"Mother," Cheryl said. "Absolutely nobody in my class has to be home at eleven o'clock. Nobody!"

"That's not true, sweetheart," Lori said. "Cheryl has to be home at eleven."

"We could make it ten," Dan said. "That would make your statement true."

"DadDEEE!" Cheryl screeched.

"I'll tell you what," Lori said. "For every minute that you get home before eleven, Mark can stay here a minute later. We'll be in the bedroom."

"It's the Valentine's dance, it celebrates love and romance, and you want to count minutes."

Later, Dan explained the rules to Mark, who tried to sound responsible. Dan wasn't convinced, but -- at least -- Mark didn't screech at him.

"I don't know, Dan," Lori said. "Is even your own living room a safe place to allow your daughter and a boy to be alone together at night?"

"Night?" Dan thought. His first time, with Karen, had been in an open field on a summer morning. He could remember it as if it were yesterday.

They spread out the blanket he had got out of the trunk of the car and lay together. First, they kissed while his hands roamed all over her clothed body; soon, though, he removed her shirt and bra. "Her Breast," he quoted,

"(a place for beauty's throne most fit)

Bears up two globes where love and pleasure sit,

Which beaded with two rich round rubies show

Like wanton rose buds growing out of snow."

He kissed each of Karen's 'rose buds, ' to give her a clue.

"You didn't write that," she said.

"Not by some centuries. But I thought of you when I read it."

She tugged at his shirt, "It isn't fair. You're all dressed." Off came his t-shirt, and they rolled over with him on the bottom. They hugged like that for a minute, then she moved upward so he could kiss her breasts again. Her hand stole back to press against his swollen cock.

"And you talk about unfair," he said, although the touch had thrilled him. He reached down to caress her mound. "This is still unfair. You're all inside, and I stick out."

Her face got that enigmatic look that always would exemplify "woman" to him.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," she said. She rolled off.

He started towards her to do the unbuttoning. She was there before him, so he undid his own jeans instead. When he had pulled those over his tennis shoes, she was stark naked beside him.

"Tennies too," she said.

The thought struck him then that they might actually be going to do it.

But first she examined his cock without touching it. He couldn't resist touching her, however. And, after all, hers was all inside.

Not quite all, of course. The first thing he noticed was her mound and all the fine hair around it. Not until he would see Lori trim hers would he suspect that Karen's might have been trimmed. The hair led down between her legs, which Karen let him spread for a better view. Then the fat lips, with their own neat sprinkling of hair, opened enough to show the tiny, glistening red lips inside. They looked both delicate and angry to him then, an impossible combination. There was some sort of swelling at the top, which he didn't notice much.

When he spread the inner lips, however, they revealed a complexity at their juncture. The folds surrounded a central bud. His reading, although not nearly as much as kids got today, was enough to tell him that this was the mystical clitoris. The groove beneath it was moist and colored with subtle shades of pink and red.

Karen's entryway was evident, and evidently too small to take him. He kissed her mound. As he did so, he received his first full inhalation of a woman's scent of arousal, overlain with something floral.

"You can kiss lower," Karen said. He tried, but he took the word "kiss" too literally. After a minute, he kissed a path up her tummy back to her breasts. He kept his hand where it belonged, though. Once she pushed his finger off her clitoris and deeper into her groove. He took the hint and slowly swept his fingers up and down while her breath got shorter.

"Don't you want to do it for real?" he asked.

"It isn't safe."

"I have protection."

"You do?" she asked. That's when he truly believed that they would do it, and he would become a man. He had to stop everything he had been doing to pull the wallet out of his jeans, the packet out of the wallet, and then the rubber out of the foil. He rolled toward her, but she had other ideas. "Lie back," she said.

When he had, she straddled him. She took his rubber-covered cock in one hand and herself in the other. Then she fit them together and eased down over him and around him.

At some point he had realized that this was not her first time, but she was still marvelously tight around him. She pulled his hands back to her breasts before starting a luscious back-and-forth rocking over the place where they were joined.

