Many years ago, when I was in college, I worked in a bookstore. It was a big place, classy, with a cappuccino bar and wood shelving and nice lighting. I wouldn't mention it, except... occasionally the store would buy a box of remaindered books. This would be like a pallet sized box of books that hadn't sold which the publisher or distributor or whomever sold at a steep discount. The selection was completely random: you'd never know what you were going to get. A lot of them just went into the recycle bin. Whatever was sellable, went to the floor on deep discount.

In this one shipment, two of the books didn't make it to the recycle bin or to the sales floor. They went to the staff restroom. One was Delta of Venus, by Anaïs Nin, and the other was an illustrated instructional guide called The Mouth of Love. The former was my introduction to erotica and the latter my introduction to the idea of oral sex.

That volume's illustrations consisted solely of somewhat grainy black and white photographs, not intended to arouse prurient interest, but clearly showing what was intended. There was a lot of prose, none of it flowery or romantic. This was, in its way, intended as a serious guide to the concepts and practices of fellatio and cunnilingus.

What my co-workers were doing with the books in the bathroom, I'm not sure. I, however, was a careful student of both books. At that point in my life I was busy with school and work and didn't have a girlfriend, or even any prospects. I had no practical experience, beyond a few fumblings in high school. The books provided me with concepts and ideas, but I had to wait to develop any practical experience.

It was a rainy Tuesday when I got my first opportunity to put theory into practice. Outside the day was glowering and dark, which always made the store feel warm and cheery. The yellow of incandescent bulbs and smell of paper made the space homey. But, after a rush of newspapers and lattes in the morning, it was resolutely quiet.

I had snuck the Nin book out of the bathroom and was surreptitiously reading it when the bell on the front door jangled. A tall woman entered the store, her hair a confection of frizzy auburn, neither red nor brown, her body sheathed in a tan trench coat. She was, in my then-estimation, an older, mature woman, perhaps forty or more, with a broad face obscured by foundation makeup, lightly pink lips, and lively green eyes that seemed to bulge slightly.

"You open?" she inquired.

"For another hour or so," I said. "Can I help you find something?"

I'd put the erotic paperback down so that my page would be held. I made no attempt to obscure the cover, not thinking that she would see it or perhaps not thinking that any normal person would know a subversive book like that.

"Do you have more like that one?" she asked, nodding slightly to it. I felt embarrassed, caught out reading something naughty, my cock still slightly hard in my pants from the wicked imagination of the author.

"Not at the moment."

"It's too bad," she said, before adding, "Does it fire your imagination?"

"Her writing is very inventive," I said. I felt nervous. I was used to discussing books--ones I'd read or ones I'd only heard about--with customers, but this was different. I was being flirted with by the older woman, caught reading dirty stories.

"Is it? Tell me, which of the stories is your favorite?"

"I'm only partway through," I said.

"Which one are you reading now?"

"Uh... Mariana," I said. I was struggling to stay calm, seemingly unflapped by her directness.

"Mm. Are you... intrigued by what you're finding?"

"Um..."

"Oh! I've embarrassed you. But perhaps you are an adventurer? It's quiet today."

"You're the first customer in an hour."

"Why don't you lock the front door? I'm certain there is a private area here where we can explore these topics and discuss them frankly, if only we can avoid interruption..."

I swallowed hard. It was unheard of to close the store during the day, but the night folks wouldn't come for an hour or more yet. I could hear the windows rattling, the rain spraying against the panes.

I was confused. I was, forgetting a few humbling attempts, basically innocent. I had imagination, of course, and some idea of the mechanics. This much older woman, though, was very direct. I was unsure where she was leading me. Should I follow her lead? Having nothing to lose but an unwanted virginity, I stepped around the counter and grasped the brass lever of the deadbolt.

Snick it went in the lock. I looked up from her toes and she was smiling.

"Why don't you show me somewhere private?" she said.

I lead her back through the store, my mind racing. It wasn't as if we had a bed or even so much as a sofa. The back room was all boxes and carts and scales and invoices.

There was an armless chair near the back.

"This looks good," she remarked, sliding into it. "You going to open my coat?"

