. 12

Sorry for the delay between chapters—I tend to be away from my keyboard more during the summer months, and I've been splitting my reduced writing time between this chapter and the start of a story line a long-time reader asked me to make an attempt at.

This is a story about sexual exploration and, open relationships. Open relationships can and do happily exist, but they are not for everyone. If you disagree and are offended by the thought of multiple sexual partners, please do yourself a favor and don't waste your time reading this.

Standard disclaimer—this story takes place in a world where STDs don't exist and only babies planned for and wanted do—in other words, a fantasy world. Any resemblance to real-life people is purely coincidental.

*****

Despite Gwen's concerns, Walt's retirement dinner went off without a hitch and a nice evening was had by all the gathered employees and significant others. Most of those in attendance saw the same conservatively dressed Mrs. Nelson they knew and respected, although Andrew spent the evening discretely remembering her another way. It was her demeanor that the gathered guests had decided was markedly different. Where before Gwen Nelson had always been distant and coldly formal, now she seemed almost...friendly.

She was up well before Tim the next morning, climbing the hillock to the pool while the sun was still low behind the trees. . Her nipples hardened to tight little eraser points in the chill of the fall dawn, but Gwen knew the water still held much of the warmth of the summer sun. Her nude body knifed through the pool's calm surface with barely a splash. Time to open up the hot tub, she mused as she lazily tread water.

Gwen hurried from the water to retrieve her terrycloth robe, nipples still in their alert state as much from her brazen early-morning daring as the sudden cold. She was thankful she did not have to suffer a wet suit that would turn cold and clammy before reaching the house. Skinnydipping is just so much more logical and efficient! Tim found her sipping coffee at the kitchen table when he stumbled from the bedroom an hour later.

"G'morning," he mumbled, kissing the top of her head as he shuffled past on his way to the coffee. She appreciated his own choice of attire this morning—he had not bothered with anything more than a t-shirt, and his muscled backside flexed as he walked past. Gwen was only too happy to admire his cute bottom as well as what was drawn up between his legs when he turned back to the table with coffee cup in hand. I never imagined that thing could have so many shapes and sizes, she mused as she noted how both the shaft and the pouch below it seemed to be trying to stay tucked close to the warmth of his body.

Tim pulled out the chair next to her, plopped down and took a sip of the steaming liquid. "Plans today?"

"The usual," Gwen replied. "Chores, groceries..."

"Supposed to be a beautiful day," he said, looking down into his mug. "How about we take the boat out for a bit? Won't be long before it gets too cold..."

"Did you plan on fishing, or...going somewhere? And before you say it, I absolutely will not anywhere near that place you and Charlie went last weekend. I would never be able to look Margaret Murphy—or Al—in the face again if they saw us there."

"Going there was Charlie's idea," Tim assured her. "And no, uh, not there. Looked like too much commotion, anyways. I was thinking someplace quieter where we can just hang out and soak up some sun, maybe that place we went last time?"

Gwen smiled at her husband's choice of sunbathing over fishing. "We'll see. As long as there aren't too many people."

Tim smiled hopefully and stood to get ready. He seems a bit more filled out down there, she noted. The coffee must have warmed him up.

The landing was busy when they arrived, the early morning fishermen coming back fighting against the tide of pleasure boaters flowing out to take advantage of the weather. Tim and Gwen were able to put in without incident, and the boat's nose was soon pointed up the lake, the craft moving at something a little above a leisurely pace.

Gwen had discretely removed her shorts soon after they had cast off and the t-shirt followed as Tim guided them into open water, the mid-morning sun warming her despite the breeze. He eyed her bikini-clad body appreciatively, remembering the jeans and sweatshirt she had worn her first time out here this summer.

"It doesn't look like anyone's in there," Gwen called out as they cruised past the little cove they had swam in that day.

Tim looked to where she was pointing and turned his attention back to the bow. "Let's keep going on up to the next inlet. It's sunnier, and there's more of a beach. If it's crowded, we'll come back here."

