A civilized ratio – ten days of work, followed by twenty of vacation. This was Jim's second vacation day. His time at the University of Oslo had been very well spent – lots of interactions and some actual research.
Particularly nice was the campus's landscaping specialty: at noon on day one, when he and his "Stay at my house!" host left the man's lab to walk across campus for lunch, the fellow had intentionally not alerted him in advance. The sky was cloudless – and every green spot, or horizontal bit of granite building, was littered with people sunbathing, all naked at least from the waist up. Pinkish-white bodies bloomed everywhere like odd, pale flowers, most of them topped by blond thatching – the occasional more swarthy skin or darker hair stood out starkly. For Jim's taste, the sex ratio was properly skewed – most were female, and most were more than just good-looking.
His host grinned as Jim goggled, and told him "A nice custom here, don't you think? Actually it's a holdover from aboriginal sunbathing for rickets-prevention. Clearly not necessary in days of vitamin-D enriched milk and such. But some things are best left unchanged. One should preserve one's culture, no?"
Jimmy agreed, and when he had almost tripped over his tongue a couple of times he managed to ask, "Am I being impolite if I stare just a little, on occasion? An awfully high percentage of your females rate more than a glance!"
The host replied with a grin, "It is of course rude to stare too much... but it is also I think, from the women's point of view, rude not to stare at all... a delicate balance is best!" Just about then a particularly spectacular, genuinely beautiful woman arrested the host's attention and he stared blatantly, finally catching himself and turning to Jimmy – "But of course there are special events and times..."
That first Friday evening, the host held a small party. Another sea of blond heads, moving, bobbing, friendly, almost all conversation conducted in English, nice for him although not done entirely for his benefit. During the party Jimmy and one of the most senior female graduate students had become quite friendly, progressing quickly to significantly beyond casual flirting, but he wasn't about to proposition her. It wasn't necessary, either – late in the evening, she asked him, directly and unexpectedly, to spend the night at her place.
Jimmy was most appreciative of both the invitation, and (especially) of the utter lack of notice taken by all within earshot when she walked up to the host and announced, without any weaseling or embarrassment-"You have nice visitors! Jimmy is coming home to spend the night with me. Don't worry about him, I'll get him back to you at your office undamaged and well fed by mid-morning!"
It was a glorious night –they proved to be highly compatible and equally horny. Then, a week later, that is, yesterday, she took a day of vacation herself and they spent it together, plus last night. She had just now dropped him off at the ferryboat terminal in plenty of time to catch his departure. They parted with promises of more get-togethers "Sometime, somewhere, and SOON!"
Jim settled down on the steel deck in the early afternoon's clear subarctic northern sunlight. Scandinavia yes, but hot and bright for the moment. He was looking forward to thirty-seven hours of coastal cruising northwards under an almost never-setting sun. This ferry was one of the huge Norwegian ones, over 200 meters long, capable of carrying hundreds of cars and thousands of people. But right here he was alone in that crowd. Years at sea on research vessels had taught him that on any ship there were always a few unknown, un-inhabited spots like this one, and also how to find them. He was alone, in a good approximation of a reflector oven made up of white bulkhead, funnel and deck, with a beautiful view of the passing mountains and fjords, completely out of the wind. He was on-deck because at the last minute he decided not to book one of the little overnight cabins. Not for want of funds or dislike of sharing spaces with strangers, but because he really wanted to spend the passage outdoors, with the world in view. If needed, he could always sleep in one of the deck chairs – his so-called "standing room" ticket guaranteed him that. He had stuffed his big backpack into one of the coin-operated lockers and then gone on the prowl, winding up here.
The steel deck was actually hot, not to mention rough with antiskid sand in the paint. He wished he'd had enough sense to bring his sleeping bag pad to sit on, but it was now several decks away, and retrieving it would cost him another fistful of coins – no in-and-out privileges on the lockers. Drowsy with the warmth and deliciously tired from a not-very-sleep-filled night with his impromptu personal hostess, he studied the hot metal against the backs of his legs, watched the landscape slide past at twelve knots. Fleeting, nearly subliminal memories of his last-night's partner stirred his cock slightly, raised a slender tickle of resurgent horniness in the bases of his groin and skull alike, which he tried to ignore. Beneath his butt, the ship was a living thing, vibrating, breathing, shifting like an enormously powerful animal. It felt good – a familiar, happy environment for a seagoing oceanographer.
Then, suddenly, an interruption.
Around the corner came a trio of young women, near clones, all of them of a size, one of them was clearly the eldest –by a scant year or so at most. Collectively, they were slender, with corn-silk blond hair, bright blue eyes, translucent skin. In short, fine specimens of young Scandinavian Womanhood. They carried a blanket and a thermos-box. "Crap! Damn the luck!" he thought to himself. He waited for the rest of the group, which he felt was sure to follow, and tried not to be upset.
He was wrong on both counts – as to followers and his own luck. N=3 was the entire herd. They looked as startled to see him as he was to see them. As Jim briefly scanned them he replaced his first uncharitable reaction with something considerably more mellow. After all, here were three pretty 'native' females – something he heartily approved of, especially in Scandinavia. As to luck, well, he thought, it could have been a gaggle of obnoxious twelve-year old boys just as easily.
His presence had them slightly rattled. Hidden behind his dark sunglasses, Jim studied them as the ladies very quickly reassembled their wits. They were all genuinely attractive. Long legged, all of them, underpinnings dangling down very nicely – one pair obviously shaved, the other two sets delicately a-glint, in the bright sunlight, with tiny golden shimmerings. One woman had a perceptible edge in age: she was clearly the alpha-female and current leader. She looked at least nineteen, more likely twenty-something-small. Without stretching things, the other two women were probably nineteen, not less... but that would be speculation on his part, yielding a guess rather than a deduction. Especially given how long such Scan-women stayed ridiculously young-looking. He dismissed as unfounded any concerns about age and proprieties, and thought to himself that it was nice, for a change, to be able to actually look long and thoroughly at a trio of pretty women without being crowd-constrained... or companion-constrained.
