The sun came up over the lake on that cool August morning, casting a million sparkles across the water. They reflected back up into the world. Some of them hit the wall of my tent. It was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. It was very peaceful. Spots of light just dancing on the fabric above me, like happy little spirits.

The first thing I heard was the splash of waves on the shore, and a gentle breeze in the canopy of leaves above. I was safe and warm in my sleeping bag, and I decided it was going to be a very good day. I just needed a few more minutes of sleep.

I closed my eyes, but immediately opened them again when I heard a soft female voice singing quietly outside the tent. I sat up. It was Jordyn. She was the daughter of the couple who'd nearly ruined our entire vacation this year. The idiots at the camp office double-booked our site, the site we book every year, the spot we've camped at every year since I was a baby. When we got here, driving twenty minutes into the bush to our isolated little section of beach, there was already a tent set up, and this couple, Harry and Janet, were cooking up supper over an open fire.

It took a while to sort the mess out, and dad was nearly ready to just turn around and go home, but mom and Janet convinced him that it would be perfectly fine if we just shared the spot. Dad asked me what I thought, and I was about ready to tell him I had some games I wouldn't mind to play back at home, but then Jordyn came bouncing out of their tent in her short little shorts and tight little T-shirt barely containing her beautiful boobs, and I quickly changed my mind, telling them I didn't mind sharing. I had a crush on her almost immediately.

And so we set up across the campfire from them, and had been sharing the fire and forest for two days now. My parents and her parents had actually become really good friends, though our dads disagreed quite a bit about politics around the campfire at night. Me, I just loved listening to Jordyn sing. She was a shy, kind of quiet girl who giggled a lot and blushed a lot, but when she sang to herself, it was as beautiful as an angel. It made me tingle.

Her dad was very protective of her, though. He wouldn't let her out of his sight for longer than it took to take a piss. I could see why he felt that way. She was an absolutely gorgeous girl, around my age, fifteen, but already more amply endowed in form and figure than even my mom. Her breasts stood out, big, bold, and obvious, no matter what she wore. Even in sweat shirts, they were difficult to conceal. Her bum was big and round, too. Not fat. Not plump. Just round, flaring out from her narrow waist like a bell, high and firm, sometimes jiggling when she walked. It was maddening. Hypnotic. I swear, I even caught my dad stealing secret glances a few times. Her long dirty-blonde hair nearly touched her bottom, too. The only thing missing was angel wings.

Her dad apparently knew how gorgeous she was, though. He gave disapproving looks whenever I so much as talked to her. But after a couple of days, my parents had somehow convinced him that I wasn't a lecherous scumbag bent on defiling his angel. I was in the top of my class at school and made good money at a part-time job after school. Hell, I even volunteered helping veterans in my community. I was a great kid, dammit! Finally, Harry seemed to approve of me a little bit, at least enough to stop scowling.

All was quiet in the camp now, and Jordyn was singing to herself. I looked at her through the mesh screen of my tent door. There she was, sitting on a camp chair by what was left of the morning's cook fire, twirling a marshmallow on a stick over the smoky embers.

Little strands of her light golden hair fluttered in the wind from beneath the blanket she had pulled over her head. Her eyes were a gorgeous greenish-blue, almost the same colour as the lake. She was wearing little blue pajamas with stars and moons on them. They only came down to her lower thigh, though, just above the knee. Her pretty little toes wiggled next to the rocks that ringed the fire pit. She looked cozy.

The most beautiful thing about her though, were her lips. Her lips were puffy and pink, soft and shiny in the morning sun, an icon the most beautiful kiss any human being ever had. They parted slightly as she brought the marshmallow to her lips. Her tongue flickered out at it, licking some of the white cream from the gooey ball of sweetness. I just watched her quietly, from the shadows of my tent. Then, strangely, dizzyingly, she actually slid the gooey marshmallow between her lips and pumped it in and out a few times, before sucking the thing right off the end of the stick. Oh my God. My jaw dropped. She licked the sticky residue off her lips and popped another one onto the end of the stick.

