The Reluctant Neighbour

The Island was truly beautiful and very pristine. It was was deserted now as the seasonal fishermen who used it to sort and dry catch for part of the year had gone to other areas for the new season. Rob and Shannon appeared to be the only inhabitants.

"Okay, I'm ready for a swim," Shannon said, skipping along the beach while taking off her sneakers and hopping on the sand that was heating up beyond comfortable. She was wearing white capris and a long sleeve loose cotton shirt on Rob's advise to protect from the sun when out on the water. Shannon turned back to Rob and quietly asked him, while looking into his eyes, "Rob do you mind if I swim without a bathing suit? I learned to really enjoy swimming naked on Wreck Beach."

One of the features of the UBC campus in Vancouver where Shannon had done her undergrad was what was probably the Canadian west coast's most famous clothing optional beaches. Wreck Beach fronted the ocean and was reached by descending a steep pathway through the forested hillside on the campus property to the federally owned beach. During WW2 the feds fortified this part of the approach to Vancouver and old gun emplacements were still standing. The lax rules on the beach were mostly because the City had no authority over the beach. It was a favourite of the student population. The water was cool but relative to the mountain lakes of her native Alberta it was very swimmable.

"Shannon dear, do you mind if I do so as well?" Rob wasn't exactly sure that he wanted either of them naked but he wasn't going to let his age show here.

"Rob, I've seen everything on Wreck Beach. I may be young but yes, I've seen lots of guy parts."

With that Shannon began pulling her surf soaked clothes off in a race to get to the water.

Although having seen her often in her tiny bikini, this did not really prepare Rob for how utterly gorgeous this girl was. Rob was riveted to the sight of her backside walking into the water. The flow from her thighs to her gently rounded bum to her incredibly graceful back was enchanting in the extreme. Turning in a crashing wave he finally saw her uncovered breasts and he could only stop and stare in wonder. They were firm and gently rounded and in every way perfect. Rob stopped breathing for a few seconds while he absorbed in the wonder of this young woman's body.

"Rob, are you coming in or not?"

Rob very quickly shed his clothes and dashed into the surf. He wanted to be under water as fast as he could . Shannon caught a wave and went rolling at him almost knocking him off his feet.

"Whoa girl, those breakers might hurt if you get pushed under."

"You'll catch me right?" And with that she launched herself on a wave at him. Crashing into him, Rob back flipped with her on top and for a brief second she was fully stretched out on his body in the water. She grabbed onto his neck and dragged him under. Rising up he grabbed her hips and tossed her away. The thrill of her momentary touch had sent a shudder through him. Even in the water Rob was sensing an erection building and he needed to get away from this game. He started swimming out with her in pursuit. The both of them then began body surfing on the waves side by side. He could handle this with out quite so much embarrassment, and it was really fun.

Rob got out of the water first and Shannon continued to play for some time. Rob was lying on his beach towel watching her in the waves. When Shannon walked out of the water slowly coming at him Rob was absolutely certain he had never seen such a beautiful creature in his life. She was breathtaking.

Shannon dried herself on her small towel and then flopped down beside him on his beach towel as was her custom from their morning swims, except this time she was naked. Grabbing her day pack she pulled out her sunscreen and handed it too him while settling in on her stomach.

"Rob, could you do the top side for me," she said.

He stared at her back for a second and then began at her shoulders and worked his way south. He tried to focus on the distant horizon, doing all he could to control his body's reaction. Shannon mercifully had her head turned away from him.

Gliding his hand down to the small of her back he snapped the top shut on the lotion and eased up on his rubbing.

"More please."

Rob took a deep breath, put more lotion on his hand and began spreading lotion on the back of her calves.

Shannon snapped, "ROB!"

"Yeeesssss dear??" he drawled out slowly.

"Bum!"

"You missed my ass. How will I sit if I get burned."

If you pinned Rob down on what he thought was the most erotic feature of a woman he would have to admit it was a woman's backside. Nothing, even breasts and a woman's sex didn't speak the same seductiveness that the soft curves of a beautiful butt did to him. Shannon was a small package and she was not really broad in the hips but the contours of her ass cheeks were firm and beautifully sculptured. Her skin was so achingly soft. Rob had been particularly avoiding this part of her anatomy visually and certainly physically.

