Chapter 11

Paula and I lay side by side, staring lazily into each other's eyes and smiling.

"I don't think we were supposed to do that." She giggled. "I think I was a 'baaad little girl.' I think I was supposed to just tease you, not bring you up here and almost rape you."

"Oh well, I enjoyed it, didn't you?" I chuckled.

"Sure did." She giggled again. "Shower?"

"Mmmm, sounds good." I grinned. "Otherwise I'm going to go to sleep and I need to get the steaks into marinade and the coals started for the barbeque."

We rolled to our feet and slipped into the bathroom in the nude, sliding aside the glass doors to the tub/ shower enclosure. We had a perfect view of the front deck and saw Aileen and Sydney leaned against the rail looking out at the lake.

"Can they see us?" Paula whispered.

"Nope." I grinned. "These are triple pane windows. The center section is triple thickness 'Lexan' with the center section a mirror surface to visible light. Between the center pane and the outer one there are LEDs set into the frame that are connected to sensors both inside and outside the building. Right now, we can see out, but they can't see in, to them this surface is mirrored. When the light level from outside falls to or below the light level on the inside, the LED's light up and the window appears to be a mirror from both sides. I could put a control in the circuit so I could adjust it to be able to see out even when it's dark, but I've never bothered to do it."

"Jeez, that must have cost you a fortune." She laughed.

"Nah, a friend of mine developed it and I'm testing it for him." I laughed, snapping on the shower, there was a brief instant of cool water, then it settled into the temperature I liked. "The temperature of the shower is programable too, but this is the temperature I like."

"Run that by me again, either I missed something or you forgot to mention it."

"Oh. I probably forgot." I smiled. "I do that at times. The hot water in the pipes is in a circulating system, so it's always the same temperature, and the cold water is pretty well the same temperature year around as well. On the shower, there's an automatic sensor for the mixture. Once you've adjusted the mixture temperature by hand to what you want, you hit the program button and set your initials or some ID number into the control on the panel you see beside the shower control. From then on all you need to do is select that ID and the program will always adjust the shower to the same water temperature as you preselected every time."

"Testing a new development for another friend?" She grinned.

"Nah, this is off the shelf technology, the mixing valve was developed for physically or mentally challenged people so they could have a simple on - off control for the same temperature water all the time. I just added the programable part and a couple of temperature sensors."

"So, if I want it a bit warmer, I just adjust the hot water handle?"

"Yep, do it slowly and when you have the temperature you want, go to the 'Squirrel screen' and touch the ID square on the screen twice, then select your ID code from the little keyboard display. Now touch the ID square again and presto, it added your ID below mine and displays both in the upper left corner of the screen. The system will remember this temperature and adjust the water temperature to match it the next time your press your ID code."

"But if you press your initials, you get the other temperature?"

"Unh huh."

"Darn, I like this." She grinned, flicking it back and forth several times. "This is wonderful! But what about these other two symbols by your name, there's a CJ- and a CJ+, are they second choices?"

"Unh huh. C is cooler and CJ+ is warmer, in case my mood changes a bit. The code for any ID will always be the same. It can't be changed. That's so someone can't play practical jokes with the system by changing the water temperature on someone else. There's an anti-scald limit on the system too, so you aren't allowed to select water that would cause you to suffer physical damage to your skin."

"Umm, I don't want to be a spoil sport, but I thought we were in a hurry to shower and get ready for a barbeque?" She grinned again, slipping under the shower and spinning slowly.

I grinned and moved toward her, then pulled back.

"Darn, you like the water too hot for me." I admitted easily.

"Sorry." She grinned. "Just let me rinse my hair first."

As she let the water run through her hair and arched her back in pure delight, I stood in the far end of the tub and simply admired her beauty. It wasn't that she was truly outstandingly beautiful in any one way, it was just that she seemed to be completely comfortable and gloriously happy wearing the skin that she had been born with. That gave her a special form of beauty that seemed to flow from every pore of her flesh. At that moment I wanted to hold her then and forever, yet not to confine her, just to be near her and appreciate her for being so special.

Then she reached over and her finger tapped the spot on the screen marked CJ+, then she leaped from the spray of water and into my arms.

"I thought if I was fast enough I could beat the change in temperature of the water and then cool down a bit in your arms before we get back into the spray." She giggled as she stared up into me eyes. "Whatcha been thinking about while you've been standing here, looking so serious?"

