My name is Melanie, and I’m a pretty good girl, if I do say so myself.

I have just two secrets.

Judging from what a crazy mess the world is, and how awful most people are, I would rate I’m not doing too badly if I’ve only racked up two so far. Just two.

The first one is my hidden wedding Pinterest board where I collect millions of pictures of dream dresses, beautiful cakes, fun things to do with shells, wedding manicures and sexy yet classy bridal lingerie that has the name of your dream guy embroidered in tiny white stitches on a silky suspender belt…

The other is that I seem to be addicted to watching hardcore porn.

I always thought that the best colors for a wedding are obviously pastels, even though I know they’re a little predictable, right? Still, you can always go with a retro theme. There’s a whole section of my “Dresses” board that shows, like the stripes in a rock, the periods of my life where I was intensely interested in 50s wedding frocks with poofy skirts and the cutest little shoes.

But then I decided I wanted a bright Frida Kahlo style Mexican theme with paper cut outs and piñatas that rained down wedding favors when the guests hit them with sticks that had ribbons plaited on them. But I soon decided that would probably end up cheap-looking and that what I really wanted was something all mute and elegant – lace, you know, and pearls, and little desserts that look like roses with tiny cakes tucked inside.

My tastes in porn …well, that stayed pretty much constant. I always chose the same, nasty, horrible, no good stuff to look at, sadly.

Now, I like fitted wedding dresses the most, honestly, and find they flatter my butt nicely, even if I do say so myself. Like I said, I’m a pretty good girl, but lord help me I do think I have a nice butt, and it’s not too vain if I say so. Good girls wait for the wedding night, and listen to their mammas, and do well in school so they can be dental technicians and live the dream. And that’s what I did. A Pinterest board may have been jumping the gun a little, sure, but so what if I fantasized once in a while about what my groom would wear even before he technically existed? Only a bad girl would let such a small detail get in the way of her planning a decent wedding.

The porn though. Ugh. What could I say? God knows I tried my best to get over this filthy habit. I read “The Beauty of the Chaste Woman” by Reverend Peters. I took cold showers (does that only work for boys though?) and I wore my own makeshift pledge ring on my middle finger, where it was too small and so would hurt the most. I put special parental controls on my browser. Then I took them off again.

Nothing worked, which just goes to show you that even good girls struggle sometimes. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m some poor repressed Christian soul. You’re thinking I’m a big old prude and that I’m like one of those girls on the TV who believes the idiot in her youth group when he tells her you can’t get pregnant on Easter or something.

Well, I’m not. I’m no fool. I may be on the inexperienced side but I know a thing or two about you-know-what. My family’s a bit uptight about these things, sure, but besides my Aunt Carol, we all just like to do things properly. The right way. What’s so wrong about that?

I’m young, I know (nineteen years old and ten months!) but it seems to me that living a good life is a bit like planning a wedding: you have to pay attention to the details, you have to plan ahead, or else you’ll have a big old flop on your hands, won’t you? Besides the nasty issue with the porn (don’t judge me, I’m working on it and no, I certainly won’t tell you what kind of porn it is) I was going to have that good life for myself. Right down to the last table arrangement and swan shaped bottle of bubbles. I thought nothing could possibly stand in my way.

Boy, how wrong I was.

“For Christ’s sake, Jenny, it’s not lube, it’s personal moisturizer” said my Aunt Carol, who had not only taken to using the lord’s name in vain, but had also joined a pyramid scheme, from what I could tell.

“Personal moisturizer? Well, for such an open minded company, they sure have some funny ideas about calling a thing what it really is,” said my mom, turning a green bottle over in her hands a few times before plonking it on the table like it was poison. If my mom had been in charge of what to call the stuff, she’d probably have gone with “slut water” but I told you, my Aunt Carol was a bit of an outlier in the family.

“Nonsense. ‘Personal moisturizer’ is just what everyone calls it these days.”

“Oh do they? And what does it moisturize? Your person?”

My Aunt Carol is the black sheep of the family, although with her fierce dyed-red hair and massive hippie earrings, she’s more like the red sheep. It didn’t used to be like that. A few years ago, my uncle died and left my Aunt Carol a ton of money, which she promptly used to fuel a long and obnoxious journey of sexual self discovery.

While my mother and other aunts watched in horror, she went to Spain and probably, I don’t know, did things, and then she dyed her hair and started to wear chintzy stone jewelry to channel her inner goddess; these days she was peddling lingerie and “personal moisturizers” from a company called “Oh! So Good” that made my mother’s ulcer tingle.

“Don’t decent people sell Tupperware anymore?” said my mom, drawstringing tired lips round her cigarette, looking for some strength there since God never seemed to give her any. My aunt’s hippie earrings were flapping now as she shoved all her goodies back into a branded tote bag.

“Just forget about it. Jesus,” she said.

It was a Saturday morning, one of those boring domestic scenes where you just drink coffee and wait for some activity to suggest yourself. Living at home was fine, I guess, except for these little moments of drama.

Aunt Carol had been given a decent amount of leeway, as a widow you know, but my mom was steadily losing patience. My aunt’s gift of the bestseller, “Sexual Freedom at Fifty and Beyond” didn’t sit well next to “The Beauty of the Chaste Woman” and found its way into the trash. My aunt packed up her bag of tricks - all those things that the brains behind Oh! So Good thought would make the average housewife happy – and made for the door.

“I should go anyway. Some of us have lives to live, you know?” she said, with a flick of her beet-red and newly liberated hair.

“Ooh! Aunt Carol! Am I still housesitting for you this weekend?” I asked as she reached the door.

“Yes! I nearly forgot. Get your mom to drop you off. Jared and I will be leaving at around 9 on Friday to catch our plane, so come then and see us off.”

“Jared? Is this a new one?” my mom said, freshly judgmental, smoke blowing out her nose like a dragon.

“He’s not a ‘one’, he’s a very nice man I met at gym, and he’s coming with me, and we’re both consenting adults” said my aunt, slowly.

“Consenting adults? Oh, well, I hope you and your person have fun with him,” mom said.

I giggled, and Aunt Carol left, not about to let family or advanced age prevent her from enjoying her youth.

“What’s the bet she’s paid for his ticket and everything? He’s probably less than half her age and twice as evil,” mom said, who was really very good at virtue accounting.

My mom had been mad at Aunt Carol’s indiscretions before, but this one had her particularly riled up. There was some extra energy in the way she spoke about this “one”.

“Have you met him? This Jared?” I said.

“Never. But Alice told me he can’t be a year or two older than you. It’s disgusting.”

Of course it was. Utterly disgusting.

So disgusting, in fact, that I had to find out more.

Now, don’t ask me how, but I’m not a complete stranger to boys. Even still, meeting Jared in person was …surprising.

I arrived at my aunt’s on Friday evening, ready to see her and her inappropriate lover off on their vacation. I brought a backpack with my laptop, some clothes, a book, a box of pop tarts. I would feed Buttons, maybe get stuck into an essay that was due on Tuesday.

It was all planned out.

The moment I stepped through my Aunt’s front door, though, something instantly let me know that all my plans were about to be disrupted somehow. It could have been the intense stinking cloud of cologne I walked into, or it could have been the loud, laughing voice that seemed to fill the whole house. Or it could have been something else entirely. Buttons was well-known, for instance, for being able to judge when earth-tremors or quakes were coming because he’d scamper under furniture and meow and meow till it hit. Maybe it was like that. Maybe some part of my brain sensed a disturbance in the force, you know, and I could tell a quake was coming.

I slammed the door shut.

“Mel is that you, sweetie? We’re in the kitchen!”

I found my aunt there, even more animated than usual, fussing with some snack bars and a tiny cooler bag, hippie necklace flapping over her big shelf of a bosom. “I’m just trying to pack some nibbles in case we get hungry! Although how many should I bring? Will they give us a snack do you think, babe?”

She turned to look at the guy standing beside her, a young guy who was eyeballing her closely. He was clearly the source of the cologne, the laughing I heard a second ago and all the disruptions that were about to hit my innocent, good girl life.

He was smiling. A kind of mocking smile, one filled with cockiness and spunk, and he stood there with both hands on his hips as though he had been transported straight from a beer commercial into my aunt’s middle aged life.

“Babe, babe, no snacks, ok? Come on what do you want snacks for?” he said in a voice that sounded unnervingly young.

He was right.

If there was anything more lame and middle aged than packing seed bars for a plane trip, I couldn’t think of it. I usually think my mom exaggerates with most things in life. For instance, I’m pretty sure that anal sex doesn’t mean your children will have cleft palates, and that soy isn’t a crop invented by the communists to make good people resist the teachings of Jesus. But still, staring at this young guy and my ridiculously red aunt, I had to say: this was quite something else.

Was she paying him? It didn’t make sense. Why would a guy like this do a thing like that? And why would my sweet, goofy aunt do a thing like that, for that matter? He looked no older than me, it was true. And immediately feeling embarrassed, I wondered if I should have worn something a little nicer to judge him in.

He threw the seed bars back in the cupboard and shrugged, laughing.

“You’re right! You’re so right. Why am I packing them? God, I don’t even like them. This is what I love about you, Jared, you’re so carefree,” she said, smiling a big flushed smile at him. Jared beamed right back at her. Gross. My eyes scanned over my aunt’s matronly figure, over her freckled hands with her wedding ring still attached (“It’s water weight! I’ll take it off once the swelling goes down!”).

My aunt was an elegant lady, of course, and I loved her to bits, but she was also fifty-four years old.

I glanced over at him, trying not to dwell on his branded hoodie and squeaky clean trainers. Did they …you know …? I shuddered to think. Just as I had pushed the thought out of my head, he leaned over and pecked her on her cheek, just like that, right in front of me. I swear, if they ended up an item I would not invite them to my wedding. No sir. My aunt’s maroon hair alone would be enough to ruin the color scheme, for sure.

I cleared my throat and plunked my bag down onto a kitchen stool. I took out my laptop and plugged it in, getting ready for a long weekend where I could pretend that I was actually a grown up who lived alone.

My aunt began to fuss with a few more things in her bag. Jared turned his attention to me, eyeing my laptop.

“So you’re Mel? I’ve heard all about you.”

“And I’ve heard about you too,” I said, unconsciously taking over my mom’s work in her absence. He didn’t respond to this, but kept eyeing the laptop.

“What’s that for? Don’t tell me you’re going to study?! It’s the weekend, girl, loosen up!”

