One Prince of Serendip

Remembering days gone by, and some damned good luck...

Author's note: This is set back in '71, before National Nude Day came out of New Zealand. Hippies and Naturists were thriving subcultures, though, and subjects of some interest/repudiation, depending on who you were. AIDS didn't exist and everything but Herpes could be cured with antibiotics. Unwanted pregnancy was the big concern. This a submission for the National Nude Day contest. I hope you, the reader, enjoy the story and vote accordingly, regardless of any contest. Oh, and all characters are over the age of 18.

*~*~*~*~*

My parents owned a vacation home on the Great Lakes and when I was in college, I would get up there every chance I got. I grew up going to the house and loved being there, especially when I was older, if I could be alone. Being alone became a lot simpler in High School, when I got my driver's license. It became almost a given in college, because I got breaks when no one else did and my parents appreciated me dropping in on the property to keep tabs on it. I'd go up year-round... it didn't matter to me.

Some of the breaks, especially in summer and over the winter holidays, meant taking along siblings and friends. The times I could get to myself, though, were always more appreciated.

My grandfather had built the house as a retirement home but never got to enjoy it. He died when I was young. He built it to last, though... some of the locals called it a bomb shelter. It was in the middle of once-cut timber, mostly evergreen and birch with some deciduous trees as well, which gave spectacular Fall colors, and it nestled up against a sand dune ridge so the front porch peeked over the top of the ridge, facing the lake. The basement, including a two-car garage, was below the ridge line with the first floor above it.

The woods had been cleared directly in front of the house, looking out over the lake side of the slope of the dune, across the beach and to the water. Woods surrounded the gravel apron and the house, and there was a long drive through the woods to the highway. Grandpa and a friend of his had bought almost thirty acres along the water and split it between them, but he'd sold off some parcels for other folk to build homes. By the time I was going up there in college, the property still had about 1,200 shore feet, and it was about 300 to 400 feet from the water to the highway. It was a lovely, isolated bit of heaven.

I was also a closet nudist. I tended to be shy around people, but when I was alone up there, I loved stripping down and just feeling like I was part of the raw nature of the place. When it was warm enough, and windy enough (to keep down the mosquitoes), I'd lay out on the beach at night totally naked, looking up at the stars, listening to the surf steadily rolling up onto the shore, listening to the wind in the trees and hearing the occasional owl or two. It was still, it was calming and it was awesome.

Sunbathing and swimming during the day were also activities I preferred to do nude. I wasn't stupid about it, though. Anytime I had to go into the woods, I was covered head to foot and wore insect repellent. Some people think it's a joke that the mosquito is the Wisconsin State Bird, but believe me, some of the ones in our woods you could have lassoed, thrown a saddle on and ridden to work.

We had neighbors... I just didn't see them very often. The closest house south of ours was a summer vacation home for an elderly couple who seldom strayed far from their patio. The closest one north of us belonged to a family that included the teenage daughter who had helped me lose my virginity. She was a couple of years older than me and seldom came around anymore. What I didn't know was that much farther north along the beach, a new family had purchased one of the vacation homes, and their family happened to include a couple of kids around my age. They also owned horses.

So, to the point of this story, I was enjoying a warm, sunny Memorial Day weekend basking on the beach. It was windy enough that I had staked out a spot in the lee of a dune about halfway between the tree line and the water's edge, put out a big, comfortable blanket, set up a cooler with drinks and sprawled out naked as the day I was born to soak up some sun.

My daydreaming was encroached upon by the sound of a horse snorting. As a horse was not part of my reverie, it confused me. Then I heard another and the weirdness started dragging me back from Nirvana. It was the girl's voice that brought me crashing back to reality.

"Wow... doesn't he look nice?" I heard. I sat on my instinct to panic and feigned sleep.

"Oh, yeah..." said another female voice and the panic started to leak out anyway.

I opened my eyes just a slit to try to assess. I couldn't. Unless I raised my head, I couldn't see to the water's edge, where they appeared to be.

"I wonder if he's one of those Hippies?" the first voice asked. "I mean, he has the long hair and the beard." It was true. I had hair past my shoulder blades and a full beard.

