Chapter 1

I stuffed my last cardboard box of personal belongings into the cargo hold of my girlfriend’s Rav4, jumped into the passenger seat, and waited while she fussed over a map with directions to our new home. I moved in with Darlene to save money when my landlord evicted me from my apartment for nonpayment of rent. We believed that two could live as cheaply as one. We were right, two could live as cheaply as one, but only for half as long.

Darlene and I had met at a local tavern where we developed an unlikely May-December relationship. She played the part of Ms. May at the youthful age of 35 years. I fulfilled the role of Mr. December at the tender age of 65. Darlene was an attractive, short, little brunette, just under five feet five inches tall, with small breasts, shoulder length hair, and a freckled baby face.

We had become romantically involved as much out of laziness as out of lust. Neither of us wanted to spend the necessary time to search for the perfect partner so we settled for the close enough for right now instead of searching for Mr. or Ms. Right. The joke was that I was ‘robbing the cradle’ when I took her to bed, and she would respond, ‘True, but I feel like I’m robbing the grave when we make love’.

We wouldn’t have had any luck at all if it weren’t for bad luck. The real-estate development company into which Darlene had invested fifteen years of her life went belly-up two weeks after we decided to shack up, and then her last two paychecks bounced. The bounced checks set up an overdraft chain reaction. Darlene’s rent check bounced, along with about 25 or 30 personal checks; each bad check racked up a $35 bank charge, $25-30 in returned check merchant fees, and her account soon was in the red by several thousand dollars. The certified letter ordering our eviction was the last straw. The back of our financial camel broke and the pieces shattered beyond repair. We needed a new place to live, and we needed it fast.

Our dwindling fortunes required drastic action, and Darlene had a plan. She suggested that we pack up, drive up into the mountains, and stay with a group of her college friends. They were a group of amateur survivalists living in an off-the-grid cabin. The commune was located somewhere in the Rocky Mountains about 250 miles west of Denver.

The more I thought about it, the better it sounded. Living off the grid far from civilization was an attractive alternative to living in a cardboard box behind a Stop and Shop supermarket. Besides, I liked the high country and I had made several treks into the mountains while I stationed at Lowry Air Force Base prior to shipping out for an all-expense paid tour of Vietnam.

Darlene and I discussed joining her friends in the mountains. I watched and listened as she dictated a text message requesting sanctuary for us, and shared her joy when she received an affirmative response a few minutes later. We talked long into the night, and we sealed the deal by morning with a wild session of lovemaking. We were going to make a new life for ourselves. We were going off the grid.

Darlene finally finished fussing with the map, folded it, parked it in the sun visor, followed US-70 out of Denver, and we were up into the mountains an hour later. We hit the town of Rifle four hours later, broke for lunch, and I asked Darlene to stop at the local Smoke Shop. I had learned that our new home wasn’t only remote; it was in the middle of fucking nowhere. The idea of running out of cigarettes a million miles from resupply was frightening.

I assumed our new off-the-grid home had some power, so I purchased an electric rolling machine. I then covered my bet; I bought two hand-powered rolling machines just to be safe. I then cleaned the shop out of their inventory of Zen rolling papers (three cases), along with 60 pounds of tobacco, two hundred cheap disposable lighters, and five tobacco pipes. The total bill put a $1,600 dent in my bank account (did I mention that I’m addicted to cigarettes?).

The Zen cigarette tubes and 60 lbs. of tobacco were too bulky to fit in the Rav’s cargo bay, so I ended up securing my newly acquired stash to the vehicle’s roof. I wrapped everything up in a tarp and triple tied it down with rope and bungee cords. The car looked like a band of gypsies owned it by the time I finished.

We turned north on Route 13, passed the town of Meeker two hours later, and we turned onto a winding dirt road leading up into the mountains about 45 minutes later. Darlene announced, ‘It won’t be long now’ for the twentieth time.

Darlene was a bright young lady. She had programmed a series of waypoints her friends had e-mailed her into her vehicle’s GPS system. We followed the dirt road through a thick pine forest until the road devolved into not much more than a poorly marked trail. The trail shrunk down to a path as we continued onward, our path soon became nothing more than a series of GPS waypoints connected by miles of barren rock as we climbed above the tree line. I finally asked Darlene after an hour of driving ever deeper into the mountain wilderness, “How long is not long?”

“We should be there within the hour,” Darlene answered.

“Christ Almighty! Your friends aren’t only off the grid; they’re off the fucking map. Do you have any idea of where we really are?” I complained.

Darlene just shrugged her shoulders, smiled, and kept driving.

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Chapter 2



Our Rav4 reached a ridge crest, which afforded us with a splendid view of a long thin U-shaped valley nestled between two towering mountain ranges an hour later. We could see a building almost lost in the distance at the far end of the vale.

I could see that the structure was considerably larger than it had seemed from the ridge as we approached the cabin. The rustic cabin looked like it was growing out of the side of the mountain upon closer examination. It was as much a log mansion as it was a log cabin. Solar panels covered the south facing steel roof, and a farmer’s porch wrapped around three sides of the cabin. The overall appearance was Buck Rogers meets Davy Crockett.

The sun had disappeared behind the snow-capped mountains. Night and the thermometer were both falling fast by the time we rolled to a stop in front of the cabin. A welcoming committee of at least a dozen women had gathered on the porch. They erupted in shouts of joy and hand waves when Darlene emerged from the vehicle. The boisterous welcome turned to silence when I stepped out of the car. It was as if someone had pulled the plug on the PA system.

Darlene stepped around the front bumper and gave me a hug as she whispered “Did I mention that this is a lesbian survival commune?” in my ear.

“You forgot to share that little detail with me. What the fuck are we going to do now?” I whispered back.

Darlene was like that. She tended to skimp on the details and fill the void in with trivia or useless information. Darleen held my hand as we broke from our embrace, and spoke to the assembled women on the porch, “I would like you to meet my lover, Dennis Richards, everyone. He’s old, but he’s a very nice guy once you get to know him.”

An older woman, who appeared to be the group’s leader, stepped forward and said, “I’m Lisa, Mr. Richards. Please come inside. I think we need to have a talk.” I had the same uneasy feeling that I used to get when I got summoned to the Principal’s office as a kid.

Lisa turned on her heels, walked inside, and the rest of us followed her into the cabin’s great room. If the cabin had looked large from the outside, it looked like it went on forever standing in the middle of the hall. It was enormous. A massive freestanding stone fireplace dominated the center of the room, and a blazing fire radiated heat and light in all directions. A cathedral ceiling towered over the open space, and a rustic balcony ringed the wall on all sides at the second story level. Thousands of LED icicle lights hung from the balcony’s railings and stairways. A soft, comforting glow bathed the room.

Lisa directed us to follow her to her office upstairs. She stood about 5’6” and was a good-looking woman about my age. Streaks of red highlighted her closely cropped brunette hair, and she appeared to be in excellent physical condition. Her skin had the bronze tan of someone who was no stranger to hard outdoor work. Her face was more attractive than beautiful. She was wearing faded work jeans and a low cut wool sweater which allowed an excellent view of well-tanned medium-sized breasts and ample cleavage.

Lisa’s office featured a large oaken desk and a stone fireplace. A picture window filled one wall with a breathtaking view of the frosted mountains painted silver in the light of a nearly full moon. A floor to ceiling bookcase crammed with books covered the opposite wall. Several oriental rugs were scattered about on the wood floor. Lisa said, “Make yourselves comfortable, I’ll be right back.” Darlene and I took a seat on a small sofa in front of a coffee table and waited.

I turned to Darlene as Lisa left the room, and whispered, “What the heck is going on? Lisa isn’t exactly giving us a warm and fuzzy welcome.”

“I don’t understand. I told Lisa’s assistant that you were coming with me, and she said, ‘Great, the more, the merrier.”

We could hear the voices but not the words of two women engaged in a heated discussion in the next room. The conversation abruptly ended, and Lisa, entered the office with another woman in tow.

“Your presence here presents us with something of a problem, Mr. Richards. Darlene sent us a text message that she was bringing her lover ‘Denise’ with her. It was on that basis that we gave our permission for you to join our family of sisters,” Lisa explained.

Darlene let out a little gasp just before she burst out laughing. “Fucking auto-correct will get you every time. I dictated that message on my IPhone, and I never caught the error when it changed Dennis to Denise,” Darlene said.

It took Lisa only a moment to absorb the implications of Darlene’s unintended error. There was no conspiracy at work here; just faulty technology.

“Error or not, Mr. Richards’ presence in our family of sisters might produce unwanted sexual tension, and that kind of stress can be bad for families,” Lisa explained.

“Seriously? You’re all lesbians, how can an old fart like me produce any sexual tension?” I protested.

“There are capital-L Lesbians, and there are lower case-l lesbians, Mr. Richards, and then there are those who might want to find pleasure from a man out of mischief or mere curiosity. The fact that you’re old makes you seem harmless, but I know better. You’re not as safe as you appear. You have already seduced one of our first lesbian sisters and convinced her to take you on as a lover,” Lisa answered as she glanced over at Darlene.

I also gave Darlene an inquiring glance of my own. I had suspected, but never known for sure that my ladylove walked both sides of the street.

Lisa leaned forward and looked directly into Darlene’s eyes as she asked, “Since we’re already on the subject, why on earth did you pick such an old guy for a lover in the first place? My God, he’s old enough to be your father or even your grandfather.”

Darlene laughed and answered, “Everyone wants to know about our May-December relationship. I picked Dennis because he’s low maintenance, easy to be with, and treats me with respect. He’s a fantastic lover and knows how to make a woman happy. He has a very talented tongue.”

Lisa looked over at me and raised a questioning eyebrow. I just smiled back and shrugged as the ‘talented tongue’ comment seemed to hang in the air forever.

Lisa let the silence stretch out a bit, and then leaned across the coffee table, took Darlene’s right hand in her own, and asked, “Tell me, dear sister, is his penis as talented as his tongue?”

Darlene looked surprised at Lisa’s question, and then looked thoughtful. She told Lisa after several moments of reflection, “He has an untrained penis and it doesn’t work nearly as well as his tongue. He sometimes has trouble getting it up and his pecker has a mind of its own at other times. He often suffers from premature ejaculation when he finally does get an erection.”

Lisa glanced over at me and raised another questioning eyebrow. I just blushed, shrugged, and did my best to sink out of sight in the sofa.

“Thank you, Darlene. That was certainly a comprehensive answer to my question,” Lisa said with a wink.

Lisa turned toward her assistant and said, “Will you please show Darlene to her room and round up a few of the sisters to help unpack their vehicle, Lucia? I need to spend a few minutes to bring Dennis up to speed on the ground rules for our colony. Please let the kitchen crew and the others know that we may be a little late for dinner.”

Darlene gave me a quick kiss on the lips and followed Lucia out of the room. Lisa stood up as the door closed behind them, and said, “Let’s adjourn to the next room where we can be more comfortable. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

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Chapter 3

The ‘next room’ turned out to be the bedroom Lisa shared with her partner, Lucia. The walls were hand hewn pine planks decked out with bookcases and several very well done nude watercolor portraits of women. A queen-sized four-poster bed covered with a beautiful handmade quilt took up one wall, and a rustic looking nightstand with a large table lamp adorned with a stained glass shade provided most of the light in the room. The balance of the lighting came from a stone fireplace with several burning logs. A huge bearskin spread out on the floor before the fire, along with several large throw pillows, offered comfortable seating. The room had an elegant, warm and cozy feel to it overall.

Lisa retrieved an amber colored bottle and two glasses from the bookshelf, and sat down of on the rug. She patted a spot next to her as she invited me to sit in front of the fireplace with her.

“Dennis, would you care to join me in a glass of home-brewed brandy?” Lisa asked.

“Only if you make mine a double,” was my reply.

I took a seat on the rug next to Lisa, and made myself as comfortable as possible. I wasn’t as flexible as I had been when I was younger. Moreover, sitting on the floor wasn’t my preferred mode of relaxation.

I took a sip of the offered brandy. Oh my, God, it was as smooth as silk, and I could feel it filling me with a warm glow.

“Dennis, how comfortable are you with public displays of nudity?” Lisa asked as she took a sip of her brandy.

Her question caught me off guard, and I nearly snorted the drink out of my nose as I coughed and choked in surprise. What the fuck kind of question was that?

I replied, “I don’t have a problem with public nudity” as I regained my composure. “I’ve visited plenty of nude beaches in my life.”

“Did you get nude yourself or just visit as a voyeur?” Lisa inquired.

“I got as naked as everyone else. Why do you ask?” I responded.

“Because our dress code most assuredly is clothing optional when we’re in the cabin. Most of us go skyclad when we aren’t working or cooking, or if safety requires that we remain covered up. I’m glad that you’re comfortable with this,” Lisa said, as she pulled her sweater over her head and exposed her braless chest.

Neatly folding her garment, she rose to her knees, unbuckled her jeans, and slid them down to her ankles. Lisa wore no underwear, and her naked body showed no trace of tan lines.

Lisa folded her jeans, placed them on top of her sweater, leaned back on the pillow behind her, and closed her eyes, “Ahh, that feels much more comfortable. I’m almost getting to the point where I hate wearing clothing,” she said with a deep sigh.

I took the opportunity to examine Lisa’s exposed body as she lay naked next to me. Her breasts were still pretty firm, and they showed few of the signs of aging or sagging, apart from a few stretch marks, which came along with advancing years. Lisa’s nipples were about the size of my little finger, and her dark brown areolas were roughly the size of fifty-cent pieces. Her stomach was flat with just a few wrinkles above a thin patch of reddish-brown pubic hair. She was in better physical shape than most women half her age. Either that or she was a very high mileage thirty-year-old.

Lisa’s face had the usual lines and weather worn creases of someone who spent most of their time outdoors, and there was only a slight hint of a double chin.

She opened her eyes as I studied her, and asked me, “Do I meet with your approval?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just not often I find myself alone with a naked woman I’ve only just met,” I stammered.

“This whole thing is way too weird. Talk about being beyond my comfort zone; you’re naked. There’s an entire colony of naked lesbians, and then there is this cabin in the middle of nowhere. It’s just everything. I don’t mind being outside my zone, but I still need the time to process it,” I said.

“Take this cabin, for example. It didn’t grow here. It seems to be at least ten or fifteen years old, and it must have cost a fortune. What did you guys do? Win the lottery or something?” I said, waving my arms around the room.

“That was either a good guess or a lucky guess, but it’s how this place came to be. Do you remember when everyone was freaking out over a $75 million jackpot that remained unclaimed for almost a year nearly 20 years ago? That was the sisters and me,” Lisa said.

“It took us that long to set up a corporation to hold the ticket. We decided that we would fly under the radar. We didn’t want the media attention,” Lisa explained.

“How the hell did you build this structure? You needed some heavy equipment to put this place together, and there are no roads in or out of the valley,” I asked.

“We cut and milled all the wood we needed on site. A French Canadian Heavy Lift Helicopter Service brought in all the necessary equipment to complete this building and about a dozen utility structures,” Lisa said. “I’ll give you and Darlene a tour of our colony tomorrow,” Lisa offered.

I nodded ‘yes’ while reaching into my shirt pocket to pull a pack of smokes out, and asked, “Is it OK with you if I have a cigarette, Lisa?”

