Chapter 1



Steve put down the heavy trunk he was carrying and turned to watch the small figure on the path far below struggling with two heavy suitcases. In the far distance, he could just make out his rusting Ford pickup parked at the end of the dusty road that wound up from the valley floor far below. His cabin commanded a view of that valley he never tired of. Unless, of course, he was carrying a fucking steamer trunk full of fucking rocks up the fucking mountain on the hottest fucking day of the fucking year.

"God Damn bitch," he muttered to himself. "Every fucking year the same fucking thing."

Why couldn't his sister just watch her own kid for the summer? Just because he had a disability pension and didn't have to work; and just because he had a big place up in the mountains where the kid couldn't get into trouble... His sister had been unloading his niece on him every summer for the past 10 years - ever since the young girl, Nicki, had been 4 or 5 years old. It was less than five years after the stupid bitch had given birth to an unplanned and unwanted child. It still amazed Steve that those two self-centered brats who called themselves her parents had suffered through those first five long summers without their precious vacations. How they withstood the agony of not being with their money-stuck-up-their-ass friends was a mystery. Of course, they still lamented that sacrifice loudly and every time they asked him to take her.

Steve glanced back down the mountain path. He grinned, in spite of himself and his bad mood. He really did like the kid and all. He watched her struggle determinedly with those heavy suitcases. He knew she wouldn't quit and that made him proud of her. He had taught her that.

He had to admit she was kind of nice to have around the place after the first couple of weeks. It took about twp weeks for her to get over being totally ignored and totally spoiled and to get the 'city' out of her system. His sister and her no-good husband were too busy working to pay any attention to Nicki. They substituted cash and gifts for love and attention. As you would expect, Nicki was spoiled rotten. But she was more lonely than spoiled. He knew how that felt because he felt the same way when she left the cabin at the end of the summer. He quickly shoved those painful memories out of his mind. They would come soon enough. He would deal with them then.

He picked the heavy trunk back up and headed towards his cabin in the distance. Shit, it felt like she was moving in for good this time. This was by far the most stuff she had brought with her, and that wasn't counting the suitcases she was lugging. He thought he remembered hearing something about more boxes of shit on the way, too. They were being shipped via UPS or something. Fuck! That meant even more fucking trips up and down the mountain.

When he finally reached the cabin, he put the trunk down heavily on the packed earth clearing that substituted for a front yard, turned and sat wearily on the trunk. He just sat there and rested, wiping the sweat off with his shirtsleeve, waiting for his niece to make her way up the path. He knew better than to help her or to offer her any assistance at all. It was an understanding they had from that first summer 10 years ago. She always insisted on carrying her own weight. This time, she almost was. Those damn suitcases she was carrying were heavy!

It was hot today, hot for this early in the season, hot for this high up the side of the mountain. Still, the sun felt good on his back as it warmed him through his shirt. He impulsively pulled the shirt over his head, baring his muscled torso to the sun's rays. His chest glistened from the effort of hiking up the steep slope carrying the extra weight of the steamer trunk. Steve kept in excellent shape during the spring, summer, fall and most of the winter by chopping firewood for the older folks up and down the entire valley. He did it for free, just for the exercise - and to keep from going crazy up here by himself. Only the deep snows kept him housebound. The neighbors thought he was already crazy to do it 'fur nuttin', as they said, but they weren't complaining loud enough for him to hear, yet.

He grinned as he proudly watched his niece struggle as she lugged the heavy cases up the last section of the path to where he was sitting. Nicki wasn't used to the altitude yet or the strenuous exercise and it showed. Her salon-styled hair was messed up, her perfect make-up was mussed and smudged, her breathing was ragged and she was sweating profusely. She dropped the heavy cases helter-skelter next to the trunk and collapsed on the bare ground.

"Moving in for good this time?" he asked.

"Huh?" she asked him, looking up at him with a strange look — like he was suddenly stupid. "Didn't Mom write you? She said she sent you a letter. They're going to Europe or something and will be gone longer this year."

"Shit!"

He had meant to say it under his breath, but apparently, some of it slipped out. Nicki's face clouded over and the excited light in her eye flickered and dimmed. He watched as a large tear dripped down her smooth cheek. Now he knew what shit felt like.

"Oh, Nicki. Fuck me, OK? Oh, Hell! You know me. I didn't mean that like it sounded. You know it's not you. The problem I have is with your Mom. It's just that, well, I just wish she would ask me first. Just once."

"You don't want me here, do you?" It wasn't really a question, but a flat statement. Her shoes fascinated her at the moment. She wanted to hear him grovel a bit. It was another tradition from way back. She always needed him, at least once, to say he wanted her to be up there with him. Steve always managed somehow to <have> to say it, too...

