Chapter 27: Mage Arches
We biked out of the park’s only organized campground, continuing up the road to the nearby Devils Garden trail network. This is where many of the arches the park is named for are. They’re all much less famous than Delicate Arch, but any natural stone arch is rare, worth seeing.
The main trails in that area are hard-packed dirt, so they were fairly easy going on our trail bikes. It was at this point that I think Kaitlyn began to see the value of the full-suspension frame I’d talked her into; a fixed-frame bike would beat you up pretty bad on these trails.
We stopped several times, doing the full tourist thing. We’d taken our cameras with us since we weren’t going to try and spread our consciousnesses out over miles as we’d done the previous weekend. Having them in our bags wasn’t going to impede any plans.
This was a much less crowded part of the park, so a few times we snuck off the trail and had a little fun. Several times, I got Kaitlyn to strip off quickly and pose for some nude shots. She required the same of me, “For insurance,” and I was happy to do so. As we got further out on the trail, the number of people decreased as the lightweights turned back to the parking lot. Out near the farthest corner of the park, we were almost alone on the trail, so we were able to slip away into the trees unobserved, where I was able to take the time for a nice long photo session. Kaitlyn showed off her flashy biking outfit in several poses, then did a deliciously slow strip tease with me calling out lots of poses along the way, making several compositions of each. Once she was nude, it was like we began a second photo session, doubling the number of shots, poses, and compositions. I ended up with hundreds of keepers from that morning.
I’m more of a photo geek than Kaitlyn is, and she’s a better subject than I am, so I spent most of my time on the other side of the lens, but I stayed naked once she’d bade me strip. I was no longer bothering to restrain my erections around her, so I was bowsprit to the wind the whole time. Kaitlyn offered to relieve me at one point, but I declined graciously, not wanting to get caught doing anything beyond the bounds of “naughty” and into “lewd.” Not in the park, at any rate. I suspect she was a bit frustrated not just at being turned down, but also because it meant she wasn’t getting any, either.
“Patience, grasshopper,” I soothed.
“Grasshopper gnaw leg off soon,” she pouted.
I chuckled even though I wasn’t entirely sure whose leg she was threatening. She was kidding, right? Right?
We dressed and got back on the trail, heading for a spot I knew where we could get off the trail and head for the park’s border and beyond.
Out in a lonely corner of the trail’s far loop, there’s a wash that takes off out into the desert. We dismounted our bikes, rolled them into the wash, and took off our shoes, socks, and helmets. We stowed our things on the bikes and started walking our bikes down the wash.
“We’re using the wash to avoid stepping on the biological crusts?” Kaitlyn asked.
Cryptogamic crusts are complicated desert ecosystems that just look like black gunk on the ground, but they’re delicate and a large part of what keeps the desert from turning into a sandpit like the Sahara, so they’re important to preserve. I was not surprised that Kaitlyn knew this, though I didn’t know whether it was from being an area native or from her schooling in ecological science.
“Yes, but also so we can hike barefoot,” I clarified. “Best way, when you can get away with it.”
Perhaps a half hour out, Kaitlyn stopped me and just started to strip off. I looked back and, indeed, we were now well out of sight of the civilized parts of the park, so I joined her. “My little nudist!” I gushed. “Two weeks ago I had to treat you like a skittish kitten to get your kit off, and now you’re in the lead!”
She grinned. “You won me over. Absolutely did. I wish we could make this just another form of dress to choose from, simply the next step down from swimwear and sleepwear. Not for use everywhere, no more than you’d wear a nightgown to the mall, but there are lots of places where you should have the choice.”
“Beautifully put, my shishya. Maybe someday,” I replied wistfully. “For now, how about you knock the hiking sweat off us?”
She did much better than her first time beside the road last weekend. We hardly coughed at all. Kak, wheeze. “You’re getting there, Kaitlyn,” I encouraged around a developing phlegm ball.
We then got out the sunscreen and buttered ourselves up. Then Kaitlyn came over, touching up some places I’d missed, and I touched her up, and we touched each other up some more, and… And then I stopped Kaitlyn, saying, “It’s lunchtime, Kaitlyn.”
She came immediately back with, “And I know just what I want a taste of,” with a purr.
“Yes, I agree, definitely one of the MREs,” I teased.
“You remember what I said about legs, yes?”