Where was everybody? It was so quiet out there. As I sat there watching Jordyn for a few minutes, I began to realize that maybe, for the first time since we'd arrived, she and I were alone together. I grabbed a breath mint from mom's bag and quickly popped it in my mouth.

"Not exactly the healthiest breakfast," I told her, after another minute or two of silent staring.

She jumped a bit, spinning to look my way. "Oh, Ryan! I thought you were gone with the others!"

"Where'd they go?" I asked, running my fingers through my hair to smooth it down a bit.

"Canoeing. I was still in bed when they left. They said something about checking out Harold's Rock."

"Harland's Rock?"

"Yeah! That's the one."

"That's miles away. They'll be gone all day."

"It can't be that far. This lake isn't that big."

"Trust me. We went out there last year, me, mom, and dad. We left in the morning and weren't back until after supper time."

"Oh," was all she said. She took a nibble of a new marshmallow.

"They actually left you alone here?" I asked. What I really meant to say was, why the hell would old Harry ever leave his beautiful angel alone with a teenaged boy all damn day? I didn't voice that full thought, though. I was secretly elated.

"He tried to wake me up, but I complained about, um, girl troubles." She giggled. She blushed.

"Girl troubles?" I asked, puzzled.

"You know? My period?" She laughed out loud now, blushing even harder.

"Oh. So he let you stay because of that?"

"Mom told him he didn't have a choice. He didn't like it much, and then he started trying to stay behind to watch over me, but she refused him that, too. There was no way he was going to miss such a beautiful experience just being an old curmudgeon. So off they went."

"I can't believe he actually left you alone," I told her.

She looked at me sideways. Her eyes twinkled a little in the morning light. Then she smiled, poking her stick back into the fire. "To be honest, it was a total lie. I just didn't feel like going. Sitting in a canoe all day with a stupid life jacket on, squishing my..." She looked down at her chest but didn't complete the sentence. "No thanks."

Thank you, God, I thought to myself.

"What are we supposed to do for lunch?" I asked.

"Wieners, I guess," Jordyn said, and then she blushed cutely, and giggled as though saying the word was too naughty for an innocent girl like her. This was the most conversation we'd had the entire trip, and I was loving the sound of her voice.

I unzipped my tent, crawled out, and stood up, stretching. "How long have they been gone?" I said, scratching the back of my neck with one hand and glancing tiredly around the camp.

She didn't answer right away. She just stared at me for a moment, like I was missing an arm or something. Her lips parted slightly and she sucked in a breath. Her eyes were wide.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"You're, um, not wearing a shirt."

I looked down. I was wearing only a very loose-fitting pair of cotton gym shorts. They were grey. They only covered half my thighs. Other than that I was naked. I wasn't even wearing underwear, though I wasn't about to tell her that.

"That's what I sleep in. Is that a problem? I can, uh, get a shirt on if it bothers you."

She blinked a couple times and shook her head, turning back to look at the fire, then looking out at the lake as though her dad would come paddling back any minute now, all in an frothing outrage. Nobody was around for miles. The lake was empty.

"No! It's no problem. It's nothing. I've seen all kinds of guys with no shirt, like, at the beach and stuff, and in music videos sometimes. No big deal, right?"

"Not to me," I said.

She glanced over at me again, looking me up and down one more time, as though it were nothing, no big deal. Then she answered my original question.

"I guess they left about an hour ago. I've just been sitting here."

"Wow. I must have been tired. I didn't hear any of that. What time is it?"

"Probably around nine or so. I don't even know."

The first thing I did was go for a pee. The boys in the camp had a little spot in the thicket a short ways, where we'd all be relieving ourselves. The girls shared a little porta potty thing which was really little more than a wide, round bucket with a toilet seat on top of it. They had this behind a tree with a tarp around it, hanging from two trees, for privacy. But when you were out in the woods, very little was private.

When I was done, I went over and sat down on the little camp stool across from her. She roasted another marshmallow, but this time, instead of licking or sucking it off the stick, she just popped the whole thing in her mouth all at once. All I could do was stare. But she apparently noticed.

"What?" she said. "Why you staring at me? Do I have something on my face?"

