Chapter 1

Topless by the Lake

Early experiences — even if they’re locked securely in the past, replayed only in our memories and perhaps the occasional dream — play a powerful role in shaping our mature sexual selves. As an adult there’s no question in my mind that breasts are my most potent sexual trigger, but I can remember a time when I didn’t think about breasts that much, because they didn’t seem like such a big mystery, for reasons I’ll explain. My curiosity was focused almost entirely on the genitalia, because they were always hidden away. And yet I eventually discovered that breasts could be a source of great pleasure for both the one who had them and the one who got to look at and touch them.

Picture if you will a boy in a relatively relaxed family (not saying this was my family, not saying it wasn’t, the truth as always is somewhere in between). A boy who saw his younger sister topless from time to time. It wasn’t a big deal. Just as he did, his sister would wrap the towel only around her waist after a bath or shower. And why not? Her chest was not appreciably different than his. And swimming at the lake in the summer — she would wear only the bottom part of a bikini all day, and that seemed completely natural — the lake was secluded. But what was there to see? She was almost completely flat; even this year, when a slight change was visible — the slightest of swelling behind her nipple — he barely looked at it. He’d seen his mother topless, too, though not so consistently. She wore a two-piece suit at the lake, but she’d occasionally take the top off to sunbathe, lounging on her deck chair. She didn’t make a big deal about it and he would have been embarrassed to be caught looking, but he certainly knew what her breasts looked like: small, slightly saggy, the nipples surprisingly solid. He didn’t think, ever, about his mother’s body; his mind skittered away instinctively from even the thought. And perhaps just the fact that she wasn’t particularly uptight about baring her top had inhibited him, a little, from forming a sexual association with breasts. But he certainly thought about his sister sometimes. She was only a couple years younger than him, they had always been reasonably close, and she was pretty. He had his mind on sex all the time; it was inevitable that he’d think about his sister sometimes, too. It was just — just, her breasts didn’t even register in his consciousness, even though they were growing more prominent now, now, because he saw them so often, because he’d seen her bare chest all his life.

The big mystery, the thing he wondered about as he furtively looked at her in her bathing suit, was what was under her briefs, because even in a family that didn’t panic about a little exposed skin, he’d rarely seen more than a brief, accidental glimpse of her vulva, once or twice when the towel slipped while she was changing, perhaps. At night he masturbated, with the abandon of adolescence, all manner of images running through his mind. And yes, sometimes it was his little sister he imagined naked, though he would never have admitted that to anyone, but it wasn’t her chest; it was always that little, hidden triangle that flashed through his mind as he lay in the bed, panting, erection in hand.

But she — she would spend evenings looking at her tiny, nascent breasts in the mirror, wishing fervently for them to grow faster. She’d try to encourage them by rubbing them, squeezing them, tweaking the nipples. It gave her obscure, pleasurable feelings to do so. She looked at, touched, and thought about her breasts all the time; on the other hand, nothing particularly made her want to examine herself down there — that was associated in her mind with peeing, which was just a little gross. True, sometimes the pleasurable feelings seemed to coalesce to a locus between her legs, but she had never really figured out what to do about that. Of course she’d touched herself tentatively, but never for very long. It left a scent on her finger that she liked to sniff, but at the same time she had to force herself not to think about pee and the toilet, and her mind and fingers always came back to her underdeveloped chest afterwards.

She was intensely curious about her older brother, and the mystery of what was happening to him these days. Why he was so furtive sometimes, why he spent lots of time in his room. She’d read all the books that her friends giggled about, she understood that his ... thing was getting hard a lot now; she could always tell when he was trying to hide it. It was hilarious, like when at the lake suddenly he’d have to go into the water even if he’d just come out. Or they’d be playing ball and suddenly he’d have some lame excuse to stop and sit down with the towel over his waist. He wasn’t fooling her. She’d noticed it making a little tent in his swimsuit a few times. She would look, trying not to be obvious about it, and wonder what it looked like. She could only think of the vague memories she had of seeing him when they had bathed together years and years ago. Surely it must be much bigger now; no way something that... little would make a noticeable bulge.

She had strange dreams sometimes, that summer. She dreamt of her big brother taking her into his arms and holding her. In her dreams her breasts and nipples were bigger and her brother couldn’t take his eyes off them. And he’d always be hard down there, although she didn’t really see that in the dreams. She just knew. The visual part she remembered was always her own breasts, magically grown prominent, and the effect they had on him. In reality, of course, no matter how much she ran around topless, he didn’t even seem to notice that she was starting, just starting, to develop. Their mom had noticed, though — in fact had gently suggested that she start wearing bikini tops at the beginning of the summer, but hadn’t pressed the matter when she protested, asked “but why?” She didn’t really want to lose the freedom she was accustomed to; she didn’t think it was a big deal. And in secret she was kind of proud of even the little development she’d had, and it excited her in an obscure way to imagine her brother seeing the change. Even if he hadn’t seemed even to notice, damn it!

