Julianas Amorous Adventures Pt 01

Juliana is, obviously, not my real name.

I am not going to describe in narcissistic detail what I look like, the size of my breasts, the colour and/or length of my hair, and all the other rubbish that the usual so-called "erotica" online is usually filled with. You can imagine whatever you want from these basic details:

I'm in mid forties, plumper than I want to be, and of medium height. While I am not in a committed lesbian relationship, I was single at the time I am writing of here. I am bisexual, of mixed race, have a college degree, and work in middle management in a finance company. I love reading, goldfish, hard rock, and walking in the mountains. That's all you need to know; my country, city, politics, bank balance, phone number, bra size, and other details are of no consequence and none of your business.

Right?

Right.

**************************

While I'm no longer single, for most of my life I have been, because I can only tolerate people apart from my girlfriend and one or two very close friends in small doses. I've enough of them in the office without having to share my personal life with them as well. But that doesn't mean I don't have sexual needs; I have those, all right. In fact, I have a fairly strong sex drive, which I'll be the first to admit sits oddly with my general misanthropy. However, after all the stress of work, I don't usually have the inclination or energy for lovemaking. Not on working days, anyway.

My favourite time of day is the late evening. I drive home from work -- I live in a fifth storey flat in a residential building -- park in the downstairs car parking, where like all the residents I have a reserved place -- and take the lift up to my flat. As soon as I'm inside, almost before I lock the door behind me, I take off my shoes, sighing with relief at having them off my feet after nine or ten hours. I hate footwear. I start stripping off my clothes, piling them on the nearest chair as I get naked. I'm not a slob; I'll put them away later. I just need to get showered before I do anything else.

Later, after I'm clean, I change into my favourite evening wear, an oversized T shirt without a bra and loose shorts, without knickers except when I'm menstruating. Unlike the usual women in erotica, I'm a real person, so, yes, I do bleed from my vagina every month, strange as it may seem to some people. I feed my goldfish (Orandas, Ryukins, and a very large and friendly Panda Bicolour, who inhabit a 200 litre moulded aquarium with an inbuilt top filter, a tank heater and thermometer). I'm not much of a cook. If my girlfriend isn't home -- since she's a trauma nurse her working hours and mine rarely coincide and it's a fortunate evening that we get to spend together -- I don't see the point of attempting anything fancy, so I make whatever I want and eat it directly in the kitchen, right out of the frying pan. And then, after washing up, the evening's mine, to rest and do whatever else I want to do.

It's probably not a surprise, then, that evenings are my favourite part of the day.

I don't watch television. In fact I don't even have a television any longer. I got rid of it long ago on the grounds that I have better things to do with my mind than jam it full of consumerist propaganda tailored to the lowest common denominator. Instead, I usually read -- a real book, paper and print; believe it or not, they still exist -- until I'm ready for bed. I said to bed. Not necessarily to sleep.

I have slept naked, from my college days. This was a habit that was inadvertently instilled in me by my mum, who was and to this day is a control freak and attempted to regulate every bit of my life. She wore nightdresses that reminded me of Mother Hubbard gowns, and insisted on my doing the same while I was still living at home, until I had become so totally used to them that I thought that they were in the normal manner of things.

Then I went to college, where I had a room in the student residence hall. And, of course, I had a roommate.

I will call her Mila. She was tall and pale and sophisticated, with aquiline features and eyes that seemed to look down at you from Olympian heights. Her clothes were inexpensive to look at, and if you saw them hanging from a hook -- or tossed over the back of a chair -- you wouldn't have spared them a second look. But once she put them on, they somehow moulded themselves to her, like the clothes of a princess to the manner born.

I'll admit it -- I took one look at her and my heart began to thrum as though I was a twelve year old besotted with a singer from a boy band.

I still remember that first night in the hall room. Mila had been watching as I unpacked my things -- she had moved in several days before, and all her stuff was already stowed away -- and casually asking me some questions about my past and interests. At last she shook her head sorrowfully.

"You poor thing," she said.

I was surprised enough not to be offended. "What do you mean?"

"I just said what I meant. You poor thing. You haven't really had much of a life, have you?"