I just grinned and started unpacking the food. I got it mixed up with water in our aluminum camp plates and served it up. Kaitlyn scowled, but she ate.
I cleaned the plates with a sand-and-wind scrub, put the stuff away, and we hiked onward, well out of the park boundaries by now.
About an hour later, we came upon a small sandstone arch poking up out of a hillock, not part of the park at all, yet akin to its more famous siblings. “This is the spot, Kaitlyn. This is where I became a mage.”
We stood there and studied it for a while, then I walked my bike over to a nearby juniper tree, leant it up there, and motioned Kaitlyn to do the same. We wouldn’t need to lock them up way out here.
I held out my hand to her, she took it, and we walked the last several hundred feet to the holy spot in silence, my place of rebirth, naked and receptive to Gaia’s magic.
At the base of the hillock, I said, “I call it Mage Arch. It probably has another name, but…” I just shrugged. We climbed up into the arch’s saddle, and I let go of Kaitlyn’s hand, sitting myself down in the curve of the arch on one side, motioning her to do the same on the other side, facing me. I slid into a trance and became sufficiently part of Gaia that the arch felt like a recliner to me. I hoped Kaitlyn would intuit that she should do the same, else she’d get sore; if so, well, teachable moment, right?
Settled now, I began telling Kaitlyn my magical origin story.
“You recall me saying that I vacationed out here not long after I came to this country, back when I was still an Indian citizen? Well, that was a long 2-week trip, not a quick jaunt down, because I wanted to really see this whole area; it’s on the license plates, by Ritchie’s beard, so I figured it had to be important, or at least interesting.”
“So, I came to Arches first. I’d intended to kind of stomp around the area, then go do Canyonlands, Valley of the Gods, the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, Bryce Canyon…you know, the typical tourist loop through Southern Utah.” She nodded, probably having done that a time or two herself.
“I did much as we did yesterday: saw Delicate Arch, camped at Devils Garden, and then the next morning went out along the same hiking trail we took this morning, and I took the same tangent off the trail out here.”
“In India, we have a rather different attitude towards nudity than Americans do. Nude yogis are not unheard of in India, for example, so once I was out of sight of the park, I decided that a good start was to pack my clothes away and continue my journey through this new desert land, nude in nature. Eventually, I found this place and just spent hours out here hiking around, naked and free, drinking in the spirituality of the place.”
“I knew this place was special, so I hiked back to the campground that evening and proceeded to rearrange all of my vacation plans so that I could stay out here the rest of the time, starkers.”
“Part of the change of plan was to go into town and buy more camping gear and a lot of backpacking food. I was geared up to make Robinson Crusoe weep with envy.”
Kaitlyn smiled at this characterization and essayed, “Two cameras strapped across your chest like cowboy bandoliers?”
“There might have been,” I replied with a wry smile. “I don’t remember. I do remember the camping store salesman looking very happy that day as I picked up my bagged purchases.”
Kaitlyn smiled knowingly, and I resumed my story. “When I got back out here, I was a bit scared about getting caught camping outside a designated campground. I didn’t know about BLM vs National Park land and such then, so I picked that spot over there,” I pointed, “because it’s screened from the park direction by that sandstone outcropping, shielded from the wind by the nook in its side, and fairly well-screened from this direction by the junipers and sagebrush. I was worried about a ranger hiking out here and catching me naked. I had no idea how unlikely that was at the time.”
“That turned out to be a fortuitous choice. It forced me to walk over here completely naked, well away from all of my techie gear, and also kept me from putting my tent in the wash like the gormless tourist I was.”
She just grinned at that.
“Unlike your own magical birthplace, Kaitlyn, this place was absolutely clean when I got here. I’m not sure if any human had ever walked on this spot before I discovered it, but if so, they tread lightly.
“About three days in, I was lying under this arch, my glasses back in the tent as a kind of challenge to myself to be utterly naked and helpless, unable even to see if anyone was coming. Being up in the arch was part of it, too: I hadn’t been caught in days, so I was putting myself on display as well. Blind, naked, and on display! I’m not an exhibitionist; I don’t want to be seen naked by strangers. I guess I just feel that I have to push out to find the boundaries. I’m the sort to snap back away from the boundaries once I find them, rather than run gleefully across to the other side, but I have to know where they are.
“One of my core philosophies, Kaitlyn, is that people are strange, and I do not exclude myself from that characterization.
