“SO WHAT NOW?” Ann looked exasperated. It was a little after four and everyone was heading home. “This isn’t like Atlanta.” There everyone had been frantic, determined, working so late they almost were missing the free drinks back at the hotel. “What’s there to do in Austin?”
“I can take you back to the hotel.” Brad was squirming, unusual for him. He seemed evasive, which was even more unusual. “Or maybe to one of the malls?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Oh, Brad is headed over to the lake. Aren’t you, Brad?” That was Ned, one of his friends in Austin, who’d been ogling Ann most of the day. Even among all the Texas beauties, she was still a stunner. She’d been the team leader for the last group he’d managed, a bright girl on top of her good looks, and he’d taken her on quite a few of his trips to Atlanta in his new gig as corporate project savior without incident. Except that she had filled him in on all the little romances going on among the kids (well, recent college grads) he’d been working with for the last two years.
“The lake?”
“Lake Travis,” Brad explained. “I’m a distance swimmer. There’s a place there with a swimming area almost a mile long. So I can do a round trip and get in a couple miles.”
“Oh.” Brad had made it very clear early on that he was married, and not interested in playing the field. Even without her along, Atlanta was full of lovely ladies, most of them looking at him in awe as he swooped in every other week or so to prop up their project. Now the same thing in Austin. Lots of cuties here also, and he would flirt with them, more than back home, enough to shock her at first. But he would never go beyond that. He had never even flirted with her, in all the years they had worked together. There was one time he had hugged her, given her a little kiss on the forehead, when she had burst into tears telling him her father was dying. But that was the only time he had ever touched her.
“Sounds nice.” She wasn’t going to let this cowboy get her goat. “You should have told me. I would have brought my bathing suit along with me. I suppose we could go back to the hotel and get it?”
Brad looked stunned. There were a couple of times she had come down into the lobby to hear him play the piano, and he had said he was heading down to the pool next and she had announced quite primly that she was tired and was heading off to bed. Okay, once or twice she’d gone running with him before work in a skimpy little outfit but she had been visibly embarrassed doing it. Especially when he took his shirt off, but what was he supposed to do in the hundred percent humidity of an Atlanta dawn?
“Why honey, you don’t need a bathing suit,” Ned drawled. It was worth it to watch Brad squirm, blush even. “It’s a skinny dipping beach, right Brad?”
“Well, not beach exactly. It’s a lot of limestone cliffs, and big rocks down by the water.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, we can just go straight over there then.”
“What?” Brad looked at Ned, who was struggling not to burst out in laughter. Whatever happened, he was going to be in for a lot of ribbing the next day. Anything he said now would be held against him. “Come on, we can talk about it in the car.”
“Let me pee first.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
She gathered up her purse and went out into the hall. Brad turned to Ned. “What the fuck was that all about?”
“Just tryin’ to give you a little boost, ol’ buddy.” Ned was full of glee. “You help us with the tech stuff. We help you with the pussy stuff.”
“Maybe I don’t want help. Maybe this is a really bad idea.” Brad gathered up the suit jacket and briefcase that were mostly props, and went out to find the men’s room. Hard to pee, with an erection; one that he hoped would subside by the time they got over to the lake. No, they were not going to do this. He would talk her out of it, once they got to the car.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Those were the first words out of his mouth as they pulled onto the highway. “I’m not going to wear shorts, just for your sake. Understand?”
“Tell me more about this place.”
“Well it’s called Hippie Hollow. It’s a county park, clothes optional although almost everyone takes the no clothes option. The water is crystal clear, ninety feet deep but you can see the bottom, very warm. The swimming area is a mile long, a hundred yards wide. Look, Ann, I go over there to swim. I’m in the water for an hour or so. Are you going to be okay on your own all that time?”
“I was a lifeguard. I can swim with you, if I want. Or maybe just sunbathe. Is there a changing area?”
“Not really. There are some bathrooms, glorified outhouses really. But I usually just change in the car. Well, take off my clothes and wrap around a towel. I only have one, though.”
“No problem. I’ll just wear the dress.” Ann was drawing her knees up, lifting up her hips, sliding her panties down long brown legs.
“I usually wait until we’re in the parking lot.”
“Well of course. You’re driving and you have a lot more to take off.” She pulled down the top of her dress to reveal a clunky white bra, then slipped off the bra to reveal two very brown breasts. Oh. This wasn’t her first rodeo. There was a side to prim and proper Ann he didn’t know about, it would seem. Of course, that cut both ways.
“Maybe you should pull the top back up? While we’re still on the road?”