I opened my mouth to answer -- what, I still don't know -- when I stopped to think about it. I remembered my school, which I hated; the teachers who had no sympathy for a girl who preferred imagination to dry facts, the classmates who disliked her because she preferred books to films and gossip. I remembered the stifling atmosphere of home, where I was always made to feel as though every moment was a lapsed duty to my mother, a wasted moment when I should have been doing something for her.

My father? I never knew him. He died in a car accident on the highway while my mother was seven months pregnant with me. She never forgave him for it, and, because he wasn't around for her to blame, she took it out on me.

"That's what I mean," Mila said, as though she could read my mind, could see through my eyes the dry parade of the years. "You're repressed."

"Maybe," I replied, putting away the last of my clothes. I didn't think it the right moment to mention that, repressed or not, I'd managed to earn a full scholarship to this college. Later I was glad that I'd held my tongue, for Mila, despite her high-and-mighty airs that first evening, was, as I was to discover, herself a superb student and helpful besides. "Well, I'm here now."

"Yes." Mila grinned. "It's college, you know. You don't really have to still live as you used to. You can let yourself be you."

I didn't really understand what she was talking about until later that night, when we were about to go to bed. I was about to retire to the bathroom with my Mother Hubbard nightgown to change when Mila, without a word, began to strip right in the room, in front of me. Within moments, she was totally naked.

"What's wrong?" she asked me, raising those eyebrows like leaping gazelles. "Haven't you ever seen someone naked before?"

I swallowed. "I...aren't you going to put on something to sleep in?"

She laughed. "Of course not. I always sleep naked. You'd better get used to it." Her eyes widened as she took in the object draped over my arm. "Don't tell me you're planning to sleep in that! It's...it's a bloody tent."

"I've always slept in it," I replied defensively.

She was staring at it with horrified fascination. "It would strangle me," she said. "It's an offence against human rights, that's what it is. Do you really enjoy sleeping in it?"

"I always slept in this." It sounded silly even to my own ears the second time around.

"Well," she said, sitting on her bed, leaning back on her elbows with her legs apart, "why don't you try doing without it?"

It was one of those moments that change lives. To this day I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I'd merely turned towards the bathroom with the Mother Hubbard draped over my arm. Instead, I looked at her -- really looked, for the first time since she had taken her clothes off.

She was amazingly, achingly beautiful.

Imagine her body, in the light of the one table lamp that was burning -- like a marble statue, the light shining on the tops of her breasts, outlining the discs of her areolae, her nipples jutting like little bullets into the air. The plain of her belly, with the deep well of her navel a pit of shadow, more shadow covering the triangle between her slim, muscular thighs. She raised a hand, and her fingers were like birds flying through the night.

"We'll be living together in this room, you know," she said. "There's nothing to be embarrassed about if there is nothing left to hide."

I looked at her for what seemed a very long time but must have been only twenty or thirty seconds. There was a metallic taste in my mouth and my heart was hammering. I could barely feel my lips moving, forming words.

"All right," my mouth said.

I didn't know until I'd said it that I was going to say it. I probably was going to say something like "Well, maybe sometime else," and walk off to change into the Mother Hubbard in the tiny bathroom. But at that instant I had a mental image of my mum, and the look in her eyes that always proclaimed "I gave birth to you, so you're my property, and you'll do what I tell you." Part of me suddenly decided I didn't have to anymore.

My body -- I can still remember it clearly -- took over control from what remained of my conscious will. My arm straightened, and dropped the Mother Hubbard to the floor; I never wore it again, and a week later I threw it away. My hands went to the bottom of my T shirt, pulled it up and off my torso. My tracksuit bottom followed, and there I was in my bra and knickers and nothing else. My very conventional, boring, white bra and knickers, not that it mattered.

Mila watched it all with the faintest smile on her face. "You're planning to keep those on?" she asked eventually.

"I'm...I'm not sure."

"It's fine, you know. I'm not asking you to do anything, Juliana. Do whatever makes you feel happy." She swung her feet on her bed and turned to fluff up her pillow. In the lamplight her curves gleamed like pearl.

