The Gambler

I

I wanted this one. Different from the others, he was somehow able to see what I had habitually hidden. He was slender, tall, and had jet black hair. His deliberate movements laid bare a deeply rooted intelligence which revealed he knew who he was and what he wanted. At a point in my life where I found myself attracted to men who knew what they wanted, I wanted him to want me.

Small towns, you understand. Even now, I can't remember how I knew about him. It seemed I always did. From the time I was a little girl, I knew. But he was a big boy and big boys don't notice little girls, at least not until little girls grow big tits.

Of course, in little towns, everyone sees everyone at some point. It's just that not everyone is conscious of everyone is all.

We didn't formally meet until I was nearly twenty. Until then, I went out of my way to stay out of his way, embarrassed he might catch me looking; worried he might know my secret thoughts. Anyway, he paid little attention to me and fortunately, our uninvolvement gave me time to grow, to visit the clearing...to become a woman.

At the time, I was tangled up with Dex, the one I followed to a secret place - secret from girls anyway, or most girls; a clearing in the woods by the river. There, concealed in the tall grass, we did it; made love with only the warm afternoon sunshine looking on, smiling no doubt. He was tender and taught me. It was there that I first knew sex and its power. As one might nourish a delicate sprout, a little girl's body soaked up those few drops of semen and blossomed, developing a slender waist which accentuated large soft breasts, and rounded hips. Pretty? I don't know, but with my big green eyes, carefully accented with pale shadow, some thought so.

Like an Egyptian goddess, I learned that my eyes entranced men; lots of men, men who contributed to my...education, which advanced in lengthy -- sometimes dangerously lengthy - strides. Mom knew and feared for me. But it was too late. By then, I was who I was.

After the river there were others of course, but nothing like this; nothing that left me hungry like I was for this unusual man, this Edmond. My feelings for him were frightening in their intensity and were about to drive me to take on a role I had never had to actively play on a man's stage before; the temptress. I had to have him.

Where he was concerned, little else mattered. In the end I just couldn't resist him as some strange and demanding attraction tugged at my heart-strings and, in typical fashion, I gave way to instincts which overwhelmed me.

One day, as if it were a casual thing rather than something I had obsessed about for months, I simply opened my phone and called him. He was surprised, but only a little. We met for an innocent drink and he asked me to a New Year's Eve party. Though I accepted and desperately wanted to go, from the moment I said "yes" I had every intention of backing out.

Even knowing he was the kind who might not repeat the invitation, I played the odds and risked it anyway. Employing a lame excuse, I stood him up at the last minute. It was a favorite trick I used to keep men off balance. It always worked.

II

I didn't allow men to control me and puzzled even myself about this one. Why was it, I wondered, that with him I wanted it; to be controlled, but not too readily. True, I enjoyed the danger I sensed about him and knew if he ever touched me I'd catch fire, so I decided that whatever this was, despite the fantasies I'd had since the age of thirteen, I wasn't going to allow myself to open up too quickly.

Given the relationships which had already passed across the stormy sea of my experience, I had learned that there are only two places from which a woman could survive in a relationship. She can either be dominant or dominated. The first was safer and was infinitely more useful than the second. But given what I knew of Edmond's temperament, I wasn't certain I could access option one.

III

There was an emotional strength about him that I liked but which came bundled with a matching suggestion of delicacy. I sensed he was made of tempered glass and knew I would need to be alert in my dealings. The risk-taker in me had passed up what might have become safer relationships as I waited, anxiously at times for the likes of him to make his appearance. But I liked the danger his paradoxical nature implied as he, unlike the others, rarely did what I thought he would.

An intimate connection with him would require carefully considered tactics as he insisted on exclusivity in his women and had a reputation for demanding that they remain chaste, a rule he didn't apply to himself. Being with him meant he could do what he wished while it was understood that I would fuck only him. All of this came to me through women who had played their hand with him but failed to produce a Royal Flush. So yes, I knew the stakes were high with this one.