“Sure.” She was sitting with her legs still pulled up, slightly parted. Concentrate on driving, he told himself. It had been a long time since a girl had sat like that in the car, waiting for him to rub her clit, waiting to give him a blow job while he was driving. It would be so easy to reach a hand over between those parted legs. But no, that would definitely be out of bounds.
“Out of bounds?” she echoed. He must have said it aloud.
“For my marriage vows.”
“And going to this nude beach isn’t out of bounds?”
“No. I do that all the time.”
“Going with me?”
“Maybe. Look, we travel together all the time. Jane is okay with that.”
“Is she? I saw the look in her eyes, that one time I picked you up to go to Poughkeepsie.” Ann had shown up at the front door of his house at seven in the morning, elegantly dressed and made up, to whisk him away in her little white Eclipse. And Jane had been there in her bathrobe, having provided breakfast for him and the kids.
“Yeah she was bummed out. But she got over it.”
“What about going to this nude beach with me?”
“Look, we’re going over to swim. At least I am.”
“Whatever.” Ann gave a little sigh. Was she in love with him? She had a boyfriend, was engaged even.
“What about you? Is this out of bounds?”
“Definitely.” She gave a throaty little chuckle. Was this really Ann, the ice princess, the look but don’t touch goddess that had frustrated all his single buddies for so many years? “But Evan knows I’ve got a crush on you.”
“Oh.” Turn back, turn back. But the sky was cobalt blue, temperature a hundred two according to the bank they had just passed. He was not going to give up his swim, even if it was going to land him in perdition. “This is so wrong. You used to work for me. It’s not an equal relationship. You know when I was a teaching assistant I let myself be seduced by one of my students.”
“A guy?”
“No, not a guy. It was before we were married. I wasn’t even dating Jane then,” he hastened to add.
“I’m not trying to seduce you. Why can’t I go to the beach with you? If I were a guy would it be a problem?”
“No.”
“Well where are my equal rights? I go to Sandy Hook all the time.”
“Really? You never talk about it.”
“At work? Do you talk about going skinny dipping at Hippie Hollow?”
Brad decided it was time to change the topic. “What did you think of the Austin group?”
“They’re very laid back compared to Atlanta. And I couldn’t believe that team meeting. How the hell do you get anything done with a self directed team of sixty?”
“That’s why I’m here, to give direction to a self directed team.”
“Yeah, they think you are God come down from heaven. O O G, that’s your nickname. Object Oriented God.”
“I thought it was guru.”
“Katie said it was god. You know, the gal from Atlanta you flirt with all the time?”
“Yeah, she’s a sweetheart. She’s still in Austin? Didn’t see her today.”
“I don’t know how you can stay on the brink all the time. You know she would fuck you in an instant.”
Brad was stunned that word was even in Ann’s vocabulary. “We lived on a girl’s college campus for six years. In the Seventies. I guess I built up a resistance to temptation.” What about you, dear heart? Would you fuck me in an instant?
“You never know. You might be pushing your luck. Can I change the music? It’s so gloomy.” She found a country western station. “Why do you listen to such gloomy stuff all the time?”
“It’s classical music. It’s what I like.”
“Your own stuff isn’t like that. It’s very pretty. Very romantic.”
“Thanks.” Well, she had listened to him play a couple of times in Atlanta without comment. But how many nights had she been up on the balcony as the music filled the atrium?
“Why are you hanging out at this nude beach?”
“To swim. I do the same thing at home but it’s more private, more edgy. Here at least it’s legal.”
“Yeah you do it for the exercise. Like reading Playboy for the articles. And why do you flirt so much?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s midlife. You know? Fighting off creeping respectability.”
“Yeah. I know. Evan is pushing me to set a date. My mother wants grandchildren.”
“It changes your life. For the better, mostly.”
“So all this is just to get away from your wife and kids? To work out your midlife crisis?”
“No.” Brad gave a sigh. “I just stumbled into this. Atlanta wanted six people for six weeks to help them and we came back with a counter offer of one person for a week, which was me. And it’s been a couple of years now.”
“Oh.”
It was strange. How many times had they had dinner together and their conversation had never turned so personal.
“And now you’ve got the tiger by the tail.”
“Seems like.”
“Does it scare you?”
“Not as much as it should. Probably. Look, at work at home I run back to wild lakes and go for swims.”
“Naked?”
“Of course naked. Not that it matters. Who’s there to see me? I go cross country skiing alone at dawn on glare ice sometimes.”
“I never would have guessed you had such a wild side.”
“What about you with Sandy Hook?”
“I hate tan lines. I want to get a perfect tan. That’s all. Maybe Evan goes to perv on the ladies but I’m not into that.”
