"Max, would you be horrified if one of my friends had sex with you?" my girlfriend asked me.
Well that just about blew my mind.
My girlfriend always was an extrovert - that was partly what attracted me to her in the first place. But she continually surprised me in the bedroom - even after six months together, she came up with suggestions that continually baffled me. Just as I thought I knew her well enough to know her limits, she would crash through them.
It was sexy, I suppose, not ever being able to guess her next move, but it often messed with my mind.
I suppose I should give you a little context. I met my girlfriend at University - I go to a fairly well-known English University, and she's here as a foreign student. For sake of a label, her name is Bethany, and she's American, from New York. She's actually quite short - I'm six two and she's only about five two - but breathtakingly pretty with long blonde hair and really nice blue eyes.
I met her shortly after we started - I knew her in our group of friends living in this one apartment block - and she flirted with me outrageously before a friend tipped me off that she was after me. I was just being English, I suppose, hopelessly poor at picking up the signs - I didn't have a clue she was after me.
Anyhow, hearing this rumor, I spent a little more time around her in social situations, and we ended up one night back at her place, fairly drunk. I casually complained that my back was aching slightly - I'd been playing soccer that afternoon - and she offered me a backrub.
I took off my shirt and sat on the floor in front of her. There was some TV show on at the time - I forget which, but it might have been Frasier - and I remember really not concentrating on it as she massaged my back. Her touch was electric, and her perfume had me hooked. Every now and then she would squeeze the muscles in my shoulders, and her face would come close to one or other of my ears. I heard her soft breathing, and a slight tremble in it, as though she was nervous. It certainly wasn't cold in there, so that was all it could be. For me, that confirmed what my friend had suggested - she was interested in me.
I spent a while just trying to think what to say to her. Naturally, I'm a very shy person - it's in my genes, really. After a long while, my backrub came to an end. It was the nicest I'd ever had. I felt defeated, because I didn't know what to say, and I made my apologies and said I had to go.
She stood in her doorway and said, "Aren't you gonna thank me?"
She was standing slightly indignantly, with her hands on her hips. I realized that I hadn't thanked her for an unusually long backrub - I'd been in a daze ever since she first touched me.
I don't know what came over me - I saw her standing there, looking at me with those wonderful blue eyes - I felt a little shock at having forgotten my manners, I didn't want her to think I was an animal - but completely against my own nature, I didn't say a thing, just walked over to her and kissed her, full on the lips, running my fingers through her silky hair, reveling in the soft but exhilaratingly warm contact between our mouths and the intoxicating aroma of her perfume.
After a while, we broke apart. I looked at her and it was all a little much for me - my head was spinning. I apologized and told her I'd see her tomorrow. As I left, she was completely dumbfounded, staring after me in a daze of her own. It had been quite a kiss. The natural chemistry that occurred between us was something I'd never experienced before.
The next day I felt weird. I knew instantly as soon as I woke up that I had made a serious mistake walking away from her like that. What if she thought I didn't like her after that kiss? The reality was that before that kiss I had thought she was really good-looking, but perhaps a little out of my league - then after the kiss I was besotted. I spent all day in lectures thinking about that moment, regretting my early exit.
That evening, once my working day was over, I wandered over to Bethany's apartment. On the way, I met the friend that had tipped me off about her, and he raised his eyebrows at my direction of travel, knowing where and why I was going. This gave me some relief - he was a good friend of Bethany's, she told him most things - if he thought there was still something between us, then she couldn't have taken offense at the other night.
I got to her doorway and pressed the buzzer, my heart in my mouth.
The door opened and, "Oh my God!"
A petite blonde literally leapt at me, smothering me with her arms and drawing my lips to hers. We kissed again, recreating the magic of the previous evening.
"Uh...sorry...about the other night," I fumbled when she eventually let me go.
"I never thought you'd come round here," her smile was the most wonderfully joyous sight. "I thought I was a terrible kisser or something," she pulled me inside and I was soon introduced to the other girls that lived in her apartment - all Americans: the foreign students all lived together to give themselves support.
But it wasn't long before I was dragged into her bedroom. She seemed to think that now I had come back to her, it was open season on me and she could do whatever she wanted with me. Who was I to say no?
We made love five times that night before eventually collapsing. It was the most amazing night. Between every time we connected - and during, to some extent - we talked about all kinds of things, finding out about each other. Her fantastic body came from her years of ballet dancing. My lack of flab came from years of soccer. She was the most gorgeous thing I'd ever seen. After she had first stripped me, making her sexual craving pretty obvious, I took her clothes off one by one.
Her sexual extravagance became clear when her underwear was revealed. I had never thought real women wore g-strings or thongs - just models and porn stars. But she smiled and said she found other kinds of panties uncomfortable. She really was great - I might have had five orgasms that night, but she had many more. She came just from my attention at her supple breasts. I had a real live wire here.
I am still quite young, I suppose, at 22, but it was as though I'd never had sex with anyone before. She opened my eyes - she had a wardrobe full of all kinds of incredibly sexy lingerie, we made love in positions I'd never thought possible, and she loved talking about sex - something English girls would never do - which I found thrilling in the extreme.
So it's fair to say that those six months were the best of my life up until that time: we made love on average three times a night every single night, without fail. That all stepped up a gear when we visited her home, New York City, at the beginning of the summer.
"Max, would you be horrified if one of my friends had sex with you?"
She said this as we walked to a taxi outside the airport terminal. I was shocked - even after the various things she'd got me into those six months. I looked around us to make sure no one had overheard her. Damn, my head was reeling.
"Wh-what do you mean?" I stammered as we got into the yellow taxi.
