A Game of Sexual Tension

It is a well recognized fact about sex that, in the long run, the sex act itself is one of its least intriguing aspects. Indeed, devoid of preparation and anticipation, the act of sex soon takes its place among the myriad other bodily functions which we perform but do not particularly savor.

It was with such considerations in mind that suggested to my wife Mary that we invent a game for the purpose of inducing in each other a mild but prolonged state of erotic tension which, either because the circumstances prevented our doing so or by mutual consent, we would not hasten to alleviate by sexual intercourse.

The game we chose was intended to derive its potency from on our mutual interest in Mary's breasts. Mary has beautifully shaped, moderately sized breasts which, because of their firmness, sit proudly on her chest even when they are bare. The pleasure Mary derives from her breasts has two sources. In the first place, her breasts and nipples are exquisitely responsive and easily excited when fondled. Secondly, like anyone who has an asset which is appreciated by others, Mary is pleased by the knowledge that her breasts hold me, and other men, in thrall. Thus, not only does she enjoy the time which her breasts spend cradled in my hands or her nipples spend being worried by my fingers and mouth, she derives, albeit somewhat covert, pleasure from the attention which her breasts attract when they are on display under her clothes. For example, each week, Mary attends a dance class at which, to her considerable satisfaction, the males, and particularly the instructor, quite openly admire not just the general tone of her body but, especially, the firm prominence of her breasts under her leotard. In response to their interest, Mary takes more than usual care to make sure that her leotard displays her body to its best advantage when she goes to her dance class. On the other hand, being the well-bred girl that she is, Mary had never gone to her class less than modestly attired. In particular, she had always worn a bra and panties under her leotard. Thus, even though she had undoubtedly wondered how it would feel, she had never made her unprotected breasts available to her instructor's occasionally inquisitive hands.

Because I suspected that it would provoke in both of us the sort of ambivalent excitement which we were seeking, I suggested to Mary that she purposefully make her breasts more accessible at one of her dance classes. I was not suggesting that she flaunt her breasts but instead that she simply leave her breasts bare under her leotard. In addition, I told her that it would excite and frustrate me to prepare her breasts beforehand by stimulating them to a state in which they would be sensitive to even the slightest touch. Indeed, just the idea of my own participation in the preparation of her breasts for the hands of another man produced in me exactly the sort of erotic tension for which our game was intended.

Mary's initial reaction to my proposal was less than enthusiastic. Although she had learned to reconcile her conservative upbringing with her enjoyment of the admiring way in which men looked at her body, she was reluctant to recognize that she herself played more than a passive role. That is, so long as she did nothing flagrant to gain men's attention, her enjoyment in their appreciative stares fell within, if only barely, the code of behavior which she had been taught as a child. On the other hand, that code would be violated if she were to dress for her dance class in a way which explicitly announced that she herself had made her breasts more visible to the eyes and more vulnerable to the hands of all and sundry.

Nonetheless, in spite of these reservations, Mary found that she could not just dismiss my idea out of hand, and, over the course of the next few days, found herself increasingly open to it. For one thing, now that she was in her mid thirties, Mary realized that the blooming of her body soon would be coming to an end and that as its bloom waned so would its attraction to men. Hence, if not now, when? For another thing, she could not conceal from either of us the excitement she felt when she imagined having her unfettered breasts in the hands of a man who was not her husband, especially if her husband not only knew what was happening to her breasts but had been the person who had taken special care to make sure that they would be maximally responsive.

In the end, Mary's curiosity won the battle with her inhibitions, and, after about a week of vacillation, Mary told me that she was ready to play my game. Fortunately, I had been thinking in the meantime about the way in which I would prepare her breasts in the event that she agreed. In order to not be rushed either before or after her class, I asked Mary to schedule her next dance class for the following Saturday. On the morning of the class, I told Mary that I wanted her to keep her breasts bare so that they would be continuously available to me. As I explained to her, I wanted to accustom her to the experience of having her breasts touched without her anticipating it. In addition, in order to help her minimize the inevitable embarrassment which our game would cause her, I wanted to teach her to mask the excitement which she was experiencing. For this reason, I warned her that I might punish her if she allowed her face to register too clearly the pleasure which she was deriving from my attention to her breasts.

On the day of her class, the first time that I took advantage of the availability of her breasts was when Mary was leaning over the sink to brush her teeth. When she is leaning forward, Mary's breasts hang from her chest in the shape of two beautifully turned vessels. Further, because they are pendulous in this position, they lend themselves to more penetrating manipulation than they do when she is standing erect. Thus, when I reached under her arms, placed my palms over her nipples, and clasped her hanging breasts in my hands, my fingers were able to palpate deep into the intricate network of glands and nerves which lie beneath the surface. From past experience, I knew that Mary's response to such palpation of her breasts is to hunch forward in a way which renders her breasts even more available to deep penetration. At the same time, a beatific smile comes over her face as she indulges herself in the sensations which she is experiencing. Because I knew that she found particular satisfaction in this sort of manipulation of her breasts, I was not surprised that Mary gave herself over so totally to my ministrations that she completely forgot my instruction to disguise her reactions. As a reminder, I released her breasts and told her keep her face impassive while she watched me stretch her breasts by pulling down on her nipples, and, after a minute or so of watching and feeling her breasts being elongated, Mary was more careful about her response when I resumed my earlier manipulations.

