Chapter 12
It was a beautiful early evening and with all the screens in place the front deck of the house was a great place to be, but with four of us sitting out there, it felt crowded to me. I suppose I was just spoiled by the fact that I was used to being at the cabin by myself a lot of the time. When I suggested to Paula that we go spread a lot of the salvaged greens and other vegies around for the animals and feed most of the rest to the horses, she was on her feet in an instant, asking if there was anything special we'd need.
When I suggested jeans and shoes, she looked at me as if I was going strange, so I shrugged my shoulders, I wasn't about to argue. At least she did ask why I suggested them, so I explained that the mosquitoes and gnats hung in the grass so that as you walked along, they rose and started to feed. That changed her mind. Aileen had a curious look on her face as Paula disappeared at a run.
"What's wrong?" I asked her.
"Well, CJ, I was hoping that perhaps I could have a turn at trying to feed the deer later." She said quietly.
"You'll have a chance." I smiled. "I always save a few of the best bits back until later just in case, but you're welcome to come along with us now too, if you want."
"Umm, me too?" Sydney asked.
"Sure, why not." I chuckled. "I told you folks before, make yourself at home. If you start to do something that bugs me, I'll let you know about it."
I suppose I should have expected them to rush off, but I'll admit that seeing both of them literally leap to their feet and hurry inside to change their clothes surprised me at the time. Then they all astounded me in how fast they were back and ready to go for a walk. It only took a few minutes for us to pick out a few bits and pieces of lettuce, some small wilted carrots and a badly bruised apple to save for possible deer feed for later. Then as I carried the box across the lawn, they spread a lot of the stale and bruised vegetables and fruit on the ground as we walked toward the barn and pasture where the horses were kept.
They were chattering and my horses must have heard us coming because suddenly they came trotting out of the trees toward us. Suddenly the women all fell silent, simply staring at the two big horses coming toward us. It was classic.
"Omigod, they're huge!" Paula gasped as she suddenly clung to one of my arms even though we were still on the outside of the pole fence I had used on this section of the horses' pasture. "Are they tame!"
"Oh yeah, they're perfectly tame." I chuckled. "They're pets, but they're working pets."
I realised of course that all of them had expected me to keep riding horses, but that's not really why 'Di' and 'Almond' were kept around. I took the time to explain that although I treated them almost as pets, they were also a working team of Percherons. They earned their keep every year by being my 'ecologically sound' power source, taking the place of a small tractor.
"But, they're so big!" Aileen sighed.
"My size." Sydney laughed easily. "My Dad had horses almost like these two, back when we lived in the US. As a kid, I can remember that I used to ride on their backs while he'd plow with them."
She reached out a hand and scratched the spot in Di's forehead that all horses seem to love having scratched and of course Di snorted softly, blowing a gust of horse breath our way. That made Sydney laugh aloud.
"This one reminds me of one of the horses Daddy had." She grinned at me. "We didn't have a tractor, so he used a team of horses instead."
"Umm hm." I grinned at her. "Actually they can do a lot of things a tractor can't do. Either one can haul a huge dead fall out of the woods to be bucked up into firewood or I can hook them up as a team to do almost any heavy work around the place. In actual fact, I used them hooked to an old horse drawn Fresno scoop to add the finishing touches when I deepened and levelled the bottom of the lake after I first moved into the cabin. I'd have gotten stuck down there in that muck with a tractor, but the horses just waded through it."
"Oh come on, CJ, you're not trying to tell us that you built the lake are you?" Aileen said as she turned and looked at it.
"No, I just improved it a lot." I grinned. "You see when I first saw the property it was early spring and one of the things which had impressed me was the 'S' shaped lake, nestled in amongst the tall Fir trees and Willows. I checked and found out that it was fed by a small stream that flows out of the park that backs up the property. Of course that influenced where we wanted to build our houses. What I didn't realize was that in a dry year, the stream dried up and the 'lake' did too, then it became a weed and mosquito infested swamp."
"Ouch, I'll bet that p'd you off." Sydney smiled, still petting and fussing with the horse.
"Oh it did!" I snorted. "While we'd been building the cabins, we went through a couple of very dry years and we found out that if the drought carried on long enough, the 'lake' disappeared completely. It simply dried right up. Of course that was probably opportune because it gave me a chance to really check things out using a small backhoe. I found that the lake must have been a beaver dam at some time in the distant past, but it had gradually filled with silt. I also found out that the whole area is underlaid with a substratum of either blue clay or rock. That was when I made up my mind that we needed a 'proper' lake, not a slough that dried up on us."
"So, what did you do?" Paula asked, turning to look at the lake speculatively.