She would, though, have been horrified to know that the reason her mother had suggested wearing a top was that her father had noticed. He’d found it distracting; he kept finding his gaze involuntarily drawn to her; she reminded him more than a little of his wife when they’d first started dating. She’d been almost flat then too; her breasts didn’t even really grow appreciably until she got pregnant the first time. He would never have admitted that he’d had such thoughts, but he complained to his wife, after the first night at the lake, that their daughter was getting too old to go around topless. She poo-poohed the idea, and he dropped the subject, but — though he didn’t raise the matter again — she did suggest to the girl that she wear her top. Met with resistance, however, and not feeling too strongly about the subject herself, she let it lie, and so nothing changed.

One evening, their parents went out on a date night, leaving them alone at the lake house, with strict instructions to stay away from the lake itself. This hadn’t used to happen; at home they used to have a babysitter, and she guessed it was hard to get a babysitter at the lake house, so the family tended to do things together in the summer. But apparently her brother was now deemed old enough to be responsible for an evening. Even though they couldn’t go swimming (she didn’t mind, who wanted to swim after dusk when the mosquitoes were out), she thought they would have fun; she was imagining an evening of watching TV, eating snacks, and the like. She was disappointed when, shortly after their parents left, her brother went into his room to use his home computer. She didn’t even understand why he would have brought that thing to the lake house. It was boring, in her opinion. There were some fun games on it but he rarely let her play them; in fact he didn’t even play them himself. He had some modem thing that would connect to the phone, making annoying noises in the process, and then he’d be glued to the screen until their parents would yell at him to get off the phone. Probably he was taking advantage of their being absent to get a few hours uninterrupted.

She sulked for a while, watched a little TV, made a snack, then went into her room, stripped down to just her panties, and stood in front of the mirror checking to see if her breasts had grown any since last night. She imagined they had. Suddenly she had a defiant idea. She went to her brother’s room, knocked on the door. When he opened it, his face registered mild surprise. Sure, he’d seen her topless and in bikini briefs all day at the lake, but she never walked around in just panties inside. “It’s hot,” she said, lamely. He didn’t say anything, but let her into his room. There was long, inscrutable text on his computer screen. He didn’t go back to it, but sat on his bed. At least he was looking at her. “I’m bored,” she said. He didn’t reply. He was still looking at her - not her bare breasts, it seemed to her, but her underwear. She wished she could come up with some excuse to take her panties off. She sensed he’d be interested in seeing that, but it would be unthinkably weird to just pull them down, or even bring it up as a suggestion. “Aren’t you hot too?” she asked. “No,” he replied, quite sensibly - it wasn’t, in point of fact, that hot tonight. “Well, I’m surprised you can wear all that, and stay in this stuffy room too.” Her brother didn’t say anything. Despairing, apropos of nothing, she blurted out the words she instantly wished she could swallow back: “Do you think I’m cute?”

He didn’t say anything immediately. He had an incredibly odd expression on his face, as if he were considering the question for the first time, and was unsure of whether to be annoyed, burst out laughing, mock her, or reassure her. Finally he settled on taking the question seriously. “Sure, you’re really cute.” No taking the question back now, she thought. “Do you think Emily is cuter than me?” Emily was her best friend back at home, and had often come over. She had real bust development; she had to wear a bra already. “Nahhhh ... you’re cuter than Emily,” he said, earnestly. She didn’t believe him, but it was nice to hear. “Emily has real boobs, though,” she protested. “Aww, you’ll get boobs too,” he replied. “You’re starting to grow them a little, I guess.” Hearing him acknowledge that gave her a little shiver of excitement, made her bolder. “Wanna feel them?” He paused for a second, uncertain, then said “Sure.” She stood in front of the bed, facing him, and when he didn’t make a move, jutted out her chest provocatively. Finally, tentatively, he reached out and touched her right nipple, briefly. She felt the lingering touch of his hand after he withdrew it. Her heart was thumping. “You can touch them more if you want.” He hesitated, then put one hand flat on each breast, massaging the slight swelling. Her chest felt hot under his touch; he could feel the nipples tickling his palms. “They feel nice!” She looked down at his hands; they were so big, and yet so gentle. She felt sure he could feel the crazy pounding of her heart. She didn’t want him to stop. It was so different from touching them herself in front of the mirror, hoping absurdly that it would help her bust grow. She wished she had more for him to touch. Would he prefer to be playing with Emily’s real boobs? Of course he would, she thought, but Emily was hundreds miles of away and probably would never consent to being examined by her brother anyway. She, on the other hand, was right here, ready and willing.