I hated him. Settling down and putting Buttons in my lap, I casually replied, “No, no work, but I have other things I wanted to get done this weekend…”

He grinned at me. “Other things, eh? Looking at naughty things on the internet I bet.”

My face burned. Aunt Carol absentmindedly swatted his meaty arm, “Oh leave her alone, babe, she’s a good girl.”

He stood there, the fool, staring at me full on. He winked, cracked a bubble of gum between his teeth. “Yeah, no, I’m sure she is,” he said in an arrogant voice.

I wanted to hit him. I couldn’t decide what irritated me more. The fact that my aunt was so dismissive about me, or the fact that this meathead had technically guessed one of my two big secrets within 5 minutes of meeting me. Nevermind, he would never know how right he was, and I certainly would never let him know my other secret.

I hugged and kissed my aunt goodbye and they hauled their luggage out to the car.

Hadn’t he gone to school, like a decent, normal boy? Where on earth did my aunt even find him? Why was any of this happening, for that matter? It was annoying, to say the least. What was the point of anything if idiots like him could just swan in and take advantage of a vulnerable widow like me dear aunt? Although honestly, at this very second she didn’t look quite so vulnerable as I would have liked.

Jared hoisted up her bags onto his broad shoulders, the spidery edges of some tattoos on his belly peaking out as he stretched upwards. He went out to the car, came back in and then slapped my aunt’s ass as she grabbed her coat, and she both giggle and jiggled, reminding me of a very happy Miss Piggy. Bizarrely, he then spread his arms wide and demanded a hug from me, too. Before I knew it, he was squashing his indecently hard body against mine and squeezing me goodbye as well.

I stammered a goodbye and closed the door, nothing but my own surprise and Buttons’s bored green eyes to keep me company. I sniffed my sweater: I smelled like him now. Gross. I tore it off and tossed it onto the sofa, unsettled by the whole thing. So what if I did look at naughty stuff on the internet? Who was he to judge, when he was running around with a woman more than twice his age?

I opened my laptop, clicking to open a secret browser, looking over my shoulder to see if Buttons had anything to say about it. Don’t judge me, but my favorite these days was “2 tattooed jocks fuck teen” and I had watched it dozens of times before. I know, I know. But at least if I kept coming back to only this one clip, it would mean that I’d only technically watched one of them, which was less terrible than watching a whole bunch of them, right? I’d stop eventually, I was just stressed these days, that’s all. I would give it up one day, definitely. I was a good girl, and this kind of nonsense was definitely not in my life plan. But oh well, it was just me and Buttons here, and I was pretty tired, and it didn’t count since it was just this same clip anyway.

The familiar figures moved across the screen and I watched. Some badly behaved college boys, ink all over their hard chest and abs, roughly passing a girl between them. I was ashamed. My hand found its way into my skirt and I desperately rubbed that shame away. Then it was at the best part – the part where they’re both, well, you know, and she’s completely and utterly, well. You can just imagine. What a dirty slut she was. I sighed. It would all be fine just as long as I never watched anything more than this one clip. It would be OK, I’m sure.

Just then, with a little flutter of horror I realized: they look like him.

I looked closer at the screen and crunched up my face. Yup, just like him. Darn it. The same cocky smiles, the same toned shoulders and rough hands. I sat back, a little irritated. Well, he had completely ruined that for me, the idiot. I quickly closed the window and found Pinterest instead. Maybe the problem was that I was thinking too classic. Too traditional. Maybe instead of petit fours inside the rose desserts, it should be white éclairs? Buttons looked on, completely uninterested in my mortal soul.

Well, they do say the devil finds work for idle hands, and that weekend, well, let’s just say I didn’t have much of anything to do and hands kept finding their way to where they shouldn’t be. Buttons and I sat around and watched series; I cooked and added a paragraph here and there to my essay, slept in late the next morning…

But each time I shut my eyes, he was there behind my eyelids, stupid grey hoodie half unzipped and a big stupid grin on his face. And without being able to stop it, my mind hit “play” to its own evil little clip where he was somehow melded into my favorite forbidden pleasure. Well, at least it had been my favorite until he had tainted it. Well, tainted it even further. Whatever. You know what I mean.

Anyway the solution was simple; I’d just have to keep my eyes open, then. I fell asleep eventually, but I made sure to keep my hands outside the covers, you know.

Time floated away and soon it was Sunday evening and they came back, much the same way they had left. Jared seemed even more tanned than when he left and my aunt even ditzier somehow, and with more hippie bangles jangling on her arms. They were sorry, the flight was delayed a little, then there was some traffic on the drive back, and they hoped I hadn’t been bored here all alone.

I was happy to leave, shall we say, the scene of the crime, and was hurriedly packing my backpack; my warm and innocent bed only a 10-minute bus ride away.

“Oh don’t be silly, sweetie! Sleep here the night and I’ll drop you in the morning. Your mom won’t mind.”

But will I?

Jared seemed completely unfazed by this suggestion, as outrageous as it was. It was like he just waltzed around all his life vacationing with women his mother’s age and sleeping in houses with …girls.

I cleared my throat to explain that I was a good girl and so on and that I couldn’t possibly do that, but she was speaking again, rattling off in that excited way of hers.

“We can all watch a movie or something, I’m exhausted.”

I most certainly did not want to watch a movie, and even more so didn’t want to do “or something”. Ok, just relax. Maybe my nasty secret (not that one, the other one) was making me jump to conclusions. I looked over at her two seater couch and imagined how hard I was going to judge this boy if he even so much as tried to get a crush on me, which he obviously would.

“Ok, sure, we can watch a movie. Or have an early night. Whatever.”

Well, I was now in Aunt Carol’s house, with a stranger, a stranger who was probably paid to you-know-what no less. I was irritated that they seemed totally unashamed of themselves. I suddenly had a thought. What if I paid him? He couldn’t turn it down, it was his job basically, so he’d have to do whatever I told him, right? Technically? What a stupid thought. I went and sat on the couch and played with Buttons. My aunt flitted in and out of her room as she unpacked her bags, then, and you won’t believe this, then he came and sat next to me.

“Get all your ‘work’ done this weekend?” he said, teasing me and making two quotes in the air as he spoke. I would later learn that this was one of his most stubborn habits. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and the redder I went, the more it seemed to suggest exactly the answer I didn’t want to give.

“Aunt Carol? Aunt Carol I think I’d better go home actually. I really need to finish this essay for tomorrow and I have classes in the morning anyway. I can still catch the bus …”

He chuckled at me, getting far too close on the sofa.

Aunt Carol stuck her head through the living room door and frowned at me, a half-filled toiletry back in her hands. “Oh sweetie, you’re so studious. Such a good girl. Fine, but why doesn’t Jared take you? Jared just take my car, be a lamb.”

“Yes ma’am” he said, and I wanted to smack him.

“Seriously, you’ve never had a boyfriend? Not even one?” he was saying.

I couldn’t believe he had gotten this nosy in a car trip this short. Was he deliberately driving slower than he needed to? “No, not one, and I might say it’s not really any of your business, jeez.”

He paused a little. “Really, but not even one?”

I fumed. He was driving my aunt’s car like he owned it, spreading his legs wider than you’d think any human male was capable of, resting his elbow on the lip of the window like a total ass.

“Nope, not one. I suppose that’s a little hard for someone like you to understand, huh?” I could hear my mother’s voice in my own again.

“Aw, now what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nevermind. Whatever.” I looked out the window, contemplating diving out and running home, anything to get rid of this smell of his cologne, filling up the car now. He was pretty hot, okay, if that’s what you were wondering.

“No, what do you mean by that? Someone like me?”

“Jeez, I don’t know. Forget it,” and I wanted to, but before I knew it I was blurting out, “why are you with my aunt anyway? It’s weird.” I sounded like a little kid.

He grinned. “Weird? What’s weird about it? Your aunt’s a beautiful woman,” he said this last piece like a joke, and it made me defensive.

I love Aunt Carol, even though she had bad taste and freckled hands. “Yes, and she’s also inherited a lot of beautiful money, too” I said, thinking this was a pretty good quip, even if I did say so myself. I’m a pretty witty person, it just usually takes me the next day to think of things. The grin fell off his face and he stared at the road.

“Ah, I forgot, you’re only 18. You think that love has nothing to do with money, and money has nothing to do with sex?”

My ears pricked at this word. In my family, we call it you-know-what. “I’m 19, actually, and I’m not an idiot. How old are you? You’re old enough to be her son. That’s pretty disgusting.” To be honest, I didn’t know why I had such a flash of anger towards him, this person I had barely spent 10 minutes with.

He looked like he didn’t know either. “Well, I think it’s disgusting that you think so little of your aunt that you just assume she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

I opened my mouth to speak but he interrupted me.

“And by the way, have you considered that she may be using me?”

I looked at his smooth, boyish hands on the wheel, his unlined forehead. Nope. He was definitely preying on her; there was no way around it. Besides, I was never wrong on questions of morality, although obviously he didn’t know this yet.

“That’s ridiculous. She’s in a vulnerable condition. My uncle passed only a few months ago, did you know that?”

I couldn’t believe how personal things had gotten. In my home, we usually said …well, we just said nothing. Speaking of which, we were almost there.

“I did, because she told me. She’s a strong woman, I know that. But now it’s time for her to have a bit of fun, don’t you think?”

“Oh and I suppose that bit of fun is you?” I asked, with as much sarcasm as I could muster, secretly hoping he wouldn’t say the s-word again.

With a slick hand, he gestured towards his body and smiled a big cheesy grin. “Damn right it is!” he said.

“Gross”

Was he actually even wearing anything under that hoodie?

“You know, your aunt spent her whole life like you.”

“Like what?”

“Judgmental. Close-minded. I took care of that.” He chuckled, and I couldn’t help but stare at his crotch for a split second. Gross.

We had arrived in my drive way, thank the Lord. I gathered up my bag and tried to look indignant, although it did feel as though we were cut short in the middle of the conversation, and I don’t think he quite understood yet just how wrong he was.

“Be honest, are you going to keep seeing her?” Man he looked like such a douche, sitting there, legs spread wide, sideways smile and about 150% too much attitude, as though he was in his own music video or something.

He raised a single naughty eyebrow at me and smiled even more sideways. “Are you asking me if you get to keep seeing me?” he said, then winked.

I slammed the car door and marched inside. All I wanted to do was think about how wrong he was, but all I could think about was how my butt looked to him as I walked away and up the stairs.

Just remember everyone, God never gives you any burdens that he knows you can’t handle.

