The River Takes, the River Gives

Disclaimer: Hiya, LW readers. This is not your standard fuck-and-suck story, it's more a reflection on how an unexpected event can affect a marriage. There is some adult content here, but other than that, it's kinda lame. That's why I entered it in the Summer Lovin contest; I'm a glutton for punishment and I aspire to failure. Thanks for stopping by.

A majestic stand of towering redwoods cast a stately shadow over a pair of matching blue and white dome tents. The sound of a gurgling stream echoed off the canyon walls. The smell of sizzling bacon wafted through the trees as two middle-aged couples puttered around the picnic table on a fine, picture perfect morning.

But as is often the case with couples out on a summer road trip, the picture perfect morning would soon take a turn for the worse, because someone burned the bacon, and someone used up all the butter slathering it on pancakes yesterday morning, and someone was upset about about running out of clean socks.

Bob, the bacon-burner, opted for the non-confrontational approach. Grabbing his fishing pole, he announced: "I'm hiking up to the waterfall if that's alright with everyone."

His sour look elicited a half-hearted "see ya" from his wife Brenda.

My wife Sally was drying dishes, a task she carried out with grim determination. She had taken over kitchen duty because no one else in our group had the knowledge or competence required to properly prepare meals in a camping situation -- or so she assumed.

She looked over at me and sighed. "I can only go for so long without a hot shower," she said, her hair matted like a wet dog. "I'm driving down to the camp store to get cleaned up, do laundry, and buy food. I may be gone all day but I'm sure no one will miss me."

"Honey," I whined, "of course we'll miss you."

That was a lie. Sally and I had reached that point in our marriage where time apart was a welcome respite from the dreary reality of our lives. Divorce was looking more and more like the best option. It wasn't something we talked about, more of a deep apprehension, like the gathering clouds before a sudden summer storm.

"How about if I come with you?" I suggested, perfectly willing to play the martyr card.

"Don't be silly," Sally replied, disgust dripping from her voice like maple syrup leaking off the top of a stack of pancakes. "You've been waiting all year for this trip. I'm certainly not going to ruin it for you." With that she stomped back to our tent.

"Crap," I muttered under my breath. "Why does it always come to this?"

"Cause you're an insensitive ass?" Brenda, Bob's wife, whispered.

Then she laughed, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Brenda and I had always felt a sort of kinship, a connection that ran much deeper than the superficialities of life in the suburbs. We could complain to each other about our annoying spouses. We could talk about our big dreams, the ones we both knew would never come true. It was a comfortable relationship with just enough unresolved sexual tension to keep it interesting.

"So," I said, watching out of the corner of my eye as my wife headed down the trail to the car, "want to swim with the fishes today?"

"Hmmm..." Brenda said, looking up at the billowy white clouds flirting with the mountain tops across the canyon, "if it doesn't rain, I was thinking of a river walk. You know, literally, in the middle of the river?"

"You mean like, wear our shoes in the water pretending like we're ten year-olds?"

"That's the idea," Brenda grinned.

"Cool," I said, suddenly appreciating Brenda's compulsiveness. It was a welcome change of pace from Sally's slothful determination, her excruciating attention to every insignificant little detail. I suppose deep down, I still loved my wife, but the spontaneity of Brenda's spirit, the quickness with which she made unmeasured decisions intrigued me in a way that Sally's dependability never could.

"We should probably wear our swim things, eh?" I asked, not so much because of a practicality issue, but because I was always up for seeing more of Brenda's trim, athletic body - another trait she possessed that Sally never would.

"Mine's still wet," she said, lacing up her shoes. "Anyway, the water's only a foot deep."

"Good point," I said, watching her while she put her hair up in a ponytail. My wife used to wear a ponytail, at least until she got the big promotion at work, a promotion that, apparently, came with a Hillary haircut. I was mortified, but what could I say? If the viability of my wife's career relied upon a dorky haircut, there was nothing I could do about it. Well, there was one thing I could do about it: Watch Brenda go jogging each night after work.

Sometimes I'd pass her as I pulled off Highway Drive and onto the curving streets of Lakeview Terrace. (There is no lake view, just a bunch of identical red tile roofs.) She'd wave, sweat dripping down her chest, but she wouldn't stop. Brenda never stopped when she was jogging. Actually, she did stop the first time we met, but that was because she and Bob were new to the neighborhood, and she thought it was important to mingle with the locals.

