PART I
Irv Watson and his wife, Camela, trudged happily down the Juniper Ridge Trail of central Texas' Pedernales Falls State Park, her with eyes glued to the screen of their handheld GPS unit, him scrutinizing the park's trail map he had printed before leaving home that morning, both trying not to clumsily walk into a tree in the process. "It should be up here on the left a little ways," Camela offered over her shoulder to her husband and their fellow trekker.
Following behind them was Jennifer, Irv's sister-in-law who was living in their upstairs guestroom in Austin while navigating a complicated divorce from his brother. She was blonde, and beautiful in a very natural way, a bubbly long-ago hippie, but far from an airhead. Her low-cut tee shirt revealed an ample amount of cleavage, as was her style, and her tight spandex workout shorts had attracted glances from every man they'd passed on the trail that morning (not to mention a few women, too). Their divorce was one of those rare situations in which the Watson family had sided with her, effectively divorcing Walt, too, though he was their flesh and blood.
This is not to imply that it had been a difficult choice. The forty-something S.O.B. had run off with their buxom 21-year-old Brazilian housemaid who barely spoke English. As if that weren't bad enough, he had taken all the money with him, leaving Jennifer destitute until police could track him down and get some of it back. She couldn't even sell their home or furniture in Dallas, the city in which they had all grown up, until the courts sorted things out. That could take many months, for no one knew where the pair had absconded to. Probably Brazil, they all agreed.
The family had been mortified, as though somehow Walt's actions reflected badly on the whole Watson clan. For now, Jennifer would be broke until she found a job, and was living rent-free with Irv and Camela until she could get back on her feet. Her presence in the house was a daily source of irritation for Camela, who valued her privacy and resented Jenn's revealing clothing and carefree ways. But Irv insisted that it would be cruel to not take her in since she was the innocent victim in the whole sad affair.
He had gotten his way and Jennifer received an open-ended invitation to stay as long as she needed. The fact that she was quite nice to look at and seven years younger than his wife didn't factor into his decision, he told himself, but it was a nice and unexpected benefit to behold her lovely figure, tight outfits, and radiant smile bouncing around the house.
Geocaching was about the only thing Irv and Camela still had in common. At least once a month the two of them spent a Sunday morning traipsing through some nearby forest, using billion-dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the woods. For the uninitiated, geocaching is a worldwide phenomenon. All over the globe, individuals who enjoy this "sport" hide small containers (most are smaller than a shoebox, some as tiny as a matchbox) in a variety of publicly-accessible locations along highways, in parks, or deep in forests, publish the geographical coordinates online, and challenge others to use GPS to find them.
Usually the person who places the geocache gives it an intriguing name and writes a sentence or two containing enigmatic clues to help guide (or confound) those who seek it. Some of the containers lay in plain view. Others are buried in the ground, hung from trees, tucked under bridges, concealed in fake logs, hidden in drain pipes, etc. They're virtually everywhere, and the more diabolically disguised or cleverly hidden, the better. Most people in the USA pass dozens of them every day, blithely unaware of their existence.
Inside each container is a random assortment of worthless trinkets. Each person who finds a given cache is expected to sign and date the enclosed sheet of paper to document their find, remove one item and leave another for the next successful seeker, then carefully place the container back in its original location. Jennifer was new to geocaching but was game enough to come along as a third wheel since she didn't know anyone else in the area yet. Not having invested in the proper equipment, she used her smartphone as her GPS and to consult her ViewRanger app to know exactly which trail they were hiking.
Today's geocache was placed just last week by someone with the username "twingems," and was called "Out on a Limb." The clue read: "Fly like a Juniper Jaybird." Irv and Camela hated it when the clues were so transparent. They preferred a challenge, a conundrum, a puzzle to be solved the way Hercule Poirot might unravel an Agatha Christie murder mystery. This one, however, would obviously be perched on the limb of a tree near the Juniper Ridge Trail.
But today had been the first time that Jennifer had chosen the sought-after treasure, so they had humored her, driven their SUV to the trailhead nearest the coordinates she had printed out, and hiked toward the indicated destination. As they walked, Irv thought about his wife.
Camela was still beautiful, he silently conceded. As he walked three or four paces behind her he admired her long, auburn hair that always looked as though she'd just come from a salon. He enjoyed the gentle sway of her shapely butt, still impressive after 20+ years of marriage. But he wasn't likely to see it uncovered anytime soon, nor her magnificent 36C breasts, for she was a prude.
Whenever the two of them had ventured into the woods together over the years he had tried to persuade her to go skinny-dipping in one of the area's many secluded spring-fed ponds, or to make love to him under a tree in the forest, or just to give him a quick blowjob. But she would have none of it. In fact, he'd stopped asking more than a decade ago. She hated being naked even indoors and rarely left the bathroom undressed.
She wouldn't even sleep in the nude, preferring granny pajamas that covered her body from neck to ankles. There was no way he was ever going to get her naked outdoors. And to tell the truth, Irv was afraid of his wife. Her anger was a fearsome thing to behold, and wired on a hair-trigger. It just wasn't worth the risk of setting her off to suggest something risqué or daring, especially since he knew the answer in advance.
He had long ago accepted his fate: to live the remainder of his life unfulfilled, "enjoying" perfunctory sex with her once or twice a month until he died. He didn't even harbor much hope that he would outlive her, as she was a year younger than he, extremely cautious, and a health nut. She was gorgeous, but that fact diminished the sting of his mundane existence only slightly. At least he could enjoy her pretty face every day, he consoled himself.
