that look and feel and sound as lovely as a man shooting his come into my pussy, at least if I've had the opportunity to come ahead of him. When he'd stopped pulsating inside me I slid off him, feeling like a puddle of warm liquid. He sat up and kissed me. "That was great, Es," he said. "I suppose you're going to have to go out again?"

"In a little while," I said. "Every time I do, I come back and more wild shit is going down. Too many more times and he'll have the Barnum & Bailey circus out here."

"I don't think there's room for it."

"You didn't see him materialize out of the middle of the creek like I did." I put my t-shirt back on and went out back again. This time the place I chose took me close enough to some of the tents on the other side of the campfire that I could see and hear people inside. I shouldn't have been able to hear, but my senses seemed to stretch out and pick things up. I tried to match up people that had stayed for the party and their individual camps. The DeCastro tent, I thought. It was a partitioned one, big enough for three or more. I saw the silhouettes of a man and a woman. A girl. No, a woman.

Mike was saying, "Please, baby, don't ask this of me, it's all wrong. Yes, you're lovely. I do want to fuck you. I want to so bad I can hardly stand it. But it's wrong. And your mom would kill us."

"No she won't," Ana said with a giggle. Last I looked she was in with Miss Karen and Miss Melea waiting for a chance to get in on their action. Can you call it a daisy chain with only three people in it? A trillium, maybe." Mike was sitting with his legs tucked under him, his cock standing rigid and twitching. The girl rose to her knees, her luscious hard-tipped young breasts in her hands, offering them to his lips. "C'mon, Dad, don't you think these are pretty? Just tell me you don't want to suck on them..." With a moan of surrender Mike embraced the girl, kissing her breasts and sucking the nipples until they were both short-breathed with arousal. When he stopped, she said, "It's not fair that you should be alone tonight. Tonight is magic, we can do anything and it'll be ok...Oh, papi, I love you—let me do something for you." The two silhouettes merged again as Ana's head descended into Mike's lap. 

A few seconds later, Mike growled, "All right, stop! You've got some explaining to do. You are too damn good at this. Where did you learn to suck cock like that? What have you been up to?"

Ana raised her head. "How do you think it is that you have no grandchildren?"

"Huh. Kids today...well, I still don't want any grandchildren, especially not from tonight." Mike lay down, stretching his legs out. My view of him was obscured by Ana, who was now sitting next to him, leaning on one hand. "So let's be safe—if we're going to do this, swing that round little ass over and spread that juicy puss you've been flashing for the last hour over my mouth. I want to find out if you taste as good as you smell." Ana complied and lay over him, top to tail. Their silhouettes merged again. I heard slurping and sucking and moans of pleasure as Mike enjoyed the taste of his daughter's flesh. Very soon, Ana raised her head from Mike's cock and let loose with gasping cries of ecstasy

Back at my tent, I shucked my sandals and went in. "You look like you've seen a ghost," Jesse said. "I've been resting, I haven't looked out since you left. What did you see?" I told him about the exchange between Mike DeCastro and his daughter. He gave a long whistle of surprise. "Huh! Well, it is a special night. How'd you like to do what they were doing?"

"I don't mind if you don't," I said, "but we've been at it so long, I really don't feel fresh down there."

Jesse laughed. "I don't mind if you don't." Then, "What the hell's up with that light?" A crazy spotlight was bobbing up and down on the side of the tent; it seemed to be coming from the Hannitys' next door. We came out of my tent far enough to look into it. Del had returned. He was lying on his back; Karen rode his cock, Leda de Castro his face. The Hannitys' flashlight was one of those long ones that take six batteries. Melea, reclining near them and watching the three, was masturbating with it, and had not bothered turning it off first. The electric light that hung from the ceiling of the tent showed quite clearly the silver, ridged length of the flash's shaft plunging in and out of her vagina. It was as fascinating to watch as the threesome. 

"Come on, Esmé," Jesse. "You can ride my face if you want." 

