Author's note:
This is a copyrighted work of fiction. The 'International Park' should not be confused with any real national park; nor the characters mistaken for anyone real.
Tags: MF, Threesome, Risky, Unprotected
The Ranger
A gust of wind from the north moved the branch that showed Maddie true beauty in the world for the first time. Maddie's younger half-sister, Cassie, paused and wondered what Maddie had seen, and what had completely captivated her attention.
The handsome naked man washing himself with a bottle of shower gel in the waterfall was perhaps twenty-six years old, maybe even as old as twenty-eight. With the late afternoon sun illuminating him, it could almost be a cinematic shot used to advertise the product he was using. Sex sells, after all, and this cinematic view was sex on steroids for Maddie.
"Ssh!" Maddie insisted as Carrie, approached noisily through the undergrowth.
There was a beautiful pristine pond and a little waterfall feeding it, before streaming away into the bigger river below; a pond perfect for swimming and bathing. Apparently, the muscular handsome man had thought so too, given the proximity to his campsite. It was close to where Maddie's family had stopped, and then explored down a short trail. Maddie adjusted her viewing position to maximise voyeuristic pleasure. The Adonis finished rinsing himself and started to move out of the waters, towards his towel, weapons, and clothes, waiting on the rocks.
"It's a naked man taking a shower in a waterfall. And?" Carrie shrugged, unable to see what the fuss was about. Her regard of the male body, at eighteen years of age, was of total disinterest. At twenty-five, Maddie's experience was not extensive, but she wasn't able to act with the same casual indifference. She did her best not to show how attracted she was to him. Her little sister just rolled her eyes at Maddie's sex driven desire. In Maddie's eyes, the guy was built, and had respectably generous genitals. A man built to breed. They complemented his fit muscular body nicely. Awesome.
"Shh!" Maddie insisted. Moving to get an even better view, a shaft of sunlight through the trees caught and illuminated her face like a spotlight. She stepped on branch that was dead and desiccated. Even with her petite shapely figure, the weight was too much. The twig snapped and was loud enough to attract attention. The man froze; his eyes darted to their location. His hand reached automatically for a rifle next to his clothes, rather than to cover his modesty. Carrie ducked, but Maddie's blue eyes and the man's intense green-blue eyes locked on to each other. He'd seen her; she'd seen him. She knew he'd seen her, and he knew that she'd been seeing all of him. Crap. His eyes, in the late afternoon sun, were almost luminous; and Maddie couldn't will herself to look away. Whatever power he had over her, she was captivated and captured by it.
"He's seen you! Run!" Carrie gasped. The man's eyes glanced at Carrie, to assess her as a potential threat, before returning back to lock on to Maddie's eyes and illuminated face. Maddie was still frozen and staring. Carrie pulled at her, urgently. Reluctantly, Maddie let her eyes blink away the image of the most handsome man she'd ever seen, and let herself be dragged by her little half-sister. They climbed onto the dusty track and ran back to where they had stopped.
"Why are you running?" Caleb asked worriedly, perking up as Carrie ran and grabbed his hand. He'd been inspecting a rocky outcropping further along the river. The mountain and other rock formations all over the park were awesome for those fascinated in geology, as well as ecology and botany. Caleb looked like his twin sister, Carrie. The same blue eyes and blond-brown hair colour. Annoyingly, Maddie looked exactly like them too, despite having a different father. Apparently, their mother's taste in blue-eyed fair-haired men had been consistent, before she had died.
"Come on Caleb!" Carrie pulled at his hand. He slipped his rock hammer into his rucksack, lifted it on to his back, and followed.
"Why?" He sighed, running after her. No one told him anything. That was the problem with being the baby of the family, even if his eighteen-year-old sister was only eighteen minutes older than him. The label stuck.
On the road at the top of the trail was a small area to accommodate a few cars. Calling it a car park seemed excessive. Calling it a rest-area would be more accurate, especially given that it was all hard pan rather than paved. Forest rose above the road on one side, and a steep incline fell away on the other. The family sports utility vehicle was missing, but unfortunately the twins' father was still there. He was there, standing in the dust, abandoned. It's fair to say that they hadn't prepared for this trip very well. It's not like they could camp, as they had no gear.
"This isn't a fucking camping trip! This track through the park was supposed to be a short-cut!" The man snapped as the three young people raced back. He only contradicted himself slightly given he'd sold the idea of coming this way as a leisure activity, and stopped when Caleb pleaded to check out the rocks. "And where is Brad? Did you see him on the ridge?" He asked them.