He felt every motion of her body on his sensitive cock while he played with her lush breasts and hard nipples. She reached down between her legs while she was still moving, but she stopped still just when he was about to come. He pushed up with his hips to little avail.

Then she gasped. Her cunt clasped around his cock several times, drawing an intense, gushing, orgasm out of it. She fell on his chest, losing him in the process, and panted in his arms.

"I love you, Karen," he had said, not yet knowing what the word meant.

Dan took many risks with Karen after that, but they were never found out.

"No place is safe, nor any time," he said. "Do you remember your first time with Gary? Would your parents have suspected it?"

Actually, Lori always thought that her mother had a pretty good idea about her first time with Gary. Her father hadn't, because he would have done something heavy-handed about it, because he hadn't been home that night, and because he didn't notice much. But she'd been two hours late, after all.

Gary had been able to steal the keys to his family's summer cabin. It was nearly an hour's drive away, and they had ditched the entire dance to get time. The previous week, Gary had moved the other two kerosene heaters from his room and his sisters' room into his parents' room and made the double bed with newly- purchased sheets.

They stood kissing for the longest time before the chill room had warmed enough for them to undress. Then Gary had taken time to kiss her skin as he removed each article of clothing. Even then, the sheets had been icy. With three heaters blazing away, however, the two of them had soon generated enough heat under the down comforter.

Gary's hands were everywhere. He duplicated all of the steps of their previous petting. He brought her to panting eagerness before rolling the Trojan on, and then repeated the most intimate caresses while kneeling between her legs. Poised at the entrance, he kissed each of her breasts in turn before thrusting smoothly home.

Lori hadn't known that it could be like that. Gary kept most of his weight on his elbows, which were positioned so that his hands could reach her breasts.

He held those and caressed them while filling her completely. He tickled her nipples while stirring her with sideways motions of his hips. He finally turned them partly to their sides while his hand clasped her thigh with one finger reaching to just brush her clitoris.

Positioned like that, he tickled her while driving in and out. His finger, his cock, his evident ardor spiraled her to new heights of tension and desire. Then she had soared away into bliss. She returned to feel the last throbs within which told her that he had reached his own culmination before hers was finished.

Experiencing such care, such ecstasy, such mutuality, she was an instant convert to a life of sex, to sex with Gary, to a life with Gary. She only wanted to lie silently remembering that bliss and loving the man who had made it possible.

Then Gary said, "It wasn't your first time, was it?" It had been her first time like that, and she tried to say so.

Instead, it turned into a night of recrimination. It hadn't been his first time, either. She had known that all along and had been grateful for his experienced care for her. But he didn't think that his past was relevant.

"Promise me one thing," Gary said as they drove home hours late. "Never tell me who it was. I would have to kill him." Her mother kept her from dating Gary for a month, they broke up a month after their next date. They came back together, and she swore to be faithful to him.

"All we can do is to take reasonable precautions," Lori said. "And pray. Don't you think that getting her to spend the time in her own house will give us a better chance?"

"I suppose," Dan said. "After all, we can't really keep her from doing what she wants. At least, with us just down the hall, this Mark kid won't be able to force her ... I hope."

"I hope so too. I figure that it's better than a parked car somewhere.

"Anyway," she continued, "it's Valentine's Day. We can be parents tomorrow. You dish out the dessert while I change out of this girdle." They always dressed fairly formally when a date picked up their daughter. That didn't make Cheryl like the idea that the boy had to come in, but it did obviate some of her arguments. Anyway, the idea of a kid forcing Cheryl stirred dark memories and darker images. She wanted a few minutes alone to exorcise them.

She'd always followed Gary's rule, even with Dan. She'd never mentioned Ted to another living soul. That was one reason that she had never followed Dan into Catholicism, although Cheryl had been raised in the church. She didn't want to go to confession. She felt sometimes that she should tell Cheryl, warn Cheryl; but she never had. Her mother had warned her, and it hadn't taken.

