Nude & Wet in the Cold Mt Hot Tub

In his dream, her lush, naked body was visible in the hot tub. Stars glittered overhead, and snow fell on on the pines in the pristine forest. The lights in the hot tub danced over her skin, creating mysterious shadows in the curves that allured and tantalized. He moved toward her in his dream, savoring the tingle of bubbles rushing between his fingers and her smooth, wet contours. Though she was slippery, Steed grasped her, stroking her shoulders, tracing the path of the droplets down, down, down, as they trickled between her breasts, and his tongue explored the convergence. He tasted the iciness of snowflakes as they landed on her skin, instantly dissolving from her body heat, and leaving the merest trace of wetness. The contrast of extremes excited him and he felt as though he would burst with desire. But then, with a start, Steed Johnson awoke from his magical dream to the squalid reality of his hut in the jungle. But the reality was not enough. Had he but world enough and time, he could reclaim the dream. He would walk home for Christmas.

And so Steed Johnson went out walking, after midnight. Out in the moonlight, he checked his compass, found the proper setting, and began. He had heard that the journey of a thousand miles began with a single step. In this instance, the journey was, in fact, a thousand miles, but he had finally decided to take that step. He was sick of being a hired soldier, and he was tired of the dank, humid jungles of Central America. He longed for the cold, crisp air of his home in the mountains.

Although Steed had no money for an airplane ticket, and no car to transport him, he did have two strong legs and a pair of LL Bean insulated, waterproof hiking boots. Steed lacked a horse, so he had made up his mind to simply take the shoe leather express and walk home for Christmas, home to the little mountain resort where he had been raised. To cover a thousand miles in the month he had before Christmas, Steed realized that he would have to do more than 30 miles per day. An impossible task over rough terrain, but Steed was also an experienced hitcher. Driver were certain to stop, pick him up, and shorten the distance he would have to walk.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles to the north, the old home town looked the same, as Alicia Keyston stepped down from the train. But there to meet her weren't her mama or her papa. Down the lane she looked, and she felt chary, as she tipped the porter who carried her leather suitcase to the shuttle bus. As the little shuttle bus wound its way through the two-lane streets of the tiny mountain town in western North Carolina, Alicia -- "Aluscious," as one of her many boyfriends had dubbed her -- gazed out at the Red Man chewing tobacco signs on the red barns. It was good to be home again.

As she pondered, suddenly a bit weak and weary, she swept back her long, blonde mane. Suddenly, as the sun hit the window, she saw her reflection in the glass, saw the fine features, the full, sensuous mouth, the ripe lips. Literate and sexy. Those words described Alicia Keyston. She was educated, yet not narrowly so. She had a catholicity of interests.

But there was more, much more, to Alicia. She was lean and firm from aerobics classes and situps. Still, there were plenty of educated, fit women. Alicia, though, had that certain icy sensuality associated with the young Catherine Deneuve. And yet, despite her chilly reserve at first meeting, observers noted that she seemed to burn with sensual heat. Those who met Alicia could envision her in a hot shower, the water sluicing down her firm body. Her last boyfriend, Steed Johnson, once gazed upon her figure and actually struggled to find the appropriate words. Svelte? Yes, it was. But full and rich, like fine Colombian coffee. Her legs, firm from running, led to a tummy with just the right amount of potential for kissability.

Steed was not divided on cleavage. He approved of it. Approved entirely. But Alicia's hips most entranced Steed Johnson. In idle moments, Steed recalled all those delightful occasions when he and Alicia had opened up her Santa Claus bag of sex toys and spend idle afternoons in sustained sessions of pleasure. Being a liberated woman, Alicia enjoyed her toys, viewing them as innocent teases. Steed loved to serve as assistant when Alicia retrieved her vibrator, her faux-leather miniwhip, her bottle of massage oil, and the slender strand of spectragel anal beads.

Steed, who had not attended college, had not known that the abacus was a primitive counting tool. Beads were used to keep the counts. Historians had explored the abacus, but it was not until Alicia's doctoral paper that it was fairly conclusively established that the abacus had, in reality, been invented by primitive peoples to keep track of their orgasms. Truth be told, though, Steed was not interested in scholarly pursuits during those passionate afternoons with Alicia.

