index


Message-ID: <54586asstr$1159186203@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: "Samantha" <samanthak@fastmail.fm>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: {ASSM} Sam - Part 18  (FF, MF, tort, exhib, size, viol)
Lines: 4847
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 08:10:03 -0400
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d



-- 
http://www.fastmail.fm - Access your email from home and the web

<1st attachment, "Sam - Part18.doc" begin>

Sam - Part 18

by Samantha K
(FF, MF, tort, exhib, size, viol)
[comments welcome: SamanthaK(at)fastmail.fm]

I must have been more than half-asleep when I went to bed,
because the next morning I woke up in Mom's bed with her arms
around me.  It was great to be there, and I tried to settle down
and enjoy it, but I was all slept out and my arms and legs were
starting to twitch restlessly.

I stole out of her bed as quietly as I could.  The clock on her
bedside table said I was up a half-hour early.  My clothes were
nowhere in sight, and I didn't want to chance waking Mom while I
searched for them so I decided to just tiptoe out without them. 

I was getting pretty good at this business of being stealthy
because I didn't even hear a sound until I was in the hall and
closing her door behind me.  The latch made a slight tick as the
door shut, but that was all.

What do you do when it's early in the morning, you're wide awake
and stark naked?  If you're me, you go outside to feed the dog.

Brute was so glad to see me that he knocked me down and tried to
wrestle with me as soon as I set foot in the back yard.  He acted
so much like a puppy that after I put out his food, I played with
him for awhile before going back inside.

They say time flies when you are having fun.  My fun romping
across the yard with Brute seemed to last forever, but that may
have been my trance state slopping over into my 'normal' state
without my realizing it, or maybe I was just getting better at
taking small vacations from real-life   doing things that were
just simply fun and didn't involve danger or heroism or anything.
 I promised myself that I would keep alert to the opportunities
for escapism from now on.



I had just stepped out of the shower and had stepped into my
bedroom to finish toweling off when there was a soft knock and
the door opened a few inches.  I stopped with the towel against
my breasts by reflex; even though there wasn't anyone who would
be peeking into my room that I would mind seeing me naked.  Not
this time of the morning, anyway.

When the door stopped after opening about six inches and no one
appeared, I got curious.  I walked over to the door and started
to pull it wide when the head of a big thick cock poked through
the opening, like it was peeking into the room to see it the
coast was clear before the person it was attached to entered.  I
grabbed the cock before it could escape and hauled the rest of it
and Bud into the room with me.

"Well, good morning, Bud!" I said, cheerfully.  "Were you
knocking with this?  I'm lucky you didn't break my door down."  I
held onto his cock with one hand while I supported the towel with
my other.  His cock was as stiff as a baseball bat, and almost as
thick.  I could have sworn that it was getting bigger every time
I saw it.  It was so hard that I couldn't even feel his pulse in
it.  The poor boy must be suffering terribly, I thought.  I had
to do something to ease his pain.  I was even starting to have a
sympathy pain deep in my pussy that only a good massage could
relieve.

"I didn't think of that," he said.  "I could have, though.  As
you can see, I have this problem...."

"Aaah!  A bad case of morning-wood?  And you brought it over here
to see if Dr. Kramer could help you with it?"

"Yeah.  Although I think it came on its own and brought me with
it."

"Well, it certainly came to the right place," I said, backing up
to the bed and pulling him with me.

I tossed my towel on the bed and lay down on top of it with my
hips at the edge of the mattress.  I though of being coy and
making Bud wait a bit before I 'helped him', but he looked like
he was in some real distress, so I smiled and spread my legs
invitingly.

Bud wasted no time.  He put his cock-head to my opening and
pushed until it popped inside.  After that, he had to work it
around some before I was loose enough for it to go all the way
in.  When it finally did, his heavy balls banged into my ass,
making me flinch at the contact with my anus.

Bud moaned at the feeling of my pussy around his cock and he
started short-stroking me right away.  I suspected that his
supposed 'morning wood' was just a randy teenage boy who had
become used to sex in the morning and now craved it as part of
waking up.

Bud fucked me with an urgency that told me he was feeling
pressure that made him need to cum quickly.  It was a feeling
that he passed to me with his quick, insistent thrusts, making me
need release as much as he did.  I got ahead of him, though.  I
came once when his balls struck at just the right spot on my
anus, surprising both of us with the suddenness of my climax.