“Shit! You’ve got cigarettes? I haven’t had one in years,” she said, as she took the pack from my hand. She tapped two cigarettes out and set the pack down next to her leg. Lisa gave me one before rolling onto her stomach. Slightly spreading her legs for balance, she stretched forward and reached into the fireplace to find an unburned twig to use as a match to light her cigarette.

Her buttocks were on vivid display as she sprawled before me. Each rounded cheek was firm, compact, and well-tanned. Her small puckered brown anus was clearly visible in the valley between them just above the lips of her vagina. I could feel a stiffening in my shorts as my body responded to the vision before me.

I was going to have to get my aging and raging hormones in check if nudity was going to be the new normal. I had a hunch that sprouting a boner every time one of the women of the colony bent over wasn’t going to cut the mustard.

I reached into my pocket, pulled out my Bic lighter, and lit my cigarette while Lisa worked to get her twig lit. I then tapped her on the leg and offered her my lighter.

Lisa relaxed against her pillow for the next few minutes and puffed away at her first cigarette in years. “Damn! I had forgotten how much I enjoyed a good smoke,” she said with a laugh.

“Keep the pack; it’s my treat. I’ve got plenty more in the car,” I said.

“Really? How much is plenty more?” Lisa asked.

“I’ve got enough tobacco to roll at least 24,000 cigarettes. That should last a few years,” I said, as I told Lisa about my bulk tobacco purchase in Rifle, Colorado.

My eyes kept drifting back to Lisa’s breasts and down to her pubic hair and vagina as we talked. I finally said, “I know that staring is rude, Lisa, but it’s hard to keep my eyes away from your body. You’re a very attractive woman.”

“So I’ve noticed, but don’t worry about it. I didn’t give you much warning before I changed into my birthday suit, and this was a test. I wanted to see how you would handle female nudity, and you did just fine. I’m frankly flattered when someone admires my body, even if it’s a man. Just try not to drool,” Lisa said with a grin.

“I understand the usual norms around social nudity, and it doesn’t include unwanted sexual aggression. Just because a woman is naked doesn’t give anyone permission to grope or fondle her. I get it,” I said.

“That is an almost a feminist viewpoint for a man. Maybe you’ll be able to fit in here after all,” Lisa replied.

“I’m famished and it’s getting late, Dennis. Let’s continue this conversation later, but we need to get downstairs before there’s nothing left of dinner in the meantime,” Lisa said, as she climbed to her feet.

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Chapter 4

The dining area was located just off a large commercial kitchen at the far end of the great room. A supersized picnic table lined with benches provided more than enough seating capacity for the thirty-seven females who made the colony their home. The table itself was a stunning thing of beauty. The tabletop’s surface consisted of wide pine planking sanded to a silky smooth sheen, and then coated with dozens of layers of polyurethane.

I took a good hard look around as we descended the stairs. Designed to appear humble, at least from a distance, the cabin was a state of the art survival factory. There was enough solar capacity on the roof to meet the needs of several large households. All the lighting I had seen so far utilized LED bulbs. The thousands of LED icicle lights deployed around the great room drew less power than two or three 75-watt bulbs.

The hall’s air temperature was a pleasant 75°F. Most of the sisters of the colony were gathered in animated conversation around the expansive dining table, which doubled as a conference table for group meetings. They were all topless and most were bottomless. I had never seen so much exposed female flesh in one place at one time.

I was frankly in a daze as I tried to process a torrent of new information. I was kinda prepared for the sight before me thanks to Lisa’s sudden introduction to public nudity. Nothing Darlene had told me about this place had prepared me for the strange reality of actually being here, however.

One of the women spotted us and shouted out a greeting to Lisa before we had even descended a third of the way down the staircase. A naked Darlene was waiting for me with a hug by the time we reached the bottom of the stairs.

Darlene whispered in my ear as we embraced; “Give me a long, wet, sloppy kiss and play with my ass. I’ll explain later.”

I had learned long ago that obedience was the best course of action when Darlene gives a command like that. We locked lips and traded spit in one of the most passionate kisses we had shared in a long time. I ran my hands over her bare bottom and lovingly caressed her buttocks as I held her. Darlene let a low moan out. I cupped each cheek in the palms of my hand and jiggled them so much that she burst out laughing which ended in a loud ‘yelp’ when I gave a loud slap to one of her cheeks.

“What was that for?” she whispered.

“That was for your excessively detailed account of my prick’s sexual deficiencies,” I whispered back.

Darlene giggled, gave me a quick kiss, took my hand, and then pulled me in the direction of the dining table as she said, “You’ve got to get some dinner before it’s all gone. It’s venison stew, and it is absolutely delicious.”

Flavored with an assortment of tasty vegetables that I couldn’t identify, the stew was thick, hardy, and spicy. Darlene was right. The taste was out-of-this-world delicious. Darlene started to introduce me to each of the sisters after she had given me a few minutes to eat.

Darlene has a natural ability to remember names. I, on the other hand, had already forgotten the name of the first woman by the time I had been introduced to the third sister.

I shook hands, made and kept eye contact (to avoid staring at their naked breasts), and repeated their names in a futile effort to drill each name into my memory as I met each member of the colony. Most of the women warmly responded to my introduction, but two or three were very reserved, if not hostile. A few of the sisters clearly had ‘man issues’, most likely the result of some abusive male in their history.

I couldn’t say that I blamed them. I could understand how my presence might be disquieting, to say the least, if I had joined a remote all lesbian community to put the world of men behind me.

The next to last woman I was introduced to was an attractive dirty blonde named Alice. She was well-endowed, and she had a dark golden tan like the rest. I guessed her age to be about fifty, and stretch marks on her somewhat saggy breasts and her stomach suggested that she had given birth at least once in her life.

Alice seemed genuinely happy to meet me. She gave me a radiant smile and held onto to my hand far longer than is customary. Alice turned to the young girl sitting next to her, and said, “This is my daughter, Star Shine, and she’s been living in the colony since she was three years old. You’re the first man she has ever met. She just celebrated her 18th birthday two months ago.”

I bowed and shook Star’s hand as I wished her a belated birthday while doing my best to make and keep eye contact. Alice’s daughter was drop dead gorgeous with small, perky breasts, and a slim elfin and athletic figure adorned in a beautiful amber tan. She had bright blue eyes and wore her waist length blond hair in a braid, which made her look like a young Scandinavian fashion model. She was, in a word, stunning.

I had a hunch that I wouldn’t earn points from her mother if I started drooling over her nude daughter, so I kept my cool even as I felt the stirring of an erection. Thank the Lord I was still fully dressed.

Her mother must have been a mind reader. Alice took my hand and pulled me close and asked, “Why are you still dressed, Dennis? Why don’t you strip down and make yourself comfortable?”

I noticed her question elicited a few murmurs of agreement, including a nod from Lisa, and an ‘I’ll second that motion’ from Darlene.

“Moved and seconded. All those in favor, please signify by saying Aye,” Lisa announced in the voice of a true parliamentarian. A loud chorus of Ayes filled the hall.

Lisa then called for the ‘No’ vote: crickets. I half raised my hand and quietly said, “No.” My vote was as much a joke as an opinion.

Lisa smiled at me and said, “Hearing minimal opposition, I declare that the Ayes have it. Motion carries.”

After a long pause, Lisa said, “OK, Dennis, you heard the vote. Now it’s your turn.”

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Chapter 5

Stripping was going to be awkward. The last thing I wanted to do was strip naked in front of a group of nude woman, especially with a growing boner. Even so, I decided that I had no choice but to comply. It was clear in any event that I would eventually have to join the clothing optional norm of the colony.

I unbuttoned my shirt, took it off, and laid it on the table. I then took my shoes and socks off and placed them next to my shirt. I was trying to drag things out for as long as possible in hopes my erection would go down.

I undid my belt, unzipped my jeans, let them slide down to my ankles, and stepped out of my pants. I tossed them into the air with a flip of my foot, caught them with my free hand, folded my jeans, and laid them on the table.

I remembered how my mother always told me to wear clean underwear in the unlikely event that I had to go to the hospital. I prayed that there were no visible racing stripes as I stood in my whitey tighties. A small but noticeable bulge was making a tent in my shorts. I could feel myself blushing as I noticed Alice and her daughter staring at me with interest. All the colony’s sisters seemed to be paying close attention to developments in fact.

The attention on my private parts by so many women had a chilling effect on me as a wave of apprehension spread across my body. Being naked was the ultimate in performance anxiety. I knew that my junk was about as average as you could get; my circumcised penis measured five and a quarter inches when fully erect and just under three inches when flaccid. The girls were going to be severely disappointed if any of them were expecting a well-endowed porn star.

I removed my t-shirt next, folded it, and placed it on top of my jeans. I stood dressed only in my underwear for a few moments as I worked up the nerve for the final act. I debated with myself; I had few choices; I could either chicken out, or I could drop my drawers.

Well, I would give them a show since they apparently wanted one. I slowly lowered my shorts and exposed a patch of light brown pubic hair. I paused and then turned away from the table and slowly slid my shorts to a half-mast position, leaving half my buttocks exposed. I slowly lowered them to my knees after another dramatic pause, and then let them drop to my ankles.

I turned around, faced the women, and proceeded to do an exaggerated bow from the waist with my arms spread wide. I heard Alice’s daughter giggle. There was a smattering of happy laughter from the sisters. Thank God! My fear and stalling tactics had worked, and my erection had subsided to the point where my prick was only semi-stiff, halfway between flaccid and hard.

“Well done and nicely played,” Lisa said with a smile, as she gave me a thumbs up.

“I think this would be a good time for you to introduce yourself to our group, Dennis. Why don’t you take a few minutes and tell us about yourself,” Alice said.

“Thank you, Alice. That’s an excellent suggestion. You have the floor, Dennis,” Lisa said.


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Chapter 6

The sisters’ leader was testing me. She had earlier wanted to know if nudity by the colony’s women would ‘bother’ me. She was now testing the sisters to find out if my nudity would bother them; quite clever actually.

I have done my share of public speaking over the years, but it was different this time. There’s a certain something about standing naked in front of an audience which compels honesty. I decided to give a very brief and unvarnished account of my life thus far. I stood in thought with my head bowed for several minutes. There were two things at work for me during this interlude; the first was an old showman’s trick: keep the audience in suspense by never starting on time. The second was a political trick: use any extend silence to buy time and gather your thoughts and wits. Show your audience that you’re thoughtful and caring, or as my dad used to say, ‘Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that you’ve got it made.’ I was going to use the body language of my audience to gauge my reception while I spoke.

“Hello. My name is Dennis Nathan Richards, and I was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on June 28, 1950. I am a 65 year-old Vietnam Veteran with a 100% disability from Agent Orange exposure while in the country. I served in the United States Air Force, mostly in Japan and Vietnam, and I receive $3,000 disability compensation from the Veterans Administration every month and $1,000 from Social Security each month.” I searched the faces of the sisters while I spoke as I tried to access my ability to engage each woman at a deeper and more positive level. I was, in essence, trying to seduce a room full of lesbians while we were all naked. Talk about your lost cause.

“You can stop me at any time if you have a question. I would rather we have a dialouge than a monolog,” I said in an effort to break the ice.

The invitation to ask questions resulted in on one brown-haired woman tentatively raising her hand. I asked her to remind me of her name, and she said, “My name is Amelia and I have a question. You said you got a monthly disability check from the VA. What kind of disability do you have? You seem to be in good shape.”

“Good question, Amelia. My disability is mostly invisible. I have Type II Diabetes because of exposure to Agent Orange while I in Vietnam. I specifically have severe neuropathy in my right hand and in my feet.”

“What are the effects of your neuropathy?” Amelia asked as a follow-up question.

“Neuropathy is nerve damage as a result of too much sugar in my blood. In my case, the result is numbness and tingling in my hands and feet. The other effect is rather embarrassing...” I said as I paused. I was not sure how much detail I wanted to go into.

“Do not stop there. Please explain,” Amelia asked as she pressed me for more information.

“Remember when Darlene said I had difficulty in getting and keeping an erection? “ I asked the group.

Amelia and several of her sisters nodded. I noticed that Lisa and Alice were paying very close attention to the conversation.

“The result sometimes is a limp dick, for lack of better words, when the nerves connecting my prick to my brain shutdown due to high sugar levels,” I answered.

Several sisters responded with stifled laughter or nervous giggles and additional follow-up questions. Sex is always an interesting conversation. I had their attention at least.

“Can you still have an orgasm?” Alice asked with a look of concern on her face.

“I still have orgasms; even when flaccid a guy can still ejaculate. It just takes a little more effort,” I explained.

“I don’t understand. Darlene says you’re a fantastic lover. How can that be if you don’t get hard?” Alice asked. I heard several sisters say, “I was wondering the same thing.”

“My goal or mission as a lover is to provide the necessary emotional and physical stimulation required for my partner to achieve an orgasm. I do that orally,” I said.

Standing stark naked in front of twenty attractive and nude women while talking about orgasms and oral sex was having unintended consequences. I could feel my semi-flaccid penis begin to stiffen. There was no way to hide my growing arousal.

“I thought you said that you couldn’t get hard, but you apparently can,” one of the woman asked.

“I get an erection sometimes, and sometimes I don’t. It tends to be a hit or miss affair. My prick seems to have a mind of its own and I can never depend on it to respond as I want it to. It’s all rather embarrassing and frustrating,” I explained as I shared far more information than I wanted.

Looking at several sisters’ body language, I saw signs of what looked like sexual responses from about half of them. Nipples had slightly hardened, many had leaned forward a bit more than usual, and their faces were relaxed and smiling or friendly neutral. Body postures showed a focused interest at some primal level; pheromones were in the air and my body was responding.

I looked down at my gradually stiffening penis; I covered myself with my hand. “Sorry about that, but all this talk about sex and stuff seems to be having an effect on my hardware, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. It never seems to respond like I want it to as I said, and a public boner is rather awkward,” I explained. I could feel the heat of a blush spread across my body.

Darlene came to my rescue. She walked up to me and gave me a big hug and lingering kiss, and then turned to face her companions while holding my free hand. “I think Dennis is thinking about the lovemaking session we’ll have when we go to bed,” she said with a foxy grin.

Darlene started to rub my ass while she stood next to me, much to her sisters’ amusement. The sensation of her warm hand massaging my bare behind did nothing to diminish my arousal. I continued to stiffen to about three-quarters erect, a little less than four inches, under her playful touch.

Looking out over my audience of colony members, I noticed that they were all paying close attention to the interplay between Darlene and me. I was at a loss for words and wasn’t sure how, or if, I should continue or try to beat a hasty retreat.

“Don’t be embarrassed by having a hardon, Dennis. It’s a natural event. We all get sexually aroused from time to time; it is just that your arousal is slightly more noticeable than ours is,” Lisa said. Her statement got choirs of chuckles and laughter from the sisters and did much to ease the tension that had been building in the room.

“I’ll put it to a vote if it makes you feel better, however, Dennis. By a show of hands, how many of us would like Dennis to proceed with his self introduction?” Lisa said as she raised her hand. A unanimous show of hands joined with Lisa. The sisters wanted the show to go on. The vote left me both relieved and annoyed at the same time. I was glad I hadn’t offended them, but I was way out of my comfort zone. Exhibitionism had never been my thing.

