Innocent Milf

Warning: Depictions of non-consent in this chapter.

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Once the rain had stopped, we got back into our "prehistoric" clothes and stepped out into the now-soaked campsite. The river had swollen its banks, its rushing and gurgling much louder. The post-storm afternoon sun peered through the clouds in occasional bright shafts, as if not certain that it was welcome yet. Where its light suffused the still-glittering air, a vivid rainbow stood stark against the darkened eastern sky. Cary "oohed" in delight.

Trying to do anything with the fire yet was a lost cause, so I played a little more with throwing axe and spear while Cary sketched, sitting on one of the flat stones nearby. Tomorrow we'd have to pack up and hike back to the ridge to meet Jack and head home. But for now, it was easy to pretend that we could live this timeless primitive sex-retreat forever.

I asked Cary more about her life--what hobbies she had as a kid, if she was happy at the gallery, or if she had other plans. She had sold a few more illustrations as magazine covers, but didn't like the idea of commercial illustration as much. "Still," she sighed, "it pays the bills well enough. I'd still rather just paint what's in my heart. Which right now is absolutely full to bursting."

I chuckled. "I know it wouldn't be appropriate, but I kind of wish I'd brought my mandolin along so I could play while you draw or paint. It makes me feel like... I don't know. Kindred spirits."

Cary's smile flashed up at me from under her bangs, even though she was still bent over her sketchbook. "Wearekindred spirits. And that's not something everybody gets to have."

About to answer, I suddenly noticed that things had gotten quiet. Quieter than it had been since we got here. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Holding the stone axe and the spear in its atlatl, I backed up slowly to Cary. "Stand up," I said quietly. "Something's not right."

I could feel her warmth press up against my back as we both stood, tense and silent. My breathing was loud in my ears, and Cary's slight tremble of tension shivered right through her to me. I could feel my knuckles tightening on the long sharpened wooden stake that I had been using as a throwing spear for practice. The wordbearkept repeating itself over and over in my head.

The sound of something large moving through the brush made my heart rate speed up. "You should get in the tent," I said hoarsely, waving my back hand vaguely.

A short, anxious laugh came from Cary. I turned in wonder to see that she had drawn her obsidian knife from its dangling sheath between her breasts. "If it's a bear, a tent won't matter."

My heartbeat thundered. Just as I was sure that it would be better to make a noise and rush at whatever was coming, if only to break the tension, I saw it--huge, slow, and stately. As if somebody had taken a deer and made it twice as big. Its huge rack of antlers was multi-pointed and brushed the branches of the evergreens screening our campsite.

An elk. And not just one, but at least a couple of dozen. Cary and I sat frozen as the huge herbivores meandered without concern along the bank of the swollen river and through the edge of our campsite. Once or twice, one of them would slow and tilt its head, a single large eye pointed towards us. I suddenly wondered if the rain had washed away any sort of "human smell" that might alarm the elk.

On the other hand, if I were as big as even one of these elk, I wouldn't be worried about a pair of humans at all. Especially not armed with sticks and stones. Incongruously, I remembered reading last week about the theorized prehistoric methods for hunting large game, and how they all involved a large group of people--some of whom were not guaranteed to make it back.

I heard Cary let out a breath behind me, and her grip on me relaxed a little. Her hand wandered slowly to my chest and she leaned against my back. We stood, still and quiet, watching the antlered males escorting the core of the elk cows and calves through this part of the river valley. I felt a strange kinship with the people who had wandered this same valley thousands of years ago, leaving petroglyphs and probably hunting similar beasts.

A full minute after the herd had passed, I let myself relax and start moving again. If I hadn't been so laid back from making love in the rain earlier, my muscles probably would have been screaming with the tension. I turned to Cary and enveloped her in a bear hug. She flung her arms around me and pressed her body as close as she could. We remained in silence for a long moment.

"That was unexpected," Cary laughed nervously. She shuddered against me, and I wrapped my arm around her, still a little wary to put down the spear. I nearly poked myself on the tip of the obsidian knife she still held. We both chuckled.

"Ha. So if it was a bear, you were going to take it on with that knife?" I joked.