I nodded, smiling. She quickly tapped at her chin and cheeks with her fingers, then she brushed them across her lips. There was nothing there, but I liked watching her touch her mouth like that.

"It's right there. On your lip," I said, touching my own lip and pulling it down a bit. She did the same. Then I slid my finger to the left. She did the same. Then I slid it to the right. Finally she caught on.

"You're just teasing me, you big jerk!" she said, giggling and blushing again. She hid her face with her hand for a moment and looked away across the lake. Her dad still wasn't coming.

"You have very pretty lips," was all I said.

It was something I never would have said with Harry around. But I was emboldened by our solitude. The compliment seemed to shock her, as though nobody had ever told her that before. I was surprised.

"You think so?" she said, blushing again. Her eyes sparkled a bit.

"They're, like, amazing," I said. "Your boyfriend must love kissing them."

Now she really blushed. She laughed out loud, too, instead of giggling.

"As if I have a boyfriend!" she told me, impaling another marshmallow on her stick.

"Well, that's just absolutely insane. Why not?"

"Take a guess."

"Crazy Harry?" I said, doing an impression of his grumpy scowl.

"Yup. He's even got me enrolled in an all-girls school. Have been all my life. I've hardly even talked to any boys, other than my cousins when they were little. But they moved away to Europe."

"That's crazy," I muttered. "What, does he hope you'll become a nun?"

"Who the heck knows? I often wonder if he's planning to throw me into a volcano someday, as a virgin sacrifice to some dark god."

She was joking, but she sounded genuinely sad. I didn't know how to reply.

"So you've, like, never even kissed a boy, like, ever?"

She squirmed a bit at the awkward question. Then she shook her head. She seemed mortified to admit it, though it made her seem even sweeter to me somehow. Well, no wonder she seemed shocked when I'd stepped out of the tent shirtless. I must have been the first half-naked boy she'd ever seen up close.

"Well, don't feel too bad about it. I've never kissed a girl either. Well, I kissed one girl on the cheek, back in grade six, at a birthday party. We were playing spin the bottle, but we were only kissing on the cheek. Nobody even kissed anybody on the lips, so it doesn't really count."

"What was her name?" Jordyn wanted to know. I paused for a moment, wondering why she cared. Did she actually think she might know the girl from somewhere?

"Marybeth, I think. Something like that. Marybelle? Mable? Can't remember now. Anyway, she was a friend of my cousin."

"Was she pretty?"

Another strange question, but less strange than what her name was.

"I don't know. We were only eleven. I guess so. I probably wouldn't have done it if she was ugly."

She popped the latest marshmallow into her mouth, staring off into space as she chewed. Then she poked the empty stick into the embers and stirred them around, lost in a pretty little daze for a minute. I just watched her, thinking how cute she looked when she was concentrating on something.

"At school, the girls are always talking about the guys they've kissed and how hot they were, and how they got their boobs felt up. One girl said a guy even tried to finger her, but she stopped him. I lied and said I kissed a boy once. But nobody believed me. 'As if little baby Jordyn ever kissed a boy! Yeah, right!'"

My first thought was how suddenly un-shy she was as she burst into that little tirade. My jaw nearly dropped when she talked about somebody getting fingered. She seemed to be lost in her own little world, though.

"I can't believe what I'm hearing from innocent little Jordyn McMaster!" I said, teasing her.

She looked up, a little startled for a moment, as though she hadn't even realized I was there. Then she shrugged, pouting out her bottom lip a bit.

"First of all, I'm not really as innocent as you think. I just act that way around my parents because they'd ground me for like a billion years, if I didn't. And secondly, if you're gonna tease me like the girls at school do, then you can shove it! That's not even who I am. And third, if me just being myself offends you, too bad! I finally get a break from Adolf and Eva for a few hours. I'm not gonna waste it."

I leaned back a bit, a little amused at her rant, but looking at her with new respect.

"I'm not offended at all. I actually love it. It's just surprising. Such a sudden change."

She shrugged again. Her boobs rose and fell with the motion. I tried not to stare, but damn!