I turned to Darlene who was still playing with my bare bottom, and said, “Maybe now is not the best time for foreplay. Shall we will continue this later?”

Darlene was as much of a ham as I was. With an exaggerated stage pout, she said to me, “You are such a tight ass. You need to learn to relax and have fun.” She jiggled my ass cheeks with both hands. The jiggle made my erection dance in the air.

My mind went blank as I started to speak; I forgot what I was going to say. “I’m having a senior moment. I just lost my train of thought. Are there any more questions while I try to get back on track?” I asked the women around me while I stalled.

Alice and several of her sisters raised their hands. I figured it would be an easy question, so I called on Alice.

“Since you’re the only man in a community of lesbians, how do you feel about women who love women?” Alice asked as several of her companions nodded their approval of her question.

I began my answer by explaining how Darlene and I were on the brink of being homeless when she suggested that we could go and stay with a group of her college friends who were ‘living off-the-grid’. Not that it would have made a difference, but she never bothered to mention that we were traveling to a lesbian survival colony. We were both completely unprepared for what we found when we arrived on their doorstep.

“This is all unexplored territory for me, and I am winging it the best way that that I can. I believe that everyone has a right to love anyone of his or her choice. I doubt that we have much control when it comes to selecting our sexual identity. We are who we are. I don’t remember choosing to be heterosexual. It is just who I am.”

“The real question is how do you feel about having a man living among you in this beautiful colony? Because men can be real dicks, no pun intended, as we all know,” I said to an outburst of laughter.

“I noticed that several folks here did not seem too happy with my presence when I was speaking earlier. I suspect that personal experience with abusive males is likely the source of this negative attitude.

“I know a thing or two about abusive men. A male babysitter raped me when I was twelve years old,” I explained. The sisters responded with a collective gasp. Alice looked shocked; her daughter stared at me with wide eyes and an open mouth as her hand shot into the air with a question.

“How did it happen? How did it make you feel? Was it traumatic?” Star Shine asked me in a series of rapid-fire questions.

“Without going into gory details, it happened after I got severely sunburned. My babysitter walked in as I got out of the shower. I was naked and he offered to give me a massage after he took his shower. A naked pedophile giving a nude boy a massage - what could possibly go wrong? The rest is, as they say, history.”

“As to how it made me feel; I felt used and humiliated. I was there exclusively for his sexual pleasure as far as that bastard was concerned. I wasn’t a person to him, only an object for his sperm. I hated it and I vowed I would never treat a fellow human the way he treated me.”

“I didn’t hate men when it was over, but I didn’t trust them. I did hate him, and I dislike the way too many men treat other people, especially females,” I explained.

“How do you feel about gay men?” one of the sisters asked without raising her hand.

“As I said before, I believe that everyone has a right to love anyone of his or her choice. I think most of us occupy a point on the sexual spectrum. Very few of us are born 100% straight or 100% gay. Almost all of us are born on one side or the other of the rainbow of possibilities. Does that answer your question?” I asked. Nodding heads told me I had.

“What happens when you get an erection at a nude beach?” another sister asked.

I laughed, “I either sit down and wait for it to pass, or I go behind a bush and take care of business.”

“What would you do if you end up staying with us?” Lisa asked.

Lisa was everything anyone could want in a leader. She was thoughtful and measured in her approach to unexpected problems. I was an unexpected problem. I knew her questions weren’t accidental. They were part of her test which would determine whether I stayed or went away. My problem was that I had no way of knowing what the right answers were. My only option was to roll the dice and hope for the best.

“You and your sisters have built something here that is amazing, unique, and precious, Lisa. The protection and continued safety of this community is a top priority. I can understand why some might view me, as a man, to be a possible threat to this family. I am who I am, and there’s nothing I can do to change that,” I said.

We were now talking about the elephant in the room and the hall had become silent as each woman considered my words. I raised my right hand and faced Lisa. I said, “I vow to do everything in my power to help this colony continue to succeed under your leadership” when we made eye contact. “The world outside this valley is changing into something very ugly and dangerous, and I think that having a man among you might be useful. I would like to be that man, and I will place the safety of your sisters ahead of my own if you allow it.”

I lowered myself to one knee before Lisa, crossed my arms over my chest, and bowed my head when I finished speaking. I held my position as I waited for Lisa to speak. It may have been a bit melodramatic but it seemed like the right thing to do. I had seen it done in a movie.

The silence seemed to stretch out forever, but I didn’t move. I did a long count in my head to track the time. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, and Lisa broke the silence when I got to fifty-two Mississippi.

“That’s a compelling offer and I appreciate your apparent sincerity, Dennis. It’s very moving. Truth be told, however, I don’t know you well enough to trust you with the lives of our family. I can’t give you trust that you haven’t yet earned. I will allow you to remain among us as my guest until I make a final determination as to your status here. We will revisit this question in two weeks. You will not attempt to leave our company in the meantime. Do you understand?” Lisa asked.

“Thank you, Lisa, I can’t ask for more. You have my word of honor,” I replied, as I resumed a standing position. At least my status had been clarified; I was a guest/prisoner of the group’s leader.

The serious discussion wasn’t as much fun as the sexy questions. My erection decided that it was time for a nap for the time being. I decided to wrap up my ‘brief’ introduction as quickly as possible.

“I’m looking forward to getting to know all of you, and I’m thankful for your generous hospitality. I will do my best as your guest to carry my own weight for as long as I’m under your roof,” I concluded.

The applause of the sisterhood caught me by surprise. It wasn’t over the top wild, but it was polite and lasted about 20 seconds.

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Chapter 7

I took a seat on the table’s bench next to Lisa and just tried to relax. I felt like I had just run a marathon. Darlene gave me a warm hug and a glass of ice-cold water and sat with me. I don’t know which I appreciated more; her company, the hug, or the beverage. I guzzled the water down in one long gulp. Public speaking is lonely and thirsty work.

The sisters stopped by in ones and twos to exchange small talk with Lisa before retiring for the evening. That was the cover story at least. I noticed after the third such ‘visit’ that most of the women seemed to spend more time sneaking glances at my naked crotch than they did in conversation with their leader. Great; I was now either the object of sexual curiosity, or at the very least, a diversion in the colony’s daily routine. It had been years since most of the women in the cabin had seen a man, with or without clothes. Maybe I should charge admission.

Lisa said, “I’ll show you both to your quarters if you two are willing to call it a night,” after the last of the group had drifted away to their rooms.

The colony’s sleeping quarters were on the second level balcony that ringed the rectangular shaped Great Room. I did a quick count; there were 24 doorways in total, seven on each side of the long axes, and five each on the short sides of the rectangle.

The room reserved for Darlene and I was located on the north balcony above the cabin’s Great Room and appeared to be identical in size to Lisa’s quarters. The room was stunning in its simplicity. The walls had the same pine paneling that we had seen in Lisa’s rooms, with wide oak planks for flooring and exposed wood beams supporting the white plaster ceiling. A colorful handmade antiquated quilt adorned a queen-sized bed on the wall opposite a large picture window. I paused for a moment and looked out over the moonlight bathed sleeping valley. The shadows of mountains rose in the distance like sentinels into a sky ablaze with stars.

The stuff we had brought with us on our journey nearly filled a huge walk-in closet. I was pleased to see that my tobacco stash had also been unpacked. A small windowless half-bath was located at the far end of the closet. Lisa advised me that a communal shower was located two doors to the left when I asked where I could take a shower. I had to admire the cabin’s design efficiency. The half baths used a minimum of plumbing and were handy for midnight relief, while the community showers were for general hygiene. Lisa wished us a good night and left us alone in our room. Darlene wrapped her arms around me when Lisa had departed, and gave me a hug and a kiss that was almost violent in its intensity.

“I’m so fucking horny, Dennis! I want you to make love to me right now,” Darlene said, as she wrapped her arms around my bare backside and pulled me onto the bed.

“Your wish is my command,” I replied, and slowly began to kiss her face. I softly kissed her eyelids and then her cheeks. I lightly traced the tip of my tongue across her lips and kissed her under her chin before moving down and nibbling along the nape of her neck. I kissed along the edge of her collarbone to her shoulders’ rounded top. I then reversed direction and gently kissed the side of her neck, and then softly nibbled her ear lobes.

Darlene’s steady breathing changed into little pants punctuated by low moans as I continued to circle her face and neck with kisses. I softly caressed the soft rounded underside of each breast with my hands before touching her whole breast. I avoided direct contact with her nipples. I let my fingers brush ever so slightly against each tit as my hands caressed the contours of her chest instead.

Darlene arched her back as she tried to push her stiff nipples into my hands each time my fingers approached the tips. I refused contact, and continued to tease her instead while my hands moved back to her shoulders and along the inside of her arms.

My lips followed the same path traced by my hands and fingers. I kissed the top of each breast and used my tongue to trace a circle around the base of each nipple before flicking my tongue across the very tip.

I moved my hands to the inside of her thighs and softly caressed her sensitive skin as I kissed and licked the underside of each breast. I sucked one nipple at a time into my mouth and gently squeezed them between my teeth when my exploring fingers approached the outer lips of her vulva.

Darlene moaned, and her fingers pulled at the bed coverings as she spread her legs further apart. I moved my fingers to each side when my hands reached the base of her vulva, and followed the valley between her pubis and the top of her thighs. I reversed direction when my fingers reached the base of her stomach and worked back down towards her knees.

Her vulva was glistening with moisture and glowing pink, and her skin took on a deep reddish blush. Her soft moans became steadily louder as her arousal grew in anticipation while I explored and stimulated each erogenous zone in turn.

I slowly licked, touched, stroked, and caressed Darlene’s inner thighs as I steadily worked my way upward toward her vagina. I wanted to keep her on the edge of a climax for as long as possible. I could feel the tension building within her as her body trembled and tightened in response to ever-building waves of pleasure.

I slid my tongue along the valley between her swelling pubis and the top of her thighs when my mouth reached the base of her vulva. Darlene hips and body began to writhe and twist to meet my mouth as I used the point of my tongue to gather her secretions into my mouth. I celebrated and savored every delicious drop.

I gently and carefully opened the large lips of her labia with my fingers, and let the flat of my tongue slide along the valley separating her inner and outer lips. I used my tongue like a magnifying glass in a beam of sunlight to narrow the focus of her pleasure and drive each particle of joy toward the center of her erect clitoris. Women have twice as many nerve endings in their clits as men do in their pricks. I wanted every one of her nerves to be on fire with desire.

I finally gently opened her labia minora’s lips to reveal her vaginal opening and swollen clitoris. The inside of her lips was bright red and slick with her lubricant. I ran the tip of my tongue around her opening and then moved upward and swirled the tip of my tongue around the base of her clitoris, as she began to force her hips upward to meet my mouth.

“OH MY GOD DON’T STOP!” she screamed as her legs and body started to shake and shiver. I flicked my tongue across her clit as I slid my index finger into her vagina, and started to massage the ridges of her G-spot with a ‘come hither’ motion. I increased the pressure of my tongue around and on her clitoris as I stimulated the inside her vaginal canal. I slowly slipped the index finger of my free hand into her anus and wiggled it from side to side when I felt mounting waves of contractions ripple within her body.

Darlene’s orgasm exploded in series of vaginal spasms, her legs went stiff, and then kicked and flayed about as she cried out and screamed “YES! OH FUCK, OH FUCK”. I relaxed the pressure a tiny bit and then redoubled my efforts as I stimulated all points at the same time as each wave passed.

I knew I was finished when I felt her hands pushing my face away from between her legs. I scooted up and lay along the side of her body, holding her close to me. We cuddled together and basked in the warm afterglow of euphoria. I kissed her lips, and innocently asked, “Did I make you happy?”

I knew it was a stupid question, but I loved hearing her answer. It was my report card.

“You were fucking fantastic, Dennis, and you know it! My God, I came so many times that I lost count,” she said, and then hugged me as tightly as she could.

I whispered, “That was only the first installment. Are you ready for part two?” about ten minutes later.

I kissed her skin in a line across the top of her pubic mound, and whispered in her ear, “Turn over onto your stomach.”

She eagerly obeyed. I straddled her and began to caress her buttocks and the inside of her thighs. The delicious musky scent of sex rose from her like steam. Using my fingers to spread buttocks apart, I leaned forward and ran my tongue down the side of the valley between her pink cheeks. Darlene twitched, and her hips jumped as she screamed ‘Oh my God, fuck yes!’

I licked from the top of her crack down to a point just before her vagina opening. I then reversed direction and used my tongue to lick along the opposite side of the valley. I avoided contact each time I approached her anus and traced a teasing wet circle all around her puckered hole instead. I savored the sweet/tart taste of her fluids and the rich aroma of her arousal.

I continued to lick an up and down path along each side of her valley. Each pass was slightly faster than the previous one as I teased and pushed her toward the brink. Darlene suddenly arched her back after several minutes of mouth play, and screamed, “OH MY FUCKING GOD YES! I’M GOING TO CUM”

I stiffened my tongue and drove it deep into her anus as she screamed. Sliding it into her rectum as far as I could, I could feel her entire body tense in a screaming, nearly ear-splitting climax. She reached the top of her first mountain and kept climbing.

The contractions of her orgasm squeezed my tongue like a pulsating vise in one wave of pleasure after another before she lay still.

“Christ, Darlene, do you think you can make any more fucking noise?” I scolded.

“I doubt it, but I can try,” Darlene giggled, as she tried to catch her breath.

“I had been telling my sisters what a fantastic lover you are while you were meeting with Lisa, but I don’t think they believed me, so I decided to let them hear for themselves. Besides, you need all the advertising you can get,” Darlene explained.

“Why would I need any advertising?” I asked.

“I think they all heard how hard you could make a girl cum after tonight. You now have a reputation to uphold, Mr. Talented Tongue. A few of my sisters might want you to give them personal tutoring if I know them.”

“And you would be OK with that?” I asked, as I gave her a skeptical eye.

“Of course I would be, just as long as you make your students use me for the final exam,” Darlene laughed with a wink.

“OK, OK, I’ll think about it,” I said, as I lowered my mouth between her legs and began to lick. It had been a long day, but the night was still young.

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Chapter 8

The bright glow of morning sunshine reflected off the snow-capped western mountains and cascaded through our bedroom window, filling every corner with light. Some part of my sleeping brain registered the change in illumination and curiosity teased my eyes open.

My initial reaction was a momentary disconcerting sense of confusion that we all feel when waking up in a brand new place for the first time.

The mountains dazzled white and magnificent and against the brilliant blue sky; Darlene slumbered next to me as naked as a newborn child. Her freckled face had the relaxed innocence of deep sleep.

The fog of confusion lifted within a few moments as I remembered last night and yesterday’s journey to the Colony. I became acutely aware of important business requiring my immediate attention; my full bladder and rock solid piss hardon screamed for relief. I felt like a star of one of those annoying TV commercials featuring old men and their ‘urgent need to go’.

I got out of bed and raced, if you can call a stiff-legged gait racing, toward the bedroom door. I paused for a second to scan the room for a set of underwear to cover my nakedness. Increasing pressure on my bladder warned me not to delay. I exited the bedroom and moved toward the community bathroom as quickly as I could.

As luck would have it, none of the sisters were visible on our side of the balcony. My luck changed the instant that I entered the bathroom. Alice was lathering up under the shower, and her nude daughter was brushing her teeth at a complex of sinks under a wall-sized mirror.