"Oh, shit, yes! Of course I do! I look forward to you coming up her every summer. I really do. Honest! Its like — well — like you belong here, you know? You always have a room up here with me. Besides, I can imagine, it must be hard for you, too, getting dumped off on old Uncle Steve, having to come all the way up here in the woods every year. It must be tough not to be with all your friends."

"Nah, it's OK," she grinned, letting me off the hook easier this year than last year. Her grin grew to include her whole face as she continued. "It's no big deal. None of my friends are home, either, this summer. They all go to stupid camps all summer and have to sleep in big rooms with people they hardly know. It's a different camp and different people every two weeks. At least I know where I'm going to be, I have my own room, and I know who I'm going to be with."

She continued to grin up at him again and he knew he was forgiven for his thoughtless outburst. "Besides, you're not all that hard to live with, Uncle Steve."

She had been looking at his face during this last part. She liked his face. It was so open and honest. Not tight and closed like her father's.

"He's pretty hot looking, too!" Nicki flushed red as this thought flashed through her brain.

Now that she had noticed, however, she had to admit he really was kind of good looking. His longish blonde hair was lightened by long hours in the sun. It gave him a kind of displaced rugged surfer look so far up here in the mountains. His face was, well, not handsome in a pretty boy way, but its ruggedness and "out-doorsy" coloring deeply attracted her. She was physically drawn to his strength.

She also liked how his eyes sparkled when he looked at her. They both had the same blue eyes. So did her mom. Icy blue, almost white. Against his dark cheeks, the contrast with his eyes was startling.

Her gaze drifted lazily down to his thickly muscled chest and she felt another funny twinge in her tummy, the same as she had when he hugged her so excitedly at the airport. She couldn't help herself and she blushed again.

She was really feeling those weird twinges a lot lately. "Maybe it was the altitude," she tried to convince herself, but she knew better. She had felt the same itchy feelings in the airport looking at that huge football player who was waiting for his flight. Her dad had introduced them and she had been so tongue-tied she hadn't been able to say a single word. She was also afraid she had left a wet spot on the chair before they called her plane. So if it happened on the coast, it couldn't just be the altitude.

The muscles rippling across Uncle Steve's chest as he moved stirred something inside of her. She had the same feelings when she had watched his tight butt as he walked in front of her up the path. She hadn't stopped on the path because she needed to rest. She had wanted to see his tight butt!

Uncle Steve's bulging muscles had taken her breath away when he lifted the heavy trunk and carried it to his truck like it was empty. He had tried to pretend it was nothing, but it had taken her and both her parents to get it into the taxi. She felt the fluttering in her tummy again as she looked a little lower at his stomach. God! A six-pack! Even slouched as he was against the heavy trunk there was no excess. Uncle Steve was all muscle. All male...

Nicki felt her heart-rate pick up and another hot flash swept through her young body. She leaned back on her elbows, resting against the two suitcases she had carried. She closed her eyes to cover her embarrassment at her strange thoughts. Even with them almost closed, she could still peek between the slits of her eyelids at her uncle. She had never realized before what a huge hunk of a man he was. Maybe - maybe he could teach her about some of those things... ?

Steve watched her looking him over. He had been trying hard not to stare at her the whole trip from the airport and then on the long walk up the path to the house. When they had first started up the mountain, he had been behind her, as usual. He immediately noticed that she had developed a decidedly feminine ass over the past year. A very nice ass, too. He thought back to when she had left the last time and he knew she had not looked then like she did now. She had just been a skinny kid then, kind of scrawny. He began to have trouble walking as he kept staring at that enticingly swaying ass, and at her first rest stop, he had moved in front of her.

As he looked at her now, hot and flushed from her exertions, he started getting hard again. Climbing the steep path to the house on a hot, humid day had plastered her thin cotton tee shirt to her young 15-year-old body, nearly transparent with her sweat. And God! What a body!

It was obvious she wasn't wearing a bra underneath that thin shirt, nor did she need to. He had done her laundry for the past 10 years and he knew she had never worn one up till now, so its absence didn't really surprise him. But someone should have clued her in. With tits like that hanging out in the open, he was going to have a lot of trouble keeping his hands off her. He shifted a little, relieving some of the pressure on his swelling cock. Her tits were just as he liked them. Not huge, but definitely out there. High, firm mounds capped by the lightest pink/red centers. Smaller than a quarter, with stubbornly erect nipples he could see poking up into the damp material of her thin shirt. He thought again of how she had looked when she left last September. Yep, she had been just a scrawny kid. He had hardly recognized her getting off the plane. Holy Shit! Was she built or what?!

