Chapter 2: Courtship

Mandy wore a dress when Bret picked her up Friday night. In her back pack were jeans, sneakers, a top, two pairs of panties, two pairs of socks, a nightgown and a robe, and one book. Without opening the back pack, you couldn’t have known that it wasn’t all books.

Court Theater was on campus, but it drew its audience from the Hyde Park community and the city as a whole. She didn’t look out of place; nobody could have.

Bret carried her back pack up. After he closed the apartment door after them, they had a long, deep kiss. Bret’s mouth and hands were starting to get her carried away again, but she broke it off and pushed him back a foot.

“Look, I’m staying here tonight, aren’t I?” she asked.

“Oh yes.” He looked damned pleased. Well, a girl liked to feel wanted.

“So you don’t need to seduce me out of my clothes. Let me go in there and take off my face and stuff.” He stood back. “Let me look at you once more,” she said. “I’m going to take off my contacts, too.”

“I’ll take off my glasses. My loss will be much worse than yours.” Actually, he wasn’t a bed looking guy, not movie-star pretty, but with a rugged face and a tall, spare frame.

In the john, she relieved herself, took her pantyhose all the way off -- guys hated pantyhose. After brushing her teeth, she got the skin cleaner out of her makeup kit, used it, and removed and stored her contacts. She took the nightie and robe from her backpack. She went directly into the bedroom. She set her pantyhose, robe, and nightie in that order on the back of a chair and put the back pack behind the chair. She noticed that the light in the bedroom came from an awfully dim bedside lamp. There was a condom packet lying on the might stand right under the lamp.

When she got back in the living room, Bret was taking his own time in the bathroom. The kiss when he came out showed that he’d brushed his teeth, too.

It also began arousing her again. He broke it to kiss a line towards her ear. “You taste better this way,” he said. He held her shoulders to turn her around while still kissing her neck. He turned off the overhead light, and the only light came from the bedroom. They walked that way while he kissed the other ear.

Once in the bedroom, she stepped out of her dress shoes. He pulled her against him and stroked her breasts while his erection pressed into her back. He kissed the top of her head, stepped back, and unzipped her dress. Unhooking her, he asked, “Can this just be lifted off?” It could be, especially if the one lifting were as tall as Bret was. She raised her arms, and the dress went up until it was all off. Instead of handing it to her, he took it into the closet and hung it up. There seemed to be lots of room and a hanger right there.

“Mandy,” he said, “you’re beautiful ... More beautiful like this,” he said when he walked closer.

“You,” she said. She attacked his buttons, and only his eyes caressed her until she was done. He stripped off the shirt and then the tee shirt. He led her to the foot of the bed and helped her lie down. He lay on top of her with his feet off the edge. The kiss when they were skin-to-skin aroused heat everywhere they touched and more heat in her breasts and the pit of her stomach. She could hear two thumps which must have been his shoes hitting the floor.

“Turn over,” he said. That turn took her to the very edge of the bed. He nibbled on the back of her neck. Then he continued nibbling down her spine as he opened the back of her bra. By the time his lips reached the small of her back, he was scraping the backs of his nails down her thighs and she was burning an inch under his kiss.

She turned back over and lifted her bra off while he stood and removed his socks and trousers. He was wearing boxers, and his cock was peeking out of the top of the slot. He covered her for another kiss, and even more of their skin touched, and it burned even hotter.

He rolled to her side and kissed her breast while fingernails trailed down her belly and over her mound. She sometimes forgot the wax job these days, but that sure reminded her. Then his finger parted her folds. He stroked her clit and sucked her nipple at the same instant; heat flowed through her belly, and she felt moisture on her lips.

“Yes, Mandy. Yes sweet.” Bret had apparently felt the moisture, too. He stroked it up towards her clit. She had one moment to decide he wasn’t going to use his mouth this time and to regret that. But where he did use his mouth was terribly arousing, and his finger on her was bringing heat throughout her body. She felt herself stiffen.

“Yes, Mandy. Give me this. Let me see you come.” Bret’s voice was coming from above her face, but her eyes were shut to savor all the other sensations. He stroked up again, stopped just short of her clit though she pressed toward his finger. She ached. Then he stroked up again and all across the tip of her clit.

She erupted. The fire ran through her to the tips of her fingers, her toes, even the tips of her hair.

“Yes, Mandy darling. Yes, sweet. You are so lovely.” One more stroke, and she shuddered. One more spasm, and then she collapsed.

