Author's note: The game that most of the world calls kiss chase is known in Australia as kisschasey. Since I happen to be Australian, that's what I grew up with, and I've stuck with it for this story.
***
"Okay, gather in, everyone!" shouted Jenny, clapping her hands for attention and flashing everyone a wicked grin. "I need to go over the rules!"
Even when we were kids, it had seemed transgressive. Aged ten or eleven and understanding very little about men and women, we had still known by instinct that there was something
naughty
about playing kisschasey. I remembered racing down the grassy slope in our schoolyard, determined to outrun Jenny, determined not to let her kiss me, because the thought of being kissed by a girl was simply disgusting. And yet when she caught me -- I was small and unathletic back then, and Jenny was agile and speedy -- when she caught me, and pinned me gleefully against a tree, and leaned in and kissed me on the lips... something deep in my tummy that didn't know what it meant yet had fluttered in queasy confusion.
It had usually been Jenny who started the games of kisschasey. She was giggly and wild and loved to chase us, and the rest of the girls in our group had gone along with her, caught up in the excitement of the game. To us boys, it had been something that we protested, complained about, shouted over the girls about -- and yet somehow we never actually made enough of a fuss that we stopped the games from happening. Perhaps deep down, even then, we knew we wanted to play.
And then we had hit puberty, and the games of kisschasey had stopped. Once the desires in us started to surface -- once we
knew
that kissing each other was something we might actually want and enjoy -- then the game became far, far too real. We left it behind just like we left behind toy trucks and barbie dolls. And as we grew older, even as our friend group stayed together and stayed in touch, it became something we never even mentioned -- except maybe as an occasional "Remember when we used to..." that was inevitably followed by an awkward laugh.
Until, that is, the topic came up at our reunion night two weeks ago.
We had all had a few drinks. We were sitting around in Emma's living room, chatting aimlessly about new jobs and old memories, when somebody mentioned playing kisschasey in the schoolyard. And this time, the topic didn't get awkwardly dismissed. Earlier in the night there had already been a raunchy conversation about Jenny's sex life, during which our still-wild, still-giggly friend told us way more than we had expected about exactly what she liked to do with her endless supply of Tinder dates. I think quite a few of us had caught each other's eye in that conversation and known that the talk was turning us on. So when it came to talking about kisschasey, at least some of the group were feeling ready to let that topic take us to new and interesting places.
I think the idea came to quite a few of us before anybody said it out loud. People were edging towards it -- one person was brave enough to say they missed playing kisschasey, someone else said they wished it were acceptable to play it as adults. But I will never forget the moment when one of the girls -- it was Tess, the tall and willowy redhead -- had looked round the room, taken a deep breath, and tentatively said:
"You know... there's probably ways we could...
upgrade
kisschasey. Make it into a more
adult
kind of game, if you know what I mean."
And the entire room had frozen for a moment, holding its breath, while the air suddenly crackled with charged excitement, and all of us looked at each other, and knew what we were thinking.
So now, here we were.
We had rented out a giant indoor play space -- a 'soft play' centre, as it was called. It was one of those adventure playgrounds that parents take kids to tire them out during the school holidays, and we all remembered loving it when we were younger. There were multiple levels of tunnels, walkways, stairs, and slides -- a labyrinth of play spaces, all colourful and soft-floored. There were slides that twisted around to send you whizzing into a ball pit; there were mini-mazes where you could easily get lost and come out in a completely different part of the playground; there were places to climb, places to run and dodge, and places to hide. We had hired the place for the whole night, and Tom had slipped the staff an extra few hundred to go home and leave us undisturbed. We had the playground completely to ourselves.
Everyone had got tested and posted their results in the group chat -- we had agreed that the game would run a lot better if nobody had to worry about condoms. It had all gone smoothly, and to my amazement, nobody had got cold feet, none of us had backed out. And so here we were, stood in a circle at the edge of the play space in a kids' adventure centre, some of us grinning awkwardly at each other and some of us having fits of the giggles, and all of us, I think, amazed at what we were about to do.
We were here to play a game of fuckchasey.
"Listen up," Jenny called in a mock-stern voice -- though the effect was undercut by the massive smirk that she couldn't help herself giving all of us. There were a few more titters as we all stopped talking to listen to her. I was standing next to Tom, Jason, and Patrick, and I could tell that all four of us were trying to look casual, as though we were totally cool with all this. As though the prospect of playing this game with the five women we'd been friends with all our lives wasn't making us wildly, ridiculously excited.
We weren't concealing it very well.