Ted's parents had gone away for a weekend, and Lori had faked a babysitting job. Ted stirred her blood as no other boy in the school ever had. Her mother had taken an unreasonable dislike to him. "You went to the last dance with Ted," she'd said. "Find another boy for this dance."

"Mother, it doesn't work like that."

"So stay home." She had; Ted hadn't. A couple broke up at the dance, over Ted's dancing too often with the girl according to some stories. Anyway, it had ended with Ted and Cindy as a couple. Lori had been out in the cold. "So find another boy," her mother had said. She did, but Dave didn't kiss like Ted did.

So, now, she started off on her "baby-sitting" assignment, but the house she went to was Ted's. Barefoot, he led her down to the rec room.

Ted still kissed with heavenly skill. He still lit fires in her that no-one else could. He still stroked her breasts as if they were precious fabric. He still tried to go too far.

"Stop it! I'm not that kind of girl," she said.

"What kind of girl are you? I'm still taking Cindy to the next dance, I'm still not your official boyfriend. If I took you down for a malt, there would be talk that neither of us would want."

"I know all that. I don't want to go out with you, especially tonight. My mother thinks that I'm babysitting. I just want you to hold me and kiss me."

"And a little more."

"Yes. A little more, I love how I feel when you pet me."

"Well," said Ted, "you'll love how you feel when I pet you right. If you don't, I'll stop."

"You can stop right here."

"Fine. I'm stopping. Can you find your own way out?"

"Ted!"

"You visited my house for a petting date," he said. "You don't like the way I pet. That's fine; we can end the date now. Look, you've enjoyed everything I've done so far. All I'm asking is that you try it out."

That was a little off the point. She'd never thought that she wouldn't enjoy it. She'd just thought that she shouldn't do it. Caught between the choice of going home to explain everything and trying things that she really did think she would enjoy, she allowed him to remove her slacks and panties.

"Oh, Lori," he said, "you're beautiful." He kissed her then, before moving her back to the couch. He kissed her mouth and gently smoothed over her breasts. He teased her breasts with lips and tongue before ever touching her mound.

She did enjoy what his hands could do between her legs, enjoyed it until she soared away from him and flew into a brief bliss. He kissed her deeply as she returned, kissed her until she shoved him away so she could breathe.

"Okay," he said to that, "I'll be back in a minute." True to his word, he reappeared with two cans of soda in his hands. "Are you thirsty? I have ginger ale and root beer."

"Root beer, please," she said. He opened her can and handed it to her.

"Chilly?" She wasn't really, but she was feeling awfully naked. When she nodded, he removed his shirt and draped it over her. She had actually wanted her shirt, but she was covered. Ted was a lot bigger than she was, and his shirt covered a lot more of her thighs. He opened his can and sat to her right, with his arm draped over her.

"You know," he said, "I was serious. Everybody knows that you are a cute-looking girl. But you are absolutely gorgeous without your clothes."

He sat like that while she finished her drink. Once in a while he would say something else about her beauty, how her breasts were firm and her nipples enticing, for instance.

When she was finished with her can, he took it from her and set both of their cans down on an end table. "But what is most beautiful about you," he said as if there hadn't been a two minute pause in the conversation, "is your lovely fur-covered mound of pleasure."

The purple prose set her off a tiny bit, but the thought was reassuring even so. Being pretty is important to any girl, and she has to wonder about how pretty she is where no boy is supposed to see her. Who can she ask? But Ted seemed both experienced and impressed.

Soon he was kissing her again. This time, although he took his time, there were no impediments to his exploration. Soon, she was lying down on the couch with his hand between her spread-open legs. Again, his mouth on her breasts and his hand below sent her teetering near the edge.

This time, while she teetered, she felt something against her thigh. When she opened her eyes, Ted was kneeling between her legs. "Relax, Lori," he said. "This will be wonderful."

Then, as she struggled to pull herself together, he placed himself at her entry. Bucking to throw him off just helped his cock drive home.

