It Shouldn't Matter at All

This is the first part in a three part series.

This is the young woman/younger man version of a set of four separate, three-part stories. All are basically the same with slightly different character relationships. "It Doesn't Count" involves a brother and sister, "A Mother's Lust" involves a mother and son, "It Doesn't Matter" involves an older woman and her daughter's young ex-boyfriend, while "It Shouldn't Matter" involves a young woman and her younger sister's ex-boyfriend. You can read any or all of them, according to your tastes, but the vast majority of all parts of all stories are the same.

-- The Author

*

Dan glanced down at Lori's slim, manicured hand. It rested just millimeters from his, with her long, delicate fingers beside his own, on the table between plates littered with the remnants of a moderately expensive lunch. She was so close he could feel the warmth of her, but her hand wasn't touching his. He looked up into her eyes, seeing a mischievous twinkle there. She'd placed her hand there, just that way, on purpose, as a subtle reminder.

Dan had to look away. He felt a blush rising in his cheeks. A quick glance told him she was grinning, enjoying his discomfort. He didn't know why this was all so much easier for her. He'd always thought that he himself was the boldest person he knew, the most shameless person ever.

In her family, Lori was the careful, considering, planning one. She was the one that didn't take unnecessary risks. She was the one that played by the rules. She never cut in line. She never spoke out of turn. She never pocketed a bill that someone else had carelessly dropped. And Lori was the one that tried to make sure she had a royal flush before she made even a small bet.

When Dan had been dating Lori's younger sister Stephanie, an affair that had lasted through most of his adolescence, he could always count on Lori to be somewhere around, plain, reserved and carefully thoughtful, making sure that he never crossed over the white line with her own sweet little sister, although he frequently had.

She was two years older than him, yes, but he was still more daring. He considered himself to be more mature, too, especially in affairs of the heart. Or, rather, especially when it came to sex. She thought he was a hound, now that he and Stephanie had split. He thought he was well traveled.

She took her hand away to reach into her purse to pay the bill. Dan felt a sudden sadness as she did so.

"Let me pay, today, Lori," Dan offered, knowing he couldn't really afford to pay for even his own meal, let alone hers, too. "Just this once."

She looked up at him with her wide, sea green eyes, her hand at rest in the maw of the purse. She hesitated a moment before continuing to look in it for cash.

"No, lover, I've got it."

She had never called him lover before. It sounded strange, and a little unsettling. She'd been saying things like that throughout lunch.

"No, let me, come on," Dan argued.

"It's the twenty first century, sweetie," she said, looking up at him with a smile. "Men don't have to pay for their dates anymore. Anyway, I have a job, you don't."

Dan glared at her, letting his face harden into ice.

"It's not a date, Lori."

"Whatever you say, lover," she said, smiling, as she dropped some crumpled bills onto the check on the table. "I've gotta get back to work. I'm running late."

She rose from her seat, then walked around the table to pass him on the way to the exit. As she reached him she suddenly bent down to put her broad, full mouth to his, or almost to his. She stopped with her lips just a hair's breadth away. He felt one long, warm breath caress his lips.

She made a slow, soft kissing sound, then was up and off, never having touched him. Dan watched her walk away with a motion that made him sit up straight. He felt something stirring in him. He tried his best to ignore it.

* * *

It had happened, or rather started, rather innocently. He'd stopped by to visit her at her apartment on Friday after work. He did that often, for both himself and for Lori. Stephanie herself had stayed close to home to go to college, while Dan had gone out of state, coincidentally to the same city Stephanie's older sister lived in.

When he had first arrived, visiting Lori was good for his sanity. It gave him a connection to at least one familiar person from home. Over time, the connection had grown to work both ways. Lori liked having a friendly face around from her own childhood, as well as someone to help her out with things. Sometimes it was to fix odd things around the place for her, to help her out, like by unclogging her finicky sink. Over the years, she'd even given him his own set of keys.

But mostly it was just to keep each other company.

When Dan had gone away to college, Steph and Danny had tried to stay together themselves, but it just didn't work. At first they pined, and then they drifted, and finally they each felt trapped and annoyed. Near the end of their freshman year she broke it off, and he was both sad and grateful that she had. She was a great, sweet, beautiful girl. They had literally shared half of their short lives together, first as kids and best friends, and then as lovers. But it just couldn't work long distance.

