Life Raft

"I really need to apologize to you," she sniffled finally. "This wasn't your doing and you didn't ask for any of it. You've been a perfect gentleman to me ever since we met, and here I am, acting like it's the end of the world if you touch me, even though I asked you to. The thing is, I've never been naked with a man and I'm really uncomfortable about that since I'm so ugly."

There it was again. Ugly? How could she possibly think that? Sure, I'd noted that her face wasn't as cute as her friends', yet she'd been the one I was attracted to. I decided to go out on a limb a little and tell her the truth.

"Jessica, the reason I was rowing so hard through the calm section was to see if I could catch up to you guys. I guess I had some kind of forlorn hope that I could split you off from your friends, since it seemed like they weren't being very nice to you anyway. I wanted the chance to talk to you some more."

"You wanted to talk to me?" Her voice was a mixture of doubt, wonder and maybe a little bit of concern.

"Yeah, but don't worry, I'm absolutely not going to take advantage of you." I said it with as convincing a tone of voice as I could manage.

"Oh. Are you, like, gay?"

Maybe I'd been a little too emphatic. I couldn't quite tell from her inflection whether she'd be relieved or disappointed if I said I was.

"No, I'm definitely not gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that..." I said, stealing the Seinfeld line and managing to get a smile from her. "And it's not that I'm uptight or attached either. Let's just say that you're completely safe in my hands and leave it at that."

"Okay. If you say so." She took a deep breath. "I'm ready if you're still willing."

"I am."

We stood up and she got back into position. I resisted the urge to start reciting her Miranda rights to her.

"Jessica, you lied to me."

"Huh?"

"You're not completely naked."

She actually managed a little bit of a giggle. "My sandals don't count. I'm not really all that embarrassed about my feet being seen naked in public."

"You little exhibitionist, you."

This time she held perfectly still as I took her hair into my hands. It was thick, soft, silky and amazingly weighty. I had to fight the urge to run my fingers through it. Instead, I hung her ponytail over her shoulder, out of the way.

Squeezing a little lotion into my hand, I rubbed it in my palms, then started lightly working it into her shoulders. The feel of her body was electrifying. Even as amazingly baby soft and smooth as her skin was, the lotion didn't go far, though, so I picked up the bottle to get more.

"Sean," she said, "why don't you just squirt a bunch on me and get after it. I think there will be a lot less embarrassment for both of us if you just do it quickly."

"That's true. I need to keep in mind that what I'm doing here is a preventative medical procedure."

"That's the spirit."

I grabbed the bottle and squirted a line of lotion from her wrist, across her arm, and then in a spiral pattern down her back. I returned to the nape of her neck and ran a line from there to her other wrist. I could barely believe this was happening. While I felt bad for Jessica, I was massively turned on by the fact that I was about to run my hands all over her amazing body. This day was definitely looking up.

Starting at her narrow waist, I quickly and efficiently spread and massaged the lotion into her skin. I worked it in well enough to get rid of the white smears, but I made sure it was thick and even. She wasn't going to burn if I could help it.

I made sure I got her sides and gloried when I felt just the outer swelling of her breasts. Then I did her incredibly smooth armpits, firm shoulders and went clear up to her hairline under her ponytail. I covered both arms from fingertips to shoulders, only avoiding the quilled areas.

"Okay, let's do the bottom half," I said, now on a roll. Jessica paused for a long moment, but then leaned forward a little and spread her legs, giving me enough access to be able to coat them all the way up. I'm sure she knew she was also giving me a beautifully framed look at her privates as well, but that couldn't be helped.

While I empathized with her situation, I couldn't help but look. The first thing that jumped out at me was that Jessica was defying modern convention by not being trimmed, let alone shaved. Some of her wispy, black strands hung down a couple of inches between her slim, but muscular thighs.

Her maidenhood was very modest and discreet, with only the barest of slits visible. Everything was neatly contained with only her pubic hair outwardly differentiating her from a child. Still, she was beautiful and I felt a surge of desire for her.