After our session before the mirror in the bathroom, I decided that Mary should have her breakfast in relative peace. However, I did insist that she herself keep her nipples erect throughout. That is, whenever her nipples began to lose their prominence, I had her bring them back into erection with the same nonchalance with which she might readjust some piece of clothing. In view of the fact that her toothbrushing experience had left her both significantly aroused and aware of the repercussions for lapses in demeanor, it is not surprising that Mary had to interrupt her breakfast only once and that, when she did, she maintained the proper level of decorum while bringing her nipples back into erection. By the time that we finished breakfast, there was a little over an hour before she would leave for her class. In order to make sure that her breasts would remain at the center of her attention, I had her put on a bra which we had designed to present her breasts in an exaggerated manner. Namely, by removing the cups from an athletic brassiere which was a size too small, we created a structure which holds Mary's breasts only at their base. As a result, when she is wearing this bra, her breasts are thrust into prominence without being concealed. Further, by using buckles which we sewed into them, we can adjust the straps holding her breasts to exacerbate their constriction. That is, we can tighten the straps around the base of her breast, thereby causing the rest of her breast to look and feel as if it were isolated from her body. The result is dramatic, particularly because, after several minutes, the taut surface of Mary's breasts takes on a distinctly pink tone, her areolae enlarge, and her nipples become engorged. For obvious reasons, when Mary dons this bra, it becomes impossible for either of us to ignore her breasts.

Once Mary had put on this bra and I had adjusted the straps, I asked her sit cross-legged on the floor with her back straight and shoulders pulled back while her breasts underwent the transformation described above. When they had, I armed myself with a stiff feather and, sitting directly in front of her and staring her in the eye, I used the feather to stimulate the already ruddy globes of her breasts. In spite of the teasing sensation of the feather on her breasts, Mary was able to maintain her composure for quite a while. However, as the focus of my activity converged on her engorged nipples, Mary found it increasingly difficult to keep her body and face from broadcasting the frustrated excitement which she was experiencing, and her attempt to do so completely failed when her nipples became the victim of the feather's insidious attack. Because her nipples received insufficient satisfaction from the fleeting sensation provided by the feather, first her frustration became clearly written on Mary's face, and then, in the hope that it would help to relieve her frustration, she dropped her straight-backed posture, hunched her shoulders, and thrust her breasts in my direction. Her punishment for this lapse was born by her areolae. To be precise, after reversing the feather, I used the quill to prick the highly sensitive area where the stalk of her nipple emerges from the areola. Even when it has no other sources of distress, the pricking of such an intimate target is hard to bear, and when the target is under the sort of duress to which Mary's breasts were being exposed, the effect is devastating. Hence, it took only a few pricks to make Mary aware of her indiscretion and correct it by resuming the posture and facial expression which I had demanded.

Even though she was incapable of completely hiding the tension which she felt, I was satisfied that she had learned her lesson. In addition, I feared that further stimulation of her breasts would be counterproductive in that it would only reduce their sensitivity to what lay in store for them at the dance class. Thus, shortly after she had regained her composure and I had tested that she could prevent herself from having another lapse, I stopped my teasing of her breasts and pointedly reminded Mary that I would not be the next man to touch them. Mary, her breasts still tingling and her body craving greater satisfaction, resignedly got to her feet, removed the bra from her breasts, and withdrew to the bathroom to take a shower and make sure that her body was presentable for the next stage. When she emerged from her shower, pink, thoroughly scrubbed, and carefully shaved, she went to our bedroom and, with great care, chose the leotard under which her body would be presented at her dance class.

Knowing that it would increase the sexual tension for both of us, the one which she chose emphasizes the accessibility of the body which it is covering. Loosely modeled on the dresses worn in ancient Greece, the upper half of this leotard consists of two flaps which run from the front of the midriff, crisscross over the breasts, and join behind the neck to form a panel which covers the back and ends in a pair of ties which, after circling the midriff, are secured in place by a bow just above the buttock. As they did in essentially every aspect of life, the Greeks knew what they were doing when they came up with this design: there is no more pleasing a way to present the bust of a woman whose breasts are as nicely shaped as Mary's. In particular, although there is nothing immodest about the design, the way that the flaps cross right at the cleavage appears to be an invitation to inquiring hands. Thus, when she came into the living room to give me a preview, I admitted that I had second thoughts about the game which I had started, and my reservations only increased when she demonstrated how, as she performed various dance exercises, her breasts bobbed and her nipples traced a path under her bodice. I also noticed that, in an act of defiance, she had chosen to forego any panties: except for the less than complete cover provided by her leotard, she was naked. Nevertheless, I was not about to weasel out at this point, and, after giving her an affectionate pat on her scantily clad rump, I gallantly helped her into her overcoat and sped her on her way.

