Liberty Mountain:
No Man’s Land

Nathan Wolf
Copyright 2020

All rights reserved.

 

~ Wolf Paw Press ~

 

Liberty Mountain: No Man’s Land is a spicy cross-genre tale of apocalyptic survival. It is an adult work of literary fiction intended for mature readers (Age 17 and over). Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is too weird for words and 100% purely coincidental. 

 

Printed in the United States of America
February 2020
ISBN 9781720189398

V3.1

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 1

Life is good except for the parts that suck, and being homeless sucks almost as much as being old.

In the cold light of autumn dawn, under the uncaring eyes of the Sheriff's eviction team, I shoved my last cardboard box of belongings into the trunk, and slammed the hatch closed.

Resisting the temptation to render a one-finger salute, I kept my opinion in my pocket, jumped into the Toyota RAV4's passenger seat and shivered. Darlene flipped several strands of flyaway hair out of her eyes for the umpteenth time. She squinted to read the tiny letters with directions to our new home: some godforsaken prepper hideaway in the western mountains. Mapmakers tend to hide the most critical information in the smallest print known to man.

She was like that--a stickler for details.

Finally finished, she smiled. "Let's go!"

She adjusted the mirror and shifted her vehicle into gear. We were on our way to start a new life off the grid.

Her soft and innocent musical voice accented her thoughts with honey and desire. To me, her voice tasted like exotic ear-candy.

She was more than she seemed and used a different song for every mood and season. When angry, sarcastic sandpaper replaced honey as words sandblasted lies and bullshit away from facts until only the unvarnished truth remained.

We met at a nearby saloon where we developed an unlikely May-December romance. Darlene played the part of May at a youthful thirty-six. I fulfilled the role of Daddy December at the grandfatherly age of sixty-mumble.

Through the process of elimination, we become drinking buddies at our neighborhood tavern. I'm not sure "buddies" is the correct word. More often than not, we happened to be the last people still standing when the bartender bellowed out, "Last call for alcohol!"

Initially, geography was our common bond. The tavern, built in the 1890s, featured a walnut and mahogany bar with an odd little 'L' shaped hook at the far corner of the saloon. The counter and a back wall of brick formed a naturally cozy alcove spacious enough to accommodate three stools.

According to local legend, the original owner ordered the hook's construction to allow him to follow the activities of untrustworthy bartenders while also keeping an eye on equally unreliable patrons. The voyeur and hermit in me loved the obscure hideaway, and I had the place all to myself for several months until the day Darlene arrived. She also fell in love with the strategic lookout post.

At first, I was annoyed by her invasion of my secret space. After a while, I looked forward to her companionship. Like commuters sharing an across-town bus, we got used to each other's presence on the installment plan. Familiarity grew comfortable, and silence gave way to conversation as we observed the ebb and flow of tavern life.

It all started with casual flirting. She flirted. I was casual.

Hell, she flirted with everyone: men, women, and even the bartender's mangy tomcat. While I enjoyed the sometimes risqué banter, I never considered Darlene as potential girlfriend material. She was a young vixen, and I was an old wolf. I entertained myself by sneaking a peek down her v-neck or up her skirt when I thought she wouldn't notice.

One Friday evening, the stars governing our relationship aligned like the bars on a slot machine. Heads turned as Darlene strutted into the tavern: a blur of legs, cleavage, and the predatory smile of a fox. Her apparel left little to the imagination. Her mini-dress might have been a belt in a previous life, and her tissue-thin unbuttoned blouse was open down to her navel. She wore no bra.

"Interesting outfit you're almost wearing."

She hopped up on the adjacent barstool, and I did a double-take.

"Panties optional dress code?" I nodded my head and filed the image in my long-term memory vault.

"Like it? I'm getting laid tonight. One of these stud-muffins will be going home with me," she chuckled with a little shiver and scanned the tavern for targets of opportunity.

I grimaced; my envious glance flavored a bit oddly by jealousy. What a curious blend of emotions for a virtual stranger? I did an inventory of my own.

The tavern was a working man's watering hole. Most of the guys looked like drop-outs from Blubber Buddies or some such weight-watching group. Too many six-packs left many on the greasy side of flabby. Over the last few years, I had gone from two-hundred-seventy-six to a slimmer one-sixty-seven. I had earned the right to gloat.

Wives or girlfriends escorted most of the men. Boyfriends with rainbow rings accompanied several others. Darlene's field of viable partners appeared limited unless she lowered her standards or went in for a threesome.

I pitied the lucky guy who won Darlene's attention. She possessed the uncanny ability to read people like a book and play 'em like a deck of cards.

"Compliments of the house."

Our ogling barkeep placed a beautifully mixed and handcrafted White Russian in front of my lady friend, and did a visual inventory of his own.

She nodded and took a small sip, savoring the drink like a gourmet. "Splendid!"

Tilting her head back, Darlene wolfed it down in one long gulp. Yikes! Talk about thirsty.

"Ahhh!" She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, smiled and bounced down from her seat and, like Alexander the Great, set out to conquer the known world.

I had to admire her style. Radiating sexual availability like a neon sign in the night, she was the Alpha-Fox loose in the hen house. The lass was in a class by herself, and that was a problem. She sparkled like diamonds in a coal bin and scared the daylights out of the men she approached.

If anything, she was too beautiful and too self-assured. With titters, giggles, and seductive glances, she worked her way around the tavern. The males she flirted with were flattered, flustered, and fearful of her aggressive attention. No man dared to take the bait.

After ten minutes of flagrantly flirting, Darlene returned to her seat to regroup and refuel. Our bartender presented her with another complimentary White Russian as his sacrifice to the gods of Wishful Thinking.

"Thank you so much! You are such a sweetheart. Can I have another one to keep this one company?"

Darlene touched his hand, and if her smile had been any warmer, the barkeep would have sparked into flame. A few moments later, our generous drink master reappeared with a trio of tall White Russians.

"One is for you, and the other two are honor guards for the poor dead soldiers." He pointed to the two empty glasses.

"I love this drink."

She inhaled the beverage and sloshed it down in one long gulp. I widened my eyes in puzzlement. How can anyone love a drink without taking the time to savor the subtle by-play of flavors?

Thirst quenched for the moment, Darlene resumed her quest for the night's bed partner. Her second expedition of seduction ended in bewildered disappointment.

"What the hell? I usually have to beat guys off with a stick." Shaking her head in disgust, she demolished another White Russian.

"Maybe you should offer to beat them off with a stick, you know, Fifty Shades of Kinky?"

Darlene's head turned, her eyes narrowed, and her lips thinned to white. She was not amused. "Why? Do you want to get beat off with a stick?" she smiled coyly before dispatching the last White Russian.

"Hell no! I hate splinters," I said.

"He shoots. He scores!" Darlene laughed. She raised her finger and traced a point on the invisible blackboard in the air. "Nice one."

I shrugged my shoulders. The rising heat of a blush warmed my body, and I squirmed in my seat under her gaze. While she studied me, her dark frown of frustration gradually brightened, and her emerald eyes glistened. Her grim expression transformed into the predatory smile of a fox once more.

"I'm as horny as hell," she lowered her voice, "Wanna screw?"

She leaned into me and brushed her nose against mine. I inhaled a cloud of warm vodka breath flavored with the sinful and delicious scent of winter pleasure. Her lips parted into a grin and her little pink tongue licked the outline of milk from her mouth. She rested her forehead against mine and moved her hand to my knee. Slowly she slid her fingers along the inside of my leg. I answered by placing my hand on her thigh and mirrored her journey of exploration.

"Your place or mine?" I whispered.

It was as cliché as shit, but I couldn't help myself. What could I say? She had made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Thus began our strange love affair.

We became romantically involved as much out of laziness as out of lust. Neither of us cared to invest the necessary time to search for the ideal mate, so we settled for close enough for the moment. After we moved in together, I joked about "robbing the cradle." She would giggle and respond, "I guess that would make me a grave robber."

Several things attracted me to Darlene. The first was her personality. She was so easy going I once tried to give her the nickname "Lake Placid." Still waters run deep, and it didn't end well.

"Enough! Dennis, that was a twofer."

The book she was reading sailed across the room, missing my head by less than an centimeter.

"Watch out! You nearly hit me! What the hell is a twofer?"

"My love, a twofer is the first and last time something happens. I loathe nicknames. Why the hell would I want to be named after a stagnant pond?"

Her smile was a funky combo of mischief and annoyance. I took pet names off my to-do list.

The other thing was her attitude toward lovemaking. Everyone needs a hobby, and sex was her diversion from work. She accumulated orgasms like some folks collected postage stamps.

She'd let me move in with her when my landlord evicted me because I refused to pay rent until he fixed the bathroom in my crappy apartment. He decided a new tenant would be cheaper than new plumbing. We shacked up to save money. Darlene and I believed two could live as cheaply as one. We were right, but only for half as long.

After a couple of months together, the real estate development corporation in which Darlene had invested a dozen years of her life went belly-up. Her last two pay-checks retroactively bounced. The returning rubber checks set up a cascading overdraft chain reaction.

