Love Always Wins Pt. 02 Ch. 05-09

Terri gave me a quizzical look that prompted me to continue, "At the very least, and especially if you can only get a text message through, I would suggest that an assurance that you are safe needs to be de rigor. Then, maybe something to the effect that you have been having so much fun that you lost track of time. Finally, follow that up with an assurance that you expect to be giving him a hug sometime late tomorrow.

"That's my shot in the dark, but you know his personality infinitely better than I do and I expect that you will be far better than I at crossing the important T's and dotting the appropriate I's in your conversation."

"Thanks Stef! I guess I'll see how it goes." With that, Terri turned away from me and sat down on one of the tower anchors. I took that as a cue to slip back to the truck and give her some privacy.

I was busy taking pictures of a kind of mushroom that I had never seen before when I heard footsteps coming up behind me. I stood up and turned around to ask Terri how the call had come off. As I came around, the simple question I intended to ask dissolved into incoherent sputtering as Terri's full image painted my retinas! Except for a big Cheshire grin, Terri was naked from the waist up!

About all I remember while I was reorganizing my neurons was what seemed like sort of a roaring sound. I finally did find the switch that activated my linguistic equipment, "Jesus Christ, woman! Are you trying to kill me off with a surprise-induced brain hemorrhage?"

Terri gave me a cute little smile and replaced it with a faux pout, "What! Don't you like what you see?"

I was finally able to laugh. "Oh, very mucho bueno! However, have you ever heard the phrase, 'killing with kindness?' I'm afraid you will have to provide mouth-to-mouth resuscitation if you want to keep me and Little Stef on this side of the River Styx!" I said as I clutched at my chest.

"Yes sir! Rescue is here!" cried Terri as she ran the last few feet and jumped into my arms while wrapping her legs around my waist. Our lips met in a passionate lock while our tongues jousted like knights at a tournament!

I have taken great pride in the fact that my brain has always been able to maintain a cool and objective perspective in the face of the most passionate efforts of Little Stefan, but this time I failed utterly and completely. Terri and I went at it with all the finesse of rutting rhinos!

Our clothes disappeared so fast that many of the seams were strained and a few were torn! By the time that both of us were naked and Little Stef was exploring Terri's Kitty, a few of my neurons elected to demonstrate a little presence of mind. I was able to carry Terri, while we were joined at the crotch, the short distance to the truck where I braced her back against the wall of the truck bed and proceeded to pound her pussy with an energy (according to Terri's later assessment) that would have done a war party of Neanderthals proud! By the time that I came with what felt like torrents of cum, Terri had orgasmed at least twice and maybe more!

We were both slick with sweat and I was almost totally spent! "Omigod! Where's a grassy spot? I mustn't drop you and I am ready to collapse!"

Terri opened her eyes and quickly looked around. As she gasped for air, she pointed to a little patch of grass that I then managed to carry her to and where I contrived to drop to my knees and almost gently roll the two of us onto what looked like grass but which sported about as many dead pine needles as blades of grass. I will confess that neither one of us were very concerned with the quality and comfort of our resting place as we gasped for breath and spasmed from orgasmic aftershocks. As more of my brain cells came back on line, I became aware that I was still hard and Terri's vagina was still milking Little Stefan with abandon!

Terri and I lay on the ground in exhaustion; and finally continued to rest in a lovely sexual afterglow that lasted until Little Stefan slowly (even reluctantly!?) withered and slipped out of Terri's Kitty.

"Hey there beautiful, what the hell just happened?"

"You tell me! I swear I've been to the moon, so what are we doing down here?"

I had to chuckle. "You know Terri, we really blew it."

"What do you mean? What did we do wrong?"

"We should have had had a camera crew to record this bit of Olympic exercise! We could sell the resulting Oscar-winning porn film for a mint!"

Terri giggled. "Gee whiz, and I thought it was little old me that you were interested in—and now it turns out that the first thing that comes to your mind is nasty, filthy, lucre!" She punctuated this statement with a couple of fake sniffs.