Cary raised an eyebrow. "You're one to talk. A wooden spear and a stone axe? We both would have been bear chow."

I let my hand wander to the hollow above her hip. "If Ihaveto be bear chow with anybody, I choose you. But I'm glad it was just elk." I frowned. "Dangerous enough."

"Thanks for protecting me. Again." Cary ran her hands up my back. "Even if it wasn't necessary this time. You have no idea how much it means to me that you want to keep me safe. I've never had anything like that, either."

I frowned a little, thinking of what her life must have been like up to this point. Rather than reopen any old wounds, I kissed her on top of her head. "Let's see what we can do about getting the fire ready for some roasted elk."

Cary's laughter rang in the dell. "Well. How accidentally appropriate for the night."

We sang as we took the firewood out of our tent and back to the firepit, and worked to get a fire going. It was slow work--I had expected as much. Still, it didn't seem so tedious when I had somebody to play with and talk to. Working through some of our old-time folk song repertoire together, we quickly ended up singing radio top 40 hits and old nursery songs.

By the time the fire was truly going, the clouds had fully cleared away, the river had sunk back to its accustomed level, and dusk was approaching again. The days here seemed to pass both languidly and too quickly. Without the demands of a modern schedule, I felt myself much more relaxed. No school, no work--just me and Cary.

I said as much to her, and she nodded dreamily. "I'll want a real shower soon, but otherwise, this really is kind of like paradise. Thank you so much for putting this together. I'll have to think of something to do for you."

I shrugged. "More adventures with you sounds like payback enough."

After eating our roasted elk with some pine nuts and some dubious salad made of rain-bedraggled leaves thatFoxfireassured me were edible, we sat next to the fire and let the night fall in bliss.

"I want to watch the stars tonight, before we go back." Cary lay back on the grass and stared at the stratified sky, painted in colors of sunset and early evening. "I've always loved the stars, ever since I was a little girl."

"I'll get the blanket and we can go out a little into the meadow away from the trees so we get a good view." I considered putting out the fire, but figured that with all the rain, a temporarily unattended fire wouldn't be a big deal. I retrieved the sheepskin blanket, and Cary and I went hand-in-hand out of our little grove to the meadow beyond.

Wary of elk--or anything that might follow a herd of elk for hunting--I also brought the spear. Just in case. We didn't need to be digested by a pack of hungry coyotes, either. We found a spot that was a little drier, and draped the blanket over both of us. Cary sat with her back against me.

I wished I had paid more attention to the names of the constellations, but Cary was able to point most of them out to me. We snuggled beneath the blanket, sharing our heat as she named off the summer constellations. Lyra, Draco, Aquila, Cygnus, and Hercules all floated above as we enjoyed each other's closeness. Cary shifted a few times, as if getting comfortable. As I moved my arms to encircle her, I realized her rabbit-fur bra top was gone.

"Oh, goodness," Cary murmured in mock-confusion. "Where didthatget to, now? My boobs will get all cold. You'll have to warm them up." She pulled my hands up to rest on her breasts, and she sighed. "Better."

Of course, it didn't stop there. Even though we had just made love in the rain a few hours ago, I was more than ready for sex under the stars. Luckily, Cary was too. I teased her about ticking another box off her "list," and she buried her face in her hands, even though it was too dark for me to see her blush.

"I'll... I'll share it with you some time," she said softly. "You're the only person in the world I would share it with. Not even my girlfriends know about it. Not really."

After that, we were too busy for talk.

As we relaxed in post-coital bliss, Cary stretched and let the blanket fall from her shoulders. "This whole trip has been like a dream," she sighed. "If I didn't love my kids so much, I wouldn't want to go back."

I pulled her closer to me by her hips and she giggled. But after a long moment she turned and pressed herself against me. "Hey, you've been really great to not ask about my past. I know you have questions. And you deserve answers."

I shrugged as best I was able. "Tell me what you want. It won't change how I feel about you."

She reached up and cupped my cheek. "You're wonderful. And I think it's time I gave you a sense for where I came from. Out here with you, in this enchanted place out of time, I feel safe. Safe enough to talk about it, and to tell you the whole story of what my early marriage did to me."

