Coming Clean

Lucy Selfridge moved out of the house that her parents lived in as soon as she could afford to rent an apartment. She got along with her father all right, and she got along with her mother except on one subject, but that one was enough to make her want to move out: sex.

Not that Lucy was really doing anything, or anyway anything much. She was a virgin, although she had gotten into some serious tongue-kissing and she had let a couple of dates touch her breasts. But she was interested. She had read a lot about it from an early age, medical books and so on, and later from trashy best-sellers and some romances. She had even gotten hold of some hard-core pornography, and she liked it, except for the language.

Her mother got the idea that Lucy was sleeping with a couple of the fellows she dated -- especially one of them whom her mother didn't approve of, and whom Lucy only dated a second time because her mother didn't approve of him. He did pick her up several times after that, but that was because of double-dating.

But her mother would never come out and say that was what she thought, which was what bothered Lucy. She kept giving her printed booklets about contraception, and telling her to be sure she was careful, and acting disappointed when she came in late.

Lucy didn't know if her mother would have felt better or worse if she had learned that Lucy went onto birth-control pills right after moving out. Again, not because she was doing anything much; the doctor gave them to her to make her periods more regular.

There was a laundromat two blocks from her apartment, and she went there regularly about every two weeks. She had seen in going by that it was crowded on Monday, so she tried to go there on Tuesdays if she could. The first time it was also fairly full, but there was room for her and her clothes. The second time only two other people were there, a middle-aged black woman and a young man reading a magazine, whom she caught glancing at the back of her tight jeans as she bent over to take laundry from the washer. This made her a bit nervous -- she was only nineteen and not that long away from home -- but then she decided that the show was free and it was all right as long as he only looked.

The second time she went he was not there. The third time he was, and he seemed a bit more interested in her loose green shirt and tan slacks than in the blue denim of last time. And he was a little more open about glancing at her, but it bothered her less. She had been out on her own for a month longer now, which may have been a lot of the reason.

The fourth and fifth trips he was not there. But on the sixth, she got there later than before, he was the only other person there (the attendant tended to only show up again at closing time), and between those two facts she decided to strike up a conversation with him. Partly for reasons we will get to later.

This time she learned his name for the first time (Joel Kubicki) and they talked about a number of things while they waited for the machines to finish. As she had hoped, he had gotten there only shortly before she had, and as he stuffed his wash into a bag, she asked if he would be willing to walk with her two blocks to her building, since it was now dark out. He agreed, but went home with his own laundry and came back rather than carry it extra distance. So she ended up waiting a minute or so for him -- and got help with the carrying. Just as she was about to go in her door he asked her for a date.

It had been a while since she went out with a man, six weeks, but she hated to think that she would take just any offer. On the other hand, she did know a little about him -- that he washed his clothes regularly, for instance -- and she should be safe in public.

She mentally flipped a coin, and said yes.

They went to a movie and dinner a week later, and then they went places together a lot for a few months. And now they met more regularly in the laundromat (she suspected that he adjusted his schedule to hers, though she never asked) but now failed to catch up on their reading there. Somehow she saw him a lot more on the street, in the neighborhood, now, though perhaps she just noticed him where she had not earlier. They became emotionally intimate pretty quickly, and it was stronger than what she had ever known before. Being out on her own probably freed her up there.

But Lucy was brought up short on the Saturday that they spent going through a series of second-hand shops. The woman who owned one place offhandedly referred to Lucy's husband, and apologized for the error but said that the two of them seemed so natural together that they seemed married for some years.

This was getting pretty serious with Joel. While nothing permanent had happened yet, it might. She was not totally sure that she was ready to fall in love yet, she told herself -- or to go to bed! She was only 19, well, 20 in January. She had a lot of her life for such things, but then she would sort of like to have it all now too.

She decided to ride with it. This could go several places, and she was still in control of herself. Or so she thought some of the time; But over the next few weeks she wrote three times letters to Joel telling him that she did not want to see him again -- then tore them up. And another two times she was on the point of calling him to say that she was afraid that they were moving too fast. Once she made the call, but the words were forgotten when she heard his voice. And what could she say? That she was getting to like him too much?

The physical intimacy was slower in coming, and Lucy liked that fact. Though even there they went much faster than she would have thought that she ever would.

In June she let Joel expose her breasts to the air, unhooking her bra and pushing it up to place his lips on one nipple while he rubbed the other. This she had never done before with another man, exactly. The feel of fingers there while she sat in a car in some quiet place was familiar, but the touch of his mouth in the bright light of his living room was something different and far stronger.

A week later Joel was stretched out beside her on her couch, hungrily seeking her mouth and finding everything there that he wanted. He gently massaged her foot when he began and he had worked his way up to her calves, still gentle for all that his kissing was now passionate.

Then his hand went all the way up her legs and into the bottom of her panties. When he touched the lips there Lucy felt a stab of pleasure but it also made her uneasy. That was the first time that anyone other than herself had touched her there. She drew away from him and would not let Joel come near her for a while.

But she didn't tell him to leave. She didn't want him to leave. She didn't know what she really did want. She wanted several contradictory things from one moment to the next.

Joel left after a while, and Lucy hid from him for two weeks, not answering the telephone at night or responding to his letters. When she did talk to him, she let him know about the ambivalence she felt and she asked him to try to understand. He seemed to.

She lay that night thinking about what she would like to do with him, if she only had the nerve.