"Oh, my darling princess, please forgive my transgression of going from spiritual physicality to mere monetary physicality!"

"Welll, I dunno. What can you do to prove your conversion to the true faith?" I proceeded to give her a long and loving kiss.

As we came up for air, I said, "What is your verdict, my dear?"

"Guilty! Guilty of bribery! And if you know what's good for you, you will continue to do so 'til death do us part!"

"Yes m'am. And now on a more practical note, where the hell are our clothes?"

Terri giggled, "Well, I can feel that your Trail Gloves are still on your feet. My fuzzy memory says that I can probably find one of my flip-flops close to the truck and the other one is probably in the vicinity of a scattering of clothes."

We started backtracking on our passionate route in order to recover our clothes. "Ootchie, ouchie! This gravelly broken rock here is a bit more than my tender feet are used to! Can I get a lift to my shoes?"

As I grinned and scooped Terri into my arms I said, "Harumph! First you want bribes, and now you want me to carry you around. What do I get for all my trouble?"

"Well, for starters, in exchange for all this wonderful skin-to-skin contact that I am now giving you, I need another bribe!" and with that, Terri tightened her arms around my neck and proceeded to lock our lips together in a slow and loving kiss. I was amazed that Little Stefan actually tried to rise to the occasion, albeit unsuccessfully!

Our kiss continued for quite a while after I stopped above the flip-flop nearest the truck. As we came up for air, I squatted down and said as gruffly as I could muster around my smile, "You need to do some of the work! Can you reach your thong down there?"

Terri giggled some more and replied, "Gee, that looks more like a flip-flop than my thong." She gave me a quick peck of a kiss and continued, "But yes, I can reach it." and then proceeded to pluck it off the ground.

From there, I carried Terri to the general vicinity where she had surprised me. She spotted her flip-flop before I did and she was soon perambulating about on her own two feet with the protection that the flip-flops provided. We both set to finding all the lumps of fabric lying about, sorting out who they belonged to, and putting them on.

"Oh, wow! I guess I get to go commando on the way back!"

"Huh, why is that?"

"Ms, Kitty's thong did not survive our strip tease." Terri held up the thong she had been wearing in such a way that it was quite obvious that the waistband was completely torn apart.

"Hmm, you should talk. I see that there is only one button left on my shirt and ALL the buttons on the fly of my shorts are gone!"

"Oh yeah, that's right. I expected to find a zipper there, so after I got past the belt buckle I remember getting REALLY frustrated!

"Stef, you need to make a note for future reference; you will NEVER again buy shorts that do not provide zipper access to my favorite toy!"

I had to smile at that line. "Oho-kay. Whatever you say, m'am.

"I guess the good news for me is that since my boxers seem to have survived, I won't have to go back to camp double commando, in other words, bare bottom."

"No, I think you ought to be able to hold the fly of your shorts together in front with the belt."

"That's a point. I'll give it a try.

"Oh, and how did the chat go with your Dad?"

Terri's face clouded a little bit. "Uh, I think you were right. It's a good thing that I called. Daddy sounded more worried than I expected."

"I trust that everything is AOK now?"

Yes, he was happy to hear that I had found some pretty country and some nice people to explore it with."

"Uhhh?"

"Yeah, yeah! He knows that we have been exploring the hills and valleys of the Rocky Mountains, but I didn't feel like it was time to tell him that we have been exploring all of OUR hills and valleys."

"And he is expecting you back when?"

"I took your advice. I told him that I'd give him a hug when I got in tomorrow evening."

"So everything is copacetic now?"

"Welll, only if we have enough time to finish our conversation."

"Uh, how do you mean?"

"You have only explained your philosophy of love up to friends with benefits. I need the rest of it!"

"I am honored... and humbled by your interest. You're sure about this?"

"Dammit Stef! Yes, I want to learn about your whole ball of wax! You've got me so tangled up in your personality and overloaded with oxytocin and dopamine that if I had to make a decision this minute and I had no other option than to sign a contract turning me into your sex slave for the rest of my life, sure as God made little green apples, I would sign it! And I'd use my own damned blood for ink if I had to!"