I came again even harder when he did.  As soon as his hot cum
began to pour into me, I dug my heels into his ass, trapping him
until he had given me every last drop.

When I did allow Bud to pull out, he seemed unsteady on his feet.
 He kissed me and then started back to his room to dress, almost
staggered into my vanity table on the way.

"You OK?" I asked, as he recovered and put his hand on the
doorknob.  He seemed to be in something of a daze.  I hoped he
wasn't coming down with something.

"Never better, Sam," he said, grinning.  "You just have a way of
taking it all out of a guy, you know?  I need to work out some
more or something."

When he left, I pressed a corner of the towel between my legs in
case some of the jizz might try to escape.  While I waited, I
wondered if I were getting better at sex the same way I seemed to
be getting better at a lot of things.  

The time it took me to cum seemed to be getting shorter.  I
thought I was getting turned on easier than before, too.  I'd
learned in the Sex Ed class   the one that I had to forge
Yvette's signature on a form to take   that boys were able to
climax quicker than girls and that girls needed more stimulation
than boys to reach the same level of arousal.

It didn't seem to me that I had ever needed a lot of time to
become aroused; certainly not since I had abandoned virginity as
a lifestyle.  I had a firecracker's short fuse and I was proud of
it.  In the time it took a boy to get hard, I could be wet,
willing, and waiting.  

It did seem that it was easier for me to get my head into a place
where my level of arousal bordered on that gray area between
cumming and just being really strongly turned on.  I remembered
taking a ride with Bambi where I wound up so turned on afterward
that it was hard to tell if I were still climaxing or not.  A lot
of the sex I had lately left me with just that kind of feeling. 
The duration varied, though.  It seemed that the prolonged buzz
would just keep going until I was distracted and focused my
attention on something else.

That might mean that the 'sex is all in your head' business I had
been taught was correct.  At the time of the class, we girls all
laughed at that.  We knew from self-exploration that a large part
of it was in a specific spot between our legs and the claim to
the contrary was likely the work of a yet another male who didn't
have a clue how girls worked.  Although we had fun making a list
of all the other places we had found that produced sexy feelings
when touched, rubbed, stroked, or licked; it was very informative
to learn that not everyone's list was the same.  Some girls had
places that felt good that other girls thought were too sensitive
to touch, or were painful, or just didn't do anything for them. 
I had assumed that some girls were just wired differently, but
now I had evidence that the difference wasn't in the wiring, but
in the switchboard.

I was well aware that my head was a strange and mysterious place.
 Bambi had warned me about messing about with that specific part
of my anatomy once we discovered my ability to make physical
changes and she was very wise to do that.  But maybe I was
rewiring my head without being aware of it.  Maybe my brain, like
the rest of my body, was responding to the things I did by
adapting, changing so that some things became easier, faster, and
more intense.  I suppose I knew that the brain could adapt, in
effect to reprogram itself.  That was how we learned, after all.
But the idea that my own head might be changing, making it easier
for me to do things, think things, or experience things   like
sex   was pretty freaky.

I couldn't figure out how I could tell if my head were getting
reprogrammed or not.  I thought about it for a bit, but I
couldn't even come up with a protocol that would tell me if
something had changed.  It was the classic case of the observer
affecting the experiment.  All I could do was continue to watch
and try to be alert for any further enhancements in my senses or
changes in my behavior.

When I checked the towel, it was still only lightly damp from me
drying off with it.  Nothing had leaked out.  As usual, my womb
had sucked it all up and sealed it inside.  When I concentrated,
I could feel the weight of the cum inside me and it felt
wonderful.  I could imagine all the hot, gooey stuff flowing
around in there; a small ocean full of millions of sperm   like
microscopic fishies swimming around and around in a sexual frenzy
looking for an egg to fertilize.

I still wondered where all that stuff went once it had been
pumped inside me, but that question would have to wait.  I had
made enough breakthroughs for one morning and I had to get going
or I'd be late for school.

Instead of going downstairs to breakfast in a nightgown, a robe,
or even completely naked   as I kept thinking I might do, just to
see the reactions   I decided to go ahead and get dressed.  I
tried to find something conservative that would hide my figure
and make my shape look less like the girl who had gotten so much
TV exposure lately.  