He didn't think she was aware that her unrestrained breasts were essentially completely exposed by the wet translucent material. As he watched her slyly scoping out his chest, arms and abs, he saw her tiny nipples suddenly perk up and poke out very sexily. What could she be thinking? A dark damp spot was spreading across the crotch of her tight shorts, too. It could have just been from sweating, but maybe... ? His cock began swelling even larger in his jeans, causing a lump to grow down his right pants leg.

Nicki caught her breath, now that she finally had it under control. While she may have had her breathing under control, her heart beat was racing! She had closed her eyes almost all the way shut and leaned back against the suitcase, resting. She knew that leaning back on her elbows like she was really made her boobs stick out. She wondered if he would notice them. When she saw that sudden bulging of his pants she felt her nipples push out, further than she ever remembered them, even when she played with them at night.

She was seriously checking out her Uncle Steve between the slits in her eyes. He didn't look like any of the boys she had known at General Parker Middle School. There were no guys at the high school she was starting next year that looked like him, either. They were boys. Uncle Steve was a man! Her heartbeat sped up again, sending more strange fluttering feelings down to her cunny.

And that thing in his pants! God, it was getting bigger and bigger! That couldn't be his 'thing, ' uh- his penis, could it? If what her girlfriends told her she was supposed to do with it was true, it was way too big to fit down there. Holy Cow, it went all the way down his pants leg! And if what she had learned in SexEd was true, when it got hard and stiff, when a boy got 'excited, ' he was supposed to fit his erection up inside her somehow. Geez, Uncle Steve wouldn't be thinking about doing that to me with that, would he? Oh, God, would he? Do you think, maybe, he... , we... ?

"Maybe this wouldn't be such a bad summer after all," she thought to herself, bringing another bout of blushing to her upper chest and face. Maybe she... , maybe he... , maybe they... But God! It was so BIG!

She had heard one of the girls talking about putting her boyfriend's thing in her mouth and sucking on it. Most of the girls had thought that was just absolutely the grossest thing they could think of, but Nicki wasn't sure. She wondered how it felt — how it tasted. Some of the other girls had called the girl that had admitted to sucking on it a slut and a cocksucker for doing stuff like that. Nicki didn't do anything but listen - and to think about it. But just thinking about it now, putting her mouth over Uncle Steve's thing, well, just by thinking about it the tingling got stronger. That wasn't all sweat that was leaking out of her cunny, either! With a little shudder, more stuff leaked out, and she suddenly felt very self-conscious.

Blushing bright red, Nicki jumped up quickly, unintentionally giving her uncle a nice little bouncing booby show. He enjoyed it immensely and almost applauded before he caught himself. Something told him not to embarrass her. She picked up her suitcases and headed for her room, leaving her semi-aroused uncle staring at her long legs and shapely ass as she walked by, and echoing his niece's sentiments, wondering if this summer wouldn't be so bad after all.

The next few days were somewhat tense and unusually uncomfortable. Both of them were trying to figure out if there were new rules of behavior, now that there was another set of raging hormones in the cabin. There had never been two sexes there before when Nicki had visited. Nicki was a late bloomer. Fast, but late. So it had never been a problem with them, and they had been pretty casual about dressing and closing doors and privacy. There had never been a need for privacy before. The bathroom didn't even have a 'real' door on it, just a set of hanging beads more appropriate to the time of the Hippies.

As a result, there were several 'accidental' walk-ins when one or the other was in the shower or dressing. She was fascinated with his schlong, hard or soft. For two days, whenever they were together, it seemed to him she never looked at his face at all. Her eyes automatically fell to his crotch. He smiled to himself as he dug out all his bikini underwear "for her benefit." Or at least that's what he told himself.

On her part, she was totally oblivious to his stares at her newly developed body. She hadn't had it long enough, or been exposed like most of her friends to a lot of gawking young boys to make her all that sensitive to male attention. She hadn't yet learned to watch where a man's eyes were focused. If she had ever looked up at Steve's face, she might have noticed where he was looking. But all she noticed was that fat tube in his shorts when he got up in the morning and went into the bathroom. She got a good look at it once when he was in the shower and she 'had' to go pee. It seemed to get a little bigger as he watched her use the toilet, but she wasn't sure as he politely turned his back to her. She thought he had taken a longer shower than normal that morning.