“You were lovely; you were delightful; you were wonderful; you are wonderful.” Bret’s voice was traveling down towards the foot of the bed, and she wondered dazedly how the orgasm he had given her was such an accomplishment on her part. Then he kissed the inside of her thigh just above the knee, and she had no more time for puzzles.

The kisses trailed slowly, inexorably, delightfully, up her thigh. He pressed her legs apart and licked once in the fold between her leg and her folds. Then he parted her labia and lapped up the moisture that he’d been inciting.

Then he began all over on her right leg. When his kisses had begun, she’d been panting. Now, she felt herself holding her breath as his mouth drew closer and closer. The kisses were arousing and increased her heat, but knowing what was coming really tensed her up.

He opened her wide and then shifted his hands to her hip bones. He licked upwards between her labia, and she tensed. “Yes,” he said, and his breath was as arousing as his word. His tongue flicked her clit and she shattered. She writhed while he pressed her hips down; her limbs thrashed and her head rolled from side to side. He sucked on her while she erupted.

When she collapsed, he shoved his arms under her legs and up her sides. Her thighs rested on his shoulders and his cheek on her mound.

“Sweet, lovely. You smell divine,” he confided to her bare slit. His hands cupped her breasts as his tongue parted her folds.

The warmth in her belly, which had never really dissipated, heated again. He strummed his fingers over her nipples, and the special heat spread down her. She stiffened, and something inside her wound tight. She felt his arms under her legs as they pressed down into the mattress, and her center rose into his mouth.

Lightning flashed within her, and she convulsed.

He sucked on her, and another spasm wracked her.

He sucked again while pinching both nipples. She writhed and screamed.

She collapsed into a puddle, barely conscious or his extracting his arms from beneath her and fumbling around on the bed. He was kneeling between her legs and lifting her up. She dropped further up the bed. He pulled her knees up and apart.

Then the cool slickness was parting her sensitive lower lips, stretching them, filling her. His hands were on her breasts again, and his thumbs were on her tender nipples.

The strokes within her were calling for heat from a store that had been exhausted. Somehow, though, heat built again. Each slide through her vulva heated her and made her muscles tense.

The tension increased the heat. She thrust up towards his steady thrusts downward, tightened around the cock stroking deep within her.

Fire flashed deep inside her. He pulled out through that fire. “Mandy!” he cried and drove downward. He pushed her an inch further up in the bed. Then she felt him pulse inside her last contractions.

She collapsed, and he fell on top of her. Breathing was an effort, and his weight made it harder. He rolled to her side. Long afterward, his getting up broke her doze. She felt the sheet spread on top of her. He lifted her head, and slipped a pillow under it. He came back in bed behind her and encircled her. She sensed nothing else.

When she woke in the middle of the night, she was conscious of where she was and that the arms cuddling her were Bret’s. They were covered only by a sheet, and the air was cool where he wasn’t touching her. His warmth was comforting, and she snuggled back against him. She needed to go, though, and that was what had woken her.

She lifted the arm he had over her, and he started to pull against her but let go. She got out on the far side of the bed from the door and walked around the foot bare naked. All the lights were off, but enough came through the Venetian blind to see shapes. She retrieved her baby-doll nightie and robe from the chair where she had left them, and put them on while walking to the bathroom. When she switched on the bathroom light, it nearly blinded her, and she dodged back into the living room for a moment

Her bladder complained, though, and she went in and sat on the toilet. She had an odd ability to remember words spoken to her when she was distracted and to play them back later; (it didn’t work with lectures). Bret had praised her for coming. Before that, he’d begged her to come. The two times when he was down lower, he didn’t speak, but his mouth was busy then. Well, she was glad he enjoyed her orgasms; she sure did.

“Sleeping together” was an odd euphemism, and actually sleeping in the same bed with a man seemed almost more intimate than the sex. He was the second man she’d had that experience with. Once Jerry had sprung for a motel room, and once they’d stayed on campus over Spring break when his roommates had gone home. She’d known Bret little more than four weeks, and when she’d known Jerry that long, they had never had sex.

She wasn’t a girl to run around naked. Even at home, she slept in a nightie. Of course, at home, she couldn’t leave her room for the bathroom without a robe or Larry might see her. Sharon saw her dress and undress, but she didn’t see her -- and she didn’t see Sharon -- parade around the room without anything on.