Mother and daughter turned to stare at my erection and me, as I made a bee-line for the toilet.

I stood before the open bowl, glanced around at my unwanted audience, and tried to take a piss. It’s a male fact of life that pissing with a hardon is challenging, if not impossible.

There is a pesky little valve inside the prostate gland, called a sphincter. Its job is to control urine flow in the urethra, and it is directly above the two ejaculatory ducts bringing sperm up from the testicles. The system is designed to prevent sperm and piss from mixing. It’s part of a man’s hardwiring. The shutoff valve remains closed even with a raging boner until the erection starts to go down.

Maneuvering my erection in a downward direction was painful and awkward. I managed to dribble out a tiny stream instead of a golden relief stream. It was just enough to reduce the internal pressure on my bladder which, in turn, reduced the pressure on my prostate gland and allowed my erection to subside. The dribble turned into a yellow river of pure relief which left my toes tingling as my penis returned to a flaccid state.

“That was fascinating, I’ve never seen a boy urinate before,” Star said in a quiet voice.

The bathroom wasn’t created with modesty as a priority. The showers and walls were tiled and open, as were the toilets. Privacy is non-existent.

“He’s not a boy, he’s a man,” Alice said, as she corrected her daughter’s choice of nouns.

I turned my head to see Alice behind me toweling her hair dry. Alice’s gaze, like her daughter’s, fixated on my genitals.

Great! A mother and daughter inspection team - just what I needed.

I decided that I might as well clean up from last night. I stepped under the shower Alice had vacated and turned the water on to the hottest setting that I could stand. Maybe a cloud of steam would offer some privacy.

I realized that I had no soap.

“Could I borrow your soap please, Alice?” I asked.

“My pleasure,” Alice answered, as she joined me under the shower and started lathering my back.

I tried to figure out a polite way to discourage Alice’s hands-on assistance when her daughter joined us and proceeded to lather my legs.

The sensation of two sets of hands caressing my body vanquished whatever objections I had over getting woman-handled. I could probably force myself to get used to pampering with a little bit of effort.

“You need to clean all his body parts, Star,” Alice said, as she ran her hand between the cheeks of my ass and scrubbed my anus with her fingers.

“Turn around so that we can do your front, Dennis,” Alice said, as her hands turned my body to face them.

Alice soaped up my chest, and Star soaped my legs. I closed my eyes and let them do their thing as hot water rolled off my back. The sensation was incredible and arousing as the mother’s hands scrubbed downwards and her daughter’s small hands caressed upward. I wondered what would happen when their hands met at private parts in the middle; maybe they would arm wrestle for cleaning privileges.

“Am I supposed to clean his thing?” Star asked her mother.

“It’s called a penis and, yes, it also needs to be cleaned,” Alice instructed her daughter.

I looked down to see Star kneeling before me. She was at eye level, and only a few inches away from the beginnings of an erection. Star looked at me and back at her mother who nodded her head ‘yes’.

Star reached her hands out, and with a tentative and delicate touch, began to apply soap to my pubic hair. She grew bolder and spread the soapy lather along the length of my growing erection as her fingers created a flurry of soapsuds.

I seriously doubt that Star had any idea of how her touch was affecting me. Her mother, on the other hand, knew damn well what was happening as she proceeded to ‘help’ her daughter by circling my erection with her thumb and fingers, and stroking me with enthusiasm.

Alice abandoned all pretenses at cleaning after a few minutes of pumping, and moved full throttle into giving me a handjob. Alice had locked eyes with mine. She was smiling and unblinking as we made and kept intense eye contact.

“I will ejaculate if you keep this up, Alice,” I warned her.

“I know,” Alice said, as she rubbed her fingers around the tip of my gland and played with my pee-hole. The tempo of her strokes increased and abruptly ceased.

I looked down to see what was going on - or not going on in this case. Alice was guiding her daughter’s hand to a glistening drop of pre-cum which had formed at the opening of my urethra.

Mother and daughter both shared the signs of sexual arousal. Nipples stood erect and hard, and a rosy blush added a glow to their faces.

“Notice how slippery it feels, Star. It’s pre-cum and men produce it to help lubricate a woman’s vagina to make penetration more enjoyable for both parties,” Alice instructed her daughter.

The intense look of serious curiosity and wonder on Star’s face almost made me laugh. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Star pulled a pad of paper out and started taking notes. I let out a groan of pleasure when her mother touched the drip with her finger and smeared it around the surface of my gland.

Star mimicked her mother’s actions with Alice’s encouragement as she dipped her fingertip into another emerging drop of the colorless fluid and carefully spread it over my gland.

“Dennis will make more pre-cum if you continue to stimulate him,” Alice said, as she caressed the length of my erection and, several drops of fluid oozed out of me almost on command. Alice continued to slowly milk me as her daughter used the tips of her fingers to spread clear lubricate over my swollen glans.

I could feel pressure building in my testicles, and my legs began to shake as my body tensed. I was close to going over the edge.

“Are you in there, Dennis?” Darlene’s voice called as the door to the bathroom swung open.

“Come on in, Darlene, the water’s fine,” I answered with a less than steady voice.

A nude Darlene took a few steps into the bathroom before she stopped and surveyed the situation. Her eyes widened at the sight of the mother and daughter pleasuring me. Darlene’s mouth widened into a mischievous grin and she started to laugh.

“It didn’t take you too long to introduce yourself to my friends. It looks like Alice and her daughter have the situation well in hand,” Darlene punned with a chuckle.

Darlene walked over to Alice and whispered something into Alice’s ear. Alice’s only response was to giggle, nod, and stroke even faster.

“I’m going to cum,” I moaned, as I passed the point of no return and my toes began to curl. I could feel a hot rushing sensation building up in my groin and my body went rigid as a surge of sperm began to rush upwards in search of release.

Alice reached behind my body when I let out a long moan, slid her free hand between my buttocks, plunged her index finger deep into my rectum, and wiggled it to and fro. The intense pleasure I was feeling suddenly kicked into overdrive as my brain released an additional surge of endorphins. I exploded in an incredible orgasm of pure ecstasy and gratification while her surprised daughter tried to catch my ejecting sperm in her hands.

Darlene and I returned to our bedroom a few minutes later, and Darlene burst out laughing.

Darlene told me, “Alice is very proud of her homeschooling skills”, when I asked her what was so funny. “She told me last night that she was thankful a man showed up at the colony. She said you arrived just in time to help teach her daughter advanced sex education. The curriculum apparently includes lots of hands-on field work and there is a killer oral exam she’ll have to pass if she wants to graduate, from what I understand.”

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Chapter 9

Darlene and I found a note from Lisa pinned to our door reminding us to join her on the front deck for an introductory tour of the colony and surrounding area when we returned to our room after breakfast. The instructions suggested that we dress for the weather.

Our walk-in closets looked like walk-in dumpsters. Everything we had brought with us in the Rav4 had been piled in the storage spaces unorganized. I busied myself picking out an appropriate wardrobe for our tour.

I selected my favorite Indiana Jones style hat; a dark-brown fur felt fedora which had cost a small fortune. I had bought it online a few years ago in the mistaken belief it made me look like Harrison Ford. Fedoras are some of the most practical headgear known to man. The wide brim keeps the sun out of your eyes and sheds rainwater like a mini-umbrella.

I customized the hat with the addition of an eagle feather I had acquired at a yard sale. It counted as contraband since I didn’t belong to a federally recognized tribe. Non-native people are prohibited by law from possessing eagle plumage and could be fined as much as $100,000 and sent to prison for up to a year.

I decided to take the risk for the sake of fashion. I stuck the feather into the hatband, which was adorned with a small enamel replica of the red-yellow-green Vietnam Service Ribbon that I had earned when I finished my tour in Vietnam. I didn’t think that I would run into any federal feather police considering the remote location of our mountain hideaway.

I preened in front of the full-length mirror wearing nothing except for my hat and a smile.

“You’re so vain that you probably think this song is about you...” Darlene sang in a perfect imitation of Carly Simon as she gave me a warm hug.

“Wow, the cowboy hat makes you look sexy.”

“It’s not a cowboy hat, it’s a fedora,” I replied with a grin.

“Well, it’s a very sexy fedora,” Darlene whispered into my ear as she pressed her nude body against my backside. Her hands reached around me and began to fondle my semi-flaccid penis. The incredibly sensual feeling of her slender fingers delicately caressing the length of my shaft almost drove me out of my mind.

“I’m horny. Want to fool around?” Darlene asked.

“We’re meeting Lisa in ten minutes; we don’t have the time,” I answered.

“Ten minutes? Isn’t that nine more than you usually last,” Darlene teased.

I turned to face Darlene, dropped to my knees, and was eye level with her pussy. I positioned her legs in a wide stance and glanced at my wristwatch. Using my fingers, I gently opened the cleft of her mons pubis to reveal her pink clitoral hood. Beads of lubricant and a reddish glow around her vagina testified to her advanced state of arousal. Darlene let out a little gasp and shifted her feet to maintain her balance when I ran my tongue over the length of her hood and licked her swollen clitoris.

I blew a cooling stream of air on her clit before placing my mouth over her genitals and exhaled a hot breath. The contrasting sensations were like fire and ice. I followed each sequence by giving the little man in the boat a rough tongue bath.

Darlene’s legs began to quiver and tremble. She grabbed the back of my head to help steady herself and to maintain her balance, and pressed my face into her sex. Lick, blow, and suck, I increased the pace of my stimulation and was rewarded by a series of pants and grunts as Darlene’s level of arousal increased. I slid my finger into her vagina and stroked her G-spot with enthusiasm to speed her ascent as she climbed the mountain.

“Oh my God, I’m cumming,” she cried, as waves of contractions squeezed around my finger. She suddenly lost all control and my mouth filled with liquid as she squirted and urinated. Her hands pushed my face away. I loved the sight of her contractions as her clit pulsed in climax and streams of liquid trickled down the inside of her legs.

I looked at my watch again and announced, “One minute thirty seconds. I think that we have a new land speed record. Now we’ve got to hustle if we’re going to be on time.”

“What about my afterglow?” Darlene pouted.

“Take it with you,” I said, patting her bare behind.

Lisa was waiting for us with a warm smile when we arrived on the cabin’s front deck more or less on time.

I returned Lisa’s smile as I gave her a pack of hand-rolled cigarettes and a red Bic lighter.

The shadows still held a hint of last night’s frost despite clear blue skies and bright sunshine.

“Follow me,” Lisa said, as we set out on our tour of the colony.

Our first stop was a utility building built into the base of the mountain with only the outer garage doors visible.

“This structure is designed to minimize the colony’s visual footprint. We don’t want to draw undue attention to our presence because of Google Earth and the plethora of available satellite imagery. Our continued survival is dependent upon us keeping a low visibility, and we do our best to be invisible to the outside world,” Lisa said, as she opened a set of outer doors to reveal a long dark tunnel blasted into the mountain’s bedrock.

Motion sensors activated banks of overhead LED lighting which illuminated the passageway for as far as the eye could see when Lisa entered the darkened corridor.

The tunnel was about a twenty-by-twenty-foot wide box ramping downward into the mountain’s interior. The rough-hewn rock walls glistened with seepage and condensation. Drainage ditches lining each side of the corridor’s crushed gravel roadway carried the excess water into the interior.

The sound of my voice echoed off the walls as I asked, “Holy Shit! Did you guys build all this?”

“The Liberty Mountain Mine was one of several thousand of hard rock gold mines, which dotted the Rocky Mountains back in the 1860s. The claim never amounted to much of anything and it went bust after three years. We took the existing mining shafts and adapted them to accommodate our service vehicle fleet,” Lisa explained.

The temperature gradually rose as we descended. We found ourselves in a large cavern after about 300 - 400 yards. The cave contained a full-service automotive center, complete with a dozen vehicles of various descriptions. I spotted several snowmobiles, Jeep Cherokees, and ATVs, along with a few front-end loaders and small bobcats. I saw our Rav4 parked off to one side.

“Several of our sisters are excellent mechanics and vehicle operators. They do a fantastic job keeping our fleet up and running,” Lisa said, as she led us to a tunnel at the back of the cavern.

We followed the lighted passageway for a few thousand feet into another expansive cavern so large that the roof and far walls were lost in darkness. The hot and humid air in the grotto hummed with energy: The distinct whine of 3-megawatt steam driven turbines filled the chamber with the sound of its power.

I was slack-jawed in disbelief at the sight I was seeing. It looked like a scene out of the science fiction movie ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’. Piping and heavy machinery at the middle of the cave surrounded a huge hot spring and a heated pool of water on three sides. A single story control center occupied space on the side of the pool nearest to where we stood.

Flowstone covered the walls of the cavern behind us and looked like waterfalls frozen in time. Stalactites reached down from the darkened ceiling and thousands of stalagmites grew from the floor. Some grew as massive as trees. We followed a well-worn path through the stone forest while batteries of strategically placed LED streetlights overhead bathed the area around the lagoon in a glow of whitish-blue illumination. I noticed that motion detectors kicked the lights nearest us into high power when we came into the range of a lamp; it was like walking under a searchlight’s moving beam.

“Let’s stop by and say hello to the technicians on duty. We’ll have a cup of coffee and some conversation. I’ll tell you about this amazing place,” Lisa said, as she pointed to a two-story building about the size of a raised ranch and motioned for us to follow her.

Lisa climbed the exterior stairway and entered the building without knocking. She shouted, “Surprise!”

“No fucking way, Sister. We’ve been watching you three on our security cameras for the last 20 minutes,” said a thirty-something brunette as she gave Lisa a warm hug. The slender technician was dressed in a loose-fitting one-piece coverall. The zipper of the hunter green overall was pulled down to her navel, and it was clear at a glance that she wore nothing under her outer garments. I recognized the woman as one of the sisters from last night’s meeting.

Thanks to air-conditioning, the interior of the control center was ten or fifteen degrees cooler than the cavern’s air temperature. Wraparound observation windows provided a 360-degree field-of-view. A control panel filled with switches and dials below the window monitored the performance of the turbine and generator. Several large screens displayed different views of the underground labyrinth of caverns and passageways. Images and various views of the area around the cabin dominated one bank of displays.

Lisa said a quick hello to the two women on duty, and then led us to a large conference table on the first floor of the control center. Three K-cups worth of hot steaming coffee awaited our pleasure in a couple of minutes.

“What is this place?” I asked, as I took a sip of coffee, “It’s incredible whatever it is. No one has ever seen anything like it.”

“This facility,” Lisa said, as she tapped her finger on the conference table, “Doubles as the control center for our geothermal generating capacity and also serves as a security command center in the event of an intrusion. We’ve wired every conceivable approach to our valley for sight and sound. We have acoustic sensor arrays and remote video cameras to alert us in the event of any intrusion.”

Floor to ceiling maps of the valley and surrounding area covered one wall of the center, and banks of radio equipment filled another wall. I hadn’t seen anything like it since I completed my tour of Vietnam. I had worked in the Out-Country Air Operations command center at MACV back in the day as we tried in vain to interdict the flow of enemy supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail.