Ever since that first meeting, I had been mildly obsessed with Brenda. It wasn't so much her trim physique, or her wide grin, or her untrimmed eyebrows, it was a vibe thing, just like today. Being with Brenda was like getting a second chance at life.

"Ready?" Brenda asked, her freckled nose scrunched up as she squinted in the sun.

"I was born ready," I announced, grabbing a couple of water bottles from the picnic table. As we trudged down to the river I couldn't help but sneak furtive glances at Brenda's tan tummy peeking out above her denim cut-offs. Had she left the top button undone for my benefit, or was it by mistake? I was dying to know, but afraid to ask.

The river was icy cold, but we got used to it in no time. What I couldn't get used to was what the cold was doing to Brenda's jiggling tits. The sight of her stiff nipples poking at her Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt was driving me crazy. I was well aware of the 'look, look away' approach to ogling women, but Brenda was making the 'look away' part virtually impossible.

"You know Steve," she said, giving me a coy glance, "if you like my Hard Rock T-shirt so much, you could just buy one over the internet."

"Um, actually..." I stammered, "it's your cutoffs. The undone button look? It's perfect for you."

"The what?" she said, looking down at her waist. "Crap! My button's undone." She grabbed it, turning away from me.

"It does look good on you Brenda. It's sexy."

"And why would I want to look sexy for you?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder at me.

"Cause you can?" I said, hoping I hadn't gone too far.

She paused for a moment. "I like that," she said. "Because I can." She turned back around, her button still undone. "Are we good now?"

"We're great," I smiled, "but what if you undid one more button? I mean, you're wearing panties underneath. What would it matter if..."

"Actually Steve, I ran out of panties this morning."

"No," I said, trying to hide my excitement "you're shittin' me."

"You think I'm putting you on?"

"Yeah,"

"Come over here and look," she said, undoing another button. I sloshed over, already feeling my dick expanding.

"Go ahead," she said, holding the front of her cutoffs away from her flat tummy. "Take a peek." I peered down inside, shocked to see the top of her chestnut bush.

"Cool," I sighed, marveling at the way her mound seemed to jut out from her tummy like a little mountain in the middle of the flat plains. I hadn't encountered a sight like that since my high school days.

"Happy now?" she smirked.

"Shit yeah."

"Glad we got that settled," she said, sloshing past me. "Just keep in mind, if my undone buttons give you a hard-on, you don't need to show it to me, okay? I already know what a hard-on looks like."

"Brenda!" I said in mock surprise. "Would I do such a thing?"

She turned back to look at me. "You forget, Steve. Your wife and I talk. I know all about you and your inappropriate erections"

"Well..." I stammered, "your husband and I talk too, but I don't know shit about you." I was well aware of the double standard; women like to know the secrets of others, but they hate it when their own secrets are revealed.

"It's supposed to be that way," she said with a wry smile. "And by the way, as long as I'm leaving my buttons undone for you, why is your shirt still on?"

I laughed, pulling my T-shirt up over my head and hanging it on a tree branch. "It's not on anymore."

"Ohhh," she giggled, sliding her hand up against my smooth, hairless chest, "nice. I get so tired of Bob's fur. I swear, it's like cuddling with a dog." She let her fingers slide down onto my tummy, pulling them away just before they reached the waistband of my shorts.

"You know, Brenda," I gasped, my dick twitching in my shorts, "I wouldn't mind if you took your shirt off too."

"In your dreams, Stevie."

"What if you were to tie it, you know, like half way up your chest?"

"Enough about the T-shirt Stevie, or I'm re-buttoning."

"Sorry."

We trudged along in silence, the vision of Brenda's bush dancing in my head. The more I thought about her with no panties, the more my dick grew. But what could I do? She'd made it clear that our little flirting game wouldn't lead anywhere. Perhaps if we found a swimming hole, and I challenged her to a diving contest, and she forgot about her loose cutoffs and they came off under water? That would be a good start.

Sloshing along beside her, it was almost like trying to work up the nerve to hold hands on a first date. That's the affect Brenda had on me. I was so lost in the moment, I never even noticed the distant rumble coming from upstream.

"Steve, can you hear that?" Brenda said, grabbing my arm.