Manning up, he gritted his teeth and began spreading sunscreen on her ass. Becoming lost in the unimaginable eroticism of this task he decided to add a little torment of his own. On the final pass down the left cheek he dragged a thumb deep into her crack stopping off momentarily at her anus and then ended on her perineum just short of her sex. She startled at this, whimpered and settled back down only to do the same when he gave her crack the same treatment on the final pass down the right ass cheek. A nasty streak in him gloated at returning some of the torment she was putting him through.

Rob's thoughts were becoming thoroughly scattered and Shannon wasn't helping much as she purred softly and edged closer to him. He was now on his stomach and he was forcing himself to focus on the engineering issues at hand, long alpine rock routes that he had climbed in summers past and just about anything besides the naked young woman lying beside him.

Gazing out over the ocean he suddenly realized he had a real issue to take his mind of Shannon's body. The surf had been slowly building and he realized with a start that getting the sailboat launched off the beach was going to be increasingly difficult as the wind picked up. Rob suddenly snapped up, grabbed his shorts, started to get dressed and began packing his pack.

"Shannon, we've got to get moving if we are going to get off this beach. Now!"

Shannon looked up and pouted, "Rob, do you know you are a big meany," as she reluctantly began to get up and start to dress.

As he headed quickly towards the boat she yelled at him, "AND A TORTURER AS WELL!"

'Really!' he thought, 'a torturer?? Nothing like youthful gratitude'.

He then became lost in the task of dragging the boat towards the water and getting ready for a difficult launch. Shannon was small but she was competent at stabilizing her side in the heavier surf. She pulled her self in on Rob's command and he then jumped in, dropped the centre board and released and cleated the jib within seconds. Grabbing the tiller he yelled at Shannon, "Hang on Baby! This is going to be rough."

Slowly they made their way out through the rollers while running a clear risk of broaching in the surf. After many tense moments they gained the calmer waters away from the beach, unfurled the main and had a relatively gentle sail back to the resort.

*****

Shannon continued her intrusive rocking on the chair. She started to say something and then stopped. Rob glanced up from his laptop and the look on her face caused the tension to ratchet up a few points. Whats going on he thought -- his mind a complete blank. If she was of contemporary age to him he would have some idea, but from a twenty two year old? This was out of his sphere of reference. Rob was an engineer, not a psychologist. 'Was it something I did?' he thought.

She started again ... and then stopped again.

'This is getting stupid,' Rob thought.

"Shannon will you just blurt out whatever you want to say. I really have to get this done," Rob said, now getting seriously annoyed.

"Okay, then ... Why do you find me so unattractive?" she spit out, her voice shaking and rising in volume.

He gasped. What? Did he really just hear that? "What are you talking about?" he choked out loud.

This was about the last thing he would have ever guessed would come out of her mouth. Quickly the engineer in him went to work organizing the missing data which was:

What had ever given her the impression he thought she was unattractive?

Why did she even care in the least whether he did or not?

What was she really trying to say?

Could it be ... no way ..but he couldn't shake the question .. that he was maybe something other than a living fossil to her?

How stupid would that be?

Rob considered himself a man of some experience in all aspects of life. He was confident in his ability to answer to most questions directed at him either from a technical, business or even social situation. Now he started to open his mouth to reply to Shannon but words wouldn't come out ... simply because he didn't have any. Finally all he could croak was "Shannon, You. Are. Gorgeous. ... how .. where ... why ..what would have made you think I didn't believe that "

"Prove it too me!" She stood up quickly and faced away from him.

Once again, he utterly failed to put a response together to this challenge. He was reeling. If he had been twenty five or even thirty five he would have let his body make the answer. But now. How does a forty nine year old tell an obviously stunning twenty two year old that she is, in fact, gorgeous. That is, say something that isn't creepy to her or liable to get him arrested, even though he knew that she was in fact a woman and not a child. Still, you cant be too careful now a days and he didn't know what the Vietnamese rules around harassment were.