"Eric," I growled.

"No," she shook her head. "Myfirsthusband. Adam."

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"My mom died when I was eight. Pneumonia. I was devastated, and so was my dad. It was just us for a couple of years. But by the time I was eleven, he had met my stepmother Jennifer. I won't pretend that it was all roses and sweetness between us--I was a sad, angry little girl with a lot of feelings about a new mother figure entering my life. But we got along well enough after a while. She was the one who gave me my first set of watercolors.

The problem was that my dad didn't know enough to prepare me for dating and sex in the 70's. Dads didn't really talk about that stuff back then. And my new stepmom Jennifer was so conservative and old-fashioned that she didn't really have anything useful to tell me. She once gave me this ridiculous old book calledThe Hygiene of Marriagefrom the 40's. Girls talked, of course, but half of it was gossip and rumor, and it was an unsophisticated small town. We were told thatnicegirls didn't talk about that. So my friends didn't really know a lot more than I did.

We belonged to a fairly conservative church, and when I graduated from high school, my plans were to go get my degree in art and start a family. I was already breaking the mold by planning to leave the town I grew up in and go to "the big city" in Sacramento. It was May 1978, and I was brand new to the world. I spent my summer on Mission in Brazil--as ifBrazildidn't already have enough churches in it. In retrospect, it was a total waste of time, but we all got a lot closer-knit as a result. I feel like maybe that was actually the intention all along.

Of course, there was more to it than just trying to spread the word of Jesus to folks who spoke mainly Portuguese. It was a learning experience--and not in the way that I think that our aldermen meant it to be. First of all, it was an open secret that Nathaniel--our mission leader--got my friend Terri pregnant during the Mission. The church tried to cover it up and smooth it over as soon as we all got back, but it was pretty obvious. Sothatopened my eyes about a few things.

It also showed me that the world outside was bigger and brighter and more colorful than a girl from a small town in southern Ohio had ever guessed. And more dangerous. I had never done drugs, and never been drunk. Well, the drinking culture was much more relaxed in Imperatriz than in Beavercreek, and every one of us got a little more intoxicated than we intended. Miranda got molested our first weekend there by some local boys! I should have known that Nathaniel was no good when he gave her a stern lecture about sin and saving herself for marriage instead of supporting her.

And we got conned out of money at least twice as we went around trying to spread the Gospel. It seemed like everywhere we went, somebody had an angle and was trying to pull one over on us. It made it a real chore to leave the enclave every morning to try again. Pretty soon, we had formed a sort of bond over the shared difficulties and disappointments.

Andit was hot. Even though it was winter down there, "winter" in Imperatriz was still only a couple of hours away from the equator, and hot as blazes all the time. That meant that I was suddenly dressing in lighter clothing--and less of it--than I had ever done before. The girls were all told to "dress modestly" (something they didn't bother telling the boys), but that was really hard to do. We tried to stick to the spirit of the idea, but still... I could see the boys eyeing me when they weren't supposed to be. And the local men weren't at all shy about it. I'd been catcalled before--what woman hasn't? But this was different. I found myself almost glad that I didn't speak Portuguese.

I chased off a group of boys once who kept trying to lift up my shirt--they were shameless!--and sent them packing. At least, I thought I did. It turned out that all I did was redirect them towards my sweet friend Alexis who was about five minutes behind me on the street. She came back with her clothes all ripped to ribbons and sobbing uncontrollably.

The next day, instead of wrapping herself up and hiding inside--and nobody would have blamed her--she went out wearingless. She said 'If they see modesty as a challenge, let's see how they handle a full display.' She broke their fingers with a bike lock when they came for her next. But she also kept dressing really revealingly. If you can believe it, she ended up disappearing now and then to go dance at a strip club.

Of course, I confronted her about it. She called me a prude, and said that I needed to grow up and learn what life was really about. The first time I was ever in a strip club was when I followed her on one of her "constitutionals" and saw her up on stage. I was mortified. But I was also intrigued by how my reserved, pious friend was holding a room full of cheering men in the palm of her hand.