My burden’s name was “Jared” (idiot) and my God did I carry him everywhere with me. To classes. As I watched TV. When I was alone, in bed, at night. Well, you can see the problem.

He was everywhere in real life too, and everyone in the family begrudgingly accepted his weird new role in my aunt’s life. He seemed part sex-coach, part cheerleader, part gay friend. Thankfully there aren’t too many gays in my town, but I have seen a few, and I like to think I know what I’m looking for – Jared was irritating, and never really settled on a side, I felt. He was clean shaven, boyish, but still predatory. He was a bit of chameleon, changing subtly depending on who he spoke to. He chatted easily with my aunt about yoga and scatter cushions for her living room, and stood outside our house and vaped and wore name brand loungewear and a gold chain. He had the manners of a thug, yet somehow people responded to him as though he was a dapper gentleman. It was confusing. Not only was he spending so much time at our house, he was refusing to fit into any easy categories. Like I said, what an ass.

Anyway, let me cut to the chase here. He kissed me. It was one afternoon and I had no classes. I was killing time at my aunt’s, waiting for her so we could go out and shop for towels later. He barged in, found me in the kitchen and for some stupid reason, everything went quiet and he leaned in and kissed me. I froze. I wanted to tell him to do it again, but I was so angry with myself for thinking this that I blurted, “So, how much do I owe you now?”

And he looked a little hurt. I ran out the kitchen and sat down at my laptop, where house rules dictated I couldn’t be bothered.

“By the way, you should clear your browser history” he said, closing the fridge and grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl. My skin nearly crawled off my face. He sidled up close to me, so close that his taut belly was right next to my face, so close I could smell a distant shower and …something else on his skin.

“You’re not my type, you know,” I said, praying to God his crotch didn’t move a single inch closer to my downturned eyes.

“Your type? Apparently, I am though,” he laughed, tapped the screen twice with his finger and then walked out with his stupid banana.

That night, I masturbated so furiously I think I nearly passed out.

The road to hell is paved with …well, I don’t know really. I don’t know how I ended up here, alone with Jared, as alone as Adam and Eve were in the garden. You know, my horizons were expanding. His argument that I was just as uptight as all the other women in my family had struck a nerve.

He was wrong: I was a reasonable person; I didn’t have any sexual hang ups, no way. Through a vague series of decisions which I had trouble justifying to myself later on, I got him to agree to drive me out to the Carlisle forest parking lot, which even I knew was a place people went to …do things.

My quiet rebellion took the form of a marijuana cigarette, and after some thought I decided this was not me falling into temptation, but rather me inoculating myself from it; doing research, you know, so I was prepared if I ever was tempted for real and so on. We parked and he rolled down the window to rest his elbow. Did he ever wear anything else but sportswear and caps? He pulled a wonky white cigarette from his pocket and gently tapped its dry end on the dashboard, his fat fingers seeming too crude for the task.

“Now, since you’re only a baby, you should just have a little, ok?” he said.

I snorted. Imagine him, this ruffian, telling me to moderate myself. He pressed his lips together, held it there between them and lit it delicately, focused intently for a second on breathing it to life. Then he turned to me and offered it. I took it gingerly, placed it to my lips, puffed a little then spat out a jagged ribbon of smoke. That’s it? That’s all? I gave it back to him.

He was giggling.

“Yeah, yeah, good job. But try again now, and this time, really suck.”

I shot him an unimpressed look.

“Sorry, I know, you already suck. Just inhale, ok? Like this.” He leaned forward in his seat, the leather creaking under him, and I could smell the smoke on his breath as he hovered his palm over my chest.

“Breath in deep, into your lungs, so that your chest touches my hand, ok?”

He was like a brother. Like a pervy, douche idiot of a brother. And I wanted to kiss him again. How dare he.

I did as he said, and a hot puff of smoke penetrated my lungs, and my chest rose up to gently meet his waiting hand. A wild buzz filled my head; I was so dizzy I felt as though I had been slapped.

“Good …good, ok hold it in now” he said quickly, pressing down hard on my chest and looking at me with laughing eyes. I held on as much as I could, but the burning eventually got the better of me, and I let go.

“Wow,” I coughed and sputtered, giddy.

“What a lightweight” he said smiling. His hand stayed exactly where it was.

“You didn’t say it would hurt,” I whined, “it really burns.”

The leather creaked again as he moved his hand up to my throat and stroked it there for a moment, then dragged it down again to rest on my breasts.

With my buzzing head, I looked down at his hands, then at him.

“Your hands are so soft” I said, which was totally not what I wanted to say then. I wanted to tell him to take his filthy hands off of me, and just what did he think he was doing and did I say he could? But all that came out was, “I didn’t imagine they’d be so soft.”

The moment was so awkward I fumbled and let the cigarette drop. It fell into the seat crevice, not before burning a quick pink hole on my thigh, and we both went scrambling after it.

“Ha! Only users lose drugs,” he said and fished it out, although to do so meant he had to stretch the full length of his body over mine and grope around the other side of my seat. He triumphantly held up the now extinguished cigarette, but instead of going over to his side of the car again, he stayed there, on my lap, smiling. For some reason, this seemed incredibly funny to me. I burst out laughing and he laughed with me.

He was laying on my lap, smiling up at me, striking joke poses like some 50s belle in a magazine shoot. He put his hands under his chin, pouting, pretended to fluff his hair.

“Cut it out!” I laughed. I looked at his face, suddenly seeing for the first time how open it was, how hopeful and simple and playful. It made me feel weird.

“You sell your body for sex,” I said, and instantly regretted it. It was like I was unable to say all the things I should be saying, and could only blather like an idiot.

He didn’t respond. He lit the thing again, took a long drag and blew the stream of smoke out the window, watching it go. He took another hit then stubbed it out on the ashtray. His face changed.

“Mel, I don’t sell sex, you know.”

“Then what do you sell?” There was no more judgment in my voice. I really was curious. I really wanted to know everything. I hated playing the clueless religious girl all the time; was it so bad that I just wanted to know? Did he kiss them? Did they pay for his time? Per act? Per each …body part?

“I provide a service.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah… Look at me, what do you see?”

“An idiot.” I giggled.

“Exactly, you see a totally handsome and charming young buck. I’m a machine, Mel. I can fuck holes into walls, I can ruin a marriage just by looking at a woman’s ass right. I’m young. I’m hot.”

I was giggling uncontrollably now at the thought of him with his you-know-what stuck in a bit of drywall.

“But I give women what they really want, and for that service I get compensation. In this case, money.”

I had never heard him speak with so much passion. “So what do they really want then…?” I asked quietly, the hot fuzzy feeling in my head was starting to creep down to the rest of my body.

“Let me show you” he said, and sat up quickly.

The air in the car seemed heavier all of a sudden. My eyes felt like they were swimming in my skull. The thought of this made me start giggling again. He reached out and placed two hands on my shoulders, shooting his gaze straight at mine, like a laser.

It shut me right up and I stared back, hypnotized.

He began cooing at me softly, with a buttery, unspeakably sexy look on his face. “Mel, oh my god Mel, have I said how beautiful you are? You’re like a sexy witch, I feel like you’ve cast a spell on me… your eyes …”

Here he slowly, slowly extended gentle fingertips and touched the edge of my cheek, as though he was surprised I was made of flesh and blood and not mist. His eyes were riveted right on mine, and as overwhelming as they were, I couldn’t look away. There was nothing at that moment but the stillness in the car and his rapt attention on me, so raw it was more like worship, so intense it felt like a spotlight, but one that was not only illuminating me, but devouring me, seeing down into concealed depths. Blood rushed to my face and I stammered, trying to say something.

“Is this …is this real?” I said.

He smiled one long, slow, languid smile and then snapped his eyes away from mine, throwing himself back into his seat. “Nah. That was just an illustration. That’s what I’m talking about. That feeling, that thing you felt right there? That’s what women want. And how much would you pay for that?”

I tried to think, but my head was a little scrambled.

“Yeah, well, they pay a lot,” he said.

We sat in silence.

“I’ll probably have to pay someone to have sex with me one day you know. Or just die a virgin,” I said, surprised at how easily I had spoken this confession, and how it hurt me the moment I said it out loud. All at once I felt like I wanted to cry.

He looked at me quizzically. “Hey, hey Mel, don’t say stuff like that. God, your family is really fucked up.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly.

My tongue felt loose and it suddenly seemed like, well, why not tell him all this stuff? He was the last person on earth who was allowed to judge me. Listening to people was basically part of his job, anyway.

“Do you ever, you know, with …younger women?” The voice I spoke with was not my own, and seemed to come from far away, somewhere outside my body. This, I guess, was what they called being “high”. It was nice I guess. He looked at me again, the quizzical look intensifying.

“Well, you’re not really my type, you know,” he laughed.

It was like a stab. The moment was so strange, and I was there, desperately trying to grasp what I was saying and he was saying, that this little quip seemed to me like a sword sunk straight into my heart. Without thinking about it, two fat tears rolled down my cheeks.

“Hey! Don’t cry! Oh man, just chill. It’s OK. OK?’

He looked genuinely concerned. He reached over the folded ends of his hoodie sleeve and smeared away the tears. “Look, no offense, but you’re …how do I put this? You’re young. You’re kind of inexperienced. And you’ve got …issues. About sex.”

I sobbed loudly, “I do not have issues,” I said, realizing that the snot bubble on my nose at that point was seriously undermining my credibility. It felt like one of the arguments I would have with an older brother about whether I was or was not too much of a ‘fraidy cat to ride the same rollercoaster all the big kids did.

“Oh yeah? You look at some pretty messed up shit online.”

“That’s private, you creep.”

“Whatever.”

I was still smarting from the suggestion that he had anything other an all-consuming obsession with deflowering me. For the first time, I found myself with the ridiculous thought that Aunt Carol had something that I didn’t.

The world went on outside us, busy, far removed and uninterested in our little car-sized drama.

“…if I paid you?” I heard myself saying in a stranger’s voice. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it was scary. I wanted him. And I wanted him to grab me and throw me around and call me a slut and fuck me till it hurt. Oh God where did that come from?

“Mel, you’re high, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Don’t be so patronizing to me.” It was a word I had just learned, and was proud I had remembered it.

“I’m not! But you’re out of your depth. This was a mistake.”

“No it wasn’t.”

‘You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Yes, yes, I know, I’m a baby and I couldn’t possibly understand anything. Whatever. You’re only a few years older than me, you know. What makes you such an expert?”