Darlene's condo payments went south, along with about twenty-five or thirty personal checks and a cloud of ATM transactions. Each bad draft racked up a thirty-five dollar bank charge and about the same again in returned check merchant fees. Soon her account was bleeding red ink by several thousand dollars.

The certified letter ordering our eviction was the last straw. Our financial camel lay mortally wounded with its back broken beyond repair. We needed a new place to live, and we needed it yesterday. Darlene and I criss-crossed Denver and the surrounding suburbs, chasing every "For Rent" sign in view. The story was always the same: an hour or a day late, or the price was beyond our reach.

~~~

"Well, if you hear anything, please give me a call. Thank you."

Darlene frowned, and she hung up the phone. She glanced at me, turned slightly, and examined the calendar hanging on the refrigerator door before returning her eyes to mine.

"There goes our last best lead; we're screwed." She slumped in her chair.

We sat across from each other at the kitchen table as, like an unwanted house guest, a shroud of gloom darkened the room. Out of options, the clock ran out of time. Eviction Day was the day after tomorrow.

Darlene's posture abruptly changed. She sat upright in her chair; the corner of her mouth turned upward, and a smile twinkled in her eyes.

"Yikes! I can't believe I forgot my sisters," she slapped the table-top with the palm of her hand and laughed. "Dennis, how would you like to live on a commune?"

"Huh?"

What kinda random question was that, and where was it going? Her exotic outlook on life tended to lean toward the spiritual rather than the religious. Oh! Boy. I braced myself for her answer.

"What kind of hippy village are we talking about?"

"Hippy? I'm not talking about Woodstock, my love. My friends from university have an off-the-grid cabin in the Rockies. They owe me some money--maybe we can stay with them."

"What's their address?"

If you learn where someone sleeps, you can start to make a good guess as to their culture.

"Sweetheart, they don't have an address, and they're not on the road or any highway."

Darlene moved to the living room sofa. I followed.

"How far are your friends from the world?"

She had my attention. In theory, the closer to the road, the more tethered her friends would likely be to conventional reality. I had visited many communes in my younger days, and each had a temperament ranging from boring to batshit crazy. We sat together on the couch.

"Twenty miles, give or take." She snuggled as we sat together. "We've been buddies for a long time. We were friends back in college."

"What kind of friends?" If they had been living off the grid for fifteen years, this gang had something going for it.

"You know, friends who help friends. Anyway, they are heavy-duty into the survivalist movement. They might let us stay with them."

After so many years in the wild, if her group was still holding its own, they might be an answer to our current housing crisis. Depending, of course, on the depth of the batshit. Too deep would be too weird.

"Okay, you got my attention." I kissed her. "Tell me everything you know. Who are these people?"

We talked until there was no more to say.

"Stay or go. Your choice," Darlene said. "Do you want to give them a try, at least for a few weeks?"

Living as amateur survivalists, her friends occupied an off-the-grid cabin located somewhere in the Rocky Mountains about two hundred and something miles west of Denver. The more I thought about it, the better it sounded. Living far from civilization was an attractive alternative to sleeping in a shipping crate behind a Safeway Supermarket. Besides, I liked the high country, and I had made several hiking trips into the peaks while stationed at Lowry Air Force Base before shipping out for an all-expense-paid tour of Vietnam.

"Hmm, I'm in. Let's see if your friends will let us stay with them."

I listened as she dictated a text message requesting sanctuary for us, and shared her joy when she received an affirmative response a few minutes later.

"Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, off the grid, we go," I sang and did a happy dance.

"Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, off with the clothes we go," she chanted as she turned the dwarf song into a stripper-gram for two.

More efficient than artful, she had me barefoot from my toes to my chin in under a minute. Bare ass and laughing, we sealed the deal by morning with a wild session of lovemaking. We were going to make a new life for ourselves.

The next two days vanished in a rush as we raced to pack what we needed for our new lives. Our RAV4 got a new set of off-road tires along with a complete tune-up and oil change. We sold everything we couldn't take with us. What we couldn't sell, we gave away. We were done with Denver.

We departed shortly after sunrise and followed I-70 away from the city. Within an hour, we were in the peaks, and four hours later, we arrived in the small town of Rifle and elected to do lunch. I asked Darlene to stop at the village's smoke shop. I had learned our new home wasn't only remote; it was in the ass-end of nowhere. The idea of running out of cigarettes a million clicks from resupply was frightening. We parked in the alley next to the store.

I assumed our new off-the-grid home had some power, so I purchased an electric rolling machine. To cover my bet, I bought two hand-powered devices -- insurance for the addicted. I next cleaned out the store's inventory of Zen cigarette tubes (three cases), along with fifty-nine pounds of tobacco, two hundred disposable lighters, and five hand-carved pipes. Darlene stood next to me as the cashier rang up the largest single purchase in the shop's history.

"Are you out of your mind? What fool spends that kind of money on nicotine? My God! We're broke and almost destitute." She shook her head.

"Sweetheart, my VA benefits are direct deposit, and it came in last night. Where we're going, money ain't going to be of much use, so why not?"

I added another handful of Bic lighters to the pile of merchandise. The total bill of sixteen hundred and forty-seven dollars and twenty-eight cents wiped out half my available cash.

The Zen cigarette tubes and sixty pounds of tobacco were too bulky to fit in the Rav's cargo bay. I secured my newly acquired stash to the vehicle's rooftop by wrapping everything up in a tarp and triple tying it all down with rope and bungee cords. The car looked like a band of gypsies owned it by the time I'd finished.

We turned north on Route 13, passed the town of Meeker two hours later, and turned on winding unpaved road leading up into the hills. About forty-five minutes later, Darlene announced, "It won't be long now" for about the twentieth time.

My lady programmed a set of waypoints her friends had emailed her into the vehicle's satellite navigation system. We followed a dirt road through a thick pine forest until the way devolved into not much more than a poorly marked trail that shrunk down to a path as we ventured above the tree line. Soon our pathway became nothing more than a series of GPS waypoints connected by miles of barren rock.

I asked Darlene after an hour of traveling ever deeper into the highland wilderness, "How long is not long?"

"We should be there within the hour," Darlene said.

"Lord Almighty! Your friends aren't only off the grid; they're off the damn map. Do you have any idea of where we are?" I complained.

Darlene sneezed, smiled, and kept driving.

An hour later, our RAV4 reached a ridge crest, which afforded us a splendid view of a long, thin U-shaped valley nestled between two towering mountain ranges. We could see a building almost lost in the distance at the far end of the vale.

As we neared the dwelling, it became apparent the structure was considerably more significant than it had appeared from the ridge. The rustic cottage was as much a log-mansion as a log-cabin. Solar panels covered the south-facing steel roof, and a farmer's porch wrapped around three sides of the building. Buck Rogers meets Davy Crockett.

It was twilight by the time we rolled to a stop in front of the lodge. The setting sun had disappeared behind the snow-capped peaks. Night and the thermometer were both falling fast. The welcoming committee of at least two dozen women gathered on the balcony erupted in joyous shouts of celebration and hand waves when Darlene emerged from the vehicle. The boisterous welcome turned to a frosty silence when I stepped out of the car. It was as if someone had pulled the plug.

.

Chapter 2

Darlene moved around the front bumper and gave me a hug as she murmured in my ear, "Did I mention that this is an all-women survival commune?"

"You forgot to share that little bit of news with me. What the hell we gonna do now?" I muttered back.

Darlene was like that. She tended to skimp on the details and fill the void with trivia or useless facts. She held my hand as we broke from our embrace, and spoke to the assembled women on the porch.

"I would like you to meet my partner, Dennis Richards, everyone. He's old, but he's kinda cool once you have a chance to know him."

An older woman, who turned out to be the group's leader, stepped forward. "I'm Sheila Carson, Mr. Richards. Please come inside. I think we need to have a talk."

I had the same, uneasy "Oh crap! Now, what?" feeling that I used to have when summoned to the principal's office as a kid.

Sheila turned on her heels, walked inside, and the rest of us followed into the cabin's great room. If the building appeared big from the outside, standing in the middle of the cathedral hall, the misty room seemed to go on forever. A massive freestanding stone fireplace dominated the central space with a blazing fire radiating heat and light in all directions.

The distant ceiling towering over the open space was almost lost in the shadows and the smoky haze of the great room. Rustic rough wooden balconies ringed the walls on all sides at the second story level. Thousands of LED icicle lights hung from the unpainted railings and stairways. A soft, comforting glow bathed the room in the soothing and pleasant colors of an autumn sunset.

Sheila directed us to accompany her to her upstairs office. She stood about five feet six inches and was a good looking professional woman about my age. Without a trace of makeup. She needed none. Streaks of red highlighted her bangs and her short cropped brunette hair, and she appeared to be in magnificent physical condition.

Her skin had the bronze tan of someone who was no newcomer to hard outdoor work. Her face was more handsome than beautiful. She was wearing faded work jeans and a low-cut wool sweater, which allowed an excellent view of well-tanned, medium-sized breasts and the valley between.

Sheila's office featured a giant oak desk and a stone hearth. A picture window filled one wall with a breathtaking panorama of the frosted mountains painted silver in the light of an almost full moon. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase crammed with books covered the opposite wall. There were several oriental rugs scattered about on the wood floor.

