I like the subtle glances across the room, when our eyes meet and we realize that we're both thinking the same thing. I like the moment our lips meet and we both feel the warm pleasure of our touch, connecting mind, body and soul...

I love to feel that pure bliss and the highest peak of pleasure suffusing our bodies brought by the sweet rush of erotic touch, the harmonic thrill when the spirit overwhelms you and orgasm is inexorable. It's a most transfixing moment.

Women like Carla have a power over me. The power to make my blood hot, my heart pound, my breath quicken. Just the thought of her body close to me, clinging with need, the sense of her makes me ache with passion. I like slowly undressing her, eagerly anticipating what's to come. I love the feel of my hands on her body, her arms and shoulders, her breasts, her legs, her hips, her ass, her feet.

The intensity of being overwhelmed by someone you want so badly, when you are incapable of waiting one second more.

There are many friendly women, but few women who are really friendly. Women who love kissing. Women who love having their breasts and nipples kissed. Women who love the feeling of being caressed, desired, licked and penetrated. Women who orgasm easily, cumming and happily sharing pleasure. Women who love sensual love and pleasure. Women who love the thrills and joys of desire, passion and intimacy.

Women such as these are truly precious. They are so much more genuine and real. It's unfortunate in our society that women like these are rare.

The italicized words above are not mine. They were sent to me by a reader after I posted One Night of Bliss, a story about Carla and Gary meeting at a frat house party, their night of love-making, Carla's disclosure that she was leaving for California to be married a week later, and Gary's whispered 'please don't'. The words feel as though they were written by a woman, but they just as well may have been penned by a sensitive man. In any event, they impelled me to write this story, as related by Carla, the following morning as the Car Service transported her to Dulles Airport.

As I did almost every morning, I woke up with two of my fingers inside me and my other hand tweaking my nipples. Frankly, I could never tell if it's the pressure of those fingers that wakes me up or if I instinctively slide them inside me the moment I'm awake. That morning my fingers felt something quite unfamiliar, the creamy goo of a man's cum still inside my body. It was a sensation that I had never felt before, as I shall soon relate. Often, perhaps usually, when I wake after a night of love-making, of multiple orgasms, my fingers simply remind me of the previous night's pleasures, as I had with Gary, and after a few moments of nostalgia, my fingers move away and I rise to my daily routine.

On the other hand, when the previous evening has been celibate, those fingers make up for it, caressing, plunging, pinching, exploring, slowly — or quickly, depending upon my mood — bringing me to soaking, gushing, orgasmic relief. It may leave my bed sheets wet as my mouth dries off my fingers, reeking from my satisfied lust, but it's worth it.

Like a scientist continually recalculating the results of an experiment to make sure that his conclusions are correct, I kept recalculating my menstrual clock to be sure that I had not inadvertently left myself open to the frantic searching of one of Gary's little swimmers. My acceptance of the unspoken offer of his body had been for unknown hedonistic pleasures, not for procreation.

OK, so I lied. My trip back to California was not for a wedding, though it was for something equally important. My Mom would be returning from a week's vacation with her latest inamorato — Mom needed a male companion while Dad was off making the world safe for democracy — and I planned to greet her with the big news. Or rather Tina and I planned to greet her, possibly supported by Tina's mother. 'Yes, Mommy Dearest, your worst fears are coming true, Tina and I are lesbians and we're moving in together.' Hopefully she won't figure out that Tina's Mom has known about us for years, and that may take away some of the sting. And equally hopefully, she'll never guess that all those boys I dated were just as a subterfuge, to hide my female love, and that none of those horny young men ever got their fingers underneath my blouse or sweater.

And yes, Gary, you were nothing but a last fling, so that I could tell myself that I would be missing nothing by being faithful to Tina. And yet, and yet, I began to wonder if that was really true, for Gary had been an amazingly careful and gentle lover. Had I been missing something all these years, I wondered. Clearly it was too soon, after a single roll in the hay, so to speak, for him to be in love with me, yet his soft final words told me that he was seriously in 'like'. Was I fated, did I want to be fated, like millions of my sisters, to spend my life with someone of the opposite sex? Gary, Gary, why couldn't you have been like that prick Eddie?