“I never said I was -”

“You don’t do anything mystical, you just sell your body. For sex. Whatever else you say about it, at the end of the day that’s all it is. You’re the one in denial.”

He went quiet. In my small, teenaged way, I felt this as a victory, and pressed on.

‘Show it to me. I want to see it. Show me what my idiot aunt thinks is worth throwing her life away for.” I looked down at the dark wet streaks my tears had left on his cotton sleeve.

“Show it to you? My…? You’re crazy,” he said.

“I’ll give you $100 dollars if you show me your …dick.” I had never said that word out loud, not least to a man.

He stared at me, jaw working silently. Perhaps I was indeed just saying stuff because I was high.

“Ok, fine. What’s the big deal? You think I care? This is so fucking immature…” he said, loosening the drawstring on his pants. The next few moments unfolded quickly, but would remain burnt into my mind for many, many years to come.

He wasn’t wearing any underwear, to my surprise. He yanked down the elastic of his grey track pants and there it was, the first real life penis I had ever seen, a beautiful thing, kind of scary looking. All I could do was stare. With a little flutter of recognition, I realized he was slightly …hard. It was a smooth cock, smooth as the rest of him, dead-straight and milky white, the head of it a bruised pink color ending in a flared rim under which two, just two, fine blue veins disappeared. I was mesmerized. Dicks, it turns out, are rather complicated up close, and not just some devil-tubes designed to poke you and your virtue to hell. It was its own little organism. And it looked so smooth. My mind flashed to how pillowy soft his hands had felt on my chest only a moment ago – or was it hours ago? I couldn’t tell.

“Satisfied? Do they teach you at bible camp what to do with one of these?” he scoffed.

Actually I was mightily satisfied, but said nothing. I hated seeing him so defensive all of a sudden. I wanted him to be playful again, and lighthearted. I wanted him to look at me like he did a moment ago. I guess I would pay for that feeling again after all. I was too tightly wound. I was too uptight. Maybe he had a point and wasn’t a total meathead.

“Well that’s a very nice penis,” I said, hoping for the first time that I hadn’t hurt his feelings. I felt the beginning of a headache forming. He nodded and tucked himself back into the waist band, and I must admit, I was sorry when he put it away again, and I stared for a few moments at his crotch, almost missing the sight of it there.

“Sorry for calling you an idiot all the time.”

“No problem.”

“And sorry I insulted your …profession.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“So …will you?”

He flashed nervous eyes at me. I don’t know if it was because I had just seen his pink, bulging cock, but he suddenly seemed kind of naked in the way he was looking at me.

“Let’s go home,” he said.

He zipped his hoodie up as high as it would go and started the engine, and we drove home in silence. I felt the smoky feeling in my head subside a little, and came down with the strong impression that things were now changed permanently, and would never be the same again. It was comfortable with him now, somehow, and yet deeply terrifying all the same.

He dropped me outside my house.

“Use some eye drops and brush your teeth. If you still feel the same tomorrow morning, I’ll think about it.”

I used some eye drops. I brushed my teeth. I lowered my eyes and went up to my room. Even if I had bumped into my mom, she probably wouldn’t have detected anything, seeing as her pamphlets probably told her that those who did drugs sprouted syphilis sores on their forehead in the shape of the word UNCLEAN or something.

I closed my bedroom door and tried to think.

Did I really have issues? Issues about you-know-what? What was the point of being a virtuous virgin if nobody wanted me anyway? It was an ugly thought, that men would want something other than purity in a woman. That Reverend Peters maybe didn’t know everything about the hearts and minds of men. Or women, for that matter. It had never occurred to me before that my virginity could actually be a handicap. I felt thrown off balance. And worse, I now had three secrets. Or even four? Five?

I went to my bed and lifted the covers, pulling out a secret box hidden underneath. Stashed inside the box: a few items that Aunt Carol had mercifully pretended she hadn’t noticed me steal from her Oh! So Good bag of tricks. There was a small packet of “personal lubricant”, which I had not decided how I would use yet, a cheaply made black g-string with a magenta bow at the center, some body glitter, a ribbed condom and a small jar of edible chocolate body paint.

To another woman, all of this might have seemed like tacky junk, but to me it was a little treasure chest of something powerful and dangerous, a dress up kit where I could play at being everything I wasn’t. I wasn’t that surprised to see his dick, honestly, but I was surprised by how much I liked it. I briefly thought about how there didn’t seem to be any room, on any of my Pinterest boards, for such a tacky pink-and-black theme like this one.

These new thoughts thrummed over me: maybe my mother was wrong. Maybe Aunt Carol, with her freckled hands and over processed hair and mid-life crisis …maybe she was right. Maybe he was, too. I stripped down, slid on the g-string and took a long look at my reflection. Wrapped round the mirror frame were faded and torn cherub stickers from first grade, some plastic flowers. But inside the frame was a young girl in black lingerie. It was a striking, and uncomfortable mess. It was an accurate picture of my life, in other words.

I ran experimental hands down over my body, trying to find answers there, trying to determine that precise fold or curve where my virtue was hidden, or else proof that I was as bad as him. I found only soft, warm flesh, and skin that made me think of him again, in the car. Vulnerable and pinkish – how could anything be wrong with flesh?

My nipples protested against the cold. I watched goose bumps form on my upper thighs. Jared didn’t judge me, although I had judged him. I thought again about my request. His open ended answer. My head was no longer as fluffy, and a little ache of embarrassment was growing, but something else: I didn’t change my mind. I had only said what I had been thinking for a long time now, ever since he appeared in my aunt’s life months ago.

I looked at myself once more, then got back dressed. I didn’t want to be like my mother. And I didn’t want to be like Aunt Carol either. I wanted to be my own person, and do what I wanted to do.

And at that point, there were many, many things I wanted.

The next day, and the whole of the week after that, I heard nothing from Jared.

I didn’t open my hidden box again, and tried to pretend I wasn’t offended that he wasn’t just dying to hear what my decision was. I couldn’t bear the humiliation of texting him, even though I had his number. So I waited.

He wasn’t with Aunt Carol either, who seemed disturbingly unaffected by his absence. They had been a little cool with each other ever since they came back from their vacation. Didn’t she care that he was probably off with other women? Throwing that easy smile off to anyone who had the cash for it? But she genuinely didn’t seem to care, and I was irritated, both for myself and on her behalf.

After two weeks had passed, I more or less resigned myself; the weird Jared-shaped hole in my life had been allowed to get way, way too big anyway. Besides, two weeks was just enough for two times at church, which seemed to be the magic number to snap me out of …it. I had gone more than fourteen whole days without watching any porn, and perhaps that many hours without imagining it, with Jared plugged into all the leading roles and with my own innocent limbs instead of that girl’s.

I was doing well.

So, of course that’s when he decided to pitch up again.

My mom and I were at my aunt’s, who was graciously hosting our bake sale prep but not interested in the least in helping, especially after we didn’t laugh at her joke to put booze in the cupcakes. Then he waltzed right in, like he owned the place. My mother’s face, even if it wasn’t already halfway to doing it already, nearly fell to the floor, and she stammered and tried to introduce herself to “Jeffrey”.

My aunt seemed a little boastful and showed him off, proud that her contribution to the day was not a box of baking equipment for a church function, but a hot stud in a muscle shirt.

“Oh hi Jeffrey,” I said, hoping he’d catch a good glimpse of how modestly I was dressed. He didn’t. He was instantly between my mom and aunt somehow, and they were cooing over him like he was a new baby, except the baby had thick biceps and you could see his nipples.

“Carol you’ve never bought him over, I keep telling you, why don’t you bring him over for dinner.”

“And share him? Never”

“Carol!”

“He’s not interested in old fart things like dinner you know.”

“Now ladies, ladies…” he said, as though he was born to fend of stay at home moms throwing themselves at him. I knew my aunt had fully lost her senses but I had to say I was surprised my mother seemed to like him. He had both his hands raised, and both his eyebrows too, as if he’d be breaking up a fight between them any second now.

“Come help us in the kitchen Jeffrey,” mom said, but my aunt had pulled him onto the couch with her. He scarcely looked at me. In fact, I wondered if he remembered our exchange at all. What a slut. Can you call a man a slut?

The two women then busied themselves with fixing him something to drink, and they both simply had to do it, and they were both sure the other one wasn’t doing it correctly. I was alone in the living room with him, again, because of course I was.

“Nice of you to grace us with your presence,” I said.

He beamed.

“Aww… little Mel missed me! Well, I missed you too.”

“You’re such a liar.”

“Yeah OK, you got me, I don’t usually miss people. Let’s get out of here – your mom’s going to make me frost cookies or something. Wanna go for a drive?”

I eyed him suspiciously. Not much of a gentleman. “Fine.”

We made our excuses (we’ll go to the mall to fetch more sugar!) and were back in the car again, which was strange since the day before I had vowed up and down that nothing he could do would make it up to me, and I didn’t care how sorry he was for ignoring me for ages, I was a good girl, and he’d better not dare treat me like that again.

But instead, I sat nervous in the car – this time, his car – and I didn’t know what to say. It seemed pretty useless, in hindsight, to read about all those parables and fairy tales if I was just going to lose my virginity to some toy boy in a car. Oh my god where did that come from?

By the time we stopped in the mall parking lot, all two weeks of my church-going had been undone. He turned off the engine. But instead of saying something, anything, he moved to get out and go into the store. Didn’t we have the hugest thing to talk about?

“Jared…” I started.

“Yeah?”

This was all wrong. He hadn’t even glanced at my skirt, the shortest one I owned. “Well, I went home and thought about it…”

“Thought about what?”

I wanted to die. My face stung, but he laughed,

“Hey, I’m just kidding! Chill. You take things too seriously.”

“I want to,” I said quickly. Perhaps a bit of romance could be wrangled from this wreck after all. It had to be him anyway. All the boys in my youth group were hideous.

“You want to …what?” he said, teasing, then ducked out of the way as I tried to punch his arm. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you say it, I know how you Christian girls are.”

I suppressed a smile, even though I was majorly offended. Seriously.

“Good. Ok. I’m busy this week. I’ll come and fetch you on Thursday and we’ll go to my place. Bring $800.”

I swallowed hard. Was he joking again? This was outrageous. Surely he didn’t expect me to…?

“What, you thought you wouldn’t have to pay?”

I would have died rather than admit that I did think that, actually, and assumed that only, well, older ladies had to pay. Surely he should be grateful that I was letting him… and not the other way round…

“No, of course not,” I said, not wanting him to catch even a whiff of desperation. Just business then. Nothing funny here at all. There was the small detail of me not actually having $800, but I pushed away the thought.