I wasn't sure how well that would work in my tent—it wasn't nearly as big as the DeCastros'. At least now it didn't matter if someone had their feet pressed against the side of the tent and made it move. It worked well enough for me. I didn't mind the tasting myself on Jesse's cock, and all the friction had rendered me deliciously sensitive. I got off twice, but then I had to stop what I was doing to him. I hadn't satisfied him and my jaw was starting to feel as if I were at the dentist's.

He slid out from under me. "I'm sorry—I don't know why, but it's never easy for me to come this way unless it's for the first time. I'd rather give than receive. I thought tonight would be different, and I did get closer than usual. Let's just lie here for a little while and watch the show. Or...there is something we haven't tried yet..." I was not too surprised to feel his fingers wander down my back and into the crack of my ass. I turned around and gave him a dirty look. I didn't care if it had become fashionable rather than taboo; I still didn't have to like it.




Panic Ch. 03



"Must we?"

"C'mon, Esmé, you'll like it."

"Wanna bet?"

His breath was warm and tickly in my ear. "I can make it good for you. It won't hurt. I know how."

"Jesse," I said. "You've been fucking me all weekend. I'm familiar with your style. I like it, but I know it won't work as back-door action. Anyway, this just isn't the place. If I'm going to do it at all, I insist on having soap and running water nearby. And santorum in my sleeping bag? Forget it. Just For. Get. It."

"We've got all the running water we need," Jesse said. "Down by the creek. We can go back to that place where we were before. We'll take the soap and the lube with us. C'mon, give it a try."

And the next thing I knew, I was putting the bottle of liquid soap and the lube in a mesh bag. Suddenly, it had seemed like not so bad an idea. I knew why, of course; as I crawled out of the tent and Jesse followed me I wondered, despite the fact that I knew he was a supernatural being, how the forest god could run so many things at once. We had not bothered with getting dressed, except for putting on t-shirts; the party in the clearing was still going full blast and nobody paid any attention to us. Kymilla and Terri had moved to an old fashioned chaise, the tubular kind with webbing, where they lay close together, breast to breast, top leg akimbo; each gliding her fingers up and down the grooves of the other's slippery cunt. As I watched, Kymilla panted and shuddered through an orgasm, her legs stiffening and toes curling. In a few seconds, Terri came after her. The Morrisette twins had remained with the forest god. Danielle lay half-reclined, her legs parted; Chloe, lying with her head pillowed on one of her sister's thighs, was giving her pussy a slow, careful, languorous Frenching. Chloe was being pleasured in her turn by our supernatural visitor, who, spooned behind her, was doing things to her with his cock that most cocks are not built to do. Not human ones, anyway.

The Settle brothers' truck was parked on the other side of the clearing, where Cornell had brought it around to power the compressor. Two men were pressed up to the tailgate. At first I thought the older and bigger one was Cornell, but I had seen him and his wife Marissa heading for their tent when the wild time had begun. No, this was his younger brother, Verdell, with a similar bear-like appearance, but lighter in build. I wondered who the young dude was that he had trapped nicely between him and the rear of the truck, bent forward, legs spread wide, hands gripping the top of the tailgate. Verdell was holding onto the top of the tailgate, too, but his other arm was wrapped around the young man's torso, presumably giving him a reach-around. The firelight illuminated Verdell's hairy body, and the flexing of his big square ass; he was really whaling it into the fellow, whoever he was. I could hear the little pants and grunts and slaps of flesh upon flesh. When Jesse and I went around the truck, we could then see who the younger man was. There were similar expressions of pleasurable strain on their faces. "Damn, it's BobEarl," I said. 

"Esmé!" Jesse said. 

"Hey, if they didn't want me to look, they could have gone into a tent," I said. "Heh. Pagan goings-on, indeed." I wondered if BobEarl ordinarily had these tastes, or if he was taking a side trip into unfamiliar territory, as so many of us seemed to be doing; and if the former, if Earle and Mindy knew. 