"Hear what," I replied. All I could hear was the chirping of the birds, but after all those years of running power tools and pneumatic nail guns, my hearing might have been a little impaired.

"Oh my God!" she gasped, looking over her shoulder. That's when I saw it; a chest-deep wall of brown water churning towards us like a runaway freight train. Instantly, I realized we'd never make it to the river bank, so I grabbed her hand.

"Quick!" I barked, "that boulder behind you. Come on!" We sloshed through the water, reaching the giant bolder just as the deluge hit.

"Nooo!" she bawled, clinging to my arm as the water slammed us up against the rocks. I managed to straddle the boulder like a rodeo bull rider, but Brenda was knocked off to the side. She grabbed at me frantically, catching my leg, but she couldn't hold on.

I reached for her, snagging her T-shirt with one hand and ripping it clear up to her armpits. Reacting without thinking, Brenda also grabbed for her shirt, which was now over her head.

We both held on in a life and death tug of war, the stretching shirt the only thing keeping her from being carried down the river. As the water swooshed past, it lifted her up till she was horizontal, her bare chest cutting a white-capped wake in the current. The rushing water was so powerful, so unrelenting, it stripped off her shorts and sent them sailing down the river like a little blue boat. Moments later, her shoes followed.

With the shirt stretched to its limit, I watched for a trough in the crashing waves so I could jerk her back onto the rock, or at least get a better grip. The trough finally came, and I was able to grab her wrist.

"Steve!" she moaned, as I dragged her over next to me. I put an arm around her waist, snugging her bare butt up against my hip, and looked upstream to see if there was any dangerous debris floating towards us, not that there was much I could do about it. My gaze fixed on an odd looking object tumbling and rolling in the foaming water, but when I realized what it was, my stomach did a sickening flip, and I almost fainted.

"Nooo!" Brenda screamed, as the twisted, broken body of her husband Bob floated towards us. His limbs swiveled this way and that, as if the joints were only connected by skin. The way his head was lolling about, it was obvious his neck was broken. Running on instinct now, she let go of her ravaged T-shirt and reached for him, but she only managed to get a mouthful of brown foam, turning her scream into a wretched cough. A moment after Bob floated past, I managed tuck Brenda in between me and the bolder.

"Take it easy Brenda. You're safe now."

She clutched at me with a death grip, her fingers digging into my forearms like the talons of some human-size bird. In that moment, I was no longer the friendly neighbor making jokes about his bad marriage, I was her protector, her provider. I checked out her injuries, which appeared to be relatively minor; just a few scrapes on her knees and her elbows, and a nasty looking abrasion on her bare hip.

Suddenly, she was sobbing softly, her head buried on my shoulder, her bare breasts pressed against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her, trying not to focus on the fact that she was naked. But she was naked, her body clamped up against mine, her legs straddling my thigh, her mound pressed against me. I held her gently, like a father holding a child, protecting her from the river's wrath.

"It's okay Brenda," I murmured, "the water's going down. We're safe now." I let her have her cry, patting her on the back, rocking her like a baby, waiting for the sobbing to subside. Finally, catching her breath, she looked up, as if she'd just awakened from a bad dream.

"Is it over?" she sniffled.

"I think so," I said, loosening my grip on her so she wouldn't feel like I was molesting her. She untangled from my embrace and looked down at her scraped nakedness.

"Guess I should have worn my swim suit after all?" she said, forcing a smile.

"I'm not complaining," I said, taking the 'look, look away' technique to new levels of perfection.

"I'll bet," she sighed. "We almost die, and all you can think about is my tits."

"Your tits and your ass. Did anyone tell you you've got a great ass?"

"Shut up!" she moaned, giving me a gentle shove. Then she stood tentatively. "I think I can walk," she said, her legs wide, her bush dripping a tiny stream of muddy water as it drained off her body.

"You want to try for the river bank?" I asked.

"I guess so," she said, taking an awkward step. I let go, leaving her hand flailing in the air. "No!" she screamed, looking back at me in terror. "Hold on to me, please? I'm scared." Her lower lip started to quiver again, but before it was too late, I was by her side, holding her elbow as if she was an elderly grandmother negotiating the perilous steps of the nursing home. We hobbled over to the river bank and Brenda collapsed on the grass, panting. "Did you see Bob?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, sitting down beside her and hanging an arm over her shoulders.