I looked out the window as the car zipped along the parkway toward the airport. Vaguely I could make out trees flashing by but mostly it was just a green blur as my mind, not my eyes, was what was active. A quick glance at my watch showed that I had maybe three hours before I would have to turn off my cell phone on the plane. For sure that driver knew the route better than I, for I had never been there before in my life, so I felt secure in closing my eyes and leaning back in my little corner of the back seat, the better to contemplate my life. Or at least that portion of my life starting with the previous night in Gary's bed and ending with my so-called marriage the following weekend.

The previous night part was easy. Rippling muscles, soft lips, experienced fingers, a hard cock, a well-trained tongue, a soft voice and such genteel love-making as I had never known that the male of the species was capable of. And then those last two words of Gary's! I hadn't responded vocally, just with a gentle, filial kiss on the lips, but those words were burning in my mind, had kept my tossing and turning, chasing a nap that took forever to come. I knew what the words meant, or at least I thought that I did, and I had those three hours ahead of me to figure it all out. For once that cabin door closed and the flight attendant began her/his speech about seat belts and flotation devices — idly I realized that my breasts could serve as very adequate flotation devices - the die would be cast.

I've lived my entire life in California, three time zones and a whole other world away from Gary and his fraternity house. It's been a good life: Dad and Mom sort of still living together, even though he's mostly away in the Diplomatic Corps, nice big house, a ski lodge for weekends, private (co-ed) schools. Gary has already described my breasts for you. They and my face (thank you, Mom) made me very popular, starting when I was about eleven or twelve.

Do you remember being that age, when thoughts of sex consumed a large part of your waking moments? Not that I did any participating at that time. Mom had given me the 'birds and bees' talk but basically it was just a polite rehash of what I had learned from my friends in whispers in the school hallways, the speaker always looking both ways to be sure that none of the teachers were nearby. The Sex Ed class was truly a yawner, the artwork being simply stick figures.

My first real visual exposure came when I saw a porn DVD that my friend Tina had borrowed from her big brother. Since the primary market for that stuff was men, the movie concentrated on naked women. But not totally. I knew what pussy looked like, since I owned a mirror, but I was most interested in the cocks that were shown entering various orifices of the pussy owners. As we watched, two twelve year olds leaning forward next to each other on her bed, my hand went into my lap. Without even thinking about it, I was getting ready to rub my pussy.

I was no stranger to self-pleasuring. By the time I reached eleven, I just sort of discovered it, with no information or input from my friends. And certainly not from Mom. Maybe it was something I had read about in some bodice ripper from Mom's shelf, maybe it was something some character said in one of those trash television programs, I don't remember. It was just that when I thought about sex, I got wet down there, and when I rubbed it for long enough, I got this tremendous feeling of relief. My body would shake and it felt as if I was peeing but no urine came out, just some clear fluid once in a while.

I even knew the medical word for it, masturbation. That's Latin for jerking off. Just kidding, I don't know the derivation of the word. But I really loved to do it. So there I was, about to begin, when I felt the bed shaking a bit. I looked over at Tina and saw that she had her hand right where I was going to put my own, and she had already started.

"You do that too, Tina?" I asked.

"Doesn't everybody?" she responded with a question.

"I don't know," I said, starting to move my own fingers. We sat there silently, our hands moving in tandem, our eyes fixed on the recorded sex radiating from the screen on her wall. I watched as the actor but his head between the legs of the naked actress and began to lick up and down on her shaved pussy. My hand began to move faster and faster, my breathing became raggedy. I closed my eyes to savor the upcoming orgasm, and then...

"Stop, Carla!" Tina's hand was like a vise around my wrist, pulling my hand away from my body. I quickly replaced the hand with my other one and she just as quickly grabbed that away also.