As we scrambled down the bank, I heard a few ascending, staccato cries, followed closely by a bull-like bellow, and figured that Verdell and BobEarl had concluded their business. I was a little embarrassed, but a lot aroused. The moon made the water look like a rippling silver sheet. We stepped into the cold stream and walked up to the sandbar, as I had done twice before—once with Jesse, as I was doing now, and once by myself, to plead with the forest god. The half-submerged tree was dark against the bone-white sand, but pale as a ghost where the moon shone on it. As if in a trance, I took my t-shirt off and mounted the trunk as I had earlier—had it been only today? The tree's barkless skin was cold and a little sandy under my palms. Jesse stood behind me; I couldn't hear the gurgle of the lube in the bottle because of the water, but when the tip of one of his fingers glided between my ass cheeks, I could tell he had applied it liberally. I tried to relax. He pushed the finger in, little by little. I had admired his long fingers when I'd first shaken hands with him. Now I got to admire them from another angle...He began slowly and gently finger-fucking me, getting a little further in with each stroke. This isn't so bad, I thought. Presently I could tell he had the finger all the way in. I thrust back at him. I wouldn't have minded if that finger were just a little longer...he pulled it almost all the way out, and then I felt two fingers coming in.

"There, how do you like that?"

"It's ok," I said cautiously. 

Jesse laughed. "Ok? Just ok? You're backing up to me like an animal in heat." 

I was one. Not only was I enjoying the sensation of Jesse's fingers stroking in and out of my ass, my pussy was swelling and aching with renewed excitement. I would have been just as happy if Jesse would just fuck me there, but I knew he was determined to have my ass and I was beginning to believe what he said about making it good for me.

"Jesse," I said, "Fuck me somewhere!"

"One more finger," Jesse said. He withdrew his two fingers, and when he entered me again, there was a third one. He moved them within me; I gasped and heard an animalistic sound come out of my throat. "You're ready." He pulled his fingers out and grabbed my hips; the digits that had been in me startlingly warm against my cold skin. Then the head of his well-lubed cock pushed against my freshly opened rear passage. I put my head down and once again tried to relax as he slowly shoved it into me. I felt like there was at least a foot of hard flesh entering me, although I knew this was impossible. At last his wiry body hair nestled against the skin of my ass. 

"Be gentle with me," I said, trying for lightness.

He was. Each stroke seemed to take a long time going in and a long time coming out. The friction produced by that long thick cock was stimulating nerves I didn't know I had. I felt he could go on for a long time. Only one thing was lacking. The point of entry I was used to also needed attention. Having Jesse pull out and enter me there, however, was a non-starter—it was just asking for a course of antibiotics and yogurt for lunch every day for two weeks. I moved my left hand to a more central position so my right hand would be free...

At that moment I realized, in the sudden shift in perception that one gets in dreams, that it was no longer the barkless surface of the tree under my hand. It felt like warm skin over heavily muscled flesh. And the insides of my legs were rubbing against hairy male ones. I opened my eyes and looked down. The forest god's smile flashed white in the moonlight. It was only later that it occurred to me to wonder how he could lie back on that tree trunk and fit between my legs and Jesse's as well. But there he was. And I knew, in the same way one knows in dreams that he had not left the party up on the bank to its own devices; he was up there and here too. 

Well, of course. 

When I reached down to take his cock and guide it into me, he intercepted my hand and placed it on his chest next to the other one. His cock seemed to have found me of its own accord, rising up from his thickly furred groin like a cobra; I could feel its warm blunt tip bumping against the insides of my upper thighs, finding its way between my labia, stroking my clit. How in hell was it—he—able to do that?

"Jesse," I said, "stop a moment." He did. "Do you see what's happening?" We stood there frozen into our position while the end of the forest god's cock slid up and down the center of my cunt. "Unhhhhhhh..." I said as its tip—lubricated with precut—stroked my clit. And then it slid into me, following the bend of my vagina all the way to the end, nestling against my spot as it did so. "This is fucking unbelievable. It's like it's prehensile or something..." 