"Well, first I investigated everything a bit." I chuckled and shrugged my shoulders. "I checked with the Provincial archives and found a couple of photos of the area; they showed a decent sized lake where the swamp was. Since it was on those photos and I could prove it was there in the past, it gave me the excuse to restore it to what it had been like. So I went up in a plane and took a photo of the area, then superimposed the old picture onto the new one, after that I called in a surveyor with a laser level and had him mark out the area. Then it was just a matter of getting in some big equipment to dig out the hole and making a decent sized dam that wouldn't wash away, but as well as I added a wetland area to cut down on the amount of silt that washed in from the park next door."
"But it all looks so natural now." She protested, gesturing with a sweep of her hand. "How did you manage to get everything to look so good and do it so fast? I mean you said you've only been here for five years and everything looks like it's been here forever."
"Oh, I called in an expert." I grinned as I shrugged my shoulders at her again. "I found a University prof. who specialized in water plants and fresh water marine biology. She and a bunch of her students came up and supplied a lot of the manpower and skill to help out as a special project."
"What did she and her students do? It looks so good and it still seems completely natural."
"Well, to start with they salvaged a lot of the plants from all over the area and transplanted them to a safe area. When the caterpillar and the big front end loader that I hired came in, the professor had them scrape all the silt and the topsoil from the whole area so it could be safely stockpiled in separate piles off to one side. After that she sat down with me and we designed the dam and the contour of the lake bottom; then it was a matter of letting the big machines dig out the clay to move it around so we could make the dam and the base for the wetland areas. It was only a couple of weeks before the big machines were all done."
"And what happened then?" Sydney grinned at me, egging me on.
"That's when the professor and I got really busy." I laughed. "She wanted to start restoring things, but I wasn't really satisfied with a simple packed clay dam with no spillway. I was positive that the clay would dry out and crack, then it would simply erode away. I wanted a solid concrete barrier set into the clay with a proper spillway that had several small pools and rapids. In other words I wanted a 'natural' appearing spillway that would look like it had always been there, but I wanted to have a really solid barrier that would last as well."
"How did you build that? It sounds difficult."
"Oh it wasn't hard to figure out how to do it, but it was costly. I used a backhoe to trench across the dam at a place where there was a solid rock barrier on either side, then we put in forms and cast huge footings, and on top of that we built a wall of sorts. When it was backfilled and the clay was packed around it, I had my barrier and all I had to do was landscape the downstream runoff area with some rocks that I had brought in to set into the clay so the erosion would be cut down. That took almost another two weeks, but at the same time, the prof and her crew were using a small tractor with a front end bucket to backfill the wetlands with the silt that had been stockpiled off to the sides. They even wanted to spread a thin layer of silt on the lake bottom. By doing that a lot of the natural marsh and lake bottom plants could reestablish themselves where they belonged because the seeds and even the old roots of the natural plants were already in the soil. That's when I thought of the idea of using horses because by then there was some water spilling into the lake bottom and they'd have gotten stuck with even a light tractor."
"So that's where my buddy here came in." Sydney grinned, patting the horse once more.
"Yeah, first off I rented the horses to just use for a while, but after I'd had them for a week, I went back to the owner and bought them outright, along with their harness and a few horse drawn implements. After two months, I felt that they'd already paid for themselves and decided I wanted to keep them permanently. It didn't hurt any that Mom and Em fell in love with the team as well, so when I planned the barn and pasture areas, I picked this area so that both of the women can see them from their cabins." I gestured toward Mom and Em's cabins that we could make out on the far side of the lake; from the angle that we were looking at them they appeared almost one above the other with Em's cabin being the furthest from us, but higher up the slope of the little valley we lived in.
"The horses were even essential in grading and packing the hundreds of yards of sand that I had hauled in to establish two little beaches in the tiny coves in front of each cabin. That was when I had the opportunity to trench in the supply and return pipes as well as the sand filters for the water supply to the heat pumps for each of the cabins."
I laughed again and pointed to another shed off to one side that was filled with old tools and equipment. "Of course, having the horses, I had to trace down and buy old horse drawn implements so I could do the work. Then I found a small horse drawn carriage with rubber tires and a restored sleigh on a trip back to northern Alberta. I bought them both and arranged for them to be shipped home. The first Sunday morning after I got back, I had Em drop in on Mom, then went over riding in the carriage pulled by the horses and took them for a ride. That's when Em adopted the horses and insisted on learning all about driving and caring for them. Since that time, she and Mom have become a common sight in the neighbourhood as they go for rides in the carriage. As you might expect I never mentioned the sleigh to either Mom or Em until we had one of our rare snowfalls a couple of years ago, then I took them for a ride in it. Now it's become a habit for Em and Mom to enjoy the sleigh every time it does snow. I think every kid in the neighbourhood for about five miles around here has had a ride in that sleigh and every neighbour has at least one photo of Em and Mom with a load of kids in the sleigh while the horses trot along one snow-covered street or another."