She'd thrust her shoulders back and lifted her neck elegantly. I couldn't stand there, looming over her. I went to my knees before her and reached out to loosen the garment. My hand shook as I reached for the wide belt of her mac. I was kneeling between a woman's knees, reaching for her waist. It was more intimate than I'd ever felt with a girl before. I tugged at it and the simple overhand knot relaxed.

The fabric did not part, however, as the coat was also buttoned. I reached up to finger the uppermost of these, an inch-wide disk with a carefully sewn buttonhole. Fingers shaking, I undid it. And the next. The third button was enough to begin spilling out her charms. She was wearing a dark brocade dress with a round scoop collar. The fourth button was beneath a drooping protuberance. To release it, I was forced to touch her there, rubbing her warm hanging flesh.

"Sss! Keep going," she hissed in my ear.

Two more buttons and the coat fell open. She shrugged it onto the chair.

The dress was ankle-length or perhaps a few inches higher, but the woman was not sitting in the chair modestly. She was forward, commanding, in the way she spread her legs apart the way a man might. Her thick legs and thighs were encased in slick nylon pantyhose, beige and electrically smooth. My fingers went zzzz! sliding up her calves. I thought of the other book, hidden away in the restroom.

"Push my dress up and put your lips on it," she whispered. Her left hand twisted in my hair and put subtle pressure to guide me. For the first time in my life, I smelled the musk of a woman's arousal. She leaned back and thrust her hips forward as my hands obeyed and pushed her hem up to her waist. My thumbs felt the slippery nylon and jiggly firmness of her upper thighs. I was pushed or perhaps guided to push my face into the cotton clad mound that hid her from me.

I exhaled, letting my breath warm her, before pushing my lips to where I presumed the hidden landscape I'd studied so intently in the instructional manual lay. The woman in the grainy photographs had been thin. The woman thrusting her dank sex at me was thick and substantial. But I must have found the right general area. She sighed and squirmed as I worked my mouth around her humping pudenda.

"Rip them open," she whispered. "I want your tongue inside me."

I pulled my face back just enough to get my hands in there, feeling for the seams, pinching and grabbing at the elusive material until I could gently tear at it. It took more force than I expected to get it to break. She laughed as I flexed muscles to get it to break open. Gritting teeth, I ripped the pantyhose open. I caught a glimpse of thick reddish-brown hair and fat lips before her hand forced my face into the exposed cleft.

I used my thumbs to part her wide as my tongue and, for the first time, slid my mouth into the naked sweet wetness of a woman's vulva. She was sweet, with a hint of yeasty tang. Her heels were behind my shoulders as she wriggled and laughed, shifting to expose herself completely, both hands now guiding my ministrations.

Mindful of my book-learning, I penetrated a deep canyon of fertile wetness, exploring carefully the inner folds, and then gently seeking the tiny knot of her hidden pleasure. I knew, somewhere, there would be a tiny organ, the clitoris, that I must at all costs sneak up upon and not attack, but which would be furtive and perhaps hard to find.

Hers was not hard to find. A huge thick finger of sensitive flesh offered itself to me. I explored it with my tongue before softly sucking it.

"Mm, yes, there. There. Put a finger in me," she pleaded.

I kept sucking, mindful against overstimulation, as I felt around with one hand. My middle and forefinger found her hole and I marveled as the feeling as I sank them into her. The soaking wetness gripped my fingers as I rotated my hand. From the book, I knew I should seek out her g-spot and I curled my fingers, trying to locate it.

"Uh! Uh! Uh!" she went. I wanted to reach up and grab a boob or maybe down to my fly to free my straining member for action, but I needed both hands and all my wits to keep stroking and licking her onwards. Her hips quivered and shook and then she was pushing my head away from her. My face was dripping with her emanations, the fingers of my right hand still up inside her. I could feel a stray pubic hair on my tongue as she smoothed her dress down, stood, and resealed her raincoat.

"Thank you," she said, as I sat, stupefied, on the floor before her.

Afterwards, I cleaned myself up, putting the book back in the bathroom, and reopened the shop, thinking that no one was the wiser.

For days afterwards, I hoped for a return visit, but she didn't come back, at least not right away.

