by Jeremy Edwards
(01/16/08)

When my sister had to back out of the vacation we had planned with her best friend Gretchen, Gretchen and I decided there was no reason we couldn't go ahead with the trip.

The three of us had always made a comfortable trio, habitually sharing a motel room and taking turns on the rollaway that complemented the twin beds. We used the bathroom to dress, nobody snored, and it was fun to have company as we planned day trips, watched TV, or drank beer from a mini fridge.

So over the past few summers, Gretchen and I had been bunkmates. Yet I continued to think of her as Brenda's friend. Our friendship wasn't such that we would go out of our way to make plans independent of Brenda.

Still, those road trips had built a bond. When you vacation with someone, you see each other when you're overtired, or a little cranky, or ready to go home. If you survive all this and opt to do it again, then you've proved something about your compatibility. Beyond that, you share magical times, and that's a bonding experience.

Gretchen and I felt solid. That's why I didn't hesitate to convert vacation for three into vacation for two. And I was pleased that she felt the same. In fact, I was flattered. Brenda and Gretchen were both twenty-eight -- to my twenty-three. The boy inside me thought it was cool that I'd be traveling with my big sister's friend, just the two of us.

When she clambered into my car, all shorts and sandals on a wonderfully misty morning, I felt the thrill of summer vacation in a way I hadn't since childhood.

Our ultimate destination was a motel some four hundred miles away, on the far edge of an enormous national park. Since our route went close to a huge pristine lake, we timed our departure to spend time at the lake while the sun was still high.

The long morning of interstate driving was filled with the kind of relaxed, open-ended conversation two friends can have when they're comfortable, when their time is their own, and when an intoxicating sun is shining. Sometimes the things we talked about were quite personal; but something about the vibe made it all right.

We arrived at the lake around three. Gretchen was intent on dipping in, and she had worn her one-piece right under her clothes. No sooner had we scrambled out of the car into the beautiful, first-day-of-vacation outdoors, than she was unzipping her denim shorts. Even though Gretchen in her bathing suit was to be a public sight, her undressing felt private. I instinctively looked away for a few seconds -- long enough to allow for the transition. Then my gaze returned to her.

I had to remind myself that this was just my sister's friend, my good old traveling companion, my driving buddy and confidante. I kept forgetting all of that as I observed how lithe and gorgeous she was in her sleek, coral-pink swimsuit, her sandy hair fluffing gently in the lakeside breeze.

She used the park restroom to change back into her shorts and tee, putting them on over a handful of underwear from her knapsack. While she was off doing that, I caught myself backtracking to the moment at which she'd yanked down her shorts and I'd turned my head away. I wondered if her bottom had wiggled. I felt silly for having deprived myself of that sight -- or whatever precise sight the moment would have held.

During the final leg of our drive, the conversation turned to relationships -- specifically, to how neither of us had had one recently. Thanks to some special candor of the highway ride, along with a bit of roadside-coffee confidence, we each bravely admitted to some currently-unsatisfied carnal desires. I appreciated how, in the context, we were able to share this without any risk of making each other uncomfortable. We were not propositioning one another, and no particular response was required. On the other hand, I noted, nothing was ruled out.

"This is our turn-off," I said. We'd been quiet, contentedly talked-out. "The motel should be just a mile."

"I can barely sit still for another mile."

"Yeah, I know. My legs get restless after this many hours in the car."

"Uh...it's not only that," she clarified. "I have to pee. And -- confession -- that's making me, um, hold myself a little while your eyes are on the road. And that's making me horny -- which is making it even harder to sit still."

Had she really said all that? The scenery took on an unreal quality as my system went feverish.

Well, I told myself, on a car trip everyone knows when everyone else has to pee. And, on this particular trip, we had made no secret of our chronic horniness. But I was regretting that "eyes on the road" necessity.

"Too much information?" she inquired, in response to my silence.

"No," I said as we pulled into the motel parking lot. "Just exactly enough."

She was laughing as we got out of the car. "Would you mind checking us in?" Gretchen asked. "I really need to excuse myself for a sec before I puddle my panties."

Check-in was speedy; she was just exiting the ladies' room as I turned away from the counter. "Your need all taken care of?" I asked.

"That need," she said. "There's still the other need, of course." She winked at me -- not seductively, but with a suggestion of camaraderie. We were in this horniness thing together, the wink told me. Buddy-buddy.