Oh crap! It feels like the kimchi is getting deep! "That is the most double-edged compliment I think that I have ever been given! In one fell swoop it puffs my ego up nicely while the potential power disparity scares the pants off of me at the same time!

"The only scenario I can imagine that would even come close to what you have described would be to find you on the auction block of a slave market. I would bid every cent that I owned and that I could beg, borrow, and/or steal in order to take possession of you. Upon winning the bid, I would proceed to manumit you as fast as the paperwork could be gotten together—or as fast as I could find a blacksmith to cut the slave collar off of your neck!"

"And bang! Right there you give me another reason to trust and love you! If you are really a spider weaving a web of deceit around me, than I freely admit that you have me fooled completely—that I am merely dead meat on the hoof!"

Arrgh! I don't want the level of control that this sounds like! "All right. I'll cover as much ground as you need. Please be aware that my philosophy includes a time component that we need to respect for levels four and five. Today we can make decisions that may lead to levels four and five, but we will not be making level four or five love decisions. "

"I'm kinda confused, I think."

I laughed and replied, "Well, I think that I understand. However, I'm pretty sure that what I'm driving at will come clear as we step through the philosophical construct. Probably the best thing I can do is to just solicit your patience at this point."

Terri grinned and replied, "Alright, professor, I'll give you enough rope to either hang yourself or to truss me up in knots."

"Okay, I think that we have already reached the 'friends with benefits' level, and I am perfectly comfortable with that and... Hmmm, I just realized that there is a caveat on that one. If it is a monogamous relationship until one or the other of us notifies the other of a need for change, I am perfectly comfortable with that.

"If it is an open relationship, I can work with that too as long as before we have a tumble we inform the other of whatever sexual experiences we have had in the interim since our last tumble and what precautions were taken during those flings.

"That's assuming that we do not know each other's partners. I guess I could see it working as sort of a sex club or swinging group where everybody knows everybody else and everybody agrees to play by the same rules at all times.

"Before I wind up falling into the endless minutia of the possible permutations and complications that could arise from this relatively simple and safe relationship; at least in general, are you comfortable with what I am saying?"

"You are making sense to me. For the record, at this level, I am not ready to do anything beyond the monogamous 'friends with benefits' arrangement!"

"Great! That's definitely the zone where I'm most comfortable!

"So, moving on, the next levels have the potential to either really screw people's lives up OR to make peoples' lives totally worth living. A commitment to these levels of love should not be made lightly—unless you WANT to make your life and/or another person's life a sojourn in hell!

"None of these levels of love should be entered into lightly, on short notice, or under the influence of drugs and/or hormones, for example: alcohol, Viagra, dopamine, or oxytocin. At every level, the heart may have made the decision to move up to a particular level very quickly and that can be very dangerous if the head follows along without doing its job of analysis and evaluation.

"That said, I need to add that I definitely believe that 'love at first sight' is real, BUT most of the time I'm afraid that it turns out to have been 'lust at first sight.' The Universe gave us a brain to help keep us safe and happy, but it is our responsibility to use that tool."

"All right professor, the philosophy is nice but I already know where you are coming from. What are the practical implications that you see affecting our relationship or needing to constrain our movement from one level to another?"

"As I see it, level four of love is a committed partnership, almost always combined with cohabitation and some form of resource sharing. I reckon that there can be open and swinging committed partnerships, but I don't think we need to fry any neurons over them since I don't see any chance of my accepting them without a substantial sales campaign to persuade me of their compatibility with my psyche.

"This commitment can be based on a verbal agreement that lays out the rules and responsibilities of the participants or it can be codified as a legal contractual relationship, in which case I would tend to call it a civil union rather than just a committed relationship.

"Level five is what I call marriage. Essentially, it is a committed partnership wherein the adult parties to the arrangement have agreed that raising one or more children to adulthood is the, or a, primary objective of the marriage. It matters not if the children are the natural offspring of the marriage, or simply adopted into the family unit defined by the marriage agreement. The critical factor is that as soon as a child is conceived or adopted, the understanding must be that all adult parties to the agreement must accept responsibility for ensuring that all children born or adopted into the family have the love and resources needed to reach their majority.