However, I was wrong about no one being aware of our encounter. The little grouping of chairs was visible from the side windows of the shop. Anyone might have observed us just walking past--but for the inclement weather. As it happened, though, someone had been peering through the windows.

"Had any interesting encounters lately?" the girl asked as I was ringing up her special-order book. It was a thick baby-blue hardcover wrapped in plastic, the size and shape of a textbook or reference volume. I hadn't even peeked at the title. Her name was on the pink piece of paper rubber banded to it: "Rebecca Cohen".

"What do you mean?" I asked, absently. My mind was elsewhere.

"You know, encounters. I'm still wondering what you were reading that lead to that," she said. I was startled now, since her meaning was obvious. Looking up I saw that she was maybe a couple of inches over five feet tall and thin as a stick. I thought she must be a graduate student, and I had the vague impression that she lived on this street, since I'd seen her in passing before. She had long, coarse dark hair with a kind of spiral curl to it, that hung down in her face. She had a long nose and narrow features that would have been weaselly but for her gold rimmed glasses, coke-bottle thick, that made her more nerdish and gangly.

"I... uh... no, no encounters. I'm not sure what you mean?"

I didn't want my boss to hear about anything that might have happened, so I was muttering it under my breath.

"Your secret is safe with me," she said, "although maybe I might need a demonstration of your technique. Seems you have my number."

Indeed, the special-order slip had her phone number. Someone had called her to let her know the book was in. She paid for the book, smiling as I slipped the slip into my pocket.

When I got off work that evening, I went and found a pay phone (this was way before cell phones were a thing) and huddled in the little booth for a minute, working up the courage to call the number, working through what I might say. She must be at least a couple of years older than I was. She wasn't a beauty, and I wasn't attracted to her in that way. But there is something arousing about a woman who takes notice of you. I was still, despite my "encounter", an innocent, a naif.

I dropped my quarter into the phone and punched in the number. There were the usual pauses and sounds, then, ringing, ringing. My mouth was sour with fear and tension. The receiver clicked.

"Hello," came her voice. I could hear classical music in the background. I wondered if I had interrupted anything.

"Um, hello," I said. "I'm, uh, you, uh, asked me to call you in the bookstore today."

"I merely pointed out that you had this number."

"That's true."

"I'm busy this evening, but perhaps you can arrange a demonstration for me sometime soon. Are you free Saturday afternoon?"

"I'm off then."

"You should come by, then. One-fifty-one, apartment C"

"What time?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter. I'll be home all day."

It was only Thursday, so I had days to wait for whatever was going to happen. I scoped out 151, a narrow non-descript building across the road from the shop. The angle wasn't such that you could see into the bookstore, I thought, but it was quite apparent that someone standing on the sidewalk might have easily observed what I'd been doing with my erstwhile friend.

I kept an eye peeled but didn't spy her once during the week.

On Saturday, I was off from work and school. I might have spent time studying, since the end of the quarter was coming up, or meeting friends. There was a game of Ultimate Frisbee being brewed up by my roommate, Steve, but I begged off. I was modestly stumped. You couldn't call it a "date" as such. It felt weirdly different. I had a meetup. Maybe. With a girl. I didn't want to tell anyone about it, in case I was embarrassed or stood up or had misread the situation. But I didn't want to blow it off either.

I showered and shaved. I trimmed my straggly excuse for a goatee carefully. I dressed carefully. I tried several outfits before settling on a pair of gabardine pants and a button-down Oxford shirt. I considered what to take with me. I had a trusty condom in my pants pocket. I thought about flowers, chocolate, a book. I didn't know her tastes. I opted to go empty handed, reconsidered, and then put back the book I'd picked up.

The clock wouldn't budge. At 11:30, heart in throat, I set out. Too quickly I was at the door to the building, and knew it was too soon. I went into the bookstore and ordered a coffee to kill time. Stacy, behind the cash register, tried to make small talk, giving me this knowing look the whole time.

"Got a date?"

"I guess it shows?" I said, glancing at the clock again. 12:15 it said.

"Relax. You'll have fun," she said. Then she reached across and pinched me "just for luck".

I looked over at The Chair and thought about what I'd done with the customer there. The busy air of this Saturday made it seem improbable and far away. 12:25. I got up and made my way out.