Joel could read between the lines enough to guess at what the problem was. Lucy wanted to go to bed with him, but at the same time she did not want to. Either she had been badly burned by a man who she had an affair with or, more likely he thought, she had never gone all the way with a man and was nervous about doing so. He wanted very much to ease her into a physical relationship, and to ease her into opening her legs for him, and, if his guess was right, to ease his way into the gentle stretching and bursting of her maidenhead. Then to enter her deliciously tight cavern and spread it wide, to feel her muscles move aside for the first time and hear her gasps as she was introduced to womanhood.

For two more Fridays and Saturdays he was very polite. Each of those times he left Lucy chastely at her door again. The next time she invited him into her apartment.

That evening ended on her couch. His hand went into her panties again and took them halfway down, and this time he took her to a wonderful climax with his fingers. And after he left... Her fingers did the same, but it was somehow not the same at all.

The following date began with his suggestion that they go to his apartment after the movie, and he would drive her home afterwards.

Should she do it this time, knowing how it might end? Or, rather, not knowing?

This was the same problem that Lucy just got finished hiding from. Joel was a gentleman, and he would never make her do anything she wouldn't want to. The question was, just what did Lucy want to do? She still didn't know.

She swallowed, but timidly agreed.

At the end, Joel shut the door and took her in his arms. He kissed her so tenderly on the lips and his tongue wormed its way into her mouth even though Lucy had very firmly decided that she was not going to let him in there again. His tongue had excited her more than she thought she could control -- and maybe that night proved that she was right, because that night his tongue got her more excited than at any time before. Lucy wanted to lose herself in the orgy of sensuality that was spreading to every pore of her body. She wanted to be naked with him and having him do incredible things to her. She wanted to do to him and with him all the things that she had ever dreamed of doing with a man.

His hands seemed to be everywhere that night, and wherever they had been to take her clothing off, they returned to touch gently and to excite her more. And then his lips and even his tongue went there also.

It seemed that in no time at all after the first gentle kiss on the lips, Lucy was standing almost naked in front of Joel, and he was even more so. Then he picked her up in his strong arms and he carried her into his bedroom and lay her down.

A voice in the back of her mind still kept telling Lucy that she shouldn't be here, that she shouldn't be doing this, that she shouldn't be letting Joel be doing these things to her, but all the rest of her mind was willing to let him continue and go much further, and her body was screaming for more.

If he had paused then or much before then or even afterward for a while, so her mind could clear, Lucy really might have objected, but he didn't. Joel kept moving from one place to another with his hands and lips and tongue and kept her off balance, and later she was so glad he did.

Joel lay her down on his bed then lay beside her and she thought how it felt to have the hair on his chest pressed against her nipples, which were raised and sensitive because of the way that he had excited her. He kissed her lips again and he tugged gently on one nipple with his fingers. Then his lips were on the other nipple, probing and pulling and nibbling and giving her new sensations until she felt that she would burst.

Joel moved to her neck and he kissed her there, and he moved down on her body, kissing her on her collarbone, then in between her breasts, and downward an inch at a time until he reached the elastic band on her panties.

When he pulled that band wide and moved to take them off, Lucy thought again that she should object and stop him, but she knew that she did not want him to stop. She held her breath for a second when his hand returned to that region. His fingers glided over the short dark hairs and touched and caressed her until her thigh muscles relaxed and her legs slowly opened for him.

His fingers caressed her labia, pulling and spreading, and her secretions covered his fingertips. He brought her to a high state of excitement with his hand before he moved on.

It was obvious to both of them that Lucy was ready for him, and she asked Joel to make love to her now, to make her a woman. He moved over her and her legs spread wide to welcome him. He took his special part in one of his hands and he spread her lips apart with the other. The very tip of his instrument of love moved back and forth in the crease at her opening, to be lubricated by the weeping of her desire for him, before he gently began to enter.

At that moment, with her spread wide beneath him, Joel whispered: "Do you want me to go on, Lucy?"

"Yes!" she said loudly, and the answer was to more than his question.

When Joel touched the membrane that prevented his full entry, he apologized for the pain that he might cause, and Lucy told him that it would cause her far more discomfort if he did not go on. He began to smile, and before he could she pulled him to her, and the expressions on both their faces changed because of that.

There was the slightest touch of pain when he broke through her maidenhead, but a great deal of pleasure and wonder. All of her doubts and fears about what they were doing were swept away along with that bit of skin.

Every move he made from then on increased the pleasure that Lucy got from feeling him move inside her, from knowing that at last she was doing what she was designed for. He opened and reopened her tunnel of love, widening and lengthening it far beyond anything that she had thought possible.

He moved slowly, as if they had all the rest of their lives to be together could and spend it all in bed. Once he even stopped, lifting his mouth up and gazing into her eyes, with his own heavy with passion. His hips were half-withdrawn, so that only an inch of him was within her, still and tantalizing her almost beyond endurance.

"Now you are mine, Lucy," he said to her. "I have claimed you."

"Yes," she whispered, and he sank his stake into her again.

What his lips and hands did to her breasts, and his hands did to her clitoris and the outside of her labia, combining with what his special part was doing to her inside, gave her an orgasm and then another before they met at last in the third and largest one and Lucy felt the scalding flood of his semen spilling into her with a strength that brought a hoarse cry from deep in his throat.

Lucy was never happier at any time in her life than when they lay there together afterward. She wanted very much to do it all again, as soon and as often as they could.

And they did. And it was not even very long before they made it legal.