It wasn't wonderful; it was painful and invasive; mostly it was a dirty trick. He pumped in and out a few times while she struggled. Then he slumped over her. She pushed him off and sat up. A lot of fluid oozed out of her. From the pink threads in it, some of it must have been blood.

"I love you," Ted said from the floor.

"Well, I hate you. I want my clothes and I want to go home."

"Your clothes are over there. Except for your bra and panties. They're in the freezer."

"The what?"

"I thought that you might want to claim that I forced something on you that you didn't want. I felt that you might have a hard time explaining why I had time to take your bra and panties while you were willingly naked and put them in the freezer. That took some time you know. You could have left while I took that trip. You could have retrieved them before they had time to get cold."

"You are a dirty sneak."

"I've been called worse. Think about me for the next few days, and you'll see that you'll want me again. I'm not a boy scout, but I'm the best lover that you'll find in that school. Do you want to take your underwear out of the freezer now? Would you like a shower while they warm up? It will be another hour before your mother will believe that you're done babysitting."

She had finally accepted the shower. She had never spoken with him again. Years later, she'd figured out that it was probably his own first experience as well. With hands and mouth, he might well have been the best lover in that high school, as he bragged. After she'd had some experience, however, she realized that he had no finesse at all in actual intercourse. He probably had improved with experience. Where was Ted today, she wondered. An expert gigolo? In jail for raping someone harder to bluff than she had been? In hell?

Hard as it was to smooth young Cheryl's path along lovers' lane, it was at least possible. Insight, however profound, was not going to change Lori's history one iota. Time to abandon the past and live in the present.

She hadn't intended the pun, but she giggled nevertheless. Last year's Valentine's Day present was a pair of black, real- silk stockings to go with the garter belt the year before. The present the year before that had been several sets of black panties, one of which she put on over the stockings. The first present had been a half bra; or some fraction of a bra (a half should have covered some of her areolae). Dan soon learned, however, that she wanted to feel like a temptress, not like a whore.

The bra she put on had support, and it was not quite transparent on the top. Well, the top of a brassiere really hadn't much purpose. She put on slippers immediately; she didn't want runs in those stockings. Then she looked at herself before slipping the robe over everything.

It wouldn't do to appear in the kitchen looking sexy. First the dessert, then the celebration. "Strawberry ice cream!" she said, as she had said it the first time, when it had really been a surprise. This memory was allowed in Dan's presence because Dan shared in it.

Lori was a freshman who had taken advance-placement physics and high-school calculus. She would have done the same with chemistry had the chem lab in her high school been outfitted after Lavoisier's. Dan was an English-major Junior who desperately needed a distribution in a "natural science." Sworn to be faithful to Gary, she had approached each of the four other women in her lab section.

None of them wanted to be her lab partner. She'd seen Dan with a girl on campus, playfully pushing on the end of her nose. Observation had taught her that casual touching meant a long- term relationship, she just didn't guess how long-term.

By the time she found out that Cheryl (not to be "Aunt Cheryl" for years yet) was Dan's sister, Dan and she had been lab partners.

Dan would never understand the first thing about the simplest oxidation-reduction equation, but he could follow instructions carefully and had a steady hand for pouring chemicals and really nice handwriting for the notebook.

Dan watched her eat her strawberry ice cream with gusto, and then slow down as she fell into a reverie. After years of marriage, he knew her thoughts sometimes. He could remember that quarter as well.

Dan thought that Lori was quite attractive, but he needed her brains more than her body. She explained that she was being faithful to Gary, who attended another school. He promised to keep romance out of their relationship. Lori and he "studied chemistry together" until she asked what she was getting out of it. Then she tutored him in chemistry while he "checked the grammar" of her English papers. That soon looked an awful lot like editing; "What do you mean here?" he would ask. The pairing raised her to an A in English and him to a C in the book part of chemistry. (They jointly earned As in the lab portion, and fully deserved it.)