The Air Force dropped tens of thousands of seismic and acoustic sensor arrays along the length and breadth of the trail system. The enemy couldn’t fart without us knowing about it. It didn’t do much good. Charlie had more farts in his belly than we had aircraft and bombs. Still, we had wired the trail like a pinball machine and played it every day.

“Our sensors are solar powered and have a 99% up-time. We picked you up on our surveillance system when you were still ten miles out yesterday. Our security teams didn’t go on high alert since we expected your arrival. On ready-alert maybe, but they weren’t deployed to prevent your entry into the valley,” Lisa said, as she pointed out the grease paint marking which indicated our route of travel.

I had an increasingly uneasy feeling as Lisa talked. She was telling me too much and sharing too much information. There was no way she would ever allow me to leave this place. Millions of dollars and fifteen years of labor depended upon Liberty Mountain staying off the grid and a secret from the outside world.

She was a competent and capable commander, and the security of her family of sisters was her number one priority. My mission was to figure out a way to become a fully-vetted member of the colony and to earn Lisa’s complete trust.

“How often have you had a problem with intruders?” I asked.

“We’ve only had two incidents since we opened the cabin. The first was a troop of lost boy scouts. We intercepted them and redirected them back to civilization. The second time was when two escaped convicts wandered into our valley,” Lisa said.

“How did that turnout?” I asked.

“Not so well for the convicts. They stumbled upon three of our sisters skinny-dipping in the river and decided to have some fun. They almost beat one girl to death and tried to rape the other,” Lisa said, as her eyes narrowed and her expression hardened.

“The third woman was able to get away and radio security. We got there before they could do much more harm than they had already done,” she said.

I remembered the hullabaloo over the escape of two men from the federal prison facility in Englewood. It eventually died down. No one ever found the escapees, and folks assumed that they had made their way to Mexico.

“What happened to the men?” I asked.

“I executed them and left their bodies for the animals. No trace of them remains,” she said without elaboration. I noticed her hands were shaking as she was talking.

I pulled out my pack of smokes out of my shirt pocket, offered a cigarette to Lisa, and took one for myself.

I felt a surge of sympathy as she smoked in silence. It wasn’t for the dead rapists that I grieved, but for Lisa. Necessity forced her to take a life to protect the community, and she would carry the memory to the grave. I realized with a shudder that she wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet into me if she thought it necessary to protect the colony. Having a cup of coffee with someone who one day could be your executioner was weird. Weirder still was the fact that I liked and respected her.

“This is one of the secrets of Liberty Mountain. We decided to expand the network of tunnels leftover from the days when this site was a hard rock gold mine after we started to revamp the old cabin. Imagine our surprise when we busted through into this cavern. It’s a geothermal treasure. It took us almost five years to engineer and design this system. Construction was a three-year process which cost us almost $5 million to complete,” Lisa explained.

“We’ve pretty much run the generators nonstop for the last ten years. We keep one generator active and the other in reserve. We switch generators every few month to perform routine maintenance. The geothermal feature provides us with all the power and heat we’ll ever need.”

“We produce far more electricity than we need. The excess capacity doesn’t go to waste because we use it to distill water into hydrogen. Our location is so remote that it’s impractical to import gasoline. We’ve converted all our vehicles to run on hydrogen. The cabin is steam heated. We keep the fireplaces going for their physiological benefits rather than for heating value. Our relationship with fire is both a primal and tribal thing. There’s something about a fire and an open hearth that makes a house a home,” Lisa said, as she tapped the ash of her cigarette into an empty water glass which doubled as an ashtray.

“Let’s take a walk. I’ve got a few things to show you guys,” Lisa said, as she jumped down from the stool where she had been sitting.

We followed her down a trail to a winding passageway leading to another cavern deep under the mountain. The corridor emptied into an illuminated grotto after several hundred feet. The open space contained an expansive underground hydroponic garden roughly the size of a football field. The garden’s computerized hydroponic system automatically operated with a minimum of human intervention. Row upon row of tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, and other vegetables thrived under the artificial lighting system. There was a patch reserved for Cannabis production. Forty or fifty dark green marijuana plants added a pungent fragrance to the air.

“Our colony is nearly 100% self-sufficient in the production of food. We hunt deer and elk, and take two or three a week. We also have a herd of 35 free-range cattle and 24 sows, to say nothing of our flocks of free-range chickens. The only food that we still import is wheat. We could grow winter wheat in the valley, but the fields would standout like a neon sign on satellite imagery. Speaking of food, it’s time for lunch,” Lisa said.

The colony leader led us to an elevator shaft dug out of one side of the grow room instead of following the route we had taken to the cavern. We emerged in the grand kitchen of the main cabin a few minutes later.

Several sisters, dressed in aprons and nothing else, were busy fixing the colony’s midday meal. Lunch consisted of the remainder of last night’s venison stew, fresh baked bread, and a garden salad. The food looked and smelled as delicious as the naked backsides of the kitchen crew.

I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I took a bite of the warm bread. The next ten minutes passed without conversation as we consumed lunch in blissful silence. I tried to process what I had seen on Lisa’s tour of the colony. What she and her family of sisters had constructed defied description, and I wouldn’t have believed such a thing was possible if I wasn’t a witness.

“How did you find this place, and how did this community come to be?” I asked Lisa

“My father and I found this valley by accident about thirty-five years ago. We were hunting on horseback and came up over a ridge and we saw this spectacular valley below. The cabin was in ruins, but it was still beautiful. My dad knew these mountains like the back of his hand but he had no idea this place existed until the day we stumbled on the valley,” Lisa said.

Several of the sisters took seats near us and listened in to our conversation while the colony leader told the story of the valley’s discovery. Most of the lunchtime crowd was dressed in work clothes, although a couple of the women were nude. The mixture of dressed and undressed females was oddly erotic and distracting, and I had to force myself not to stare.

“We explored the cabin’s wreckage. I was the one who found the old safe filled with stock certificates for the Liberty Mountain Mining Company - 345,000 shares total. The original owners cleared out when the gold ran out and the mine went bust. They even left a note which described the gold mining venture as a ‘fool’s dream’ and anyone stupid enough to try to make a go of it was welcome to the company and all its worthless holdings. We researched the company when we returned to Denver. No one had filed paperwork to dissolve the company. It was still a legally valid entity,” Lisa explained.

“We had to settle nearly 160 years worth of back taxes, fines, and fees to the tune of $240,000 to get on the right side of the law. It was worth every cent,” Lisa said with a grin that would put the Cheshire cat to shame.

“Dad and I fixed the cabin up enough to be useful as a family hunting lodge. We came up to the mountains every year before he died and I became the sole owner of the Liberty Mountain Mining Company.”

“I continued to visit the cabin with friends and lovers after my dad died. We fancied ourselves a ‘Society of Sisters’ and often daydreamed of starting an all-women commune. We pooled our money and purchased lottery tickets. We planned to split any winnings among the players. We held many discussions on what to do with our good fortune when we found out that we held the winning lottery ticket,” Lisa said.

The word about Lisa’s history lesson spread, and a dozen or more sisters joined the others at the table.

“Each sister could have cashed out with $2,500,000 if we had split the money evenly, but the windfall would have been the end of our group. We decided, after much discussion, to pool our money and build a state of the art survival colony instead. The vote was unanimous,” she said.

“I remember the vote well. I wasn’t ready to live away from civilization, and turning my back on that kind of cash in my pocket was a tough choice. I considered the money as an alternative retirement account,” Darlene said.

The attention to detail and planning which went into the colony’s creation was impressive. Lisa and her group spent a year creating a shell company to redeem the $75 million winning lottery ticket to avoid the public attention associated with winning a large jackpot. The Society drafted a charter and a set of bylaws governing the community’s operation.

Everything was as open and democratic according to Darlene’s remarks and comments from several sisters, at least as open as a secret society could be. Free and open elections for colony leadership resulted in Lisa’s selection as colony leader, a post she had held without visible opposition for the last 15 years. Members of the family of sisters were fiercely loyal to each other and to their leader. The fact that I was accepted, or at least tolerated, by Lisa did much to improve my standing as a ‘guest’.

“I love what you’ve done to the place.”

“The only thing missing is children,” one of the women said to Lisa.

The comment about children hung like a pregnant pause in the air. Looking around, I was startled to see all eyes were on me as the phrase ‘founding father’ took on a potentially new meaning.

“Children might be a nice addition,” Lisa said.

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Chapter 10

The tour of the Liberty Mountain camp consumed most of the day and I welcomed the chance to sit down and collect my thoughts. We were back in the cabin with about twenty minutes to spare before dinner was served, and I wanted to use the time to clean up before supper. Darlene had left me on my own for the evening to rekindle a long lost friendship. The night belonged to me. I frankly welcomed a few solitary moments.

I went to our room, changed out of my clothes, grabbed a towel, a bar of soap, and visited one of the four community showers. Any hope of sneaking in for a quick scrub down without company ended when I entered the room. The hour prior to the evening meal apparently was rush hour. I spotted the naked bodies of several females of various ages amid billowing clouds of steam. The way the light glistened off the women’s skin sent a jolt of lust through me. The ‘slippery when wet’ sensuality of water on naked flesh is a major turn-on.

I waited my turn by the sinks lining one wall. I glanced around for a urinal to use out of instinct. The designers of the woman’s restroom neglected to install plumbing for men, of course. Situational awareness demanded that I be more mindful of my surroundings until I learned the practices and customs of my new home. Looking for urinals in a woman’s bathroom equaled a major brain fart.

My voyeuristic presence in the shower room remained unnoticed by the ladies so far. I took the opportunity to watch and relax as the sisters frolicked under the streams of steaming water. Each of the sisters shared a common physical trait with the others. In fantastic shape, the naked bodies displayed the lean and well-toned appearance of women who worked and played hard. The clothing optional dress code produced deep, bronze-colored natural tan. Even the most expensive tanning booths couldn’t duplicate the deep golden hue of a sunshine tan.

The unlimited supply of hot water didn’t lend itself to short showers. A person could spend the entire day in the shower without hitting cold water if they wanted to. Voyeurism soon gave way to impatience. I would be likely to die of old age before I got a chance to take a shower at the rate things were going. I finally left my towel on the sink and entered the clouds of steam with a bar of soap in hand in search of hot water.

My appearance at the center of the group elicited a short ‘eek!’ of surprise from Charlotte who made an instinctive and half-assed attempt to cover herself with her hands. One of the women called out, “What are you doing in here. Dennis?”

“I’m here to clean up like you guys before dinner,” I said.

“Well, come on in. The water’s fine,” Charlotte beckoned to me as she regained her composure.

She was by far the tallest woman in the colony and towered over me by six inches or more.

I might just as well be standing in a hole when I stood next to her. I measured in at five feet, eleven inches tall. She possessed a hefty and muscular body without a trace of fat. Her lovely tanned breasts weren’t perfectly symmetrical like many women’s. Her right boob appeared to be a half-cup size larger than her left side. Charlotte didn’t shave her pubic hair or apparently anything else unlike most of the women in the colony.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm anyone. Maybe I could schedule my shower for a time when no else is around,” I offered.

“No, no, you’re welcome to bathe with us. You startled me. I forgot that there’s a male visitor in our midst. I’m not going to start wearing clothes because you’re here. Besides, it feels kinda sexy to prance around naked in the company of a man,” Charlotte giggled. Her breasts jiggled as she bounced up and down on the tips of her toes.

“OK, would you rather I wear clothing when I’m around in the evening, or is it alright with you if I’m as naked as everyone else?” I asked.

“Nudity is the norm around here and you’ll need to bare your backside like the rest of us if you want to fit in,” Charlotte said with a grin. Something in her voice belied her smile. She meant every word.

I found the whole nudity thing to be kinda weird and erotic. I enjoyed looking at the wide variety of body types in the female landscape provided by the sisters. Heck, the exhibitionist in me got a thrill at the chance to strut my stuff. The objective critic in me realized that I was a certifiable old fart. I had grown a bit too comfortable in my old age. I’m not overweight, but I tend toward the flabby side. My stomach and legs were as pale as a fish’s belly. A box of rubber bands displayed better muscle tone than I did. I at least wanted to look sexy if I had to run around unclad.

The evening dinner, like all meals in the commune, is served buffet style. Tonight’s offering was Beef Wellington. The sisters in the kitchen displayed some serious cooking skills. Wrapped in homemade puff pastry, and an aroma of pure delight, the filet of beef tenderloin, assembled with liver pate, mushrooms, and onions truly was fine dining worthy of a five-star eatery.

I worked my way through the serving line and took a seat at the far end of the community table. I sat down in a social twilight zone; halfway between sitting close enough to be ‘next’ to someone, yet far enough away to be ‘by myself’.

The last 24 hours had buried me under an avalanche of new experiences, people, sights, and sounds as I tried to adjust to my new environment. My senses were on edge from operating at a level of hyper-alerted awareness. I was suffering from information overload, which felt like a major case of jet lag in my situation. I took long, slow, cleansing breaths, and forced myself to relax as I centered myself on the here and now. I moved my mind to a place where there was neither a past nor a future, only the moment of ‘now’ was real.

I could sense the tension draining away from my body like an outgoing tide with each breath I took. I had dabbled in Zen, self-hypnosis, and meditation when I was much younger. I closed my eyes and recited my personal mantra to help me relax and center in the moment.

‘Seek not the storm’s fury. Nor it’s jagged light. Search instead for the quiet center, and there stand against the night’.

A voice asked, “Is this seat taken?” on the third or fourth recitation. I opened my eyes as Lisa wedged her nude body into the space next to me.

“Please sit down,” I said.

“What are you doing?” Lisa wanted to know.

“I was meditating and trying to settle down and reduce tension. The last 24 hours have been hectic and eventful and I’m creating a space to relax and process recent experiences,” I responded.

The warmth of our bodies wedged together and the sensual heat of skin-to-skin contact had its effect on me. The tension I had been trying to drive out of my body returned as sexual arousal. Nothing I could do would hide my rising interest. If Lisa was trying to get my attention, she was doing an excellent job.

“Christ almighty; you’re as tense as shit, Dennis. A backrub will calm you down. Let’s go up to my bedroom where we can relax and get to know each other better,” Lisa suggested, as she took my hand and led me up the stairs to her quarters.

The dimly lit bedroom appeared much as it had the night before. The embers smoldering in the fireplace provided scant illumination - enough to see shapes, but little detail. Lisa instructed me to lie down on her bed, and she fetched two glasses of the delicious homemade brandy that she served me on the previous evening as I got comfortable.

I rested on my back with my head up propped up on her pillow, while Lisa positioned herself next to me. We sipped our spirits in silence together for several minutes. Alcohol is as effective as mediation when it comes to reducing stress. My body was relaxed and as horny as hell within a short time.

“So, what did you think of your tour of our colony?” Lisa inquired, as she absentmindedly fondled my thigh with her right hand.

“You’ve built an extraordinary place. I can’t believe how lucky I am to be here,” I answered.

“Do you think it was luck that brought you here?” Lisa asked.

“Well, it sure wasn’t planning,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

Most of Lisa’s body was in a shadow except for the curves of her breasts which were highlighted by the glow from the fireplace.

A soft, warm hand rubbed my inner thigh. “This may be a stupid question, but are you trying to seduce me?” I asked with a slight grin as I realized that I sounded like Dustin Hoffman in the movie ‘The Graduate’.

