As promised, Stephanie was waiting for me just outside the common room. She gave me a conspiratorial look.
"Was it good for you?" she asked, winking.
"Yeah," I answered. "How about you?"
"Just what I needed," she replied with a proud smile.
Other couples filtered back into the room over the next five minutes. Kayla and Stewart resumed their position at the front of the room. They began to process the activity - What had we gotten from it? How did it feel to disclose these stories to our partners? How did we feel hearing about their most intimate thoughts and experiences? The couple I'd seen in the woods walked in a couple of minutes late, also looking cheerful and refreshed.
"Namaste," Kayla said. We dutifully repeated the word back to her, like a church congregation. She continued, "Namaste is an ancient Sanskrit word. Literally, it means I bow to you. But its deeper meaning is that the divinity in me recognizes the divinity in you. My soul sees your soul. How often do we really look into each-other's naked souls? How often do we really see and let ourselves be seen?"
"Right," Stewart picked up. "This next activity is not only about seeing your partner's divinity, but also possessing the vulnerability to be seen yourself. Okay, so I'd like to invite everyone to remove their clothing. These are nothing but disguises we wear to hide our true nature."
Stewart and Kayla stood, and began to strip off their clothes. Shirt and shorts, yoga pants and sports bra were quickly cast onto the floor. The pair stood, casually naked at the front of the class, watching the reactions of rest of us. I felt shocked, but everyone else seemed to be taking it all in stride. Soon the other attendees were taking off their clothes as well, exposing breasts and asses, penises and vaginas, pubic hair styles ranging from bare to trimmed to wild and untamed, in a number of different shades and colours.
Stephanie and I looked at each other questioningly. On one hand, I was thrilled at the opportunity to finally see Stephanie naked, but on the other, this was clearly stretching the boundaries of our collegiality. I looked around again at the others. We were the last people in the room with our clothes still on. I felt other people's eyes expectantly on us, as we stood there awkwardly.
"What do you want to do?" I asked in a quiet voice.
""I mean, it's not really that big a deal is it?" Stephanie asked. "It's just our bodies."
"Everyone else here is naked," I observed.
"I know, but..."
"When in Rome?" I suggested.
"Do as the Romans do," Stephanie finished. "Okay, I will if you will."
"Yeah? You sure?"
Stephanie nodded. Slowly, she began to pull at her top, watching me to see if I'd reciprocate. I lifted my shirt over my head, and let it drop to the floor. Stephanie did likewise, revealing a powder-blue bra beneath. She reached behind her back, unclasped it, and let it fall away from her chest. Her breasts looked even more amazing than I'd imagined; round and perky. She looked down at them, and then back at me. I gave her what I hoped was an encouraging, and appreciative, but not in a perverted way, sort of smile. I must have looked like a total goof.
"Okay," she said. "We can do this."
I nodded. Stephanie hooked her thumbs into the waist band of her yoga pants. I did the same with my grey sweat pants. Then we hesitated. It seemed like this was crossing a line that we wouldn't be able to come back from. Were we really going to go through with this?
"For the research?" I whispered to her.
"For the research," she responded, nodding.
"On the count of three," I said. Stephanie nodded solemnly. "One... two... three."
Decisively, I pulled my pants and underwear down to the floor. My cock dangled in the open air. A second later, Stephanie pulled off her pants, yanking them from her ankles ungracefully, while trying to keep her balance. Instinctively, I moved forward to steady her. Only after she'd gotten them off did I realize that I was naked and holding my naked co-worker.
"Sorry," I said, stepping back.
"It's fine."
I finally took in her full naked body from top to bottom. The round perky breasts, the flat stomach, the smooth pubic mound between her thighs. At the same time, I noticed Stephanie's eyes scanning my own body, lingering on my cock. I wasn't hung like a porn star, but I didn't have anything to be ashamed of either. Judging from the look on Stephanie's face, she wasn't disappointed with what she saw. I couldn't help but feel a little proud.
Then, she glanced around the room. I followed her gaze, noticing all eyes were on us. Suddenly, I felt shy and awkward all over again. From the other side of the room someone began clapping. Soon the whole room was applauding us. Even Kayla and Stewart joined in. Stephanie and I waved back timidly, and finally sat down on our mats.
"Okay, so this is called the soul meditation," Kayla said. "All you have to do is sit facing your partner and stare into their eyes like this."
She and Stewart demonstrated, sitting naked, cross-legged and still in front of each other. Her hands rested palms upward on her knees, and Stewart lay his hands on top of them. They stared fixatedly at each other for a few minutes. I watched Kayla's bare chest rising and falling as Stewart penetrated her with his eyes. They were completely focused on one another, almost as if they were in some kind of deep telepathic communication.
