It embarrasses me to admit that I began writing this story in 2007. I finished it and published it as a much shorter story on a different website that didn't allow this subject matter so I had to change the details but it kind of rankled. Having to change one of the key plot points of the story really pissed me off. Then I discovered the Literotica website and I realized I could put it on here in its original form but I'd always felt that it could do with being expanded. Basically, it ended too soon. I needed to know what happened. And it's taken me this long to find out.
Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed the title and deduced that I must have written three parts and you'd be correct. However, the three parts are not grouped together in one section within the Literotica web library because each of the three stories explores three different groups of characters and three different themes, so if you want to read all three please be aware that one or other of them may have content that you might find disturbing or disgusting.
This chapter is listed in Incest/Taboo because that's what it deals with. Chapter Two, 'On Location', is set about ten years later. It is listed in the Romance section and is, hopefully, the least 'out-there' story. The third Chapter, 'Water Baby', takes place about thirty years after that, making it roughly present-day (at the time of writing). It is listed in the Fetish section and if you're not into anything that might even remotely qualify as a fetish I would politely suggest that perhaps you should stay away from it.
All three stories are linked simply by the fact that they take place in, around, or are connected in some way to, the small seaside town of Bowen. Bowen is a totally fictional location, existing only in my head but I have based it on a small town I know of in the north of the country where I live. In an attempt to keep the series a little more relatable I have tried to position it somewhere within the continental US, although I'm not entirely sure where. I suspect it might be somewhere in Florida, like on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, but I've never been there so I can't be sure.
I hope it feels real.
BBV22
January 2025
Sunrise
'Practical Applications of Metallurgy' has to be the most brain-deadeningly and stultifyingly dull study text ever written. I sighed and reread the page I was on for the third time. There were plenty of things I would have rather been doing on a sunny spring afternoon but I'd been avoiding this module of the syllabus for my machinist's apprenticeship for too long. It was one of the last ones I needed to get through and I'd finally realized that ignoring it wasn't going to make it go away.
"Alex?!"
"Yeah mom?"
"Phone!"
I rolled off my bed and went out to the kitchen.
"Hello?"
"Alex?" It was a girl's voice.
"Yeah?"
"Hey, it's Libby. Libby Thompson, your cousin."
I hung up ten minutes later in a daze.
My cousin Libby, who was six months younger than me, had rung because she wanted to know if I would be interested in helping her to obtain another credit towards a local community services medal she'd decided to try for. She was organizing a hike through a forest park around a lake several hours drive north of the city where we lived and she had called to see if I was interested in coming along. I doubted my fitness was up to the task, but I agreed to go and make up the numbers as I didn't have anything more pressing to do that summer and because I figured I would have an excuse not to read about acceptable methods of heat treating steel.
There had been a certain amount of friction between our parents as we grew up and consequently Libby and I had only really seen each other at Christmas and on birthdays when we were kids and then maybe only once or twice a year after that until we reached an age where all contact just kind of petered out.
I suppose part of what drove my decision to join her was that I realized it was an opportunity to reconnect and find out a bit more about a branch of the family that I knew very little about.
After I'd agreed to go along we had a couple of get-togethers to meet everyone and make sure we were all up to speed with what we were going to do. I was stunned to find that Libby had changed so much from what I remembered of her. Gone was the little girl who used to torment and annoy me and my older brother with her older sister. In her place was a stunning nineteen-year-old woman with a ready smile, a laugh like music, beautiful long blonde hair and warm brown eyes. She was shorter than me, I'm just on six foot-two so a lot of people are and maybe it was a bit inappropriate to notice, but she was definitely beautifully proportioned.
She was friendly and funny and seemed delighted that I had agreed to join in and the spontaneous hug she gave me when I turned up on the doorstep of her parents' house for the first meeting to plan the trip was surprising and enjoyable in equal parts.
I quickly realized that my fitness was really going to be a major issue and, as a result, much of my spare time after that was spent walking every night after work in preparation. The planning phase went smoothly enough, except that Steff and Nate, two of the other participants, had some sort of an issue so Nate dropped out literally at the last moment.
Steff was equally as easy on the eye as Libby, taller and slimmer, with a happy laugh and calm blue eyes that watched everything quietly. It was a long drive to the forest park where the lake was and we stopped a couple of times during the trip for a break to stretch our legs as well as a stop for lunch in a town that seemed to consist of a gas station and the one diner. The two girls seemed to be almost telepathic and I was starting to wonder about what I'd let myself in for. Steff and Libby seemed to be from a completely different world.
We stayed a night, the girls in one tent and I in another by myself, at a campground run by the Forest Rangers at the start of the track so we could begin fresh in the morning and we were a happy band of three, the two girls, one blonde, one brunette and me, when we left the car park by the Forest Rangers Headquarters and, with a 'This is it' kind of feeling, hit the trail.
It was a long steady climb to the first hut which sat high on a ridge with, we'd been told, a commanding view of the lake and as the weather had turned out cloudless we were glad of the shade provided by the trees as we walked. Unfortunately Steff twisted an ankle on a rough part of the track at about the halfway point so we dragged into the hut quite late in the day.