“Maybe, what do you think?” Lisa replied, as her fingers stroked my scrotum. My growing erection twitched in response to her touch.

“What about the upper and lower case L for lesbian?” I said in reference to Lisa’s comments from the night before.

“I’m also a capital ‘L’ leader and I’ve made love to everyone who calls Liberty Mountain their home. It’s my way of getting to know people. I can only trust a person if I’ve made love to them. Words lie, but the human body tells the truth if you take the time to listen,” Lisa explained, while her fingers tenderly caressed my shaft.

“You’re a lesbian. I thought you didn’t like men,” I said to Lisa as she continued to fondle me. My erection was now at full mast. I was so hard that it was almost painful.

“It’s not that I dislike men; I prefer women. There have been a few male lovers in my past,” Lisa replied, as the tip of her finger played with the clear drop of precum leaking from my urethra. My level of sexual arousal increased as she smeared the clear, colorless, viscous fluid over the head of my prick.

“Darlene has told me all about your lovemaking skills. Shit! She made more noise than a brass band last night. Everyone in the cabin heard you two going at it,” Lisa told me as she traced the veins on my dick with her finger.

I watched as she played with me. Her face glowed in the light of the fire and she was studying my trouser-snake with the intensity of a mongoose studying a cobra. She was playing me like a fiddle, and I could feel the pleasure building within me. Fuck! Premature ejaculation is a real buzz-kill. I needed to give Lisa her share of tender loving care.

“Enough. Lay back and take my place. Turnabout is fair play,” I said, as I climbed to my feet and guided Lisa back into the spot I had previously occupied.

She had a bemused smile on her lips as she settled into my place on the bed. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“I want you to be happy,” I said, as I leaned over her and lightly licked her lips. Lisa’s eyes widened in surprise and she resisted my kiss for an instant.

I gazed into her eyes as I stroked her cheek with my fingers. I slowly leaned forward again, nuzzled her cheeks, and kissed her closed eyelids. I traced the outline of her lips with my fingers and followed with a series of butterfly kisses.

I caressed her face, and chin, and nibbled the nape of her neck. I kissed her on her lips again as my hands moved across her shoulders. Her lips opened this time, and her tongue touched mine for a moment before it withdrew.

I looked into Lisa’s eyes and whispered, “Do you want me to make love to you?”

“I’m not sure that I’m as ready as I thought,” Lisa said with a sigh.

“It means you are not ready if you’re not sure. Reluctant lovemaking is the second cousin to rape. You’re an extraordinary woman, and I find you to be incredibility attractive and sexy. I’ll make love to you when you ask me, but not until then. I don’t attend parties unless I’m invited,” I told Lisa as I took her into my arms and held her close to me.

Lisa shifted her body and rested her head on my chest. I thought I heard her whisper ‘Thank you’ as her breathing slowed. She was soon gently snoring in my embrace. I pulled the blankets over us and tried not to think about the pain in my balls.

Lisa’s playful and seductive touch had brought me to the edge. I could have taken her at her word when she said that she wanted to make love to me to ‘get to know me’. There was no doubt in my mind that she would have allowed me to ‘have my way with her’. She was the one who suggested using sex as her way of getting to know her people, after all.

Lisa had boxed herself into a corner by making an offer she hadn’t been 100% comfortable honoring. I gave her the opportunity to withdraw without losing face when I asked her permission to proceed.

My grandfather used to tell me, ‘Sometimes we can only get what we want by not taking everything we can get’. He also used to remind me that ‘No good deed goes unpunished’.

Lisa snorted in her sleep as she rolled over on her side and we nestled like two spoons in the kitchen drawer. She was quietly snoring again within a few minutes. I wrapped my arm around her bare body and held her close as I kissed her neck and soon joined her in slumber.

-------

Chapter 11

My bladder is the perfect alarm clock. The urgent need to go dragged me out of hibernation as the night sky brightened in advance of dawn. I awoke to the gentle sound of Lisa’s breathing. Naked, beautiful, and warm, she lay next to me in the relaxed innocence of sleep. Lisa sensed a change in my position, shifted her body, and pressed her bare bottom into my groin as we snuggled together under the covers. My hand remained cupped to her breast. Lisa placed her hand over my mine and pulled it tight to her body as she slept.

Our bodies cuddled together in blissful warmth. I wanted to stay under the sheets forever, but I needed to take a piss. With a bad case of ‘morning wood’, my erection found a home between the cheeks of Lisa’s ass. As pleasant as it felt, I wouldn’t be able to stop my body from unleashing a flood if I didn’t get out bed soon. Wetting the bed wasn’t an option.

I untangled myself from Lisa and silently slipped out of bed into the chill of the morning air. I adjusted the blankets to cover Lisa’s exposed shoulder, and made tracks for the bathroom. I decided to make a quick getaway instead of using the facilities in her room to avoid the awkward moments after a night in which nothing happened. I almost made it to the door when Lisa’s sleepy voice called my name.

“Where are you going, Dennis?” she asked.

“Gotta go pee,” I mumbled.

“Excellent idea; hang on and I’ll join you,” Lisa said, as she threw the quilt back and climbed out of bed.

“We might as well take a shower since we’re already up,” Lisa suggested while grabbing towels and soap from the closet.

Three members of the kitchen crew hard at work preparing breakfast are the only other people up and about in the hour before sunrise. We had the showers to ourselves.

We dried each other off after our morning scrub, and Lisa suggested, “Let’s head down to the kitchen and grab a cup of coffee.”

The custom of indoor nudity might make more sense if we were born kangaroos with natural pockets. I stopped by my room to make up for our genetic deficiency, put an unbuttoned flannel shirt on, stuck a pack of smokes and a lighter in the breast pocket, and joined Lisa in the kitchen.

Coffee is the nectar of the Gods and Colombia’s only legal drug export. It’s also a natural lubricant, allowing us to slide from dreams to wakefulness with a minimum amount of friction.

Coffee in hand, Lisa led me to a cozy nook next to the fireplace in the Great Room and we sat together next to the fire.

“I want to talk to you about last night,” Lisa said, as she sipped her coffee.

“OK, what’s on your mind?” I responded.

“Inquiring minds want to know. I had turned you on and you were obviously aroused; why didn’t you want sex with me?” Lisa asked.

Her question was both delicate and dangerous. The wrong answer could do damage to our relationship, but I had no idea of what she thought the correct answer should be. I followed my grandfather’s advice: ‘tell the truth if all else fails’.

I set my coffee down on the fireplace hearth, took Lisa’s hands in mine, and looked into her eyes as I spoke, “Your body said one thing, but your words were saying something different last night. I listened to the truth that your body spoke. You weren’t ready to get that intimate with me.”

“True, but I would’ve gone along if you had persisted,” she acknowledged, as she gave my hands a soft squeeze.

“I figured that you would allow intercourse if I pushed it. You would be resentful, nevertheless, and that makes for a lousy start to our relationship. I would have selfishly screwed you to the floor if I only thought about my own gratification,” I said with a grin.

“I’ll take your friendship if I have to choose between being your friend and being your lover and can’t have both,” I further explained.

My father used to tell me that the best way to learn the thoughts of another is to ask a direct question, shut up, and listen to the answer. “What about what happened, or didn’t happen last night?” I asked.

“I was relieved at first when you asked for my permission, then I was pissed. I was confused after that. I was happy in the end. Maybe you didn’t think me desirable enough or maybe you didn’t like me enough for us to fuck. I felt safe, loved, and cared for when you held me in your arms and stayed the night,” Lisa said as she gave me a hug wrapped in a smile.

Silence filled the comfortable space between us as our conversation slowed to a stop. The colony’s leader took a sip of coffee and studied me over the rim of her coffee mug for several moments before saying, “You’re a strange man, Mr. Richards. Whatever am I going to do with you?”

Our zone of silence gradually evaporated as the sisters of the colony drifted into the kitchen for breakfast in ones and twos.

“Refill your coffee and grab a seat; we’ve got a group meeting in fifteen minutes,” Lisa announced, as she excused herself to prepare for the gathering. I set off to the kitchen looking for fresh coffee. Ready or not, a new day was getting underway.

It’s a fundamental law of the universe: staff meetings seldom begin on time, and the Liberty Mountain assembly was no exception. Significant numbers of sisters hadn’t taken a seat at the conference table yet. Start time came and went as Lisa kept glancing at her wristwatch and scanning the faces of the attendees for missing members. I also glanced around the table for Darlene who was among the missing. My ladylove took starting times and deadlines as suggestions rather than requirements. She had a long established reputation for always arriving at the far edge of ‘fashionably late’.

Only the light tapping of Lisa’s pencil on the tabletop betrayed her outwardly calm exterior. The taps steadily increased in tempo the longer we waited. It was as if the pencil doubled as a Geiger counter reporting that her frustration was approaching critical mass.

The giggles and laughter of several women echoed from the walls of the hall as if on cue. Darlene, Lucia and a woman whose name turned out to be Sandra emerged from the kitchen moments later. I saw the trio and nearly burst out laughing. They were as drunk as skunks, and could barely keep from falling over as they staggered toward the meeting table.

Darlene took a seat next to me with a stumble, and moaned as she held her head in her hands. She seemed like she had just come from an orgy: her hair was a mess, nipples stood like stiff pencil erasers; her shoulders, cheeks, and chest glowed like a neon sign with the rosy blush of sexual arousal. The swollen outer lips of her labia glistened with vaginal lubrication.

“Too much party,” she groaned, as she leaned her body against mine.

“Too much sex?” I asked.

“There’s no such thing as too much sex,” she said with a burp. Her hand flew to her mouth as her face took on a greenish tint.

“But there is such a thing as too much (burp) brandy,” Darlene gasped, as she bent double and barfed up who knows what over my bare feet.

Standing in a puddle of someone else’s used dinner is over the top gross. I nearly lost my breakfast before I got my gag reflex under control.

“Clean up on Aisle Five,” I called out, as I helped Darlene to her feet.

Lisa’s expression was halfway between annoyed and amused. “We’ll start the meeting as soon as we’ve gotten these guys cleaned up and into bed,” she said.

I took a seat next to Alice and her daughter twenty minutes later. The meeting of the sisterhood of Liberty Mountain was finally about ready to start.

The flannel shirt I was wearing gave me the comfortable illusion of being dressed even though it was unbuttoned, and it covered none of my vital parts. Alice leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Is it true that you spent the night in Lisa’s bed?”

“We kept each other company last night,” I answered.

“Very interesting; will you keep me company tonight if I ask nicely?” Alice asked with a sexy smile as she placed her hand on my thigh and gently caressed my bare leg.

“Mom!” her daughter protested as she watched her mother’s attempt to seduce me.

“Shush, Little one. You’ll get your turn after I check him out,” Star’s mother replied.

The touch of Alice’s warm hand stroking my thigh in close proximity to my genitals was enough to get my libido’s attention and I could sense myself responding to Alice’s invitation.

Part of me was amused at the turnabout in my love life since I arrived in the colony. I had always played the part of the seducer prior to my visit to the Society of Sisters. The tables had turned and I was now the target for seduction. The new state of affairs perfectly fit with my passive/aggressive approach to sex. I had always been the sexual aggressor early on, usually with mixed results when I was young. My advances ended in failure more often than I cared to admit.

“Your place or mine?” I said to Alice, as I moved her hand to the relative safety of my knee. I didn’t want to sprout another public erection in front of so many naked women. Exhibitionism isn’t my thing, as I said.

The gathering’s primary agenda item was the question of work assignments. The concept was simple: Many hands make light work. Maintaining the colony required a lot of effort and every member of the community had at least one assigned chore or duty. The colony ran as smoothly as a Swiss watch when everyone pitched in.

I was the only person without anything to do after the sisters had divvied up the chores. Lisa called on me when I raised my hand.

“Freeloading is not my style; I need a chore. How can I contribute to our community?” I asked.

“You are my guest until your status here at Liberty Mountain is established. Feel free to help out wherever you can,” Lisa said.

“Does anyone need a helping hand?” I said as I turned to face the gathering.

Silence answered my inquiry until Alice spoke, “Our sensors have picked up a deer herd about ten miles out. Lucia and I are on the schedule to go hunting this afternoon but she isn’t in any condition to do anything until she sleeps it off. You can tag along in her place.”

“I’ve never been hunting before,” I pointed out.

“Do you know how to shoot?” Alice asked.

“Sure. I took basic training and qualified as an expert marksman,” I replied.

“Are you a member of PETA?” Lisa inquired.

“If you mean “People Eating Tasty Animals,” then the answer is yes,” I said amid chuckles and laughter from the sisters.

“Then it’s about time you learn the manly art of hunting. Alice is extremely skilled and she’ll make sure you have all the appropriate gear. You two leave in an hour. Meeting adjourned, good luck,” Lisa said.

-------

Chapter 13

"These mountains are as dangerous as they are beautiful. They might appear to be lovely and majestic, but don't let 'em fool you. The beauty hides the heart of a killer," Brenda explained as she dug through her inventory looking for a pair of gloves in my size.

"Got 'em!" she yelled as she held the object of her search aloft. A pair of insulated gloves joined the rest of my new wardrobe.

A slim and attractive woman in her mid-thirties, Brenda served as the colony's quartermaster. Medium-sized, well-tanned breasts protruded from her chest and a pageboy haircut framed her freckled face. The dented circular scar of a long-ago healed bullet wound adorned her left breast a few inches below her collarbone.

One wall of the armory displayed her honorable discharge from the US Army, along with a citation awarding her the Army Commendation Medal for heroism, a Purple Heart for wounds received in combat, and an Iraq Campaign Medal. Ex-Army and combat tested, she was the real deal.

The brand new garments still carried tags from L.L. Bean. I let a long whistle out when I did a tally in my head. The camouflage Gore-Tex hunting jacket and matching tactical cargo pants carried a hefty price north of $800. Gore-Tex is some amazing shit. The fabric is a lightweight, waterproof, and breathable membrane that repels liquid water while allowing moisture and vapor to pass through.

A pair of Gore-Tex lined winter hiking boots I had brought with me turned out to be the only article of my clothing that passed muster with Brenda. "The secret of staying alive in the wilderness is to stay warm and dry, and the proper clothing is your first defense," Brenda commented as she rummaged around for headgear.

"Is it true that we lose the most body through our head?" I questioned Brenda.

"We lose heat from any part of the body exposed to the air, but the head is a special case. For example, when hands are unprotected and exposed to severe cold, the human body tries to maintain a core temperature, and sometimes our bodies will shut circulation to the hands down to conserve heat," Brenda replied.

"The rapid loss of hand function is the net result. They eventually become useless popsicles. Our body will sacrifice our hands to save our life. The head is different. Our bodies will never shut down blood flow to our heads, but it will sacrifice everything else to maintain our brains at a functioning temperature. Folks succumb to hypothermia and die from cold without ever realizing they're in danger," Brenda spoke as she produced an adjustable thermal fleece Balaclava Winter Face Mask.

"Is all this really necessary? We're only going hunting. We're not climbing Mount Everest." I grumbled.

"I use the parachute principle when it comes to gear," Brenda said as she examined the facemask.

"What the heck is the parachute principle?" I asked.

"Gear is like a parachute. It's better to carry one and not need it than it is to need one and not have it," Brenda joked.

