Jen's Legacy.

Royce had his own thoughts about what was happening, and what he needed to do for her once her got her to where he could see to her.

He dragged her out of the water more drowned, wet, and cold, than alive, changing his hold on her when he was more secure on his feet in the rocky bed of the river, and was able to let go of his rope, but never letting go of her until he got her onto a small piece of sandy shore in the shelter of the rocks, falling to his knees beside her as the water ran off them both.

He stripped off the remainder of his wet clothes, and then his boots and socks before turning back to see to her.

She was alive, and mostly conscious, but cold and unhappy. He was cold too. He knelt over her and got her lifejacket off. She was still breathing and coughing up the water she had almost choked upon, and although not yet able to complain, she would be conscious of everything he was doing for her, pulling her around undressing her, wiping water off her, and then off himself to let the sun beat through to their skin.

She had a light blue swimsuit beneath her outer clothing, consisting of a safari shirt and shorts, so he stripped her down to that and checked her body over once more to be sure she had no other injuries that he should know about before he did any more. Finding none, he took her straps off her shoulders and stripped her swimsuit down her body and off her.

She had a beautiful body, and wondrous breasts, as well as a sparse growth of hair between her legs. He paused and hesitated, seeing that; seeing too much about her, and wanting to learn more. She was stunningly built and unbelievably beautiful.

Sitting down with her, he pulled her closer to him, enfolding her in his arms as he once did for a well-loved teddy bear when he had been a boy, and rubbed his hands firmly over her entire body and head, several times, sweeping the water off her body, defiling her with his eyes and his touch, but only to keep her in this life.

What was this angel doing in this hellish place with him, and bringing these difficult feelings in him to life after he’d given up on them?

He firmly swept his hands over her everywhere once more before she became conscious enough to complain about him touching her body, her breasts, her abdomen, or even between her legs, sweeping water from her everywhere, and then doing the same for her back as he touched her everywhere again, driving him further into insanity.

He laid her in the sun on her side, wrapping his own dry shirt around her for a while and, unzipping his sleeping bag behind her, lifted her to lie on the edge of it, leaving her in that, partially covered, to get some warmth back into her limbs and where he could see her body and admire it. Her breasts were so firm they had barely moved as he'd pulled her around.

He killed that dangerous thought.

His shirt and the sleeping bag would ‘wick’ the moisture away from her fast enough.

He put his denim jacket over where she laid, without hiding her body from him, then left her to recover as he searched for more driftwood and twigs from the nearby rocks to get a fire going in front of her. That was the next priority. There was enough dead wood around, and it was dry.

He looked at the rocks rising above them and shook his head. They wouldn’t be going anywhere tonight. To get up there would take hours of climbing, and she was not capable of doing anything until morning.

Hot tea, or soup would help warm her from the inside, so he brought a pan of river water up, and placed it at the edge of his fire on a flat rock to heat up as the wood crackled and began to radiate warmth that she would soon feel.

The sun was warm on his body, so once he’d got all of the water off them both, they would both soon warm up.

He pulled her even closer to the fire as she began to come around. He took the opportunity to examine her shirt with its many pockets to try and find out who she was, or to learn something about her, though there was little in them apart from a couple of wet tissues, some half-dissolved mints, a fragment of paper with everything obliterated on it, a cell phone with a cracked screen in a waterproof pouch; still dry.

He uncovered her and used his shirt to dry her hair; fortunately, almost as short as his own, then, when that was not so wet, used other parts of it to pat her dry under her breasts and between her legs, and to rub some life back into her limbs, laying her sodden shirt and shorts out on the rocks in the sun near the fire. His shirt was already taking the remaining water off her body, helping her dry that much faster. It would do that without his help if he left it over her for her to continue for herself if she could, rather than him offend her as he attempted to dry her any more, touching her so personally.

The sun would not be visible above the canyon rim for much longer, and then the shadows would begin to creep up the slopes above them.

He checked her over for injuries; arms and legs, while she was unable to complain or stop him, still with her eyes closed, but she was coming around as the warmth began to come back to her limbs, and she would soon object to what he was doing.

She had brown eyebrows on her alabaster-pale face, with high cheekbones, long eyelashes and a slightly upturned nose that did nothing to detract from her beauty. Her full red lips, drawn upwards into an emphatic bow, by a slightly shorter upper lip than seemed usual, only added to her beauty, and they were also in sharp contrast to her pale face. As her expression changed-- even if it were a frown-- there were dimples beside her lips. He wanted to kiss her again, but knew that he must not.

If she’d had a hat on to protect her from sunburn, it had gone overboard with her.

She might almost have been, Jen. But that thought was dangerous. It would be so easy to imagine that she was, Jen, except this one had a growth of dark hair between her legs. He touched and teased at it gently to be sure. It hadn’t been long since he’d groomed her there, and it wouldn’t have grown like this already. This one had never been groomed, as he'd recently done for Jen.

She wasn’t, Jen, but she was as beautiful as Jen.