I still don't remember taking my bra off. My breasts were suddenly bare; for a moment I considered taking off my knickers as well, but didn't feel I could go that far. Instead I raised my hands to my head, to tie up my hair.

I was conscious of Mila's eyes on me. I didn't quite dare look at her as I climbed into bed, pulled a sheet over me, and turned off the light.

There was a long silence. "Good night, Mila," I said eventually.

"Good night."

*********************

I don't know whether she fell asleep at once. I certainly didn't. I was acutely conscious of her lying just a few metres away, completely naked; unlike me, she hadn't even drawn a sheet over herself. I could imagine those breasts of hers, rising and falling with every breath. I could even imagine the shadowed valley between those athletic thighs, open to the night. My heart was pounding, and I began to feel a tightness in my lower belly and between my own legs.

I was, of course, not all that innocent. I'd had sex and I was very familiar with masturbation. I had never before though been turned on at the thought of a naked woman, and I had never even thought of masturbating in the same room as someone else. The very idea would have been mortifying normally. But my hands were still outside the control of my mind; they slipped between my legs, rubbing the fabric of my knickers, which were, to my surprise, soaking wet. One of my hands crawled under the waistband of the knickers, through the rough patch of my pubic hair, and my fingers slipped into the damp moist valley there.

I'm sure I sighed. I may even have moaned softly, as my fingers got to work, slipping and sliding into the depths of my vagina in between emerging to touch my clitoris. They didn't have the freedom of movement that would have been ideal, because of the knickers, but there was nothing to be done about that; I didn't dare raise my hips and legs to take them off in case Mila was awake and noticed. I was even terrified that my heavy breathing, and the soft sound of my fingers moving in and out of my vagina, would wake her. But I couldn't make myself stop, even though my conscious mind wanted to. Finally, I came to a shuddering orgasm, and this time I'm sure I moaned. But there was no sound from the other bed, though I held my breath to listen; just the softest noise of breathing.

Eventually, I fell asleep.

*********************

The next few days went by in a whirl of settling in and starting classes. Outside our room I rarely saw Mila. We were in different classes, and she had, not surprisingly, a gaggle of friends, while I had none. But she never brought those friends back to our room.

Once, I asked her why.

She shrugged. "It's our private space, yours and mine. I'm not interested in bringing anyone from outside into it. Besides, they're only friends."

Only friends? If they were only friends, what was I supposed to be?

I got used to seeing her stripping naked every night, which she always did without the slightest bit of self-consciousness. After that first evening, I became used to taking off all my clothes in front of her as well, except for my knickers. I kept them on, just as I did the sheet I pulled over me.

Often, in those nights, I would lie masturbating in the darkness, biting my lip to keep from moaning out loud at the darts of pleasure sparking out from between my legs. Finally, I would fall asleep, my limbs tangled in the sheets, my knickers down around my knees, until in the small hours of the morning I would awake and pull them back up again.

I don't really remember exactly what I was thinking of every one of those nights while my busy, busy fingers slipped in and out of my vagina and danced over my clitoris. I suppose I must have had some kind of fantasy playing in my head, but all I remember being conscious of is the naked young woman in the next bed, about the mounds of her breasts, the cleft between her thighs that she made no attempt to conceal, the soft sound of her breathing. I think I imagined what it might feel to be kissed by that red mouth of hers, how her lips might feel on mine. But I never thought it would really happen, oh no. That was just in the realm of fantasy.

One day, about two months after my arrival in the college, there was a storm. It had been oppressively, airlessly hot all day, with a peculiar yellow sheen in the sky. By late afternoon towers of black clouds were marching across from the south west, driven by a sweeping wind that whirled dust and dead leaves before it.

"It's going to be bad tonight," one of my classmates said. "Better cancel any plans you have for this evening and stay indoors."

I hadn't any plans for the evening; I never did. Still, I found myself hurrying back to the hall after the last class, hunched over with my books held protectively against my breasts, the wind at my back pushing me along. Lightning flickered constantly in the distance and the thunder was like a god's grumbling.