“And you don’t mind if guys are perving on you?”
“Not really.”
“Here’s the lake.” Brad made a right turn.
“Wow. This is Texas? I thought Texas was flat.” They had been going through hills that seemed somewhat miniature compared to the ones at home, covered with scrubby little trees. Not too impressive. But now they were up a couple of hundred feet over a huge blue expanse to their left. She leaned over see better, the dress falling away from her breasts. But of course Brad had his eyes steadfastly on the road. “It’s way down there?” She looked forlornly at her shoes. She was not equipped for rock climbing.
“The road goes down a bit before we get to the beach.”
“Wow.” The road did descend a bit, and made a bend to the left so she could look back to see the limestone cliffs behind them. “This is amazing.”
“Now you know why I like to come to Austin.”
There was a considerable amount of hill to the right of them now, a road winding up to a cluster of houses. To the left, a turnoff. “Here we are.” Brad pulled up to a gatehouse, was waved on through as he flashed a card. “Got a season pass. Cheaper that way.”
The parking lot was not very full. They pulled into a space at the front, next to the walkway and the sign warning of nudity ahead. “Oh good. This far in I don’t worry about changing in the car.”
Brad turned off the engine, the air conditioner in the process, and got out, peeling off his shirt almost immediately. It was too hot to stay in the car. But when Ann got out, the parking lot seemed even hotter. She was going to sweat up her nice dress; one that needed to be dry-cleaned. She pulled it off, hoping they were in fact close enough to the sign. Brad was busy fussing with his shoes, pulling out some slip on sneakers and trying to balance as he took off his clunky work shoes. Well, not clunky exactly. Wing tips, but pierced with a lot of little air holes so they breathed. His summer shoes. She had always thought he was so elegant with his three piece summer suits and the summer shoes. But watching him flop around trying to get them off and keep his bare feet from hitting the pavement was comical.
“Here.” She offered him a hand for balance, and he glanced over at her lack of clothing briefly before he turned his attention to the other shoe lace.
“Should have untied these in the car. Usually do. Guess I’m distracted.”
Finally, both shoes were off. It was time for the big moment. She’d seen Brad without a shirt on. Even seen most of his legs beneath the tiny little jogging shorts. Muscular, he was very muscular on top of everything else. It had been disconcerting to see what he was hiding under those three piece suits. Ten years out of college before he had started work, the same summer as she had. Ten years older than she was, more or less, so early forties for sure. But he didn’t look it. Just a hint of gray at the temples, which hadn’t been there when he had first gone into management. Maybe a hint of love handles, the price of life on the road for the last couple years, even though he was determined to keep in shape. He leaned over the open trunk and pulled his pants down, underwear along with it. Nice butt, what there was of it, darkly tanned like the rest of him. Another awkward moment as he tried to get his feet out of the pants and into the sneakers.
“Put the dress in the trunk? No sense carrying it down.” He was busy pulling out a towel and the sunscreen, folding his clothes nicely so they wouldn’t wrinkle. Not paying the least bit of attention to her. “Here.” He reached out a hand behind him with the sunscreen. “Better put this on now.”
“Do your back?” Without waiting for a reply she started on his shoulders. God, he was hard, back rippling with muscle. He didn’t comment as she worked her way down to do his butt, but he did squirm away when a finger probed between his cheeks.
“I can get that myself, thanks. Want me to do yours?” He put the towel and the car keys up on the roof of the car, and turned around at last; which was anticlimactic. Really broad shoulders, arms that were big and smooth muscled, abs okay but with just a little layer of flab obscuring them. Not like hers, still beautifully defined. She’d seen all that. He had really big balls, and a tiny little shriveled prick that didn’t even make it to the bottom of them. One that was not showing a hint of interest as he looked her over.
“Turn around.” That was it? He’d taken a glance at her, an almost dismissive glance, and that was it? Well the afternoon was beautiful, the lake was beautiful. There was that, at least. “You are really putting the skinny into skinny dipping.” He was feeling her ribs as he rubbed her back with both hands. Was that a good thing? He did her butt, and she spread her legs a bit to make sure he could reach inside if he wanted to. But he didn’t. Out of bounds. That would be out of bounds. She gave a little sigh of exasperation.
“You okay? Sorry, just teasing you. Didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You didn’t offend me.” She turned around and gave him a nice view as she rubbed lotion on her breasts, her belly. She was trimmed for the beach, most of the pubic hair shaved away except for a little tuft to let it be known that she was a true blonde.
“Don’t forget to do your feet.” He was bending over to get his own, legs spread to give her a really good view of his asshole, balls hanging down beneath it. He got himself upright and turned around to hand her the sunscreen.