Especially as horny as Dan always felt.

Lori was getting ready to go out for the evening with friends. He just wanted to borrow some of her CDs before he left. As a poor, struggling senior in college, it was a lot cheaper than buying his own.

As long as he was there, she'd said she wanted his opinion.

"Be honest. Brutally honest, if you can."

"About what?" Dan asked, not really listening, as he sorted through her collection. She had far too many slow, romantic pop albums. That stuff made his skin crawl. He'd thought she had better taste than that. At least, she did with everything other than music.

"As a guy, not as my sister's ex boyfriend that I would pummel if he answered incorrectly, just as a guy."

The way she'd phrased that made him pause. He swiveled his head to look her in the eye.

"Yes?"

"As a guy, on a scale from, say, eight to ten... am I hot?"

"Eight? Eight to ten?"

"I'm feeling fragile today. You can't go lower than eight."

Dan grunted as he turned back to selecting music. Lori always felt fragile. Or rather, she always felt insecure. He didn't know why. She was smart. She was fun. And she was a total knockout, and she knew it. Dan had spent an embarrassingly large part of his life trying not to flirt with her more than her sister, his girlfriend. And he'd certainly imagined himself with her often enough. But Lori seemed to need constant complements to boost her self esteem.

"Come on, Dan. Okay, have it your way, on a scale from five to ten, how hot am I?"

"Are we talking hot as in simply attractive, or hot as in getting a guy to try to get into your lonely pants?"

Dan had said it without looking up. His bored, tired tone of voice said he wasn't looking up, in case she didn't notice.

"Into your pants hot," she answered readily, ignoring the "lonely" comment.

Dan sighed loudly, realizing that this wasn't going to stop until he gave it his full attention. Fine, if that was the way she wanted it.

He stood up to look her over. Only now did he notice that she was dressed to kill. It was funny that he hadn't even noticed that she'd changed since he'd arrived. If she weren't his ex-girlfriend's older sister, a woman that mostly acted like she was his own big sister, he was sure it would have hit him like a whole bottle of tequila. He wondered now which friends she was going out with, and who she was actually going after. He fought down a surge of inappropriate jealousy.

She wore a tight fitting, short, black dress. It was almost too low cut, showing too much of her expansive cleavage in a way that made Dan a bit uncomfortable. She obviously wasn't wearing a bra. High heels, makeup, lipstick, dangly earrings, she had everything she needed to get any guy that wasn't gay to do anything she wanted, for, with, or to her.

"Turn around," he ordered.

Lori looked him in the eye, hesitating, as if she were suddenly too shy to model for him. She slowly spun in place, spinning her head to keep him in her sight the whole time. Her long, straight, pale blond hair flew around her as she whipped her chin from one shoulder to the other, taking her eyes from his only in that instant, but looking right back into his as soon as she could.

Dan silently whistled in his own head. He didn't really need her to spin around to know what her curves looked like. She would have looked hot in flannel pajamas. It had been driving him crazy since he'd reached puberty and figured out that his body was attracted to women, no matter what they did or how they acted, or who they were. The fact that she was his girlfriend's sister hadn't made her any less exciting to a growing teenage boy. In fact, maybe it made that much her more attractive.

She also wasn't a girl anymore. She was a woman. She radiated sex appeal, with a calm lust and a worldly familiarity that promised an incomparable experience in the sack.

At the same time she projected a shy innocence, a sense that she was submissive, and uncertain, and so pliable that any guy that wanted would be in charge, and be able to take what he wanted, and ultimately that was what she wanted. The whole package was unsettlingly arousing.

He'd gotten used to it by now. He'd numbed himself, over time, to Lori's incredible sex appeal. But when he stopped to look at her, to really look at her, his blood started pumping faster. Bodies like hers didn't come along very often. Faces like hers didn't come along very often. Finding them together, on one sweet, warm, intelligent woman, simply didn't happen, ever.

Dan knew that for a fact. He'd been searching his whole short life for one woman that was half of what Lori was, and no one he'd met had ever come close. She thought he was a rogue because, since Stephanie, he had never dated the same girl more than three times. She'd never know that it was because he knew he was never going to meet a girl as unbelievable as she was, Lori, the one girl that he could never have. She herself had set the bar too high for him.

