The Party's Not Over Yet

Suzanne Riley went to the party at the Serlins with Joe Farrar. She had been dating him for two months, and she knew he had broken up with some woman not long before that, after being very serious with her for a long time. Suzanne took that for a good sign, because at 26 she was looking for somebody to be serious with. She didn't expect that his old girlfriend would be there with her new man, and spit insults at him at every turn.

She certainly didn't expect that Joe would start drinking and get too fried to drive only an hour after they got there. He got packed off with some people whose baby-sitter had a curfew; his car was safe there overnight. She began to look for a ride home, but she didn't have to look far.

Nick Perry, whom she had known slightly for a couple of years, had brought a new girlfriend, Sharon something, who got physically ill early in the evening. She lay down for a while, but it didn't pass off and she left with a married couple who lived near her, telling Nick to stay and enjoy himself.

Both Suzanne and Nick therefore felt pretty down, and they talked to console each other, and ended up being about the last people to go. When Nick took her home, she invited him in to talk some more. It was still early, and the wine that she had drunk made her feel a little giddy but not at all sleepy. If Nick had drank anything, it wasn't very much.

It may be that her subconscious was working on her, too. She had been working her way around to deciding to sleep with Joe Farrar that night. She was not at all virginal, but it had been a while since she had a man, and she'd been masturbating every night for a week thinking about Joe. Now he was out of the picture for tonight, maybe forever from the way he had acted, and she may have wanted a substitute of some kind.

It certainly didn't mean she planned to take Nick into her bed, but she wanted a man around a little longer if it could be worked easily. It was maybe a bit after eleven when she came home with Nick, and they sat and talked and listened to music until almost one. He put an arm around her after a while, and they kissed some.

When he got up to go, she gave him a stronger kiss than they had shared before, maybe stronger than she intended, and he said, "That makes me want to stay."

And Suzanne replied, "I almost want you to..."

"Anything I can do to tip the balance?" he asked playfully.

She shook her head and gave him a mock slap on both cheeks. He took her hand as she finished and kissed the palm. It was a tiny thing, but it thrilled her and she leaned forward to kiss him again. This time the kiss lasted and got her very stirred up, and she could feel that he felt the same way. And she could see it; that didn't help.

Seeing that bulge made Suzanne feel pretty basic, or maybe primal is the word. She kissed him again to press up and feel that hardness against her. He read her feelings pretty well and stroked her shoulder blades with his hands, then kneaded her lower back. She was trying to think and decide if she wanted to do what she really wanted so much to do, and her mind was getting swallowed up in a delicious fog.

When he bent down slightly, then came back up and slid that hardness upward against the dress where her legs joined, it decided her. Suzanne reached her hand down and caressed him. They left the living room holding hands.

Beside the bed, he lifted her off her feet and up until he pressed his head against her stomach and between her breasts as she came back down. As she came back down, her skirt rode up and she wrapped her legs around him. He lay her down and they undressed each other slowly and with stops to fondle and kiss each new bit of bare skin.

Suzanne was ready for him to fill her with his manhood before they were off their feet, but he took his time. He kissed her all over her body, especially on her breasts and in the dark curls of hair at her center. His tongue touched the sensitive skin under her arms.

"This is so wonderful," she said. She stood him up so that his long hard shaft pointed toward her, and she raised her upper body so that her hands could take and her tongue could circle the head. As he shuddered at this, her head suddenly plunged forward and her cheeks drew in as she sucked him into her mouth. Her eyes closed tight so that she could concentrate on the feel of his manhood within her lips and the cavern of her mouth, and on the long groan of pleasure he gave. But this soon became too much for him.

And when the throbbing rod of granite touched the lips and entered that hungry mouth between her legs, the sensation was exquisite and prolonged. He seemed so broad and long that it must be painful, but it was not. Suzanne's mouth opened in a gasp as he drove into her from beneath, with one leg raised and bent back almost to her shoulder. Then that leg lowered, once her lubrication became plentiful enough that the friction was reduced and neither would climax so quickly that neither would be fully satisfied. Their love-making built up to a wonderful peak, and he poured his passion into her.

The next morning, his hand on her stomach when she awoke started Suzanne thinking about another round. While she decided to at least postpone that, the decision wasn't easy. Her appetite did not feel at all reduced, nor did his, to judge by what she felt against her back.

They both at breakfast stumbled toward saying that they felt the other was probably rushed into being physical, and apologies were offered if any were needed...

But both of them, they found, had no regrets at all. Or they regretted only that they hadn't gotten to know each other better before, and, maybe, that they got the order of things wrong.

They were both a bit frightened by that casualness, but they agreed that there was an attraction between them. So they mutually decided that they would date each other exclusively for one month, being very chaste and proper, and then they would decide whether there was any future for their relationship. And if they felt that there was a future, they could then decide what it should be.

So starting on the 15th of May, they spent every Friday and Saturday evening together, and two weekday evenings during the month, trying to learn about each other. At the end of the month, Suzanne knew more about Nick than about any other man she had ever known.