Time to show off her cheerleader skills. She pulled her right foot out of the useless little pump she’d worn to work, balancing on the left still in the high heel as she pulled her knee up to her chin and delicately applied the sunscreen. That would give him a really nice view of her pussy.
“Impressive. I don’t know how women do that.” Even with all that, he was visibly unaroused. Hard for a guy to fake it, one way or the other, especially when they were naked. Maybe she just wasn’t his type. Oh well. Maybe it was better that way. “Think you’re going to want more sunscreen?”
“No. It’s already pretty late.”
“Leave it in the trunk then. One less thing to lose.” So they set off with just shoes and a towel and the car keys.
“Oh my God, how do you get down to the water?” Ann was staring at the cliff face that separated the paved walkway from the lake.
“There’s a path.” Brad pointed out a narrow rut that wound its way almost straight down the face of the cliff.
“I’ll never make it in these shoes.”
“Too hot to do it barefoot. I think there’s a handicap route that gets you down. Somewhere. Look, I can help you down.”
“You’re going to carry me down?”
“My knees wouldn’t take it. No we’ll do it in stages. Here, stand up at the edge, turn around. Like climbing down a ladder.” Brad went backwards down the path a few steps. He reached up to grab her butt. “Okay, ease yourself down.” They were both sweaty from the heat. She was sliding down along his belly.
“You enjoying this?”
“Just helping a lady in distress.”
“Yeah, right.” It was a long way down the cliff it seemed, maybe twenty more of those little slides, but at the bottom she still was not getting a rise out of him.
“Hey Brad, how’s it going?” That was from a tall girl, even skinnier than Ann, sitting on one of the boulders by the water.
“Hi Stephie. Doing okay. Hot today.”
“For a change. Been this way all summer. Who’s your lady friend?”
“Ann.” She offered a sweaty hand to Stephanie. “I work with Brad.”
“Really.” Stephanie was rolling her eyes. She’d seen how they had come down the hill.
“We’re business associates. Well, and friends.” Ann, stopped, blushing. “I know what it looked like, but it isn’t like that.”
“None of my business, one way or the other. Are you from New York City?” She drawled it like the cows in the picante sauce commercial Ann had seen on the TV last night in the hotel.
“New Jersey.”
“Oh. I’ve never met someone from New Jersey.” Stephanie looked her over as if she were some strange alien. Pretty face, not an ounce of fat on her, long legs, long body. Big breasts considering how skinny she was, but not much of a butt. Not that Stephanie was one to talk. She herself was lacking in both the breast and butt departments. “You a dancer?”
“Cheerleader.”
“She’s amazing,” Brad said. “She did something up on the parking lot to get sunscreen on her feet that was incredible.”
“Oh, I can do better than that. Without the stupid shoes. Give me the towel to stand on.” Barefoot, she lifted her right leg straight up over her head, balancing effortlessly on the other one.
“I used to be able to do that.” Stephanie got up and gave it a try, but started to topple over. “What about you Brad?”
“Me? I can cross country ski okay, but that’s about as far as my balance goes. As for flexibility …” He gave a shrug. “Hey Steph, can you do me a favor? Keep Ann out of trouble while I swim?”
“You want to go for your swim? That’s more important than hanging out with two lovely ladies? Naked lovely ladies?”
Apparently it was, because Brad was off into the water, heading left up to the big cliffs they had come along on the way in.
“Well, that was rude,” Ann grumbled. “I’m sorry, I’ll be fine by myself if you want to get going.”
“Oh, I’ll be here for a while. Every time he comes here he does the same swim. It’s like a compulsion.”
“Yeah I travel with him all the time and he’s like that about running. Has to get his run in before breakfast every morning. Except he didn’t this morning. Not that I know of, at least. And no, we did not spend the night together.”
“Oh, I don’t think he has much interest in the ladies. I always thought he was gay.”
“No. Not that I know of. He’s married. Very. Married.”
“And you?”
“I’m engaged. Have been for a long time.”
“Living with him?”
“No.” Ann gave a pause. “We’re both still living at home.”
“Really. You’re like …”
“Fucking him? I’ve been fucking him since we were in high school. It’s just that it’s gotten …”
“Gotten what?”
“More sporadic. Infrequent. Not as often.”
“Oh. Is that why you’re throwing yourself at Brad?”
“I’m not throwing myself at Brad.”
“I saw you two coming down the cliff.”
“Okay, maybe I am. All of a sudden. Just this afternoon. Really, I was fine until he said he was coming over here and he was going to leave me stranded at the hotel or some shopping mall and I thought why should he have all the fun? Oh. My. God. Look at that.”