Brenda smiled with satisfaction after a few adjustments and additions. My wardrobe now met her minimum standards for survivability in extreme conditions.

"You can't go hunting without a weapon," the quartermaster said as she laid a Kimber 84M Mountain Ascent rifle on the counter for my inspection.

The rifle weighed in at less than 5 pounds. Fitted with a four round magazine, it fired a 30-06 bullet with a muzzle velocity of a bit over 3,000 feet per second. The rifle's $2,000 price tag was the heaviest part of the Kimber. Money apparently is no object when you win the lottery.

Brenda positioned me in front of a full-length mirror and, like a tailor, stepped back to admire her handiwork. "Very nice; now you look like a hunter. The deer will take one look at you and die of fright," she noted with pride.

"It's more likely that Bambi will die laughing. I feel like an escapee from an L. L. Bean fashion catalog," I said with a silly grin.

"Dead is dead, and Bambi is dinner either way," Alice smacked her lips in anticipation of venison stew.

Unloaded rifle in hand, I followed her to the underground garage. A somewhat dented 2009 Kawasaki mule retrofitted to run on hydrogen fuel would be our transportation. We spent the next fifteen minutes doing a pre-trip safety inspection.

We read out the items from our pre-trip cheat sheet and Alice reported the status of each. Tires? Check. Fuel? Check. First-aid kit? Check. Radio? Check. Emergency Rations? Check, and so it went until we had checked all the vehicle's systems and inventory."

Satisfied our pre-trip checklist was complete, Alice took her place behind the wheel, I climbed next to her to ride shotgun, and we sped down the tunnel toward the exit.

Our Kawasaki mule abruptly decelerated the moment we hit daylight.

"Why so slow? I can walk faster than this," I said to Alice.

"This is our exit protocol. We reduce speed when crossing the meadow to minimize damage to the grassland," Alice kept our speed to a crawl.

It was all rather clever. The colony's survival strategy was to do nothing to alter the visual footprint of the valley. The likelihood of someone accidentally entering Liberty Mountain's valley was modestly remote. However, it was a virtual certainty that dozens of Google Earth's armchair explorers loaded images of the valley into their computers on any given day. Dirt trails left by vehicles exiting the mountain would attract unwanted attention.

The air temperature dropped like a rock as our rate of travel increased to a more reasonable 20 MPH once we crossed the meadow and entered the forested area. Splotches of sunlight mixed with patches of frost left over from last night's deep freeze.

The valley's and the mountains' ecosystem idled between fall and winter as plants and animals braced for winter's arrival and the season's first major snowfall.

"The herd we're hunting should be about fifteen miles ahead of us. We'll need to cross a steep ridge and two valleys to get there," Alice said.

We journeyed westward in near silence thanks to the modifications to our ATV's exhaust system. The sound of our tires on the rocky trail was louder than our engine's whispering purr.

Alice let the ATV coast to a stop and killed the engine as we topped the crest of the last ridge between our deer herd and us.

The top of the rocky ridge offered a spectacular view of the snow-capped summits all around us. The clear chilly air gave the illusion that the distant mountains were much closer than they actually are. High overhead, the bright indigo morning sky now had a hazy white tint, and high-altitude streamers of wispy mare's tails and cirrus clouds smeared across the heavens from the west.

"Time for lunch and a potty break," she said, as she secured the vehicle, killed the engine, and dismounted.

"Great idea! I gotta go water some moss," I said while turning my back to Alice. I used my body as a modesty screen. Alice moved next to me and stood at my side as I was busy unzipping my fly.

"Do you mind?" I protested.

"Don't get your knickers in a knot. Just pretend I'm not here," Alice responded with a wink.

"Besides, you weren't very shy when my daughter and I were playing with you in the shower the other day," she reminded me.

Despite some major boundary issues, I was both amused and flattered by her interest in my man parts. She flirted with me and teased me at every opportunity since our shower episode. As much as I hated to admit it, I enjoyed the sexual by-play between us. It was a weirdly major turn-on.

My bladder was so full that I started to leak and dribble. I gritted my teeth and tried to stem the flow. I didn't have time for an argument, so I raced to pull my prick out of my pants as quickly as possible. It was a photo finish. The floodgates opened just as the head of my dick cleared my fly.

My knees trembled in relief as urine drained out of me. I'm at the age where my early warning system is a bit out of tune. The interval between the sensation of needing to take a piss and the uncontrolled act of urination was getting razor thin.

I turned to rebuke Alice for her bad manners. She was intently watching every movement of my man parts. Her eyes might just as well been super-glued to my pee-hole.

"Oh, Shit! Now I gotta take a piss," Alice said as she succumbed to the power of suggestion.

"Would you like some privacy?" I made a point of drawing out and embellishing the final word of my question with extra syllables for dramatic effect. My version of 'privacy' sounded like a blurry 'pretty-city'.

"Thank you for asking," Alice said, as she unbuckled her pants and lowered them and her blue cotton panties to her ankles. She squatted down, looked me in the eye, smiled, and pointed to her neatly shaved crotch as she let loose a thick stream of bright yellow piss.

I frowned at Alice for her exhibitionist behavior, and she burst into laughter. "Don't be such a prude. I caught you spying on me while I was spying on you. You liked what you saw, so I gave you a show for the fun of it."

"That was no show, Lady! That was the whole fucking circus," I growled and pretended to be annoyed. My stern demeanor crumbled when my shoulders started to shake with suppressed laughter and my mouth broke into a grin.

"A voyeur and an exhibitionist walk into a bar one day and," I took a breath as I tried to remember how the joke went, and my mind went blank. All I could remember was the punch line 'Here's looking at you, Kid'.

Interesting fact of life: it is nearly impossible to stay pissed-off at someone when you're both sharing a laugh.

We got down to the business of lunch after the show-n-tell piss break. The thermos we had filled in the kitchen prior to our departure produced two steaming hot bowls of the colony's legendary venison stew.

I studied Alice as I dug into my serving of stew. Despite our shared laughter, there was something about Alice's sexual advances and continuous flirting that didn't ring true with me. Why would a hardcore lesbian like Alice suddenly decide she needed a man in her life?

There was a frantic, almost desperate desire for us to engage in sex, so much so that she was even hinting at bringing her virgin daughter into the action. I held my libido in check even though they were both hotter than a Texas parking lot in August. I decided to make haste slowly until I had a better understanding of the mother/daughter dynamics involved.

Years of social trial and error had taught me that the best way to clear the air between two people was to speak plainly. I like to think of it as playing poker with your cards face-up on the table.

"We need to talk, Alice. Curious minds want to know; do you want us to have sex?" I said.

My blunt question seemed to take my hunting partner by surprise as she raised her eyebrows and blinked at me. She said nothing for several moments before responding, "Do you mean right now? Can we finish lunch first? Why do you ask?"

"You asked me at the meeting this morning if I would share your bed tonight if you asked nicely. Was that a real question, or were you just flirting?" I inquired.

"I was serious. I wanted to know if you would make love to me." Alice's face took on a reddish tint as she blushed, "Will you make love to me tonight, Dennis?"

"Be honest; you're a lesbian and I'm an old fart. Why would you want to have sex with me?" I asked.

She looked at me in silence for the longest time before answering, "I'm concerned about my daughter."

It was my turn to be surprised. "What does your daughter have to do with us having sex?"

"Liberty Mountain is my home, and I'm here because I love my sisters. My daughter has displayed no interest in sexual relations with other women, but she has shown a keen interest in getting to know you in the Biblical sense. I want her to explore her sexuality, and I want her to be true to herself. Star and I have had a few long mother and daughter talks about you. You're the first male who she's met. I told her that I might give my blessings for her to have sex with you, but I would do so only after I've had a chance to check you out," Alice said.

"Your daughter is still a child. I wouldn't feel right taking advantage of her that way," I sighed.

Alice gave me a sharp look, "Bullshit! How old were you when you lost your virginity?"

"I was fifteen, and she was nineteen," I answered.

"So fifteen is old enough for boys, but eighteen is too young for a girl? Sounds like a fucking double standard, pun intended," she shot back.

"OK. I get it that I'm old fashioned. I still don't understand why you would want your daughter to have sex with me, however."

"I want the best life for my daughter, and that begins by her being true to herself. I'm good with that if it turns out that she likes men. I'm also good with that if she prefers women. It would be fine if she's bisexual like her mother. I'll love and support her no matter who she is. Besides, I have a dream of being a grandmother someday," Alice offered.

"What about you? Why is it so important that you check me out first?"

"Because I won't let you near her if you turn out to be an asshole like her father, that's why. He was a lousy, selfish lover who cared nothing for his partner's sexual needs," Alice concluded.

We spent the next several minutes in thoughtful silence as we finished lunch and got ready to resume our quest for fresh venison.

Our vantage point on the ridge afforded us a clear view of the deer herd in the valley a thousand feet below. A dozen does graze along the banks of the stream flowing across the glen's floor under the watchful eye of a magnificent stag. It would take all Alice's driving skills to traverse the pathway to the bottom.

We had just started down the slope when our radio crackled to life. "This is Liberty base. The National Weather Service has issued an updated and revised winter storm warning for our area. A potent and fast-moving winter storm is heading our way and forecasters are calling for up to 36 inches of snow. The forecast for our locality calls for snow starting at 5 PM, with blizzard conditions beginning at 6:30 this evening. Snow will continue through the night and into late afternoon tomorrow. Winds will be south to southwest 20 to 30 mph with gusts up to 120 mph along exposed ridges with strongest winds likely tonight in localized, east facing areas. Return home immediately. Please acknowledge."

"It's too bad that we can't acknowledge a message we never received," Alice said as turned the radio's power off.

I scanned the sky overhead. The wispy streaks of morning clouds had given way to a high hazy overcast. Tops of advancing clouds were beginning to appear on the western horizon. The minuscule amount of weather lore I still remembered from my days as a Tenderfoot Scout told me that high thin clouds and Mare's tails were telltale signs of approaching storm systems and usually signaled that there would be stormy weather in 12 to 18 hours.

We had left base around 9:00 AM and had been on the trail for almost four hours. We would barely make it home before the storm hit if we returned now. "We need to turn back if we're going to beat the snow," I urged Alice.

"No fucking way! I'm not getting this close without bringing Bambi Burgers back," she replied with a look of determination that could blister paint. I wasn't going to win this argument.

The 30-degree angle of the slope and the sheer granite face of the nearly treeless ridge made for a treacherous descent. We had almost made it to the base of the ridge when our rocky trail abruptly narrowed before ending in a dead end at the edge of a vertical cliff. It was fucking frustrating. We were within 100 feet of the valley floor. Our goal could just as well be on the dark side of the moon as far as we were concerned.

"Fuck! I should have taken a different trail," Alice swore, as she reached for the radio and turned the power on.

"Liberty Base this is Hunter One, come in please, over," Alice paused and repeated her call, "Liberty Base this is Hunter One, come in please, over." It was useless. A slab of rock a mile thick stood between our location and the base's radio receiver, effectively blocking our signal. The steady hiss of static ruled the airwaves. Alice handed me the radio's microphone and instructed me to repeat the call to base every five minutes.

Backing up the steep slope was a royal pain in the ass. Reverse gears are slow and the best speed our mule could manage up the incline was not much faster than a slow walk. Our retreat finally paid off when we came to a wide spot on the trail after 20 minutes of travel. Alice executed a tight 3-point-turn and the front of the ATV pointed in the right direction at last.

The trail up the side of the ridge was difficult to follow. The overcast changed the light. None of the landmarks we passed on the way up looked like the ones we passed on the way down the trail.

We blazed our own path and we followed the contours of the ridge on an upward journey. Slow and steady wins the race in fairy tales. We won the ridge in an hour and thirty-six minutes in our case and lost our race against time.

We used too much time backtracking and there was no way in hell we would be able to make it home before the weather turned to shit. We would both be dead before dawn unless we could find a sheltered place to hunker down and ride the blizzard out.

"Do we have the time and tools we need to build a lean-to?" I asked.

"Good idea. We have the tools, but we don't have the time. We've gotta find something almost ready made - like a cave, rock overhang, or a cluster of fallen trees," Alice said, as she handed me a pair of binoculars.

We drove to an outcropping with a good overview of the eastern face of our ridgeline. "Scan to the north and I'll scope out the south," Alice said, as she lifted her binoculars and searched our southern flank.

The heavy cloud overcast reduced the daylight in the valley to near twilight conditions even though sunset was still 45 minutes in the future. The wind died down to almost nothing in a classic case of the lull before the storm. I felt a drop of wetness on my cheek and another on my nose a few moments later. Like the advance scouts of an approaching army, the first snowflakes explored the ground around us.

"Fuck it! There's nothing to the south of us!" Alice screamed in anger.

The slope of the ridge to the north gave way to a nearly vertical drop. Conditions were favorable for the formation of a rock shelter. Slabs of granite had broken away and tumbled to the ground over the eons. I was looking for anything resembling a natural rock lean-to or cave opening.

"I think I got something, Alice," I shouted with more hope than conviction, as I pointed to a dark shadow in a land of shadows at the base of a granite cliff.

My partner studied the rock feature with her binoculars for a moment before slamming the ATV into drive and racing forward to possible sanctuary.

Hope turned to disappointment as we got close enough to see the details of our target. We were well and truly fucked, the rock outcropping was too large and exposed to serve as a shelter. Daylight was nearly gone and snow was falling as fast as the thermometer.

"What the hell do we do now?" Alice pounded the steering wheel in frustration flavored with fear.

"Let's check that out," I said, pointing to a stand of saplings about 100 yards to the left of the useless overhang. Maybe we could construct an emergency lean-to from the young aspens.

We drove across the dusting of snow-covered ground and dismounted our vehicle. We inspected the thin grove of trees with flashlights in hand.

"Holy shit, there's a cave opening back here," Alice screamed and pointed to a five or six foot wide opening at the base of the cliff behind the trees.

We explored the inside of the cave with our flashlights. It thankfully was uninhabited. The dry and dusty floor of the cave sloped upward to a level area, which formed a low, cramped chamber about twenty feet across and thirty feet deep. We had about four feet of headroom at the most.

"Unload the mule and get our stuff inside while I'll cut down as many saplings as I can with our folding survival saw," I said, as I grabbed the cutting tool from the ATV's cargo bay.

Our plan was as desperate as it was simple. Cut as many of the young aspens as possible, slide the trees into the cave opening, and use the thin branches and remaining leaves to block the wind. The crowns of the trees would collect snow and form an impenetrable shield against the wind as the storm raged. The narrow trunks of the young trees were only four or five inches in diameter, and the saw made fast work of them. I had almost a dozen saplings down on the ground within fifteen minutes.

I had finished cutting the trees and snow and night was all around us by the time I was done. Winter descended upon us with a vengeance.

Alice finished bringing the last of our gear into the cave and together we hauled away at the fallen Aspens to plug the entrance as best as we could. Alice and I had no choice; the rock cavern would be either our salvation or our grave.

As I adjusted the position of the last tree Alice screamed, "Snakes! Oh my God, look at 'em all; the fucking cave is filled with rattlesnakes."

Chapter 14

In the confined space of the cave, Alice's distressed cry reverberated off the walls, so loud my ears hurt. I scrambled to be at her side. She sat in a fetal position with her arms wrapped around her knees and her whole body trembling like a leaf in the wind. Fear distorted her face and her eyes closed so tightly her facial muscles twitched with the effort.


