Chapter 18

On Tuesday morning Devlin made a point of seeing Sue. The wind was just as bad as the day before, but most of the sidewalks on campus had been plowed the night before. She felt half-frozen and took several minutes to warm up in the hospital's cafeteria before presenting herself at the front desk.

Sue was sitting up in her bed, staring at her toes. From time to time one of them would move, and when that happened she'd grin.

"Look," she said when she saw Devlin. "Watch what I can do." She flexed her toes again and again.

Devlin gave her a quick hug. "I didn't think that was supposed to happen for several days."

"I didn't either; the doctors are ecstatic."

"And you aren't?"

Sue laughed. "So what are you up to on this beautiful morning?"

"Classes are on again today."

"You didn't expect a little snow to stop them, did you? This isn't grade school."

"Sue, the snow out there comes up past my knee. In some places it's past my waist. That isn't "a little snow"."

"And this time next year I'll be worrying about walking in it."

"I know. Marvelous, isn't it. Aren't you glad I talked you into this?"

"It's still experimental. We have a long way to go before I'm chasing the kids." Sue studied Devlin's face. "What's bothering you? I can see something in your eyes."

"I've been wondering if Jeff and I are breaking up."

"I hope so."

"What?" Devlin looked at Sue in surprise. "You hope we're breaking up?"

"I've never been comfortable with the idea of you two together. I haven't mentioned it before, but he's a Momma's Boy, and his Momma is a big wheel in that church of hers. I always thought you could do better."

"But..."

"But what?" Sue asked softly. "I know you've said you two were good together. Were you? Really? Or was it just something you told yourself."

"I, uh, I don't know. I thought we had a lot in common, but lately..." Her voice trailed off and she stared at Sue's flexing toes. "We really haven't been seeing much of each other. I mean, we get together most every week for lunch, but..."

"Are you confusing what goes on in the bedroom with having other things in common with him, Devlin?" Sue finally said with a shake of her head. "I'm surprised that you, of all people, made that mistake.

"Does he like anything that you like? And vice versa?"

"He likes my cooking."

"He's a man, and if I remember, he's an engineer. That means he'll eat anything heated and edible and not notice or say much about it." She studied Devlin's face. "There's more, isn't there? He hurt you recently, didn't he?"

"Maybe." Devlin scowled. "I found out his Social Studies tutor is a woman."

"Social Studies tutor?" Sue shook her head. "Unbelievable. Devlin, maybe things have changed, but when I was in college it was next to impossible for an engineering student to flunk Engineering Social Studies. Just showing up gets them a 2.5, and if they so much as crack a book and ask a question in class they're guaranteed a 3.0. ESS isn't for weeding the good engineers from the bad ones, its there as a sop to the liberal arts majors. And he has a tutor for it? Something's wrong there."

"I kind of wondered about it," Devlin said. "I could understand a tutor for his math and chemistry classes. His GPA rose a full grade point after the tutor started helping him.

"Devlin, seriously, something funny is going on there. I'd get out while you can."

"I'm almost there," Devlin said. "We're going to have lunch on Thursday."

Sue glanced at a nurse standing in the door. "I'd like to talk more about this, but breakfast is here." She grinned at the nurse as she set the tray on the bed. "Something must be wrong, Carolyn, dinner last night actually tasted pretty good."

"We've had a lot of complaints about that," the nurse said. "The Board of Directors is looking into it. We have standards to maintain."

"Come visit on Friday," Sue said after the nurse had left. "I want to hear more about Jeff."

"Okay," Devlin said, getting up. "Uh, Danny and I were..."

"He's another one you can talk this over with," Sue said, "though I expect you two will have something else on your mind."

"I, uh, I was meaning to ask you about that."

"It's going to be some time before I can keep up with Danny in bed. You're welcome to keep doing this, if you want."

"Thank you," Devlin said, smiling appreciatively. "At least something in my life is constant."

"We need to talk more," Sue said. "I think you just need someone to talk to. Now go, I know you have classes."

Devlin glanced at her watch and made a hasty good-bye. If she wanted to get to her first class on time she would have to skip breakfast. It was a small price to pay. She'd make up for it with a good lunch. Then she remembered Danny. Oh well, she'd try to grab something during the day.

At 11:40, as she was crossing the lobby of the Athletic Club, the clerk behind the counter called her over. "Your packages just arrived, Miss McCabe."

"Packages... ? Oh, yes, where are they?"

"In back. If you'd like I can have them sent up to your room."