"Make yourselves comfortable, I'll be right back." Sheila made a quick exit through a side door.

Her abrupt departure startled me. Something was brewing. Darlene and I took a seat on a small loveseat in front of a coffee table and exchanged worried glances while we waited.

I bent close and whispered, "What the hell is going on? This ain't the warm and fuzzy welcome we expected."

"No kidding. I don't understand. I told Sheila's assistant that you were coming with me, and she said, 'Great, the more, the merrier.'"

We could hear the muffled voices but not the words of two women engaged in a heated exchange in the next room. The argument stopped abruptly, and a moment later, Sheila entered the office with another woman in tow.

"Your presence here presents us with something of a problem, Mr. Richards. Darlene sent us a text to our satellite phone. She told us she would be arriving with her lover 'Denise'. It was on that basis that we gave you permission to stay with our family of sisters." Sheila crossed her arms and studied me closely.

Darlene let out a little gasp before she burst out laughing. "Shit-for-brains auto-correct will get you every time. I dictated it on my iPhone. I never noticed it changed Dennis to Denise," Darlene said.

Oh, damn! Talk about getting off to a lousy start. We were at the intersection of Colossal and Fuck Up. It took Sheila only a moment to absorb the implications of Darlene's unintended error. No conspiracy at work here, only faulty technology.

"Mistake or not, Mr. Richards' residence within our family might produce, er, unnecessary sexual tension; that kind of stress can be bad for families," Sheila explained as she took a seat across from us.

"Seriously? If you're all lesbians, how can an old fart like me create any kind of tension?" I protested.

"There are capital-L lesbians, and there are lowercase-L lesbians, Mr. Richards, and then there are those who might want to find pleasure from a man out of mischief or mere curiosity. The fact that you're old makes you seem harmless, but I know better. You're not as safe as you appear. You've seduced one of my lovers and convinced her to take you on as a lover," Sheila glanced over at Darlene.

I also gave Darlene a curious look of my own.

I had suspected but never knew for sure that my lady love walked both sides of the street.

Sheila leaned forward and looked directly into Darlene's eyes. "Since we're already on the subject, why on earth did you pick such an old guy for a lover in the first place? Good Lord girl, he's old enough to be your father or even your grandfather."

Darlene laughed. "Everyone wants to hear about our May-December relationship. I picked Dennis because he's low maintenance, easy to be with, and treats me with respect. He's a fantastic lover and knows how to make me happy. He has an extremely talented tongue."

Sheila looked at me and raised a questioning eyebrow. I smiled back and reddened as the "talented tongue" comment floated in the air like a lost balloon.

She let the silence stretch out a bit, and then reached across the coffee table, took Darlene's right hand in her own, and licked her lips, "Tell me, dear sister, is his penis as talented?"

I shifted in my seat and struggled to keep a neutral expression as the two women discussed my sexual performance. I couldn't imagine a more awkward conversation.

Darlene eyes widened in surprise at Sheila's question and then narrowed in thoughtful reflection for several moments.

"His thing is untrained, and it doesn't work as well as his mouth. Sometimes my lover can't get it up or keep it up. Other times, his pecker has a mind of its own. He often suffers from premature ejaculation when he eventually does generate an erection."

Sheila glanced over at me and raised an inquiring eyebrow. I just blushed and did my best to sink out of sight. I tried to avoid any response that might further extend the discussion. Darlene had a tendency to overshare information.

Turning toward her companion, Sheila asked, "Will you please show Darlene to her room and round up a few of the women to help unpack their vehicle, Lucia? I need to spend a few minutes on bringing Dennis up to speed on the ground rules for our colony. Please let the kitchen crew and the others know that we may be a little late for dinner."

With a fleeting kiss on my lips, Darlene rose and give Sheila a noticeably longer smooch as she followed Lucia out of the room. As the door closed, Sheila stood and beckoned me to follow her.

"Let's adjourn to the next room where we can relax. We've got a lot to talk about."

No doubt about it, I was a stranger in a very strange land.

Chapter 3

The next room turned out to be the bedroom Sheila shared with her partner, Lucia. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase and a trio of artistic watercolors of lightly-clad women adorned the golden-yellow walls of hand-hewn pine planks.

A queen-size, four-poster bed overlaid with a beautiful handmade quilt took up one wall. An antique handcrafted wrought iron table lamp with a stained-glass shade provided most of the light for the room. The remainder came in the form of the hazy glimmer of smoldering embers within the stone hearth.

An impressive bearskin carpeted the floor at the fireside, and scattered throw pillows promised comfy seating. Overall, the aura in the warm and dimly-lit room was pleasant and cozy.

The colony's mistress retrieved an amber-colored bottle and two glasses from the bookshelf and sat down on the furry surface.

"Would you care to join me in a glass of home-brewed brandy?" Sheila suggested. Her hand patted a spot next to her side, and she beckoned me to sit.

"Sure, but only if you make mine a double," I answered and lowered my body to the rug.

While I was tempted, I decided not to ask for a triple. Perhaps later, this will do for now.

I took a sip of the fragrant spirits. The silky-warm glow of liquid heaven slipped down my throat as smooth as glass.

"Tell me, Dennis, how at-ease are you with public displays of the human body?" Sheila invited before taking a swallow.

I near snorted the drink out of my nose as I coughed and choked in shock at her weird question.

"Don't gotta problem with casual nakedness," I said as I fought to regain my composure. "Back in the day, I visited lots of unclothed beaches in my lifetime."

"Did you undress or only visit as a voyeur?"

"Yes, I got as sunburned as everyone else. Why do you ask?"

"FYI, our dress code is clothing optional when we're home. Most of us go skyclad when we aren't working or cooking or if safety requires, we remain covered up. I'm glad you're comfortable with this," Sheila pulled her sweater over her head and revealed her braless chest.

I used to think myself as jaded as jewelry, and nothing would surprise me. Wrong.

She folded her garment, rose to her knees, unbuckled her blue denim trousers, and slid them down to her ankles. My eyes widened in wonder. Sheila wore no underwear, and her unclad body exhibited no trace of tan bands. My head spun.

The same dizzy sensation I had when standing at the edge of a cliff swept over me in a wave of cultural vertigo. I struggled to keep my mental balance. The standard familiar landmarks outlining the boundaries of acceptable behavior were either missing or obscured in this strange new world. After placing her jeans on top of her pullover, she leaned back on her pillow and closed her eyes.

"Ahhhhhh, much better. I'm getting to where I almost despise attire," she said with a deep sigh.

I took a second to examine Sheila's exposed body as I engraved the image in my memory for later replay. The moment might make more sense the next time around. Her tanned breasts had thus far won their war with gravity. Apart from some stretch marks, they were teenage-firm. Her attentive spirit and youthful voice belied her years.

Except for a few creases above a thin patch of reddish-brown hair, Sheila's toned and brown body was almost wrinkle-free. She was in better physical shape than women half her age. Whatever the years, the view was soft on the eyes.

Her face had the typical lines and weather-worn features of someone who spent most of their life outdoors. She blinked her eyes and caught me studying her body.

"Do I meet with your approval?"

Shit! Stone-cold busted.

"Aha, err, sorry," I blushed and half-smiled. "Didn't mean to stare, but I don't often find myself alone with a naked lady as attractive as you" I confessed.

"This whole thing is way too wild. Talk about being on the wrong side of easy; you're nude, and you tell me an entire flock of natural jaybirds is roosting beyond this door." My eyes darted about the room, "and, um, all this, this place is half-way to nowhere a dozen zip-codes from my comfort zone. I need time to process."

I hesitated for a moment and glanced about while I took deep cleansing breaths and tried to gather my wits. A mind is a terrible thing to lose.

"Take this cabin, for example, almost new, ten or fifteen years old at most, must have cost a fortune. What'd you guys do? Win the lottery or something?" I said, waving my arms about the room.

"You're either a wonderful guesser or a rather lucky boy. Luck is how this community came to be. Remember twenty years ago when everyone freaked out over an unclaimed seventy-five million dollar jackpot? We were the winners, the sisters and me," Sheila said with a wink.

"We cashed the ticket on the last day after taking a year to plan and establish a corporation to hold and claim the prize. We elected to fly under the radar. We didn't want the media attention. I'm sure you can understand." She caressed my thigh.

"You needed tons of supplies to build this place and the glen has no roads in or out. How the hell did you construct this mansion? "

"We cut and milled the wood we required on site. A French Canadian heavy-lift helicopter service hauled in everything necessary to complete this building and several utility structures. I'll give you and Darlene a tour tomorrow," Sheila offered.

I nodded as my fingers searched my shirt-pocket. A butt would calm my nerves.

I held my tobacco-filled tube before Sheila and inquired, "Okay with you if I light up?"

"Shit! Fags?" She took the tin case from my other hand and emptied two and set them next to her body.

Sheila gave me one before rolling on her stomach. Her legs spread a little wider for increased stability as she inched forward and reached for an unburned sprig to use as a match.

Her bare buttocks were on vivid display. So was the scenery in the valley between. The little guy in my shorts stiffened in response.

Down boy! I better learn manners if bare-assed is the new normal. Woodies wouldn't cut it.

I lit my cancer-stick and took a thoughtful drag while I studied Sheila as she worked to ignite her twig. I tapped her leg and presented my torch.