"Do you think he died instantly?"

"Yeah. I'm sure he did." Actually, I was pretty sure Bob had struggled in the water for a while before he drowned, or was mercifully knocked unconscious by a rock.

"What do we do now?" she asked, looking out at the muddy river.

"First thing we do is get you cleaned up and put antiseptic on your scrapes. Then we get the hell out of here."

"That works for me," she sighed, resting her elbows on her knees. I watched a tiny line of blood trickling down her shin, and it made me realize how precious she was, how vulnerable she could be to the consequences of her carefree ways. Not that it was her fault we had gotten trapped in a flash flood, but just the fact that life itself was precious, and could be snuffed out in a millisecond.

"Shit!" she moaned, holding her head in her hands. "It's all my fault! If it wasn't for that fight I had with Bob over the stupid bacon..."

She started bawling uncontrollably, her shoulders heaving, her whole body shaking. All I could do was hold her, consoler her, remind her that it was the river's fault, not hers. I knew it was hopeless trying to reason with a grief-stricken woman, but what else could I do?

After she caught her breath, I helped her to her feet, and we trudged back towards the campsite. When we reached the water spigot, I grabbed her elbow and stopped.

"Here," I said softly. "Let me get you cleaned up." I took the drinking ladle and rinsed her scrapes with clear cool water. She stood there stoically, lost in grief, or so I assumed as I tried to ignore the beauty of her naked body. But ignoring her was hopeless.

As I rinsed the blood off her elbows, I couldn't stop myself from gazing at her pointed breasts, full and round on the bottom, with the small brown nipples all stiff and puckered. As I cleaned up the abrasions on her knees, I couldn't help but admire her soft, puffy labia, tinted a similar light brown, but turning more pinkish where the slit opened up. As I tended to her scraped hip, I couldn't help but wonder what her heart-shaped ass felt like, resplendent with a perkiness that made her look as if she was twenty, instead of well into her thirties.

By the time I was done cleaning her up, my dick was almost totally hard. Fortunately, she was too distracted to notice, gazing straight ahead with a blank, zombie-like expression on her face.

"The first aid kit's in the tent," I said, as we passed the picnic table.

"Okay," she said, walking beside me as if in a trance. I grabbed a towel off the line and handed it to her. She took it limply, not even bothering to hold it up against her nakedness.

The tent was warm like a cocoon, the blue-tinted light making it look like some sort of dream world. Brenda eased onto the sleeping bag, silent, the towel draped carelessly across her lap. I found the antiseptic and sprayed it carefully on her scrapes, finishing with the big abrasion on her hip. She was laying on her side now, her back to me.

"Hold me?" she said, in a small, little-girl voice. I cuddled up behind her, spooning her with my arm draped lazily across her front. She took it and snuggled it up between her breasts. A moment later, she reached down and pawed at my thigh. Instinctively, I pulled my knees up till they were pressed tightly against the back of her legs.

It amazed me how small and helpless she seemed; so frail, so delicate. I held her close, wondering what to say, what to do. I figured she might have been in shock. I looked for a water bottle and saw one within reach. I was going to ask is she needed a drink, but thought better of it. At this moment, maybe the best thing for her was just a few quiet moments. I watched the mottled sunlight dancing on the ceiling of the tent, waiting for Brenda to say something.

After a few minutes, she took my hand and gently cupped it up against her breast. "I know it's wrong," she said, "but I need you Steve. I feel like I'm floating away, like I'm empty inside. I need to feel something besides this horrible nothingness." She let out a long sigh that sent a shiver down her body. A moment later, her legs opened slightly and she snuggled her pussy closer to the bulge in my shorts. "I need you inside me," she whispered.

I sighed, overcome with emotion. At this moment, if Brenda had said "I love you" I would have said it right back to her. The ache inside me was palpable. How many nights had I dreamed about this moment? And now the moment was here, but not the way I planned it. I thought Brenda and I would be running away together; Mexico, Canada, it didn't matter. But this? This horrible twist of fate? It seemed so unfair, and yet it seemed to be our destiny.

As I freed my stiff cock from my shorts, I felt Brenda's slender fingers guiding me up to her slit. Easing the tip into her, I could already feel my load building. Desperate not to cum too soon, I gritted my teeth and pinched, hoping to make this one precious moment last forever.