I dropped to my knees and squirted a thick line of lotion from her ankle, up her leg, across her buttocks a couple of times, then back down the other leg. I started at the bottom, temporarily removing her sandals so I could get the tops of her feet, then covering all around each leg and up to her hips. I was really impressed with her muscle development. She was obviously some kind of athlete.

I rubbed the lotion into her butt cheeks and the sides of her hips, but avoided her privates by a couple of inches. I was going to need special dispensation to go there. A moment later, she gave it.

"Sean," she said, obviously fighting her embarrassment, "I don't want to get burned there, either. It's okay to do those parts too, if you don't mind."

I didn't trust myself to say anything, so I just squirted a little more lotion into my palm and began to rub it between her butt cheeks, spreading it efficiently, but thoroughly. Then I slipped my hand between her inner thighs.

I felt her quick intake of breath as my palm rubbed her leg up to the top of her thigh. I just brushed her lovely lips with the back of my hand and nearly gasped as I felt her own moisture smear thickly across me. Neither of us said anything as I turned my palm upward and quickly coated her with sunblock using the same casual motions I'd used for her armpits. Though there was no physical manifestation of it, I was more sexually aroused than I'd been in a long time.

Now fully in the spirit of things, I stood up and got in close behind her. Spreading a large dollop of lotion around on my hands, I reached around and began to slather her lower abdomen, making sure I'd left no gap by again quickly palming her maidenhood.

Jessica surprised me when she began a low moan, but she caught herself and cut it off abruptly. That brought me back to myself, though, and I continued up her torso as if I hadn't heard her, but this was obviously getting her aroused as well.

"Sean, I think you're going to need to see what you're doing," she said breathlessly. "I'm going to turn around, but I'm keeping my eyes closed."

"Why?"

"So I don't have to see your look of revulsion."

"Oh, I doubt you'd see anything like that."

She turned to face me, then leaned back against the rock wall. Indeed, her eyes were closed, but it really was nice to be able to look at all of her without feeling self-conscious about it.

I decided I liked Jessica's full pubic hair. The fully shaved look had always just seemed a bit too child-like for my tastes and it would have been doubly so with her boyish physique. I found her thick bush womanly and amazingly sexy.

Directing my gaze upward, I noted that her breasts were small, especially on such a long frame, but they were high and nicely rounded, like I preferred. Her nipples were standing up hard and proud.

I liked the delicate features of her collarbones and throat, and the hard muscles of her stomach and abdomen. She was absolutely firm, but emphatically sleek.

"You can open your eyes, Jessica. Lord knows you're very easy on mine."

"Brown-noser," she said, but her eyes popped open and she gave me a grateful smile.

She was blushing intensely as she watched me squirt lotion across her chest. I rubbed it in from stomach to neck with the same motions I'd used on her back.

I'd figured that the safest way to handle her breasts was to treat them as a non-erogenous zone, but when my palms ran across her hard nipples, we both gasped. Her breasts were firmer than any I'd ever felt and her nipples were harder than I'd previously believed possible. I just plain couldn't help myself and gave them three or four swirls more than was probably necessary for Jessica's sun protection. She closed her eyes and held her breath, obviously trying (in vain) to conceal her arousal. Since there was only so much I could do with her in the end, I moved north, slathering her thickly up to her chin.

I squirted a little more lotion on my hands and began to carefully coat her face. She closed her eyes again and I quickly realized that this felt even more intimate than when I'd palmed her.

"I'm really sorry about all of this," she said. "You should be having a nice relaxing ride down the river, not be nursemaiding a helpless woman."

"Um, if I may be so bold, I think I'd rather go down the river with a beautiful girl than be alone -- or with Alex -- any day of the week."

I was pleased to see that while Jessica's expression said she still wasn't sure if I was being serious about her beauty, she didn't actually question me on it this time. I'd decided that I really liked the friendly, wholesome look of Jessica's face. And to a guy like me, her body was absolute perfection.

"You're the one who should be having a hard time," I continued, "having to look at this pale, scrawny body and big, honkin' nose."

"I think your face is quite noble-looking," she said, "and scrawny? How tall are you?"

"Six foot five, but I only weigh one ninety-five."

"It's all muscle though. What do you do to stay in shape?"