Why didn't she just go down to the hut inhabited by the young American guys who had been walking by, off and on all afternoon, peering at Shannon's hut.

"I'm waiting," she snapped. "I believe you think I'm homely, fat, stupid and and ... you like making me feel this way."

This was going from bad to worse. 'What the fuck am I doing,' he thought. 'Just boot her off your porch and get back to the project.'

That, he knew, was just a reaction. Rob had never deliberately been cruel to a woman, many other things, both good and bad maybe, but never deliberately cruel. Today was not the day to start he sighed.

He moved over to the cushioned settee along the railing and flopped down. "Come here and sit beside me and tell me whats going on," he sighed.

Silence, and no motion. Oh god, what next he thought. After what seemed like an hour but was probably less than a minute she slowly turned, moved over to the settee and sat at the far end. Rob unconsciously moved to the other end. The settee was small but they maxed out their separation on it.

Suddenly, an inappropriate thought snapped into his brain. 'Oh, shit, Did I hit save on the last revision of the document?' he thought, partially trying to dodge the issue at hand, but also practically, as power failures on this beach were a regular occurrence. Leave it, his brain advised, don't go back over to the laptop. Civility is hanging by a thread he reasoned.

With no magic words coming, he decided to keep it simple and ask questions.

"Shannon, once again, you are going to have to tell me why you think that."

She continued staring straight ahead. The evening sun was slowly reaching the horizon and the ocean was lighting up. The volleyball game was getting noisy but there were no other sounds. Even the breeze had stilled.

Finally, "When those Norwegian sluts were slobbering all over you, so to speak, and I put my head on your stomach, you didn't even touch me." How could Rob forget that. He hadn't seen such a blatant female staking out of territory in all his experience. He had attributed it to her dislike for the two blondes and not really for anything she felt for him. He had also felt incredibly aroused with her head on his lap and her arm draped over his cock and had been trying to forget that response since the incident.

"When we were on the island your goal seemed to be to slowly torture me with no relief when you were spreading sunscreen."

Ok, frontal assault time. "Shannon, when you first arrived I believe you would think I was a pervert if I even so much as breathed on you, let alone tell you what I really thought about you. Your entire body language said that, or at least it did."

"That was then, and besides, even if you are a pervert, you are my local pervert. Those fucking bitches can screw off and get their own pervert!"

He burst out laughing after a feeble attempt to stifle his hilarity. He also wondered if all young college women had such potty mouths in this day and age.

"So, the destruction of my self esteem is a source of mirth is it?" she said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

Rob to brain, 'Please help me out here.' Nothing came.

He sighed, "Okay, now that we have out into the open what I am, 'your' pervert is asking you to slide over and he will tell you all the ways you are breathtakingly beautiful and then you can call the cops and have me arrested. Let me call a lawyer before they take me away please. Okay?

"And .... I want to put my arm around you while I do this. Think of this as your dad speaking, well not really but you know what I mean."

Silence. No motion. Then a slow and deliberate shifting over from Shannon to him. He put his arm very lightly around her shoulders, enough though to feel the tension in them. Somehow he knew he had to actually touch her for this speech.

"Okay, here goes." Rob took a deep breath, "Shannon, your face and smile never fail to

light up my day. You have possibly the most beautiful legs I have ever seen on a woman. There are strong, toned, smooth and sexy as anything. I have even trouble thinking and looking at your butt without going hard, please excuse the pervert reaction. It. Is. Stunning. Your stomach is smooth and is aching to be kissed. I will go completely nuts if I have to describe your breasts. Please don't make me, I may start blubbering. Your hair coulour and texture is is .. well lets just say that every morning I see you I simply gasp with delight at the sight."

He continued, "Now, do I sound like someone who thinks you are unattractive?"

That was it. He had just spilled his guts out onto the floor. Surely that had to end the discussion. Victory over misconception for certain he hummed to himself. It was the truth, every syllable of it. 'Now,' he thought, 'Shannon, slowly back away and run for your hut and let me get back to engineering.'

"I'm not convinced. If you meant that then why don't you touch me .. um ... intimately?"