"Haven't seen him, dad. No sign of him or the car over there. Some cool rock formations though." Caleb panted, out of breath from running. The others caught up, also panting. Caleb was faster.
"That idiot has probably got himself lost." Ben Mitchell breathed under his breath, in an astonishing burst of double-standards and hypocrisy. He turned and focused on his perfect son, instead. He patted Caleb's face warmly. As a father you aren't supposed to have favourites of course. Caleb was his favourite though, and made no secret of it. If his other children felt less loved, they didn't mention it. They didn't seem to care at all; about anything.
"Where's the car?" Maddie pointed to the space on the dusty track where the car should be. They were all standing in a dusty carpark with no supplies or equipment; nothing. No one told her anything either. What was going on?
"Brad said he'd take the SUV to the peak over there to see if he can find the trail and get us back on track." Her former step father replied tersely. Admitting that he'd got lost, even with a GPS, would have been too embarrassing, after all. The GPS didn't have detailed maps of these unofficial dirt tracks, and it was their only form of mapping.
"Wait, you let Brad drive the car? But he was drinking again." Maddie blinked in horror.
"Why are you always questioning me, Madeleine?" Ben retorted.
"And he left with all of our drinks, including the beer, in the cooler?" Maddie pointed out. Both the car and their drinks cool box were missing.
"Damnit!" Ben Mitchell realised. "We'd better find him. Somehow." He struggled. He was important and rich so why was he cursed with a family of fuck-ups? Brad, his first-born son from his first wife, had been the worse screw-up. When Maddie's father had died, she'd been forced to go and live with her mother, Ben and his family. Until her mother had died, Maddie had been Ben's step-daughter, but he had never adopted her, just tolerated her. Since her mother's death, Ben had kept Maddie around, mostly to control the money from her family's estate. It also allowed him to micromanage her life, and drive her up the wall. Only Ben's second son was a delight to him. To him only Caleb was perfect. Carrie also thought her twin brother, Caleb, was perfect, and not just to make her father happy. Caleb and Carrie both doted on each other in a weird way that some twins do. Perhaps losing their mother at an early age had forced them to compensate by relying more on each other.
The four of them waited in the ebbing dappled late afternoon sunlight for something to happen. About five minutes later they heard a vehicle approaching, only it sounded different to their SUV.
"Is that a ranger? Yay! We're saved." Carrie bounced cheerfully, as an official-looking off-road four-wheel drive vehicle pulled up. It didn't have official park markings exactly, but did have a temporary US-Canadian seasonal park sticker slapped on the side. That wasn't surprising since the 'International Park' extended across the border after some historical accident designed to bring the two nations closer together; for political and cultural reasons that had long been forgotten. Uniquely, it was managed by a professional team made up of both US and Canadian rangers. It was inaccessible during the winter off-seasons, of course, so rangers only worked for part of the year. The official looking vehicle pulled up by the side of the road, near the steep-incline, and the ranger got out. He hung his rifle over his back and adjusted his belt before approaching. He had official park ranger attire, along with a belt mounted bodycam, and ranger's hat. There were both small US and Canadian iconic flags on his hat and on his belt, rather than either one or the other. As with others, he was authorised to work across the two borders, and range over the whole park area. The badge was the mark of an elite 'international ranger' with dual nation residency rights. For their respective governments the International Park was a symbol of cooperation between two great nations. For many US locals, the 'state' park sometimes required an uncomfortable cooperation with those weirdly metricized Canadians from up north. The park itself was a vast area of mountains and forests, covering millions of square acres. As the last remaining guardian of the wilderness, the ranger stood there smartly and bravely. He wasn't a regular ranger, apparently; he was an irregular one.
"What are you folks doing out here? Where is your car?" The handsome ranger gasped in surprise at seeing them all stranded there. It was obvious that they were not hikers or campers. Maddie stared at him in recognition--this handsome man with damp hair--and blushed a deep red. He looked at Maddie and smiled slightly, in mutual acknowledgement and attraction. She looked into his luminous blue-green eyes again and couldn't get enough of them. He didn't mention their previous encounter. Maddie just stared at the ranger's captivating face. Those eyes were so beautiful close up, and so was the rest of him.
"My son, the other son, took it. Have you seen him or a black SUV?" Ben Mitchell replied.
"No, sir, but I just came from the camp site, just over there. I don't understand. He left you here in the rest area at the top of the trail?" The man replied, his accent more Canadian than American, but had a slight mixture of both when he talked.