"I think you're changing the subject on us." Aileen broke in.
"I'm sorry, but I don't understand." I frowned.
"You were telling us about the work you put into building the lake, now you're back to the horses." She smiled. "You spent a lot of time working on that lake. I have an idea that there's a lot more to that story than you're letting on."
"I suppose there is." I shrugged. "It would just be a description of how we did things though, so I think you'd be bored."
"I'd rather talk about the horses anyway." Sydney laughed. "What do you call them?"
"The one you're petting is Di and her teammate is Almond."
"That's a strange name."
"Not really." I laughed softly. "If you say their names quickly and sort of run them together, it reminds me of where the money came from to pay for all this."
I could see Sydney frown for a second, then shake her head as she grinned at me.
"Oh, what a horrible pun." Paula laughed.
"Yep." I grinned and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Gonna dump me because of my bad puns?"
"Oh I think I can live with them, just as long as you hold them down to one or two a year." She grinned, snuggling against me.
I could feel goose bumps on her bare arms and realized that since the sun was now blocked from shining directly on us by the tall trees to the west of the cabin, the temperature was quickly dropping. I was going to say something about that and add another warning about the evening invasion of insects when I saw a slight movement at the edge of the tree line. I simply pointed at the deer who stood there and then toward the cabin, adding the gesture of a finger touched to my lips to ensure that everyone would hold their voices down.
By moving slowly and quietly, we managed to retreat to the cabin without disturbing our four legged visitors. In fact by the time we were climbing the steps onto the deck, there were three full-grown deer and two fawns slowly working their way out into the clearing, all of them grazing on the fresh grass and obviously enjoying the peace and quiet. Then one or two of them found the lettuce and other goodies that we'd spread on the lawn. Of course that unexpected banquet was soon the center of their attention.
That evening though, we hadn't attracted any of the relatively tame animals. Either that or some of the local brats had been chasing these animals away from their homes or had actually been out in the bush, chasing the deer around. No matter how patient any of us were, as soon as we stepped out onto the deck, the deer became shy and began to move away.
Of course it probably didn't help that once we were back at the cabin, Aileen and Sydney had started drinking quite a bit. To slow them down, I made up a couple of trays of snack foods with all the bits and pieces of cheeses, breads and crackers that I had at hand as well as turning out a repeat of the dessert we'd had earlier. To say that at that time I was the center of attraction was putting it mildly. They all seemed to have decided that I was extremely skilled in the kitchen and the three of them heaped their praise on me to the point where I was somewhat uncomfortable with the situation. For a while it seemed that I couldn't move without one or two of them following along and watching over my shoulder as I did things.
I did manage to sneak off for a few minutes while they were all out on the deck attempting to make friends with the deer and raccoons who had come around. In that short time, I edited and transferred the video of Sydney and two deer onto the end of a DVD that I was slowly filling with animal shots, but other than that I was trying to be the perfect host and stick close by to make their stay at the cabin as pleasant as possible.
Thankfully, Paula spent a lot of her time just being close to me. I could see the change in her as the early evening passed; she began to feel comfortable in the cabin and she was soon expressing her comfort by doing things and helping me in any way that she could. Of course I encouraged her and she seemed to glory in becoming a co-host and treating her mom and her mom's lover as guests. What made me happiest was the fact that as the evening passed, she began to tease the two of them as if to show them that although they were guests, they were still her family so they should make themselves at home.
Of course once it was dark outside and we moved indoors, they were like most of my guests, they wanted to have a fire in the fireplace. I resisted, explaining that the fireplace was meant to heat the cabin, but eventually I gave in. I might have been stronger, but Paula broke down my reluctance. She sat on my lap and grinning widely, then leaned over close to my ear.
"If it gets too warm, both Mom and Sydney have a habit of taking off their clothes. I've had enough to drink that I could probably be talked into joining them too. Wouldn't you like that?" She whispered, then leaned back, her eyes almost dancing in glee as she teased me now.
"Aren't you worried about my reaction?" I attempted to tease her in return. "I could get carried away with all that exposed female flesh around me."
"Well in all honesty, I really don't think you stand much of a chance of getting anywhere with those two." She snickered. "Of course the way they're acting today, maybe I shouldn't be too sure of myself. But, I don't think I could complain much as long as you were keeping it in the family, could I?"
"What?" I stared at her as she broke into giggles.
