One Prince Revisited

"Sorry, dude," I smiled. I couldn't help it. "You're S-O-L." And with perfect timing, I could hear Don's Jeep coming through the woods on our drive. Jim, Matt and Sarah heard it, too, and turned to look.

I was pleasantly surprised to see all four of them in jeans, boots and heavy shirts. But they could have been dressed in gunny sacks and the two girls would have sparkled. I saw Sarah stiffen.

Maybe, if we get into the work right away, she won't have a chance to go ballistic, I thought. Here's hoping the girls recognize 'territorial' and leave Jim alone.

Steve brought the Jeep up next to mine and the four of them piled out. I decided a preemptive strike was in order.

"Okay, everybody meet everybody," I told them and got the expected gee-that's-cute looks from more than one. "Actually, okay... so. Steve, Tom, Marsha, Kate (pointing at each) meet my brother Matt, his buddy Jim and Jim's girlfriend, Sarah. And vice versa. Steve, Tom, Marsha and Kate are Don and Natalie Terney's kids and they've bought the Morrisons' place."

"Introductions complete, here's the plan. I've got two major trees that have fallen over and need to come down. One is simple. It's just going to block the Jeep trail when it falls. The bigger problem is that one." I pointed to a large tree, maybe three feet in diameter, leaning in the direction of the house.

"That one needs to be belayed so it doesn't fall into the house, then back-cut and hauled back towards the road. If we can pull it onto the apron, we can section it there. Just to keep life interesting, there's a shitload of poison ivy back there. We need to be well protected, gloves included, and wash everything thoroughly afterwards. We can probably back our Jeep in close enough so a couple of us can go up the trunk and find a place to tie it off. Who hasn't done this kind of stuff before?"

Sarah, of course, raised her hand.

"Okay, then you're going to be working with whoever's running the Jeep and staying out of the woods. Do you know how to drive a stick?" She nodded and I went on.

"Okay, so everybody take a potty break, get something to drink, load up on Off! and let's divvy up the work." I thought I was doing a damned good job of keeping everybody focused on task. Of course, as soon as I was done, Marsh and Kate walked up to Sarah.

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck I think I'd better be busy somewhere else... I thought and headed for the house. Matt caught up to me using the half-bath downstairs.

"What the hell did your girlfriends say to Sarah?" he asked. Or demanded, rather. "All of a sudden, they're all chummy." Okay, so I was surprised.

"I have no idea," I told him. "I'm just here taking a leak and avoiding Ground Zero." I shook it off and asked, "so they really are acting chummy? Sarah, too?"

"Go look for yourself," he told me. "I thought Jim was going to piss his pants when your two 'oh my god you lucky sonofabitch' hotties headed for her. And by the way? I am now officially very jealous."

I was grinning like an inebriated clown. "Nice, huh?" I just had to rub it in.

"That's a mild way of putting it," he told me. "And you're boffing both of them?"

"Yes and that does not get repeated," I told him. "They're here as friends to help with the logging. If we can get those two trees down this morning, Mr. Terney has asked us to come up to his place to take care of some similar problems he's got, this afternoon."

"Okay, man," he told me -- somewhat grudgingly -- "just don't forget the wine."

"It's in the fridge upstairs."

To simplify the story a bit, we went back to join the others and set up our plan of attack. We went after the threat to the house first. It turned out Kate was part monkey. She volunteered to take the first line and the collar up the tree and she made it look easy. We ran several lines to other trees to use as capstans, and we hooked one heavy one to the Jeep so it could put some pull on it. Then Steve and Tom as a team, and Matt and I as the other, began cutting the notch with the big chainsaw. Jim and Marsha spelled us when it came to knocking it out with the sledges and then everybody scattered to man the belaying lines while Steve and I made the final cut.

Matt was driving the Jeep with Sarah acting as spotter and we did an almost professional job of dropping that tree on the driveway. We broke up into teams again, some of us hacking off the limbs with the chainsaws, others dragging them away either by hand or with the Jeep until all we had left was the central trunk. That got hauled onto the apron and cut down into 6' sections. We just stacked them off to the side. I figured we'd cut all that wood down to 18" sections and split it later.