Sheila relaxed against her cushion for the next few minutes and puffed away at her first cigarette in years. "Thanks! I had forgotten how much I enjoyed nicotine." She laughed and blew a perfect smoke ring, smiled, and exhaled another.

"My treat. Plenty more in the car."

My eyes followed the misty circles until they dissolved in the shadows. I was impressed. Not many smokers can blow quality cloud-circles.

"How many cigarettes is quote-plenty-unquote?" Sheila asked as her fingers did quotes around the last word.

"Oh? About twenty-four thousand, enough to fill two-hundred cartons, should last a few years," I told Sheila about my bulk tobacco purchase in Rifle, Colorado.

My eyes kept drifting back to her chest and down to her thighs as we talked.

"I recognize staring is rude. You're a beautiful woman. I'm having a difficult time keeping my wandering eyes at home." I twitched.

"Obviously," she chuckled. "Don't worry. I didn't give you much warning. I was testing you. I wanted to find out how you handle female nudity. You did fine," Sheila replied with a grin. "To be honest, I'm flattered when anyone, even a man admires my body." She stated and smiled at my crotch.

"I understand the usual nudist norms. Unwanted sexual aggression ain't welcome. You being au naturel doesn't give me permission to grope or gawk. I got this."

I averted my eyes and rested my hand on my lap, for safety's sake.

"Hmm, almost a feminist viewpoint. Not bad for a man. Perhaps you'll fit in." Sheila stretched and stood on her tiptoes as circulation returned to her legs.

"Dinner-time is almost over. We gotta' hustle if we wanna eat," my hostess said and extended her hand.

I have the creaky joints of a man twice my years.

Chapter 4

The dining area was located just off a large commercial kitchen at the far end of the great room. A supersized picnic table lined with benches provided more than enough seating capacity for the thirty-seven females who made the colony their home. The table itself was a stunning thing of beauty. Over the years the dozens of layers of polyurethane on the table's oak planking had been sanded to a mirror smooth finish.

I took a good hard look around as we descended the stairs. Designed to appear humble, at least from a distance, the cabin functioned as a state of the art survival factory with enough solar capacity on the roof to meet the needs of several large households. All the lighting in the cabin utilized LED bulbs. The thousands of icicle lights deployed around the great room drew less power than two or three seventy-five watt bulbs.

The air temperature in the hall hovered at a pleasant twenty-two degrees centigrade. Most of the sisters of the colony were gathered in animated conversations around the expansive dining table, which Sheila said doubled as a conference table for group meetings. All the ladies were topless, and many were bottomless. Never before had I seen so much exposed female flesh in one place at one time.

In a daze, I tried to process a torrent of new information. I was kinda prepared for the sight before me thanks to Sheila's sudden introduction to public nudity. However, nothing Darlene had said prepared me for the strange reality of actually being here.

One of the women spotted us and shouted out a greeting to Sheila before we even descended a third of the way down the staircase. A naked Darlene waited for me with a hug by the time we reached the bottom.

My lady-love whispered in my ear as we embraced, "Give me a long, wet, sloppy kiss and play with my ass. I'll explain later."

I learned long ago that obedience was the best course of action when Darlene gave a command like that. We locked lips and traded spit in one of the most passionate kisses we’d shared in a long time. As I held her, I ran my hands over her and lovingly caressed her bare bottom.

Darlene let out a low moan. My hands cupped each cheek as I jiggled them so much she burst out laughing which ended in a loud 'yelp' when I playfully smacked her ass.

"What was that for?" she whispered.

"Payback for your excessively detailed account of my sexual deficiencies," I whispered back.

Darlene giggled, gave me a quick kiss, took my hand, and pulled me in toward the serving line, "You've got to get some supper before it's all gone. It's venison stew, and it is absolutely delicious."

Flavored with an assortment of tasty vegetables that I couldn't identify, the stew was thick, hearty, and spicy. She was right. The taste was out-of-this-world delicious. After allowing me a few minutes to eat, Darlene started to introduce me to each of the sisters.

My lady love possessed a natural ability to remember names. I, on the other hand, had already forgotten the first by the time I had been introduced to the third sister.

As I met each member of the colony, I shook hands, made and kept eye contact (to avoid staring at their naked bodies), and repeated their names in a futile effort to drill each one into my memory. Most of the women responded warmly to my introduction, but several were very reserved, if not hostile. A few of the sisters clearly had “man issues,” most likely the result of some abusive male in their history.

I couldn't say that I blame them. I could understand how my presence might be disquieting, to say the least, if I joined a remote all woman community to put the world of men behind me.

An attractive sandy blonde named Alice was the next to last woman I was introduced to. She was well-endowed, and a dark golden tan like the rest. I guessed her age to be about fifty, and stretch marks on her somewhat saggy breasts and her stomach suggested that she had given birth at least once in her life. She seemed genuinely happy to meet me. She gave me a radiant smile and held onto my hand far longer than is customary.

Alice turned to the young girl sitting next to her, and said, "This is my daughter, Starshine, and she's been living in the colony since she was three years old. You're the first man she's ever met. She just celebrated her eighteenth birthday two months ago."

I bowed and shook Star's hand as I wished her a belated birthday while doing my best to make and keep eye contact. Alice's daughter was drop dead gorgeous with small, perky breasts, and a slim elfin and athletic figure adorned in a beautiful amber tan. She had bright blue eyes and wore her waist-length blonde hair in a braid, which made her look like a young Scandinavian fashion model. She was, in a word, stunning.

I had a hunch that I wouldn't earn points from her mother if I started drooling over her nude daughter, so I kept my cool even as I felt the stirring in my shorts. Thank the Lord I was still fully dressed.

Her mother must have been a mind reader. Alice took my hand and pulled me close and asked, "Why are you still dressed, Dennis? Why don't you strip down and make yourself comfortable?"

I noticed her question elicited a few murmurs of agreement, including a nod from Sheila, and an, "'I'll second that motion" from Darlene.

"Moved and seconded. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye," Sheila announced in the voice of a true parliamentarian. A loud chorus of ayes filled the hall.

Sheila then called for the “no” vote; crickets. I half-heartedly raised my hand and quietly said, "No." My vote was as much a joke as an opinion.

Sheila smiled at me and said, "Hearing minimal opposition, I declare that the ayes have it. Motion carries."

After a long pause, Sheila said, "Okay, Dennis, you heard the vote. Now it's your turn."

Chapter 5

Stripping would be awkward. Getting naked in front of a group of nude women was the last thing I wanted to do, especially while in the process of being so obviously aroused. I decided that I had no choice but to comply. I would eventually have to join the clothing optional norm of the colony.

Taking a deep breath, I braced myself and unbuttoned my shirt, and laid it on the table before removing my shoes and socks and placing them next to my shirt. I undressed as slowly as possible, trying to drag things out for as long as I could in hopes my junk would settle down.

I undid my belt, unzipped my jeans, let them slide down to my ankles, and stepped out of my pants. I tossed them into the air with a flip of my foot, caught them with my free hand, folded my jeans, and laid them on the table.

I remembered how my mother always told me to wear clean underwear in the unlikely event I had to go to the hospital. I prayed that there were no visible racing stripes marking me as I stood in my tighty-whities. A small but noticeable bulge was making a tent in my shorts. I could feel myself blushing as I noticed Alice and her daughter staring at me with interest. All the colony's sisters seemed to pay close attention to developments in fact.

The attention on my private parts by so many women produced a chilling effect on me. A wave of apprehension spread across my body. Being naked was the ultimate in performance anxiety. I knew that my junk was about as average as you could get. If the girls expected a well-endowed porn star, I would not measure up.

I removed my T-shirt next, folded it, and placed it on top of my jeans. I stood dressed only in my underwear for a few moments as I worked up the nerve for the final act. I debated with myself; I didn't have much choice: I could either chicken out, or I could drop my drawers.

Well, I would give them a show since they apparently wanted one. I slowly lowered my shorts and exposed a patch of light gray and brown hair. I paused and then turned away from the table and slowly slid my shorts to a half-mast position, leaving my rear end partly exposed. I slowly lowered them to my knees after another dramatic pause and then let them drop to my ankles.

I turned around, faced the women, and did an exaggerated bow from the waist with my arms spread wide. I heard Alice's daughter giggle. There was a smattering of happy, amused laughter from the sisters.

Thank God! My fear and stalling tactics worked; I had shrunk to the point where my prick was only semi-stiff, halfway between flaccid and hard.

"Well done and nicely played," Sheila said with a smile, as she gave me a thumbs up.

"I think this would be a good time for you to introduce yourself to our group, Dennis. Why don't you take a few minutes and tell us about yourself?" Alice suggested.

"Thank you, Alice. That's an excellent suggestion. You have the floor, Dennis," Sheila said.

Chapter 6

The sisters' leader was testing me. Earlier she had wanted to know if nudity by the colony's women would bother me. Now she was testing the sisters to find out if my nudity would bother them; quite clever actually.

I'd done my share of public speaking over the years, but it was different this time. There's a certain something about standing naked in front of an audience which compels honesty. I decided to give a very brief and unvarnished account of my life thus far. I stood in thought with my head bowed for a minute or so.

Two things worked for me during this interlude; the first was an old showman's trick: keep the audience in suspense by never starting on time.