And I admit, I had something working against me; something I knew he was aware of and which never sits well with Sicilians. My past was suspect; sex with a man I didn't like much while others stood watching nearby. I had slept with yet another merely because he looked like Brad Pitt. So shallow, I thought afterward, but that was before I did it a second time. Oh, and I had fucked my best friend's boyfriend while she was at work, all because I could. This was only the tip of my sexual iceberg.

And then there were the others. Women I knew he was seeing; three of them. Dealing with them would be complicated but that was for later. Right now, I had more important things to contend with; the danger which had taken me to the river that first time; the same danger which now lured me to Edmond.

Anyway, in keeping with my game-plan, I stood him up. New Year's Eve came and New Year's Eve went, with little doubt he'd call back in a week or two. They always had.

But a week or two came and a week or two went by, and he didn't call. That's when I grew frantic.

IV

Months passed without a word from him - nothing. Not known for patience, one day I screwed up my courage, and phoned. I knew instantaneously he was less than surprised to hear my voice.

"So, what are your plans for the weekend?" I asked brazenly, acting as if my behavior on New Year's Eve hadn't happened.

Giving me a pass, he answered by calmly handing me the dice. "Nothing much, Annabeth. What did you have in mind?"

Like the impulsive nit-wit I was I invited him to my college, which implied an invitation to my bed where there would only be room for two if one lay on top of the other. A part of me wanted to be turned down. But he didn't turn me down.

That final notion didn't strike me until after I'd hung up, however. I had now set my next sexual stage; rashly this time, with a man who baffled me, who was pushy when others might cower and who, I would eventually learn, would walk away when others would stay.

It was clear none of the rules of engagement applied to this guy.

V

Then there was the variable of my college. At my parents' insistence, I lived in an exclusively women's dorm. Imagine? Given this minor restriction, most girls would have opted to work at the local Burger King after high school.

But not being most girls, I didn't even complain. Knowing I would demolish the rules with abandon, I gladly acquiesced to their wishes. It wasn't so bad really; there were particular times when we might entertain male guests. Nighttime wasn't one.

It was junior year and a trend was developing as many of my friends firmed up relationships with boys who looked to be sound investments. These were girls I confided in. We raised hell together, passing around lots of guys in the process. We had sex with them. Sex, after all, was easy. Love, we learned, was another matter altogether. Somehow the pill, available on demand at the infirmary, didn't help with that.

As we grew older, finding loving relationships took on an urgency none of us would admit to. Did true love even exist? In typical fashion, we ceaselessly tossed the question around and as a hedge against disappointment, tried to convince ourselves it wasn't real, something we all publicly agreed to. Privately, we obsessed over finding it and each of us embarked on quest after quest just to feel it, if only briefly.

Anyway, I thought maybe he wouldn't show.

VI

Descending nervously that Friday evening, I navigated the stairwell to the lobby to greet him.

Dressed and ready to leave, I was both excited and frightened; awash in my own femininity, and about to experience what I had only watched from afar since God knows when. Moving with slight trepidation, I wore black heels that left me conscious of every step I took.

He had taken a seat in one of the lobby's overstuffed chairs and studied my approach. I was careful and tried to hide my apprehensions, instead projecting warmth in my smile. Standing, he greeted me with an affectionate hug and I could tell he was pleased with what he saw. It was nice.

"I'm glad you came, Edmond," I lied.

"I am too," he responded, likely half-wondering why he was bothering with me after the New Year's Eve fiasco.

My mother's advice crossed my mind. "Don't show too much of yourself," she had cautioned when I was a teen. "Boys will think about whatever they can see and their attentions can be held in check with minimum visibility." Having been with my adorable father for nearly twenty-five years, it was a safe bet she knew something.

So I didn't show a lot but with my body, I didn't need to. A blind man could see there was much to be had. And this one wasn't blind.

We went off to attend a party at a nearby school where we danced and didn't stop moving for hours. Tire him out, I reasoned. He had to be exhausted by the end. Then we'd sleep together. And I didn't think of that euphemistically. In one of my more contradictory moments, I suddenly wanted to put off what I had craved since a little girl had watched a big boy from afar on her way to school.