Because Mary's dance classes last about an hour and a half, I had plenty of time to imagine what Mary was experiencing at her class and think about how we should proceed when she returned. Hoping that it would help me pass the time, I went out to do some errands. While shopping for mundane items in the drugstore, I happened upon an aisle devoted to maternity needs. Going down that aisle, my attention was caught by a box with a picture of a woman using a breast pump to collect her milk. Although the picture was studiously chaste, it appeared that the pump was connected via a tube to a plastic shell which covered the woman's breast in much the same way that the cup of a bra would, and, according to the written description, the strength with which the pump sucked could be modulated over a wide range of settings. Probably, at any other time I would have passed this display without really noticing it. However, with Mary's breasts were very much on my mind, I could not ignore the possibility that this device might have other, less chaste, applications, one of which I was already planning. Thus, along with the toilet paper and other banal products on my errand list, I bought the breast pump which seemed to possess the greatest versatility.

By the time that I got back home, more than an hour had passed and Mary would be returning soon. Thus, after putting away all my other purchases, I immediately began to study the operating instructions for the breast pump. Having chosen the one which provided the most settings, I was gratified to find that, when I placed it on my bare stomach, I could vary the suction strength from a level at which is was hardly perceptible to a level at which it was impossible to ignore, especially if, instead of a man's stomach, it were attached to a woman's breast. Having become familiar with its possibilities, I took the device into our bedroom and left it on Mary's bedside table. Needless to say, all these preparations did nothing to relieve the mixed emotions which I felt about the game in which Mary and I were engaged. On the contrary, when Mary at last returned, my imagination was hard at work both on what she had been experiencing during her absence and what I hoped the two of us would be experiencing now that she was back home.

From the flushed color of Mary's face, it was clear to me that her dance class had not been dull. As with everything else, Mary does not spare herself when she is at her dance class. However, never before had I seen her in the state that she was when she came through our front door. Usually, her dance class drains her physically and restores her mentally, but this time it had done neither. Instead, both her mind and her body had been left in a highly charged, if somewhat exhausted, state, and, after helping her out of her overcoat, I immediately began to understand why. Indeed, her own sweat had plastered her leotard to her skin in a way which left no feature of her body hidden. Not only her breasts and nipples but also the pleasing rounded curve of her firm stomach, including the subtle dip made by her belly button, were all on display. Strange to say, instead of being either angry or jealous, my reaction to this discovery was one of excited curiosity. I was burning to learn how my normally modest Mary felt when, working her body in front of the large wall mirror at the dance studio, she saw the blatantly erotic image which she was presenting to the world. However, it was not my intention to debrief her in the front hall, and so I lifted her warm body in my arms and, after depositing her on our bed, peeled off her clinging leotard.

With its covering removed, I could see that Mary's whole body was aglow. The skin covering the well worked muscles of her legs, stomach, and shoulders was suffused with that pink hue that comes from prolonged exercise. But it was sight of her breasts which was really striking. I had last seen them in the reddened and highly sensitized state I had spent an hour producing. To my surprise, that was the state in which, after more than two hours, they still were, a discovery which did nothing but confirm my earlier conclusion that Mary had not been bored at her dance class. As soon as I had gathered my wits, I told Mary that I wanted her to give me a blow by blow account of everything, including her own reactions, she had experienced at her dance class. I also told her that during her narration, I would remain silent but would work on her body in a way that I hoped would communicate my own reactions to what I was hearing.

Before she began, I introduced Mary to the breast pump. Sitting by her right side, I had her make her breasts more malleable by lifting her shoulders off the bed while I placed the cup over her right breast and turned on the pump. It took less than half a minute for the pump to create sufficient vacuum to make the cup adhere to the surface of her breast so that, even after she lay back down, her right breast remained suspended in the cup rather than flattening the way her left breast did. As a result, when Mary looked at her chest, she saw one breast resting naturally against her chest and the other breast drawn away from her chest into the translucent cup. Of course, she was also very much aware of the relentless action of the pump which, as it was supposed to, sucked on her nipple and pulled it into a bulge in the surface of the cup. By turning the control, I demonstrated how I could modulate the vacuum between a level at which her breast would remain in the cup but would be otherwise relaxed and a level at which her breast, and particularly her nipple, would be subjected to considerable stress. After this little demonstration, I moved to sit on Mary's left side, and, caressing her neglected left breast with my hands, asked her to begin her tale.

Mary's lack of underwear was apparent to all from moment the she took her place at the barre. Even before her sweat had turned her leotard into a second skin, her every movement made it clear that her breasts were free and would be undergoing a visible transformation each time she changed her position. For example, when she raised her leg to the barre and arched her body over it, her breasts lay suspended in the folds of her leotard like ripe mellons in the apron of peasant, and, when she stretched back, they were flattened against the leotard in a way that brought her nipples into erect prominence. Because the wall behind the barre was covered by a mirror, Mary was completely cognizant of the delectable image which she would be presenting to her colleagues for the duration of the class, and this knowledge filled her with a mixture of pride and trepidation which, on the one hand, excited her sexually and, on the other hand, made it difficult for her to enjoy her excitement.