After futilely flipping through practically all of my clothes, I
gave up on the idea of hiding and put on an aquamarine
stretch-knit top that gave pretty modest coverage in front   if
you didn't count the fact that it hugged all my curves very
nicely - but in back was just one strand of yarn that laced back
and forth to hold the front in place, then tied in a bow
two-thirds the way down my back.  Since the single thin strand
didn't cover anything, it was effectively backless.  The top
wasn't technically my size and it didn't cover much other than my
front, either.  It left my sides bare from my armpits to the
bottom of my ribs, where it did wrap around a good bit.  It was
the first time I had worn this top, and it felt very comfortable
and cool.

I put on a cute little pair of faded pale pink knit shorts that I
must have got when I was 11.  My butt is almost the same size as
it was back then, a terribly embarrassing situation that means I
have to buy my shorts and panties in the Girls department
alongside much younger girls who were there buying their first
training bra and trying to get one that matched their cotton
panties with the teddy bears on them.  Small wonder I have little
use for panties, but 'little girl' shorts look terribly sexy on
me and I kept several pair that I still wear occasionally.

The shorts made the aquamarine color of the top look even
brighter, but I could really have worn anything.  Everyone would
be noticing my back and not much else.  Or that was the idea,
anyway.  I might still get some looks at the way my shorts kept
climbing into my crack and giving me a camel-toe.

"Oh, well," I thought, "maybe I can distract people from making
comparisons of our boobs by getting them to look at something
else.  'Our boobs'?  Will you listen to me?  This is going to
make me crazy!  Some day that may be my dissertation   Incidence
of Split-Personality in Superheroines.  Gaaaa!"

After I spent some time admiring my reflection and wondering if
my outfit qualified as 'sexy-teen' or 'innocent-girl', my stomach
rumbled, reminding me that it was time for breakfast and I had to
beat two boys to the table if I wanted to eat.

I had gone down the hall and I was just turning to go down the
stairs when I heard a thump behind me.  When I turned to look, I
saw Jim standing in the doorway to his room, rubbing his
shoulder.

"You OK?" I asked, walking back up the hall.

"Sure," he said, sheepishly.  "Dumbass me.  Walked into the
doorjamb."

"What?  How did you do that?"

"Easy.  I saw you ahead of me walking down the hall and I got
distracted and turned the corner too sharp.  You do know that
from the back, those tight shorts look just like skin?"  He
looked down at my knit top and one corner of his mouth twitched
upward.  "And that thing doesn't do anything to spoil the
illusion."

"What?  That I look naked from the back?"

"Unhunh."

"But you've seen me naked."

"Sam, seeing you naked is not something I think I will get used
to.  Know what I mean?"

"Thanks!"

"You're welcome.  Now, after you...."  He gestured down the hall
and grinned.

I walked on ahead of him, feeling his gaze on me the whole way. 
My attempt at diverting attention from any similarity between me
and The Dragon was having some unexpected side-benefits.

At breakfast, Bud agreed with his brother's opinion of my
outfit.

"Sure does," he said.  "Not bad from the side, either.  Are you
going to walk to school today?"

"I had planned to.  Why?"

"I just wanted to follow along about twenty yards back.  I plan
to count the number of people who walk into telephone poles and
street signs while looking at you."

"You do that."



He did, too.  I even heard him laugh a few times.  I didn't know
if it was from seeing people walk into things or if it was just
the people stopping to look that he found funny.  I didn't think
the clothes were all that outrageous, but that probably meant
that I hadn't managed to fully grasp the male perspective on
girls and clothes.

When I got to the school campus, I heard a couple of guys
pointing me out and I also got whistled at a couple of times,
too.  My outfit must have been more effective than I thought it
would be.  I decided that I needed another female point of view;
so I looked around for a friend to ask.  But the first person I
met was Dina, and she didn't want to talk about clothes.

"Sam!  Do you know what happened yesterday?"  At first she was so
excited that she almost screamed, but then she realized that this
should be confidential and she lowered her voice to a
conspiratorial whisper.  "I mean, I guess you do.  But I never
imagined...."

"Uncle Greg disappeared?"  I thought this might be the first
reaction of a scumbag like Greg.