There were a couple of other groups doing the hike for their own enjoyment, people we'd never met, who were already well settled in at the hut and they all chipped in with advice about how best to treat the ankle. Steff struggled valiantly through the whole of the second day, but what had meant to be an easy half-day hike down out of the hills to a campground by the lake took almost twice as long and it was obvious that she wouldn't be able to continue. After one night in a communal hut, we couldn't be bothered pitching both tents so we just set up the bigger one for all three of us.
This left us with quite a dilemma; stuck in the wilderness with no way of getting help for Steff and if we quit, which we couldn't really, it would mean Libby wouldn't get the credit for the award she'd been working on; we certainly didn't have enough gear to stay put for as long as needed for the ankle to heal. Steff was pissed off and embarrassed. We sat around one of the picnic tables for dinner with another group of hikers and had a gloomy council of war.
A thought occurred to me.
"Would you still get the credit if only one of us completed the track?" I asked Libby.
"No," she shook her head. "The rules state that at least half the party must finish."
"Well, that puts the fritz on that," I muttered
"You could wait here for the ranger," said Viv, the mother from the family we were dining with. "He makes a round of all the camp sites and huts every couple of days by boat and collects the fees from the honesty boxes."
After a big discussion, a plan emerged. The next morning we waved goodbye to the other hikers and waited all day for the ranger to show up. There wasn't much to do except laze around in the shade, talking and dozing.
In one of my depressingly common lapses, I hadn't thought to pack swimming trunks so when it got really hot in the early afternoon I went for a swim in a pair of boxers. I was resting close to shore at one point, floating on my back when there was a huge splash and something hit me in the chest, pushing me under without warning.
I surfaced, choking and gasping for air with water streaming from my face and hair as I heard the two girls laughing gleefully. Looking round I saw Steff sitting on a rock by the edge of the lake with her feet in the cool water. Libby was standing in the water beside me, laughing the loudest. She'd jumped in and pushed me under.
"What the hell...?" I demanded and made a lunge for her. She leaped sideways with a squeal but I dodged and grabbed her round the waist. Taken off-guard by how little she weighed, I figured it was time for some revenge.
"Help!" she yelled in mock-terror as I bent and lifted her, one arm under her knees and the other behind her shoulders. I could hear Steff still laughing as I twisted, flinging Libby away with all my strength. There was a piercing shriek which was cut off by another loud splash as she disappeared underwater.
"Truce!" I shouted as she surfaced, her long hair soaked. Still laughing, we dragged ourselves out onto the grassy shore by Steff and lay in the sun to get warm. There wasn't a sound except for the quiet lapping of water on the lake shore.
Eventually I dragged myself to my feet and went to get dried and dressed. With a giggle Libby slipped past and hurried ahead, beating me to the tent so that I had to wait outside until she was finished. I couldn't do anything but stand around and think. She had been wearing a powder blue bikini and I couldn't get the image of her hips and butt out of my head or the way her body moved as she'd skipped along ahead of me.
It was a relief when she stepped out of the tent and I quickly pushed past her, hoping that she wouldn't notice the bulge in my dark green boxers. I knew I shouldn't be thinking about that kind of thing; she was my cousin, but you would have to have been blind not to see how beautiful she was.
I was just pulling on a pair of shorts when there was a shout from down by the lake. When I scrambled out of the tent I saw the ranger easing his little motor boat into the cove where we'd been swimming.
We quickly filled him in on what had happened and he nodded in agreement when we asked if he could help.
"Sure. This is the last stop I had to make today so we can head straight back," he said. He had the biggest, bushiest beard I'd ever seen and his face and arms were tanned dark brown by the sun.
It was something of a relief to know that Steff would be okay, so we set about getting her gear together and loading it into the boat. We gave her one of the two tents we had brought along as well, figuring she'd need that as well as a good proportion of the food we were carrying.
After we'd watched them putter off around the point and out of sight, I looked at Libby. She grinned and punched me playfully on the arm.
"Just you and me now cuz," she drawled.
I nodded, grinning.
"Yeah. What shall we do? Stick around here until tomorrow or see if we can make it to the next cabin?"
We went back to the tent and dragged the map outside to have a look at it.
"I reckon we could make it," she said, looking at me hopefully.
"I reckon we could too. Come on, let's not muck about. This place feels a bit empty with Steff gone."
"Yeah, I thought that too." She sounded downbeat. "Do you think those clouds will be a problem?" She pointed to the huge pile of brilliant white which seemed to be sitting on top of the distant peaks. Given the temperature, it seemed a bit hard to believe they could be an issue but I had been watching them with a slightly uneasy feeling.
"I don't know," I said truthfully. "But what's the worst that could happen? It's only rain."
We packed up and hit the trail as quickly as we could.
Shortly after we set off,Libby and I hit our stride together. Given my build, it was a comparatively easy stroll for me with her determinedly slugging along in the lead so I wouldn't leave her behind. We talked occasionally on the track, but mostly were silent so as to save our energy for walking.
By the time we stopped for a break late in the afternoon the sky had clouded over and the high hills that surrounded the lake, rather than seeming to be supporting the cloud, were starting to disappear behind billowing masses that had changed from pure white to dirty gray.