He had said that he’d be faithful until she called the relationship off. That was an odd asymmetry, though she definitely wouldn’t try to enforce it. If he didn’t want her, she wouldn’t want him. He hadn’t asked for any commitment from her in return. Again, she wouldn’t take the opportunity. She was a one-man-at-a-time woman. She didn’t particularly want to promise that, but she damned-well wanted him to ask her to. Wasn’t he interested in her commitment?

On the other hand, his peculiar specificity about his step sister was endearing. It made him seem to be taking the promise seriously, which hadn’t otherwise been clear. Well, summer or not, she was getting chilly, and her business was long done.

When she turned off the light, she couldn’t see anything. She had to feel her way to the chair where she dropped the robe and from there to the bed. She climbed over Bret, which woke him. He took his own time in the bathroom. He wasn’t so warm when he cane back, but they soon warmed up between them.

When next she woke, the room was light, and his hand -- warm -- was on her bare breast under her nightie. She escaped, again, to the bathroom. When she came out in her robe, he was waiting naked and erect. She looked in the closet and found his robe hanging on a hook. Her dress was there, very nicely hung up with the hooks in back closed. It seemed to be in splendid isolation, with all his clothes shoved to the far side of the closet.

Bret took his time in the john and came out shaved. She handed him his robe. “You want to make love and eat breakfast this morning, don’t you?” she asked.

“Well, yes.”

“Can we do it in reverse order?”

“You’re the boss. Checking that I got what you asked for?”

She noticed that he was in flip-flops, which made her remember that she’d forgotten to pack slippers. She followed him into the kitchen and sat. He started coffee, set the table with efficiency, made orange juice, and began frying bacon. When the bacon was on a plate, he cracked two eggs into the skillet, slipped them onto a plate, and served her with them and half the bacon. She waited while he cooked his eggs. “Could I have a glass of water, too,” she asked. He got another glass, filled it from the tap, and put it at her place.

“Would you get the toast?” he asked. He got a loaf of white bread and a wrapped quarter of margarine out of the ‘fridge. He unwrapped the margarine onto a saucer, and she put the bread in the spanking-new toaster.

While he was putting his own plate down, the coffee signaled its readiness, He poured two cups and sat across from her.

She took the disk of pills pit of the pocket of her robe and took one with the water.

“Have I been a perfect idiot?” Bret asked.

“Nobody’s perfect. Bret, look, in a sex-ed class the teacher said that if you don’t know the boy well enough to discuss contraception with him, you sure don’t know him well enough to have sex with him. On the other hand, if you take responsibility without asking, you’re not being an idiot; you’re being responsible.” She started to eat her eggs; they looked appetizing if a little greasy.

“Does that mean that I shouldn’t use any more Trojans? Was that why you wanted breakfast first?

“That depends, and no. I wanted breakfast first because I wanted breakfast first. You’re an accomplished lover, and I want to be awake enough to appreciate you. Condoms stop more than sperm.” Then, too, she was worried about the pill that had been horribly late Sunday morning. “Tell me about your sexual past.”

“Okay. It hardly reflects glory on me,” Bret said. “At a dance back in the late fall, a girl came on to me. I’d like to say that it was my classical profile or charming personality. It was really because -- I’ll call her Nancy because that wasn’t her name, Nancy’s long-time boyfriend had cheated on her. Or, really, it’s because she had caught him.

“All I had going for me was that I looked clean and that I was fairly tall. The BF wasn’t, and was apparently sensitive about that. Anyhow, instead of driving her home, I drove her here. She screwed me to screw him; she went down on me because she’d never gone down on him. This went on for a month or so. Then, as you might expect, they reconciled. When we saw each other around campus, and that wasn’t often, we took care to go in a different direction.”

Guys were such sluts. She had taken him for a nice guy, and she still thought that he was a nice guy as guys went. Still, if she’d had sex with every guy who’d wanted her, she would have developed calluses on her shoulder blades. And most of those guys had claimed to care for her. This girl hadn’t even pretended.

“Now, I’m sure Carol didn’t sleep around. I was her second man in a couple of years. Still, her boy friend did. Whether she caught him on his first cheat or on his hundredth, she, let alone us, will never know.”

“And before her?” she asked.

“I had to satisfy myself. I’m not really a great social animal.”

“You developed your cunnilingual skills on her?”

“I read a book,” he said, “after Carol. Seemed to me that that was something that couldn’t develop instinctively and would be good to know. If you want something different, tell me. After all, I’m out to please you.”