Since she spurned any romantic involvement, he would only take her out when he was showing Cheryl around as well. The three of them had fun together. Dan would study in Lori's room, scrupulously avoiding any touch; he would sprawl in his seat watching the amateur drama presentations with one arm casually draped over Cheryl's shoulder, and another over Lori's. Whenever she thought that Dan had got too full of himself, Cheryl would stage a tickle attack, sometimes persuading Lori to help her. Whatever thoughts of Lori those events generated, Dan confided only to his lonely bed.

"That was a weird period," he said.

"We were all weird, Linda not least."

"Linda!" he said.

Linda, one of Lori's roommates, hadn't helped either one's peace of mind. She, too, had "study dates"; but she seemed only to study reproductive biology. Night after night, Lori heard the squeak of her springs and various noises from her various guests. This forced her and Pat, the third roommate, to entertain any of their guests in their bedrooms, rather than the main room which was intended for study and entertainment of guests, in order to put two doors between them and the sounds. In her room, she had to take the bed while Dan or any other visitor took a chair dragged in from the main room. Pat complained about this pattern, but Lori -- hoping for a visit from Gary one day -- kept silent. The few times that Dan visited late enough to hear those squeaks he tried to avoid looking at Lori's face while she tried to avoid looking at his groin.

"And your sister," she said, "kept trying to change our expeditions into double dates."

Cheryl played the field, but an occasional special boy would make a foursome of their trio. Lori knew that Cheryl was bringing someone to be checked out by her brother and her friend, but these excursions bothered her conscience. She felt that she was getting awfully close to dating Dan and hoped Gary was being truer to her than she felt that she was being to him.

She experienced the Christmas holidays as a let down. Gary and she could escape somewhere private enough for real sex only twice. The worse problem was that they didn't seem to have much to talk about when they were together in company. He would tell everybody stories about his first semester at college, and they would be fascinating stories. He didn't seem to have any stories for her, though, even ones he had told before.

Then school began again, and she and Dan were lab partners for another quarter.

On Valentines Day, Dan took "his girls" out for ice cream. Lori couldn't see that as a February treat until Dan ordered without asking. It was strawberry ice cream with little split strawberries which looked (slightly) like Valentine hearts. She loved the treat and laughed with Cheryl until she looked over at Dan. His look wasn't the patronizing fondness he showed to Cheryl. It was desire and, much worse, love. She pled an assignment due the next day and returned to her dorm soon. She knew that she should have felt guilty towards Gary for keeping faithfulness in only the most technical sense. Instead she felt guilty towards Dan. Why, she couldn't figure; she had warned him and didn't owe him any obligation, anyway.

Back at the dorm, she picked up her mail. There was a letter from Gary, only the second since Christmas. Maybe, she hoped, he would be able to visit her for a few days. The letter was long, but the point was in a single sentence on the second page.

Gary had met somebody else.

He felt that he and Lori were growing apart; they each needed to experience the full range of college, including social life; he wouldn't feel he was being fair if he held Lori to her promise. And, as he had mentioned earlier, he had met somebody else. So he thought that they should consider one another free. In light of that, he no longer considered her bound to avoid dates with others; and he was no longer bound, either. Indeed, there was already somebody else who had piqued his interest. And, he added parenthetically, it had been the first time for her.

Lori cried herself to sleep, but managed to get to all the classes but one the next day. That one was chemistry. She hadn't any idea of what to say to Dan. On the evening of the sixteenth, however, he called from the dorm lobby. It was their regular study night, and there was a chemistry quiz the next morning. Dan needed her help. She got out the chemistry book and told him to come up.

She hadn't said much for a while, but Dan read her thoughts in her face. Besides, today was Valentine's Day; besides, he'd been there.

His usually vivacious tutor couldn't seem to put the ideas in a clear form that night. A dozen times, Dan had formulated the question, "What's wrong, Lori?" A dozen times he had answered it for her, "And what business is it of yours?" before he could say it. He stayed later and tried to understand the chemistry again. Then the bed springs started squeaking from another room. They looked at each other. He had a raging erection, but luckily the book was on his lap.