"What are you doing, bitch? I was just about to cum. What's the matter with you?" Oh man, you cannot imagine how angry I was at Tina for stopping me just before I was to reach the very apex of pleasure. On second thought though, I guess that you can imagine it, even if you've never been stopped at precisely that exquisite moment.

"Ssh, Carla, ssh," she whispered at me like I was a baby. "It'll be better if we do each other instead of ourselves."

I thought about that as my blood began to slow down. Then, "How do you know that, Tina?"

She didn't answer, instead moving to kneel alongside me as her fingers began to work on the top button of my jeans. Transfixed might be the right word — even though I can't define it — as I watched her fingers in motion. A quick zip and then a pat on my bottom as a signal to lift it, allowing her to slide my jeans down and off. Then she hopped off the bed and quickly shucked her own jeans, exposing to my eyes her pink bikini panties. They had a big wet spot at the crotch, a spot that I had seen often on my own panties. Slowly, tantalizingly — deliberately? she hooked her thumbs into the waist band and began to lower the frilly garment.

I was mesmerized. I had seen Tina's pussy every once in a while, and she mine, as we tried on and compared bathing suits, and those occasions had been non-events, similar I assume to men standing next to each other at urinals. But this wasn't casual. Tina was showing me her sexual core, and in a few moments I would be reciprocating, for the purpose of pleasing each other, of touching, of bringing each other to orgasm. Again I lifted my butt so that she could remove my plain vanilla — soaking — panties.

As her fingers slid along my legs, I could feel my heart begin to pound. Not even knowing what it meant, I could tell that adrenaline was pumping through my system, and I had no idea what adrenalin was. I knew that I was somehow crossing the Rubicon, letting another girl caress my pussy, much less even touch it. I had never dated a boy, nor kissed one. Would this make me into an instant lesbian? In school, that was the ultimate insult word that we knew to use about a girl, more cutting even than calling her a cunt. My wandering mind tried to analyze the idea that a polite society word like lesbian seemed to be more devastating than the curse word cunt.

And suddenly it didn't matter any more. Like I guess most of the rest of the world, the pleasure of the moment — when Tina's fingers touched my clit — far outweighed tomorrow's potential pejorative insult. Maybe the next day I would be a lesbian, but at that moment I was merely a girl in lust for an orgasm. I rolled onto my side and pulled Tina down to face me. We lay close to each other, faces inches apart. Our breasts, fully clothed still, rubbed against one another as our fingers worked. She played with my blonde bush as her thumb flicked over my clitoris. I repaid the favor on her somewhat darker carpeting.

Our eyes silently screamed our friendship as we continued to service each other. Such a cold word, isn't it, for masturbating your best friend, but in a strange way we were prostitutes, giving each other sexual pleasure in return for payment, except that the payment was not in money but in kind. Tina's eyes showed a smile as she brought me closer and closer to the promised land while I reciprocated. The aroma of her lust invaded my nose, or was it my own lust, or maybe a mixture. Our clits vibrated in harmony until, until...

My memory is fuzzy about the noises when we came together. It was some sort of mélange of scream, moan, giggle, grunt, sigh and panting. What I do remember quite clearly is that when the noises stopped, Tina leaned forward and kissed me smack on the lips. Though without the tongue action that I learned later on, it was clearly a kiss of affection, something more than a quick peck. I looked at her eyes; again they twinkled with a smile.

I kissed her back and with a sigh, closed my eyes. The music and the sex noises from the DVD put me to sleep.

My first thought when I awoke was to wonder why there was a blanket covering my still naked lower body. Had Tina gotten up and covered us? But she was fast asleep in front of me, each of us with an arm on top of the other's torso. My second thought was that there was someone hovering over me, whispering in my ear. I opened one eye. It was Tina's mother.

"Your mother just called, Carla. I told her that you were in the bathroom with an upset stomach. Why don't you put your panties and jeans on and call her back?"

She laughed when she saw the look of shock on my face and the bright red glow of embarrassment. The DVD was still playing; it had been a short nap.