"But he doesn't have any pubic hair," the second voice said. "Maybe he's one of those Naturist people. Maybe this is his private beach." That was also true. Through a previous misadventure I had discovered staying shaved had its benefits. I steeled my resolve, opened my eyes and struggled up onto my elbows.

"In fact, it is," I told them. I really had to concentrate on getting the rest out, once I got a look at them. "My private beach that is. Which you are permitted to cross, provided neither you nor your horses damage anything." I actually got the entire speech out.

There were several reasons I was on my way to tongue-tied. First of all, the two girls were beautiful. They were made more so by being astride a couple of really nice horses and they were riding bareback. They would have been wearing bikinis if they'd had their tops on, which they didn't. The only thing on their tops were kit bags slung over their shoulders. My hormones were waking up and I realized that the only thing I had to cover up with was the blanket.

They and their horses were just off the beach, about three or four feet out into the water, riding in the shallows. One girl was a light blonde and the other was a reddish blonde. Other than that, they could have been twins.

"Thank you!" the light blonde smiled. "We're new here and just riding the beach, getting the lay of the land." She eyed the cooler. "You don't happen to have some cold water, do you?"

I kept to myself all the permutations "lay of the land" could mean, fought to keep sophistication on the surface, hoped to God I didn't come erect and tried to answer her.

"Not down here," I told her. "I've got some fruit juices and iced tea. The water's up at the house."

"Could we bum some from you?" the reddish-head asked.

Remember that bit about being shy around people? Yeah... well, around these two people, the embarrassment was fighting for control and I was really trying to keep my cool. I got on my knees and turned my back to them, ostensibly to rummage through the cooler. Actually, it was to hide my growing erection.

"What would you like?" I asked. "I've got sun-tea I've decanted, apple juice, pink lemonade..." They surprised me. They slipped off the horses and started walking them up towards the patio at the base of the stairs. There was a big bush next to it, or maybe it was a crabapple, that Grandpa had put in for hanging towels. They used it to tether their horses and hang their kit bags before walking over to me. This was going to be bad. I was completely erect. There wasn't anything I could do about it and nothing convenient to hide it with. There was the cooler...

In probably one of the un-coolest moves ever, I turned the cooler around so it was facing away from me, lid open, then stood up with it so it covered my groin. Then I turned to face them.

"Choose what you'd like," I told them. They broke out laughing. I felt my ears starting to burn and I knew I was turning red.

"Hi, I'm Marsha," the light blonde told me. "Can I choose what's behind Door Number Three?"

If I wasn't blushing before, I was blushing now.

"I'm Kate," the reddish-blonde told me as she walked up. "Don't let my sister faze you. She's an outrageous tease."

"I am not!" Marsha protested. "I always follow through!"

"Okay, she's an outrageous slut," Kate corrected as she looked through what was available in the cooler.

"Kate!" Marsha protested even more. "We don't even know him, yet!"

"My guess is, you will," Kate answered, pulling out a pink lemonade. I wasn't part of the by-play. I sort of wanted to keep it like that. I will admit, though, the girls were doing a far better job of not ogling than I was. Two beautiful pairs of breasts were parked less than two feet away.

"Aarrghhh!" Marsha muttered towards her sister as she rummaged through the available drinks, and happened to push the cooler back into my groin. She looked up when I winced.

"Oh... sorry..." she told me, pulling out an apple juice.

"That's okay," I answered in a falsetto, trying to be funny. Apparently it worked, because they laughed.

"So, who are you?" Kate asked as she opened her drink.

"Mark," I told her. "Hippie-Naturist owner of this resort."

"Hi, Mark," Marsha told me, then asked, "if you're a Hippie-Naturist, why are you holding up the cooler?" Well, I wasn't getting out of it, so I guessed honesty was best.

"Because you two lovely half-clad ladies have got me embarrassingly hard, and this is my version of half-clad."

"Really?" They looked at each other. Maybe it was a sister thing, but they both took off their bikini bottoms at the same time. This was not helping my hard-on. Or rather, it was helping the hard-on. It wasn't helping the embarrassment.

"Okay," Kate told me. "We're naked. Drop the cooler."