We did a sort of repeat with the other tree. And all through it, everybody was getting along just fine. No drama at all. Blew me away. When we got to lunch is when it got weird.

"Okay, everybody! Strip!" Marsha called out and started taking of her boots, shirt and pants, carefully turning them inside out. My heart was literally in my throat until I realized she, and then Kate, had shorts and a tank top underneath. Steve and Tom joined in, too, stripping down to shorts and t-shirts and handing the clothes to Marsha.

"I'm running these through the wash," she told me. "I don't like poison ivy or insect repellant. Want to give me yours, too?"

"I'm not as prepared as you," I told her. I realized that if I stripped off, I'd be standing there in my briefs.

"So?" she leered.

Okay, that was a challenge. And just like the first time I met them, nude on the beach, part of me reared up on his hind legs. I started unlacing my boots. I think I had everybody's attention. Steve and Tom were looking at me sort of bemused. Marsha and Kate were leering. Matt and Jim were incredulous. And Sarah... Sarah didn't seem to know what to think. Kind of like watching a train wreck. No matter how bad it was, you just couldn't look away.

The boots and socks came off, then the jeans and the shirt, which I dutifully turned inside out. I handed the pile to Marsha and stood there in my briefs, embarrassment keeping me soft -- thank goodness.

"What about you guys, Matt... Jim?" Kate asked. "Want make sure you're not exposed to poison ivy? Not to mention stinking to High Heaven?"

Matt, predictably, took it as a challenge, like I did. Jim was more hesitant, especially in front of Sarah. But they both caved when they saw my smug expression as I stood there with Marsha and Kate. They were down to their boxers in short order.

Marsha looked over at Sarah and told her, "I don't think you got into the thick of it... you're probably okay for the poison ivy. But you're probably going to want to shower." That's when I got to see a side of Sarah I would never, in a million years, have suspected existed.

She told Marsha, "well... I suppose I ought to be sure..." and started taking off her clothes until she was down to her bra and panties. I was intrigued. Matt was salivating. Jim was thunderstruck. He was staring at his scantily clad girlfriend with his mouth hanging open. Sarah walked up to Marsha and handed her the pile of clothes. Marsha, now thoroughly buried behind the pile of laundry, tried to stumble to the door. I decided some gentlemanly assistance was a good idea.

I guided her to it, opened it for her and helped her through, back to the laundry where we got everything loaded into the washer, using the Mark School of Clothes Washing. That is, everything went in one load, on Warm-Warm and Regular. My Mom is still trying to break me of that habit. When we got upstairs, people were cycling through quick rinse-off showers. Thank God my mother believed in a lot of towels. Marsha and I ducked into the master bath when it became available and she had a grand old time messing with me while we rinsed off.

By the time we got out, somebody had put together a soup and sandwiches lunch and everyone was sitting around the fireplace, chatting. And everyone was avoiding the elephant in the room, which was the fact that four of us were in our underwear.

A lot of what we were talking about instead was rehashing felling the trees. We'd had some close calls, and those of us who were not Kate's family were impressed with her climbing abilities. We got into talking about what we might run into up at the Terneys' and the four of them admitted they had no idea what the situation was. The banter was light, like that, until I decided to go move the clothes over to the dryer. When I came back up, everyone was gone.

The Jeeps were still there. So was Jim's car. Just... well, the people were missing. A suspicion worked its way into my brain and I went to go check out the beach. Yep. Five in the water. Naked. I walked down to join my brother and his friend.

"I do not fucking believe it," Jim muttered to me as he watched Sarah out in the water with the others.

"What?" I teased him. "That she can swim?" He turned to look at me in disbelief.

"If you had told me yesterday," he started in, "that today Sarah would be taking off her clothes in front of us and then going swimming with four naked strangers, I would have filed commitment papers on you. But..." and he gestured out into the lake.

"Well, it's better than getting your underwear wet," I told him, then stripped off my briefs and walked for the water. I was enjoying this way too much, but I wouldn't trade that moment for the world. The girls -- my two girls, that is -- let me get past the first sandbar before attacking and trying to dunk me. I was doing a valiant job of holding the two of them up, just enough off the bottom so they couldn't push me down and reveling in the naked wet skin, until Sarah The Wildcard pulled a sneak attack from behind me, grabbing my ass and knocking my knees out from under me. That was all it took for Marsha's and Kate's combined weight to drag me down.