An older couple had positioned themselves on a patch of pebbly beach nearby. The woman was lying on her back, knees up a bit and spread a bit, and the man was on his stomach in front of her, face buried in her pussy.
“Oh, they’re here all the time. I guess it’s how they’re spending their golden years.”
“Nothing like that ever happens at Sandy Hook. My fiancé got a hard on there once and we got booed off the beach.”
“Oh, well nobody cares here. Although, if you’re fucking it’s better to do it in the water. There’s one guy who claims he does porn films who brings his lady over and wants an audience, but that’s a little over the top.”
“Oh. Oh my.” Ann was absentmindedly playing with herself as she watched the woman’s hips begin to heave.
“Would you like some help with that?”
“What? Oh my God! No. Yes. Maybe. I need to swim first. I’m like caked in sweat and sunscreen. But if I swim now the sunscreen will be gone and we didn’t bring more down with us.” The sun was more intense than she had expected, reflecting off the water and the limestone.
“Okay, here’s a plan. We wait to swim until we see Brad coming back the other way. Then when he comes out of the water we give him a little show.”
“That would work. What do you think of Brad?”
“He’s fun to talk to. Very polite. Never tries to hit on me.”
“That’s a good thing?”
“Yes it’s a good thing. I’ve gotten in trouble here a couple times.”
“Raped?”
“I suppose you could call it that. Well, fucking when I wasn’t looking for it to happen. But Brad just likes to talk. I think he’s very lonely.”
“On the road. Yep sometimes I think I’m coming along just for company, someone to eat dinner with. Not that I’m not good. Not that I’m not helping him. At least in Atlanta. I felt totally useless here today, like why did I even bother to come here.”
“Oh. What’s he doing here, anyway?”
“Do you know anything about software?” That provoked a blank look in Stephanie’s doe like eyes. “Okay, here’s the deal.” Ann took four rocks about the same size. “Our program product group—that’s the one that sells stuff to outside customers—decided they were going to do this huge project in the manufacturing area. It was going to have a central core,” she put one rock in the middle, “and on top of that three towers. Well there were problems. The central core never got developed, so each of the three towers built their own foundation. Then the people doing the tower in Atlanta had no idea how to design it. But it was the same type of stuff that Brad was in charge of internally.”
“Why didn’t they just sell that then?”
“Well it was old technology, plus, very adapted to our company. Does that make sense?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, anyway the people in Atlanta got their foundation working, sort of, but not the tower part. So Brad went down there to design the tower for them.”
“Oh. They just let him take over and do that?”
“They were desperate. He was their only hope. And he pulled it off. So anyway, Austin was doing the second tower but they were depending on the central core to come through for them and it never did. So now they’re trying to use the core stuff that Atlanta did and Brad has this extra layer that makes it a lot easier for them to do their stuff. There are like a couple hundred jobs that depend on him right now.”
“Really. You’d never know it. He seems very laid back. Maybe that’s why he needs to get the swim. So what’s in it for him?”
“I think it’s an adventure. It’s something he just stumbled into and he’s been on a roll. Plus he’s getting promotions, more money. Me too.”
“Oh.. We get some big shots here. They usually let you know about it. The only thing he’s told me about himself is that he likes to cross country ski nude …”
“He what?”
“You heard me. And he wrote novels for a couple years, but never sold anything.”
“Oh. That I didn’t know either.”
“I can tell you two are going to have an interesting dinner conversation. Oh, there he is. Come on, let’s get wet.”
Brad came back to the shoreline to find the two of them in about the same position as the older couple, with Stephanie doing the licking.
“Hi Brad.” Ann gave him a wave.
“Hello ladies. Don’t mind me.” Well obviously they weren’t paying much attention to his return. He sat down on a rock nearby that gave him a good vantage point for what Stephie’s tongue was doing.
Ann looked over at him. He was made of flesh and blood after all, flesh that was swelling to an unexpected size as he was stroking it. Big, he was pretty big, not like the monster cocks in some of the porn flicks, but bigger than Evan. “Care to join us?”
“No thanks.”
Fine then, asshole. Wouldn’t want to break the fucking rules. She closed her eyes and concentrated on coming as hard as she could. When she looked back up, he wasn’t stroking any longer and his prick was in a lazy half erection.
“Stephie’s turn?” He sounded hopeful their might be a second act.
“You missed it.”
“Maybe tomorrow if you’re a good boy.”
“We should get going. They lock the gate soon.”
“I need to rinse off first.”
“You’ll be all sweaty by the time we get up to the top of the cliff.”
But the rocks had cooled enough that she could climb up barefoot on her own.