We sat silent for a while.

“I’ll bump the price down a bit, if you’ll agree to let me do things my way.”

I stared at him.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, and he laughed. We went inside the mall and bought sugar.

The only thing I had in my sexual arsenal was a stolen black g-string and my one short skirt, which I already knew had absolutely zero effect on him. Everything had been fastidiously organized: I was “going to Alice’s house for a sleepover” and both my mom and aunt were too engrossed in chatting about when Jared would come back they barely noticed. He would come at 5, when I was the only one home, and Alice had been bribed and threatened to within an inch of her life to play along. The stage was set, and I was realizing with some irritation that I had no outfit for the occasion.

It didn’t matter, because the second we arrived at his house, he ordered me to strip down. No hello. No jokes, no anything. Just, “Take that off. Anyway, don’t you wear that to church?”

I did, but tried to act as though a response was beneath me. In truth, the most shameful thing at that moment was that I had managed to scratch together just $641, but what was he going to do? Call the police? ‘Hello officer, this lovely girl has robbed me of one sex and didn’t cough up, please arrest her’ – I think not.

“Take it off? I’ll get cold” I said.

“Oh, you’ll warm up.”

His house was sparse, a bit like I had expected, the den of someone who was a High School student only a second ago, and the recent money that had come into the decoration hadn’t quite pushed out the Playstation or frat-boy posters. The entire place smelled like his cologne.

I walked to the bathroom to get out of my clothes and get things underway.

“Where are you going? I said strip.”

Oh.

I cautiously unbuttoned my skirt and took it off, then removed my top as well, lingering a little in my bra and the g-string, wondering what he would have to say about them.

“All the way, everything off,” he said. He was sitting on a bar stool and running his eyes over my body. Did he like my breasts? Was I turning him on at all? Was this just business as usual? It was hard to say.

“You know it’s my first time, right?” I said as I peeled off the bra and panties and laid them down over my clothes, folded neatly on another bar stool.

“Yeah it’s my first time, too. My first time deflowering a bratty little princess like you. And I’m going to enjoy it.”

I was too shocked to say anything. I didn’t know what to think first; that he thought so little of me …or that he seemingly enjoyed thinking it. You know, for a guy who had talked me into this and basically led me astray, you’d think he’d take more responsibility for all of this. I stood still, waiting for my next order, I guess. Could he call the Better Business Bureau if he found out I didn’t have the cash? What do you think $159 worth of “his way” would look like, anyway?

I straightened my shoulders and stood tall, stark naked. Let’s see what everyone makes such a fuss about.

He slid off the bar stool and sidled up to me, then, maintaining an excruciating inch of distance at all times, he moved round my body, top to bottom, the front and the back, as though sizing me up. Each little hair stood on end under his gaze. I had the dumb realization that of all the porn clips I had seen, curiously they missed all these beginning parts. Were we officially started now? Was I, you know, “on the clock”?

“You need to relax,” he said, still surveying me. “You can almost see the tension in your muscles.” He stepped back and delivered his diagnosis: “You need some weed.”

I shook my head. Once was enough, that’s for sure.

“Ah, I thought we were going to do this my way?”

“But …weed makes me cough. And say stupid things.”

“Incorrect. That was a stupid thing to say, and if you smoke now with me, then you’ll start speaking sense.”

“But…”

“You didn’t come here with any money, did you?”

My mind raced. I said nothing.

“No, you didn’t. So it’s on the house. But on my terms. And I say smoke, so you must.”

I could have protested there, could have told him I had indeed brought money, that he had to do what I said, but something made me bite my tongue. I was curious about where this was going. I could stand to listen. At least for a little while, right?

I nodded, and he turned and started to fuss with something inside a little tin he had on the table. It was pretty inconvenient, having to stand there like an idiot while he chopped and rolled, but I bet he kind of enjoyed it, what with me being such a despicable Christian girl. If I’m honest, I also get irritated with how much of a killjoy I could be. Maybe he could beat it out of me. Oh my god where did that come from?

“Oh Jesus will you just relax? You look as though I’m about to bite you,” he said, handing me a faintly glowing joint.

I took the joint. Apparently, it doesn’t take very long to get completely used to being naked. By the time he had turned around again, the whole thing seemed almost boring to me. Maybe all this sex business was actually easy as pie. I took it in my hands and inhaled a long, careful puff.

“Don’t forget to inhale! Here,” he said, tapping his own chest. I liked that had taught me something. That we had this secret between us. But the secrets sure where racking up.

The smoke went in me, again, and this time I knew to relax into the weird, warping sensations it brought to my head, my face, my lips, the tips of my fingers. I started giggling, then I giggled at the fact that I was giggling. I took another drag, just to see if I had the technique down. I did.

He was leaning back on his bar stool again, one hand casually propping up his head, looking at me with an amused expression.

“You know, I had my doubts, but you really are a pretty bad girl after all,” he said.

“Bad? No way, I’m a good girl.”

“Uh huh, that’s why you’re standing here buck naked and smoking a blunt in my house right now.”

He had a point.

I was reminded again how smoking seemed to take the edge off things. How the stakes just didn’t seem that high anymore. And how he looked different somehow. Cute, even. My head fell back, of its own accord, and I relished the sensation of my ponytail brushing the skin on my lower back.

“Loosen your hair,” he said.

And I did. For a brief moment, a little bubble of my shampoo scent puffed into the room against his overwhelming cologne. It died down instantly.

He stood up, grabbed my hand and led me to a low, distressed looking futon. We sat, and I swear I was overcome for a moment by just how comfy, how lovely that futon was. I briefly considered a nap.

“You’re cute when you’re stoned,” he said. I laughed and snorted. I wanted to tell him that I had waited all day for this. That I was so horny I had had to sneak to the bathroom every half hour and touch myself. I had snuck all the way up to the brim of an orgasm and then backed off, saving it for later. For now.

He was up close all of a sudden, and every bit of my body seemed at that point to be made of feelers, of little receptors that prickled when he touched my shoulders, my neck. He leaned in and kissed me, and I melted. It was a quiet, unsure kiss, hesitating on the lips, not quite fully committing. It drove me nuts. I leaned further, trying to kiss him more deeply, but he pulled back, teasing a little.

“Ok, so first, you’ll have to suck me.”

Ok. Fine. I had seen this done. Piece of cake.

Slowly, he took off his shorts, then his white gym shirt. I gasped to see a massive, intricate black tattoo on the side of him, big as a shark’s bite, and made of complicated geometric shapes. “I never knew you had a tattoo!” I said, and momentarily forgot my assignment. He smiled and dutifully showed me all his other tattoos, watching my face as I looked at his hard forearms, his tight hips, and the one on his back.

“Now stop stalling and suck me,” he said again, and brandished a cock that had been rapidly growing while I was distracted with other things. It wasn’t nearly the same creature I had met the first time round. No, this was a mean, dangerous looking thing, more purple than pink, the dimensions of my forearm, only far more obscene somehow. I giggled. There was no way I was going to fit that in my mouth.

He playfully pushed me down on to the futon and I fell easily. Kneeling over me, he placed it right up to my lips, and I clasped two hands round it, thinking about how those girls in the clips seemed to swallow everything so easily. It smelt warm. Underneath his obnoxious cologne smell was a subtler, more powdery scent. The scent, perhaps, of his unadorned skin. I nuzzled his cock against my cheeks for a moment and then closed my lips around the tip, and heard him murmur his approval. There was something warm and delicious growing inside me as well; a diffuse, inner itch. I lowered my lips and tried to find space in my mouth for some of the length. The taste was something entirely new to me, like watermelon flavored gum completely ruined with too much salt. Like something faintly sour. Like accidentally licking iron.

“Don’t be shy, more,” he said, and I obeyed. I worked my lips and tongue up and down the length, which seemed only to get bigger the more I tried to fit it in. Those two small veins were there, bigger now, the same dim, washed out blue of this tattoos. His hand gripped the hair at the back of my head and tugged me forward, bringing all of it deep to the back of my throat, where I reflexively gagged, opening my mouth even more.

“Good. Go that deep,” he said softly.

I pulled back, sucked him in again, learning what made him swell on my tongue, and which angle I needed to tilt my head to accommodate the most of him. He pulled his dick out eventually, and it was wet and red. I felt my body twinge in anticipation of what was coming next.

“It’s always the most uptight ones that turn out to be such sluts…” he said to nobody in particular, absentmindedly stroking himself. I felt my own familiar wetness growing between my legs.

“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? After I fuck you, that’s it, you won’t be a virgin anymore.”

“I know.”

“And this is going to hurt a little.”

“I know.”

The inner itch was growing, and, perhaps because of the buzz in my head or because I was tired of having everyone tell me what to do and what not to do, I flopped back onto the futon and splayed my legs, hands clutching under each knee. It was such an outrageous gesture, I couldn’t help but start giggling again. A little drop glistened at the tip of his cock, menacingly. I could feel how excited I was. I could almost smell it. He smiled and leaned in again for a kiss, but didn’t linger this time.

“See? You’re an even bigger slut than I am.”

He kneeled above me again, the expanse of his chest suddenly seeming so huge to me. He lay his cock down onto my little slit, and lifted it up again, pulling a sticky thread of moisture up as he did so.

“Are you ready?” he asked, although the question seemed answered already. He pressed himself up into the wet entrance and pushed just a little, just the tiniest bit, and my body ached and resisted him. He pulled back.

“Does that hurt? I’m sorry.”

I smiled. It did hurt. But I lifted my hips up to invite him to continue.

The swollen head touched me again, and this time the movement was a little more insistent. My poor, unsuspecting body was dousing him furiously with wetness, and he moved into me, a tightness closing instantly around him and holding just his head inside me. It stung, badly.

“Shh… just breathe. Here,” he said and placed a hand on my chest. As we had done in the car, I slowed my breathing and filled my lungs till my chest rose up to meet his palm. It worked. Each breath soothed me, and the searing sensation where our bodies touched mellowed into something far, far more interesting.

With effort, he pulled clean out again, leaving an instant ache for him to be there again. I had waited all day for it, and now I wanted it again. I was a good girl, and I didn’t want to be any more, and this magnificent chunk of flesh was going to be my falling, was going to open new and profane doors for me…

“Cute little slut …you want it again, don’t you?” he said, and before I had time to confirm, the fat head was again inside me, stretching me out completely.

“Stop teasing me!” I giggled.