“Anyway, I was taking advantage of the shade in the hundred-degree heat when the lassitude of the situation took over and I just started to float, letting go of normal awareness. I was taught meditation as a kid, and I used to do it quite a lot in India growing up, so I knew what I was on the cusp of — well, I thought I did — so I just let myself slip into a mindful trance and started to just be.
“It couldn’t have been long when I began to feel…things…around me. It felt nice, not scary, but I had no idea what they were until I started to notice a correspondence between these invisible presences and the living things around me. I’d discovered all those ‘bumps’ I showed you just two weeks ago now.”
She got a soft smile on her face, so I just let her relive the memory in silence for a while.
“It took me some time to realize that I was learning to feel life energy, and a lot more to start doing things with it, but I was fascinated. You’ll recall my master’s degree: I didn’t get that to please someone else or to get a good job, I’m just that way, voracious in my quest for knowledge. It’s why I got into computers: the field is constantly changing, so I’m actually forced to be continuously learning if I want to remain employable. I approached magery the same way. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I wasn’t going to just let it go. I intended to figure out what it was and what I could do with it.
“The first bit of natural magic I can remember doing was to whip some sand around. I made quite a mess that day!” Kaitlyn laughed. “If you look around, you might still be able to find the erosion scars,” I winced guiltily.
“So, that’s my origin story, Kaitlyn. I became a mage out here. This place is holy ground to me. And now I’m sharing it with you, my love.” I spread my arms wide, then gestured sweeping it all towards her.
Kaitlyn’s pale green eyes teared up, and her lip quivered. She sat up, rolled forward onto all fours, and crawled in the most amazingly sexy way to me and kissed me deeply. I slid down the arch and under her body as she continued to devour me.
Still in rapport with Gaia since I sat down, I reached out and brought Kaitlyn in, too.
I played my hands all over Kaitlyn’s glorious body, caressing and squeezing everything I could get to until I eventually pulled her down atop me, the better to grab the rest. I squeezed her buns, tickled up her butt crack, up the furrow of her well-muscled back, stroked her hair, kissed her neck, stroked up and down her flanks… All while engaging in the most passionate session of kissing of my life. Everything Kaitlyn wanted done to her short of actual sex, I did. I was hard as granite.
I don’t know why so many guys prefer to be on top. You get to play with all the good bits when you’re on bottom, not having to support your weight!
Kaitlyn pushed up away from my lips and looked down at me, then said, “Davie, I want to have sex with you, right here, right now,” — I was certainly ready — “but I’m not on the pill. It’s been ages since my last boyfriend, and I’m too introverted to keep the prescription up when I’m between lovers, not knowing how long it will be until the next one. And I kind of procrastinated getting my prescription renewed after meeting you,” she said, looking guilty. She continued in an achingly hopeful tone, “Please say you brought condoms?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said, “but we’re nature mages, Kaitlyn: we don’t need prophylaxis or birth control. You will soon be able to stop an unwanted pregnancy. For that matter, you can prevent one from happening in the first place!” Her eyes got wide as I continued, “Once you learn healing, STDs will be nothing but a tiny annoyance to you, quickly dispensed with,” I finished matter-of-factly.
Then she started giggling, her body squirming atop mine, her eyes tearing up all over again. She let her weight collapse fully on my body, and shortly the sound changed to more like sobbing.
I was shocked and hurt. “Y-you do believe me, don’t you Kaitlyn?” I asked worriedly in her ear. Did she think I was a cad, willing to trick her into continuing without protection?
She pushed herself back up, still teary eyed and unsteady of voice, saying, “Oh, absolutely, Davie! This is relief, not disbelief! You have no idea what it’s like to be a woman, constantly afraid of unwanted pregnancies and diseases. You’re seeing a dozen years of weight being lifted from my shoulders. This is wonderful news! I’m the happiest woman in the world!” She positively squirmed with delight.
A smile returned to my face, and I felt my own little dollop of relief. I pulled her down into an embrace and waited for her to regain control.
A short time later, as the last flutters of her diaphragm quieted, I felt her hand wipe across her eyes and then across her nose, then she whispered sharply in my ear, “Screw me, Davie. Screw me cross-eyed.”