"I swam all through high school and college. I've done a couple of triathlons and I'm training for the Ironman now, but I'm not in your kind of shape. You're obviously an athlete, Jessica. What's your sport?"

"I was the captain of the volleyball team at the university."

That rang a bell. "Wait, you're not Jessica Swenson, are you?" That was the name of the girl who had captained the Pelicans to the NCAA championship the previous fall.

"What, surprised?" She looked pleased that I'd heard of her and thankfully didn't seem to mind that I seemed a little doubtful about her name.

"Well, um, forgive me for being politically incorrect, but I guess I would have expected you to look a bit more, well, Scandinavian."

"Oh, you're quite forgiven. My grandpa Swenson is blond and blue-eyed, but my grandma is from Kenya. My mom is Vietnamese, though, and most people take me for full Asian."

"That's cool, having such a varied ancestry. Me, I'm just Irish."

"Yeah, at the risk of being a little non-PC myself, I'm guessing that there aren't a whole lot of Kenyan carrot tops out there."

"I'm sure you're right, but my genes mean that I can sympathize with your aversion to the sun. I've got long swim gear myself and if I'd known this was going to be a four-hour trip, I'd have worn it. This climate is brutal for someone like me."

"You've got that right. Living in the desert sucks," she said. "So are you a fan of women's collegiate volleyball?"

"I'm actually more of a baseball fan," I admitted, "but I followed your team's tournament run in the sports pages. I also read that you tried out for the Olympic team. That must have been cool."

Her face lit up. "You have no idea. It was a totally awesome experience. I'm still waiting to find out if I'm going to Rio in '16."

Something in her voice told me that she didn't think so, but I decided to leave that topic alone for now. At least I was finally done with the sunblock.

"Well, Jessica Swenson, it's nice to meet you. I'm Sean Sullivan."

"Nice to meet you too, Sean Sullivan. I'd shake your hand, but..."

"Yeah, do you want me to pull those needles out here, or would you like to start down the river first?"

"Sunblock or not, the sooner we're indoors the better," Jessica said. "Even in the shade of the raft, we're picking up a ton of reflected UV here."

"I'm with you." I lifted the raft up and away from the rocks and set it back down at the edge of the water. I held Jessica's arm to keep her steady while she stepped in and sat in the stern. I tossed my pack in, pushed the raft out a bit, then jumped in and rowed us toward the rapids.

I was about to tell her to hang on, but realized that she couldn't. "Uh, brace yourself. This could get a little rough."

I turned the raft so that it was going down the river stern first, rowing against the current so I could see where we were going. Jessica turned and wrapped her arms across the stern of the raft, pressing her chest against it for stability. Fortunately, these rapids were mostly just fast water and a minute later we were back to cruising.

Jessica turned back to me. I was amazed at how quickly we were both getting comfortable with her nudity. She looked down at her hands. "I figured I was going to have to stick it out with these things until the end of the river at least. They hurt."

I snagged the tweezers out of the first aid kit in my backpack. "Well, let's get started." She scooted closer so that the knees of her crossed legs were touching mine and presented her right hand. Her fingers were long but sturdy, with short, practical nails. They would have been perfect for a concert pianist, I figured. I went for a needle in the middle of her palm. It came out cleanly, but Jessica winced.

"Deep, huh?" I said in sympathy.

"Yeah, but it feels good to have it out."

Jessica was a trooper, not flinching after the first couple and keeping her hand relaxed so I could go as quickly as possible. I did my best to concentrate on the job at hand and not be distracted by the pert breasts and adorable bush in front of me. Jessica's nipples seemed to have a mind of their own and stayed erect through the whole process. At least the cactus had been of a variety with needles that were stiff and strong. There was a good chance that I could get them all without leaving any broken off in her skin.

In the meantime, I wanted to know how she'd gotten stranded, but wasn't quite sure how to ask about what was surely a painful subject. "You know," I said, "I almost didn't manage to get my raft to you. Another couple of seconds and it would have been too late."

"My bad. Randi said you were at least half an hour behind us, so I had my face turned away from the sun. I didn't hear you going by and it was just dumb luck that I turned and checked when I did. That was really stupid on my part."