"Well, you are a pretty swell guy and they've been impressed all day with what you've done or are doing. Then too, we've all been drinking so that cuts down on our inhibitions." She snuggled close. "Besides, I think they might be just a bit jealous of me."
In the long run between teasing me and reassuring me, she convinced me to start a fire in that darn fireplace. Of course it got quite warm inside the cabin, and I suppose that influenced us all to drink slightly more, but I've never been much of a drinker, at least not of alcoholic beverages. That meant that even the few beers that I drank really got through to me and it didn't help any when Sydney pulled out a couple of bottles of real French Champagne and insisted on everyone having a couple of glasses.
About that time, Paula found the controls to my stereo system and my collection of blues and old rock CDs. She loaded it with several CDs and set it on auto-play, then while she was at it, she discovered that there were controls on all the lights to adjust their brightness and she cut them back to a minimum. Suddenly Sydney and Aileen were shoving the furniture in front of the fireplace out of the way so they could dance.
At first Paula and I just watched in admiration, because the two of them really did dance well with each other. Then the two of them decided that Paula and I needed dance lessons so we got pulled out onto the floor. Of course the area for dancing wasn't really that big because the cabin was actually quite small and with four of us on the floor we were bumping into each other. After only a few minutes, Sydney and Paula stepped back leaving the floor to Aileen and me because they all felt I needed lessons the most.
I suppose we'd been dancing for a while, but I hadn't really paid any attention to the time since I'd been dancing with first Aileen and then with Sydney when I realised Paula had disappeared. The only reason I noticed she wasn't there was that I'd paused to cool off and have a drink, so Aileen and Sydney were dancing together. Then Paula reappeared; in fact, she swept down the stairs in the harem outfit she'd worn before.
The combination of her clothing, the reduced lighting and the alcohol in my bloodstream were overpowering. I simply stared at her in complete fascination and the smile on her face grew wider and wider the longer I looked at her, then she was in my arms and we were dancing. Of course her changing clothes had a reaction on the other two women as well.
I didn't notice the two of them disappearing until quite a while later, actually when Paula and I had decided to sit down on the couch and rest for a few moments. Of course she'd plopped herself in my lap and was wrapped in my arms as we snuggled and necked, then we heard a sound on the stairs. She looked up first and giggled, then poked me in the ribs and nodded her head toward the little landing at the bottom of the stairs. Sydney was posing there in a similar outfit to Paula's, but one that was more even more daring and contained even less material.
A soft yellow-gold colour, the sheer top didn't close between Sydney's breasts, but even when it covered them, their full roundness was still on show. However as she slowly stalked toward us like a tall upright cat on the prowl, each breast peeked out from beneath the fabric for an instant, allowing a now swollen nipple to show, but then with the next motion of her body, it disappeared beneath the thin textile once more. Both her arms were covered to her wrists in the same material which gave her skin an almost ethereal golden brown hue, then below the waist she wore a pair of voluminous harem pants. Those pants seemed to be designed to just catch and hold on the widest portion of her hips and drooped downward in the front to almost expose her almost completely shaven sex, but still managed to disguise and conceal it's true form just enough to be totally stimulating.
The combination of the hidden portion of her flesh with it's now golden-brown hue and the jet black of the skin of her exposed midriff and cleavage actually drew your gaze upward and I found myself looking into her sparkling eyes and admiring her classic blended ethnic beauty. She'd swept her jet black hair up into a crown on top of her head and somehow highlighted her eyes so they looked huge as they met mine in a proud, almost challenging stare.
After a few seconds, her gaze shifted to Paula and her smile turned into a mischievous grin. "You didn't think we'd just sit back and let you have all his attention, did you?" She asked.
"Of course not." Paula giggled, which made me wonder just what she was up to. "But CJ was going to see you two acting and dressing in seductive ways eventually; it seemed to me that when we're here and all alone would be a perfect time to find out how he really reacts."
"And just how is he reacting?" Sydney asked, but shifted her hips in a motion that drew the cloth of those darn harem pants slightly tighter against her swollen sex and it 'just happened' to be at my eye level.
"Like he was quite virile and very appreciative." Paula giggled. "He obviously thinks you're very exciting."
"Hey!" I protested. "No fair dammit, I'm being tormented here."
"Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet." Sydney growled in a low throaty voice, then suddenly she was sliding onto the couch at my side, but in such a way that she was facing Paula.
Then both Paula and Sydney looked up toward the stairs and I realised that they had been diverting my attention while Aileen had come down and positioned herself on the bottom landing of the stairs.