Five minutes later, they rounded the forested point of land sheltering their destination. As before, two boats were at anchor, the owners already on opposite ends of the strip of sand. Gwen made note of the lack of visible swimwear and decided that politeness would require she be the same way if she chose to join them. The Lady snorted at the idea of public nudity requiring proper manners.

"Too crowded?" Tim asked as he guided them into an open patch of chest-deep water near the beach.

"I guess not. I assume you're going to sit on the beach?"

"Sure, why not? It'll be nice to put our toes in the sand for a while." The watertight bag was produced and filled, Tim's t-shirt, shorts and shoes last in as he unceremoniously shed them. "You coming?"

Gwen felt the need to make it appear she was more reluctant than was actually the case. "I don't know...it seems so, well...wrong...to just sit around with naked people."

Tim smiled and began to seal the bag. "I wouldn't call it wrong. Maybe we just don't have a lot of experience. I'm willing to try and get used to it. "

"Wait."

Gwen took a deep breath and looked around, then hurriedly removed her top and bottom and handed them to her husband. She didn't wait for him, instead hurrying down the ladder into the clear water, feet on the sandy bottom, only her head and shoulders above the surface.

Tim hopped over the side and led the way towards the beach, Gwen very aware of her breasts, then her waist, breaking the surface as the lake bottom rose to the water's edge. She stared straight ahead as they made their way up the sand between the couples flanking them, not daring to look for signs of disapproval or condemnation. Why would there be any? the Slut laughed. They're as naked as you are.

Tim stopped when they were directly between the two pairs of nude bodies, but Gwen continued on past him, walking a bit further up, deciding she might be more comfortable if she were slightly above and behind the others. He followed to where she now stood, looking back out at the small anchorage, and handed her a towel from the bag. She sat with legs drawn up to her chest while Tim flopped down beside her and lay back to dry in the sun, seemingly oblivious to the others not more than 20 feet on either side of them. Gwen took the time to surreptitiously check out her fellow beachgoers.

To her left was a couple perhaps a few years older and a few pounds heavier than she and Tim. The woman was sitting in much the same position as Gwen, probably to support her arms holding up the paperback she was reading rather than out of any sense of modesty. Her husband lay beside her on his stomach, his bottom and legs a softened shade of the darkened tan of his torso.

To her right was a younger couple, perhaps in their late twenties, she guessed. Gwen pretended to stare at the boats parked in front of her as they rose to rearrange their towels, glancing sideways from behind her sunglasses once she felt confident she was not under observation herself. The young blonde's midsection was noticeably swollen, a definite baby bump of the third-trimester variety. Gwen was surprised a woman in her condition would allow herself to be seen like that, but also felt a certain admiration for the woman's confidence and bravery. Her swelling midsection made her beautiful in a way that was hard to define. Gwen's own pregnancies had made her particularly ugly and misshapen, something that made her even more protective of her modesty around Tim during those times, not that he would have even wanted a glimpse. The man accompanying the young woman—her husband, Gwen guessed based on the glint of gold on his finger-was average in height, sporting a bit of a paunch, perhaps sympathy weight gain, she thought. The Lady scoffed at her lack of shame or embarrassment as she looked at what was tucked beneath his rounded midsection —a flaccid penis, it's shaft more slender and the pink head more bulbous than Tim's, nestled in a patch of brown hair. Checking out the variety of what lay between men's legs amused the Slut, and she wondered what the older man to her right might have pressed against the towel he lay on. Gwen eased her legs forward a bit, daring to expose the tops of her breasts to the sun.

The Slut had to wait another fifteen minutes before the older man obliged her, lifting his head from the towel and glancing up at the newcomers with a friendly smile before turning over and flopping back onto the sand, a t-shirt over his eyes. The man's length seemed to be stuck at an right angle to the skin of his lower abdomen, a situation he remedied by reaching down and stroking it a couple of times before scratching the testicles hanging between his thighs. His hand left his crotch and found its way to his wife's back, casually stroking and scratching her from shoulder blade to where her cheeks were pressed against the towel she sat on. The woman did not look away from her book, but she did leave one hand to support her reading while the other returned her husband's affectionate caresses by petting his chest and stomach. Gwen watched breathlessly as the hand worked its way further down the hairy midsection.