“Brat! Remember, we’re following my rules here. I’m the expert, you have no idea what you’re doing.”

It was a little comical, I suppose, how we were stuck together like this, his big dick plugged into me. I wondered what Reverend Peters would say if he had to walk in right now and saw exactly what I was doing to my little pussy.

The knotty muscles of his shoulders worked under his skin as he propped himself over my small, badly intoxicated body. We were, after everything was said and done, only a few years apart in age. This body of his was so young, so arrogant. It had none of my doubt and self flagellation. It was unapologetic. I wanted it. And I wanted to be like it.

“Ok, just a bit more. Keep breathing.”

With a careful tilt of his strong hips he slid another inch into me, then paused, the dark geometric shapes on his skin betraying his own breathing. I clasped at both of his forearms and anchored myself against waves of both pain and pleasure. This was not what I was expecting at all. I felt myself pulsing and trembling around his brutal cock, and then, to my utter disbelief, he pulled out again, showing the wet sheen my pussy left behind.

“You’re teasing me again!” I said.

“Of course I am. How else am I going to make you beg for it, huh?” he flashed that irritating, smack-worthy sideways smile at me and raised his eyebrows. I squirmed a little to shift my hungry hips closer to his, but he dodged me and swiftly pinned my arms down and smiled.

“You really are very bad at doing as you’re told” he said, then pecked my cheek. “Don’t worry though, I’ll teach you.”

The ache was unbearable. Slowly, so slowly I could scream, he slid himself back in again, and instead I wanted to scream from the pain as he went well past the old limit and probed me open inside with the full, unrestrained length of his cock. It took my breath away, and as my protests died on my lips, I slammed my eyes closed and tried to remember to breathe. It was glorious, and painful as hell, and it seemed, at the moment, such a bizarre idea that one person’s body should be inside another’s. I was really high, you know.

Wedged into me, filling my little pussy to the brim, he tenderly lowered his body onto mine and planted a few consolation kisses onto my neck and arms, as if to say sorry. “Now, don’t be such a baby anymore, you can take it. When you’re ready, I’m going to fuck you hard, OK? And I won’t hold back. But I won’t do a thing until you tell me.”

He buried his head into the crook of my neck and he breathed there, and I breathed with him, my body becoming accustomed to this new violation. I have to say, with a fat cock locked into me and my head buzzing the way it was, I couldn’t honestly see why people made such a fuss of sex. Surely even Reverend Peters could appreciate how delicious all of this was?

I squeezed and molded my body around him, getting used to the idea that I had lost my virginity now, officially, and seemed to have found instead something else naughty and delicious. He was rocking inside me gently now, with small movements that ground against my clit. We rested like this together for a while, relaxing into each other, and breathing. How hard could he fuck me, really? I wasn’t scared.

‘Ok, I’m ready,” I mumbled and arched my pelvis up to bump my hipbones against his. I could still call some of the shots, here, after all.

He flashed a devil’s grin at me and glanced down at himself submerged inside my little slit, then wrapped crude hands round my waist and pulled a little harder down my body, driving the very last few atoms of his hot dick into me. With one confident movement, he pulled away and slammed back into me, hard.

I screamed. This scream was muffled by another savage pump, then another, then another, my newly opened passage submitting to stroke after vicious stroke. He held me down firmly, the pads of his thumbs pressing down beside my belly button, the full force of his toned body pummeling down into mine with swift, focus slaps of his curling hips.

“Little bitch. You like that, don’t you?” he said angrily, a violent vein throbbing all the way from his jawline into his collarbone. I opened my mouth to protest, but he delivered a string of fierce, unbridled blows into my pussy, now streaming wet and clenching desperately all around him. I could scarcely utter a word. By now he had bumped me right to the edge of the futon, and my head dangled off the edge.

Each time he thrust into me, he lingered at the hilt, grinding his strong hips against mine and rubbing the smooth skin of his belly into my quivering clit. I was no stranger to these new feelings that were swirling inside, but this time, the sensations were more melting, sent deeper into me by his merciless cock, far deeper than I had imagined, even in my darkest thoughts. With each plunge, I nudged closer and closer to an orgasm that seemed to tighten and grow at the base of my spine, at the very deepest places he was touching me.

He was fucking me hard now, sending almost frightening waves into my open hips, but I didn’t care. My head lolled back on the futon and I opened completely to him, too exhausted to contain myself anymore. When it finally hit me, my bucking body slammed hard up against his, and wave after wave of warm convulsions moved through my inexperienced body. I think I must have cried out, or tried to, but the force of my coming pushed hard on his cock out and he slid out, fell back on the futon and watched my face contort with pleasure.

He moved closer again, and I felt the clench of his abdominal muscles as he came too. With a soft growl, he poured spurt after spurt of thick cum onto my still twitching belly. I was so thrilled by this I grabbed him close and held my body to his, the final sputters of his orgasm twitching inside his cock, now sandwiched by both of our bellies. We lay lie this for a moment, trying to find our breath again.

I had been attempting my whole life to be the good girl, to keep correct, and righteous, and chaste, with some dim expectation that this alone would win me the right to enjoy my body, or someone else’s. That sex was only for those who jumped through the right hoops, that it was expensive, and dangerous, and dirty, and something other only people did. And my Pinterest wedding board and porn habits were fighting a battle inside me: sex with all the trimmings, versus sex. Raw sex. Sex that didn’t need a justification, or a white dress, or a guest list of church members. With a blank realization it hit me: this body was always mine. I was always free to use it, to enjoy it. And to give it away entirely…

“Are you sure that was your first time?” he said, gathering himself a little and smiling at me.

“I know. I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner.”

I felt dreamy, expansive. He didn’t seem quite so smug to me anymore.

With a casual kiss on my forehead he peeled his body away from mine and we both noticed with some shock a large smear of blood. It was pressed between both of us, like a red Rorschach blot, two mirror images of a bloody tree, or a hand with too many fingers.

Panic flashed in his eyes.

“Oh shit. I did hurt you…”

I looked down, freshly deflowered and still ruminating on my new persona as Girl That Fucks, and shrugged. “I don’t think my body has ever been happier,” I said simply, and I meant it.

He flopped onto his back and we both stared at the ceiling for some time, lost in our own thoughts, only the flesh of our arms connecting us.

It was a brave new world, you know. My virginity, for all the fuss I had made of it for years, was nothing but a thin membrane separating me off from a world I had never even imagined before. And now it was gone. I tried to find some shame in my body somewhere, to see if I could return to my old mindset where this boy laying beside me represented the ultimate threat. But there was none. Everything felt right and good.

In fact, what wasn’t fitting was …all the other stuff. Why have a wedding at all? What was the point of covering up the skin, lovely as it was? Why marry one person anyway, when we were all in possession of such beautiful bodies? Bodies that were capable of such wonders? Why didn’t people do this more often? What could be more simple and real than fucking a hot boy on a futon and having a smoke, in other words?

It took perhaps only one or two minutes, but my whole world had been turned upside down. I lay there thinking intently, on my back, with a little crime scene on my belly where my old self had been killed, and joyfully. As quickly as my virginity was gone, all the cogs and wheels of my life – a life built on that virginity – were shuffling and reorienting themselves. And how much space there was left over in my head when all that bullshit fell away!

“Earth to Mel. Hello. Are you still here with me?” he laughed, and I snapped my attention back to his expectant face. I could only smile at him.

“Ah, cock-drunk I see. It’s an effect I have on girls, I know. You need a shower I think.”

I blinked and looked around me, the world a different place. The membrane had been broken, and behind it reality seemed plain and clean enough already. I laughed as he dragged me out of my reverie and we went to the bathroom together.

He playfully slapped my ass. “Such a bad girl” he said.

Sure, why not?

“It’s all that smut and nonsense you bring into the house, Carol. You’re my sister, but honestly, I think some of the blame is yours here,” said my mom, smoking with more spite than she usually did.

“She’s not a baby anymore. She’s 22 for God’s sake. You know, it’s not so bizarre that a young girl like her wants to have a little fun. Such a pretty girl, too.”

“Too pretty if you ask me. And it’s not like she’s got that many good role models to look up to, does she?” here my mom stared daggers at my aunt’s poor confused face. My aunt, feisty woman she was, never quite got the hang of telling my mom to shut up.

“She sees you running around with that …that boy, and she gets ideas I’m sure.”

“Jared? I keep telling you we split up more ages ago.”

Both women returned their gaze to my left hip, where they were examining me. Earlier, I had stretched to reach down a stack of plates and accidentally flashed my newest bit of rebellion: an awesome looking winged eye, heavily tattooed on my pale skin in dark red and black. Now, after all the shrieking had died down, my mother had me pinned in the kitchen, my jeans yanked half down as she kept staring at it, hoping to find the answer to the question, “where did I go wrong?” no doubt.

“Nevermind, the damage is done now!” she said, gesturing to the tattoo, as though it and my aunt’s ex-toy-boy were intimately connected and if she ogled the thing hard enough, it might go away. In a sense, they were intimately connected. But I didn’t like thinking about that. And they certainly didn’t have to know.

I kept lots of secrets these days, some more happily than others.

“It’s devil’s markings first, then drinking and drugs, and next thing you know she’ll be having you-know-what, mark my words.”

I angrily disentangled myself and pulled my shirt down. “You know, you could try not talking about me as though I’m not even here,” I said.

My mother gave me that furious look she had been giving me a lot these last few months. I could see her thinking, stewing up something nasty to say, but the standard “not under my roof” spiel wasn’t working as well since I had moved out months ago. In just a few months, I would be a fully qualified dental technician, so she got what she wanted, in some ways.

“Reverend Peters says that people can get addicted to tattoos you know,” she started again, trying a new angle. “You never get just one, you have to keep going and going until you look like a biker or something.”

I went to grab my bag and put my jacket on. “Mom, Reverend Peters is 100% correct. This is my third tattoo. But don’t worry, the others are very well hidden,” I said, and let myself out. I closed the door quietly, and I could only hear the faint, shocked laughter of my aunt as I walked down the driveway and to my car.

It is true. You can get addicted to tattoos. But that’s not all. You can get addicted to all sorts of things. To porn or drugs. To food. To the absence of something. To feelings. To ideas. And to people.

“Close the door, it’s noisy out there,” he said.

I shut it, sealing us again in the dusky cave I had grown so familiar with recently. He was hunched over something, but I couldn’t make out much in the dim light.

“Open the curtains at least! You’re going to ruin your eyes,” I said. Turns out Jared had tons of secrets, too.