"Well? How long is this going to take?" she asked, growing impatient. He sensed that she was afraid that he wouldn't give her a ten.

"Nine and a half," he said, out of spite.

She wrinkled the corner of her lip at him, demonstrating a mix of disappointment and irritation.

"You lose a half a point because you're my ex-girlfriend's sister," he explained quickly, feeling guilty about hurting her feelings, no matter how slight the insult was. She really was too sensitive. "A half a point because I can't do any of the things the sight of you brings to mind."

She immediately broke into a warm smile, which had its usual effect on Dan. He suddenly felt warm himself. It was mostly a contented warmth, the result of making her happy. It was also a slow burning, surging warmth, the inevitable result of seeing a beautiful, sexy woman, dressed to seduce, smile at him lovingly.

* * *

Lori loved getting compliments about her looks from Danny, more than from any other man. She shouldn't, she knew. She knew him when he was only eight years old, playing baseball and sneaking through their yard. She'd watched him go out on his first date, at thirteen, with her little sister. She'd watched her own mother shepherd him out the door with that same sister to their prom. She had even listened to her sister describe her experiences, in detail, when Danny had taken Stephanie's virginity.

But maybe that was what made his words special. He was too easy to arouse, but he couldn't lie to her. He was too transparent. If he said she was hot, she knew she really was.

It helped that he was now so sexy himself, a ten on her own personal scale, whether she'd known him since he was a little boy or not. She generally liked guys that were different from her. She liked them dark and Mediterranean looking. Blond, clean-cut guys were a turn off, except for Danny. He had sandy blondish hair, with clean facial features that were too even, too symmetrical. But he also had a strong cut to his jaw and his cheek bones, with dirty blond facial hair that he only shaved every few days. It made him look more rugged, and more sexy, and he knew it.

He usually wore a bit of a scowl, or at best a serious, thoughtful look. The contrast between that stern, harsh, manly demeanor and the brightness of his wide, boyish smile was knee weakening. Whenever he switched from one to the other, Lori's heart inappropriately and mischievously jumped.

Lori lowered her head, so that she could peer at him seductively from under her brow. She sauntered toward him with an exaggerated sway to her shoulders and hips, holding her hands to her thighs as she walked.

"What can I do to earn that half point, little boy?" she asked coyly.

Danny broke into that wonderful grin. Lori felt herself instantly melting. She lost her composure then, letting a broad smile creep onto her face as well to hide her embarrassment.

"No, really," she said, suddenly self-conscious, abandoning the game. ""We're meeting some guys tonight. One of them has potential. I want to be ready. I want to be a hit."

He rolled his eyes at her, just like he always did. It was one of those cute habits she loved in him, but he didn't know what it was like to be a woman. He didn't know what it was like to have to radiate being untouchable and accessible, both at the same time. She had to seem interestingly disinterested. She had to make it clear that she was what every guy wanted, a prudish, experienced slut. She had to make a guy think she was hard to get, or would be for almost anyone but him, because he was so special and attractive to her.

Guys were so hard to manipulate into doing what they already wanted to do. It was annoying.

Danny also didn't seem to understand that there was always competition. A woman couldn't just look good. If you were out with friends, then you had to be hot, hotter, hottest. Not too hot. You couldn't look like the whore in the group. But the prettiest rose got the most bees, or at least it got them first.

"Trust me, Lori, you'll be a hit," Danny said, with an unconscious, appreciative leer.

"Promise? If I wind up coming home alone tonight, will you make it up to me?"

"And just how would I do that?"

Lori was feeling wicked again. Her self-conscious mood had already passed. She loved teasing Danny. It was so easy. As smooth and as in control as he was around other girls, he frequently lost his composure around her. And as careful and as timid as Lori herself was around everyone else, she always felt comfortable and unrestrained around Danny.

"Oh, I don't know," she said with a half leer of her own. "I guess you'd have to show me what another guy would have done, if you hadn't messed me up by telling me I was already hot enough."

"Sure," Dan said grimly. "I could get a pencil and paper and draw diagrams for you."