I almost got run over in the crosswalk. Then I was on the other side of the road, walking past the houses on that side, until I reached number 151. I nervously pushed the bell for apartment C. The door buzzed and I pushed it open. The vestibule was dark, dirty and stained black-and-white tile beneath dinged and scarred walnut woodwork, in keeping with the Edwardian era building. Apartments A and B were on the ground floor, so I mounted the stairs. The switch didn't work, or the lightbulb was burned out.

Apartment C had a thick door, heavy with layers of white leaded paint, which was ajar, waiting for me.

"Rebecca? Ms. Cohen?" I called.

"Come in and close the door."

Her muffled voice came from deep in the apartment.

I latched the door behind me, the substantial hardware heavy in my hand. The room was dim and painted a sort of cream color, including the chair rail and the high ceiling. The floorboards had a chevron pattern, scuffed and worn where they peeked out from under a moth-eaten Persian carpet. The only furniture was a folding card table with a solid-looking chair pushed up against one wall. The table held a computer terminal, gray plastic with the green glow of a CRT screen, cursor flashing, plugged into a modem with flashing lights. A huge dot matrix printer with its own keyboard stood next to it, a box of wide green bar paper ready to spew forth. A pile of books and paper sat on the floor.

I wandered deeper into the apartment, searching for the occupant. The décor was not so much spartan as "unfurnished, with exceptions". I could hear classical music coming low from a radio somewhere.

"In here," she called. It was the last room, tall sash windows facing the street, looking over the road towards the bookstore.

I didn't get to inspect the view, or, at least not the view outside. The bed was shoved up against the wall to the left and Rebecca was on the bed, on top of the tousled, unmade covers. A line of pillows formed a low line of hills behind her.

She was on the bed, and she was naked.

I'd never seen a completely naked woman, at least not like this. My Aunt Matilda, who was jolly and fat and nine thousand years old, coming out of the bath when I was eight years old, didn't count. Rebecca was nothing like that anyway.

She was spare and thin. I could see the outline of every rib. Her breasts were little more than bee stings, tiny pink peaks on a tan plain. Her knees and elbows bulged out to show how emaciated her arms and legs were. But the key element, the immediate center of my attention, was her pubic mound. Thatched with a scribble of dark black hair above the narrow line of her outer labia. The hair was thick, a black haystack, the seam of flesh below it, a blackened peach.

I must have licked my lips, because she smiled.

"That's the idea," she said.

She didn't have a pretty face, even with her thick glasses off, but it didn't matter. I put my fingers to my shirt's buttons and began to unfasten them.

"What's your name, sailor?"

"Matthew, Matthew Royce," I said, biting off the urge to say "ma'am". She might have been only few years my senior, but I felt subservient and cowed by her obvious familiarity with serious, adult, intimate situations.

"Mm, Matthew. I did appreciate your show the other day."

"Did you watch it from here?" I asked. My shirt and undershirt went on the floor next to the door. I kicked off my shoes and put my hands to my belt buckle.

"I'd need a telescope from here. No, I was passing by and happened to look in. What were you reading?"

"Delta of Venus," I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

Her legs shifted and she recrossed them in the opposite direction, giving me a flash of something in between her thighs. The book told me what that pink patch was supposed to hold. I licked my lips again as my belt buckle jingled. I pushed the pants and my underwear down together and stepped out of them.

"Your radio concert hall," a stentorian voice announced from the small transistor set next to the best. A new tune began, something by someone called Camille Saint Saens, grand music diminished by the tinny set.

I was naked, with a naked girl, in the girl's bedroom. I was very likely about to lose my virginity, I supposed.

Rebecca put both her hands over the coveted peach while spreading her legs wide, knees bent. I stood at the end of the bed, the air cool, even a little cold, feeling my little pecker waving in the breeze.

"At least you're circumcised," she said. "It's bad enough taking a goy into my bed. Mama'd have kittens if she knew what I was doing today."

I shook my head slightly, mystified by this whole affair. I wanted to show her that I could be... what? In control? A good lover? Worth it? I came to the bed, with its quilted comforter and seized the foot to my left in both hands, bending as I did so to pull her ankle to my lips.