I turned to Stephanie, once again admiring her naked Black skin. Just colleagues, I had to remind myself. We're researchers doing a study, adapting to the local customs of the natives. That's all. I took her hands, resting them on her knees, and focused on her bright blue eyes. What I saw there was nervousness and uncertainty. I could certainly relate to that. Just what had we gotten ourselves into here? How would it be at work after this? What did she think of me? There were so many questions reflected in her eyes.
After a minute of staring, they seemed to change. It's hard to describe exactly what changed, but the questioning turned into more of a curiosity. The worry faded./ She was looking into me, trying to see me. Who's really in there?
I suddenly felt self-conscious. My first instinct was to look away. But I forced myself to hold her gaze. In it, something else appeared. There was sort of an accepting reassurance. It's alright. And then, as I looked deeper into the blue, Stephanie's eyes took on an openness. It was as if she had disrobed all over again, mentally, a nakedness of the mind. In it there was warmth and acceptance. I surrendered myself to it, allowing my heart to go out to her, to return her soul's embrace.
All the while, we were sitting perfectly still and silent. I don't know how much time passed like that. Finally, Kayla's voice spoke up calmly and quietly. She began to direct us to see different things in our partner. To see them as children. To see them as old and frail. To see them in their joy. To see them in their pain. To see them afraid. To see them desire. Finally to see ourselves as they saw us, fully, completely, open, vulnerable, honest, naked, with deep compassion and understanding.
Stewart took over from Kayla, instructing us to close our eyes now and concentrate on the feeling of contact between us. To imagine the meeting of our energies between our hands. I could feel every slight twitch and movement of Stephanie's hands beneath mine. We were asked to breathe deeply in and out, in synchrony. As I breathed out Stephanie breathed in. As she exhaled, I inhaled. We visualized our spirits flowing between our bodies for several more minutes. Finally, we concluded by opening our eyes, looking into each other's eyes again, and saying namaste.
The rational part of me knew it was all pseudo-mystical hippy bullshit, but that didn't prevent me from being deeply moved by the experience. I'd never felt as deep a connection with another human being as I did just then with Stephanie. So when I told her namaste, it wasn't just a thing I said. I really did mean that my soul had recognized hers. And when she repeated back to me, I could tell that our spirits were well-met.
Kayla and Stewart had us stand up, and proceeded to guide us through another series of yoga poses, this time sans-clothing. Each of the poses involved some kind of contact with our partner. In one we'd hold hands, in another our feet would be pressed together, in another we'd be lean against each other back to back. I found myself becoming aroused at the physical touch between Stephanie and I, even though none of the poses was explicitly sexual.
I looked around the room at the other couples, a garden of asses and dangling body parts. I was comforted to find that I wasn't the only one in a state of arousal. At least half of the guys were sporting erections. Some of the women were visibly turned on as well; a flushed chest and neck, a slight glisten around pussy lips, nipples stiffening.
The energy of the room was sexually charged. I wondered if Stephanie was turned on too. I looked at her. She looked back at me with a hungry look. That was answer enough. I wondered if we'd have to take care of our own business again before the night was through.
An hour and a dozen poses later, we finally broke for the evening. Stephanie and I and a few of the other couples put our clothes back on. At least half of the attendees, however, seemed content to spend the rest of the night in the buff. They wandered the grounds, striking up conversations as if their nudity was completely natural. They reminded me of old guys in the gym locker room who knew no modesty - yeah the weather's nice, but could you get your junk out of my face? Of course, the people here were in far better shape than most of the old guys at the gym.
At dinner (Portobello burgers with asparagus fries), Stephanie and I sat next to the couple I'd seen fucking in the woods earlier. Their names turned out to be Janis and Jim. Both of them were naked. Every once in awhile, one of their hands would dip beneath the table, and the other would get a surprised look and start giggling. We did our best to take it all in stride.
"So this is your first time here?" Jim asked through a mouthful of mushroom and bread.
"Yeah, how did you know?" Stephanie asked, amazed.
"It's nothing," Janis reassured her. "It's just the way you are."
"New couples are always a little shy their first time," Jim explained.
"Oh, we're not actually a couple," I tried to clarify. This drew skeptical looks. "I mean, we work together. We're friends. We just thought it would be kind of fun to check out the retreat together." The couple exchanged bemused expressions. "Kayla invited us, actually," I finished, hoping that would excuse our non-couplehood.
"She's a real hoot, isn't she?" Janis exclaimed with jiggling breasts. "You know, we've been coming to this retreat for..." She turned to look at her husband. "How long?"
"This is our fourth year."
"Four years! And we just love it."
"It really has brought us closer together as a couple."
"I can see that," I said, reflecting back on the soul meditation I'd shared with Stephanie.
"Not to mention the effect it's had on our sex lives," Janis added giggling, and gave Jim another little goose beneath the table.