"Um..." The bitch about having your bluff called is that you have to do something about it. And I was looking at a couple of slices of perfection. Based on what I could see, the carpets and drapes matched, and they both kept their pubes trimmed. Well, no shit, Sherlock... the hair had to hide behind the bikini bottoms.

Somewhere, I got the chutzpah to brazen it out. I set the cooler down and stood up, giving them a good look. Then my bobbing flagpole and I moved to the blanket and sat down. The two young ladies who had done such a good job of avoiding ogling me, ogled. Um... stared fixedly, eyes wide. I was a skinny shit, about 6' tall and 135 lbs., but I'd been given larger than average equipment. Part of what I got teased about by the guys and part of why I was easily embarrassed.

"Fuck, you're big..." Marsha muttered as she moved to also sit on the blanket. Kate didn't say anything. She just moved to the blanket and sat.

"So, where are you ladies from?" I asked, trying to sit in a way that at least hid the hard-on as best I could and be the best college student sophisticate I could.

"From our mother," Kate answered. I gave her the obligatory Wise-Ass! look and she added, "from up the beach. Our parents just bought the Morrison place. We're the Terneys."

"You two and your parents?" I asked. Mostly trying to find out about my new almost-neighbors. The Morrison place was a little over three-quarters of a mile north and was fairly well developed, including a boathouse and dock to go with it.

"We two, our parents and our two brothers," Marsha answered. "They're older, so they're not around so much. So this is your place?" She looked up over her shoulder where at this angle, the peak of the house just showed over the ridgeline of the dune.

"No, it's my parents'," I told her. "Inherited from my grandparents. Usually, in the summer, the whole family is up here and sometimes the aunts, uncles and cousins. Right now, though, I've got the place to myself. Or had," I amended. I was having an incredibly hard time keeping my eyes up and talking to theirs.

"You do know," I went on, "that if you go much farther south, you'll need to cover up? About where the creek comes in, the permanent residents start, all the way down to the town. And there's one real crab-ass lady down there who will give you a lot of shit about riding all over her 'wildlife sanctuary.' I mean, you two are incredibly well preserved for ladies in their thirties, but you'll still catch hell from her for being juvenile delinquents."

"Well preserved?" Marsha sputtered indignantly. "Thirties?" Kate was right with her.

"Well, it was that or comment on how underage nudity is frowned on in town," I told her. I was teasing because it helped ease some of my embarrassment.

"Underage, my ass!" Marsha told me. "I'm 20, Kate's 18, Tom is 23 and Steven is 25. No, 26. He just turned 26. How old are you, Mister Smart-ass?"

"Twenty," I told her. "Heading into my Junior year at SIU. What about you?"

"I'm going to be a Junior at UW Madison and Kate's just graduated high school. She'll be going to Stevens Point in the Fall."

"Cool," I told them. The erection was actually starting to go down, and I'd just thought of a way to make it go away a lot faster. I started to get up. "I'm going to go grab a quick cool-off dip. I'll be right back."

"Are you nuts?" Kate asked as I moved towards the water. "Have you even been in the water today? It's fucking freezing!"

"Ah, ah, ah..." I told her with a wagging finger as I started for the water, my semi-erection bouncing around in front of me, "language! Nuts, indeed... I should be offended at being called nuts... but..." and I paused for effect. "Since I'm majoring in Psychology, I'll take it as a compliment!" Then I turned and sprinted for the water.

One nice thing about knowing the "lay of the land," as it were. I knew that because of the curve of the shore here, there were three sandbars before you got to the drop off where the lake got steadily deeper. The sun, even in May, did a decent job of warming the water in the first two troughs. So I could easily head out to waist-deep water and dunk myself without freezing off certain favorite body parts. They didn't have that luxury farther north near their place.

They watched my naked ass in astonishment as I plunged in and waded/swam out to where I was up to my waist. Then I turned around and waved. Oh... and the erection was definitely gone. After all, warm is a relative term.

I could see them debating with themselves and smiled. I had an awesome view of two really good-looking naked girls. They were maybe 5'5" or 5'6", they had the same nubile curves, well muscled, small waists, hair to the middle of their backs, tight butts, tits that sat high and proud and were a little larger than a handful. What would that have been? A B-cup? Maybe a C? I was never really good at bra sizes. Then I really had to laugh.