It was a cool evening. Unlike Gretchen, I hadn't arrived with long johns and adorable flannel pajamas. At the packing stage, my own nod to nightwear had been an old T-shirt and gym shorts, an ensemble that was definitely not warm enough for a night like this.

Lying in bed in my unzipped jeans, I felt lewd -- in a tame way. Even if Gretchen had been able to see me under my blankets, all she would have observed through the gap in my denim was a swatch of navy-blue underpants. But the implicit intimacy of being unzipped felt as real to me as the implicit intimacy of Gretchen wriggling out of her shorts at the lake.

A slight stiffness developed. It was too little, too late to triumph over sleepiness. But as I drifted off, I was pleasantly aware of the arousal. Like the unopened bottle of wine, it seemed to hold the promise of another day. I fell asleep with a hand in my pants, wondering if she, too, had sought herself out, through snug layers of pajama, long underwear, and panties.

She was just waking when I came out of the bathroom the following morning. "Good morning!" I said. It was nice to start the day with a friend.

"Hi," she said groggily. "What are you up to?"

"I was about to go check out the breakfast. Can I bring you back a stale bagel or a pseudo-croissant?"

"Thanks. Don't forget the weak-yet-bitter coffee."

I had walked about ten feet along the sidewalk when I realized it was still chilly and I needed my windbreaker. I made a beeline for our door, which I hadn't bothered to lock. I grabbed the knob and walked in.

A beautiful ass greeted me. Gretchen had obviously decided in my absence that she needn't squeeze into the bathroom to get dressed. Her suitcase was on the bed, and, though she had already put on her top, she was deliciously nude from the waist down, bent forward in search of garments.

Her ass was neither broad nor especially fleshy. But it was very, very round, to an extent that even the bathing suit hadn't suggested. And its texture seemed impossibly smooth, like the texture of a perfectly convex scoop of vanilla ice cream that you'd see only in a cartoon. And the fissure that cleaved it merely emphasized all this. It was, among other things, an ass that could only be a woman's ass -- and I hadn't seen a woman's ass like this one in a long time. Hell, I hadn't seen an ass like this one in all my life.

But more significant than all of this was simply the fact that it was Gretchen's ass, and that I was seeing it. Sometimes you don't realize that someone is getting under your skin until you get an unexpected glimpse of her skin. Then all of a sudden, things seem to matter.

"Oops," was all I could think to say. Gretchen turned around in surprise, but a swift exit on my part prevented any further exposure.

Something had snapped. The car-ride confessions, the gorgeous woman undressing by the lake, and the motel-lobby camaraderie now all swirled together in the service of one central image -- Gretchen, bottomless, pointing the barest-looking ass I'd ever seen in my precise direction.

Oh, it wasn't just the ass. Gretchen wasn't merely a piece of flesh to me, and plenty of interpersonal groundwork had been laid by our soul-baring togetherness. But in my fevered brain, everything had crystallized around the ass. That ass and all it implied became the center of my universe.

When I returned with the mediocre breakfast, she was cheerful -- and dressed. I offered a mumbled "Sorry 'bout that," which she graciously waved aside with a wordless, it's-cool-no-need-to-discuss-it-further shake of her head.

But in my mind, "sorry" was definitely not the last word. During our day of hiking and exploring, the knowledge that I had seen Gretchen's ass never left my consciousness. It seemed to be the only thing I thought about when we weren't engaged in conversation; and it was still present behind our chatter. The memory bounced along each trail with me and accompanied every morsel of our picnic lunch into my mouth, nibbling back at me with every swallow.

My night consisted of eight solid hours of bare-assed, horny-as-fuck dreams.

The next morning paralleled the previous one, insofar as I emerged from the bathroom just as she was opening her eyes. But instead of talking bagels and coffee, I broached a different subject.

"I can't stop thinking about seeing your ass," I said abruptly, standing about two feet from the edge of her bed.

Gretchen propped herself up on an elbow, her face understandably expressing interest.

"So here's how I look at it," I continued. "I saw your ass, and we now have two choices. We can pretend I didn't see your ass. I'll never mention it again, if that's what you want. Mind you, I'll also never forget it. I'll probably think about your bare ass every time I see you and every night at home. But I can handle it."

She laughed.

"No, you know what I mean," I countered, now seeing the humor in my choice of words. "As far as our interaction is concerned, it can be an erased incident," I said with an unnatural formality.

She stared at me for a moment, as if amused by my manner but also deeply intrigued. "Or?" she finally said.

