Chapter 21: Pulling Things in Tight
My erection began to subside after 10 to 20 minutes of inactivity, so I took that as a sign and caressed her awake. When I felt her stir, I whispered into her ear, “C’mon! Work awaits!”
“Nnnngh,” she grumbled, but got up.
As we were hiking out to the center of the radius I wanted to start working at, I asked, “You said something about a B.S. degree?”
“Yes, I acquired a Recreation Resource Management degree,” she pronounced with comic grandiosity. “Basically, it means I’m well-qualified for my job as a management type in the local BLM office, focused on the federal lands surrounding the designated parklands around here, keeping them from being overrun by swarms of eager tourists. Conservation and stuff.”
That explained the odd combination of lack of tan but also interest in the outdoors. I said, “That sounds like it will be a great help in our work. What we’re doing here is kind of a guerrilla version of what you’re trained to do professionally.”
“Yeah. Maybe we can get some things done that I can’t push through the bureaucratic mill at my level,” she said wistfully. After some time walking, she continued, “You know, I’m really glad to be getting out here more often. I’ve long had an interest in the outdoors — thus the degree — but I’ve been stuck in the office so much that I’ve had to resort to a gym membership to keep in shape.”
“You might be able to drop it now, reducing the payoff time on that bike to under a year,” I pointed out.
“Eh, I do like some of the machines. We’ll see,” she temporized.
We spent the rest of the day cleaning up the canyon in sections, each separately laying out in the middle of neighboring sections, popping the litter up to the surface, collecting it in a bag, and moving to the next. It was oddly satisfying work.
Kaitlyn was still taking a fair bit of time to slide into a trance to begin work on each new section, though steadily less each time. That gave me a short while to watch her work, since I effectively started work on each section earlier. It turns out that staring at a beautiful naked woman is a pleasant way to spend a bit of slack time. Who knew?
But then she surprised me: a few sections into the morning’s work, I saw her magically pulling the litter in towards her, creating a starburst pattern with a beautiful naked nymph in the center. She then sat up and collected all the trash without even standing. When she caught my eye, I gave her a big grin and a thumbs up, then I happily adopted her refinement on my next section. She continued to impress me!
Back at camp that evening, well-exercised and happy, I started to put up my tube tent as Kaitlyn got dinner started, both of us still naked, unlike last week. She was cooking over a fire, and I was wrestling with camping gear, so we weren’t getting too chilly yet.
Kaitlyn called out, “No, Davie, put mine up instead. It’s got a zippered door.”
Initially, I thought she was asking me to put her tent up first for some reason, before I put mine up, but then a key word registered: instead‽ Was she offering what I thought she was?
“It’s a two-person tent,” she explained, “so why don’t we share the space?”
To a tent-maker, “two person” means, “Two adult humans in the middle of the height distribution with healthy BMI, plus maybe a water bottle and a flashlight, no more.” Since most of our gear was still stowed on the bikes, and neither of us was overweight or over-tall, this wasn’t actually a bad idea.
She had only offered me sleeping space, but then I got a clue and scolded myself, ‘What, you’re disappointed that you’re going to spend the night in a tent with a gorgeous naked girl‽ You maybe had better sleeping arrangements planned for tonight?’ So, I just smiled, said “Sure,” and got to setting the tent up.
I had the tent up and had puffed a few stiffening breaths into each of our self-inflating sleeping pads, sealing them with their valves when Kaitlyn called from over by the fire, “Davie, my sleeping bag is a bit big for little ol’ me. It’s my brother’s, from his time in Scouts. I inherited it when he left home, and I took it with me when I left in turn. I don’t go camping enough to have bought one that actually fits me properly. I think you could squeeze in there with me. Just to sleep, you know, so you don’t have to freeze your toes wrapped in a blanket like last time.” A quaver had entered her voice by the end.
Kaitlyn was offering to spoon naked with me! “Aw hell yeah,” I replied. She lit up.
We wolfed down dinner, I scrubbed the cooking utensils in a strong sand shower, and then gave the two of us a much gentler one to knock the day’s sweat off. I put the fire out with a virtual bucketful of sand, and we retired early that night, never having gotten around to getting dressed again to fend off the mid-Spring evening chill.
It was a very pleasant night’s sleep. We didn’t ‘just’ sleep…we kissed a lot first, too. And then we slept. Just slept.