"Research has shown that the quality of sex is based largely on the quality of the connection between partners," Stephanie stated like the boring cerebral academic she really was back home. "What we did today would certainly help facilitate that."
"Ah, today was nothing," Jim said, waving his hand dismissively. "Tomorrow's when we get to the really good stuff."
"Why? What are we doing tomorrow?" I asked, suddenly concerned that maybe we were in over our heads. I imagined that our professional relationship was pretty much at its limit. I didn't know how much more it could take.
"You'll see..." Janis sing-songed.
I wanted to press for more information, but I was afraid of what I'd find out, so instead I let it drop. Besides, as Janis said, it was only a matter of time before we would find out for ourselves what the next day had in store for us. The conversation drifted on to other topics.
Later that night, there was a campfire. Several bottles were passed around, followed later by a couple of sizable joints. A couple of people had brought guitars. Another couple picked up the hard guitar cases, and banged on them. Others went back to the resort to find other objects to drum on; books and boxes, a few people raided the kitchen for pots and spoons.
They began playing a tribal rhythm. A number of people who weren't playing began to dance naked around the fire pit. I rolled my eyes at the superficial cultural appropriation - White people thinking they were spiritual because they were doing some ignorant approximation of whatever it was they believed native people did. I was about to make this observation to Stephanie, but before I could, she stood up.
I watched her in the glow of the fire, her self-consciousness subdued by the alcohol and a couple of tokes, as she stripped out of her clothes and joined the dance. My research partner has just gone totally native! I thought to myself, dismayed about the state of the study. This was no way for researchers to behave! We were supposed to blend in, but keep our perspective at all times.
A kind of wordless call-and-response chant began: ooo-ee-ooo-ahh - OOO-EE-OOO-AHH, ah-ah-ee-ee-oo-oo-ee - AH-AH-EE-EE-OO-OO-EE, and so on. If you can't beat them, join them, I reasoned after a few lonely minutes of observing Stephanie in the dancing circle. I took off my clothes, and joined in right behind her beautiful dark round ass bouncing jauntily in the firelight. Pretty soon, I too had abandoned myself to the night, the music, the dance, the fire, everything.
I don't remember what time it was when we finally stumbled laughing, covered in the dirt of the forest, back to our room and fell intoxicated and exhausted into bed, but it was late.
***
When I awoke, the sun was shining through our window. Stephanie was lying next to me. We were both still naked, but I was pretty sure nothing had actually happened between us... pretty sure... I couldn't remember it, anyway. I sat up and looked over Stephanie's body at the clock on the night stand. It was twenty minutes past seven.
"Shit!" I yelled, waking Stephanie.
"What?" she asked groggily. She looked around at where she was and who was next to her. A look of alarm crossed her face. "Hey, what happened last night?"
"Didn't you remember to set the alarm?" I asked, ignoring her question.
"Uh..."
"We're late!"
"Late?"
"We need to go." I threw the covers off the bed. It was covered in the dirt we'd tracked in last night. "We can't show up like this," I said, feeling my anxiety build.
"Like what?" Stephanie asked. I wished she would wake the fuck up because this repetition was getting on my nerves.
"We're covered in dirt from last night," I explained. "Remember?"
"Alright, alright," Stephanie said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. "I'll shower first and then you."
"There's no time," I said.
"What do you mean?" Stephanie asked.
"I mean, there's no time for separate showers. We'll have to shower together."
Stephanie considered me for a minute, then looked down at her own naked body. Thought processes were slowly coming on line. "Yeah, alright," she said finally.
I followed Stephanie into the shower, and watched her as she lathered up her body with soap, running the bar across her collar bone, and then over her gorgeous breasts, the water spilling sexily from each of her dark nipples. Her hand descended even further across her stomach, over her waist, between her thighs. Then she bent over, soaping each of her thighs, and going all the way down to her ankles. As she bent, she inadvertently pushed her ass back into me. My cock had gotten quite hard watching her, and now it poked between her cheeks.
"Javi!" she cried out, surprised. "What the hell?"
"Sorry. It's a natural reaction."
"I can't shower with you like this," Stephanie complained.
"It will go back down eventually," I said.
"We haven't got time for eventually," Stephanie argued, not really upset.
Before I knew it, she had taken hold of my stiff cock, and began to stroke it.
"This is just because we're running late," Stephanie said. "It doesn't mean anything."
"No," I agreed. "For the sake of the research."
"Right," she smiled up at me.
At that moment I would have agreed to anything she said, just so long as she kept jerking me off. The feeling of her hand running up and down the length of my erection was amazing.
"Are you close yet?" she asked a minute later.
"Uh..." I said noncommittally.
"Shit. Come on, Javi. We have to get going or we're going to miss it."