When I finally got spluttering to my feet, the three of them -- not to mention Steve and Tom -- were laughing their asses off at me. Sarah's the one I targeted, though.

"Oh, you sneaky vixen, you..." I started after her. She squealed and tried to flee, but I was an expert in moving through the water and quickly caught up with her, grabbing her from behind and lifting her up in front of me. I had sort of forgotten where my hands, belly and cock were going to be when I did that. As the realization was sinking in and I was distracted with thoughts like oh, shit! this is Jim's girlfriend, she managed to twist in my arms enough so that her weight threw me backwards and we both went down with a huge splash, her firm breasts and nubile pussy pressing into me. I let her go and we struggled to our feet, but not before several salient points were burned into my synapses.

First of all, she was in the same class of beautiful as Marsha and Kate. Second, she had handful-sized boobs with pointy hard nipples. Third, she shaved. Fourth, she was incredibly strong for a little shit, especially with her legs. Fifth, it was unbelievably tempting to kiss her as we stood close and she wasn't doing anything to discourage it.

I have occasionally been accused of having the morals of an alley cat. I thing that's probably an insult to the cat. In this case, though, it did cross my mind that this wasn't my girl and I'd stir up a whole lot of trouble if I did anything, so I wisely didn't. What I did notice, though, was Marsha, Kate, Steve and Tom sort of moving to surround us as I heard, then saw, Matt and Jim wading naked through the water out to join us. Maybe they thought there would be trouble from my manhandling -- woman-handling? -- of Sarah.

There wasn't a problem, though. As soon as Jim got near enough, Sarah went and draped herself all over him. Apparently, anything he was going to say got lost somewhere along the line of his naked wet girlfriend rubbing all over his naked wet body.

"Okay, so fed and refreshed," she announced to the crowd. "Do we go attack some nasty trees next?"

Marsha and Kate, Marsha and Kate, Marsha and Kate I kept repeating to myself. Anything else would be ridiculously greedy.

We did, in fact, decide to get going and move the work gang to the Terneys'. When we got there, we were met by Don, also decked out for work, and he showed us a couple of fallen trees he wanted pulled out. We did basically the same routine as before and a little under three hours later had a stack of wood to keep busy anyone with a will to section and split it. The follow-on R&R took a weird twist.

I could have predicted Marsha and Kate going for the "laundry" routine again. I was having to quickly change my assessment of Sarah, though, when she entered into open conspiracy with them. Which eventually led to a naked pool party with a naked Natalie serving soft drinks and snacks. All of which, I think, was doing a slow roast of my brother's brain. And probably Jim's.

I managed to get Sarah on the side at one point and ask her, point blank, why she decided to get rowdy with the rest of us and she gave me an honest answer. She told me, "I took one look at Marsha and Kate and realized they wouldn't even have to try to get Jim's attention. They are fun and free and exotic and bawdy and all kinds of things men can't resist. I'm a firm believer in the adage 'the best defense is a good offense.' So I decided to join them. Especially after they confirmed they weren't out to steal him from me."

"Well, you surprised the hell out of me," I admitted. "And just so it gets said, you're a really beautiful girl and Jim's a lucky guy."

"Thank you for noticing," she smiled, sort of impishly, then got serious. "You know that Marsha and Kate own you, right? You're definitely off limits for fucking around, regardless of what Jim would think."

Own me? I hadn't really thought in those terms. I wasn't sure if the idea bothered me or not.

When we got back to the others, I found Matt and Jim in a huddle with Marsha and Kate. It turned out that Marsha and Kate had several friends back over on the Green Bay side, near where Jim's and Sarah's parents had their vacation homes. They'd been comparing notes about who knew who and there was some surprising overlap. The one that had my brother's attention, though, was a girl named Jeannie who had a reputation for being fun... and voracious. I walked up to hear Marsha asking for Jim's phone number.

The inappropriately jealous part of me took that way the wrong way, until I found out it was so she could have her friend Jeannie call Matt about getting together. Then I relaxed like Atlas having the world removed from his shoulders. I figured when this summer was over, I was going to be a sorry excuse for a broken-hearted Lothario. But for now, I was going to enjoy the hell out of my fantastic luck.