"Relax. I know what happened. Who do you think put the cover on you two? Don't worry, a lot of girls try that once. Some do it even more than once. I didn't tell your mother anything. It's up to you if you choose to tell her. Now go call her back."

As I untangled from Tina and slid out from under the blanket, her mother was unmistakably staring at my pussy. That continued as I sat on the edge of the bed to put my panties back on. I had to ask.

"Are you the one who taught that to Tina?"

She blushed but didn't answer. "Go make that call," she said. "I'll iron the wrinkles out of your blouse before you go home. And if you really need inspiration next time, I've got some pure girl on girl discs that I bought after my husband died."

I headed for the phone, stopping to hug her. She hugged back, giving me a pat on the butt. I had always liked Tina's Mom; starting that day, I liked her even more.

"How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?" That line from a World War One song seems particularly apropos. It felt as though I was spending more time in Tina's bed than in my own. And it didn't take very long for our mutual masturbation to develop into more mature pleasures. Each time we got together, we progressed, if you'll forgive my use of such a word in this situation.

It was two days later that Tina and I were again in her room. We knew that her mother was downstairs, and we knew that her mother knew that we were in Tina's room, yet we didn't care, and neither did her Mom. The same thing happened, yet so much differently. Not a word was mentioned about our first time as ... what? Lovers? Mutually masturbating friends? Sexually attracted schoolmates? Whatever, that second day we knew what was going to happen. Nor did we need a video, not her brother's and not one of her mother's. Oh yes, we did discuss that, and she was kind of surprised that her Mom had mentioned them to me. It kind of confirmed to me that she had learned about female love from her mother, but it didn't matter to me.

Another difference was our clothing. We immediately got totally naked, whereas the first time we had only been bottomless. Under the blanket, we began to foreplay of accomplished sexual partners, the kissing, the fondling of breasts. In that regard, Tina got more than I did, because I had more breast to offer. According to my Mom, I had been bottle fed, and so for the first time in my life my lips fastened onto nipple and I loved it, not as nourishment but as a sexual act.

That second day, I remember the feeling when she made me cum. Unlike the new and presumably forbidden first time, my internal thrill communicated out to Tina with a soft moan, whereas her reaction to the successful ministrations of my fingers was a high pitched keen.

Tina and I continued our sex play regularly, that is, two or three afternoons a week and at least once each weekend. We quickly progressed into oral love-making, which you may know crudely as muff diving or carpet munching, or for you Francophiles, soixante-neuf. Though I'd seen it — hetero — on her brother's DVD, it meant nothing until that first time that Tina had spread my legs and caressed me with her mouth and tongue.

But much as we loved the taste and scent of each other, we were still plain old American girls constantly bombarded with the notion that we were becoming old enough to be attracted to boys. There was no more of that little girl 'ugh' when it came to the subject of boys; that sound had morphed into 'hmm' and from there to 'ooh'.

The two of us were fair enough of face not to scare any of the boys away. On the other hand, to attract them, I had breasts that would have been prize winners if our school gave prizes for that, and Tina was just so vivacious in spirit that the boys flocked to her like bees to honey. (Such a strange expression, since bees are interested in flowers; honey is just what they make at home.) Nevertheless, you get the idea. We double dated quite a bit, but also went out separately.

Since I was getting all the sexual pleasure that I needed from Tina, I was able to be fussy when it came to letting boys get away with anything, if you know what I mean. By that I mean that if a boy tried to feel me up on the first or second date, he was history. After that I was still choosy but willing to be convinced. In any event, it took a while for them to get under my blouse or sweater, and longer to get under my bra. The problem was that I wouldn't let them get any farther, and once they realized that, I was the one who became history.

While some boys were calling me a tease — a couple formalized it by calling me a cock tease — Tina wasn't teasing. By the time we were fourteen, we were dating boys who had driver's licenses and though we couldn't stay out late, those boys were pretty aggressive, and Tina was much more daring than me.