"That's it, Matthew. I want what you gave her..."

"The mouth of love," I muttered.

"Oh! The Song of Solomon. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; for your love is better than wine," she said, only lightly sarcastic.

The kisses of my mouth were working their way up the inside of her leg. I kissed just above her knee and then breathed in. The air was scented with just a hint, an echo of the spice I'd experienced on the chair in the bookshop. I was kissing higher, higher, closer to her secret place.

She pulled her hands back to make way for me. And more than that. She kept her hands on her thighs, pulling herself open. There, spread before me, were wide outer lips framing the fuchsia ellipse of her opening. The little hood above the blushing nubbin of her clit, the wrinkly slot slick with moisture, the dim recess of her vagina, all on display. Even the knot of her anus was winking at me. I brought my hands and face close and blew a warm stream of air across the surface. I wiggled in so that my mouth could encompass her offering.

She was salty and slightly bitter, unlike the bright sweetness of my previous one experience. I began to lick, slow, patient. She moaned slightly once. I kept going.

An insistent hand held my face against her. My eyes flicked up, across a tight, flat abdomen, to catch her eyes watching me, just a little unfocused. I kept licking. A regular pace, flick, flick, flick, flick, broken here and there by sucking her in. My tongue could feel her opening and I stabbed at it once and once again, before resuming my licking. The hand in my hair was lazy, nudging my head side-to-side only lightly.

I brought a stiff middle finger and just touched where I thought her vagina opened outwards. Her legs stiffened. Tap, tap, tap I went, not pushing, not entering, while I sought to circle the little stiff spot I took to be her clit with my tongue, turning laps around it while barely touching her.

She tensed and groaned louder. Judging her close, I pushed my middle finger deftly inside her in a single swift motion, curled it slightly towards myself, and gently pulled. Part of me was inside a woman, I thought, inside her there. I could feel her body, holding my finger, closed in loosely all around me. I pulled at it gently while stroking her with my tongue, listening to her groan louder and louder. I didn't feel any specific quiver inside her or from her body, but suddenly she was pushing me back.

"Stop. Stop! Dammit, you're driving me crazy," she panted.

Once again my face was dripping, my fingers coated, while my erstwhile lover inhaled and exhaled loudly through her nose, seeking to regain her composure.

In the heat of the moment, my own arousal had slacked off, but now I was reminded that I might climb the same peak she had summited. Reminded by a searching set of fingers that gently fondled me. I firmed rapidly, even though she barely played around with the dangling tip. At first it was just a sense of thickening, a pleasurable rolling of fingertips around that bit of meat. Then, as if transformed, I was thick and hard.

I moved to cover her as she rotated hips and raised legs.

"Gonna put it in me, Matthew?" she asked.

I was too tall to kiss her as I tried to complete the task. I didn't know where to go or how to go about it. I just kind of poked it around down there, looking for the elusive receptacle. Matter-of-factly she reached down and positioned me so that I could feel the wet opening grabbing me. Now I felt how her shape was guiding me as I stuck in her opening. And then I was inside her.

I was a virgin no more. I moved quickly inside her, stroking myself, my world full of that one slick hot feeling. Mindlessly, unable to contain myself, I shot a heavy load deep inside her, then fell panting by her side.

"You shouldn't probably have done that," she said, as we lay together. "Didn't figure you for lacking control."

I laughed.

"What?!?" she said, a look of concern suddenly on her face.

"It's... Um..."

"Spit it out."

"It was my first time."

"No! I mean, I saw..."

She stopped. She had a crafty look on her face. Idly, with one finger, she was poking my exhausted wiener, where it lay, sticky and disgusting, across my thigh.

"Well, since we won't be interrupted by any stray unicorns, are you aware of the concept of 'sloppy seconds'?"

She was, moment by moment, getting a response from the one-eyed snake. But she didn't actually mean sloppy seconds. She had another destination in mind. Quick as a cobra, she straddled me and, pushing my body back, worked herself forwards. Our eyes were locked the whole time. My cock was stiffening, by she had no intention of impaling herself on it. I felt--splop splop--big splashes of spent jizz drip out of her as she climbed up.