A tiny voice uttered from her lips, "snakes, snakes." Kneeling next to my partner I put my arm around her shoulder and held her tight until her trembling lessened to not much more than a shiver.


"Where are the snakes?" I kept my voice calm and measured.


"Uhh, everywhere," she said.


"Where is everywhere? Can you point them out," I said gently pressing her for details.


"Over there," she answered as she pointed to the right-hand side of the rocky cavern, "And over there," she said gesturing to her left.


The blue-white beam of my tactical flashlight lit up the last place Alice indicated. I nearly let out a scream of my own. Against the rock wall, at least 75 fat sleeping rattlesnakes knotted and piled together like a braided rug. Several dozen more snakes clumped and mounded together against the opposite wall. She was right; hibernating snakes were all around us.


When an old-timer first told me every dry cave in the mountains contained a snake den, I laughed at him. All around us, I surveyed the living proof of his words. The old man made his living as an environmental scientist and he was obsessed with snakes, specifically the Rocky Mountain rattlesnake. Racking my brain, I tried to recall what else he had told me about our legless friends.


Venomous snakes, such as rattlers, hibernate when the average daytime temperatures fall below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. In the high mountains, their favorite winter quarters are caves and deep crevices. While in hibernation, snakes are lethargic, torpid, and essentially unresponsive as their metabolism slows down to the minimum necessary to sustain life.


He said not all snakes survive hibernation. A skinny snake will not live through the winter, nor will a snake with food in its stomach or intestines when they cool. The undigested meal rots and will kill them.


Other than a heavy-duty icky factor, the slumbering reptiles posed little danger to us as long as we left them alone. I shuddered to think about it, but our sleepy cavern mates might prove to be a useful source of food.


My first priority was to help Alice regain her composure. I shared and understood her fear of snakes. Fear is useful and can provide the necessary adrenaline to power us through dangerous situations. On the other hand, too much fear has the opposite effect: often paralyzing a person into inactivity. The secret was to find a healthy middle ground between terror and bravado.


While I comforted her, I used the beam of my flashlight to explore our shelter. The dry dusty soil of the cavern's floor could just as well been talcum powder. The ATV's survival gear lay scattered about where Alice tossed them when we scrambled to get everything inside the cave.


To survive the blizzard, we needed to organize ourselves. Our situation reminded me of the scene from the movie, The Martin when the stranded astronaut faces the camera and said, "to survive I'm left with only one option, I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this."


In our case, we needed to use our heads and think the shit out of our predicament. Our biggest threat wasn't sleeping snakes it was creeping hypothermia. The chill air drained our bodies of heat and unless we figured out a way to keep warm the cave would become our tomb.


Turning to Alice I said, "Let's collect our stuff and do an inventory. We're gonna need to come up with a plan of action."


We gathered our meager stash of supplies and arranged the gear in front of us on one of the Mylar blankets as we huddled together for warmth. We had salvaged an odd assortment of survival items including:


" two Kimber 84M Mountain Ascent rifles and a 20 round box of ammo

" two winter sleeping bags (rated to 15 degrees)

" two all-weather mylar space blankets (useful as ground cloths)

" one Marmot Tungsten 3-Person 3-Season Tent

" Folding survival saw

" four packages of Meals Ready to Eat

" First Aid Trauma Kit

" Rayovac LED Lantern (150-hour battery life)

" one plastic vial containing 25 storm-proof wooden matches

" compact snap-together stainless steel Hobo Stove

" one-gallon stainless steel cooking pot with cover

" two metal water flasks filled with nearly frozen drinking water; tin cups attached

" a ready box containing: a mess kit, one bag of zip lock and plastic shopping bags of various sizes, Pocket Thermometer (0-220 degrees), deck of cards, 25 tea bags with 25 sugar packets, six energy bars, a tin of 25 beef bouillon cubes, a bar of Lava soap, and a SAS Survival Handbook in Spanish.

Huh? Spanish? What the fuck? I shook my head in bewilderment.

I emptied the contents of my pockets and added a Kit Kat candy bar, a pack and a half of cigarettes, one Bic lighter, a small glass pot pipe, and several buds of potent homegrown weed to our collection.

The branches stuffed in the entrance of the cave rattled as the blizzard's howling wind intensified and the air temperature dropped. The interior of the cave was too large to heat and if we wanted to stay warm, we were going to need a smaller confined space. We decided to erect the tent to use as a shelter within our shelter.


All components of our tent were color-coded and within a few minutes, we had all the pieces assembled. Staking our tent in place was a bit more problematic. The cave's thin layer of dusty soil was not deep enough to drive a tent peg into the ground. We improvised by filling several plastic shopping bags with dirt and used them as anchors to keep the shelter in place.


In addition to practical benefits of an easier to heat space, the finished tent provided a much need psychological boost. At least the snake dens all around us were outta sight and hopefully out of mind.


Once we finished zipping our sleeping bags together, I brought the rest of our gear inside our cozy little icebox.


"I don't know how long we're going to be stuck here, but if we don't want to sit around in the darkness, we're going to have to conserve our batteries," I said as I turned out our tactical flashlights and switched on the Rayovac to the lowest setting. Every time we exhaled, the white smoky mist of our breath glowed in the lantern's light, a visual reminder of how God awful cold our shelter was.


"Pip pip and cheerio, my dear, would you care for a spot of hot tea before we retire for the evening," I asked Alice as I mangled my attempt to invoke an excessively proper English accent.


"Ha ha funny. It ain't nice to joke about hot tea while I'm freezing my ass off," her body trembled and shivered as she replied between chattering teeth.


"Who's joking? We've got a Hobo Stove, plenty of fuel, a tea bag, water, and more time than we know what to do with, why not?" I answered as I dug through the gear we had salvaged from the ATV.


The Hobo Stove is the clever invention of some unnamed and forgotten tramp genius of days long gone. The stove's design is elegant in its simplicity. A resourceful camper could build a fully functional metal stove from scratch in five minutes or less with only tin can and a church key can opener.


Coffee cans are the ideal raw material, but any thin metal container will do the trick. All that is necessary is to remove the top of the can while keeping the bottom in place; then a ring of evenly spaced rectangular holes are punched around the top and base of the can for ventilation. Finally, a series of randomly placed carburetor holes get punched through the sidewalls to allow the fire to breathe. Happy days! You've just built a survival stove.


The beauty of the tiny stoves is they are highly efficient, produce a minimum amount of smoke, and use far less wood than a traditional campfire.


In our case, our hobo stove was a bit more refined. Weighing less than 16 ounces it was a stainless steel design consisting of five snap together sheet metal plates and a few cross members. I assembled it and sat back to admire my handiwork.


Flashlight in hand, I told Alice, "I'll be right back" as I crawled toward the cave's opening in search of fuel. The heavily falling snow was busy turning the crowns of the young Aspens into an effective windscreen. Between the trunks of the saplings, I found piles of dry windblown leaves I would use as kindling to start my fire. I cut several small branches for fuel and shaved off strips of wood and bark from one of the tree trunks with my hunting knife. I lucked out; I also found a book sized flat stone I could use as a base for our stove. The rock would keep the little stove from turning our tent floor into a puddle of melted plastic.


In the center of the tent, next to our combined sleeping bags I set the assembled stove on the flat rock, and I lined the bottom of the can with dry leaves, followed by small twigs and then a layer of larger sticks. The idea was to use the smaller fuel to ignite the larger pieces of wood. The tin can is a natural chimney and the interior metal surfaces reflected the heat back on the unburned fuel. When I was finished, I set the leaves ablaze with my Bic lighter.


I opened the screened ventilation flat at the top of the tent and kept the bottom of the tent entrance open for fresh air to keep carbon monoxide fumes from asphyxiating us.


Since carbon monoxide is heavier than air, I figured any excess would accumulate at the bottom of the sloping entrance to our cave. At least that was the theory. Nonetheless, I decided we should limit the use of our cook stove to no more than two or three times in any 24-hour period, just to be safe.


Once I had the fire well established, I balanced a metal cup filled with water and a single tea bag on the stove's open top. About ten minutes later the liquid was at a rolling boil.


"You might want to let it cool down a bit before drinking," I warned Alice as I handed her the cup after retrieving the tea bag and splashing a bit of ice water on the cup's handle so she wouldn't burn her fingers or hand. "Care for any sugar?"


Alice shook her head, no, and smiled for the first time since we received our radio warning. "Thank you," she said as she took the steaming mug of tea from my hands. "Thank you very much," she whispered as she leaned forward and kissed my cheek.


I used the recycled tea bag to make my own cup of tea. Waste not, want not.


The little fire did the trick. Soon the air temperature inside the tent was a friendly 60 or 65 degrees and worked in partnership with the steaming tea to take the chill of winter away, at least for the moment.


We decided to skip dinner to conserve our food supply. We would eat in the morning.


Turning off the lantern to conserve its battery, I was startled to see how cozy and romantic our setting was, as long as you left out the snakes out of the picture. The light from the dying embers of our fire painted the interior of the tent with a sexy, warm rose-colored glow. Our joined sleeping bags and Alice's sweet kiss hinted at all sorts of possibilities.


"That's it!" I scolded myself, "I am officially stupid. What kind of fucking idiot thinks about sex at a time like this?"


"Come on Dennis, we need to get undressed and under the covers, before it gets cold again," Alice said as she leaned her head on my shoulder.


"Undressed?" I raised an eyebrow and gave my hunting partner a hard look.


"Of course, silly man, how else do we share body heat? Do you know another way we can avoid hypothermia," Alice nuzzled and hugged me tightly.


"Besides, it'll be fun," Alice gave me another hug, longer than the last.


In an effort to protect my honor, I started to protest and instead burst out laughing as I thought of an old joke.


"What's so funny?" she asked as she lifted her head from my shoulder and looked into my eyes for signs of rejection.


"Nothing. Our current circumstances remind me of a funny story I heard years ago. It goes something like this: Once upon a time, a beautiful maiden and a traveling judge were forced to seek shelter from a terrible storm in an abandoned cabin. To pass the time, and to stay warm, the young girl offered her honor. The judge honored her offer. All night long, His Honor was on her and off her," I laughed.


"OK, I'll strip down to my underwear and you do the same, deal?" I rose to my knees and accepted her hand as she helped me to my feet. My knees were high mileage and they sucked. Such is life.


"Great, you've got yourself a deal. You go first," Alice's smile widened into a silly grin as she fired up the lantern and held it aloft, "Showtime."


I took off my jacket and spread it open on the sleeping bag. Alice watched intently, her eyes wrinkled in puzzlement and curiosity. I removed my flannel shirt, folded it neatly, and placed it in the center of my jacket. I dug my Bic lighter and a half-full cigarette case out of my pocket and deposited them next to my jacket. Moments later, my folded trousers joined the shirt in the center of my coat.


Dancing from one foot to the other with Alice's hands steadying me, I removed my boots and placed them at the foot of our bed. I draped my socks over the boot tops to air out, might as well start the next day with dry footwear.


Dressed only in my Whitey Tighties and a tee shirt, I knelt down, folded my coat into a pillow with my clothing as stuffing, and placed it at the head of the bed. As far as headrests went, my improvised bundle was more comfortable than a few of the crappy motel pillows I had rested my head upon over the years.


"Very inventive," Alice smiled as she removed her coat and mimicked my creation as she constructed her own pillow.


When she was finished, she stood in the circle of light from the lantern, barefoot from her toes to her chin.


"No underwear?" I nodded my head toward her midsection.


"This is my underwear; it's called Poils pubis el natural part of my French heritage," she explained.


"I don't speak French. Want to try that again in English?" I asked.


Pubis el natural is just a fancy way of saying, natural pubic hair," Alice answered with a chuckle.


"I thought you were Polish," I observed.


"I'm both. This is French fur over a Polish pussy," she giggled as she twirled like a clumsy ballet dancer.


I couldn't keep myself from smiling at her amazing recovery. Not too many women got a chance to go from nearly comatose with fear to saucy, seductive, and sexy all in the same day.


"Ladies first," I held open a corner of the sleeping bag.


"Yikes! It's an icebox," Alice gasped as she slid between the covers.


"Get your ass in here, I'm freezing," she said while pulling me down to my knees.


Grabbing my smokes and lighter I slid them under my pillow and parked the lantern within easy reach on my side of our sleeping bag. I gathered our flashlights together and handed her one while I tucked the other under my coat. The last thing we wanted to do was to wake up in total darkness and play blind man's bluff searching for a flashlight in pitch-blackness.


"Good God! You weren't kidding," I grumbled. The sleeping bag was not much warmer than the surface of an ice cube.


Within seconds, Alice was all over me like an octopus. She pulled me into a spooning position with the cheeks of my ass pressed into her crotch and her arms wrapped around my chest and her breasts pressed tightly against my back. She tangled our legs together and rested her chin on my shoulder as she welded her naked body to mine in the most intense sensual hug I've ever experienced. The only thing missing was super glue.


In a few minutes, we were toasty warm. The human body is a remarkable heat engine capable of generating as much as 2,400 BTUs of body heat per hour when engaged in strenuous work or passionate sex. When we're at rest or sleeping, our heat production drops to a cool 315 BTUs an hour. On average, we generate the same amount of heat as a 100-watt light bulb.

"I'm going to kill the light to save the battery. Be sure you know the location of your flashlight." With a click, I plunged us into the heart of total darkness. Suddenly we were in a blackout so intense we are unable to tell in our eyes are open or shut. It is true when we lose our sight our other senses kick into high gear to compensate for the loss of vision. The sound of our breathing and the crinkling rustle of our fabric sleeping bag seemed to grow louder as the night smothered the light. In the background, the rising and falling moan of howling wind became our lullaby.

My sense of touch also kicked up a notch. I could feel Alice's stiff nipples poking me in the back. She radiated body heat like a furnace and her warm moisture laden breath tickled the side of my neck each time she exhaled. Soon another sensation was demanding my attention. Alice's hands moved from my chest to my groin and started to caress me through my underwear in long lazy strokes.

Her fingertips traced a pathway around the growing bulge in my whitey tighties.

"I think it's waking up. Maybe it wants to come out and play." Her hands slid under the waistband and her fingers encircled and began to fondle me. She gently applied pressure and squeezed my shaft, relaxed her grip, and squeezed again with her velvety soft fingers. The slow rhythmic pattern of her touch steadily increased my state of arousal and slowly I began to move my hips to the tempo of her touch.

"I knew I would get you to sleep with me, I just didn't expect it would take a blizzard to make it happen," she whispered.

"It doesn't appear like you're planning to sleep anytime soon." I turned over to face her.

We could just as well have been two blind moles exploring each other in a lightless world. We could only "see" what we touched. I traced a pathway from her chest to the nape of her neck and upwards toward her face. My fingertips caressed her lips. My lips followed the pathway of my fingers. Leaning into her, I used the tip of my tongue to trace the outline of her lips and softly kissed her eyelids and her mouth. I was in no hurry. We had no place to go and all the time in the world.

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To Be Continued...
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NOTE: The entire story (26,500 words) has been edited by volunteer editor Pepere, and updated by the author to include a new chapter. Secrets of Liberty Mountian is an ongoing serIes and new chapters are being added on a regular basis. Comments welcome.

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