Jennifer, on the other hand, was a free spirit. Before the divorce, Walt had confided in his older brother about their freewheeling sex games, wild escapades, nude beaches, even a trip to Jamaica once during which they had gotten drunk and enjoyed steamy sex on the beach while half-a-dozen people watched. Afterwards, still unsatisfied, she had given blowjobs to three of the men gathered around. Walt reminisced that he had never seen her happier than she was that night.
Irv imagined Jenn naked on the beach, her pretty face wrapped around his brother's cock as her beautiful hazel eyes looked up at him longingly and her blonde shoulder-length hair swayed in the gentle Caribbean breeze. He pictured her eyes dark with desire and her nipples as hard as pebbles as she rode Walt's dick in the sand. Then he visualized her passionately sucking on a stranger's cock while she ferociously massaged two others by hand. Why would his brother leave
that
, he wondered? Irv would give anything to be married to a woman who had any libido at all, let alone an insatiable one.
Since she'd moved in upstairs, Irv had enjoyed seeing their houseguest come downstairs for coffee braless a couple of times, and once in just her panties and a white v-neck undershirt that didn't quite cover her crotch. Her breasts weren't as large as Camela's, but seemed pert and perfect nonetheless. The dark outline of her areolas could be seen through the thin cotton on those occasions and seemed smaller than his wife's, though he couldn't be certain because he didn't want to stare.
Okay, he
wanted
to stare, but he'd chosen to be a gentleman about it, only stealing a quick glance or two (or five) when she wasn't looking. Irv was glad she'd never appeared dressed (or, more accurately,
undressed
) like that while Camela was in the house. His wife would have raised hell and put a stop to that for good. She might have even thrown her out.
Irv wondered if Jennifer had always made sure that Camela was at work or out in the backyard watering her plants or weeding her garden before she popped out scantily clad. She could certainly have confirmed the fact by glancing out the window of her bedroom before descending the stairs to the kitchen. Did she
want
him to see her? Was she teasing him? Did she enjoy showing off her body? Her eyes had sparkled as she'd made eye contact with Irv on those three mornings when she'd appeared only partially-dressed, as if to say, "Bet I know what you'd like to see more of!" If only his wife were so playful and uninhibited!
And so, Irv Watson was left with only his fantasies. A thousand times he had envisioned coaxing his wife naked into a cool, clear Texas swimmin' hole (you always had to replace the g with an apostrophe or people would know you weren't from Texas) on one of their geocaching outings, then he would - in his imagination - quickly get out of the water and run away with all of their clothes. He smiled as he envisioned standing forty feet away from her stark naked, holding every stitch of clothing they had propped on his hardened member as she, terrified of being seen, edged nervously out of the water and crouched low as she crept closer to him, demanding the return of her clothes, only to have him run farther away.
In one version of his reverie he would drop a single shoe before retreating farther up the trail. Then, one by one, she could retrieve her articles of clothing by chasing him a mile or two up an isolated trail in various states of undress. In his mind, Camela would find the scenario strangely enjoyable and arousing, despite herself. She would bashfully admit to him that the risk of being seen in the buff had so turned her on that she couldn't wait to drag him back in the water naked, or to fuck him senseless in the woods.
In the real world, however, he knew she would not find it arousing in the slightest. Instead, she would despise him for it and make him pay in a thousand ways for many months to come. Maybe forever. It was all moot, anyway. It was never going to happen. So, in recent weeks, Irv had begun to replace his wife in those fantasies with Jennifer, who was now living rent-free in his head, not just his home.
Forcing a woman to run naked through the woods did more than just intrigue Irv. He couldn't stop thinking about it. His fantasy was a little on the impish side, not overly cruel, he told himself. He wasn't into anything perverted, and he certainly didn't want to hurt anyone. He just got-off on thinking about a beautiful woman stuck out in the woods without any clothes. In Irv's mind, a nude woman in the forest was a vision of Eden, his own imaginary microcosm of a pristine and perfect world. She would be like a regal mare at home in nature the way God intended. Or at least the way Irv intended.
Whenever they passed an attractive woman on the trail (which was often), he would always wonder,
"Why can't she hike naked? What harm would it do? It would make the world a much better place!"
Whenever searching for porn on the internet he found himself seeking out videos of women walking nude in the woods, or skinny dipping in a lake, playing naked on a beach, or canoeing topless. When the possibility existed that the woman might get caught by passersby in her unclothed state, it fueled his fantasies even more. He wondered what Jennifer would look like, bare-ass naked, hiking the very trail down which the three of them trekked this morning.
Camela shattered his daydream when she suddenly stopped and said, "Wait a minute. I think we passed it." She backed up a few paces, peering at her GPS, then turned left off the trail through some thick brush. "It should be about 40 feet this way." Irv and Jennifer, being several feet behind, found an easier path between some dead cedar trees that would take them in the same direction.
Irv glanced upward and said, "I'll bet it's in that big oak tree." A minute later, all three were standing at the base of a majestic tree that must have been at least 150 years old.
"I see it," Irv said, pointing to a small plastic recipe box wedged into the crook of a large branch about 10 feet off the ground. They looked at each other with the same unspoken question: How can we get it down? Finally, Jennifer looked at Irv, smiled, and said, "Pick me up!" Irv braced himself for Camela's patented disapproving scowl before daring to glance at her to gauge her response. She instead shrugged her permission, so Irv squatted and wrapped his arms around Jennifer's lovely shins.