Stephanie dropped to her knees, and took my cock into her mouth. In her story of her first time from yesterday, she'd been a novice with no idea how to give head. Now, she took me with eagerness, one hand gripped around my shaft, while another gently squeezed my balls. I could feel her tongue darting around the head, running over the sensitive spot beneath, hitting all the right places. She continued to move her mouth relentlessly up and down my shaft, until I announced that I was close.
"Give it to me, Javi," she said, standing, and staring into my eyes. She gripped my cock again in her hand and pumped it furiously. "Give it!"
Within seconds I exploded. I hadn't cum so quickly since I was a teenager, but with all the sexual tension between us for the last few months, I couldn't help myself. I shot my white semen over her belly and thigh, where it washed away in the water spaying from the shower head. She continued to stroke me until I was totally spent.
"Feel better now?" she asked.
"Much," I said, with a goofy post-orgasm smile.
"Good," she responded impatiently. "Then soap my back."
***
In another 15 minutes we were dressed and headed to the main building. By the time we'd gotten to the common room, it was empty. Voices were coming from the dining hall so we headed in that direction. Everyone was eating breakfast - well, most people, anyway. We were glad to see that there were a few other couples who were also missing in action. We each got a plate of honey and cheese, fresh fruit and whole grain toast. Looking for a place to sit, Janis and Jim waved us over to their table.
"Running behind schedule?" Jim asked with a smirk.
"Yeah," I answered. "What did we miss?"
"Not too much," Janis said smiling. I got the impression that she was one of those permanently positive people. "We did the sun salutation, and then Stewart read another of his poems - He's such a good writer, isn't he?"
"And now breakfast," Jim concluded.
"Well, at least we got here in time for the important stuff," Stephanie joked, dipping a slice of muenster into her smear of honey. "God, I'm starving."
"I know," I added, breaking off a piece of buttered toast. "I could kill for some bacon and eggs."
"I hear you, brother," Jim said. "There's a lot of veggies here, so they try to cater to that crowd, you know. But I'm looking forward to a nice rare steak soon as we get out of here."
"Sounds good," I said.
Since we'd arrived late, we had to eat quickly before the morning session resumed. Returning to the common room, I noticed that most of the people had taken the same spots where they'd been the previous day. Stephanie and I rolled out our mats, and sat cross-legged facing the front of the room. Almost as soon as we'd taken our places, Stewart instructed everyone to get up and get undressed again. This time Stephanie and I removed our clothes with barely any hesitation. I was actually getting used to the idea of nudity - both my own and everyone else's.
Kayla had us repeat the soul-meditation from the day before. Stephanie and I once again stared deeply into each other's eyes. It was easier this time to get past the initial instinct to be guarded towards each other. Instead, I found questions in her blue stare. What are we doing here? What does this all mean for us? And beyond that there was surrender and acceptance. Whatever would be would be. There was nothing to fight against, nothing to resist. There only was whatever was.
Kayla told us to focus on the sacral energies of our partners, and to share ours freely with them. We were to imagine giving ourselves to each other sexually, and receiving our partner's sexuality without reservation. Holding Stephanie's hands lightly in mine, and staring into her eyes, I visualized her naked body, reclining on a bed, her legs spread, her pussy glistening, inviting, beckoning me towards her. I thought of how it would feel to enter her, the sound of her sighing, the feeling of her breath warm on my neck.
In my mind's eye (aided by Kayla's distant guidance), I pictured us making love in the most intimate way, staring deeply into each other's eyes, slow and sensual. Feeling every millimeter of each other. Sharing our bodies, sharing our souls. We visualized each other in orgasm. Stephanie and I cumming together. The feelings of climax spreading through both our bodies, and outward into each other.
I heard a few moans and vocalizations from around the room as I kept my eyes fixated firmly on Stephanie's. In them I saw her totally giving herself up to me. And I gave myself to her in return. The image of her was so vivid, despite the fact that we'd never been so intimate together. Our sexual experience of each other was limited to the one hurried blowjob in the shower that morning. Nevertheless, I could see, feel, smell, hear, and taste everything about her and I together, as if we'd been making love for all of infinity.
When Stewart told us to close our eyes and focus on our breathing and the tactile sensation of our partner's hands on our own, I didn't want to break off. Stephanie was the first to let her eyelids shut. Reluctantly I closed my own as well. Her fingers firmly gripped my own. I squeezed her hands back.
Stewart led us through a number of breathing exercises designed to harness our energies, and connect us to the astral plain. All I could think of was Stephanie there sitting across from me, and the connection we shared between us. I was aware that my cock had grown quite rigid again. Finally, Stewart brought our attention back to the room, back to reality, giving us a minute to come down from the experience.
Opening my eyes, everything looked vibrant and surreal.