"That'll be fine." She gave him a smile. Normally she headed into the Women's Locker Room and then went up the back stairs, but not today. The clerk was watching, so she rang for the elevator.

She could hear Danny in the next room. She debated opening the door and telling him she was going to be a few minutes, but she knew that if she did the porter would pick that time to show up with her packages. So she sat down to wait, spending the time going through her receipts.

After half an hour the porter finally showed up with her packages. As she signed for them she reflected that she could have told the clerk she was going for a swim or a sauna and spent the time with Danny instead. Ah well, she'd plan a little better the next time.

She opened the door between the rooms. Danny was sitting at the desk in the room going through a stack of papers.

"I was beginning to wonder," he said, looking up. "I could hear you next door but didn't want to interrupt."

"It's a good thing you didn't, I was having stuff delivered."

She pulled off her sweatshirt and shook her hair back over her shoulder. Danny was standing up and starting to unbutton his shirt. This was the point she'd been wondering about all morning. Would she still feel the same thing she had before, pre-Krissi, or would it somehow be different?

She took her time undressing, spending more time watching Danny and his body. He had nice shoulders, strong, but without being overpowering. She loved his back, trim and muscular but without the layer after layer of muscles she saw on the weightlifters. He turned back to face her after removing his tee-shirt: his chest hair was dark, but wasn't the thick matt she saw on some men. It was enough for her to run her fingers through, enough that it deliciously scratched her nipples, but it wasn't like sprawling out on a bearskin rug.

She took off her own tee-shirt and bra--it was only fair that she keep pace with him. She couldn't help but notice how his eyes lit up when her breasts swung free; she'd seen his eyes light up exactly that way for more than five years and still enjoyed seeing that reaction.

The muscles on his chest were solid, and she couldn't see his ribs. Men who watched their health actually tried to weigh what they supposed to; they didn't feel the compulsion to go through life 10-20 pounds under her proper weight like Krissi probably was.

Danny's hips and butt were narrow and tight; she'd once kidded him that if his butt was any tighter she could bounce quarters off of it. He'd jokingly rolled over and asked her to try. She'd declined, but after seeing other men she had come to appreciate how Danny kept himself in shape. She knew he worked out, but the only exercise she'd ever caught him doing involved the two of them and a muscle that at the moment was hidden by his shorts.

"What's that you've got on?" Danny asked as she removed her jeans.

"It's some Gore-Tex thing that Eddie Bauer developed," she said, turning and modeling her tights. "These are breathable tights that are supposed to keep mountain climbers warm."

"Do they work?"

"I should have gotten the shirt that goes with them. This morning my legs were warm, it was the rest of me that was freezing."

She could see the lump in the front of his shorts. She wasn't entirely undressed and he was already getting aroused; no, that wasn't fair, guys got aroused at the sight of bare or nearly bare breasts--how else could you explain all of the topless bars that seemed to be everywhere.

She had to sit at the desk to remove her tights. As she did so she closed the door to her room. This room was warmer than hers and she could feel a trickle of cold air on the floor. She'd have to do something about it, but without telling the Athletic Club's management how she'd found out.

She was down to her panties, the tiniest pair she had bought Saturday afternoon. Danny's eyes had zeroed in right between her legs even though she still had her panties on. She'd asked him about that once: what was there to see down there?

"It's the thought that I might see something," he said.

"But you will. I always pull my panties off right away." It was summer and they were lying together with the windows of the bedroom open, their bodies cooling off from the passion that had consumed them only minutes before. They could hear the television going downstairs and the sound of kids playing outside on the streets.

Danny sighed. "It's a guy thing. Look, clothes cover the body, right?" She nodded. "And yet you flirt a bit with showing your body. You know: leaving that extra button on your blouse open, or the hemline that's just a little higher than is "proper". Right?"

"Well, yeah, but that's just the way things are done."

"You know that pink top you have, the one that barely covers your breasts? You like wearing that."

"Well, I--"

"But you wear a sweater over it so you can control how much people see, right?"

"Of course, but--"

"Do you know how much guys watch?"

"Of course. Guys watch you most of the time. Every girl knows that."

"We watch all of the time. It's like there's some part of our brain that's constantly checking out every girl in sight. We're constantly trying to see what you're hiding, and girls cooperate by trying to catch our attention by showing us just a bit more than some other girl. It doesn't matter, whatever you show, we want to see just a little more."