It got well past 10 o'clock that night before we called it quits. Matt, Jim and Sarah had their plans for the next day and "We Five" had ours. Specifically, we were going to trailer the Terneys' boat over to Kangaroo Lake and get some waterskiing in. The girls decided to be nice to me and let me have another night of solo R&R, so when Matt and crew left, so did I.

All in all, I was really happy with the way the day worked out.

* * * * *

[Friday 7/2]

If it is axiomatic that if you want to score in High School, you need to have a car, it is similarly axiomatic that picking up chicks is easier with a boat. A nice boat. A Glasspar Flying V-175 with Bimini canvas. Sweet. So sweet that within the first hour we were on the lake, Steve and Tom had picked up girls. It didn't hurt that they were incredibly smooth operators and that I learned a lot from them that day. Knowledge that Marsha and Kate informed me would remain archived as long as they were in my life. I was starting to understand Sarah's comment about them owning me.

The girls, Teri and Julie, got along seamlessly with Marsha and Kate and we spent 4 hours and 3 tubes of suntan lotion, plus a break for lunch, having a blast. Teri and Julie were older, 23 or 24 I think, and very good friends. They were nicely stacked and filled out their bikinis in a most arresting way. And, they managed to have the most interesting twin wardrobe malfunctions I'd ever witnessed. They were skiing together and showing off a little, crisscrossing our wake and dodging the tow-ropes, when they both managed to pearl their slalom skis at the same time.

The skis took a nosedive, both skiers got launched parallel to the surface of the water and they both executed nearly flawless pancakes -- kind of like skipping stones but with a human body. Marsha called the fall and Steve spun the boat around. Both girls surfaced, hands clasped over their heads in the "I'm okay" gesture, and started swimming for their skis. Kate nudged me and pointed. So I looked.

As we were headed back towards Teri and Julie, throttled way back, Kate had spotted a bikini top floating on the surface of the water. I pointed it out to Tom, who pointed out to me another one, on the other side of the boat. We were going to split the difference between them. I looked at Tom, he looked at me, we both shrugged... and eased over the transom to go retrieve them. I'm pretty sure Kate thought I was being a gentleman, to go get the top and bring it back aboard. I think she began to suspect I wasn't when I gave it to Tom and went to go sit up by Steve.

Okay, so I did happen to mumble something to him about a couple of lost bikini tops, and he did happen to look back to see Tom tying them to the flagstaff while Marsha and Kate were busy pulling in the tow ropes. And yes, he did smile in a most devious way. Teri and Julie had recovered their skis by that point and were patiently treading water, waiting for the boat. So what did Steve do?

He slowly turned the boat to present the stern to the skiers, per normal, and called to Marsha and Kate, "toss out!" Normally, that would mean toss the tow ropes to the skiers so they could line up for the start of another run. All seven of us realized what that meant. Steve was not returning their tops to them. Almost as if he didn't know they were topless. Teri and Julie earned permanent places in my Gutsy Hall of Fame. They knew they were topless. They knew that they either had to take the tow rope for a now bare-breasted run or swim over to the boat and demand their tops, which they could see flying from the flagstaff. They took the tow ropes.

I think irritated would best summarize Marsha's and Kate's expressions as they pushed Tom out of the way and started untying the tops. That's why I'd moved up to sit next to Steve and stay out of it. But Teri and Julie had their skis on and tow ropes in hand before the tops came off the flagstaff.

"Hit it!" Teri called out and irritated changed to incredulous, which changed to surprised laughter as Marsha and Kate scrambled to sit down before Steve punched it. He pushed up the throttle and the two girls in the water came up absolutely cleanly. We were now being treated to bare-breasted waterskiing, a first for me. To give those girls credit for more chutzpah than I could ever have shown on a public lake, they did a run most of the way down the length of the lake and back. I don't think the people they were flashing knew what they were seeing. Well, a couple of the guys did, because their eyes were glued to the girls as they went by.

Steve slowed up as we got to the end of the lake and let Teri and Julie coast down and sink gracefully into the water. We went and picked them up, they climbed over the transom and retrieved their tops from Marsha and put them on, then turned to Tom.

"Okay," Julie told him. "Your turn."