He was studying part time, for one. He had mountains of books hidden all over his apartment. It was third year physics, and his maths notebooks and heavy textbooks seemed written in a cryptic language; his assignments were all submitted secretly, too, without me ever seeing him doing it. Even the good grades he received were hidden for some reason, and he studied for exams in the back of cars and snapped the books closed when anyone came to look.

And he did this now, as though I had discovered him doing something truly embarrassing. Of all the things I had let this boy do to me in the last year, and me him, I had to smile a little that he could still be bashful around me. He shone a boyish smile in my direction and squirrelled the books away.

We sat staring at one another for a while, sizing up how things would play out this evening.

His eyes dropped to quickly take in the shirt I was wearing, the tight jeans. I saw a flicker of recognition in his naughty eyes, and returned my own to him. Fine. It was settled then.

“My mama kicked me out of the house today,” I said with an over-the-top pout. I dropped my backpack to the floor, looking like someone had stolen my candy. I twirled a strand of hair between my fingers.

He smiled that gorgeous sideways smile, just the same one he did when I first met him and couldn’t decide if I wanted to smack him or fuck his brains out. He knitted his fingers together and sat back in his seat like a bad guy in the club scene in a movie.

“Oh? Did she now? And why’s that, little girl?” he said, mocking me.

I sidled up to him a little, still pouting, deliberately avoiding his eyes.

“Oh, nothing. I’ve just been a little naughty.”

He grinned savagely, something playful yet dangerous in the way his hands rested on his knees, as though he was coiled up and ready to bite. I sidled a little closer.

“This is a very dangerous place. You were stupid to come here.” The smile was gone, and in its place came something more sinister. I loved this part. The mood dropped, clicked into a different gear. I shut my eyes and breathed in deeply and out again, just as he had taught me.

“Oh, I’m sorry mister, I’ll just be going then…” I said, picking up my bag and making as to leave out the same door. He stood up quickly, pinning me in my place with steely eyes. I loved how easily he could turn from sweet boy to …whatever this was. I didn’t know. Neither did he. And so we kept doing this over and over again to understand it.

“Drop your bag,” he barked, and I did.

He walked up slowly to me, menacingly, a showy swagger in his step that was seemingly put there to intimidate me. Little flutters erupted in the pit of my stomach. I said nothing; lowered my eyes. He brushed past me and softly closed the door, his hand on mine.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

I gulped. “But, I’m sorry to bother you, I really should just go now sir…”

He had caged me in with his arm, like the jock bully in an 80s High School series, laying claim to the innocent girl who had nothing but some books held to her chest for protection. I couldn’t say anymore. He watched me carefully, amused by my panicked breathing. I was wearing dark jeans and a torn black shirt, but in this moment, it was actually a chaste uniform, a blouse in virginal white and little skirt, and he could see that, too.

He dragged his eyes down the length of my trembling body and then back up again, then extended one finger to touch my collarbone, so gently as though he’d break me by accident. He hooked a dainty gold chain in his finger and lifted it to his face to examine it. A modest gold cross dangled nervously.

“A good girl…” he said, part question, part accusation.

I turned my head to the side, squirming away from his face, from the strong smell of his cologne. His abs were no more than an inch from my body. I was wet already, even though we had played this game so, so many times before. The answer to this half question was no, I wasn’t a good girl, over and over …but we were both compelled to keep asking the question.

He let the cross fall, then with the same finger traced a line along my jaw, grazing against my lips.

“Well you won’t be a good girl for very much longer…” he said and viciously grabbed a clump of my hair, forcing my head to yank sideways. Trapped like this, he set in for a greedy kiss, forcing his tongue deep into my mouth. He tasted so sweet, so wrong; I tried to shove him off me, a little giddy.

His hand went to my throat and slammed me hard against the door. My body went obediently limp, as his face scanned mine. His eyes changed briefly, becoming soft for a second, becoming that same goofy boy who was no more than a few years older than me. He looked into my eyes, giving me split second to use the magic word we had, to tell him that this was too much, that he was hurting me.

I tightened my mouth, stared defiantly at him and said nothing.

All at once he dragged me away from the door and flung me across the kitchen, and I went skidding to catch my balance on the other side of the room. He regarded me with hard eyes.

“Do you know what boys like me do to girls like you?”

I started to cry. Real, hot drops were rolling down my cheeks as I stood there, glee tainted with just a little fear, loving how easy it was to go so far with him. Something came over me in times like this. I had let go, that first night on the futon, and I had been letting go ever since. And now I was standing here, sobbing like a lost lamb, and he never skipped a beat, never wavered. He was going to play with me, and follow, no matter how dark I wanted to go.

What happened next was a blur to me; he tore my shirt off and yanked my jeans down, scratching my skin in the process. Eyes still bleary with tears, he pinned me against the kitchen counter, both hands in fistfuls of my hair. Steadying my hands on the counter, he grabbed my flesh and held me down.

I was so turned on I stopped differentiating between his body and mine, between pain and pleasure, between right and wrong. Under a shower of filthy words, he poured a long, hard stream of dominating energy into my body, and I, delirious and long gone into my own world, absorbed every thrust happily.

After he came, it took the hugest effort to pull his engorged cock from me, so hot and grasping my body was around him, so tightly had we knotted together. From behind, he wrapped his arms round my waist and nibbled my shoulder, as though to wake me and signal the end of our game. I came to, my body still ringing and faint prickles of pain still echoing on my scalp, and on the places on my upper thigh where he had clawed at me, desperate to jam even deeper into my body.

“Dirty little slut,” he said.

My new tattoo eyed him dispassionately. Yes, I was a dirty little slut, and it was all because of him. I hoisted my jeans back on and gave him a long, obscene kiss. He was a delicious kisser, and always had been. I was pleasantly, utterly obliterated, and lay myself down on the futon again, stretching my arms to find his hidden stash under the mattress.

He looked uneasy.

“You’re just going to go straight to …that?” he said, standing naked in the kitchen.

I looked at him. Well, what did he want?

He shook his head and came to sit beside me. His boyish charm was back in full force on his face, no trace of the animal that was here in this kitchen just a moment ago.

“I think that was a little too far, even for me,” he said eventually. His sudden change in tone felt like an insult.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He was meant to be my co-rebel, my partner in crime, not another person telling me what I should and shouldn’t do.

“Nothing. Just maybe we should calm down a little with that kind of stuff?”

For all the time we had been “seeing” each other, all the stolen kisses and secret meetings, I had in the back of my mind that $641 I had tucked away in my backpack. It seemed a lifetime ago to me now; how different I was then. He had never asked for it after that first night, and I had never offered it, and we had marched on with a nasty set of assumptions brewing between us, the money being a sore point – all the wrong kinds of sore, too.

“Why? You enjoyed it,” I said, more than a little hurt. “Who are you to judge me anyway?”

His face tightened. “Who am I? I don’t know, Mel, who am I?”

I smiled nervously, trying to lighten the tension that was growing in the room.

“Who are you? Well you’re my sexy boy toy, aren’t you? You’re my bad boy who’s going to teach me a lesson and…” I pouted playfully and tried on the same voice I had earlier, but he drew back and tightened his face further.

“What the fuck, Mel? Can you just cut that out? I’m sick of all of that. I’m not just a piece of meat you know.”

The spell was broken. My thighs were still sticky and my hair was still tousled, but he was ruining the mood, and fast. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go. I like to have things planned out, even now, and he had stopped playing his part. He was supposed to be my handsome devil come to lure me away from righteousness, and defile me, and punish my innocence…

I drew back and looked at him, trying to think of something to say to hurt him. He was supposed to be on my side.

“You’re not a piece of meat? Well, tell me honestly then, are you still seeing them?” We had fought about this last time, too. He had sworn to stop seeing his “sugar mommies” but kept at it anyway. He had kept it all secret, the gifts, the short trips. Yet he wanted to judge me? I was a fucked up girl with issues, fine, but what was he?

He looked hurt and hung his head, saying nothing.

“Oh my god …you are still seeing them!” I said, expecting him to jump in and deny it. I stood up, face burning.

“So you’ll do anything for them, as long as there’s cash involved, but I can go to hell? Is that right?”

He said nothing, and I wished with all my heart he would look at me. I threw on my shirt and left, banging the door behind me. I had planned all of this out. And this was not the way it was supposed to go.

The trouble with losing your virginity is that you can only do it once. The trouble with fantasies is that they’re not real. And the trouble with bad boys is that they’re …well, they’re bad.

I went to my dorm room that evening and secretly had to admit to myself that things just weren’t right. That maybe it was me who was the bad guy in this story. That first night on the futon, Jared wasn’t a real person to me, I’ll admit it. He was my ticket out of my “issues”, out of my stuffy ideas abut sex and my unhealthy home life and my toxic, religious upbringing. He was a catalyst, the same one that had released my aunt from of her crazy red chrysalis and now had worked on me, sparking some fierce repressed rebellion in me and letting loose a new beast entirely.

That night, the blood of something old and primal smeared on my belly like a dangerous idea, I had changed. Jared has the eerie talent of being able to reach deep into people and pull out their real desires, pull away their layers and reveal what’s really underneath. He was a “toy boy”, sure, but he was also something like a sexual magician, his irrepressible energy and ridiculous abs conjuring ordinary people into caricatures of themselves.

How could I deny him his talent? How could I be jealous? My aunt had move don fairly quickly and was happy now, so where was the harm? He had been taking money from wealthy, burnt out women for years, and what he gave them went far, far deeper than a quick fuck in their laundry rooms before their husbands came home. It was an unspoken understanding between us. We were an unlikely pair, I knew it, but he tolerated my warped sexuality and I tolerated his …line of work.

Jared had fucked me so hard he seemed to have melted melt my brain – and I was left now with a strange new imprint, a permanent glitch in me that compelled me to live out the same scene again and again. I was stuck as the naughty virgin asking for it, and I couldn’t get out. And he was stuck being my bad boy and I would rather he squeeze my throat than hold my hand.

Now I was a little older, and living alone where my mother would never catch me in the act, and I was running out of space to put new tattoos, and worse, running out of people who cared.

The trouble with having wild fantasies like mine is that sometimes, they come true.

Jared and I didn’t see each other for another year at least.

In hindsight, we were both pretty immature. My aunt had moved to Costa Rica to give my mom something to stress about. Perhaps she’ll get married there to some guy, who knows. We adopted Buttons, who got fat. I finished my degree, although just barely, and, my old good girl image well and truly fouled, I began to relax a little.