The second was a political trick: use any extended silence to focus your mind and gather your wits. Show your audience that you're thoughtful and caring, or as my dad used to say, “Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made.” While I spoke I was going to read the body language of my audience to gauge my reception.

"Hello. My name is Dennis Nathan Richards, and I was born in New Haven, Connecticut. I am a retired Vietnam Veteran with a one hundred percent unemployable disability from exposure to Agent Orange while in Saigon. I served four years in the United States Air Force, mostly in Japan and Vietnam.”

“What did you do after you got out of service?” Alice asked.

“I joined a local branch of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and spent the next three years marching to end the war. When it ended, I joined the Army.”

“Wow!” said one of the sisters.

“Why? I thought you were against war?” Sheila asked with a concerned shadow of a smile as her puzzled eyes searched my face for something she couldn’t see.

"I am against war, but I'm not opposed to fighting to defend my country or speaking out when it messes up. It's a citizen's duty to do both. I like to think of myself as a well armed pacifist.

“I was broke. One day, I happened across a bunch of Army reservists doing weekend duty at the Mall. They were recruiting and desperate to make quota. We got to talking. The Captain told me if I joined that weekend, I could enlist as a Sergeant E-5 and I would draw pay at that rank during the two weeks of active duty at Fort Drum in New York. Because I was prior service, I didn’t need to go through Army Basic Training. It sounded like a good idea at the time. I needed the coin. I enlisted.

I searched the faces of the sisters while I spoke as I tried to access my ability to engage each woman at a deeper and more positive level. I was, in essence, trying to seduce a room full of naked lesbians. Talk about your lost cause.

"You can stop me at any time if you want to ask a question. I would rather this be a dialogue and not a monolog," I said in an effort to break the ice.

The invitation to ask questions resulted in one brown-haired woman tentatively raising her hand. I asked her to remind me of her name, and she said, "My name is Amelia. One question ... you said you got a monthly disability check from the VA. What kind of disability? You seem to be in good shape."

"Good question, Amelia. My disability is mostly invisible. Type II diabetes because of exposure to Agent Orange while in Vietnam. And, more specifically, severe neuropathy in my right hand and in my feet, which is a side-effect of diabetes."

"What are the effects of your neuropathy?" Amelia asked as a follow-up question.

"Neuropathy is nerve damage as a result of too much sugar in my blood. In my case, the result is numbness and tingling in my hands and feet. The other effect is rather embarrassing," I said as I paused. I was not sure how much detail I wanted to get into.

"Don’t stop there. Please explain," Amelia asked as she pressed me for more information.

"Well, sometimes I, um, it's difficult to get it up and keep it up," I reluctantly volunteered to the group.

Amelia and several of her sisters nodded. I noticed that Sheila and Alice were paying very close attention to the conversation.

"The result sometimes is a limp dick, for lack of better words, when the nerves connecting my prick to my brain shut down due to high sugar levels," I answered.

Several sisters responded with stifled laughter or nervous giggles and additional follow-up questions. Sex is always an interesting conversation. I had their attention, at least.

"Can you still orgasm?" Alice asked with a look of concern on her face.

"Yes. Even when flaccid, a guy can still ejaculate. It just takes a little more effort, and it's not nearly as much fun," I explained.

"I don't understand. Darlene says you're a fantastic lover. How can that be if you don't get hard?" Alice asked. I heard several sisters say, "I was wondering the same thing."

"My goal or mission as a lover is to provide the necessary emotional and physical stimulation required for my partner in achieving an orgasm. I do that orally," I said.

Standing stark naked in front of a table full of attractive and nude women while talking about orgasms and oral sex was having unintended consequences. I could feel myself begin to stiffen. There was no way to hide my growing arousal.

"I thought you said that you couldn't get hard, but you apparently can," one of the women observed.

"Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The little guy has a mind of its own, and I can never depend on him to respond as I want. It's all rather embarrassing and frustrating," I explained as I shared far more information than I wanted.

Looking at several sisters' body language, I saw signs of what looked like sexual responses from about half of them. Many leaned forward a bit more than usual, necks and chests rose tinted with excitement, faces relaxed and smiling or friendly neutral. Body postures showed a focused interest. At some primal level, pheromones floated like mist in the air, and our bodies were responding.

I looked down at my gradually stiffening member and covered myself with my hand. "Sorry about that, but all this talk about sex and stuff seems to be having an effect on my hardware, as I'm sure everyone can see. My junk never seems to respond as I wish, as I said, it's all rather awkward." I could feel the heat of a blush burn across my body.

Darlene came to my rescue. She walked up to me and gave me a big hug and lingering kiss, and then turned to face her companions while holding my free hand. "I think Dennis is thinking about the lovemaking session we'll have when we go to bed," she said with a foxy grin.

She started to rub my backside while she stood next to me, much to her sisters' amusement. The sensation of her warm hands massaging my bare behind did nothing to diminish my arousal. Under her playful touch, I continued to stiffen to about three-quarters firm, a little less than four inches.

Looking out over my audience of colony members, I noticed that they were all paying close attention to the interplay between Darlene and me. I was at a loss for words and didn't know how, or if I should continue or try to beat a hasty retreat.

"Don't be embarrassed by getting excited, Dennis. It's a natural event. We all get sexually aroused from time to time; it is just that your state of arousal is slightly more noticeable than ours is," Sheila said.

Her statement got a chorus of chuckles and laughter from the sisters and did much to ease the tension that had been building in the room.

"I'll put it to a vote if it makes you feel better, however, Dennis. By a show of hands, how many of us would like Dennis to proceed with his self-introduction?" Sheila said as she raised her hand.

A unanimous show of hands joined with Sheila. The sisters wanted the show to go on. The vote left me both relieved and annoyed at the same time. I was glad I hadn't offended them, but I was still several zip codes away from my comfort zone. Exhibitionism had never been my thing.

I turned to Darlene who was still playing with my bare bottom and said, "Maybe now is not the best time for foreplay. Shall we continue this later?"

Darlene was as much of a ham as I was. With an exaggerated stage pout, she said, "You are such a tight ass. You need to learn to relax and have fun."

She jiggled my ass cheeks with both hands. The jiggle made my package dance in the air.

My mind went blank as I started to speak; I’d forgotten what I was going to say. "I'm having a senior moment. I just lost my train of thought. Are there any more questions while I try to get back on track?" I asked the women around me while I stalled.

Alice and several of her sisters raised their hands. I figured it would be an easy question, so I called on Alice.

"Since you're the only man in a community of lesbians, how do you feel about women who love women?" Alice asked as several of her companions nodded their approval of her question.

I began my answer by explaining how Darlene and I were on the brink of being homeless when she suggested that we could go and stay with a group of her college friends who lived off-the-grid. Not that it would have made a difference, but she never bothered to mention that our new home would be an all women survival colony. I was completely unprepared for what I found when we arrived on their doorstep.

"This is all unexplored territory for me, and I am winging it the best way that I can. I believe it is a right for everyone to love anyone of his or her choice. I doubt that we have much control when it comes to selecting our sexual identity. We are who we are. I don't remember deciding to be heterosexual. It is just who I am. The real question is, how do you feel about having a man living among you in this beautiful colony? Because, as we all know, men can be real dicks, no pun intended, " I said to an outburst of laughter.

"I noticed that several folks here did not seem too happy with my presence when I was speaking earlier. I suspect that personal experience with abusive males is likely the source of this negative attitude. Let me tell you this, I know a thing or two about abusive men. A male babysitter raped me when I was twelve years old," I explained.

The sisters responded with a collective gasp. Alice looked shocked; her daughter stared at me with wide eyes and an open mouth as her hand shot into the air with an inquiry.

"How did it happen? How did it make you feel? Was it traumatic?" Starshine asked me in a series of rapid-fire questions.

"Without going into gory details, it happened after I got severely sunburned. My babysitter walked in as I got out of the shower. I was naked, and he offered to give me a massage after he took his shower. A naked pedophile giving a nude boy a massage … what could possibly go wrong? The rest is, as they say, history.”

The silence remained. I continued. “As to how it made me feel; I felt used and humiliated. I was there exclusively for his sexual pleasure as far as that bastard was concerned. He didn't see me as a person. I resented it, and I vowed I would never treat a fellow human the way he treated me. I didn't hate men when it was over, but I didn't trust them. I dislike the way too many men treat other people, especially females," I explained.

"How do you feel about gay men?" one of the sisters asked without raising her hand.

"As I said before, I believe that everyone has a right to love anyone of his or her affection. I think most of us occupy some point on the sexual spectrum. Very few of us are born one hundred percent straight or one hundred percent gay. Almost all of us are born on one side or the other of the rainbow of possibilities. Does that answer your question?" I asked.

Nodding heads told me I had.

"What happens when you get an erection at a nude beach?" another sister asked.

I laughed, "I either sit down and wait for it to pass, or I go behind a bush and take care of business."