Aileen might have been in her late thirties, but the figure she cut was still extremely striking. In fact with her figure set off like it was now in a silver grey harem outfit that came close to matching Sydney's outfit in style, but at the same time almost matched her own silver hair in colour, she looked stunningly gorgeous. As she moved, she seemed to flow and I realized that she was walking barefoot, but also that she wasn't moving directly toward us. Instead she shifted until the fireplace was directly behind her so that as she moved the light of the flames backlit her costume and seemed to add to the whole allure of the tableau she presented. Then she began to dance to the slow sensuous music of an old jazz tune that was playing on the stereo.
Her motions were not only beautiful, but at the same time they were voluptuous, sensual and extremely arousing; all I could do was stare at her in wonder. This was my girlfriend's mother and although I'd been drinking quite a bit, there was something about the whole thing that I found to be completely beyond the scope of my understanding. Although I really wanted to watch the show before me, I somehow managed to tear my gaze away from the stunning sight and turned to Paula with a questioning look on my face. I never got a chance to say anything though, she lifted a hand and touched my lips to silence me.
"The reason we set this up was that Mom wanted you to know that she used to be an exotic dancer for a couple of years." Paula whispered softly. "In fact, that's where she and Sydney met."
I didn't speak, but I raised my eyebrows and shrugged my shoulders, trying to indicate that what her mom had done was none of my business. Paula sighed, I suppose in exasperation, then I felt Sydney lean against my shoulder and bring her lips close to my ear.
"What Paula isn't saying is that both Aileen and I went a bit further than dancing and taking our clothes off." Her voice was low and sexy, but at the same time there was an almost tentative quality about it, as if she was afraid of my reaction.
I glanced at her, but still said nothing; I mean what could I say to a statement like that?
"We used to charge a thousand dollars a night for a private show." She stated flatly, as if she was trying to shock me into a reaction.
I simply shrugged my shoulders, trying my best to indicate that what they'd done with their lives was none of my business. I suppose I could have said something or been more demonstrative, but to be honest, I didn't really see how it concerned me. I already had the idea that they were no longer involved, but even if they were, I was positive from the way that Paula acted, that she'd never been involved. In fact the more I thought about it, the more I felt that Paula might not even have known anything about her mom's former activities until recently.
"Mom, I don't think he gives a damn." Paula said quite loudly, then giggled and snuggled against me as I shook my head to indicate I didn't care.
"But I think your dance has left him speechless." Sydney added in a much quieter tone.
"Should I stop then?" Aileen asked and smiled at me.
At that point I didn't know what to do. Paula reacted instantly though, sitting up straight and twisting to look at her mom.
"But Mom, you haven't done your striptease and Sydney hasn't danced either." She protested, then she turned at looked at me. "Please, don't make her stop yet; I know she really wants you to see the whole routine. Pretty please? It's sexy; you'll love it."
I really didn't know what to do or what to say, but I guess neither Aileen nor Sydney needed much encouragement. Somehow Aileen flowed forward toward us, then Sydney was on her feet and the two of them were moving to the heavy drum beat of an old rock tune.
At first it was simply a dance of two women, flowing and gliding around each other as if they were meeting and accessing each other for the first time, then after a moment or two, the music changed. Now they seemed to be enamoured by the sights they each presented to the other and I could almost feel the desires they felt, simply from their actions.
The music changed again and so did the dance. Neither of them ever seemed to touch the other, yet as if by magic one portion or another of their costumes seemed to float slowly from their bodies and drift into a pile on the floor. Slowly and gradually, each motion seemingly governed by the sound of the music that filled the room, two beautiful female bodies were bared to our gaze. One body was the soft, almost perfectly clear complexion of a woman from the Emerald Isle, the other body was the amazingly fit and beautiful shining black of an African plains woman. Light and dark, yin and yang danced before us, both moving in a sensuous display of delightful beauty that was stunningly arousing.
My own hands had been simply holding Paula gently, but now as those two delightful figures began to reach out to gently touch and caress each other, I found my own hands shifting, caressing, sliding under the thin fabric of Paula's costume, caressing her warm and delightful flesh. I could feel Paula reacting to my touch, then briefly I wondered how far Aileen and Sydney would carry their display and what would eventually happen.
Then Paula was rising from my lap, seizing my hands and dragging me to my feet. By the time we had gotten up the stairs and to the bed, both of us were practically nude. There were no preliminaries, no warm up, no foreplay, but there certainly was a lot of 'after play.' Of course it didn't hurt that by the time we had reached satisfaction and calmed down from the first session, we could hear the sounds from the bedroom next door to ours.
I think both Sydney and Aileen had been as turned on as we were. I'm also certain that it was darn late that night before anyone in the cabin actually was able to get any sleep.