My hands naturally found her taut little ass, two little molehills clinging to her bony hips, as I drew her freshly spoilt slit towards my waiting mouth. She put her knees beside my ears and the world went dark and wet as I lunged upwards into the gooey, frothy mess of her dripping cunt. I could taste myself overlaid on her must, the mucoidal slime of our mating dance ran down my tongue, forcing me to swallow, as I lashed and stabbed at her opening with my lingual digit. My hands were still on her ass and I found myself controlling the intensity of her flexing, riding thrusts. The angle let me take tiny sips of oxygen here and there.

She arched her back and, unfairly, reached behind her to touch my restored cock, grasping it, insistently tugging it a couple of times, whenever she remembered, between pelvic jams against my hungry lips.

At last, she relented, panting, looking down at me with my face glistening, her nipples diamond hard, a sheen of sweat across skin red with a body-wide flush. She got up awkwardly, wordlessly, and shifted, grabbed my waiting dick, and impaled herself upon it. I put my hands on the bony projections of her hips and fucked up hard into her, rubbing her clit across my pubic bone as I yearned to get as deep as I could go, not caring that she was tight and small and vulnerable. This time it was a long while before I shot a second load inside her belly, letting her collapse against my chest, and hugging her to me.

It was some days before I saw her again. Then she came into the bookstore, waited for me to finish up with a customer, and asked "What time you off?"

I told her.

"I'll be waiting."

It was an odd sort of relationship. Rebecca was demanding, direct to the point of rudeness, unempathetic to the point of meanness. We didn't go out. We weren't dating. We were not 'a thing'. There were times that she must not be disturbed. I never, not ever, spent the night. When we were done, I went. But two or rarely three times a week, she wanted me to come over and demonstrate my (growing) skills. In return for which, she taught me to do many different things with a woman's body and the many things a woman could do with a man's body. We explored every part of her cycle, every messy orifice of each other's body.

After four months, she gave me a key to the apartment, so I didn't have to call her.

I'd come over to find her fingers blurring across the keyboard on her terminal, the big teletype spewing paper into its output bin--Rrrrrt! Rrrrt!--surrounded by open books and half-eaten ramen cups. Then I might as well not exist.

Or I'd find her naked in bed, her huge black rubber dildo slick with preparation for our session. She'd fling it in the corner and pull me into the bed, pushing my face between her thighs.

We never kissed, you know, mouth-to-mouth kissing--I did a lot of the other kind. Only once did she suck my dick. We never talked about emotions. We sometimes talked about books or music, and especially we talked about sex. But always we were naked in bed, or about to be, or just picking up after. I knew next to nothing about her--and she showed no curiosity about me. It was like I was an appliance, her love toaster, her orgasm blender.

Don't feel sorry for me. I only had to look at my roommate Steve, who had endless drama surrounding his girlfriend--he played too much Ultimate or he wasn't paying enough attention or he studied too much or... something. And it was pretty clear that the "sock wasn't on the doorknob" very often for him. Or take Franklin, in my Econ class, who was forever going on first or second or third dates and just pining for anything remotely like intimacy.

Women can smell desperation on a man. They can see the awkward horny teenager inside him coming a mile away. The can hear the whine in his voice, feel the itchy neediness, taste the bitterness of his desire before the man has even learned her name.

It's when you're not looking, don't look, don't pant, don't notice them. That's when things start to get interesting. That level of security and self-assurance is great--but that guy? Generally, he's not available. I'd gone from frustrated virgin to having regular, downright kinky sex without any of the baggage. And, from my... whatever.. with Rebecca, I'd lost that smell, the one that puts women on guard.

Which is how I got involved with Kelly. She was a graduate student in English Lit, having moved here from Ohio. She got a job in the bookstore to help make ends meet.

Kelly was "all that" and knew it. Dirty blonde hair, cute little nose, luscious looking knockers, athletic, toned, tanned. She dressed for the male gaze and lived to smack suitor's hands.

She was good looking, but I instinctually knew to pay her no attention.

"You got a girlfriend?" she asked me one evening, after the two of us had taken up the night shift at the store, five p.m. to closing.