"Don't blame yourself. I shaved fifteen minutes off my estimate. It's a good thing you looked when you did, though. Otherwise you'd have been there until your friends reported that you were stranded."

Jessica shook her head. "They won't report anything. They'll drive straight back to town, laughing their asses off because I got stranded, buck ass naked, in a raft with a guy I didn't even know. I'm really happy you managed to stop for me, but in a worst-case scenario, I would have snagged a ride with the next group."

"Jessica, there aren't going to be any more groups."

"Huh?"

I explained the one o'clock rule and the deal I'd struck with the warden. She went pale when she fully comprehended the situation.

"Sean, I didn't tell anyone where I was going," she said. "I'd have been stuck there overnight if you hadn't seen me."

It almost didn't bear thinking about. "It's still just late spring and it gets cold up here at night," I said. "Hypothermia would have been a huge issue. Without any clothes or shelter, I don't know if you could have maintained enough body heat to make it until morning."

Jessica looked really spooked now. "So to survive, I'd have had to swim eleven miles to the bottom, through two sets of rapids, or scale the canyon wall without gear and then hike to the highway? I don't know that I could have done either of those things."

As it happened, I actually knew that the chances she would have had to spend the night on the river were pretty small, but the reason I knew that was something I was planning to let her in on later. At the moment, I figured it was time to ask the obvious question. "So why did your supposed friends want to do this to you?"

"It's a long story."

"Oh. Well in that case I'll go back to the TV show I was watching."

She smiled, a welcome thing under the circumstances. "Okay, it started when I was living in the dorms as a freshman and I became friends with Randi. We were both on the volleyball team. When I came back for my sophomore year we rented a house with Kim and Trish. I liked living there, even though Randi turned out to be a bit of a queen bee. But at the start of our senior year, she got cut from the team because of how much weight she'd put on in the off-season. Then, when I was named captain, she became a total bitch to me. I'd finally had enough and moved out, into a little studio apartment.

"Then, just a couple of weeks ago, Randi called and apologized. She seemed to be totally sincere, so when she suggested I come along on this trip, I agreed. Then on the drive up, all three of them told me it's a local tradition that the first time you go tubing here you get naked and jump at the first spot. They all swore they'd done it.

"When we got to the jump spot we were by ourselves and knew that no one else would be along for a while, but I still didn't want to do it, so they said they'd go first. One at a time, they stripped, climbed, and jumped, so I felt duty-bound.

"It's not easy to get up there, and the route is around the back where you can't see the water, but I was almost to the top when they started yelling that they'd gotten too close to the rapids and were being swept away. Our tubes were all tied together and my towel, hat and suit were in my bag, attached to my tube, so I kind of panicked and tried to climb too fast. I slipped and that's when I tangled with the cactus. By the time I got to the top and jumped in, they were already into the rapids."

"Jessica, their abandoning you was no accident. I witnessed them paddling out into the current."

She nodded grimly. "I figured that. I like to think the best of people, but sometimes it can get you burned. I'm just glad you were there for me."

"It was my pleasure." And how.

I'd finally finished and Jessica gingerly rubbed her hands together, feeling for any needles that I might have missed. "Wow, you should be a doctor, Sean. You got them all and my hands are hardly even sore."

"Ah, it was nothing." I stayed where I was, cross-legged with my knees against hers. I'd been alone for so long that the skin-to-skin contact felt really good.

Jessica made no move to scoot away either. "It's your turn now," she said. "Tell me a little about yourself."

"Well, I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania two years ago, then went to Jensen Financial. Being a new hire, I spent my first year working as a stockbroker. I'm not really a "sales" kind of guy, but I did okay. I've been doing mock trades and market analysis since junior high, though, and last year I talked them into letting me try my hand professionally. They've got a small group of people that do only that."

"Ah yes, the 'engine room'."

"That's right," I said with a smile, pleased that Jessica knew the term we used. "I immediately felt right at home there and we've been consistently beating the market. I like what I'm doing and, for now, it really suits me."

"Just for now?"

"Well, I've always had a dream of being a concert pianist."