Chapter 1

At North Brookfield High School, a lot of the kids started doing it young. Some of them did it a lot. But none of them ever formed a bond. Eighteen was the youngest a person had ever entered a bond. Twenty was the most common age.

Lucy started feeling the first signs of “bondless syndrome” just before her 20th birthday. First she thought it was a cold, then she held out a faint hope that it was only a cold, and then she knew she had come of age. That meant she’d better start having sex regularly until she formed a bond.

Lucy wasn’t a virgin. Shortly after she turned 18 she had a friend Alex who she liked and had no trouble convincing him to do the job. She’d made sure in advance the penetration didn’t hurt, and she was wet enough for it to be a smooth mating. He’d come inside her after a couple minutes, and that was fine. She got the sense then that deep down sex was a good and right thing, a perspective she never lost. That was true whether she came or not. Alex was eager to do it again, and she wanted to get used to it. The fourth and last time, she asked if she could ride him, because she had heard a girl could come that way. And it worked! That was wonderful, to get that pleasure and release while his organ was way up inside her. It was exciting to then have him urgently turn her over, re-enter, thrust like crazy, and come almost at once.

But after those few experimental encounters, Lucy wasn’t inclined to do it again. She knew that whatever her opinions on the subject, she would soon start having a lot of sex, and it would go on for many years. A couple more years of not thinking about it felt like extending her childhood in a nice way.

Bondless syndrome also had a more colorful name: the Creeping Yuckies. The symptoms varied from person to person. Sneezing, coughing, ear and sinus pain, headaches, vertigo, muscle aches, sweats and fever ... But whatever they were they slowly got worse, a little bit, day by day. If left unchecked, bondless syndrome got worse and inevitably led to death.

The solution was to form a bond, and the way to do that was to have sex with a partner. At some point during an act of intercourse the bond would just happen, and which pairings created a bond was basically random. But it was roughly one mating in ten that produced a bond, so any person, man or woman, had to be prepared to have a lot of sex to get a bond.

So it was time. Time to start asking boys for sex. Many of her schoolmates had propositioned her in the past couple years, and she had turned them down politely. She now looked up the ones she had had good feelings about.

The night before she set out on her quest, she stripped naked and took a look at herself in the full-length mirror. Height: 5’6”. Weight: 125 pounds. Shoulder-length wavy brown hair. Brown eyes set a bit close together -- or at least not big and wide like the prettiest girls. Her breasts were on the small side but not too small, and they didn’t droop. She was a little bit more muscular than the prettiest girls. Her hips were of course wider than a boy’s, but probably narrower than most girls. And down there was her pubic hair, obscuring all the really important sex organs. She thought she looked OK. Probably a bit above average for a 20-year-old.

“Hey Pete, how’s it going?”

“Fine, Lucy. How are you? I didn’t expect to hear from you, unless -- you’re looking for a bond partner?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d be happy to help. I mean, I think you’re sexy and I’d enjoy it too, of course.”

“Thanks, yeah.” That was one little problem. Everyone needed to have a bond, but any girl would feel better if she thought her partner wasn’t just doing her a favor. “How many bonds do you have now?”

“Two -- but I’d be happy to get rid of either of them. No real problems, just it would be nice to have a change of pace. You’d be a fun one.”

“Yeah, well, I picked you for a reason, too --”

“Not just because I’m so muscular and handsome you couldn’t resist?”

“Well, that too,” said Lucy, playing along. They both knew what she meant was that he wouldn’t be a bad person to have a bond with. Of course it would probably just be a single act of sexual intercourse and no bond would be formed, however bad or good or fantastic it was as a sexual encounter. She didn’t want him to know he was the first one she’d picked in search of a bond, because that would imply he was more special to her than he was. She had had her eye on him for a few years, but it was nothing profound.

She came to his house and things became something of a blur. In his room ... stripping ... a stiff penis sticking straight out ... then on her back, “are you ready?” ... the plunge in ... the grunting and happy sighs of this young man on top of her, his stiff meat shoving in and out ... And lots of warm sexy feelings down there for her.

He paused after a couple minutes and said, “Guess not, huh?”

Lucy said, “Guess not.” She had lost track in the moment of the fact that they were seeking a bond, since she was just enjoying having sex. She’d never felt what it was like to have a bond form, but they said there was no way you’d miss it if it happened. Two full minutes of penis-in-vagina thrusting was deemed to be enough to get your answer. If it hadn’t happened by then, it wasn’t going to.