"Shit, I can feel it!" Jesse said. "He—it's—stroking me as well as you. Don't make me stand still any more—I've got to move—" The woods god lifted his big hands to my flanks to steady me, and Jesse began to thrust, moving me back and forth on the god's versatile tool. I was being touched in every deep place I had, at once. There was no problem with lubrication; I was still impossibly slippery. And somehow, my clit was getting stroked—by something. I wasn't even going to try to look or to feel so as to find out what it was. Every thrust of Jesse's cock, every movement of my cunt on the fantastic tool that impaled it, was a stroke toward ecstasy. Each one moved me closer and closer; I could feel an orgasm gathering like a mighty crack of thunder, in my pussy and ass both. The pleasure ratcheted up, and up, to the point of no return. Through the seismic event that overtook my body, I could hear myself roaring and shouting as I never had before, and every sound I made enhanced what was happening to me. When it had finished with me, I could hear the echo of the formless cries, the obscenities—I said fuck a lot—reverberating through the woods. I had forgotten that there was sometimes an echo out here. How far had my voice carried anyway? I began to giggle.

From up on the bank, Verdell called down: "Esmé, are you OK?"

"She's having as much fun as you were!" Jesse replied, slowing his stroke down.

"Esmé, say something!"

"Something," I said. Corny as that comeback is, I never can resist it. "I'm ok. I just got off—couldn't you tell?"

"Just wanted to make sure. You outdid yourself."

The forest god gave a low chuckle. I could feel it in my hands, up my arms, as well as hear it. "I have seldom met a mortal woman with such a capacity for pleasure," he said. "You'd make me a fit companion. Trouble is, I'd have you for two and a half days at most, and then one of those other greedy motherfuckers would make off with you..."

"Thank you, I think." I shivered a little, partly because the temperature had fallen, and partly because the god was moving his cock inside me, curling and snaking and slithering. Jesse had speeded up again. I stood braced as the two male creatures pronged me in a sort of contrapuntal rhythm. It was going to happen to me again, and this time I felt the suspense building up in every part of my body. 

"So—fucking—hot—" Jesse grunted. "So fucking hot and tight inside you, Esmé...oh, man, I can't stand the way you're stroking the underside of my dick, but don't quit—oh, fuck, that feels good...I can't take it any more, I'm gonna—"

He did, and so did I. Through the roaring in my body, I could hear full-throated shouts coming from both of us. The forest god laughed again, and then I screamed some more as I felt a long, vibrating shudder come up from the base of his cock to the end, as if the earth itself were spasming inside me. The waves of ecstasy came so close together, so hard, that I could barely get my breath between cries. Another name for the orgasm is le petit mort, and for the first time I wondered if anyone had ever actually come to death. I think I must have blacked out.

And then: I could see again, breathe again, think again, though I was panting and my legs were trembling. Jesse, winded, pulled out and leaned against me. I was still open; the small breeze felt as if it were blowing right up my ass. Hot liquid had started to run down my legs; not so much from Jesse, who had come three times before, but as for the other --I remembered how the forest god's spunk had overflowed Kymilla's mouth when she'd sucked him off earlier in the day. Under my hands, once more, was the water-felled tree. But it was no longer cold, as it had been when I first touched it. It was warm, as warm as a man's skin.

"Well, you wanted to fuck me up the ass," I said. "I hope you're happy."

"Oh, God," said Jesse. "That was even better than I expected it to be. When I came I felt like the life was going out of me."

We picked up the net bag with the soap in it and waded into the creek. I had expected it to be icy cold, but somehow it felt no more than cool. We soaped ourselves well and ducked down in the water to rinse, and stayed there holding each other, until we started to recover. Eventually we felt strong enough to step ashore, dry ourselves with our t-shirts and put them back on, and climb up the bank of the creek.

The fire had died down quite a bit while we'd been gone; no one had been tending it. So had the party. I saw where there were people on the mattress still, but I couldn't tell who they were. We went right past them and into my tent, where we fell on my bed and slept like the dead.