"That would hardly do it," Lori said, glowering. "No, you'd have to show me."

"I couldn't. Ever. Stephanie would kill us both."

"I didn't say you'd have to do it, silly. You'd have to show me."

"How? Bring someone else home for a demonstration?"

"Yuk, no. I don't want to see you with another girl."

She realized that she'd let a touch of real jealousy creep into her voice. She glanced at Danny to see if he'd noticed. His face was unreadable, cast back into that sexy, stern, hard glare he used so often. She actually had to look away to compose herself, as she felt her knees start to tremble at the sight of it.

Lori wasn't sure herself what she was saying. She wasn't sure why she'd started this line of conversation. It had been fun a few sentences back, but it had suddenly grown awkward. She didn't know what she was saying, or thinking. Danny did this to her sometimes. He just had that effect on her.

"You'd just have to show me, I guess," she told him. "But without touching me. I'm virtually your own big sister, and Stephanie would kill us, so we couldn't touch."

"No, we couldn't."

Danny's voice was cold, but in a funny way. It was more like he was struggling to take all emotion out of it, than that there wasn't any there. Lori looked at him for a moment, considering.

"Well, I've got to go. I'll have your laundry done by Sunday. Have you found what you want?" she asked, abruptly changing the subject and glancing at her pile of CDs.

"What? No! You haven't given me a chance."

"Well, hurry up. Or better yet, just let yourself out. You have your keys, lock up when you leave," she said, hurrying over to the door in tiny, high-heel safe, tight-skirt constricted steps. "And do me a favor and look at the sink. I think its ready to clog again."

As she stepped out into the hall, she glanced back at Danny to see him looking at her. She knew he'd be stealing a glimpse of her ass. It made her feel good, confident, as she headed out for the hunt.

* * *

Lori fumbled awkwardly with the keys to her apartment door, feeling a bit dizzy. The cool night air had made her feel more sober than she really was, but the sudden warmth of the stale building hallway brought the mind clouding sensations back in force.

She leaned her head against the door for a moment, trying to gather her wits, then looked back at the key ring. She systematically picked out the bolt key, put it in the lock, and turned. It didn't budge. At first she thought she'd turned it the wrong way in her confused state. When she thought about it more, she realized that she'd used the key the correctly. It was just already unlocked.

A moment of panic hit her, thinking that someone had broken in again. Then she realized that that foolish boy must have forgotten to set the bolt. She'd been ripped off enough times that it really bothered her. She thought he was more reliable than that. She angrily put the other key in the doorknob, turned it, and whipped into the room, quickly closing the door behind her.

Without bothering to turn on the lights, she flipped her heels off, first and foremost eager to release her feet from their torturous prison. In the same moment she reached back to unzip her damn dress. It was sexy, but it was too tight and confining, and ultimately it was a failure, too. All that sex appeal came at an annoying price, and it hadn't even paid off. She was alone. Again. The guy was a jerk. They were all jerks.

She shimmied hurriedly out of the dress and slip both, letting them simply fall to the floor, right at the doorstep, in a heap. Only then, once completely naked and free, did she walk towards her bedroom, while reaching up to remove one earring.

It was dark, but the city's distant streetlights feebly lit the room unevenly with a dim, oddly faded, orange glow. After taking only two steps, she suddenly knew that she wasn't alone in the room. Her heart raced, but the rest of her froze. Someone, someone large, moved on the couch, sitting up, facing her. She half turned back toward the door, wondering if she could get there and open it quickly enough to get out.

It took a moment to realize the guy on her couch was Danny.

* * *

Dan put his hands to his face, rubbing it fiercely, trying to wake up. He groggily took in the dark room, Lori near the door, and the four empty bottles on the low table in front of him. He squinted his eyes shut one more time, before opening them wide.

Lori was naked, he realized with a shock. She stood, frozen in an awkward pose, with two hands to one ear, and her head tipped to that side. Soft light fell on her large breasts, accentuating the dark creases beneath them, where they curved evenly away from her body, up to nicely pointed, pale nipples. Her legs were partly spread, as if she'd stopped in mid stride, so that while he couldn't clearly see her pubic hair in the dark, the gap between her legs was wide and obvious, and tempting.