Fire and Drums
written by:
Naughty Miranda

"Of course, it's nothing like it used to be." One hand on the wheel, the other gesticulating at nothing in particular, Phil was off again and, looking around at our fellow passengers, I realized that I was the only one who was even still awake. Or who hadn't started feigning sleep the moment the first words were out of his mouth?

"Really," I said, hoping my utter lack of interest wasn't too apparent in my tone, but he wouldn't have cared if it had been. Phil had a soapbox, and he was going to stand on it.

"Oh yeah, when Four Corners first opened, it was the real thing. Real witches and warlocks. Not like the fluffy bunny unicorn chasing new agers that go there now. And it was a lot more open. You could be naked, you could have sex, the place was completely free."

"I'm surprised you still bother going," I said, although I wasn't, not really. He may have walked the walk and sported the beard, but Phil was as fluffy bunny new age as anyone I've ever met. From the moment I met him at the crystal store on Main Street, though, and certainly for as long as I've been hanging out with him, he's been talking about taking me up to Four Corners, and with three other store regulars pitching in for gas and camping fees... well, here we go.

Okay, back up. You, reading this, and the three of you pretending to sleep in the van. Phil and I are friends, and that's it. I know it's not the impression that he tries to give when we're around folk he knows, and yes I probably should discourage that proprietorial arm that he hooks round my shoulders, whenever he introduces me to people. But what the hell. If other people's impressions mean that much to him, I'm not going to burst his bubble out of spite. He knows the real score and that's all that matters. And the real score is, friends. Not lovers; not fuck buddies; not even friends with benefits. Friends.

So why are there five people on this van, and only four places for them to sleep? Three of which, the single bunks that line the "living quarters," he's already given to the others. Clearly, someone has not been reading the memos. Either that, or he's got an airbed stashed away someplace....

"We're here." Phil turned around the bellowed to the back of the bus, and everybody "woke up." "Here" being Four Corners, a non-profit, interfaith sanctuary which is most definitely not to be confused with the state lines that converge in the southwest, but is aligned with a handful of similar enterprises all around the country, all of them set up in the aftermath of Woodstock. This one, in the mountains north of Philadelphia, is the smallest but, says Phil (who has visited them all) the one that remains closest to the original founding principles of them all. Which were... and I quote, "free love, free sex, free worship."

To be honest, it sounds quite ghastly. But it was a different time, a different generation, and at least... unlike Phil... the owners moved with the times. Today, the place is family friendly. Children are welcome, naked folk aren't. Prehistoric war re-enactors are welcome, modern day free love advocates not so much.

To be honest, I can see why people like Phil are so pissed with the change... I would be too, if my secret freaky hang-out had suddenly been invaded by uptight suburban soccer moms who want to introduce their screaming children to the great out-doors. But there's a lot to do here that doesn't involve getting naked and fucking complete strangers, and I intend....

Getting naked. Night has fallen and we've still not sorted out the sleeping arrangements. Or, should I say, we've still not talked about them. They're sorted in my mind, and I'm thinking Phil might have started already picking up on that, because when he suggested we go back to the van, and maybe watch a DVD, I told him to go ahead. I was heading down to the fire pit, to join in with the drum circle.

So I did, and I knew he was following me, long before he came up behind me with a laugh, and then proceeded to tell me about great drum circles of the past. All of which involved... yep, you guessed it. People getting naked, people having sex.

The way he goes on about it, I wondered if Phil had ever been publicly naked in his life.

And then I wondered if he'd ever had sex.

The fire was at its peak, flames leaping ten or more feet in the air; and the dancing wasn't far behind, a whooping, whirling mass of celebrants, shaking and sweating to the rhythm of the drums, an ad hoc ensemble of anyone and everyone who turned up on the night with something to bang on. There were no rehearsals, no conductor, nobody telling them what to play, and to begin with, someone told me later, it was absolute painful chaos. But then they found a rhythm to share, and from then on, it was marvelous. Magical, even.

I glanced towards the shadows where Phil had been standing. Now he was sitting. For a moment, I considered walking over, hauling him to his feet and dragging into the dance with me. But then somebody else caught my arm and pulled, and now I was being whisked into that whirling mass, already feeling dizzy, but feeling other things as well. Alive.

A girl appeared beside me, her arms raised as she danced, her bare breasts glistening with sweat and maybe oil. She caught my eye and laughed, as her hands gestured towards my t-shirt. "Take it off."

I hesitated; what about the nudity ruling? And then - what the hell. Looking around, girls in tops were vastly out-numbered by girls without tops, and as for public decency, we were in the midst of a fire and drum circle, in the heart of a pagan sanctuary, in the middle of a warm spring night. What would you expect to find?

I stripped off my T, flung it towards a pile of other clothes on the very edge of the sand coated "dance floor," and was glad that I'd not worn a bra today. I felt my nipples respond to the chill that clung to the air despite the proximity of the flames, and almost subconsciously, I clasped warming palms across my breasts, then slid them gently away again, as I spun slowly round and watched the other dancers.

More men than women, which didn't surprise me; and a lot of them naked, which did. In fact, looking around, I realized that a lot of the girls had shed their lower kit as well, at least among those who'd not had much on to begin with. I looked around for Phil, wondering how he felt now about his earlier complaints, and saw him still sitting where I'd left him. Probably thinking about the DVD we could have been watching in the warm.

"Hey, nice tits." A guy sailed by, smiling, almost laughing. Any other time, any other place, I'd have slapped him so hard for that comment that he'd be picking his teeth out of his other cheek. Tonight, I smiled back, looked him up and down and made the only response that seemed appropriate.