My mind rolled the issue back and forth in unrelenting chaos. Why was I at once both excited and terrified by all this? Why did I suddenly have reservations about the complications which routinely come attached to overly-hasty sex? Fuck, I had always had overly-hasty sex!

Deep down, I knew the answer. It was because the stakes were so high. I wanted him too much and was scaring myself into hesitation.

In any event, as the evening waned I came to think I might have gotten through night number one unscathed, with a second and more challenging day to follow on Saturday.

But the flavor of life can change swiftly and we danced, we sweated, we sneaked outside to the parking lot and smoked a joint - not that we needed to as there was plenty of that going on inside, but rather to be alone together. By late evening the weight of my own passion, a passion whose origins followed a vanishing point dating to childhood, was crushing me.

Nonsensically, when being alone with him became too scary for me I hinted we'd best rejoin the party. He surprised me by conceding and we giggled at the transparency of concealed intimacy. The next few hours heaved with music. I never moved my eyes from his, and instead wandered naked in a crowd which saw nothing and where our intellects wordlessly merged and waited. It was exhilarating and didn't work, of course, as with every passing moment I wanted him all the more.

Like I said, risk is exciting. And just then, he was risk.

VII

My heart pounded anxiously as we approached the dormitory, standing in frosty, silent silhouette against the backdrop of a moonlit early-morning sky. Shifting seamlessly into stealth mode, I sneaked Edmond to the third floor using the rear service entrance whose key I had previously lifted from the facility's security chief, after indulging him for the express purpose of acquiring that illusive prize. Getting caught meant suspension but at the moment the remnants of my hazy mind judged the prize worthy of any potential peril.

Two frenziedly silent minutes later, I slipped my key into the door of room 310. We had made it. Of course we had; having smuggled numerous boys into Queen's Court, I was a celebrated expert, an authority on the subject who knew exactly how to do it. In fact, I had never been caught and my girlfriends stood in awe of an unbroken record of success.

He was in and I had gotten him there. Barriers to the disguises women rely on for refuge were being battered down and I was doing the battering. The door to my empty room closed softly behind us. We were alone.

The fiery heat of our bodies, stoked through hours of continual movement at the party, had cooled in the winter night only to have the embers reignited by the tension of piercing the residence hall. But the flames burst back to life with an insistent and not entirely unexpected kiss that symbolically sealed an unspoken and one-sided agreement that went something like this: "I will allow you to fuck me with no strings attached." Such a bargain.

In search of a moment to catch my emotional breath, I glanced at the bathroom door. "I'm going to shower," I said, leaving out the part where I invited him to join me. He had undoubtedly noticed but courteously avoided acknowledging the sleight of hand. Instead, he nodded and patiently sat himself on the bed, stretching his long legs onto a small table a few feet away as he mutely stared out at the moonlight bathing the snow-covered quad.

The ploy granted me a twenty-minute reprieve, time to wrestle with myself over what to do next. In the shower I allowed the water to run for what seemed an eternity, soaping myself twice and afterward rubbing my body with the lotion my dry skin forever craved but derived no satisfaction from.

Trembling a little at the thought of opening the bathroom door, I wiped the steamy mirror and studied my nakedness. My eyes followed the contours of a vulnerable body, down narrow shoulders to curvaceous breasts, past my waist to soft but unlikely pubic hair. With my own chestnut curls still glistening and damp from the shower combined with the anticipation of what would likely follow, I found myself smiling at the thought of how girls in the market place of romance shaved now.

I remembered Ferron Laporta's off-handed comment before Christmas. Learning I planned to start seeing him and sensing things might end up a little more than platonic, she had warned, "Don't shave, Annabeth. He likes it natural. Hair really turns him on." I had wondered how she knew that, but thought it best not to ask.

Her cautionary words had continuously passed through my neurotic mind during the weeks and months that followed, as if endlessly recycling themselves in an IPod set to repeat the same songs over and over. As winter raged, the hair I had once routinely shaved grew back. I was ready for him.

Anyway, the stage I had created was set but my fears remained, tearing at long-held desires. Why, I wondered, did I have to luck out this year with this private room? There would be little need for the unease I felt, if only I had the usual roommate underfoot. She would have been the diversion I needed. We could all just have...gone to sleep.