I went back to her original point. "So, basically you've never had a boyfriend. You haven't even kissed a guy."

"Nope. God, it sucks. It's so embarrassing. I feel like such a loser. I'm gonna be sixteen soon!"

"Why would you ever feel like a loser? It's obviously not your fault."

"Try telling that to the girls at school, with all their gossip about who they kissed, who got to third base. Who they might go all the way with someday. None of them have done it yet, but they act like they're so experienced and mature, and I'm just some little nobody."

"You shouldn't be comparing yourself to your friends at school. They don't have the same problems you have."

"I know. But sometimes I feel like they're right about me. I don't know. I'll probably never even wind up kissing a boy until I'm already graduated and everything. Never mind anything else! I should just run away or something."

"Don't do that," I said. "Your parents love you."

She sighed, sounding nearly broken-hearted. Something in my tummy flipped over for a moment, feeling a pang of affection for her. She was a damsel in distress. I wanted to help her.

"I know they do. I just wish they'd let me be me. I spend my whole life putting on this innocent little princess act. Meanwhile I'm just burning up inside. I just wanna scream!"

Now it was my turn to sit quietly, concentrating, staring out across the lake. When I looked up, she was looking at me, but she quickly looked away. But then she looked back at me again, finally meeting my gaze for half a minute. It was me who eventually looked away. She was so beautiful it was making my insides ache with panicky little flutters.

We were quiet for a while. I got a hotdog out of the cooler and spiked it onto a stick. I roasted it over the coals, then ate it in two bites.

She finally spoke, after I'd roasted and eaten a second hotdog. "I can't believe you haven't kissed anybody. What's your excuse? Your parents seem cool."

"My excuse is, I'm busy. School work, my job, my other stuff. Plus, I don't even like anybody in my school enough to get everything all complicated. Girls ask me out all the time, but it's like ... it's just too complicated. All the rules, and shit, you know?"

"Actually, I don't know. What do you mean, rules? There are rules?"

"Which girls you can be friends with, who you can talk to, how often you have to check in. And if you don't say 'I love you' at the right times in the right way, it's all drama. A buddy of mine nearly killed himself over a girl last year. I guess, I just want to make sure she's worth all the trouble."

"Why not just mess around, just for the fun of it?" she asked. "Like this girl Casey at my school. She does it all the time with lots of guys."

"Mess around? What do you mean?"

"Like, kissing ... feeling someone up ... you know? Whatever."

"This from the innocent little princess?" I said, smirking.

"Well, you don't have to be dating someone for that stuff, do you? I don't really know the rules."

"I guess you don't. But it would still be kind of complicated. People gossip and shit, and girls get expectations once you've done anything with them."

"Expectations?" Jordyn asked, honestly puzzled. "Like what?"

"Like ... well ... it's sort of like if they kiss you, you owe them something now. Now you gotta ask them out and everything, or else they call you a player and a jerk and everything, just using girls. It's not really worth the trouble."

"Seriously? I would consider myself lucky to even talk to a guy like..." she paused, suddenly realizing she was about to say something awkward. "Well, like you. Never mind all that other stuff."

Suddenly, I was quiet for a moment. Suddenly, my heart was pounding hard and my thoughts were racing a mile a minute. Apparently she liked me. What should I do? After a minute of silence, I finally took the plunge.

"Would you, if you had the chance?" I asked, softly, in an almost whispered tone.

"Would I what?" she answered, staring at me like I'd just asked her to murder her own mother.

"Would you... kiss a boy?"

Her eyes went wide. Her cheeks turned pink. She let out an awkward little laugh. Then she suddenly realized what I was referring to, and she got all quiet.

"I wouldn't even know how..."

Now she was blushing again, but her eyes sparkled like jewels at the very thought of it. And I sat quietly, my heart thumping in my chest as she thought about it for another minute.

"I ... I guess it would depend who the boy was."

"What if it was me?" I asked, now feeling just as shy as she was.

She was quiet for way too long, just stealing little glances at me, pondering the idea, and then looking out across the lake with an almost panicked expression.