Gwen quickly glanced down at Tim, both out of an obligation to not intrude on the private moment to her left while also wondering if her husband was seeing what she was seeing. He appeared to be napping and Gwen could not resist her voyeuristic urge, privacy be damned. She returned to a sideways stare through her sunglasses.

The woman's attention was still focused on her book, but her fingers were now gliding up and down the length lying on the man's stomach, coaxing it into hardness. From her vantage point Gwen could see it inflating like a balloon underneath her absentminded stroking, the head straining to rise up against the red fingernails scratching it. The fingers went further, across the loose sac and down between his thighs, as if looking for something that had fallen between the couch cushions. His legs spread further and a tilt of his hips upwards allowed her better access and the hand tarried for a bit before returning to view and wrapping around the now hard staff. She continued to focus on her reading even as she lifted the length up and slid it back and forth through her loosely-clenched fist. If he was at all offended by his wife's lewd act or her apparent lack of attention to it, he certainly wasn't showing it.

Gwen was both shocked and fascinated by the perverted display. Such a private and personal act to perform in front of others, and yet both husband and wife seemed to be treating it as nothing more exotic than a distracted good-morning kiss.

The Lady loudly reminded her that she was not alone on the beach. Gwen shifted her gaze back to the younger couple, embarrassed by the realization she had been openly staring. They were both sitting on their towels, smiling and watching the show the other couple was putting on, not feeling the need to hide their focus on the action. Again the Lady urged her to cover up and go back to the boat, but again her need to watch won out. The Slut wanted to see if they would go further and fuck right there on the sand.

The woman did not seem to be in a hurry to move on to that act, sometimes removing her hand long enough to turn a page before returning to her languid petting and pulling. It was some time before her tempo began to change, that her grip became firmer and her pace more urgent. She continued to read while her husband's hips began that twitching Gwen had come to know as a sure sign of her own husband's impending orgasms. The Slut was anxious to observe another man's orgasm for the first time, to see a fountain splatter his chest, perhaps even further up, given the direction she had aimed him. The Slut giggled evilly. I wonder how he'll like getting a faceful? Gwen wondered if that kind of distance was even possible to achieve.

The woman's attention shifted from her book to the body next to her as he stiffened. Her fist gripped just below the head of the cudgel and held firm as he strained against it. There were no pearly jets arcing up and away, just the cream that bubbled from the tip and oozed down to coat the fingers beneath, reminding Gwen of white lava spilling from a pink-tipped volcano.

The eruption ceased and the woman affectionately shook the penis she held then wiped her hand on his chest and returned to her reading. He removed the t-shirt from his eyes, chuckled, and rolled to his side to kiss his benefactor's cheek before rising for a walk down to the water.

Gwen sat and watched his buttocks roll as he walked—not a bad looking bum, she had to admit—while making sense of the depraved scene she had just witnessed. It might have been depraved, the Slut chimed in, but it made you wet. She reluctantly had to admit that the scene had been arousing, and that Tim would have some business to take care of once they got home. Maybe sooner, if that next cove over was still empty on their way back...

A giggle to her right interrupted her thoughts of lewd possibilities and she reflexively turned in time to see the pregnant woman playfully punch her husband in the arm. Gwen wondered if her own obvious interest might have been the cause for the laughter. Tim stirred and sat up, and she quickly directed her gaze out to the boats and the man unashamedly cleaning off the remains of his orgasm.

Tim leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Everything alright?" he asked, following his wife's line of sight across the water.

"Everything's fine." The aroused woman decided that she really shouldn't be spending any more time looking at naked people and lay back, eyes closed tightly against the sun and the thought of how incredibly exposed she was in this pose, and that the others on the beach might be looking at her even now. She let the sun warm her, doing her best to ignore a different kind of heat spreading from between her legs.

"Nice boat."

Gwen's eyes opened in panic as she resisted the urge to sit up and cover herself from the voice coming from somewhere down towards the water. "Thanks," Tim replied genially. "That's a hell of a cabin cruiser you've got."