With my gaze locked onto the image in the mirror, I moved my hands to cover the heavy breasts that defined my upper body, remembering his last girl's were all but insignificant; perhaps his preference, but a well-developed woman's figure was what I had to offer. Pulling on my white terry cloth robe, I glanced at my face a final time before grasping the doorknob.

Our eyes met as I warily emerged from the bathroom. The perfect gentleman, he instantly stood, awaiting my approach. Walking up to him I hesitated, as if admitting his impressive height hadn't registered before. Searchingly, I looked up into his eyes and knew he knew it was time. Without uttering a word, he cautiously opened the top of my robe cinched loosely by a frail belt, nudging the garment's soft fabric apart and baring my shoulders.

I allowed it to drop to my waist where it lay for a moment during which time a silence even more deafening than before shrouded our little world.

Topless. Men like topless and there I stood, looking up into the dusk of those patiently smiling Sicilian eyes. It was as I knew it would be. He could see everything; the little girl which I kept hidden within myself and the woman I was about to show him.

The heavy lids of my eyes closed languidly as his hands caressed my face before moving to the softness of my breasts. We kissed a kiss of urgency; a kiss I had spent hours convincing myself I didn't want and I tore at his shirt, almost frantically seeking some measure of parity which might show itself if only we were both naked. A feeble long shot, it was nonetheless the only card I had left to play.

Locked in that frantic kiss, we began a groping combat as I unbuckled his belt and madly forced his pants to the floor. His shorts followed as my robe fell away and we collapsed onto my narrow bed where I instantly felt his erection against my belly. He was already, well - ready.

His strength, something I had longed to feel, stretched itself over my satin skin, warming me like a rough blanket against the cold, a chill which had followed us up the stairs in the wake of my own fears. Lowering his head, he urgently sucked my pink nipples into his mouth, circling each with his tongue and leaving them wet as if to remind me of the path he planned to trace over my fully exposed body.

His thumb plunged into my cunt, soaked from hours of ceaseless, if denied, anticipation. I felt his lips broaden into a smile as he murmured into my open mouth, "I love it...you're wonderful."

I knew he was telling the truth as that wetness stated plainly that I wanted him. A woman's ultimate decree of invitation, I thought.

I reached for his penis. The tip was wet and I urgently spread his sticky fluid over the head with the palm of my unsteady hand. I so wanted him in my mouth, to suck away the rest, hidden safely inside his handsome body; to taste him as only that act of intimacy allows. But with the ounce of reason I still possessed and juvenile as it may sound, I understood it was too soon; too personal, and if he wanted it - a safe bet with most men -- he revealed nothing of it. He was so Sicilian.

No, I knew tonight he would take my sex, into which he now ceaselessly plunged his rigid thumb and I instinctively opened my legs, allowing him free access to my wanting cervix; an erogenous zone few men even know exists. He carefully circled her tiny mouth, sending shock-waves through a body now freely handed over to his whims.

Using the dampness from the thick hair between my legs, he pushed a finger into my anus and worked its tip back and forth against his thumb through the thin membrane separating vagina from rectum. No one had ever done that to me before and it left me in both pain and enchantment. What was I thinking? It was madness but with the moment already out of control, I had neither the presence of mind nor the will to restrain him.

With a silent abruptness, he suddenly withdrew both finger and thumb and placed them first into his mouth, then into mine. Our eyes locked again and I sucked his fingers as he rubbed the tip of his erection against my inviting vulva. With an arm under my head and his hand guiding his penis, I opened my legs wider for him and with one swift movement, he was inside me.

I wanted him deep, deep enough to pummel my uterus and with a muffled scream, I clawed at him, pulling his hair, reaching down to his firm buttocks, demanding more.

We rocked against each other as if continuing some animalistic dance begun in the early hours of an evening that seemed lost now in some far-off distortion of time. His tongue moved against mine. His penis bludgeoned my sex and I responded by lifting my broad hips to greet his every thrust. We went on that way for what seemed a passionate eternity.