She digested that for nearly a minute. "Is that why guys wait beside the stairs at school? So they can see up our dresses? I never could understand why guys did that. There's really nothing to see."

"That's one of those things guys can't ever understand about a dress or a skirt. To you, you're wearing a skirt or dress. To a guy you're wearing a pair of panties that inconveniently has a dress or skirt over it. And if there happens to be a gap in your underwear, well that's just better. A guy's always trying to see just a bit more than a girl thinks she's showing him, and you'd be surprised at how much more we can see."

"Really? But--"

"The next time you're at a mall, watch the guys around you. Pay close attention to where all of the guys are looking. And then look at the girl they're watching, but with this difference. Don't look at what she has on. Actively try to see her underwear and body. You see that she's wearing a green blouse and jeans. A guy sees her bra strap and, with any luck, maybe the outline of her panties. That's what guys are looking at."

"You can see all that?"

"You'd be surprised how much actually shows. Now those guys who wait by the stairs, the school should put up a privacy screen or something beneath the railing. Those guys are just being boorish, especially because you can see more in a high school cafeteria or a classroom than you can on the stairs."

"Cafeteria? You mean--?"

"A girl has to stand up sometime, and when you do, do you keep your knees together as you turn to get your feet out from under the table, or do you move a leg and just stand up?"

"I-I guess I didn't think about it."

"That's when guys do the most looking. And it isn't limited to when you wear a skirt or dress. You know those black slacks you like so much?" She nodded. "When you stand up the fabric presses against your pussy so tightly I can see it, and not just the outline, but your sex lips, too."

"You can?" She was shocked. He could see her sex? She didn't think that was possible.

"It's all instinct," Danny said. "Despite what people say I don't see it as anything you can train out of a guy, either. And it's every guy, nerds, geeks, average joes, jocks, everybody who's doing the looking. Look, a girl's hormones might be pretty strong, but most girls don't realize how strong a guy's hormones are. You think you do, but you don't." He chuckled. "Guys don't, either, not until they become fathers of little girls and remember what they were like when they were teenagers. Women laugh at a father's behavior, but guys don't. I think most guys finally mature when they become a father. That's when we start talking about shotguns and things like that."

"But of course you still look. That sounds sick."

"I've noticed I don't look at my daughters, not that way. It's something inside me that puts them in the 'off-limits' category, something to be protected. As for all other females..." He shrugged. "What can I say? I'm a guy."

Now she saw where his eyes were looking. With any other guy she'd close her legs slightly so they couldn't see anything. But that wasn't the way she and Danny played the game. She took off her panties and walked over to the bed, deliberately swaying her hips.

"You're overdressed," she said, pointedly looking at his shorts.

He laughed and pulled her down beside him. "You aren't." He kissed her breasts, going back and forth between them. As he did so his hand slid under the waistband of his shorts, moving them down onto his thighs.

Devlin captured his cock, rescuing it from the fabric of his shorts. She slid them down until he kicked them off. He rolled the two of them onto the bed, still kissing her breasts, only now he was concentrating on her nipples. They tightened up delightfully, and she pressed them forward, wanting him to take more.

She'd wondered about this since Sunday night--how would she react when she was in bed with a guy? Would it be the same? Would she like the way he touched her? Now she knew the answer: Danny didn't touch her the same way Krissi did, even though Danny knew her body better than Krissi did. Krissi, of course, had that special knowledge of her body that only another woman would have.

She felt Danny's cock nudging her thigh--that was something she'd never feel from Krissi, and he was paying attention to her breasts just the way she liked. After all these years he'd better know what she liked. And his hands were nice and warm, and his lips, rougher than Krissi's, but still insistent as he sucked her mounds. His skin was rougher; Krissi's looked like porcelain and felt like silk, Danny's skin had a different texture that she actually found she liked more. It was like his body was caressing hers.

She tried to stop comparing them. They were different. Krissi was a girl, every inch a girl from her beautiful hair and flawless skin to her generous breasts and deep eyes. Danny was a man with a hard body and firm muscles. They looked at her in different ways, and even though Krissi could get inside her head, it still wasn't the way Danny reacted to her.

Danny moved between her legs, his cock briefly rubbing along the top of her thigh. She was very aware of it. She felt open, like she was waiting for his length. She could stare between their bodies and see the dark hole in the end of his cock staring back at her. She wanted to suck him, to taste his cum as he filled her mouth, but that was for later. Right now she wanted that hardness, she wanted that length sliding into her, stretching her open, filling her all the way to her deepest point.