I was awakened not, as was usual, by my bladder, but by the heat in my tent. It had to be over eighty degrees in there. I crawled past the still-slumbering Jesse, unzipped my door and looked out. The sun was shining brilliantly; according to custom, I had no watch on, so no way of knowing exactly what time it was, but from the look of the light, I thought it had to be at least 9:00, maybe even closer to 10:00. I wriggled into a pair of panties and crawled out into the campground. I was the first one up. 

Kymilla lay naked on the mattress, sprawled in abandon like a doll someone had left out in the yard. Someone had thrown a blanket over her, but she had shrugged it off in the night. Her skin was laced with milky tracks of cum, as if a convention of snails had crawled over her. A flash of brightness caught my eye; between the mattress and the Settle brothers' truck lay the bottle of lube Jesse had been kind enough to lend out last night; it was less than half full. What I had seen was the sun refracting through what was left. I looked back at Kymilla. She lay perfectly still. There were more flies around than usual; we had not been as careful cleaning up after supper as we usually were. One of them landed on Kymilla's belly, delicately sampling the fluids that had dried on her skin. She did not move.

She's dead, I thought. She's dead, and we're fucked. Then she drew a breath; I saw the flesh below her sternum draw in. I nearly fainted with relief. But what in hell were we going to do with her now? For one thing, I could see that she was going to get a brutal sunburn if she didn't get out of the sun and get some clothes on. There was a pile of dirty white gauze next to the camp chair the forest god had sat in last night; that had to be her dress, or part of it, and it was obviously unfit to wear until it was washed—if then. We couldn't turn her back over to Kyle, assuming he'd stayed in Pensacola per the god's advice, or send her back to her parents, in this condition. For a fleeting moment I damned Kyle for running off with all her luggage, but under the circumstances, what could he be expected to do? 

Kymilla stirred again, and sat up, blinking. Then she looked around wildly, and as swiftly as a deer, she sprang up from the mattress and ran, naked, toward the creek. "Oh, crap," I muttered to myself, and to the company at large, "Somebody get up and help me!" But I couldn't stay around to see who would; I was scrambling as fast as I could after Kymilla, who half-ran, half tumbled, down the steep bank and into the creek. 

She cast herself into the deepest part that was close to her, and submerged herself. I bent down and hauled her up. She struggled. As slight as she was, she was hard to handle; slippery with the water from the creek and all the fluids that had landed on her, it was worse than trying to land a catfish. A big catfish. At least she couldn't fin me. She was completely distraught. She kept crying, "Where are you? Where are you?"

Karen appeared above me. "Come down and help me, I can't hold her much longer! Oh, and bring some soap! Hurry!" Karen was back quickly with the soap and a washrag; between us, we got the crying, shivering, hysterical young woman cleaned up. Oddly, the cold water and the no-nonsense handling we subjected her to seemed to calm her down, although I wasn't ready to release her just yet. 

"Where are you?" she cried again, looking out over the sparkling stream.

"He's gone," Karen said. "And I hope he stays there." Kymilla, stooped over, started to sink into the water again. She had buried her face in her hands and was sobbing bitterly.

I sank with her, putting my arms around her; where we were, the water was no more than neck deep if you were sitting down. And it didn't matter how wet I got; what with trying to keep her from drowning, and then cleaning her up, I was completely wet anyway. "Kym, honey—you know he can't be with you all the time; he's got too much to look after. Anyway, it's not like he's gone gone. He just can't always be where you can see him and touch him. He's—he's all over the place! See here, Kym—any time you're out around nature, he can see you; you already know that. And if you do good for the earth...I think he'll be pleased." I rocked her and patted her, murmuring more comforting bullshit, and it seemed to help. At last we thought it was safe to turn her loose. The three of us came out of the water and climbed back to the campground. People were starting to get up.

Del came out of the tent, blinking against the light, scratching his groin through his ragged khaki shorts. I wondered if Melea and Leda DeCastro were still in there, or if they had gone back to their own tents. More specifically, I wondered what kind of conversation Leda'd had with Mike and Ana when she got there. 