Defeat from the jaws of victory. What was he going to have to say ... or do? Now he was feeling like bolting himself, for somewhere, anywhere.

"Shannon, truly, truly, in a major way I want to totally devour you, not just touch you -- remember what I am in your words, right? I have had crazy love making sessions with many girls over the years, but frankly, after awhile I decided that I was through with one night stands and purely physical relationships. They are essentially hollow at the core when there is no love involved and one or the other person gets hurt, too often me. If I cant have love I don't just want sex. I know that totally goes against everything you have ever heard about men, but really, some of us end up this way. Otherwise we risk becoming emotional wrecks." Rob had never put these feelings into words to be spoken out loud before, but they essentially spoke the truth.

Shannon continued staring ahead. Silence. Then more silence. There were crickets chirping which he had never heard before. It had never been this silent. She seemed to have stop breathing. Okay, Rob thought, 'B is for breathing , which enables C for circulation'. Humans need to continue doing this to survive. He broke the silence with three words, even though he knew that meant he had lost.

"Please breathe Shannon."

She slowly turned her head towards him, shifted her position, and then in one quick motion straddled his thighs on the settee.

She grabbed his head between two hands and held it there and said, very quietly, "You want me to breathe, then please feel my breath now." Very slowly she brought her mouth towards his face and then softly let out small puffs of breath over his eyes, his cheeks, his nose, his forehead and then breathed out inches from his mouth. Sweet sweet breath! Rob could not remember in all his experience something as completely erotic as this simple act.

Rob was now truly and totally lost, emotionally, metaphysically and finally, sexually. This didn't happen often too him. In reality, it had never happened to him. He closed his eyes, being afraid to look into hers. What was she doing to him. This can't be happening. She thinks I'm a pervert! And if desperately wanting this young woman despite everything he believed in made him a pervert, then he was there, no doubt about it. A voice crept up from the back of the brain that said if he was going to take the wrap for being a pervert he might as well enjoy the trip to Hell. He closed his eyes and slowly opened his lips but that was it, he wasn't going any further.

Almost imperceptibly her lips brushed his. More than the physical touch, he felt the electricity zapping around his body as her lips closed in. 'That doesn't really happen does it?' he thought. 'Only in bad novels right?' But it did happen to Rob.

The kisses from her grazed all around his lips and slowly he kissed back, lips only. He wasn't crossing the next line first. Sensing this her tongue touch his lips and then slipped into his mouth. Everything in his world stopped. Rob now realized he was the one who had stopped breathing. She leaned back, smiled at him and said, "Breathe Rob". After that, pure lust took over as their kissing became wildly passionate. Rob's cock was aching in his shorts. Shannon began a very slow gentle rocking back and forth. Oh god! Did she feel his hardness? She had to, she was rocking on his bulge. His hands raised from the settee to her hips and began exploring. There was no doubt what he was now.

Suddenly, he looked at her face and what he saw was that of a child. Oh my god, he snapped up, lifted and set her on the settee and stepped over the railing and sat down on the concrete rail. He was gasping trying to make up for his panic. He had stopped just in time. She was a child. Maybe only relatively speaking but really just a child.

He couldn't or wouldn't say anything. This was her opportunity to get out of there and save some respect for both of them. Surely now she would get it together and help him out by going.

Finally after a length of time that he really couldn't guess at how long it really was -- time had ceased to have much meaning - he heard motion behind him.

She wasn't going down the steps. He sensed her immediate proximity first and then glanced over as she sat down beside him on the railing. A part of him had to laugh, she was determined, if nothing else.

Very softly she said, "Rob, I believe you want this. I. Want. This. I know you are having a hard time seeing me as a woman but please do it for me, if not for you. The sun will come up in the morning, I promise."

He turned slowly to face her and looked into her eyes. Something in them said warmth, even affection and not just lust. The battle was over. He rose, scooped her up and carried her into his room, kicking the door shut with his heel, stopping just before the bed. He hesitated, put her down onto her feet. He looked directly into her eyes and said, "This is the last point I am going to stop. If you touch my bed there is no going back."