Every year, the first week after she got to the cabin was an 'off' week. Her Uncle Steve would let her get used to the altitude and the thinner air - and no telephone, and no TV and no CDs and so on. They always did the same thing on the same day every year for that first week. The first couple of days they sat around and talked, catching up on all the family news from Nicki and what was happening with the folks in the valley below. This year they both did a lot of looking, as well.

To get her used to the altitude gradually, he would take her on short hikes, one day to the caves down the mountain a ways, the next day they would hike to the lower lake and go swimming. This year she had "accidentally" forgotten her swimsuit at the cabin and stripped down to a thin tee shirt to go in. She discovered that day that she really liked the way he looked at her and especially how parts of him reacted to looking at her. That night she put all of her bras away for the summer. She decided she wouldn't be needing them.

The next day found them at the top of the mountain behind the cabin and then the last day of the 'off' week they went to the high lakes and went fishing, if the ice was melted. The water in their special high mountain lake was really too cold to swim, but the cool air made her nipples poke out through her shirt. Again, she had 'forgotten' her sweater, and Uncle Steven had to put his arm around her to warm her up. The heat his touch generated in her quivering young body had nothing to do with shared body heat. It was more like the chemical reaction of two sets of raging hormones rubbing together. Maybe thermonuclear would be more appropriate...

In many ways, the week had gone pretty much like normal, but at the end of it they both were still unsure of how to act around each other. Sometimes, the way she acted or the way she said something, Steve thought she was just his little niece again, and he was cool with that. But increasingly, she was acting more like a little sex kitten. That was beginning to drive him nuts and he just about got a blister on his prick jacking off at night. Then there was the issue about her disappearing without telling him.

Nicki kept sneaking off by herself, thinking she was slipping away unnoticed. She really just needed a little privacy, he quickly discovered, because, to put it bluntly, Nicki was horny — very, very horny. She was also surprisingly inexperienced and naïve and more than a little bit shy about her new body and these strange and wonderful feelings she was having all the time now. Her mother, as usual, hadn't had time to talk to her about the changes she was going through. The changes in her daughter's body had happened so fast, her mother almost didn't recognize her when she had come home from work early one afternoon. She had stared at this strange beautiful young woman, and then had gone straight into her office, ignoring her. Nicki had been especially hurt by that, but then, she had caught on at a very young age that she wasn't very welcome in her own home.

So any sex education Nicki got, she got on the street. So many of her girlfriends had developed tits earlier than she had and they had boyfriends. Most if not all of them had already started kissing boys. Nicki had had a body like a stick next to theirs until just last year and the boys just hadn't been interested when there were girls with real boobs available. When she had finally started to blossom, hell, when she exploded into womanhood, well, she had been embarrassed by the deformations happening to her body. She covered up what was happening with the loose-fitting styles of her generation. No one had really noticed her new development.

She was terribly shy about sex and boys, but mostly sex. That didn't mean she wasn't curious or that she didn't talk to her girlfriends. She was just not confident of her new self yet, of what she had become. And the urges the other girls were telling her they felt hadn't been there, either. At least, until now. Just before she had left the city for the summer, her one best girlfriend had asked her if she had ever rubbed herself 'down there' and Nicki, even though she hadn't, said of course she had. But she would only admit to once so her friend wouldn't think she was a slut or ask her more about it. But it got her thinking.

As she got used to the altitude at Uncle Steve's cabin, and the clean air, and the early nights — they went to bed when the sun went down — she finally did it, once. She touched herself down there with one slender finger. Over her panties. She discovered that she liked it a lot. She touched herself just where the hair ran out. That's where it felt best. The thin cotton of her panties kept bunching up and getting in the way so she slipped her finger underneath. It still felt good. Better, in fact, than through her panties. The tip of her middle finger traced up and down the firm lips of her cunny. It tickled a little, but the way if felt so much better, she automatically knew this was a move in the right direction.

As she played with herself, her knees came up automatically, spreading her virgin cunt open to her exploring fingers. She ran her hand up and down the tightly closed slit slowly, then faster. She noticed her fingers were getting wet and at first she thought it was perspiration — or pee! But this was slimier, slicker than sweat. Her breathing became shallow, and she could feel something beginning to happen, to build inside her. She knew something was going to happen, she could feel it. But she didn't have a clue what that was.

On the upstroke, a lazy finger grazed the spot right at the top of her slit. She gasped at the sensations that slight grazing caused. She had touched herself there before, yeah, but it had never ever felt like that. She touched it lightly again, and groaned in her throat. The little bump that had been there before seemed a little bigger, swollen like. So this is what her girlfriend meant.