The laugh that responded made it clear the man behind it was coming closer. "Yeah, thanks. Little more than we need, but it came with the house, and it's big enough to stay on overnight out here, so we kept it." The Lady counseled feigning sleep, unconsciousness, death, anything to avoid acknowledging the man who was surely now just feet away, but politeness and curiosity made her sit up, bringing her knees back up to her chest to hug them as she did so.

The older man was now squatting at the end of their towels, his body still glistening with beads of water from his swim. "Bob," he said, extending his hand first to Tim, then Gwen. "That's my wife Yvette." At the mention of her name, the woman looked up from her reading, smiled and waved, then returned her attention to her book.

"I'm Tim, and this is my wife, Gwen." No names, the Lady screamed. No names!

"Nice to meet you both. Welcome to our little hideaway. Well, not ours, really- our house is on the other side of the lake, but our neighbors aren't the clothing optional types, so we come here to work on our tans. Nice place to lay out and relax. Everybody seems to just know this beach has an adults-only vibe to it, but the partiers stay further down the lake, so it's pretty quiet."

The talk turned to boats and fishing, Gwen only half-listening, unable to come to terms with the idea that she and her naked husband were talking with an equally naked man as though it were the most normal thing in the world. Not to mention the fact that the docile thing hanging between the man's legs had been on display in its full masculine glory just a short time ago...

Her mind wandered from the discussion of marine engine horsepower and back to the realization that she was naked just a few feet from a strange man. His occasionally focused on her, a quick smile accompanied by a look in her eyes before a run up and down what body he could see behind her legs. Either he's checking me out, Gwen reasoned, or more likely he's just trying to be polite and include me in on the conversation, He can't be checking me out—there's nothing left to see. I'm as naked as the day I was born.

Not that Gwen had been ignoring the body squatting in front of her. He was not model material, but he was real, and this was the closest she had ever been to a naked man other than Tim. There were a few extra pounds, but there was muscle too, and hairy legs and arms, and...that thing dangling between his slightly-spread thighs. Docile was not the proper description for it, perhaps at rest would be more fitting...the hair surrounding it had been clipped very short. His tanned shaft (I didn't know that could tan, too! Gwen thought), even though recently drained, still maintained an impressive length and girth as it lay draped over his loose sac, the skin of the pouch several shades darker, the outline of his testicles nestled inside plainly visible. She briefly wondered what it might be like to reach out and cup them—she was almost close enough to do so—to feel if they were as heavy as they looked.

Bob shifted slightly, opening his legs even more to her, as if welcoming her to examine it more closely. Gwen quickly focused on the boats in front of her, then to movement to her right.

The young man had gotten to his feet, the shaft of penis beginning to swell in proportion to the helmet that capped it , and helped his pregnant wife up. Together they walked hand in hand further up the beach, back behind the bank to where those people had gone last time to...The woman shyly smiled at Gwen and then averted her eyes as she passed, as if acknowledging what the ultimate goal of their excursion was.

She was surprised that the couple would be doing anything like that in her condition, much less here. Tim had been shut off from any sort of sexual contact the moment her own pregnancies had been confirmed, and his Saturday night conjugal rights had not resumed until two months after she had given birth. Gwen had convinced herself back then that lovemaking would be difficult with her stomach in the way, and even if it was possible, a man of top of her poking his thing so close to where their child was growing couldn't be healthy for the baby. Besides, Tim would have had to be desperate indeed to want to touch her. You've found a lot of ways to fuck besides missionary since then, the Slut reminded her, and I think Tim would have found a way if you had let him.

"So what do you do for work, Tim?"

The conversation again had Gwen's complete attention as the Lady desperately looked for a way to stop this egregious breach of confidential information. Too late.

"We own a plumbing business over in Albany. You?"

"Financial analyst. I work out of my house, mostly. You do any work out this far?" The Lady urged Gwen to step in and tell him no, but Tim was quicker.

"We try not to turn down any jobs," Tim said with a smile. "Why?"