"Oh, how much I like you." I managed to say quietly.

"Oh, is that all. I thought surely you must have been working on a new quantum theory or at least a way to make a million dollars or something. You looked so serious."

"Well, it's a fairly serious case of like." I grinned.

"That's just 'cause I'm loveable." She teased as she rubbed that delightful body against me.

"That too, but I find I like you as well." I laughed and patted her bottom, just hard enough to make a slapping sound. "Now, I promised everyone a barbeque, so we'd better get moving."

"Kiss me first." She demanded.

So I kissed her briefly, then grabbed the soap. After a quick scrub, then an equally quick rubdown with a big beach towel for each of us, we moved back to the bedroom to dress in shorts and T-shirts. Downstairs, I grabbed the packet of rib-eye steaks, made a quick marinade and set them in it, then slid them back into the fridge.

Paula had pulled a chair over to watch me, waiting for me so that we walked out on the deck together. Both Aileen and Sydney were simply relaxing with drinks in two chaise lounges. As we came out, they began to quietly tease us, but to my surprise, most of the teasing was for Paula's benefit. However, to my even greater surprise, she gave as good as she got.

When Sydney teased her about the results that her gift to Paula had on me and on Paula, Paula just laughed.

"So where are these harem outfits you two were going to counter with?" She demanded.

"Oh, we didn't see any need for those, after all they are evening wear. Besides, I'm getting too old for that kind of reaction." Sydney chuckled.

"And, I'm just playing a support role here." Aileen grinned. "He's your man, and you seemed to be doing just fine all by yourself."

"In other words, you set me up, didn't you?" Paula laughed. "Not that I minded, besides, it got me a chance to have a hands on demo of the fanciest shower I've even seen."

Aileen frowned. "I looked in the bathroom, and it didn't look fancy to me."

"Not to me either." Sydney agreed. "Although, I think it's the first shower I've ever seen where the shower comes from the ceiling and the tub filler is on the side."

"I'll bet they didn't turn on the light and ceiling fan." I winked at Paula. "The 'Squirrel screen' is inactive and unlit then."

"Oh, so then the controls are all neutral?" Paula frowned.

"Well, yeah, in a way. You can adjust the control valves anywhere then, but the balance feature is cut out and the only safety feature left operational is the non-scalding control, it's mechanical."

"What are you two talking about?" Aileen demanded.

"Come on. I'll show you, then you can show Sydney later." Paula invited. "CJ has these wild controls on his shower."

After Aileen and Paula had gone inside, Sydney sighed softly to get my attention and stretched like a cat. I managed to keep a straight face, but I knew she was doing it intentionally to tease me. I was grinning to myself as I glanced at her, then carried on cleaning the grill on the barbeque as if I'd ignored her altogether. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her moving, but was uncertain what she was up to.

"So, CJ, I was looking around the cabin a bit. It's quite nice, but how do you heat it in the winter, not just with that fireplace, certainly?"

"Well, the fireplace helps, after all it's a forced air heat-a-lator fireplace, but the actual heating in the winter and cooling in the summer is done by heat pump. The lake is my heat sump."

"Pardon me?" She stared out at the lake about a hundred feet away from the cabin. "How do you do that?"

"Well, I have a heat pump in the basement of the cabin and there are pipes that run from the house to the lake. I have a sand filter out in the lake that I clean by back flushing it once or twice a year, but other than that I just pump the water from the lake and the heat pump does the rest."

"But, I didn't see any radiators in the cabin, where are they?" She sounded perturbed.

"Oh, you can't see them, they're under the floor. I just used the semirigid radiant plastic piping that's used in the heating business for under concrete floors and fastened it in place between the joists. It's not as efficient under wood flooring, but I've managed to make it work. As well there are air circulation and mixing units that draw the air from the ceiling peak, down the central support as well as from the outside. The vents for that are at the base of the first stair and under the kitchen sink in the baseboard of the cupboard."

"I see." She said quietly. "But, you mentioned that you get a fair amount of snow up here. What happens if you lose power?"

"Well, first I have a set of solar power cells on the roof and the angle of them is set so the snow slides right off of them most of the time. Even on a fairly cloudy day, they provide enough power to keep a set of batteries in the basement charged with enough power to run the heat pump for long enough to prevent the place from freezing up. On top of that I have a generator setup that will automatically start if the batteries ever drop below a certain voltage. So far it's worked well enough that the pipes in the place have never frozen up and the food in the freezer has never thawed out."

