Prologue
The sensations were distinct for Nicole at first: the cold shock of the raindrops on her bare skin, the taste of her husband's lips, the tingling brush of his pubic hair against her clitoris, the swelling pressure of his member inside of her, and the strange tightness in behind. But the more she gave herself to the moment, the more the sensations merged, swirling together like paints on a palette. The world went away and all she could feel or recognize was a summiting pleasure that slowly consumed every corner of her awareness, filling her to completeness before bursting like a balloon of rapturous, narcotic delight. She screamed without realizing it.
Chapter One -- Just Before Dark
"Glad we got here before sunset," Caleb remarked as they pulled into the parking lot after 30 minutes of highway-driving, followed by 20 of winding, turkey-trail, dirt-roads. He dreaded to think how much dust would be pasted now to the exterior of his little blue sedan.
"Still gotta drive home dear," Nicole smirked, noticing that the sky was almost completely dark by this point.
He hadn't thought of that, and now had a fun new dread to contemplate -- trying to do that whole drive a second time in one evening with a higher degree of difficulty thanks to darkness the second time around. "Well, shit."
"I can get us home." She offered.
The thickness of the forest kept the breeze low and refreshing as they stepped out of their car and onto the endless depths of tiny pebble that made up what was ostensibly a parking lot, but only in the crudest sense of the term -- it was a gravel lot in which cars parked, and seemed very nearly full at the moment, despite the remote location, and with a stream of cars still lining up behind them to enter.
"Well, at least we got a space," he said, watching some of the most recent cars giving up entirely and simply parking on the sides of the dirt road just outside of the lot.
Caleb held out his arm to help steady his wife, whose black-heels had already sunken half an inch into the loose pebbles beneath her. The sight of her stepping out in his favorite dress, a tight, ankle-length black gown with an open back and thin shoulder straps was enough to cause him to very nearly miss supporting her. It wasn't the cut of the dress, so much as the fabric, thin and clingy in a way that tantalized him with the sense of just how little material separated her soft, fantastically curved body from the eyes of the world. She grabbed his arm to level off and his mind emerged from the gutter it was drowning in.
"Thanks. Let's head up."
"Up where he asked, looking around for some sort of signage, but finding only cars and pedestrians and trees." There was something spectacularly contradictory about so many people occupying the same space out in the middle of nowhere. There must have been 30 cars, at least.
From one of them, a nearby Ford pickup truck, a short, elderly man with kind eyes emerged and waved at them as he passed. Caleb nodded back in acknowledgement.
"What was that about?" he asked.
Nicole pulled back her own waving hand in order to pin behind her ear the few strands of shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair that had tossled across her face on the bumpy drive over. "Just being friendly." This tracked for Caleb. Nicole had the kind of beauty that you might describe as "accessible." She was stunning to look at with her large, expressive mouth contrasting her petite button nose, but it was her large blue eyes that always felt completely engaged and engaging, like whoever she was talking to was the only person in the world, the only person in the room. She put people at their ease.
"You don't think he remembers us from..."
"Last year?" She could tell that he was visibly blushing. She had to hold back her smirk for seeming too condescending, but she always found him to be utterly adorable when he was flustered or embarrassed. That, combined with the warm summer breeze and the recollection of the event last year all mixed together as a sort of cocktail of tingling she began to feel throughout her skin. She sensed her heartbeat picking up a little as well, but resolved to stay cool, poised, calm, whatever it took to keep her husband from freaking out.
"Yeah," he replied.
"I'm actually pretty sure everyone who saw us last year is going to remember us. We were pretty unforgettable."
Caleb's cheeks flushed even further. "That was...something."
The details of the recollection were awkward, maybe even humiliating -- a mistaken invitation to the meeting of a swingers club leading to a drunken indulgence. Instead he chose to remember the moment he liked best-- her naked flesh, the stage, the crowd of surprised and exuberant onlookers, the climax. Everything after that was retreat. In some ways, he'd been retreating ever since, but not tonight. He'd made a promise to her and he intended to hold up his end.
She led him past the cars at the east end of the lot toward a little path that led away from the lot and into the forest before climbing a small set of log stairs that pierced through the treeline and over the hill. They went with the flow here, following the crowd of others, everyone walking in the direction of the setting sun, all but gone now, save for a feint glow on the horizon that, at the right angle, filled the thin gaps between the trees with a haunting glow, as if the forest itself was projecting an aura.
They paused before a large pink Bristol board sign lettered in black sharpie that read: "Ayr Polyamorous Society -- Spring Solstice Ceremony -- This Way"
"You sure you want this?" he asked.
She smiled. "You have no idea."
Chapter Two -- Very Good Seats
Thirty feet down the trail, Caleb stood in front of another Bristol board signpost at a fork in the trail with arrows pointing in two different directions. "Do we want robing or auditorium?" Nicole, trailing 15 feet behind on account of the heels, stifled her anger at him for sprinting ahead to read the sign.
"Auditorium," she replied passing ahead of him and following the trail without stopping.
Caleb half-sighed at this before following. "How come we don't get robes?" He was a sucker for robes, lived for his Sunday morning robe-wearing, and 3 of his last 7 Christmas gifts from Nicole had been robes.
"We don't need em," she half-spat backwards at him in frustration.
"OK." And just like that the sudden joy of unexpected robing deflated just as quickly as it had arrived into his life and he resigned himself to being robeless. Looking around he noticed several small wooden cabins amongst the trees, each with a little doorstop and a picture of a smiling bear in front of an address number.
"Is this a summer camp?"
"Will be in two weeks," she replied. "They use it off-season."
"Really?"
"Every last Thursday in June, then again in October."
"How do you know that?" he asked.
"It's on the group page."
Caleb had only had the one encounter with the Ayr Polyamorous Society and, while memorable, the details surrounding their infrastructure were not something he'd ever latched onto. Any time he thought about them, and there were times he tried not to, all he remembered was the room of people cheering him as Nicole thrust her sweat-soaked body across his lap in front of them.
The path was sloping downhill now, away from the cabins, and a burly man in his 30s with a shaved head and beard walked toward them and smiled as he passed.
"Forgot my robe," he said apologetically.
Caleb stopped and turned his head to follow the man walking away.
"See? Are you sure we don't need to..."
"Yes," Nicole stated bluntly. "Hurry up or I'm leaving you out here to fend for yourself."