"Or I can stand here and tell you in great detail why I enjoyed seeing your ass. And why I'd very much like to see more of it."

"Why don't you go get us breakfast," Gretchen said. "I'll get dressed -- in the bathroom -- and then we can discuss this over mouthfuls of mealy pastries."

It was a deal. Lousy croissants had never sounded so good. I was not discouraged by the fact that she was getting dressed rather than undressed. The overriding consideration was that she thought there was something in all this that was worth talking about.

There was a line at the breakfast bar, and my attention wandered to the cover of a dinner menu that was lying on a nearby table. The artwork on the menu was just a simple silhouette of a couple dining. But something about the woman's posture was surprisingly erotic. Her foot seemed poised to caress her companion's leg, and I could vividly imagine that the silhouetted lady would soon begin to moisten the two-dimensional panties beneath her silhouetted skirt. As I made my way toward the orange juice, I wondered how much of the erotic effect was attributable to sensuous menu design, and how much had been projected out of the motel room I shared with Gretchen.

I returned to find her dressed in a snazzy nylon jogging suit, complete with racing stripes. Orange suit; blue stripes. The pants had a thick stripe across the seat -- or, more to the point, across Gretchen's ass. I couldn't help but imagine myself dragging a stripe of sky-blue watercolor paint all the way across her, from a bare left cheek to a bare right cheek, with a soft brush that would tickle as it grazed the crack.

"I thought I'd go for a run after breakfast," she explained, interrupting my fantasy. She sat down on the bed and motioned for me to bring the pastry bag and coffee caddie over and join her.

I thought we were going to end up with watery motel coffee all over the bedspread when she grabbed me by the waist and pulled me in for the hungriest kiss I've ever received. Gretchen's decision to do this must have been a sudden one, as it was clearly not the act of a person intending to talk things out over breakfast and then dash off for a morning run.

She soon maneuvered the two of us off her mattress without ever allowing our lips to lose contact. Coffee spillage may or may not have been a concern; in any event, Gretchen had reasons for leaving the bed to our neglected breakfast. We had been kissing for only a couple of minutes when she reached for the back of the motel-room armchair and turned away from me.

While I nuzzled her neck, she directed my hands to the waistband of her tracksuit pants. With her hands guiding mine, the pants, and her little baby-blue cotton panties, were lowered just enough to expose her to me, providing a minimum window of access when she bent forward.

It was funny -- more of her body had been revealed when I accidentally stumbled on her in the process of dressing than was now visible as I prepared to eat her pussy.

But I wasn't complaining. I clutched her thighs and began to lick up and down, up and down her succulent slit, feeling her ass dance against my forehead. Her cunt made juicy love to me when she climaxed, and as I lapped her fragrance filled the room.

When I unveiled my cock and locked into Gretchen's pussy from behind, I could now, from my vantage point, see almost none of her skin. She was mostly a wriggling blur of hair and tracksuit, though a pair of naked hips titillated my peripheral vision. It made my cock throb especially hard to feel flesh against intimate flesh while seeing so little evidence that she had bared herself to me. Meanwhile, my balls were getting an extra thrill from riding the thick elastic of her waistband.

She never did go jogging. After we'd finally consumed the anticlimactic but sorely necessary breakfast, we cleared the bed and undressed each other for a classic naked fuck. My gaze ate her up as I lowered myself onto her bright, pale body, her creamy flesh waiting, her smile shining. She was a dazzling package of naked girl, the gap between her thighs advertising her femaleness and saying to me, "You belong in here, mister." She no longer seemed like a contemporary of my older sister. She was my peer, my partner, my delight.

Later on, we took our first shower together. We relished watching each other as we soaped and rinsed. I finished first, and I leaned blissfully against the shower wall as Gretchen went through the final stages of her ablutions.

"Would you like to wash my ass for me?" she suddenly asked.

Her ass was already as clean as could be, and we both knew it. I had, with unbroken concentration, just watched her lather and rinse it. But who was I to quibble? I took her question in the spirit in which it was intended -- as another irresistible offer of intimacy.

The ass which had turned my world upside-down was now in my hands, graciously offered for soapy caressing. I methodically washed every smooth centimeter of each cheek, and I ran slippery fingers up and down that perfect crack. She purred when my fingertips touched her neat asshole. My cock poked against her thigh.

As Gretchen turned and took my hardness in her hand, I imagined the endless series of vacations she and I would take. Alone.

Sorry, Brenda.

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