“You do it very well.”

“Social skills are my weak point. Skill at learning from books is a strong point.”

But there was still the late pill. Well, he might not enjoy wrapping up, but he’d enjoy the news that he was about to be a father a lot less. “Let’s keep it the way we have for now.”

“I certainly can’t complain. What we have been doing has been delightful.”

She thought it had been delightful, too, They each thought their own thoughts -- although they might have been quite similar -- until the meal was over and the second cup of coffee -- decaf, and she hadn’t even mentioned that -- went down. He washed the dishes, not asking her to do more than to pass him hers, while she sat there. He left the washed dishes in the drainer.

He went into the john before coming to raise her up. The kiss was sweet, and it told her he had brushed his teeth again. Then it was hot, and his hands were all over her. They made it into the bedroom, and he got her out of her robe and nightie. He picked her up, and laid her on the bed. She saw that the sheet had been shoved to the side until it was nearly off the bed. He stood beside her while dropping his robe. He was naked underneath and erect again.

“Do you even own pajamas?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said while opening the drawer and extracting a wrapped condom. “I spent the first two years in dorms.” He dropped the condom on the night stand and got in bed beside her.

She could think of other questions, but he kept her mouth busy until she forgot them. Then he moved to kissing the palm of her hand. His kisses moved up her arm to her shoulder, then down to her breast.

He kissed a circle around the base or her breast. Then his hand stroked down over her belly, over her mound, over her thigh, while he kissed a spiral up the breast towards its peak. As the spiral neared the areola, the hand stroked upward between her thighs.

When his mouth finally reached the nipple, a finger penetrated her damp folds.

The strokes and the sucks had the same rhythm, and the heat seemed to come in waves. Then he kissed a path down her breast and the around her left breast. The spiral repeated, and the heat grew.

“Bret,” she said when he’d finally reached the nipple. She was burning, and she needed something.

“Yes.” He abandoned her, though, and turned to fumble on the night stand.

Then he was between her legs and over her. He opened her folds, and the cool slickness spread them. He was looming over her, and he was filling her.

The sliding in and out eased the itch for a moment. He was on straight arms above her, only joining her at their genitals, and the motion rocked his body. His face was grim, not smiling at all, and so far above her.

Then the rhythmic beat made the itch worse instead of better. She tensed, and he suddenly grinned.

The heat burst into flame. She contracted around him, and he drove in and out through the contraction. “Mandy,” he said, and he drove in more deeply. She could feel him pulsing within her depths.

He fell to her right and lay on her arm and her leg. Finally, he roused himself enough to get off and help her roll away from him. He cuddled into her back and pulled the sheet over them. It was midmorning, and she had things to do. Before she could say so, the radio spoke from behind her.

“Your program,” Bret said.

She had to admit that listening to “Wait-wait” was more fun with Bret than it was with Sharon and them. His warmth was nice on her back, and his hand roved enticingly if distractingly. When she guessed the answer before the panelist, he kissed the back of her head.

After he’d clicked off the radio, he rolled back against her and gave her a hug. His cock sort of twitched against her rump.

“Do you want to do it again?” She wasn’t particularly interested right then, but he had asked her for the entire day.

He chuckled. “‘Want to’? Certainly. ‘Able to’? Definitely not. So, what’s on the agenda now?”

“I’d like to take a shower.”

“Want somebody to scrub your back?”

This was really more intimate than she was comfortable with, and her parents -- who always slept in the same bed -- showered separately. “I think I can handle that. I may take a bit.”

“Okay,” he said.

She put on nightie and robe as soon as she got up, conscious that he was watching her. Well, he had left his glasses somewhere. She took everything out of her back pack, and carried most of it into the john with her. She came out dressed in the jeans and top and with her makeup on.

“You said you wanted to study. Is the kitchen table good enough?” he asked.

“Sure.” He’d cleaned off the entire table, leaving nothing of the stuff that had sat there since she’d seen it. She went back into the bedroom to put on socks and tennies and to get her book and notebook.

Aside from getting a cup of coffee and asking her to tell him when she was done, Bret left her alone.

She had feared that study would be impossible after such a night and with him so near. Actually, it went very well. He was a lot quieter than three women, and she felt less need to think about him when he was in the next room. Finally, she had her book work done. She still had a paper to write sometime, but her mind was stale. When she wandered into the bedroom, Bret was hard at work on his computer.