On summer afternoons, as the warm rain pounded down outside, pelting the windows, Steed would watch as Alicia slowly removed her outer garments. Always -- and he looked forward to it immensely -- Alicia would have some new lingerie to model. It would be filmy, diaphanous, and he would watch it, and her, and feel what Delbert called that "old weakness" beginning again.

For Alicia's part, nothing was more reassuring than the certain knowledge that she would have her first orgasm of the day in the next half hour or so. It made her warm with a certain slow, almost lazy anticipation, like a person approaching that first lovely bite of warm apple pie, the morsel poised on the fork.

She enjoyed knowing that her skimpy undergarments were mercilessly teasing Steed. She enjoyed the anticipation, the knowledge that, at some moment, his kisses would burn down her arms, that his kisses would lead to the inside of her elbow. She recalled interludes in the shower when Steed's kisses had tantalized her armpit before she felt his hot breath on her breast.

As he watched her writhe on the bed in her tiny thongs, mere wisps of fabric, the little garments were made even more delicious by the knowledge that Alicia was fully shaven except for a tiny, high triangle. The little triangle was just a teasing little reminder, a mockery. But her thongs were so pretty, the fabrics so silky, that he almost hated to remove them. Yes, he knew that in the fullness of time Alicia would demand that they be removed, that she would want to feel his tongue on her smoothness. But he almost hated to be without the visual allure of the thong. But, being born to sacrifice and to duty, Steed would eventually, albeit very slowly, draw off her thong.

Being a prudent hedonist, Alicia would have an initial orgasm to relieve some of her sexual tension. Thereafter, with her passions under better control, Alicia would apply oil to her slender little anal plug. She would slowly insert that, her breath catching in her throat as the pleasure hit. Always, she would marvel at the simplicity and effectiveness of the small toy. What evil genius had designed it, knowing how it raised the sensual ante?

At that point, however, Steed had to exercise diligence in his role of manager of Alicia's orgasms. He knew that the little oiled plug would almost immediately dial up Alicia's sensuality and make her want to have another orgasm. He had to take care to assure that Alicia did not arrive at her second orgasm of the afternoon too rapidly. Thus, he had to slowly ration out the manner in which he teased Alicia with her regular vibrator, assuring that she had sufficient buildup to the orgasm to make it as sweet, long, and satisfying as an ample wedge of warm apple pie topped by no-fat vanilla frozen yogurt.

So the afternoons were spent, as she employed her wide array of toys singly and in delicious combination, teasing herself to mindblowing serial orgasms. Often, as he watched Alicia's firm, tan hips undulate in pleasure, Steed sought to arrive at a name for them. Finally, after much deliberation, Steed pronounced Alicia's hips "beadworthy." In other words, he felt -- on the most cosmic level -- that they deserved to be teased with beads, that they deserved to be tantalized with the little faux-leather miniwhip. He loved to watch her hips, which were worthy of tiny love bites, until they began to tremble as Alicia dissolved into orgasm.

There were times when Alicia requested to be "tied" with loose silk scarves. At any time, she could escape her "bonds." She would ask to be teased with the little miniwhip. Slowly, ever so slowly, the little strands of the miniwhip would tease her smooth, tan flesh. The strands would caress her hips. The hips would retreat, and then elevate again as they sought additional contact with the strands. After even 15 minutes of such teasing, Alicia was ready to explode with pleasure. But Steed would tease her until she was almost begging for the release of orgasm. Sometimes, she would whimper: "Please, let me come again." And he would refuse, making her wait just a little bit longer.

Little wonder that Alicia logged on as Mistress_of_the_Miniwhip. Still, for all his virtures as a sensual manager, Steed was not one of the great western philosophers. Perhaps the world would little note, nor long remember, what he did there. But now that Steed was gone from her life, called off on a military job to Central America, Alicia recalled with great fondness their lazy afternoons of pleasure. Indeed, Alicia could feel her nipples swelling as she remembered their little gasps of passion, the pooling of their sweat, the mingling of their desire, the way he kissed her painted toes.

Alicia loved having her toes worshipped. Yes, it was fair to say that her toes were worthy of rings. Steed appreciated a toeworthy woman. There was something about well-pedicured toes tipped with glossy polish that excited him. And her, too, when he sucked gently on her toes and then licked the delicate spaces in between. It sent a tingling straight up her calves and thighs and made her want to wrap her long legs all the way around his muscular back. Yes, she had read the books on reflexology and was familiar with the school of thought that purported that each area of the sole corresponded with the internal organs of the body. But she'd swear they all went straight to her clitoris when Steed massaged her feet.