"Majority itself is a flexible concept largely based on the mores of the culture in which the children are to be raised. I suppose that today we could still find cultures where a female reaches 'adulthood' at age twelve or at menarche. I seem to recall reading about cultures where boys officially became men at age thirteen but the only age for males that I am reasonably certain of is the medieval practice of considering fourteen the magic age of maturity for men.

"American culture seems to agree that the magic age of maturity is somewhere between eighteen and twenty-one with special exceptions being available all the way down to sixteen.

"Based on some of the brain research I have come across, I could see a cogent argument being made for the magic age being twenty-five. You see, that seems to be the age that I have seen mentioned most often as being when all of the teenage neuron pruning and brain rebuilding, which makes the teen years so fraught for so many, is effectively complete.

"Okay, that's pretty much the philosophical foundation that I have built my understanding, such as it is, of love on. Unless you have some questions about or disagreements with it right now, we should probably be getting back to camp. That will give you some nice scenery to meditate on while you digest any personal eccentricities that I have probably injected into my understanding of the topic. After we get back, we can get into some of the complexities of this framework that have implications that can or do directly affect our situation."

Terri replied thoughtfully, "You have covered ground that I have never thought about. That surprises me a bit since I think that I detect an undercurrent of Heinlein flowing through it. That may be why, at least at first glance, it seems pretty reasonable to me. There are a few nits that I need to think about and maybe eventually argue about, but nothing jumps out at me as being flat-out wrong or totally self-serving."

Chapter VIII

Terri and I did a final check for clothes, parts of clothes, and pocket contents. Except for a few buttons, we finally agreed that we had recovered all that we could and proceeded to drive back to camp.

Terri seemed to be enjoying the scenery as we drove back to the campground. Since we were going mostly downhill now, we got more nice views than when we were going uphill. However, at one point Terri happened to look in my direction, got a pensive look on her face, and proceeded to lean onto the center console between our seats.

"Stef, I've got a trivia question for you. I don't know if it's a dumb question, but it has been bugging the dickens out of me."

"Okay, fire away." I said.

"Every day you seem to wear a different type of underwear. I have seen you in boxer briefs, and today you are wearing white boxers. Why the variety in something that most people will never get to see?"

"Oh, that's a goody! It sounds like a straight line that a good comedian could really run with. Unfortunately, since I'm not a professional entertainer, I guess I'll have to tell you the strange truth.

"My body size puts me exactly in the never never land between clothes that are size small and those that are size medium. Consequently, ever since I got past size small, I have never found a style of drawers or undershorts that is comfortable all day long, every day. Since my body reached my current size of small medium or medium small, the only crotch attire that I have found to be comfortable virtually all the time is to go raw, or to wear a breechclout or a kilt!

"Of the three, since I sleep raw most of the time, that is my most common form of comfort. Unfortunately, the social constraints on the other two make my use of them very limited!"

"Wow! Stef, you are deeper than a black hole! It seems like every time you open your mouth, something strange or unique falls out!

"So, I guess my follow-on is, why is today a white boxer day?"

"That's easy, as you noted earlier, my hiking shorts are pretty baggy. That means that as long as I'm not doing a lot of sitting to wad them up, a pair of nice, loose boxers are entirely compatible with baggy shorts which translates to a maximum of comfort.

"I guess I could add that when I'm in a kilt and in mixed company, the boxers are nice to wear under a kilt so that I don't wind up inadvertently flashing someone."

"Speaking of baggy shorts, Stef, they are looking more baggy than ever. I guess my suggestion that the belt would close the fly well enough to be presentable was a bit off."

I laughed, "Well, I'd best not complain. To use a word that your generation seems to have adopted, Terri, you were awesome back there! It was an experience well worth a few buttons!"

Terri giggled, "I suppose that you do get better air circulation that way?"

"I'm not sure, but I suppose that's true."