Gently she began experimenting with her new "magic" button. Rubbing it with her fingertip was good, but too intense, at least for the beginning. Rubbing it directly felt better later on she found, when she felt she was ready to explode. What felt best right now was running two fingers up and down, one on each side of the swelling hooded button. And then there was the rhythm. Slow was good, but so was fast. Then faster. Now slow for a bit. And faster. And...

She was afraid she had woken up her Uncle Steve with her screaming, but he hadn't said anything at breakfast the next morning. She hadn't meant to scream so loudly but the feelings that had charged through her sweaty, heaving body had really surprised her.

It may have surprised her, but it still had felt like nothing she had ever felt before. It felt so darn good. She began playing with herself all the time, whenever she could. She couldn't get enough of it. She had always thought she might feel dirty about doing it when the other girls had talked about touching themselves down there. Heck, all she felt was good — really, really good! It was thrilling and it was naughty at the same time.

Nicki was rubbing herself constantly, day and night. During the day, she would stand at the corner of the kitchen table and let the sharp corner poke into her crotch as she would rub up and down, forcing the hard wood against her sensitive swollen lips. She would position her chair at an angle and she would use the table leg, sometimes with Uncle Steve sitting across from her! He never even noticed!

When she was out in the woods, she would find a large fallen branch or a downed tree and straddle it, riding it to a thrilling shudder. There was one fallen tree in particular she liked that was just out of sight of the cabin. She could really let loose there, out there all by herself. She also used the stairway banister with that wonderful funny knob on the end. She also used the free-standing towel rack in the bathroom, the edge of the bathtub, the old exer-cycle with the busted seat in the basement. Basically, she dry humped anything she could find that she could get between her legs.

Every night she used her fingers before she went to sleep to rub herself to a shuddering orgasm. Or two. Or three. Every night, in her dreams, she had visions of huge sausages, writhing tubes of meat, snake-like monsters all looking at her naked virgin cunny. In her dreams she would spread her legs wide, inviting them to do something, anything but exactly what, she wasn't sure. In her dreams all the long thick monsters ever did was rub against her. She would wake up in the morning in a frustrated sweat, somehow unfulfilled, knowing there was something more. She was still a virgin, even in her dreams.

Steve, for his part, was playing it cool. Or at least as cool as a normal male could in this situation. He, for the life of him, could not remember a time when any one female body had caused him such joy, wonderment, pain and suffering, all at the same time. At least, not since his sudden discharge from the Marines. No one in his family knew it but his discharge from the service had not been for physical reasons, as he had told them. The technical term for what had happened to him was "SNAFU" — Situation Normal, All Fucked Up!

He had been an exemplary jarhead, not too bright to attract attention and get into the dreaded officer ranks, but not stupid either. He actually was well on his way to a Sergeant's strips. He was the top ranked driver in the motor pool at HHQ.

He had been discharged after his CO had brought him up on charges of being a homosexual — charges which were patently false. Not that he had anything against the guys that were like that, and there were more of them than you would suspect in the Corps, but he just didn't swing that way.

He had been assigned to escort a big mucky-muck politician from Stateside out in to the country where the asshole could get in touch with the real people of current war zone. The fucking jerk had no idea whatsoever just how much effort went into protecting his fucking lilly white ass on those fucking jaunts into the country, that when he made Steve stop the armored vehicle and wandered over to a bunch of kids, no one was surprised with one of those 'innocent' children pulled an automatic from inside her US-made dolly and shot the fucker in the leg.

Thankfully, one of the omnipresent news camera crew was riding in the armored vehicle and caught Steve's vehement protest and the deriding dismissal of his concerns by the politico on film for all of posterity, including his accepting full responsibility for any consequences. Those consequences eventually included three dead children, a seriously wounded soldier and a gut-shot newsman besides the asshole's own relatively minor wounds. Steve had finally been able to put his vehicle between the stupid idiot and the young gunman until the soldiers on a nearby patrol had been able to kill the girl with the gun. It had been the girl who had shot her two playmates as the automatic weapon had sprayed its lethal projectiles. Those deaths may or may not have been intentional, but her ferocity in attacking the soldiers, the cameraman and the politician surely was with intent to kill.

Needless to say, Steve had rushed the honored guest back to the Medics with all due haste, although he was actually more concerned about the more seriously wounded newsman. All Hell broke loose when Steve took the newsman into the triage unit before one of "God's Chosen." Shit, what a piece of work.

It continued to break loose for the next couple of days until the news story broke. The reporter didn't even edit the tape at all and all of the charges levied by the Washington pinhead were suddenly dropped. But that's not what got him discharged or libeled as a gay.

Night Shade

Chapter 2