I realized both their horses were geldings... but that didn't stop them from hanging down, which they were both currently doing, very noticeably. The girls had walked to the water's edge and were checking out the temperature with their feet and heard me laughing.

"What's so funny?" Marsha called out in an irritated voice. Maybe she thought I was laughing at them. I just pointed to the horses. They turned to look and their expressions were priceless. They saw what I saw and turned quickly back. Even from out in the water, I could see the blushes rising on both of them. Kate was the one who plunged in first, splashing her way out to where I was. Marsha followed her moments later.

Kate reached me and I swear, I didn't see it coming. She splashed up to me, put her hand around my back and pushed those beautiful tits into my chest, then reached down with her other hand and grabbed me.

"So," she told me as I realized the position I was in, "you've got something in common with my horse." She started kneading me and unfortunately for me, she was damned good at it. "So what?"

"So nothing?" I ventured as Marsha splashed up. It was bad enough I was swelling. I didn't dare move.

Marsha, on the other hand, did. She moved around behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist, pressing into my back and drifting a hand down to join her sister's. I was fighting a losing battle.

Out of sheer desperation, and I have no idea where the hell the idea came from, I took Kate's face in my hands, leaned down and kissed her, not giving her time to pull away. The moment our lips touched, she got a death grip on my balls and went rigid. I cringed and started to think I'd made a major mistake. But then she rapidly melted, returning the kiss and kicking it up a notch, pressing her tongue against my lips. It was my turn to be shocked but I did open my mouth and we slid into an amazing make-out session waist deep in Lake Michigan. And she hadn't let go of me.

She did, though. She moved her hands up my back, pulling me down to her. Marsha, being the other half of the team apparently, took over cock and ball massage duty. The only thing that was keeping my incredibly horny body from blowing my load right there was the fact that the water was just cool enough to interfere. Thank God.

I'm not sure how long Kate and I went at it before Marsha complained that she was getting ignored. Somehow it just made sense to turn around so I could make out with Marsha while Kate fondled me. And Marsha was every bit as good as her little sister in the kissing department. Maybe even a little better. I was achingly hard when we eased up on the kisses and I told them, "there's a much more comfortable place than the middle of the lake for this."

I felt it register with Kate behind me and I could definitely see it in Marsha's eyes. And her smile.

"Let's go," she told me and turned for the shore, Kate letting go and following right behind her.

I was standing there with the echoes of their awesome bodies reverberating on my skin, and their taste, and their scents... I got my ass in gear and followed them in. When I got there, they were standing near my blanket and looking around.

"A little open, don't ya think?" Marsha asked, implications bouncing all over the place.

"Well, you're the first ones to come by in three days," I offered, "but if you'd like, you can take your horses up the Jeep trail and picket them by the house." I started folding up the blanket and Kate quickly stepped in to help me.

"What Jeep trail?" Marsha asked.

"I'll show you in a second," I told her and finished with the blanket, thanking Kate for her help.

"Hopefully, you've got tops to go with those bottoms," I told them. "C'mon with me." They did, and I walked about fifty yards up the tree line before stopping. "See these ruts?" I asked. "This leads through those overhanging branches to an old logging trail we use for getting the Jeep, and hence the boat, up and down from the beach. It goes up sharply, then curves left and goes through the woods until it empties out on the apron. If you look to the right as you face the house, you'll see a little lawn area. You can put your horses there, if you want."

"Sounds good to me," Kate offered.

"Those evergreens are going to sting on the way through, though," Marsha commented.

"C'mon, Sis, we can cope," Kate told her and turned to follow me back. I picked up the blanket and cooler and headed for the stairs while Kate, and then Marsha, picked up their bikini bottoms, realized they were full of sand and carried them to their horses. They took down their kit bags and pulled out t-shirts, putting them on before mounting up.

"I'll see you up top," I told them and started up the stairs. I was shaking the blanket out on the front porch when they emerged from the woods.

"Have you got Bactine and a laundry?" Marsha called up from the apron.