I let my eyes rove over the girls. Of course, this was hardly the first time I'd imagined fucking them. We'd grown up together, been together all through college and stayed in touch beyond, and I'd had plenty of fantasies over the years about hooking up with one or two or all of them. But it had never happened. I knew that some of us had been together before: Jason and Aimi had dated for a while in college before splitting up amicably, and there had been a night when Tom and Tess got drunk and fucked at a party. But in general there had been remarkably little sex within our friend group -- and for me, no sex within the group at all. I was a late bloomer anyway, and by the time I knew what I was doing, we were all moving out of college. One or two of the girls had certainly
talked
to me about sex over the years ("Okay Mark, I'm going to teach you how to flirt," a drunken Jenny had said to me one night before rambling on for ages about the art of seduction); but it had never gone further than talking. The thought that this was about to change was making my heart hammer in my chest.
From the looks on the faces of the girls, they were feeling just as nervous, just as self-conscious, and just as queasily excited as I was. Emma was awkwardly playing with her hair: winding her wavy brown locks around her finger, pulling it up into a ponytail (she always tied it with a blue ribbon to match her eyes), and then, a minute later, letting it down again. Emma had always been the most sensible in the group, and I had been amazed -- and thrilled -- that she was down for this. She was usually the one who came out with a long-suffering sigh and an affectionate telling off when one of us did something foolish or reckless. Yet here she was, breathing heavily but looking quietly determined, and with an unmistakeable gleam of nervous excitement in her eyes. I noticed all the same that she had chosen to wear a t-shirt and jeans, while the other four girls had all dressed just a little bit sluttier than usual. The t-shirt was tight and shapely though, and as I let my eyes rest for a moment on the clear shape of Emma's tits -- she was busty, probably the most busty of the five -- I felt a delicious tingle of anticipation deep inside me.
Next to Emma were Tess and Lizzy, who had always been specially close friends. Tess was tall, slim, and sporty, with long red hair and bright, confident green eyes. Watching her play hockey at plenty of games over the years, it had been impossible not to notice her long, shapely legs, or the way she moved on the field with such powerful, sexy grace. Lizzy, standing next to her, made quite the contrast: she was small, bookish, and shy, with curly blonde hair that hung in ringlets around her pale face. Tonight she was looking even more nervous than usual, and her pert little mouth was slightly open as she breathed heavily, visibly trembling with anticipation. As I watched, Tess leaned down and whispered something in her ear. Lizzy giggled and blushed, and the two girls caught each other's eye and grinned. Lizzy quickly glanced back down at the ground, but she looked slightly more relaxed -- and the grin was still lingering on her face.
Next in the circle was Aimi, who was Japanese, but had moved here with her family when she was little. Of all the girls, I thought, Aimi was the only one who looked something close to genuinely casual and at ease. She was bobbing a little on the balls of her feet, like a runner before a race (and a race, I realised with a jolt, was kind of how this was going to begin). Her long black hair was tied in a ponytail, and her face wore a coolly satisfied expression as she looked around the circle at the boys. With a leap of excitement, I remembered a night in college when Patrick and I had gone for a drink with Jason, and he talked to us about what Aimi was like in bed. He had made her sound like the naughtiest, dirtiest little slut any of us had ever been with. I hoped he hadn't been exaggerating.
Quite suddenly, Aimi looked me in the eye. For a moment we held each other's gaze. Then she raised an eyebrow, and her mouth twitched in a playful smirk. My stomach gave a massive lurch. It was electric -- looking each other in the eye, and knowing exactly what we might very soon be doing with each other. I swallowed hard, flashed her an excited smile, and looked quickly away, trying not to grin too widely.
And then there was Jenny. Brunette, freckly, always playful, often naughty, and always full of life. Jenny who had a smile that could light up a room like a sunrise, and an ass that always made me struggle not to stare -- especially when she wore the tight little booty shorts that she was wearing tonight. Jenny, who had been the ringleader when we played kisschasey at school. Jenny, who had eagerly jumped in to take the lead in organising this whole crazy thing.
And she was speaking again. I tore my attention back to the present, and listened.
"Welcome," said Jenny, "to tonight's game of fuckchasey."
A frisson of electric current seemed to run round the circle when she said the word.
"I know we've all agreed on everything already," Jenny went on, "but I'm going to run through the rules all the same. As you know, tonight the boys will be chasing the girls. The girls will get a one-minute headstart, which should be plenty of time for us all to get deep into the play space and spread out. When the timer goes off, the boys can come in after us."
There were a couple of giggles at that, and Jason seemed unable to wipe the grin off his face.
"From that point on," Jenny said, "the game will proceed in three stages. It all depends, ladies, on how many times you've been caught. To begin with, this will be a perfectly ordinary game of kisschasey. When you get caught by a man for the first time, ladies, that man gets to kiss you." Jenny's bright, playful eyes danced briefly across the four boys. "And you have to
really