"What would you do if you end up staying with us?" Sheila asked.

Sheila was everything anyone could want in a leader. She was thoughtful and measured in her approach to unexpected problems. I was an unexpected problem. I knew her questions weren't accidental. It was all a test to determine whether I stayed or went away. My problem was that I had no way of knowing what the right answers might be. My only option was to roll the dice, tell the truth, and hope for the best.

"You and your sisters have built something here that is amazing, unique, and precious, Sheila. The protection and continued safety of this community is a top priority. I can understand why some might view me, as a man, to be a possible threat to this family. I am who I am, and there's nothing I can do to change that," I said.

We were now talking about the elephant in the room, and the hall had become silent as each woman considered my words. I raised my right hand and faced Sheila.

"I vow to do everything in my power to help this colony continue to succeed under your leadership," I said while making eye contact with the group's leader. "The world outside this valley is changing into something very ugly and dangerous. We live in troubled times, and I think that having a man among you might be useful. I would like to be that man, and I will place the safety of your sisters ahead of my own if you allow it."

I lowered myself to one knee before Sheila, crossed my arms over my chest, and bowed my head when I finished speaking. I held my position as I waited for Sheila to speak. It may have been a bit melodramatic, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I had once seen it done in a movie.

The silence seemed to stretch out forever, but I didn't move. I did a long count in my head to track the time. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, and Sheila broke the silence when I got to fifty-three Mississippi.

"That's a compelling offer, and I appreciate your apparent sincerity, Dennis. It's very moving. Truth be told. However, I don't know you well enough to trust you with the lives of our family. I can't give you trust that you haven't yet earned. I will allow you to remain among us as my guest until I make a final determination as to your status here. We will revisit this question in two weeks. You will not attempt to leave our company in the meantime..." Sheila paused before she continued "...do you understand?"

She was not making an optional suggestion; this was a stone cold command. I didn't want to find out what would happen if I disobeyed.

"Thank you, Sheila, I can't ask for more. You have my word of honor," I replied, as I resumed a standing position.

At least my status had been clarified; I was a guest/prisoner of the group's leader.

The serious discussion didn't arouse me as much as the sexy questions. My little guy got bored and decided that it was time for a nap. I took the opportunity to wrap up my “brief” introduction as quickly as possible.

"I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you, and I'm thankful for your generous hospitality. I will do my best as your guest to carry my own weight for as long as I'm under your roof," I concluded.

The applause of the sisterhood caught me by surprise. While not over the top wild, it was polite and lasted about twenty seconds.

Chapter 7

As the applause died down, I returned to my seat and sat next to Sheila and tried to relax. I was drained, sweaty, and exhausted, as if I had run a marathon. Darlene gave me a warm hug and a glass of chilled ice water and sat with me. I don't know which I appreciated more; her company, the hug, or the beverage. I guzzled it down in one long gulp. Public speaking is lonely and thirsty work.

The sisters stopped by in ones and twos to exchange small talk with Sheila before retiring for the evening. That was the cover story, at least. I noticed after the third such “visit” that most of the women seemed to spend more time sneaking glances at my crotch than they did in conversation with their leader.

Great; I was now either the object of sexual curiosity or, at the very least, a diversion in the colony's daily routine. It had been some time since most of the women in the cabin had been with a man, with or without clothes. I sympathized with animals in the zoo. Maybe I should charge admission.

Sheila stood and stretched after too long sitting on an uncomfortable wooden bench without padding. "I'll show you both to your quarters if you two are willing to call it a night."

After several minutes, the last of the group drifted away to their rooms.

The colony's sleeping quarters were on the second level balcony that ringed the rectangular shaped Great Room. I did a quick count; there were twenty-four doorways in total, seven on each side of the long axes, and five each on the short sides of the rectangle.

located on the western balcony above the cabin's Great Room, the room reserved for Darlene and I appeared to be identical in size and layout as Sheila's quarters. The sleeping space was stunning in its simplicity. The walls had the same pine paneling that we had seen earlier, with wide planks of Gambel Oak for flooring, and exposed wood beams supporting the white plaster ceiling.

A colorful handmade antiquated quilt adorned a queen-sized bed on the wall opposite a large picture window. I paused for a moment and looked out over the moonlight bathed sleeping valley. In the distance, the shadows of mountains rose like sentinels into a sky ablaze with stars.

The belongings we had brought with us on our journey nearly filled a huge walk-in closet. I was pleased to see that my tobacco stash had also been unpacked. At the far end of the closet there was a small windowless half-bath with an "Out Of Order" sign affixed to the door. Sheila advised me that a communal shower was located two doors to the left when I asked where I could bathe.

I had to admire the cabin's design efficiency. The half baths used a minimum of plumbing and were handy for midnight relief, while the community showers were for general hygiene. Sheila wished us a good night and left us alone.

As I started to prepare for my shower, Darlene wrapped her arms around me and gave me a hug and a smooch that was almost violent in its intensity.

"I'm so damn horny, Dennis! I want you to make love to me," she said as she took my hands and pulled me next to her on the bed.

"Your wish is my command," I replied, and slowly began to kiss Darlene's face.

I tenderly stroked her eyelids and cheeks and lightly traced the point of my tongue across her welcoming lips and followed with kisses under her chin as I moved down and nibbled along the nape of her neck. I traversed the edge of her collarbone to her shoulders' rounded crest before reversing direction and gently kissed the side of her neck.

Darlene's steady breathing changed into little pants punctuated by low moans as I circled her face with affection. I tenderly stroked her eyelids and cheeks and lightly traced the point of my tongue across her welcoming lips and followed with kisses under her chin as I moved down and nibbled along the nape of her neck. I traversed the edge of her collarbone to her shoulders' rounded crest before reversing direction and gently kissed the side of her neck.

Darlene's steady breathing changed into little pants punctuated by low moans as my hand moved to the inside of my lover's thighs as she parted her legs and allowed me space to softly caress her sensitive skin. She held her breath as my advancing fingers danced along the edge of her pleasure. She gasped and shuddered as I ventured ever deeper.

Darlene's whimper was whisper-quiet, and her body glistened with desire as her body took on a deep reddish blush. Her soft moans became steadily louder as her arousal grew in anticipation of my touch while I visited and stimulated each erogenous zone in turn.

I felt the tension building within as she trembled and her muscles tightened in response to ever-building waves of desire.

As I slid forward in search of her special place, Darlene lifted her hips in welcome and twisted her body to meet my lips. The point of my tongue gathered her dew as I celebrated and relished every luscious drop.

With the tip of my tongue acting like a magnifying glass in a beam of sunlight, I narrowed the focus of her thrill as I guided each particle of delight toward the center of her joy. Women have twice as many nerve endings there as men do. I wanted every strand to be on fire with desire.

"Oh, mercy, yes! Don't, uh, Oh my God! Don't stop!" she shouted as her body started to shake and quiver.

Darlene's climax exploded in a series of spasms, her legs went stiff, and then kicked and thrashed about as she moaned, "Yes! That's it. Oh yeah!" I relaxed the pressure a tiny bit and then redoubled my efforts as I stimulated all points at the same time as each wave passed.

I knew I was finished when she moved me away. I wiped my face with my hand and scooted up and rested alongside my lover's body. I held her close to me, and we cuddled together and basked in the warm afterglow of euphoria.

Savoring Darlene's lips, I innocently inquired, "Did I make you happy?" It was a stupid question, but I loved hearing the answer. It was my report card.

"You were absolutely fantastic, Dennis, and you know it! My sweetheart, I came so many times that I lost count," she said as she hugged me as tightly as she was able.

"That was only the first installment. Are you ready for part two?"

I kissed her skin in a line under her navel and whispered, "Turn over."

She eagerly obeyed. I straddled her and began to massage her bare backside and the inside of her loins. The heavenly and musky scent of lust rose from Darlene like steam. I savored the sweet/tart taste of her excitement.

I proceeded to lick and explore the pathways of desire. Each pass was a little faster than the previous one as I teased and pushed her toward the brink. Darlene suddenly arched her back and screamed, "Oh my lord! Oh, Dennis, yes!"

Darlene's entire body tensed in a screaming, nearly ear-splitting shriek of passion as she reached the top of her peak and kept climbing. Her contractions of bliss squeezed like a pulsating vise in one surge of ecstasy after another before she lay still.

"God Almighty! Do you think you can make any more fucking noise?" I scolded.

"I doubt it, but I can try," she chuckled as she tried to catch her breath.

"I had been telling my sisters what a fantastic lover you are while you were meeting with Sheila, but I don't think they believed me, so I decided to let them hear for themselves. Besides, you need all the publicity you can get," Darlene explained.

"Why would I need any advertising?"

"Tonight, I think they all heard how hard you make a girl come. You now have a reputation to uphold, Mr. Talented Tongue. A few of my friends might want you to give them personal tutoring if I know them."

"And you would be okay with that?" I asked as I gave her a skeptical eye.

"Of course, I would be, just as long as you make sure your students use me for the final exam," Darlene laughed with a wink.