"I ... um ... Are you asking me to... kiss you, Ryan? Like, right now?"

She said it as if that was the most insane idea anybody ever had in the history of humanity. But she was squirming in her chair, too, and she hadn't run away, so I grew a little bolder.

"Well, I was just thinking, there's nobody around. You've never kissed anyone. I've never kissed anyone. Maybe we could... practice together. I mean, if you want."

"But..."

"Do you think I'm attractive enough to kiss?"

She just nodded. She nodded quickly, too, with zero hesitation. "Uh huh... Definitely."

"Attractive enough for your very first kiss?"

She nodded again, staring at me freely now. Her eyes were deep pools of blue.

"Well, then what's stopping us?"

"I don't know. It's just... weird. I totally wasn't expecting this when I woke up this morning."

"Me neither. But I was kinda wishing for it."

Her eyes widened for a moment at the compliment. She stared at me as if trying to figure out if I was being sincere. Then she looked down again, poking her stick into the fire once more. She took a few deep breaths and then made a confession.

"Well ... me, too, sorta. I mean, I sort of liked you from the first time I saw you. But I never thought anything would ever actually happen, like for real. My dad's such a dick all the time."

"We're gonna part ways in a couple days and probably never see each other again. I'm sure your dad won't let you call me or write me or anything. So if you wind up not liking it or something, you can just pretend it never happened, and who's gonna know the difference?"

"But what if I do like it?"

"Then you have a beautiful memory. And someday, when you finally do run away, you can look me up."

She smiled at that, but made no move to get up and kiss me. We sat quietly, thinking about it, glancing across at one another every minute or so. Now the silence was even more awkward than the idea of kissing. I got the idea that neither of us would be brave enough to make the first move. We'd sit there all day before anything happened. So I got an idea.

"Well, I'll tell you what, Jordyn. I'll just go back and lie down in my tent. If you change your mind, just come over and lie down beside me. We don't have to say anything. We'll just kiss. But if you don't want to do it, I'll just go back to sleep and we can pretend like we never even had this conversation."

"Wait!" she said as I got up. I turned to look at her, almost breathless with how pretty she was. "What if I'm too scared? What if I want it, but I'm too scared?"

"Then I guess you don't really want it."

She nodded, slowly. I went into the tent. My heart was pounding wildly as I laid down on my sleeping bag, wondering what she would do, wondering what I would do if she did come over and lay down next to me. The very thought was brain-melting. But what would I do if she didn't? Maybe this was a stupid idea. Maybe I should have just made a move on her.

After about five minutes (minutes that felt like hours), she came walking over. She stood beside the tent door for a long time. I waited, my heart pounding even harder. Then she squatted down and looked at me for another long time, through the mesh screen. I looked back at her, not saying anything.

"They're gonna be gone all day, right?" she said. "You're absolutely sure about that?"

"Yup. We paddled out there last summer, and it took three hours just to get there. It's a big lake. And my dad likes to go all the way around the shore instead of cutting across. It's safer."

"Will we hear them coming when they get back?"

"Probably. They'll probably be laughing and talking. Voice carry across the water. Plus we'll hear the paddles splashing."

"Yeah, they did make quite a bit of noise as they paddled away." She chewed her lower lip a bit, thinking.

"If you want, we can leave the tent door open. You can see the lake from here. We'll watch for them, too. If we don't hear them, we'll see them. And you'll have plenty of time to sneak away if by some crazy chance they come back early. But really, I doubt we'll see them until past supper time."

"Okay..." she said. "Yeah ... Okay ... We'll watch for them. We'll be very careful..."

She was trying to talk herself into it, though she was absolutely terrified. It made my insides even more excited. I was actually going to get to kiss this girl, right on those beautiful lips.

Finally, she just let out a sad, tense-sounding sigh and climbed into the tent with me. She lied down on the sleeping bag next to me and just stared up at the ceiling, waiting. The morning sunshine was lighting her up now, through the open door of the tent. She looked absolutely angelic.

