“Mm.” She nodded.
“Well, like we said, your body releases other chemicals and hormones for different reasons,” I said simply, sounding like one of those sex educators on radio talk shows. “When your body, or your mind, wants to have sex, it gets horny.”
“What is horny, though? What happens?” She shuffled forward a bit and pulled her skirt down. “Will I feel like hugging, or—”
“You’ve never felt it before?” My eyes subconsciously moved to the bare patch of skin between her thighs.
“No. I mean…” She looked down at her lap. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you remember Cal talking about ‘awakenings’ on your first day of school?”
“Yeah.”
“You get a kind of pulsing down there; it makes your whole body warmer, and you feel more open to touch.”
I expected her to know what I meant, but her brows pulled in, making a little line between them.
“Can I demonstrate?” I asked, hopping down off the table.
“How will you demonstrate?” She looked nervous but also excited.
“I’ll touch you—as friends,” I reaffirmed, putting my drink down and then taking hers, placing it beside mine. “And you can tell me to stop at any point if it gets awkward.”
“What are you going to touch?”
I smiled, seeing her cheeks change color again, but for a different reason. “Do you feel that change in your body now?” I gently lifted her hand and placed it against her ribs. “A fluttering maybe, like excitement?”
She nodded, her breath shaky.
“That’s the first change.” I cupped the side of her neck with the full weight of my palm and brought my lips to her ear, my breath hot and human against her soft, sweet-smelling skin. “Now how do you feel?”
“The feeling in my stomach is getting tighter,” she said. “And you smell nice.”
I laughed into her skin. “Thanks.”
She readjusted her seat then and crossed her ankles. I knew it was time to push this a step further.
“I’m going to touch you now, and you’ll notice that heat, that tightness, move down.”
“Down?”
“Yeah.” I turned my back to the crowd to hide us, and reached down between her knees, parting them around me. She collapsed into me, her spine rounded, her soft warm breath falling against the center of my chest. When I was certain no one could see where my hand was going, I softly cupped her breast, my dick going instantly harder. She wasn’t wearing a bra and I could feel the full, very physical weight of her flesh in my hand. They felt the same as they always had, and it was so familiar to me that I nearly cried.
Her shoulders lifted with each deepened breath and she started to shake. “You’re my friend, David,” she said softly. “I don’t even want to have sex with you, so why do I feel like this?”
“Because that’s just it—that’s what I tried to tell you.” I stood a bit taller and pulled her in for a hug. “When you get horny, it’s easy to make poor choices, and that’s why boys aren’t allowed to have sleepovers with girls.”
She nodded against my chest, making no effort to move away. “My arms feel weak, like I just drank alcohol.”
I laughed, holding her tighter. “That’s normal. Mine feel like that too.”
“Why are yours weak? I didn’t touch you.”
“Because… I touched you,” I said, my voice low and seductive. “And I liked it.”
She jerked back a little and her voice sounded panicked then as she said, “Hey, David?”
“Yeah.”
When I looked at her confused face, her eyes falling on my groin, I laughed again, hiding myself a bit closer to the apex of her thighs. “Yes, that happens when a guy gets turned-on.”
“What does?” She went to reach for it but I stopped her, tucking her hands around my waist.
“Don’t touch it. I haven’t had sex for over two years; you’ll make me ejaculate in my pants right here.”
“What’s ejaculate?”
“Oh God.” I buried my lips in her soft hair. “You really don’t know anything about this, do you?”
She shook her head. “I was afraid to look it up on the Internet—”
“Yes, don’t do that,” I insisted. “If you have questions, ask me. I’ll tell you all about it without making you feel silly—or trying to seduce you.”
Her arms went back around my waist. “Thank you, David.”
I kissed her head, not meaning to. “Any time, sweetheart.”
15
Ara
I looked up at David, slowly taking my arms from around his waist. “Why do you call me that? It sounds like something a dad would call his daughter.”
“I’m sorry.” He shook his head at himself. “I grew up around a lot of southerners, and it’s a pretty common sentiment out there.”
I laughed through my nose. “Okay, I guess that makes sense.”
David smiled too.
“Shall we go give these gifts to Cal and Bree now?”
“Uh, yes,” he said, clearing his throat. “But if it’s okay with you, can we stand like this for a moment longer, just until this goes down?”
I looked at the hard bulge in his jeans. “Will it go down?”
“Eventually.”
“Why does it do that? When I saw Shaun’s, it was really floppy and—”
David laughed loudly, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s how they look when they’re not… when the guy isn’t turned-on.”
“And they do that when you are?” I pointed to it.
He discreetly put my hand down. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Uh… well, it’s because…” His awkward meter was flashing red. “It won’t go in if it’s soft.”
“In?” I said, and then I realized. “Oh. In.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat again. “It needs to be firm, otherwise it’ll just bunch up at the entrance and maybe hurt you a bit.”
I cringed. Sex did not sound at all appealing. But I was intrigued by it still, and amazed at the way a guy, whom I don’t want to have sex with, could make me feel just by touching me. “Does sex really feel good, like everyone says it does?”