"Nice cock."

He bowed low, thanked me, and whirled away. That happy, that easy, that natural. Fuck it. I stripped my skirt off, and at least joined the handful of women who were dancing in their panties. Then I kicked my sandals off for good measure, and it's amazing how wonderful the sand felt on my bare feet, the heat it kicked out as I danced close to the fire, the cold it sent shivering as I moved away.

Another figure joined me, I felt its presence as I whirled, eyes closed, not so lost in the beat that I had forgotten where I was, but not so conscious that I cared to open them and look. Not even when a hand grasped mine... a man's hand, I knew that much... and spun me in what felt a lot like a glorious, crazy perversion of a ballroom maneuver. Glorious because, as it ended and I toppled back, he caught me in strong arms, and those hands grazed my breasts, while a soft voice whispered, "it's okay, my eyes are closed too. Let's see how long we can keep it that way." And crazy because, if his eyes were closed, then how did he know that mine were too? And why didn't I even consider that at the time?

Instead I nodded, as I righted myself, pressing against a firm body at least a foot taller than me (so I knew for sure it wasn't Phil - he's barely got an inch on me, and that's only because he wears elevators in his sneakers), a hot wiry chest taut and scratching against mine. Fingers tipped my chin up, lips enclosed mine, and a tongue slipped out, gently exploring my mouth as hands stroked down my back and toyed with the waistband of my panties. I almost told him to take them off, but that kiss was so delicious that I didn't want it to end. Not even for a few words. He'd figure it out eventually.

He figured it out immediately.

Now I was falling, tugged down to the ground, my body half cradled against his bare flesh, and half prickly cushioned by the coarse sand beneath us. I wriggled and he pushed me back, one knee parting my legs as he raised himself on out-stretched arms, and for the first time I became aware of his cock, hard and hot on my tummy.

My hands on his back, but one scraping around now, finger nails lightly scoring the flesh of his flank, his abdomen... he moved, slipping down my body, his mouth on my neck, my breasts, my stomach.

"Are your eyes still closed?" he whispered and I giggled. "Are yours?" I asked him, and his tongue slashed my pussy lips. "They are," he answered, and he was licking me softly, great circular motions that teased every nerve end, and so barely brushed my clitoris that - well, either he was the most accomplished pussy licker on earth, or else he was the unluckiest .

I did open my eyes once, as a sudden thump and a brief gasp of "sorry" saw my lover suddenly trampled beneath another dancer or two... the perils of stretching your legs out across a crowded dance floor while you eat out a total stranger. But he rearranged himself, his feet by my head, and of course that suited me just fine because... ah yes, the cock, so tantalizingly stiff. It got away from me once, let's see it do it again.

I reached out and held him, and his tongue pushed in deeper, as though trying to find the back of my pussy. Oh, if only he could... and then I angled his cock and pulled him closer towards me. He moved effortlessly, unprotestingly, not quite rolling himself on top of me, but close enough that I needed turn just a little for him to plunge himself deep into my open jaws.

Too deep. Or too long. I'd figure that out later. My hand wrapped around him, just a little above his balls. At a guess that still left six inches to play with, which was as much as most men could give me altogether, and my tongue rolled gently up his shaft, halting just beneath the helmet, to lap lasciviously around the crest.

He moaned and his mouth left my cunt for a moment, which focussed my mind magnificently. I bit him, not hard but just enough, and my free hand pressed his head back to business. Then I popped him back into my mouth, and purred as he gently fucked it.

Have you ever made love in public? And, if so, have you ever made love and then opened your eyes, and realized four or five other couples are doing it too? It wasn't an orgy, because it was all one on one - there was nobody sharing, nobody gang banging, just shadows moving in the firelight, rising and falling, gasping and moaning, writhing with the drummers that seemed to have found a very different rhythm, and he was moaning now, as his movements grew faster and his cock seemed to swell....

I jerked my head back and his cum drenched my breast... I came and his cries seemed to reverberate through me. I grabbed him again, still firm, still pumping, and put him back in my mouth, sucking harder than I had before, draining his balls as my body still purred from the shockwaves that he had sent coursing through me.

Only when he was soft and clearly trying to move away did I release him, and ask if he still had his eyes closed. He said yes, but he didn't, because neither did I, and we were both staring into one another's faces - him smiling, happy, sucked bone dry; me, grateful that he didn't look weird, or have a thousand loud tattoos, just the boy next door in a field full of naked people, sixty-nining with a chick he might never see again.

I sat up and the cum that had pooled in my cleavage dripped to my lap, so I stood and slowly began to dance. He'd shot a lot before I drank the rest, and I could only imagine how I looked to everyone else, naked and ecstatic, my head tipped back, my hair cascading down, and my body dripping a strange boy's cum.

But only for as long as it took for me to dance around to the other side of the fire, where other hands waited to pull me down; where another mouth waited to lick at my nipples, lap at my breasts, and cherish the flavors it found in my cleavage; and another cock strained in my now greedy hand, mine to do with whatever I wanted.

I pushed its owner back, and whispered, "are your eyes closed?" He said yes and, as I mounted his erection, I told him that mine were, too. But they weren't. They were looking over to where two other guys were standing, watching us, naked, beautifully erect. I smiled and beckoned them over.

I'd never fucked three guys at once. I only hoped I had places to put them all.

And then I wondered what I'd say to Phil when I saw him in the morning.

"You're right," I'd tell him, as I wallowed in the sensations of a well fucked mouth, an even better fucked ass, and a positively amazingly double-fucked cunt. "That was nothing like it used to be."