"No!  Even stranger!  When I got home late yesterday like you
said, I walked in and he was on the back porch doing the laundry.
 I mean, I didn't even know he knew how to run the machine, but
there he was, with a load of sheets coming out of the dryer and
some of his clothes going into the washer.  The wildest thing
was, they were sheets off my bed, not his.  He was using way too
much detergent, and they smelled like he'd used some fabric
softener on them, too.  But that's beside the point.  Uncle Greg
doing laundry is just not something I every thought I'd live to
see."

"How did he act?"  I knew the reason for the laundry thing.

"That's the really weird part.  When I reached past him to change
the setting on the washer so his jeans wouldn't shrink, he jumped
like I was a cottonmouth about to bite him.  Honest, he turned
whiter than those sheets.  Even when I backed off, he acted like
touching me would give him cooties, you know?  It was a 180
degree change.  From trying to rub on me every chance he got, to
being scared to get too close.  It took me a while to get him to
relax."

"Hunh?"

"Well, I couldn't have him acting all spooked like that when Mom
got home, could I?  She would have known something was up right
away.  I don't think she would have appreciated the scare
somebody put into her baby brother.  I told you how tight she can
be about family."

"Oh?  Yeah."  I wondered why Dina's mother didn't feel as 'tight'
about her daughter as she did about her brother, but I wasn't in
any position to criticize someone else's dysfunctional family.

"When I asked him if he wanted a blowjob, he looked like he was
about to cry."

"What?"

"Yeah.  I undid his belt and reached into his briefs to pull it
out and he went all, "Now darlin', are you sure you want to do
that?" and stuff.  He kept backing away from me with his hands up
like I had a gun on him and was about to shoot his pecker off. 
It took him a LOT longer to get hard and it seemed he was just
never going to cum."

"Oh?"  I seem to have dropped my end of the conversation
somewhere and I was having trouble picking it up. 

"Yes!  I finally got to try some of the things I'd been wanting
to do.  I even managed to keep him hard after he shot off!  Can
you believe that?"

"No!"

"Oh, yes!  I think I made him cum a second time, too.  But I
can't be sure because all he did was breath hard and jerk around
a little.  I guess he couldn't squirt any more so soon.  How long
does it take, anyway?"

"Uh, I guess it depends on the guy."

"Oh?  Well, Uncle Greg must have kind of limited reserves."

"Maybe it goes along with the size of his cock?"  I tried to be
sure it came out as a question.

"I wouldn't know about that.  Anyway, he always talked like his
was way bigger than average.  When I get it all in my mouth, it
tickles the back of my throat.  Isn't that pretty big?"

I couldn't think of any way to answer that that wouldn't give
away too much information, so I ducked it.

"They come in all sizes, or so I hear.  You will have to judge
for yourself."

"I guess.  I hope I get to try out what I've learned on some guy
soon, before I forget."

"I think it's like riding a bike, Dina.  You never forget how."

"I hope not.  Anyway, Uncle Greg was kind of out of it after
that, so I put a can of beer in his hand and left him sitting on
the couch with the TV running and went off to make my bed and do
my homework.  When Mom got home he looked perfectly normal,
asleep on the couch with his cock hanging out of his briefs.  She
never noticed a thing.

"Thank you so much for helping me!  I'm sure I can handle Uncle
Greg now that he knows there is someone looking out for me.  And
even if he backslides, I know that all I have to do to keep him
from making me pregnant is to make him cum before he puts it in
and he won't be able to squirt enough into me to get me even a
teensy bit pregnant."

"Uh, you're welcome." 

Dina ran off to her homeroom and I walked, stunned, to mine.  I
told myself that Dina seemed happy and Greg had learned  
something useful, I'm not sure just what   so everything had
probably worked out for the best, but a nagging voice kept asking
if I really wanted to get involved with any more domestic
problems.



I had to admit that Bud was right about my clothes.  All day, I
kept hearing comments and a few whistles behind me.  I tried to
show my appreciation, but whenever I turned around to catch
whoever it was, all I saw was disappointed faces.  I quickly
learned just to appreciate the moment and let whoever it was
enjoy their mistake for as long as possible.  It was nice to have
people looking at something other than my chest for a change.



I'd missed talking to Polly the day before, so I was looking to
catch up with her during Gym.  It was another dress-out day, so
we went right to our lockers and changed into our exercise togs.
When I had got my shoes and shorts on, I took my sports-bra and
my t-shirt and went down to sneak up on Polly.

