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I couldn’t even tell whether my gorgeous, petite, golden-haired girl even registered those little conversations that confused me so much. I had definitely gathered, by the time I came out of the bathroom naked and hard as iron at the mere thought of having sex at last with the bride of my dreams, that Mandy simply didn’t want to communicate about sex. I had started to feel guilty about even trying.
I had no doubt on that wedding night—or after the unusual conversation with Scott and April and the distressing confrontation about it in our room—that Mandy’s physical attraction to me remained strong. I had enough experience to know when a woman responded to my touch and when she didn’t, and Mandy definitely did: even when she pulled apart from a hug, or pushed my hand away from her bottom or from between her thighs, I could feel the trembling in her limbs and the way she had consciously to force herself to stop whatever little seduction I had started.
I didn’t mind. Well, Ihadn’tminded. Especially while we had courted, I understood how she had grown up, and why she would want to stay a virgin until her wedding night. Cuddling in my bed, our voices hushed to keep our words private from my roommates, I had felt her body’s need for me even as she seemed to want to keep that need in check.
It had surprised me a little that it seemed to hurt Mandy so much when we had sex for the first time. I had tried to go slow, and I had turned all the lights off the way she wanted. I had thought we would cuddle for a while first; I’d always loved the sweet, teasing kind of foreplay that can get a girl so hot she begs for a good hard fucking. But Mandy had spread her legs before I’d even gotten into bed, clearly feeling she wanted me tomake a woman of her, like in some old book.
So I had, and she hadn’t cried out—Mandy clearly wanted to be brave, and her courage at her body’s first submission to mine turned me on. I had come quickly and gratefully, thinking she would feel grateful, too, since her tears of discomfort in the near-darkness told me I should give her time.
I had tried to take her in my arms, wondering if we might be able to try again before we fell asleep, since I’d started to harden almost at once. Mandy had gotten out of bed and gone to shower, kissing me lightly as she passed by my side of the bed, her nightgown once again covering the intimate places I still, three days later, hadn’t explored or even glimpsed the way I—as a healthy, typical guy—so urgently wanted to do.
So she had finally communicated, a little, this evening. She had asked me to be patient, since at least the topic had finally come up in what could pass as a serious way. It seemed like progress to me, and Mandy had also behaved at dinner like the loving girl I knew, rather than the distressingly distant one who had emerged after the conversation on the porch. The past two days of “Not right now, babe?” seemed to have resolved into the more solid “Can you be patient with me, Ricky?” I tried the new understanding out as soon as we got back to the room.
“Let’s go to bed and cuddle, Dee,” I said, remembering how Scott had spoken to April with decision in his tone. I didn’t consciously try to imitate the older man, but I realized that part of me had absorbed a little of his manner. It felt right for me—more suited to my inner self than the tentative way I usually spoke to Mandy.
* * *
Mandy
I had stepped into the room ahead of Rick. When he said, “Let’s cuddle, Dee,” I turned my face back over my shoulder to look, surprised at his not having made the suggestion as a question, the way he always did—You want to cuddle, Dee?
He hadn’t spoken sharply or severely in any way, but on his face I saw something that surprised me as much as his words had.Resolve.I had seen that emotion on Rick’s face many times when he spoke to other people—my parents, say, or his employees. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him demonstrate that kind of resolution with me.
It took a moment, as I looked at my husband with a slight frown on my brow, but then I realized where some of the responsibility for my surprise lay. Rick had just sounded like Scott from the porch. Had hemeantto? Whether or not, that tone… it felt…
Well, it felt a lot of things, but the one I focused on, so that I could ignore the way his words had seemed to affect my body, was the danger involved. I couldn’t let that tone continue, could I?
But… Rick had just said before dinner that yes, he could be patient. And dinner had seemed to go so well, and all he was asking for now was cuddling, which I had always loved during our courtship.
We could talk about his tone later. After all, he hadn’torderedme into bed for cuddling—he had said “Let’s.”