I turned onto my side and looked at her, resting my cheek on one hand. Up close, her boobs looked bigger than ever. They were protruding high and proud above her chest, rising and falling with each tense little breath she took. She was staring at me. I quickly looked away up to her eyes. She was glancing down at my naked chest and shoulders a bit, too, so I guess I shouldn't have been nervous.

Then she reached up and touched my cheek. "Thank you, Ryan," she said. "This means a lot to me." She was actually thanking me? I was astonished. She was about to make me the luckiest guy on earth. I just smiled, though.

"If you close your eyes, we can pretend you're a princess and I'm a prince, and I have to wake you with a kiss."

"Okay..." she whispered. She really liked that idea.

She dropped her hand from my cheek and closed her eyes, feigning sleep. I took the opportunity to steal another glance at her beautiful, round boobies again. I could almost feel the heat of them from my place on the sleeping bag beside her. Her nipples were poking up out of the fabric of her pajamas, stiff little points atop the round globes of flesh. Her boobs jiggled a little as she trembled beside me. I started getting hard in my shorts. I was worried about that for a moment, but then I realized that by the time I was kissing her, I would be fully, completely, undeniably hard, with absolutely no way to hide it. So I decided not to worry.

I touched her cheek, and then I leaned down and kissed her. Her lips were warm, soft, and luxurious, as beautiful as I'd dreamed. I pressed mine gently to hers, and when she exhaled a soft little sigh, I realized up close how sweet her breath tasted. We just pressed our lips together for the longest time. Just breathing. Finally, I pulled away. She lay there with her eyes shut.

"How was that?" I whispered. "Okay?"

She nodded. "It was beautiful," she whispered, without opening her eyes.

"Want more?"

She nodded again, licking her lips.

I bent down and kissed her again, pressing my lips to hers, softly, innocently, but this time, she began making kissing motions, moving her mouth against mine, the way girls do in the movies. I guess she'd been dreaming of this moment for years, through all the gossip at school and every movie she'd ever seen. She seemed to know the basics of kissing, though she'd never actually tried it until now. My heart beat hard, my hand trembled against her cheek. Then I pulled away again.

She finally opened her eyes, looking up at me, and I felt a pang of something that must have been the very beginning of love. It was just a big scary burst of emotion inside me that made me feel overjoyed and terrified at the same time. I just stared at her, feeling like I never wanted to be more than three feet away from her ever again. But she lived in a whole other city. That was crazy. I swallowed, trying to get a grip on myself.

"The princess awakens," I said. "But will she fall in love with the handsome prince?"

"I like kissing you," she said, smiling. "It's beautiful."

"I probably smell like hotdogs."

She shook her head, smiling sweetly. "No. You just smell like a kiss."

I kissed her again, and this time, she reached up to wrap her arms around my neck and pull me closer. Her touch was absolute bliss as her fingers caressed the back of my neck. I could feel one of her boobs pressing into my chest now, too, as I leaned over her. The side of my arm touched her other breast as I reached up to caress her cheek. It was warm and gorgeously soft.

But there was more to kissing than just touching lips together. I knew this much from the movies I'd seen. I wanted to do everything right, make it beautiful. I delicately parted her lips with mine and slid my tongue cautiously forward to touch hers, so very gently and carefully. She sucked in a soft gasp when our tongues touched, and then released a soft moan as I slid my tongue fully into her mouth to dance with hers. It was the most beautiful experience of my life up to that point. I just held her face and kissed her, deeply, and adoringly. Her tongue wriggled slightly, and fluttered a bit, tickling and teasing mine, shyly exploring the experience. My heart was pounding. My stomach was tense with excitement to an almost panicked degree. I felt dizzy, but I never wanted it to end.

We kissed for what seemed like a whole hour, but it was probably only a few minutes. Birds twittered outside, the waves splashed endlessly over the shore. The breeze fluttered the walls of the tent. And I just lay there kissing the most beautiful girl in the world.

Finally, I broke away and just stared into her eyes.

"Wow," I said, muttering softly. My eyes were wide and dazed. She looked up at me, mirroring my expression.

"Yeah. Wow," she answered. "As first kisses go, I couldn't have dreamed of a better experience."

"So what happens now?" I asked.