She was one of those girls who had got in the habit of trying to
change clothes in front of her locker with the door hanging open,
like she was trying to hide in it.  A lot of girls picked that up
in Middle school while their bodies were filling out.  I did it
too, until I felt I had something that didn't need to be hidden
any longer.  Even then, I was still reluctant to stand out
because I had got so used to hiding.  Once Bambi turned me into
the boob-queen of the county, I had nothing at all to hide and
found that I loved the looks I got   envious, jealous, spiteful
and all.  I was a walking Rorschach test.

Polly's locker was on the end, so she was easy to sneak up on   I
just went around the corner and came up behind her.  I was
feeling playful, so when I got close enough I pressed my breasts
into her bare back and said, "Guess who!"

I must have startled her more than I expected, because she jumped
up and spun around, almost falling back into her open locker.

"Sam!  You scared the crap out of me," she said.  "I didn't know
what that was poking me."

"Hunh?"

"Your rings, silly.  I felt your rings."  She recovered from
being startled by being pissed.  She reached out a hand and put
her index finger through one of my rings and tugged on it.  "Big
and metal and suddenly in my back.  I aught to..."  She looked to
see that we were screened from the rest of the room by her locker
door and Darlene Chambers wide-load butt, then she flipped her
wrist around and spun her finger in a complete circle, twisting
my ring and my nipple into a corkscrew.

The pain wasn't awful, but it was a shock.  After the first
surprise, it was even a delightful shock.  My eyes fluttered and
my mouth made a small 'o'.  When she didn't let go immediately, I
forced my hands to my sides and then behind my back.

Polly saw me assume a submissive pose and she smiled a crooked
evil smile.  She cranked her finger around another half turn and
pulled harder.  The pain became even more delightful and I closed
my mouth and gave her a smoldering look through the pain that I
meant to say, "Do your worst!"

He other hand had just closed on my other breast with her short
nails biting into my soft flesh, when Coach called down the hall
for us to stop dawdling and get dressed and out on the field. 
Polly let go of me and watched as everything went back to its
place with only a few red marks to show what she had done.

"I'm not finished with you," she said in a menacing tone.

"I sure hope not!" I thought.

I steadied her while she stepped into her gym shorts, hoping she
might give me an idea about her next idea for what she might do
to me, but if she had something in mind, she was keeping it to
herself.  When she pulled her t-shirt down I was still waiting,
my bra and shirt forgotten in my hand as I tried to imagine what
she might think of.

Seeing me still waiting, my areolas tight with anticipation,
Polly raised a hand and slapped my right boob hard enough to make
me jump and cover up with my hand.

"Get those things out of my face," she said, her face jumping
from a snarl to a smile and back as she tried to rise to the
challenge and play the bitch.  "I don't want to see them again
until I tell you.  Meet me behind the gym after school.  I'll
deal with you then...and those big things you're so damn proud
of."

"Yes, Polly," I said, meekly, pulling on my bra.  I pulled my
t-shirt on over my head as we filed out of the locker room.  

I spent the better part of the class period tugging at my bra,
because my rings kept trying to flip up from my nipples being so
hard.  By the time gym was over, I was so horny I could scream. 
I was going into the locker room, ready to pull the bra off at
the earliest possible moment, when Coach tapped my arm and asked
me to step into her office.  

I followed her in and sat down on the couch with my thumbs hooked
under my bra, trying to lighten the pressure on my aching
nipples.

"Having a problem, Sam?" Coach asked.  

She shut the door behind her and I pulled the bottom of my bra up
and over my boobs.  My t-shirt rode up over them leaving my stiff
nipples free in the cool air coming from the air conditioning
vent.

"Ooooooo," I said, luxuriating in relief.  "That's better. 
Sorry, I just had to get out of that."  I shucked off the bra and
shirt and sat there with my arms spread out trying to cool down.

"My goodness!" Sue said, looking at how my rings were almost
standing out horizontally.  "Something's got you all worked up."
The look she gave me added that she hoped it was her.

"Just the usual hormonal surges," I said.  "Some things just get
me all torn up.  Don't you ever feel that way?"

"Not until recently," Sue said, blushing.  She sat in her swivel
chair and crossed her long, lovely legs; pointedly tightening her
thighs and rubbing them together.  "Someone has wakened the
dragon deep inside me."