Still in trance with Gaia and Kaitlyn, I reached up and grabbed her hips, right at their outermost crests for maximum leverage. I pulled her up and flexed my pubococcygeus muscle to bring my erection up almost parallel to her body, then used my magical sense to select the perfect angle and then slowly, slowly, slowly brought Kaitlyn’s hips downward, perfectly spearing her pussy with my cock by virtue of my magically enhanced kinesthetic sense. She gasped “Ah!” at my first contact, then cried “Oh!” as the head slowly slipped in, and then shuddered a long “Aaaah!” as I took a solid minute to bottom out, making sure she felt every millimeter of me inside her. She tried to push down faster, but I held onto her hips, controlling the speed.
I let it sit there until I could feel her fully relax around my shaft, and then I began pumping slowly.
A few strokes in, I once again found Kaitlyn’s g-spot with my penis, less dextrously this time than before when I’d used my fingers, though I again knew I could find its depth precisely. I adjusted my angle so that I would both hit that spot and rub her clit indirectly by flexing her clitoral hood, making it slide back and forth in time with my strokes. Kaitlyn shortly began to moan, and then to wail.
I never allowed her to get a single instruction out to me in words, anticipating each desire and need through the Gaia bond. When Kaitlyn needed me to go faster, I went faster. When Kaitlyn wanted depth, I gave her depth. When Kaitlyn wanted rapid shallow strokes, I gave them to her. When she wanted long, deep, slow strokes, I gave her those, too.
As we continued, her vaginal canal stretched and deepened, so that I was no longer bottoming out in her, she was bottoming out on me, pubic hair slapping together before parting an instant later.
We changed positions with the fluidity of silk curtain dancers on a low-g planet, switching around as smoothly as if choreographed, never breaking penetration for more than a second or two at a time, and all at Kaitlyn’s whim: she thought it, I made it happen.
I counted several of her orgasms before I felt her getting sore, both in her vaginal canal and through her belly from all of the violent clenching, so as I felt one last orgasm building in her body, I began loosening control over my own ejaculation, intending to time it perfectly to coincide with hers. And I nailed its onset as I nailed her, bringing the most perfectly glorious lovemaking session to a simultaneous climax.
“AaaaaiiigigiigghhghhhhhHHhh!” she screamed in exquisite release, riding me in forward cowgirl at this point, her back arched clear through her neck line, so that she was shouting straight up at the crest of fiery sandstone above us. I threw a primal yell of release up as well, the two yells of passionate release joining at the arch and reverberating around us. Then she collapsed on my chest, her breathing ragged, her vagina pulsing along my cock, squeezing my emission from me to hold it greedily deep inside her.
We said nothing, just experienced each other, our sweat-slicked bodies sliding slightly back and forth against each other with our expanding and contracting chests. I held her increasingly tightly as her well-developed stamina brought her breathing back under control.
My sword softened and slid from her sheath. The sun was going down, so I spun her around on my chest and then rolled us sideways to face the sunset, completely naked and at one with nature, framed in an arch for anyone to see, but completely unseen by any higher intelligence.
Kaitlyn was the first to speak. “Holy fracking cats, Davie, that was amazing. Please believe me when I say that’s the best I’ve ever had!”
“I’ve never had better, either, but we haven’t peaked. We can and will do better.”
From my position behind her, the big spoon, I could see her jaw drop, then tremble. In a shaky voice, she said, “I’m scared, Davie. It felt like we rode right up to the ‘pain’ line and even a bit over it several times. I’m not into BDSM. Do not hurt me, Davie, or I’m gone, no matter how good the sex is!” she threatened.
“Hush. Relax. I have absolutely no intention to push us in that direction. I’m talking about even greater pleasure and rapport here, not simply more energetic sex to the point of pain. We’re going to learn to absolutely detonate, and we’ll both love it, I promise you. I will not hurt you, my love.”
“That’s quite the promise, Davie. How can you back it up?”
“My little secret.”
“Blast it all to Hades, Davie!” she barked, fist slamming on the ground, spinning around in my arms to face me, angry. “Not another secret! We are fully committed lovers at this point, and we will share everything, or we are through!”
“And we will,” I soothed. “This is not a new secret. It’s still the same one, the only one I’m still holding onto, and you’ll know the answer soon. In fact, you might be able to guess it by now. Go on, try.” That shut her up. She got a mystified look on her face as I rolled onto my back, taking her up onto my chest with the roll. She lay her head down under my chin, head turned to the glowing pink and purple sky, trying to work out that dratted secret.