"Okay, okay, I'll think about it," I said as I lowered my mouth and began again. It had been a long day, but the night was still young.

Chapter 8

The bright glow of morning sunshine reflected off the snow-capped western mountains and cascaded through our bedroom window, filling every corner with light. Some part of my sleeping brain registered the change in illumination and curiosity teased my eyes open.

My initial reaction was a momentary disconcerting sense of confusion that we all feel when waking up in a brand new place for the first time.

The mountains dazzled white and magnificent against the brilliant blue sky; Darlene slumbered next to me as naked as a newborn child. Her freckled face had a relaxed innocence of deep sleep.

The fog of confusion lifted within a few moments as I remembered yesterday’s journey to the colony. I became acutely aware of important business requiring my immediate attention; my full bladder and a rock solid chunk of morning wood demanded relief. I felt like a star of one of those annoying TV commercials featuring old men and their “urgent need to go.”

I got out of bed and raced (if you can call a stiff-legged gait racing) toward the bedroom door. I paused for a second to scan the room for a set of underwear to cover my nakedness. Increasing pressure on my bladder warned me not to delay. I exited the bedroom and moved toward the community bathroom as quickly as I could.

As luck would have it, none of the sisters were visible on our side of the balcony. My luck changed the instant I entered the bathroom. Alice was lathering up under the shower, and her nude daughter was brushing her teeth at a complex of sinks under a wall-sized mirror. Mother and daughter turned to stare at my erection and me, as I made a beeline for the toilet.

Standing before the open bowl, I glanced around at my unwanted audience and tried to take care of business. It’s an unpleasant fact that every man knows: pissing with a hardon is a challenging, if not impossible task.

Males have an annoying little valve inside the prostate gland called a sphincter. Its job is to control urine flow in the urethra, and it is directly above the two ejaculatory ducts that carry sperm from the testicles. The system is part of a man’s hard-wiring, designed to prevent sperm and piss from mixing. With a raging boner, the shut-off valve remains closed until the wood wilts.

Maneuvering my junk in a downward direction was painful and awkward. I managed to dribble out a pathetic little creek instead of a mighty stream of golden relief. It was just enough to reduce the internal pressure on my bladder, which in turn relaxed the pressure on my prostate gland and allowed my little guy to relax. The dribble swelled into a yellow river of pure relief, leaving my toes tingling as I returned to a flaccid state.

“That was fascinating, I’ve never seen a boy do that before,” Star said in a quiet voice.

Modesty wasn’t a priority in the design of the bathroom, showers and walls were tiled and open, as were the toilets. Privacy was non-existent.

“He’s not a boy, he’s a man,” Alice said, as she corrected her daughter’s choice of nouns.

I turned my head to see Alice behind me toweling her hair dry. Alice’s gaze, like her daughter’s, fixated on my privates.

Great! A mother and daughter inspection team. Just what I needed.

I decided that I might as well clean up from last night. I stepped under the shower Alice had vacated and turned the water on to the hottest setting that I could stand. Maybe a cloud of steam would offer some privacy.

Crap! I had no soap.

“Alice, could I borrow your soap please?” I asked.

“My pleasure,” Alice answered, as she joined me under the shower and started lathering my back.

I tried to figure out a polite way to discourage Alice’s hands-on assistance when her daughter joined us and proceeded to lather my legs. The sensation of two sets of hands caressing my body vanquished whatever objections I had over getting woman-handled. I could probably force myself to get used to pampering with a little bit of effort.

“You need to clean all his body parts, Star,” Alice said, as she ran her hand between my butt cheeks and scrubbed with her fingers. “Turn around so that we can do your front, Dennis,” she said, as her hands turned my body to face them.

Alice soaped up my chest, and Star soaped my legs. I closed my eyes and let them do their thing as hot water rolled off my back. The sensation was incredible and arousing as the mother’s hands scrubbed downwards and her daughter’s small hands caressed upward. I wondered what would happen when their hands met at my private parts in the middle; maybe they would arm wrestle for cleaning privileges.

“Am I supposed to clean his thing?” Star asked her mother.

"Yes, it also needs to be cleaned,” Alice instructed her daughter.

I looked down to see Star kneeling before me. She was at eye level, and only a few inches away from the beginnings of something interesting. Star looked at me and back at her mother who nodded her head.

Star reached her hands out, and with a tentative and delicate touch, began to apply soap to my patch of hair. She grew bolder and spread the soapy lather along the length of my growing interest as her fingers created a flurry of lavender scented soap suds.

I seriously doubt that Star had any idea of how her touch was affecting me. Her mother, on the other hand, knew damn well what was happening as she proceeded to “help” her daughter by circling my guy with her thumb and fingers and stroking him with enthusiasm.

Alice abandoned all pretenses at cleaning after a few minutes of pumping and moved full throttle into giving me a hand job. Alice had locked eyes with mine. She was smiling and unblinking as we made and kept intense eye contact.

“I will ejaculate if you keep this up, Alice,” I warned her.

“I know,” Alice said as she rubbed her fingers around the tip in playful circles. The tempo of her strokes increased and abruptly ceased.

I looked down to see what was going on, or not going on in this case. Alice was guiding her daughter’s hand to a glistening drop of dew which had formed at the opening. Mother and daughter both shared the common signs of arousal. The ladies stood stiff and hard, and a rosy blush added a glow to their faces.

“Notice how slippery it feels, Star. Men produce it to help lubricate a woman to make penetration more enjoyable for both parties,” Alice instructed her daughter.

The intense look of serious curiosity and wonder on Star’s face almost made me laugh. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Star pulled a pad of paper out and started taking notes. I let out a groan of pleasure when her mother touched another drop with her finger and smeared it around the surface.

“Dennis will make more if you continue to stimulate him,” Alice said, as she caressed the length of my shaft and, several drops of fluid oozed out of me almost on command. Below deck, I could feel the pressure building, and my legs began to shake as my body tensed. I was close to going over the edge.

“Are you in there, Dennis?” Darlene’s voice called as the door to the bathroom swung open.

“Come on in, Darlene, the water’s fine,” I answered with a less than steady voice.

A nude Darlene took a few steps into the bathroom before she stopped and surveyed the situation. Her eyes widened at the sight of the mother and daughter pleasuring me. Darlene’s mouth opened in a mischievous grin, and she started to laugh.

“It didn’t take you too long to introduce yourself to my friends. It looks like Alice and her daughter have the situation well in hand,” Darlene punned with a chuckle.

Darlene walked over to Alice and whispered something into her ear. Alice’s only response was to giggle, nod, and stroke even faster.

“I’m close,” I groaned.

As I passed the point of no return and my toes began to curl, I could feel a hot rushing sensation building up in my groin, and my body went rigid as a wave of pleasure began to rush upwards in search of release.

Alice reached behind my body when I let out a long moan, slid her free hand between my cheeks and plunged her index finger deep into my rear, and wiggled it to and fro. The intense pleasure I was feeling suddenly kicked into overdrive as my brain released an additional surge of endorphins.

I exploded in a wave of pure ecstasy and gratification while her surprised daughter tried to catch my stuff in her hands.

“That was interesting. Can you do it again?” Star asked as she cleaned her fingers under the stream of hot water from the shower.

“Err, not likely. I need to recharge.”

I sympathized with Jack in his box. My little guy is a one hit wonder. The show is over, and the music stops when the monkey pops.

Small talk after sex with strangers is not my strong suit. Nor is a ‘show and tell’ clinical discussion of orgasms and ejaculations. Especially with a naked and innocently curious daughter in the company of an equally undressed and aroused mother. I was a lab-rat running a maze between awkward and weird. I needed a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

Darlene and I returned to our bedroom a few minutes later, and my partner burst out laughing.

“Alice is very proud of her homeschooling skills,” she replied when I asked her what was so funny. “She told me last night that she was thankful a man showed up at the colony. You arrived just in time to help teach her daughter advanced sex education.”

My roommate’s eyes glistened with glee. “Apparently the curriculum includes lots of hands-on fieldwork, and there is a killer oral exam she’ll have to pass if she wants to graduate, from what I understand,” Darlene laughed as she patted my bare fanny.

Chapter 9

We returned to our room after breakfast to find a note from Sheila pinned to our door. She was reminding us to join her on the front deck for an introductory tour of the colony and the surrounding area. The instructions also suggested that we dress for the weather.

Our walk-in closets looked like walk-in dumpsters. Everything we had brought with us in the RAV4 had been piled in the storage spaces like an unorganized jigsaw puzzle. I busied myself picking out an appropriate wardrobe for our tour.

I selected my favorite Indiana Jones style hat; a dark-brown, fur-felt fedora which had cost a small fortune. I bought it online a few years ago in the mistaken belief it made me look like Harrison Ford. Fedoras are some of the most practical headgear known to man. The wide brim keeps the sun out of your eyes and sheds rainwater like a mini-umbrella.

I customized the hat with the addition of an eagle's feather I had acquired at a yard sale. It counted as contraband since I didn't belong to a federally recognized tribe. Non-native people are prohibited by law from possessing eagle plumage and could be fined as much as a hundred thousand dollars and sent to prison for up to a year.