Any other time, I might have thought that phrase popping up in
conversation that was a coincidence.  Not today.  And any other
time, I might have smiled and confessed that her guess was
correct and had one less lie floating around for me to trip over.
 Not today, though.  Today I was sensitive to the repercussions
of blabbing my secrets to people who would be better off not
having to lie themselves to protect me.  Sue knew, but she didn't
have to know more than she knew.  So, I smiled, but I changed the
subject.

"You wanted to know how things went with Dina?  After I got her
calmed down yesterday, I arranged for the person creating the
problem to get a warning.  Apparently it was heeded, because she
told me this morning that things have improved at home."

"How 'improved'?  I was under the impression that she was in
imminent danger of being raped!"

"And she was!  But now it seems that the tables have been
turned."

"I don't understand."

"Me neither.  Believe me!  It seems that the best we can say is
that there is still some sex going on that isn't exactly
consensual, but the roles seem to have changed.  Now, Dina is on
top   so to speak."

"Empowerment," Sue said.  "You empowered her to take charge of
the situation.  She did, but not the way you expected."

"That's it exactly.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised that things
didn't work out the way I expected.  People aren't all pure black
and white, good and evil, innocent and lecherous.  When you let
them make their own decisions, you shouldn't gripe about how
things work out."

"So she's happy with the new situation?"

"She's having a ball.  Now I have to hit the showers."

I had my hand on the doorknob when Sue said, "I stuck my head
into the shower room the other day."

"Oh?  Checking to see if we were getting clean?"  This was an
interesting turn of events.

"Something like that.  I wondered why showering had suddenly
started taking so much longer than it used to, and why all the
girls in this class were so happy about getting clean.  Your
doing, I imagine?"

"An accident.  But a nice one.  You should join us."

"Don't tempt me.  I'd love to more than anything, but you know I
can't."

"That's a shame.  Did you decide if you are going to that frat
party?  When is it?"

"Tonight.  And I think I will.  Just to see if your warning has
anything to it."

"Good for you!  But if you wake up tomorrow afternoon with about
a gallon of cum oozing out of you, don't say you weren't
warned."

"Stop!  You're going to make me crazy, too.  Do you have any
plans for the weekend?  Maybe we could go to the party together?
You could chaperone me."

"Ha!  That would be fun.  I'd be holding your legs open for all
the horny college boys and cheering them on.  No, I have a date
tonight with Steve, a playdate tomorrow, and Mom's taking us to
the beach on Sunday."

"Playdate?  Oh, right.  George from the mall."  Sue looked amused
for a second, then she looked thoughtful.  "With George, or his
mother?"

"Whoever needs me more," I said, surprising myself.  Was this a
'project' as Mom put it?  Or was this for me?  Could I tell one
from the other anymore?  When your job is helping anyone who
needs it, where do you draw the line between things you do for
friends, others, and yourself?  Could I even distinguish between
my job and my personal life anymore?  I set aside that line of
thought very quickly, before it got too deep to wade through.

"Steve's taking me to the bachelor-pad apartment of a friend," I
said, backing up to another subject.  "We're going to watch dirty
movies."

"Oh!  Sounds like I'm not the one needing a chaperone."

"I'll have one.  Neeka will be there.  But she'll be the one
holding my legs apart!"

I tore myself away from Sue before we made each other any itchier
than we both already were.  By the time I got to the showers,
there wasn't time for anything but a quickie.  A quick shower,
that is.



***



There is never a hard cock around when you need one.  Miss
Albert's Math class did nothing to sooth my fevered libido and
when it let out school was over and everyone not engaged in some
kind of extracurricular activity ran off to start their weekend
like it was the last one they would ever have.  I told Neeka not
to wait for me and I went back of the Gym to wait for Polly and
whatever diabolical scheme she had devised to torture me today. 
I tried not to think about it too much  ...  all right, it was
the only thing I could think about and I was having a hard time
reining in my imagination.  It would be bad if I got all worked
up about something, only to find out that my ideas were better
than hers.

As I had discovered, the area behind the Gym was one of those
dead spots on campus created when the windowless walls and
corners of two buildings constructed at different times came
together to make a place that nobody ever needed to go.  The back
door of the Gym opened onto a concrete walkway next to an 'L'
shaped area of manicured grass that never saw any traffic save
for the people who mowed it.  Just to make its existence
meaningful, I marched back and forth across it, savoring the soft
cushion of the thick, untrodden patch of green.