Still, I needed to push back a little, didn’t I? I said, putting a sort of mock-resentful face on, “I’ll allow it.”
Rick smiled, making me feel petty for my reaction to his invitation to cuddle and filling my chest with love for him. Why would I ever not want to snuggle up to him? And what was wrong with me that I didn’t want more than that?
I don’t want more than that. Do I?I turned back toward the bed so that he couldn’t see my face as I felt emotions roil inside me—all over, it seemed, from the blush in my cheeks to the trembling in my legs as I thought about the meaning ofmore than that. An unwelcome little thrill—the kind of sensation I knew good girls refused to yield to—seemed to travel upward from my shaky knees and downward from my fluttering stomach.No,I told myself firmly,I don’t want more than that.
I grabbed my nightgown and went into the bathroom. I hoped maybe it would be like our wedding night, when I had spent enough time in there that when I had emerged Rick had fallen asleep. I took fifteen minutes more or less just to brush my teeth and put on my nightgown—without taking my panties off, since he had said we would just cuddle, and he had said he could be patient.
I knew with a sinking feeling that Rick wouldn’t be asleep, because the thing where the husband falls asleep—the little book had a section calledAfter Lovethat described the process—didn’t happen until he had ‘found his release inside your body.’ Sure enough, when I came out I found him sitting on the side of the bed in his red briefs, waiting for his turn.
I bit my lip at the sight of Rick’s muscular body, completely revealed except for the part that sent a shiver down my spine even though I refused to look directly at it.
It’s okay,I told myself.He left his underwear on. You don’t have to look at it and you definitely don’t have to touch it. Just cuddling.
He opened his arms, still sitting on the bed. I tried to conceal my moment of hesitation with a quick rush forward as soon as I decided that I couldn’t refuse to let him hug me, as nearly naked as he was. When we had cuddled peacefully in his bedroom in the shared apartment, we had kept our clothes on, though I had let Rick put his hand inside my shirt and even up my skirt once or twice.
I thought I could get used to doing it with fewer clothes on, though, as long as our underwear stayed on. It did feel nice when he touched me gently down there, even when he did it inside my panties. As long as it didn’t mean—as it had meant on our wedding night—that he intended tobe intimatewith me.
So I rushed into his arms, and I could feel in the way he held me that he must have on his face the broad smile that always melted my heart.
“There we go,” he murmured contentedly. I thanked God that he couldn’t see my face as I rested my chin on his bare shoulder. I smelled a hint of the musky scent of his body, and I felt my brow furrow. That earthy fragrance… I liked it—no, I loved it—and yet it made me blush a little every time, the heat fiercer the more strongly I could smell Rick’s body. It smelled to me like the outdoors and the earth he worked with, even when he hadn’t just come from mowing a lawn or planting a tree. I liked it, and I loved him—so why did I wrinkle my nose?
Rick moved his right hand down my back, to touch my bottom. I stiffened. The sensation of his hand there, moving now underneath the hem of the cotton nightgown that only came down to the middle of my thighs, seemed to merge with my thoughts about the way he smelled.
My memory flashed back to the wedding night, when he had touched me between my thighs, and the aroma of his naked body had been so strong. His scent had joined together with my own terribly embarrassing fragrance—the one I always got an unwelcome whiff of when I took off my panties after a long cuddling session. I knew people sometimes talked about the way it smelled—about what my bashful mind wanted to callthe scent of intimacy. I never heard about that without the heat mounting to my cheeks, and the feeling of my husband’s hand under my nightgown, cupping my bottom through my modest cotton panties, made me anxious that my underwear would smell that way even after the cuddling I had promised to do, as chaste as I meant it to be.
“What’s wrong?” Rick asked, quietly and soothingly. I felt certain he would take his hand from my backside, but he didn’t. For a moment I wondered if he thought somehow he should try to imitate that crazy older guy Scott from the porch.