That's a story for another time, I suppose. Still, you can imagine what that did to me. I mean, you've seen me when I get competitive. But I was also barely out of high school and knew nothing about the world. I was both terrified of the men's lingering glances and their calls to me, but also felt strangely like I had discovered a superpower that I never knew that I had. It was frightening and intoxicating all at once.

So another side effect was that--church mission or not--I got all sorts of wound up and hormonally excited by my time in Brazil. And when I came back and went straight into college in Sacramento, you can imagine that I was just a bundle of conflicted sexual excitement, shame about it, and curiosity.

As it happened, my roommate wasn't any more experienced than I was. At leastIhad left the country for a couple of months. College was her first time leaving her hometown for longer than a trip to Disneyland when she was a kid. So between the two of us, we were sort of casting about in the dark. We decided to buy a copy ofThe Joy of Sex, but we were both too embarrassed to do more than read little bits of it and giggle furiously.

My first figure-drawing class was when I met Adam. He was artistic, intense, liberated, and strongly Christian. He was also our first nude model. I don't know what drew him to me, but I know what drew me to him. Regardless, it wasn't long before we were seeing each other outside of class. He was very respectful, and made it clear that he wasn't going to do anything that conflicted with my church upbringing. In fact, he would occasionally cite chapter and verse as to why not.

He was a Jesus Freak. We don't see a lot of those these days--they've mostly moved on to something else. But back in the 70's, it was a pretty widespread phenomenon--especially in California. He listened toJesus Christ SuperstarandGodspell, which I thought made him immediately both cool and worldly, but in a safe way.

What can I say? I didn't really know what I wanted. I was emotionally defenseless. And I was convinced after my Mission to Brazil that the world was a dangerous place full of rapists and con-artists. That if you tried to repress things too much, you'd just end up dancing for cruzeiros in a Brazilian strip club. So meeting a nice boy only a little older than me who appeared to share all of my beliefs (but in a cooler and more sophisticated way) was a perfect combination.

We got engaged in October. My father was almost in a panic. Jennifer didn't know what to do, so she just froze. My great uncle--the rich one--was skeptical. They all asked if this wasn't too soon, and if I reallyknewthis guy. I was too infatuated to hear how sensible they were. All my friends at church back home wrote letters of support or sent cards. After all, this was the dream, wasn't it? Grow up, get married to a nice Christian man, settle down and have kids. Adam even said he didn't mind me continuing my college education and trying to get an art career.

We set the wedding for December. My great uncle flew my dad and stepmother out for it. A couple of my church and high school friends even made the drive across country from Ohio (or wherever they were going to school themselves). They were all so jealous of how I was "the first one across the finish line." You're smirking, but I'm telling you--this is how it felt back then. Women's lib was something that happened in places other than small towns in the Midwest, and I had been so painfully sheltered growing up that I just didn't know any better."

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My butt was falling asleep, so I shifted. Cary looked up at me with anxious gray eyes, made luminous in the moonlight. I was curious--every story Cary told me about herself was like a "quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore" about the woman I loved. But it seemed like so much of her past had been uncomfortable. It amazed me that she was still so comparatively innocent. At least in matters of sex and love.

"I thought it was the 'Me Decade.' The 'Swingin' Seventies,'" I said. "I guess that was only true for some people."

Cary shoulders bumped in a shrug, bringing her breasts with them. "You heard about it. But for me, that was all stuff that our church leaders warned us against, my dad was too clueless to engage with, and my stepmother was too traditional to acknowledge. Life in a small town was different than what you see in the movies. You wouldn't have been more than... what, three years old at the time?" Her forehead crinkled as she did the math. I nodded. "Anyway, in a town where cable TV was for rich folks only and we had ten TV channels tops, that all seemed really far away."

"I have a feeling this is going to get bad," I said. "Or I would have heard of this earlier." I hadn't forgotten that she had mentioned being in a foursome on her honeymoon. At the time I had assumed she meant Eric, but now... I shook my head slightly and pulled the fur blanket closer around us. The stars glimmered in the Colorado night sky, and I smiled slightly despite the mild chill from both the wind and the implications of Cary's story.