"What are you doing?" Polly asked, as she came around the corner
of the building.

"Justifying the life of some forlorn fescue," I said.  As soon as
I said it, I realized that I had let myself think too deeply
about something again.

Polly was too concerned with her own agenda to worry about my
practical exercise in naturalist existentialism.

"Come here," she said, commandingly.

I immediately felt a flash of heat that would have made Pavlov
proud.  I dropped my bookbag and presented myself for my
Mistress' pleasure.

"Take that stupid top off.  You're almost naked anyway.  You may
as well be, the way you walk around here waving those jugs under
everyone's nose.  Do you know how much of a spectacle you have
been making of yourself?"

I knew.  I couldn't ignore the looks I got.  I loved the
attention.  Thanks to Bambi, I had bigger boobs than anyone but
adult film stars who had paid lots of money to have their bodies
inflated well beyond what nature could possibly do.  Mine might
have been the result of an exotic biochemical formula, but not a
bit of the result was synthetic or artificial.

People had looked at me before and I had enjoyed it.  I hadn't
been able to do any more than appreciate the implied compliment,
then.  Yvette would have locked me up in a closet if she had
learned that I was trying to show-off or that I had been
flirting.  Now, I could show-off all I wanted.  If Mrs. Reynolds
found out, she would be proud of me.  She bought me a whole
closet full of beautiful sexy clothes to wear so I could show-off
how good I looked.  She had empowered me to take charge of my
body the same way I had empowered Dina to take charge of her
relationship with Uncle Greg.  The analogy left something to be
desired, but the change in how I felt about myself was at least
as great as the change Dina had felt about herself.  I felt that,
in some small way, I had passed on some of what Mrs. Reynolds had
done for me, and I was proud of what I had done.

'Spectacle'?  Yes, I certainly hoped I was.  I was getting to
live out my exhibitionistic fantasies and I loved it.  I told Sue
that she had an obligation to let people admire what she had made
of herself and I meant it.  I also had an obligation to let them
see what Bambi had done for me, and I intended to honor that
gift.

I reached behind with one hand and slid it up my bare spine to
the tiny bow holding the rectangle of fabric across my chest.  I
pulled it loose and peeled the stretch-knit material off and over
my head.  I dropped in on top of my bookbag and braced for
whatever Polly had in mind.

She stared at my breasts like she couldn't decide if she was
revolted or attracted, but whichever, she couldn't tear her eyes
away.  It was a look I knew very well.  Many girls reacted to me
that way.  Usually it was right before the words, "those aren't
real" came to mind, if not to mouth.  In any event, they couldn't
stop staring until forced to.  At the moment, I was the cobra to
Polly's mongoose and her malevolent attention was riveted on the
parts of my body that I had made almost as sensitive as my clit.

The envy in her heart was reflected in her face.  She wanted to
punish me for being sexier, prettier, more outgoing, or more
whatever she wished she could be that she thought I was.  She
wanted to hurt me, to debase me, to ruin me so that she could
feel superior, instead of inferior.  If it helped her to feed her
ego this way, that was fine with me.  I needed to be tortured. 
Besides being good practice for the challenges I seemed to be
faced with on a regular basis, I had grown to love it.  We were
perfect for each other.

Polly reached out with both hands and put her palms over my
nipples, pressing my rings into my flesh and warming my nipples.
She looked into my eyes as we both felt my areola tighten and my
nipples become hard.  She rubbed her hands around in small
circles, rolling my stiffening tips and twisting my rings.

When she was satisfied that I was aroused sufficiently, she took
a ring in each hand and pulled up, lifting my breasts and pulling
my nipples so they pointed up at her face.

"I know you'd like me to hurt them," she said.  "And I will. 
We'll both enjoy that.  But first, I want you to turn around."

I obeyed.  I had my hands behind me already, one hand holding the
other wrist.  Polly pulled a length of clothesline from her bag
and tied it around the wrist.  She then wrapped the loose end
around my other wrist and the line, alternating wrists until she
had used up the cord and my hands were securely bound behind me.
She tied off the end with the knot out of my reach and spun me
around to face her.