"I'm gonna have to get back to the guy sold me that weed," he said. "I had the damnedest dreams."

So that was how everybody was going to handle the morning-after scenario. Had it all been a dream? I didn't think so. After all, there had to have been a reason that Kymilla had ended up sprawled naked on a mattress in the middle of the clearing. I clenched my sphincter experimentally. No pain. In fact, I felt no different than I would have after any night of great sex. No matter what everybody else had been up to, or hadn't been up to, Jesse really had been with me. He was even now coming out of my tent with his drum. He came up to me and gave me a scratchy kiss on the cheek, and went to put the drum into the Hannitys' truck.

We'd had plenty of opportunity to notice that Kymilla and Terri were about the same size; Karen found her tent and talked her out of a pair of panties, shorts and a t-shirt. I dug around in the back of my car and found a pair of flipflops I'd bought at a beachside store and only worn once. They were too big, but they would have to do. Once we'd gotten Kymilla decent, we ate our usual last-day breakfast of store-bought pastries and coffee, and then we began to strike camp. There was still the problem of what to do with Kymilla. She had settled into a deep, breath-catching silence, but had eaten voraciously of everything we offered her. She had literally been left with nothing but the clothes on her back; she didn't even have ID. She'd left her purse in Kyle's jeep. I took out my cell and tried to call him, but naturally, out here in the woods, the call dropped before I even heard a ring. Not surprising, with not even half a bar.

We decided that once we got out of the woods and within reach of a tower, we'd try again, and if we couldn't raise Kyle, the DeCastros would take Kymilla to Tallahassee and drop her off at her parents'. As for explaining to them and replacing her ID, she was on her own.

After we'd struck camp we parted pretty much the way we always did—with hugs and assurances of meeting the following year. There might have been some constraint between some of the parties. but Jesse and I shared a long hug before he got into the truck with Karen and Del. "It was great, Esmé," he said. "You were great. If I find myself in Houston, can I look you up?" 




Panic Ch. 03



"Of course you can," I said. "I had a wonderful time. I'd love to see you again if you're in town." I took a business card out of my purse and gave it to him. I'm not one for waiting by the phone for a guy to call, no matter how much fun I've had with him, but if he ever did come to Houston, I most certainly would make time for him.

Kyle and Kymilla never did get back together, although I believe he sent her stuff back to her. Kymilla's experience transformed her into a rabid environmentalist. Those who know her say that she's still obnoxious, but that's not surprising; after all, Saul of Tarsus was essentially the same person after he became St. Paul. My company got the printing contract for a magazine called La Mujera Latina, and Kyle started dating the woman who owned it. They are going to be married this fall.

That all happened last year. Then this month I got a letter from Karen. As I said, we mostly don't correspond between our annual meeting, so when I saw the postmark and the return address, I was curious, and a little worried. 

It looks like we're going to find another place to camp—our site, the one we've met at for more than twenty years, has been shut down. Even though we're mostly by mutual, largely unspoken agreement treating the weekend we had as if it were a dream, evidently it was real enough that people talked about it to others; rumors began to get out. A special committee from the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee came out with bell, book and candle and performed a formal exorcism on the whole area. And then the Florida Department of Agriculture Forestry Division put barricades and a culvert across the road leading to it.

I wept when I read this, because I think I know what's going to happen to it in the end. Pensacola is expanding, and all those little towns north of it are good places to commute from. Public lands, for the people now running the country, are no more than plums to be handed out for cheap to their friends. Our beloved forest, and the farmland around it, will eventually fall into private hands—Pulte, Mercedes, DR Horton, Lennar, it doesn't matter; eventually there will be subdivisions where there were once farms and forest. Sure, the real estate market and the housing industry are in the toilet now and pulling the rest of the economy down with it, but no downturn lasts forever. There will be a recovery, and the whole engine will start up again

And everyone who's read the history of this country, and this state, knows that Hell itself, let alone one pissed-off and desperate woods deity, cannot hope to prevail against landowners who have God on their side.