He could have admired her naked body all day, feeling how she affected him, never having felt such a physical response as he felt for anyone but Jen before; and the first stirrings of feeling that he was alive now, where he had been as good as dead before he’d rescued her.

He had a disturbing feeling that he had seen that face somewhere before. There was something about it that teased at faint memories, pulling them from that vault of the mind and airing them out for discovery, but there had been few such women in his life after he’d met and fallen in love with Jen, and the ones before that didn’t count. This one was too young to have been part of that earlier life. and was more recent, from somewhere. Her name, when he heard it, might tell him, by jarring that final block into place.

This one, he was sure he would have remembered.

She was very beautiful all over her body, with pale delicate skin; flawless, as of a Dresden porcelain doll but with starkly pink areolas and dark red proud nipples standing out in sharp contrast to the paleness of the rest of her breasts.

He sat back, unconsciously rotating that wedding band on his finger, hoping that Jen might help him in placing her somewhere in his life, but nothing came out of hiding in that catalogue of his mind’s catacombs of latent memories.

That effort to put a name to her still nagged at him, and would, until he remembered her as he knew he would in time.

She looked like… he struggled to try and put a name to her, working through the alphabet as he looked at her face, going from ‘a’ to ‘b’ to ‘c’ and on, but nothing caught on that hook in his mind as it sometimes did to identify her from wherever they had met.

He guessed she was about twenty-years old and (he jarred himself out of his mood) he’d better not keep staring at her as he was.

Her one-piece swimsuit had covered her adequately well; hiding nothing, yet hiding everything that he ached to see, and that he could now observe at his leisure.

The lifejacket had protected her body, but had not protected her arms, knees, or legs, which had been scraped and bruised where she’d bounced off rocks trying to slow her descent, always trying to move herself closer to the bank—he’d noticed that, as she’d floated down to him—but there was nothing broken.

He’d have to let her come around and tell him how she felt, and who she was, before he could do anything more for her.

Before she became conscious of what he was doing, he touched her with his full hand for a few seconds high on her inner thigh between her legs, feeling warmth coming back to her there, and touched at her middle, but her feet still felt cold. She wasn’t able to object, just yet, to any of what he did, but soon would, especially when she saw how naked he was and displaying a hard-on that he’d not consciously experienced anytime for the last three months; being angry at himself when that happened. It felt strangely disturbing, but good, to feel that old friend back again, letting him know that he was alive once more and beginning to 'feel' again.

The water level had dropped since last night, which was why this piece of sand they were on, was exposed, and why the girl had been pummeled around more than usual. It had also been the reason for the accident, but the rafting party would have read the water that morning before they set out, and would have been aware of where the difficulties would be.

It could just as easily go the other way in a flash flood if there was a heavy downpour in some remote part of the catchment area, bringing the main river up a few inches or even a couple of feet within minutes, when a wall of brownish water, heavy with sediment, tumbled down at them along one of the side canyons.

It had been five years since he had been here on this very piece of sand in a similar circumstance, and Jen, another angel, had been with him then. They had been naked together, and made love here too, several times. Perhaps that was what had excited him about this girl’s naked body.

He shouldn’t think about that.

That time with Jen had been the best of times-- the happiest of times-- in contrast to the way he’d felt for the last three months; the worst of times, though not in the sense that Dickens had written those words about the French Revolution.

But why couldn’t he remember this one’s name?

He felt he should know it. What was there about her that triggered these strange memories and these awkward feelings?

Before she came around fully and began to panic about her nakedness, or his, and the way he was; he shook the sand out of her swimsuit, dry and warm now, turned it mostly the right way out and began to dress her in it, threading it over her feet and pulling it up her legs, wanting to lean in and kiss her everywhere before he hid any part of her perfect body away, as he had often done with Jen as they’d played like this.

When he’d brought it up fully onto her, after adjusting it on her lower body and legs, he repositioned her breasts, as Jen had asked him to do for her so many times as she smiled up into his face so innocently, tormentingly, knowing what the effect of doing that for her; touching her breasts, would be. And then she had lain back and insisted he pull her swimsuit free of being trapped along her, between her legs if he’d pulled it up too far or too tight, as he did, deliberately, knowing what he would be called upon to do to change it. Those moments always seemed to get out of hand as that clothing was taken off again, instead, to make love, before starting dressing once more.

Then, if they got that far, Jen would dress him, knowing what she would always find out about him, and in such exciting ways as she did that.

It didn’t help his condition, reliving all of those memories. He and Jen were rarely able to complete that sequence before everything came off again.

They’d often made love.

No wonder he was the way he was with those wondrous memories tormenting him, and this equally wondrous body in front of him, and accessible. Accessible, but out of bounds. This was not, Jen.

He shivered, becoming cognizant of his own state of undress, so put his dry undershorts, and shorts back on before she came around and began to panic at seeing him undressed, sitting there with a hard-on that Priapus himself would have been envious of, and studying her with a measuring look in his eyes. She’d wonder what the hell she’d got herself into.