"Nope," I said, not looking up from the stocking cart I was unloading. I didn't need to tell her about Rebecca.

"But you like girls, right?"

I gave a one-eyed glace at her. She had skinny-legged jeans and a tight bust-enhancing blouse on.

"Yep," I said. The natural segue was there to be uttered, but I went with "Don't have any problems in that department" instead.

"Hmph," was the response. We kept working a while.

"You ever look at those books in the potty?" she asked.

"What books?"

"C'mon. The dirty ones."

"Well, obviously I have seen them. What about them?"

"Learn anything?"

I snorted. Had I learned anything? I thought of telling her about The Incident with The Chair, but held back. I must have come across as cocksure, arrogant, maybe overconfident. But I still didn't look at her or make a move.

It was driving her crazy. She'd brush up against me behind the counter or a put a hand over mine or bend over provocatively (but careful not to reveal too much) when we were alone in the store together--and I ignored it. She was cute and attractive, but it was a game we were playing.

By the end of that week, she was about bursting at the seams. It was a rainy night and we closed up early, she counted out the till while I closed up and turned out the lights.

"You want to get a drink?" she asked, as I was closing the front door behind us.

"I don't know. Do you?"

"You won't give an inch, will you?"

"C'mon, let's step into O'Leary's," I said. This was an Irish pub facsimile across the street and down the block. I saw the light on in Rebecca's flat, but we'd done it twice that week and she'd been extra bitchy with me last time I'd come over at night. It was getting to be that time of the month, but still...

O'Leary's was as quiet as the bookstore had been, just a bored bartender pretending to polish the glasses and a fifty-something cocktail waitress smoking in a booth in the corner.

"What'll you have?"

"Cosmo."

"Cosmo and a Guiness," I told the barkeep, who busied himself with it reluctantly. Perhaps they'd planned to close up shop early as well? I paid the man, leaving the change as a generous tip and we retreated to a table.

I finally allowed myself to look Kelly in the eyes, which produced a moment's satisfaction. Her thin lips and extra white teeth, perky nose, and the twinkle in her eye really were delightful to look at. But the imp inside me wouldn't let go. I "cheersed" her and then pretended to study the faux Irish décor.

I'm not normally blasé like this, but here I was being, frankly, an arrogant prick, going against all my instincts. But with an attention hog like Kelly? It was too much. She was determined to break through what she saw as a preternatural calm.

Which is how, later that night, I had my first real kiss worth writing home about. A whole series of them as we made our way into her dark apartment, tip-toeing to keep from waking various roommates. Then, inside her room, our clothes were coming off, taking turns revealing ourselves. Her big globular breasts, massive, round, but still somehow perky, were free of their halter. Then I unzipped her skirt from behind, leaving her in a skimpy white thong. She fished around in my pants to free my cock, so I pushed her onto the bed.

Her hand want to her side table, looking for a condom, as I shucked my underpants and mounted the bed. But I didn't crawl up to kiss her. Instead I knelt between her thighs.

"Where do you think you're going?" she panted.

"Down," I replied, dragging my tongue up the inner side of one thigh, then pausing to repeat the maneuver on the other side. I got closer and closer to the lacy embroidered strip protecting her modesty, but not quite touching it. She kept trying to urge me to come up and kiss her, but that stopped when my lips grazed her mound and I hummed slightly.

Her scent was a mix of musk and patchouli oil and the little garment was soaking wet. With an index finger, I hooked under the tiny rag and pulled it aside to reveal only the third pussy (not counting Aunt Mathilda), and once again my expectations were confounded.

For one thing, she was shaved smooth, or, I should say "smooth". My lips could feel the stubble and buzz of a day's growth. She had hardly any outer lips, but more than made up for it with a prodigious clam. Just as she was top heavy, she was overly endowed here as well: thick, meaty lips hung maybe three or more inches. My tongue was unable to part them fully on the first pass, even with my nose acting as an icebreaker. I had to hold her open with my fingers to expose the wonderfully juicy inner folds. One, two, three fingers went inside her opening as I kept licking and sucking.

Kelly was not a quiet lover. She cried out a stream of profanities, culminating in a chant of "Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Oh fuck!" as she bucked her vulva at my face, and then with a mighty "Aaaaaaugh!" came the final reward for my ministrations.