I thought of Jared often, how we were ridiculous opposites of each other, how all that weirdness that had happened in his dark little apartment was like the meeting of matter and antimatter, cat and dog, good girl and bad boy.

But opposites sometimes cancel each other out. We had seen to the end of that game and didn’t know what more to do with each other, and so we drifted, I guess. I wondered whether wealthy, sexually frustrated women were still paying his secret way through college, or whether he still kept that same little stash under his futon, like he always did. I went to therapy for the beginnings of an eating disorder. My mother and I threw plates on the floor and I told her I was never going back to church. Mostly, life moved on.

Of course, by now, you can guess that that wasn’t quite the whole story, and that him and I had unfinished business to tend to. That business resolved itself one rainy afternoon, when I bumped into him outside a supermarket. It was unmistakable - I could recognize his body, his gait, anywhere.

“Mel? Oh my god is that really you?”

I spun round to look square into his face, still as youthful as ever, only with a quieter knowing sparkle in it instead of the naughtiness I had remembered. He was different somehow, but only a little. He still had that same audacity that comes with wearing loungewear in public, that cockiness that comes from an effortlessly buff body, that cheeky sideways grin.

Without thinking, I flung my arms around him and gave him a big, broad hug. He was surprised, even laughed a little. It felt easier, so much easier, to just touch him and be close to him than to say words, which I had none of just at that particular moment. He laughed again at me struggling to find something to say, and so I leant in and hugged him again, this time laughing too.

He had finished his degree, he told me, and had recently landed a job he had been interviewing heavily for the past few months. Things were looking up for him. He was going to move, next month, to a new city, and start a new life there. He seemed so happy.

“It was good luck that I bumped into you then!” I said, and we both went a little sad.

He had moved out of his dingy apartment, and, naturally, had long parted with that ugly black futon, the altar on which I had sacrificed all my weird sexual hang-ups. Over and over again. We chatted, and then, just like dusting the cobwebs off an old path we had cut a long time ago, I found myself all at once sitting with him at his place, which he proudly showed off. His decorating skills had certainly improved.

And he was still cute. Damn cute. I remembered the last time we saw each other, the nasty words. I had often felt pangs of guilt whenever I thought how I must have hurt him, how I judged him for letting others use him – all the while using him myself. How after everything, he wasn’t that much older than me, it had just felt like it. Caught up in my own childish drama, I didn’t notice his own quiet ambitions, how lonely he must have felt, how harsh my judgment must have seemed.

He opened a little carved cupboard beside him and extracted a small, familiar box, which he waggled my direction. The old stash.

“What do you say, for old time’s sake?” he said, pulling out a lighter, and some papers.

I laughed. “Some things never change,” I said, but the second I did, I felt sad. Lots of things had changed. In some ways, he was the cute stud I had met in my hapless aunt’s kitchen so many eons ago; in other ways, I barely recognized him now. I felt childish around him. Again.

“We had some good times, didn’t we?” he said, and to my surprise, my face flushed hot and I realized I was probably blushing.

“Some very good times,” I said quietly.

Fearing I might burst into tears and dissolve into a blob of inconvenient emotions, I smiled and tried to lighten the mood a little.

“You were the bad boy, remember?”

“Yeah and you were the good girl,” he laughed, putting scare quotes around the “good”.

“God, we were both so messed up.”

“Mostly you,” he said.

“Shut up!”

“Seriously you were a royal pain in the ass.”

“I know.”

“Hey Jared I’m sorry, I’m really sorry I said all the things I did that day, I was just being an idiot, I didn’t mean what I said at all, it’s just that I was -”

Oh here we go. The inconvenient emotions were coming out regardless. But he was shushing me, reaching over a friendly hand to rest over mine.

“Hey, don’t apologize, please. If anything, it was I. I was in a bad place. We were quite the bad influence on each other, weren’t we?”

I laughed.

“And holy hell were you obsessed about me taking your virginity,” he continued, and I hid my face, giggling.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry, I’m cringing to think of it all now …can’t we just chalk it up to my strict upbringing and not talk about it? You weren’t an angel either you know…”

His expression changed a little and I wondered if I had hurt him again. I couldn’t help asking, “Well, do you still, you know…?”

He put the box firmly on the table and fixed hard eyes on mine.

“No” he said simply, a small vein twitching in his jaw. I thought he was about to launch into an explanation, tell me that he had hit rock bottom, that he had learnt his lesson or something, found Jesus, won the lotto, met a girl, anything really. But he simply said “no” and kept looking at me, and I sensed that this was the only answer I was getting. Shame for me had only been a game. Something sexy to toy with. But I realized then, staring at his young face, how much pride there was in him, how different his demons were to mine.

I kissed him quickly, once, and something like happiness flickered in the corners of his mouth so I kissed him again, this time more deeply. His lips were as smooth and yielding as ever, and his tongue as soft and luscious as I remembered. We smiled tenderly at one another for a moment. With some hesitation I touched his arm, the little hairs there rising up to meet my fingertips.

“I’m kind of sad you’re going, to be honest.”

“Me too,” he said.

I don’t know how it happened, but his tongue was in my mouth again, and we kissed slowly and with delicate purpose, feeling out one another as though we hadn’t already done it so thoroughly so long ago. We had both been worn a little by life, humbled a little, with our strange edges rubbed off, but I was thrilled to find that same boyish deliciousness in him still, that same elasticity in his movements, the way we could lap each other up, how his tongue would respond so swiftly to mine.

The same naughty thrill rushed all through my body, but this time it felt more naked, unencumbered with my …well, “issues”. Back then, I had made him manhandle me; he had thrown my young body around, squeezed my wrists, bruised my hips. I had egged him on, thinking that more was better, always more. But now, with his subtle, inquisitive tongue, it felt like we were doing something that even we were too afraid to do back then.

It seemed as though the more softly his lips touched mine, the more intensely my body pulsed and ached; the more slight the delicate caresses on my wrists and forearms, the deeper the pining in the rest of me grew. He sensed this too, it seemed, judging by the tender, almost pained expression he had as he stroked my arm, trying to discover if I, too, was the same.

Our clothes came off easily. First him, then me, then him again, then me again, until we were naked as the good lord made us, bare as Adam and Eve before the fall, only not quite so innocent. His caresses continued, flowing smoothly all over my whole body, missing nothing, lavishing warmth and attention onto each part of me. Had we done this before? Why not?

His lips and tongue now followed where his hands had traced, and my skin thrummed and prickled in response. He lay the full length of his nude body against mine, the heat of our flesh so surprising I smiled into the new kiss he was giving me. His warm dick was between us, hardening. Cradling my body in his hands, I undulated up into him, stroking the length of his shaft with my belly, kissing every part of him with every part of me. Then, with no force, and no resistance, the thick head of his cock found its way to my slit and sunk into me slowly, and easily. I exhaled loudly, this single thrust melting away all my doubt, my body melting onto him and swallowing him with something that felt like gratitude. He mumbled something into my ear, both hands cupping each of my breasts, and I curled my hips up to pull him more fully into me.

The moment was swollen, and slow. His movements were almost graceful, hips describing big, round, subdued shapes and the weight of his strong body bearing down on my thighs, pressing them open. Each movement was so precise, so exquisitely tuned into every little breath and moan, that it wasn’t long before I was quivering right on the precipice of a great, towering orgasm.

To my delight, he skillfully kept me lingering there, pushing my body right to the edge and pulling back slightly, letting me relish the moment, so full and so close to splitting right open. It was quiet, fragile fucking, and at its apex, I sat twitching round his hard body, his heavy dick stirring me into a frenzy, teasing me, leading me down thick, syrupy paths of pleasure. He detected my pussy whispering round him, drew me closer to him.

“Come,” he whispered.

I moaned, and he pushed once more, his fullness stretching me. Under his comforting weight, I whimpered and came, hard, crying out as deep thundering strokes moved through me. He smiled down at me, taking in every quiver of my lips, every flash on my expression. With each ripple of my pussy, I pulled him further down with me, and eventually he gave in and came tumbling after me in an orgasm that made him grunt, and press down into me with his broad, manly hips.

I clung to him with my legs and anchored against his sweaty form. We both giggled. He stroked a piece of wild hair from my face and smiled that sideways smile at me.

Ladies and gentlemen: it was my first time. I had fucked Jared millions of times before. But this time we had done something else. Something both of us had never done before. With anyone.

Chapter Fifteen

My name is Melanie, and I’m a pretty good girl.

I have just one secret.

Judging from what a crazy mess the world is, and how awful most people are, I would rate I’m not doing too badly if I only have one.

My secret is that I have fallen in love, and I don’t know what to do, or how to do it.

“You don’t have to make a decision yet,” he was saying, his warm hand resting on my lower belly. He wanted me to move in with him, pack up everything and come run away and join him in his new life and his new job. Now was the perfect time, he said, and every time we met up again he had some new detail to add: I could help him decorate. They had this amazing park there I’d love. We could bring Buttons. It would be great.

“But just think about it?”

I hemmed and hawed, and played at thinking about it, but honestly my mind was already well made up. He sat up quickly and gave me a more serious look.

“Mel, I’m going to show you something now, and it’s a secret, and you’d better promise not to tease me about it.”

I looked at him with new interest.

“A secret? I’m sure I know all your naughty secrets…” I said with a cheeky smile.

“No, I’m serious though. Promise you won’t judge me?”

“Well just how bad is it?”

“It’s …it’s kind of bad …just promise you won’t be mean if I show you?”

I was curious now. I sat up as well. What dirty secrets didn’t I know about? Didn’t we know everything about each other by this point? Was he more of a “bad boy” than I had thought?

“Yes ok, show me.”

He pulled out his iPad and started to swipe. Glossy images whizzed by on the screen. I peered over, intrigued. He took a deep breath and then turned the screen around to face me. A Pinterest board. With dozens of colorful pins of home décor. Pages and pages and pages of tasteful shabby chic quilts, Scandinavian style furniture, light fittings, Japanese crockery.

“What’s …what’s this?” I asked.

“It’s my Pinterest account. This is my ‘Home’ board. Come and live with me. Come and live with me and we’ll make a house that looks like just this.”

I burst out laughing.

“That’s very, very bad of you!” I giggled, swiping through the pages, barely believing my eyes.

“Well, will you come?” he said again, boyish puppy eyes staring at me.

It was naughty, I know, but something made me rest my hand over his, and trace his fingers downwards, where I was still slick.

“Sure, but you’ll have to convince me first,” I said and, you know, we both still knew how to play that game.