“Yeah.” His white teeth gleamed as he laughed, nodding. “Take that feeling you had when I touched you and multiply it by about a hundred.”
“That sounds like it would hurt.”
“It can—if you get horny enough and don’t do anything about it.”
A wave of dread rolled through me. “So… when I get horny, I have to have sex, or I’ll be in pain?”
“No.” He laughed again, taking both my hands and helping me slide down off the table. “There are other things you can do to release the pressure.”
Pressure? I thought. That was a perfect word for the feeling. But as I thought about that feeling, another stranger and very icky feeling came to my attention. “Oh my God!” I said, rolling one leg out to look at my thigh. “I think I wet myself.”
David’s head went back so far as he laughed that he nearly fell over.
“Don’t laugh!” I backhanded him, looking around the room in horror. “My undies are wet!”
He laughed harder, trying but failing to compose himself, his face all red and his eyes all scrunched-up.
“Stop it!” I demanded.
“Ara, you didn’t wet yourself,” he said. “That’s normal when you get turned-on.”
“What is?” I wanted to reach down and wipe it all away. It was gooey and kind of cold, not at all like urine.
“Come here.” He took my hand and dragged me toward the stairs.
“What are we doing?”
“Talking in private.” He opened the closet door, checked inside, and then pushed me in, closing the door behind us. It smelled like mothballs, wet cardboard, and that chocolatey David smell, and as someone walked upstairs, it sounded like a drum beat right in my ear. For the first few seconds, I couldn’t see a thin
g, but as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could not only feel his breath on my nose but see his lips right in front of it. I wasn’t sure what he could see, being human and all, but I was glad he didn’t have supernatural smell, because I could smell whatever this was between my legs and I didn’t like it.
“This is your body’s response to feeling horny,” he explained. “The liquid prepares you for sex.”
“How?”
“You asked if sex hurts. Well… yes, if you have sex with a dry vagina, it will hurt. So it gets wet, and when a guy puts himself inside of you, it slides in nicely and feels good.”
His description just made me wetter. I closed my thighs together. “How do I get rid of the horny feeling?”
“You can either have an orgasm, by having sex or masturbating, or you can take a cold shower.”
“None of those sound very convenient.”
He laughed again, that sweet, warm laugh that made him seem so normal—that made me think he wasn’t all that dark and weird. “It’s not convenient. But if you take the sex option, it’s worth it.”
“And what if I can’t do any of those? What if I’m somewhere where I can’t get to a shower or a closed door?”
“Think about something that grosses you out.”
“Is that what you do?”
“Yeah.”
“So what do you think about then—to get rid of the standing-up.”
“The standing-up?” he said, and then laughed. Again. “You mean a boner. We call it a boner.”
“Oh. Okay, so what do you do to get rid of a boner?”
“I…” He took a step back from me and leaned on a bunch of hanging clothes. “I think about having my flesh peeled off or something like that, but some people get turned on by that, so it won’t work for everyone.”
“Ew!” I nearly threw up in my mouth, my blood going instantly cooler. “Really?”
David just smiled, shaking his head with a breathy little laugh. I noticed then that he had very prominent fangs, almost like a vampire. It made me wish he was, which made the heat in my body come back as the blood hunger rose to the surface. It would be so much easier having a vampire boyfriend.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked me, coming a bit closer.
“I’m hungry.”
“You wanna leave, get some food?”
“Has your boner gone down?” I tried not to laugh. It was pretty funny that his penis stood up when it wanted my vagina.
“Not yet. Are you okay to wait with me for a bit?”
“Yeah.” I leaned on some boxes and folded my arms, and as much as I tried to push it down, my curiosity won out in the end. “Hey, David?”
“Yeah.” He readjusted his jeans, bouncing a little and wincing in obvious discomfort.
“I don’t mean this to… it’s not like I want to have sex with you or anything, but…”
He stood taller, slowly turning to face me. I wasn’t sure how he’d react to this question, but I was too curious now and I didn’t want to ruin my relationship with Cal by asking him. “Can I see it?”
“See what?”
“The…” I nodded to his jeans. “The boner?”
The air got ten times heavier then as he held his breath and his heart picked up a few paces.
“You did say I could ask you anything,” I reminded him.
“And you can… I just…” He readjusted himself again.
“Just?”
“It hurts,” he said timidly, all nervous and shy. “I’ve been abstinent for so long now that the sudden rush of blood through it is too much for me. I’m afraid, if I release the beast, it might blow all over this closet.”
“Blow?”
“Ejaculate.”
I shook my head. “I don’t really understand.”
“When a guy orgasms, the penis spits out his seed—it looks a bit like watery mayonnaise, depending on diet or how long it’s been since he last… never mind that. But that seed is what makes girls get pregnant—”
“But don’t you have to be in love with someone for that to happen?”