Perhaps Steed could simply walk away from his job as a mercenary? Perhaps he could just walk back to the cold Carolina mountain where Alicia was? Perhaps Steed could just walk away from it all and rejoin her? But no, surely that was impossible. It was all gone, gone with the wind.

Alicia realized with a start that the bus had arrived at the resort. She entered, registered, and made her way to the room, with its deck overlooking the lake. Lost in thought, she recited:

So much depends upon a red lace tanga. Forgive me. I have eaten the plums you left in the icebox. Passion in the snowdrift is delicious -- so wet and so cold. A thong should not mean, But be.

Flushed with emotion from these lines, and flushed from the flood of memories of Steed, Alicia decided to don her scarlet side-laced slip. As she let the slip fall over her head, the cool silk brushed against her warm skin, whispering as Steed had once whispered in her ear, driving her wild with suggestions of innovative ways to exploy her sex toys and exactly how he planned to touch her. She viewed herself in the mirror, wishing Steed was there to appreciate the flowing silk against her tanned skin. However, she noticed a flaw. The double strap of her thong ruined the clean line of the slip's lacing, so reluctantly she removed it and let it drop to the floor.

Ah, that was even better. She felt freer with just the smooth wisps of the slip against her body, but her body temperature seemed to have soared with the fevered memories of Steed. She felt a restless passion rising and realized she would have to address her tempestuous desires without the benefit of Steed's authoritative touch. Regretting his absence -- for his management acumen had rivaled that of Warren Buffet, if in a different arena -- she sank back into the downy comfort of the cabin's feather bed and closed her eyes. Half in memory, half in fantasy, she imagined Steed's fingers running all the way down her body, followed by his lips, brushiing so lightly that she moaned in anticipation and frustration. She conjured the feeling of his kisses of her inner thighs, his tongue tracing the lines of her well-delineated muscles, teasing her to the brink of frenzy. When she touched herself, she was so aroused by the thoughts that it took only a few seconds before she gasped in release.

As her orgasm raged, one thought above all others kept it going -- the thought of Steed's tongue gently teasing its way around the little triangle of pubic hair she had shaven an inch and a half above her clitoris. She could not stop thinking about the way in which he teased her by kissing his way around that little design. Like a latter day Magellan, he went around it. It was a tiny triangle, each edge no more than an inch in length. But, as he made the little journey over and over, she could feel his hot breath, and his beard stubble, on the smooth skin. She knew that Steed was teasing her mercilessly. She knew he would not kiss her clitoris right away, no matter how she writhed. And those images, of his tongue teasing her tiny triangle, his tongue remaining inches away from her clitoris as she moaned with need, teetering on the brink of orgasm...those thoughts remained fixed in her mind until her orgasm finally subsided.

Her breath coming quickly, she opened her eyes and caught sight of herself in the mirror, blonde hair spread across the pillow, her lithe legs sprawled on the bed, her face flushed and lips parted. Once again, she wished Steed were there beside her, for the afternoon would just be beginning. As it was, however, she realized there was just the slightest chance she'd ever seen him again.

She sat up, crossed to the door out onto the deck and perched on the edge of the hot tub as she looked for the switch. A long, soothing soak. Yes, perhaps that would exorcise the memories of Steed. And if she was lucky, snow would fall, Elvis would come on the radio singing "Merry Christmas, Baby," and deer would move to the edge of the woods and peer out at her in the kinship of wild things. One thing was for sure -- without Steed, she had no need for an abacus.

Steam rose in blankets from the hot tub. Alicia sat on the underwater bench, luxuriating in the heat. Before her was the frozen lake, and in the distance pine-covered hills stretched as far as the eye could see. It was a lovely scene, and it became better as snow began to fall. It being the Christmas season, Alicia felt a sudden urge to yell "Merry Christmas." She did so, and the sound of her voice echoed across the ice-covered lake. And then there was silence. And then there was another echo, a distant voice saying "Merry Christmas."

She stood up. The voice was male, and it sounded familiar. Could it be? Was she hallucinating? And then she saw it, far across the lake, the tiny figure trudging through the snow. Could it be Steed? No, it was not possible. And yet, that gait was so familiar. Yes. Yes, it was him. Yes, it was, and it would be a good Christmas after all.