She said, quite out of the blue, "I got a letter from Gary two days ago." Her tone was sad, as though Gary had announced that he had a disease. He had left so much unsaid to Lori, that it was easy to maintain silence now. After a while she went on. "He thinks we ought to have our freedom." There was another long pause. "He's dating a girl at his college."

"Does this mean," he asked, "that I could ask you out on a date without my Duennita?"

"Cheryl?"

"Yes. I love my little sister, but she is not my first choice for company when I have a date with a beautiful girl."

He looked at her across the table. The ice cream was getting soft. He started spooning it faster. She had been beautiful then, and gotten more beautiful over the years. She ran a hospital micro lab rather than having the Nobel in physics as she had planned back then; he was personnel director for a glass plant rather than writing the great American novel. But they had had a life.

When you have been married long enough, at least when you have been really married long enough, you sometimes think the same thoughts. "Anyway," she said, "Who says that Great America deserves a novel?"

"Transparent?"

"One mind."

"Isn't it 'one body'?"

"Not yet. Eat your ice cream." They each spooned faster, but their thoughts were still shared.

"I'm not beautiful," she said. "You're a nice man, always nice to me. You deserve better than Gary's rejects."

"I don't give a flying fuck about Gary," he said. "I've never met the boy. I don't want his choice or his reject or the object of his indifference. I want Lori. I've wanted Lori for some time, but she was being loyal. It was very hard to remember that her soul was as beautiful as her body and that part of that beauty was that very loyalty."

All through their speech, the bed next door had been shaking. Now it slowed and stopped.

"I feel cheap and used," she said.

"That's how you feel about Lori. How do you feel about Daniel?"

"You're a wonderful guy."

"Am I good enough to be kissed?" She began the kiss, rather chastely with closed lips. He responded, first pressing his lips firmly against hers, then opening his mouth. He licked her lips until they opened to let her tongue come out and play. The kiss went on until they needed to breathe.

She felt the request as a comfort and the kiss as a greater comfort. Somebody felt that she was an acceptable person.

Then the kiss turned into passion and the passion into desire. Just when she needed more from him than his mouth on hers, he was caressing her. He passed his hand all over her, her back first, then her side and butt and thigh. Finally, when they broke the kiss, his other hand reached her breast and fondled it.

After each had a few gasping breaths, she drew his head back to renew the kiss. She wanted to be held and kissed like this forever, but she wanted skin to touch skin. Knowing that the two were incompatible, she rejoiced when his hand crept to the buttons on her blouse. He had most of them undone when they had to breathe again.

"Let me," she said. She pushed him back enough to allow her to remove the blouse.

She unhooked the bra and shrugged it off before reaching for his face again. But he was leaning back looking at her.

He had dreamed of her in his arms and had ruthlessly suppressed those dreams. Now she was in his arms and her mouth was on his. He was hopelessly stiff, but he could almost ignore that in the glory of her kiss.

The bottom of her tongue was the sweetest thing that he had ever tasted, much better than the ice cream of two days ago. He tried to stop at a kiss, but his hands were totally beyond the control of his mind, and they wanted, needed, to feel her body. When they reached it, they were only briefly satisfied with her general shape. One hand cuddled her breast, and he almost came from the sensation.

These feelings were too exquisite to resist, and yet they merely whetted his appetite for more. He started to strip her upper body, at least, so that he could feel those breasts in their perfection. When she pushed him away, he was sure that he had ruined things by rushing her, and was about to be expelled forever from paradise.

"Let me," she said, and he realized that he was going to be admitted to heaven instead. He resisted the opportunity of feeling them for one moment of seeing them.

"Her Breast," he quoted,

"(a place for beauty's throne most fit)

Bears up two globes where love and pleasure sit,

Which beaded with two rich round rubies show

Like wanton rose buds growing out of snow."

"You're such a romantic," she said.

"Perhaps," he said, "but Herrick said it first; and he was a Metaphysical if anything. Come here, let me kiss you again."