A torrent of hot fluid gushed out onto my tongue, my chin, and ultimately, soaking the bed.

"What the fuck did you do to me?" she gawped, staring down at the mess between her knees, as I finally relented to her earlier wishes, climbed up, and kissed her hard. Condom forgotten, I entered her there and we fucked, me the conquering stag, she the insatiable vixen.

When we were done, I spent the night. In the morning, she woke me with her mouth and I got to appreciate the sway and jiggle of her danglers as she slid about my lap before pushing her down and breeding her doggie-style, one hand holding the back of her neck. Then I got to do the walk of shame, meeting her flat mates after having kept them awake half the night.

For a couple of weeks, I had what amounted to a girlfriend. We used whole boxes of condoms, alternating between her bedroom and mine, going to the movies, taking our break together.

As fuck buddies go, she was awesome, but we were too un-alike. What I'd been doing with her was a pose, a stretch for me to be such a pretend asshat. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate sensitivity or whatever. It just wasn't her thing.

We... just agreed about it. Weirdly, though, we kept a certain intimacy. She never teased me and we were always just a bit handsy working together. We just... installed a line that never got crossed again. Steve, at least, was relieved, telling me that our antics were making his girlfriend jealous "or something".

Which lead to my crossing the road and unlatching the door to 151 Apartment C again. We didn't exchange any words about the ten days or so that I hadn't come to her. We just fell back into our habits.

I came over and rubbed her shoulders as she grumpily and cantankerously tried to shrug me off. The screen was filled with gibberish, gobbledygook that flew out of her fingers. While I'd been gone, a big rack had appeared in the apartment, overflowing with faceless 15" square circuit boards, long gray ribbon cables, fans, and a tiny bank of switches. The whole thing hummed, a constant dull roar.

She didn't want to be interrupted until I put my lips on her neck.

Later in the week, I came over after closing up the store. The light was out in her apartment, but she wasn't asleep. She was sitting in the dark in her bedroom wearing men's flannel pajamas. She'd heard me coming, so I wasn't sure what she'd been doing, but, for the first time, she wanted to be kissed and held a while before she pushed the jammie pants down and had me finger her until she came.

Finally, I came in to find an older woman there, fortyish and of the same thin-and-weaselly look. She wore clothes that, without ostentation, said "money": perfectly tailored, bespoke, every stich visibly perfect.

"Oh, here he is," Rebecca was telling her as I walked in.

"That's what you're doing gemauschel with?"

"Oh, mother, we're way past that. Come here, Matthew, we have a few things to discuss."

"You must be Mrs. Cohen," I said to the woman, holding out my hand. She looked at it as if it were poisonous.

"Really, Rebecca..."

"Look, mama, he's being polite, and you have to be such a..." She used a Yiddish word that sounded unclean.

"Because of him, I'm going to be a nana before my time. Next, you'll be sticking me in a nursing home."

"Matt, I'm sorry to have to break it to you like this. This, as you guessed, is my mother. She's here because, well, we have a wedding to plan."

"Oh. Who's getting married?" I asked, innocent as a lamb.

"We are, silly. You knocked me up, so we got to get hitched."

"Wait. What?"

"I told you that you shouldn't do that, but we kept on doing it. This is what happens when you stick more than your finger up inside me, eh?"

I glanced at her mother standing right there, thinking furiously.

"I guess that's so. Is...?"

I didn't want to finish that question--no matter which ending I thought to attach to it. Is it mine? Is it what you want? Is it a good idea? Is this a bad time? I had a strong feeling that Rebecca was capable of murder if I were to ask anything.

The wedding was a pretty quiet affair, I guess. As quiet as you can make it for seventy-five people. We had it in a nice synagogue, even though I'm not Jewish.

A couple of weeks after the wedding, I was behind the counter in the bookstore, when my first lover came in with her husband in tow. He was a courtly looking gent, maybe sixty, still in his suitcoat from a day in the office, but having shucked his tie.

I looked down as the new gold band around my finger and then up to catch a smile in her eyes.

"Read anything interesting lately?" she asked.

"Nothing as interesting as the last one," I told her.