Deciding to take the risk for the sake of fashion, I stuck the feather into the hatband, which was adorned with a small enamel replica of the red-yellow-green Vietnam service ribbon that I had earned when I finished my tour in Vietnam. Considering the remote location of our mountain hideaway, it was unlikely we would run into any federal feather police. I preened in front of the full-length mirror, wearing nothing except for my hat, a beaded necklace with the same ribbon colors, and a smile.

The handmade necklace was a work of art created by Paul Lavoie, a fellow Vietnam Veteran who'd succumbed to the effects of Agent Orange. I never met the man, but after he died, his sister gave me the necklace under the conditions that I wear it in his memory and never take it off. I honor the man and his legacy by mentioning his name and story whenever someone asks me about the necklace.

"You're so vain that you probably think this song is about you..." Darlene sang in a perfect imitation of Carly Simon as she gave me a warm hug. "Wow, the cowboy hat makes you look sexy."

"It's not a cowboy hat, it's a fedora," I replied with a grin.

"Well, it's a very sexy fedora," Darlene whispered into my ear as she pressed her nude body against my backside.

Her hands reached around me and began to fondle my semi-flaccid equipment. The incredibly sensual feeling of her slender fingers delicately caressing the length of my shaft almost drove me out of my mind.

"I'm horny. Want to fool around?" Darlene asked.

"We're meeting Sheila in ten minutes; I don't think I can do it again so soon. Besides, we don't have the time," I answered.

"Ten minutes? Isn't that nine more than you usually last?" Darlene challenged.

I turned to face Darlene, dropped to my knees, and was eye level with her sex. I positioned both legs in a wide stance and glanced at my wristwatch. Using my fingers, I gently opened the cleft of the mons pubis to reveal a pink clitoral hood. Beads of lubricant and a reddish glow testified to Darlene's advanced state of arousal. She let out a little gasp and shifted her feet to maintain balance as I kissed her in places the sun didn't shine.

I blew a cooling stream of air on the clit before placing my mouth over the little man in the boat and exhaled a hot breath. The contrasting sensations were like fire and ice. I followed each sequence by giving a rough tongue bath.

Darlene's legs began to quiver and tremble. She grabbed the back of my head to help steady herself and to maintain balance and pressed my face into her sex. Lick, blow, and suck, I increased the pace of my stimulation and was rewarded by a series of pants and grunts as Darlene's level of arousal increased. I slid my finger into my lover's vagina and stroked the rough G-spot with enthusiasm to speed her ascent as she climbed the mountain.

"Oh my God, I'm cumming," she cried, as waves of contractions squeezed around my finger.

She suddenly lost all control and my mouth filled with liquid as she squirted and urinated. She pushed my face away with her hands. I loved the sight of her contractions as Darlene's clit pulsed in climax and streams of liquid trickled down the inside of her legs.

I looked at my watch again and announced, "One minute, thirty seconds. I think that we have a new land speed record. Now we've got to hustle if we're going to be on time."

Darlene stood naked before me and tilted her head. With a woe-is-me face, she asked, "What about my afterglow?"

"Take it with you," I said, patting her bare behind.

Sheila was waiting for us with a warm smile when we arrived on the cabin's front deck more or less on time. I returned her smile as handed her a pack of hand-rolled cigarettes and a red Bic lighter. The shadows still held a hint of last night's frost despite clear blue skies and bright sunshine.

"Follow me," Sheila said as we set out on our tour of the Colony.

Our first stop was a utility building built into the base of the mountain with only the outer garage doors visible.

"This structure is designed to minimize the colony's visual footprint. We don't want to draw undue attention to our presence because of Google Earth and the plethora of available satellite imagery. Our continued survival is dependent upon us keeping low visibility, and we do our best to be invisible to the outside world," Sheila said, as she opened a set of outer doors to reveal a long dark tunnel blasted into the mountain's bedrock.

When Sheila entered the darkened corridor, motion sensors activated banks of overhead LED lighting which in turn illuminated the passageway for as far as the eye could see.

"Holy crap! You guys build this?" My words echoed off the walls.

The tunnel was a twenty-by-twenty-foot wide box ramping downward into the mountain's interior. The rough-hewn rock walls glistened with seepage and condensation. Drainage ditches lining each side of the corridor's crushed gravel roadway carried the excess water into the depths.

"The Liberty Mountain Mine was one of the several thousand hard-rock gold mines dotting the Rocky Mountains back in the 1860s. The claim, like many, never much amounted to anything. It went bust after three years. We took the existing mining shafts and adapted them to accommodate our fleet," Sheila explained.

The temperature gradually rose as we descended. About five minutes later we found ourselves in a large cavern containing a full-service automotive center, complete with a dozen vehicles of various descriptions. I spotted several snowmobiles, Jeep Cherokees, trucks of various makes and years, and ATVs, along with a few front-end loaders and small Bobcats. I saw our vehicle parked off to one side.

"Several sisters are excellent mechanics and many are skilled operators. They do a fantastic job keeping our fleet up and running," Sheila said as she led us to a tunnel at the back of the cavern.

We followed the lighted passageway for about eight-hundred meters into another expansive cavern so large that the roof and far walls were lost in darkness. The hot and humid air in the grotto hummed with energy; the distinct whine of three-megawatt steam-driven turbines filled the chamber with the low rumbling hum of power.

I was slack-jawed in disbelief. It looked like a scene out of the science fiction movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth. Piping and heavy machinery at the middle of the cave surrounded a huge complex of hot springs and heated pools of water on three sides. A single story control center occupied space on the side of the pond near where we stood.

Like waterfalls frozen in time, flowstone oozed down the walls of the cavern behind us. Stalactites reached toward the floor from the darkened ceiling, and thousands of stalagmites grew from the ground, some as massive as trees. We followed a well-worn path through the silent stone forest while batteries of strategically placed LED streetlights bathed the area around the lagoon in a glow of whitish-blue illumination. I noticed that motion detectors kicked the lights nearest us into high power when we came into the range of a lamp; it was like walking beneath a searchlight's moving beam.

"Let's stop by and say hello to the technicians on duty. We'll have a cup of coffee and some conversation. I'll tell you more about this amazing place." Sheila pointed to a two-story building about the size of a raised ranch and motioned for us to follow her. She climbed the exterior stairway and entered the building without knocking.

"Surprise!"

"No way, Sister. We've been watching you three on camera for the last twenty minutes," said a thirty-something brunette as she gave Sheila a warm hug.

The slender technician was dressed in a loose-fitting one-piece coverall. The zipper of the hunter green outfit was pulled down to her navel, and it was clear at a glance that she wore nothing under her outer garments. I recognized the woman as one of the sisters from last night's meeting.

Thanks to air-conditioning, the interior of the control center was ten or fifteen degrees cooler than the cavern's tropical humidity. Wraparound observation windows provided three hundred and sixty-degree field-of-view.

A control panel filled with switches and dials below the window monitored the performance of the turbines and generators. Several large screens displayed different views of the underground labyrinth of caverns and passageways. Images of various views of the area around within the cabin dominated one bank of displays. Big Sister was watching. Security cameras doth make saints of us all.

Sheila said a quick hello to the two women on duty before leading us to a large conference table on the Center's first floor. Three K-cups worth of hot steaming coffee awaited our pleasure.

"What is this place?" I took a sip of coffee.

"It's incredible, whatever it is. Never seen anything like it. How on earth did you manage to build that?" I pointed out the window to the maze of generators and machinery at the center of the cavern as I shook my head in disbelief.

"It wasn't as easy as we thought it would be. More like an engineering nightmare. We hired a Swiss engineering firm to design and construct the entire system. Everything and everyone needed to build this facility were brought in by their heavy-lift air service. When they finally finished, we gave them a ten percent bonus to forget we ever existed. Lucky for us, their banking secrecy laws encourage financially induced amnesia," Sheila laughed.

"This facility," Sheila tapped her finger on the conference table, "doubles as the control center for our geothermal generating capacity and also serves as a security command center in the event of an intrusion. We've wired every conceivable approach to our valley for sight and sound. We have acoustic sensor arrays and remote video cameras to alert us in the event of any intrusion."

Floor to ceiling maps of the valley and surrounding area covered one wall of the center, and banks of radio equipment filled another wall. I hadn't seen anything like it since I completed my tour of Vietnam. I had worked in the Out-Country Air Operations command center at MACV back in the day. We tried in vain to interdict the flow of enemy supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail.

The Seventh Air Force dropped tens of thousands of seismic and acoustic sensor arrays along the length and breadth of the trail system. The enemy couldn't fart without us smelling it. It didn't do much good. Charlie had more gas in his gut than we had aircraft and bombs. Still, we wired the trail like a pinball machine and played it every day.

"Our sensors are solar powered and have a ninety-nine percent uptime. Yesterday, we picked you up on surveillance when you were still ten miles out. Our response teams didn't go on high alert since we expected your arrival. On ready-alert maybe, but they didn't deploy to prevent your entry into the valley," Sheila said, as she pointed out the greasepaint marking which indicated our route of travel.

"How often have you had a problem with intruders?" I asked.

"We've only had two incidents since we opened the cabin. The first was a troop of lost boy scouts. We intercep

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