Mila was already back when I entered the room. She looked up from taking off her socks. "I was getting a bit worried about you," she said. "Wouldn't want you to be caught out there, not in what's coming."

Before I could reply, there was a terrific crash overhead. It wasn't like thunder I'd ever heard. It was as though the sky was being broken apart by a giant with a mallet.

I think I squeaked. I know I winced and clapped my hands over my ears.

Mila grinned. "Not used to the storms in these parts, are you? This is just the start."

"Just the start? What do you mean?"

As though in reply, there was another terrific explosion of thunder, and the lights flickered. "I got food," Mila said, pointing to a large brown paper packet on the little side table. "And a few cans of beer as well. We aren't going out again tonight."

The food -- I can still taste it -- was cheap, greasy Chinese takeout, the beer beginning to lose its chill, but good and bitter; but it was cosy in the room, and the two of us sat side by side on my bed, eating and drinking. Mila talked throughout, but I was mostly silent. By now the wind was slashing rain across the window and the thunder was continuous and so loud I fancied I could feel the walls shake, and maybe she thought that was what I was silent about. But it wasn't that. I was acutely conscious of her shoulder pressed against mine, the slide of her forearm over mine as she reached for a can, and when her toes brushed mine I felt a shiver like an electric shock through my body.

"It's going to go on like this all night, and more likely than not tomorrow," Mila said. "Lucky it's the weekend, isn't it? We can sleep in late if we want to."

"You'll have things to do," I mumbled around a mouthful of Hakka noodles. "Friends to see, places to go."

"Nowhere," she said. "I have a feeling, a very strong feeling, that we'll be sleeping in late tomorrow." Before I could ask what she meant by that, she got up and fetched a small bright orange box from her table and put it on the bed. It was an emergency light. "We'd better keep this ready," she said cheerfully.

"Do you think we'll need it?" I took one more swig from my beer bottle, belched suddenly, and giggled.

"There, look. She can laugh!" Mila grinned. "Do you know, Juliana, that's the first time I've ever seen you do anything more than smile? You should do it more, you look delightful." At that moment there was an especially loud bang of thunder that I swear made the beer cans rattle on the table, and the lights went out.

"What did I tell you? One moment." I heard her move around and the emergency light came on, a wan white blur in the darkness. "No study tonight, not with this thing for light. You can barely make out the books. Oh, well, we need a break anyway. Or at least I do."

I did too, and the unaccustomed taste of the beer -- it was only the third or fourth time ever that I'd drunk some -- was making me feel a bit discombobulated. I actually thought of that word, discombobulated, and giggled again.

"We should have more blackouts, if it's going to make you laugh." Mila stripped off her clothes, which she did totally unself-consciously as usual, and dropped them over the back of a chair. "Might as well get ready for bed, I suppose."

Silently, I began to take off my clothes. Despite the storm now raging in full fury outside the windows, I was feeling hot, and, after taking off my bra, I went to the window in the hope that wind leaking around the edges of the straining panes would cool my breasts. In the darkness, and since our room was on the second floor, I had no fear of being seen.

The thunder was louder than ever, masking the sound of Mila's bare feet as she came up behind me. I didn't realise she was there until her breath tickled my ear. "It's so loud," she said. "You won't have to hold your breath and stifle your moans when you finger yourself tonight."

I felt as though my heart had stopped. "Huh?" I managed eventually.

"Oh, Juliana." She put a hand on my shoulder and swung me around. "Did you really imagine I couldn't hear you masturbate every night? It's only a small room, you know."

I could feel my face grow burning hot. "I didn't mean..."

"Of course you did." She smiled, and her finger traced the line of my jaw. "Why, look, she's blushing! Did you really imagine that it was something to be ashamed of, or that I wasn't doing it as well?"

"You were?"

"There isn't an echo in here, is there?" Mila's finger was still stroking my face. "Poor dear Juliana, you really need to be helped to set yourself free, don't you? I should have known when I saw that nightgown."

"Well," I said, made suddenly bold by the beer, "what do you want me to do?"

She smiled slowly. "Let's see." Her hands moved from my face to my shoulders. "Tell me what you think about when you masturbate."