He folded forward, laughing into his fist, then eventually composed himself and stood up, wiping his mouth. “No. If anyone lets that seed get in you, you’ll get pregnant—in love or not.”
“Right. So… it has to go in me?’
“Yes.”
“In me…”
“Yes. And you can’t get pregnant by swallowing it, like some girls seem to think.”
“People swallow it?” I screwed my nose up, but was quite intrigued. “Why? Does it taste good?”
When he laughed again, I started to get impatient.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not laughing because you’re stupid, it’s because you’re just so sweet and cute.”
“You think it’s cute that I don’t know any of this?” I was getting a bit mad now.
“Yes.” He grabbed my arms and pulled me up from my lean, looking down into my eyes. “It is very sweet, and I have no problem showing you my boner, but I am worried I’ll ejaculate.”
“Well, I just won’t let it get in my vagina, and it won’t matter, right?”
“It kind of does.” He scratched his lip with his thumb. “It can be embarrassing, you know. People pull funny faces and make weird noises when they do it, and if the person they’re with isn’t also doing that, it can feel a bit awkward.”
Awkward, that was a feeling I was all too familiar with. But I didn’t feel that way in here, in the dark, with David. “So, maybe I can ejaculate too—”
He laughed again, but I continued on.
“How do I do it?”
“It takes practice—for a girl. It’s a bit more complicated.”
“Why?”
“Because, for a guy, you can just rub it—”
“Rub the penis?” I said, surprised.
“Yeah. And it happens pretty fast, really. But for a girl…” He felt suddenly hotter all over. I wondered if it was because he imagined it—whatever he was about to say. “It’s easier if the guy—if you’re not having sex at the time—it’s easier for you to orgasm if he uses his fingers, or his mouth.”
“Mouth?” My blood got hotter and thinner. “On… on my…”
“Yeah.” David breathed out heavily, slowly drifting closer to me. My thighs felt so tight now that it made my vagina pulse inside and out. And the wetness there had gotten warmer. I wanted to get rid of this feeling and see what it felt like to move past it—beyond it, but I wasn’t sure what that would mean for our friendship.
“And what if… if a friend does that—the mouth thing—with a friend,” I asked, “will that ruin the friendship like sex does?”
“Yeah.” He pressed his forehead to mine, cupping my waist. “It becomes complicated. Or, if you’re ready for it, it can become more than a friendship.”
I didn’t want either of those to happen with David. If we stopped being friends, who would I come to with all my weird questions?
“Then what do we do, because I don’t know if I can fight this?” I said.
“It’ll hurt—for both of us. It’ll make it hard to concentrate tonight,” he said, a look of deep disappointment crossing his face. “Or, if we did do this, Ara, it doesn’t have to get weird. We’re not like that with each other—we’re not… things are different between you and me than they are with you and Cal. I don’t think we’d be awkward after it.”
“Why not?”
“Because our friendship means everything to me,” he whispered. “Believe it or not, I protect it as fiercely as you do. And I don’t want to do anything to mess it up.”
“You don’t?”
“No. I need you as much as you need me, Ara.”
I pressed my brow into his, moving my mouth just a little bit closer so I could feel his breath on mine. He smelled like syrup from the coke we just had, with a minty hint of toothpaste. I liked that he brushed his teeth. I liked that he always looked clean and well-dressed. I liked him in this w
hite shirt and denim jacket. And I liked the feel of his boner against my leg. I wanted to open them and let it press me a little, just to see what it felt like.
The pulsing became unbearable then and I moved my legs apart without meaning to. David, caught up in the agony of it, slipped his hand up my skirt and pulled my undies down, making my leg wet where they touched my skin.
“No sex, okay?” I said.
“Got it,” he breathed, getting on his knees. It felt like my insides were falling out of me, my body so desperately ready for this.
He cupped my bottom in one hand and lifted my left knee over his shoulder, sending me into a deep layer of breathlessness as he put his face between my legs. My wetness coated his chin, and I thought at first that he’d be grossed out, but he moaned, closing his mouth around me.
I pressed my flat palms to the boxes behind me for a moment, until his tongue went up inside me and I lost my balance, my right knee going so weak he had to put it over his shoulder too, the boxes the only things holding me up. I wondered if the smell bothered him, and I wondered how much of that wetness moving down my thighs was his saliva or my horniness.
He sucked gently at the top of my cleft while his hand left my bottom and his long, slim finger slipped smoothly into my body. I cried out, twisting his hair in tight fists, moving my hips against his face as the pulsing feeling went deeper. It hurt at first, as it grew so strong that I squeaked, but it flooded up inside me like water rising in a pipe, and when it reached the top, it tipped over. I squealed, thankful for the loud music out there, and a rush of warmth left my body, thick and creamy all over David’s face.
I instantly wanted to apologize, but I couldn’t talk.
He slowly lowered my legs for me, and my hips popped a little, my thighs sore and tight where I’d been holding them open.
“How was that?” he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. His face was shiny and wet, even in the dark, and as I looked at his lips, remembering how they felt on me, I did just want to kiss him.
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