I had the grill cleaned by then and turned to pick up the piece of stainless steel stove pipe that I'd modified and now used to start the barbeque briquettes, but I glanced at Sydney as I turned. The glance turned into a long look and a grin. She was nude and the way she was lying, her body was on full display to me. Since I knew that it was intentional on her part, I didn't mind looking at all.

"Looking good." My grin widened. "I've often wondered, and I suppose this is a good time as any to ask, do people who are as dark skinned as you are tan? I mean you're quite dark skinned now, how can you possibly get any darker?"

For a woman in her mid-thirties, she had a wonderful body with a gorgeous hourglass shape. Laying on her back like she was, her breasts were flattened, but her nipples and areola were swollen slightly. As my gaze travelled downward, I had to admire her trim tummy and tight abs, this woman manifestly kept herself in shape. Now that I could see it clearly, her pudenda was delightfully prominent and actually swelled outward invitingly. She must have recently had wax job which left only a tiny triangle of curly hair which pointed the way and invited the eye to check out the swollen labial lips of her sex. As her eyes lazily watched my grinning face, those lips welled outward a tiny bit further and the soft pink inner flesh came into view.

"I just get a bit darker." She purred, obviously trying even harder to tease me as she shifted slightly.

I simply smiled as I turned back to loading my stove pipe so it was ready to be lit, first a crumbled piece of paper, then few pieces of kindling and finally the briquettes.

"Dressed like you were before, I don't suppose you have a lighter or a match hidden away in a pocket do you?" I asked at last, as I searched my pockets in vain for the match I thought I'd put there earlier.

"No, I don't have a match." She broke into laughter. "But, I've quite obviously met mine."

"Pardon." I turned to her with a smile. "I think I missed something."

"Oh, I don't think you've missed a damn thing." She laughed and winked at me.

Her laugh brought that delightful jiggle to her flesh and I wondered again how a woman who was so wonderfully muscled could still jiggle so freely. I did realise that most of the jiggle I was seeing from this angle was coming from her breasts, but that was more of a turn on for me than all her posing and teasing had been.

Before I could get too turned on by her jiggles, I grinned at her and gave her a thumbs up in appreciation of the way she looked, then excused myself to go get a match and went inside. When I got back, she had stood and was now inspecting my improvised barbeque briquette starter. Thinking that a return tease was in order I step up behind her and to one side and gave a quiet wolf whistle that brought a grin to her face as she turned a bit to look at me.

"I suppose this is another one of your little ideas?" She gestured at the stove pipe - briquette starter.

"Nope, I saw one advertised in a magazine and modified the design a bit to fit the material that I happened to have around." I grinned. "The one I saw in the magazine was selling for $49.99 and this one cost me about two bucks. As well as being cheaper, it got rid of a bunch of junk that would have only been in my way if I hadn't used it for something like this."

She just laughed as she shook her head while she slowly walked over to the lounge and sat down again, then bent to one side in order to pick up her drink. The total effect of her action and movements was quite erotic and I'm sure she knew just what she was doing. I just grinned and winked in appreciation. I lit the fire, then excused myself, explaining that I had to go inside and prep the appetizers. I got the impression for some strange reason that it astounded her that I'd leave her alone on the deck when she was nude.

I'd started prepping the shrimp, bacon and veggies I was planning to barbeque when she came inside, but she was wearing her clothes again. I'd been zapping things in the microwave to partially cook part of the food I was going to do as kebabs for appetizers when I glanced up at her and frowned.

"Hey, no fair." I said in a low tone that I hoped wouldn't carry upstairs to Aileen and Paula.

"What's not fair?" She frowned at me. "Right now I haven't a clue what I'm doing to upset you. I thought maybe because I'd taken my clothes off..."

"No, I have to prep food and cook and everything else. Paula told me that you were going to tease me until you drove me nuts and I had high hopes when you finally started to show off that beautiful body of yours. I do appreciate it you know; there's something beautiful about almost any nude woman." I smiled at her. "I like to see nude women; you look great, even in clothes, but without them you're dynamite. I thought you could see that I appreciated how you look from how I was acting, but I guess I was wrong. Maybe I should have been more open with you about just how much I was enjoying the show though, because now you're hiding that great body again. At least you could provide me with a peek once in a while as a tease, couldn't you?"