Time and again, each of them was hauled back by conscience from the thoughts of what they would like to do, beyond the hand-holding and light touching and the one kiss per evening that they permitted themselves. Each had to work at not dwelling on that night they spent together, and not hoping too much that the other would want to renew it.

Suzanne Riley had a complete mental and emotional intimacy with Nick Perry, without any physical intimacy at all, nothing beyond a goodnight kiss. At the end of that month, she knew more about what made Nick tick than many wives do about their husbands. And she was becoming frightened by it.

Suzanne now knew at the bottom of her heart that Nick Perry was a good, kind, and sweet man, that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him -- and she did not yet know him well enough to know if he felt the same way about her.

She felt, and it may just have been a hope, that he did. Her hope lay in the fact that as the month ended neither of them mentioned that it was ending. The fifteenth of June was a Tuesday, and on the sixteenth she came home to find a message on her answering machine from Nick asking if she would want to join him in a state park on Saturday. He said that he wanted to be somewhere quiet and neutral to talk.

Suzanne was thankful that his voice sounded nervous. She was sure that hers did when she called on the seventeenth and said yes to his answering machine. Both of them were very sure to call when the other was at work...

On the morning of June 19th, Nick picked her up at her apartment. They gave each other a perfunctory kiss; she at least was afraid to do more than that even now.

They barely spoke as they drove to the park and left the car behind to walk into the woods. Doubts began creeping in on Suzanne as to whether this was because Nick was as timid as she about rejection or because he wanted now to break off the relationship.

Suzanne began dwelling again on how wonderful that one night a month ago had been, how wonderful in its different way this past month had been, and whether she could live without this man.

Despite the beauty of the trees all around, the clarity of the day, and the freshness of the air, she became somber and depressed.

When they were well into the woods, they came to a big flat rock overlooking the river valley, and Nick sat down. Suzanne sat beside him and he turned to her and said:

"Suzanne, we really need to talk seriously about whether we should continue seeing each other. I don't know how you are going to take my saying this..."

She turned from him and hid her face, because she did not want him to see her crying. She could not have stood it if he continued the relationship only because he saw her crying.

"But I want very much to go on with it. I think I love you."

When she heard these words she straightened up again and realized that while he had been speaking, he had stared straight ahead and down into the valley. He had not seen her crying, but he was very close to it himself.

Suzanne put out her hands to draw him toward her and they kissed, the most satisfying kiss she had had in her entire life. They clung to each other on the top of that rock for a very long time.

What more they said you can imagine; they would have to themselves, because it was all a vague blur to them, but a very happy one.

They got up from there eventually and walked back into the woods. They stopped many times to kiss and to hold their bodies together. Each time the temptation to go much further came over each, and each time they fought it off.

At midday they stopped in a little clearing, perhaps 30 square feet without trees or anything more than grass, and they ate a lunch. They sat on a blanket that Nick had brought. When they finished, Nick gathered up the plastic wrappings and other remains, packed them away, and lay back across the blanket.

Suzanne looked around, contemplated exactly what she was doing and what she might do, and joined him.

They began with a kiss, a bare and almost chaste touching of lips. This much was easy; what might follow after, what she very much wanted to follow after, she had never before done in so public a place, at least in daylight. Yet, to declare and to act out her desire for this man before God and nature seemed right in every way.

They lay together, and she drew one leg up to go around his hip. Then Nick rolled, so that she was above and her legs straddled his pelvis. Suzanne sat up, feeling the bulge in his pants press between her legs, and she began to open his shirt.

She kissed the hair on his chest and rubbed her face against it. Nick drew her head back up, to kiss her deeply. Having her body drawn down and her legs spread apart this way gave her great pleasure, but a pleasant ache as well. When Suzanne sat back up, she opened her own shirt to the sun and air, and most importantly to his loving hands.

He caressed her breasts until she thought she was approaching orgasm just from that. Then he lifted Suzanne off him and to his side, where he drew the shirt entirely out of her jeans and kissed her all over her upper body.

His hands now unzipped her jeans and drew them off. Suzanne did the same to him, more clumsily. She put a hand to grasp the hard tube that she had known for one night, too long ago by a month, and yearned for ever since. Nick drew her hand away from his shorts, to take them off and return to her.

His hands pulled her panties off, kissing her on every exposed inch from her navel to her knees, with a lingering return at the base of the triangle of hair between her legs. He knew from what he found there that there was no more need of foreplay, that she was ready for him to go on.

Nick touched her there regardless, spreading her open as he drew his hips up, and the first contact of his erection was within her where her folds fell back around him. His smooth pressure soon took him deep inside, and he began to slowly stroke Suzanne into paradise.

To make love in sunlight, in the midst of nature, was a new and marvelous thing for Suzanne, but she was not sure that it would have been half as good with any other man but Nick.

When they reached the end of their slow mutual climb and his shuddering explosion took place between her legs, they lay together for a long time before they dressed again.

They shared her bed that night, although they did not make love again until Sunday afternoon. But they did so twice a week thereafter until Suzanne moved in with him.