"You tried to cover up before," she said.  "We'll have none of
that, now.  Do I need to gag you as well?"

I shook my head, pressing my lips together to show I intended to
remain mute.

"Good girl.  Now let's take care of one more thing."  She bent
over and hooked her thumbs into the top of my shorts.  Before I
could think of objecting, she yanked them down to my ankles.

I obediently lifted one foot and then the other out of both my
shorts and my sandals.  Even in the heat of the day and the
warmth of the afternoon sun reflecting off the solid brick wall
behind me, I shivered at being totally naked.  The situation made
me feel more vulnerable than exposed.

The thick grass felt slightly prickly on my bare feet and I
scrunched my toes into it, both to savor the sensation and as a
reaction to being once again stripped in this spot.  I wondered
if she might have arranged for some guy to come along and throw
me against the brick wall of the Gym and shove a hard cock into
me while she watched.  I sure hoped so.

Polly tossed the rest of my clothes onto my bag and stood facing
me with her hands on her hips.  She cocked her head and looked at
me as if she were a sculptor judging her progress on a statue. 
She nodded her satisfaction at having made me so helpless.

"You're breathing so hard it sounds as if you're panting like a
dog," she observed.  "Are you a doggie?"

I nodded.  "Arf!" I said.  This was fun even if she wasn't going
to hurt me.  I could get into playing doggie.

"Hmmm." She sounded like she'd thought of something better to do
that what she had originally planned.  "All right doggie.  Get
down on the ground."

I got down on one knee at a time to keep from falling over.  I
sat back on my ankles and looked up at Polly with my tongue
hanging out and panting.

"Nice doggie," she said, smiling.  "But I want you down on all
fours before we start your training."

Since my hands were tied behind me, I couldn't manage what she
wanted.  I watched, puzzled, as she opened her bag and pulled out
a long, thin object with a leather-wrapped handle and a thinner
shaft sticking out of it over a foot.

"It's my old riding crop," she explained.  "I got into riding a
few years ago and my Mom bought me this cheap crop to use.  I
rode almost every week for a year, before I wore the crop out. 
You see the leather tab came off the end and unwound all the way
up to the handle, so I cut it off."

She held the narrow end in front of my nose and flicked her
fingers across the tip.  I could see that the shaft of the crop
wasn't one solid piece, but four triangular blades.  That design
must have been intended too make the crop more flexible.  Without
the leather wrapping, the triangular blades would separate when
she swung it and looked like they could really pinch when they
hit.

"The stable wouldn't let me use the crop anymore after that. 
They said it would be too cruel to hit a horse with it, and
horses have very thick skin.  You have very thin skin.  Very
smooth and unblemished.  I bet this would hurt a whole lot if I
hit you with it.  I bet it would leave marks, too.  Shall we find
out?"

She drew back as if she were going to hit me as hard as she
could.  I flinched and rocked back on my legs until my hands
touched the grass under my ass.  All I managed to do was to give
her two very prominent targets for her nasty little whip.

Polly slowed her stroke until the tip of the crop came to a halt
between my breasts and stayed there, quivering.  Her hand shook
with the tension in her grip on the handle, making the four
blades rasp and twitch apart, as if they were reaching out to
bite me.

"No?" She said, answering her own question.  "Then you better put
these milkbags on the ground right now."

She pulled back the crop and I leaned forward just until my
nipples brushed the grass.  It tickled.  My rings dangled between
the fresh-cut green blades.  I didn't even have to bend over that
much.  I was still able to keep my head up to see Polly.

"That's not good enough.  I want to see those perfect tits
dragging in the dirt."

For incentive, she hit me on the butt with the crop.  It wasn't a
hard hit, but the sharp plastic bits pinched and the sharp pain
felt like they had snatched a chunk out of me.  

I spread my knees and my feet to get a better balance point.  I
bent over another few inches and mashed my breasts into the
grass.  Now it was tickling my wet pussy and  I was probably
picking up bits of cut grass on my sticky labia.  As I knelt
there with my nipples and pussy on the ground, I had a thought. 
I looked around as best I could to see it there were any signs of
ants in the area.  There were none that I could see.  It was an
idea that I hoped hadn't occurred to Polly.

"That's better," she said, satisfied with my new position.  "Now
you look just like a dog, nose down in the dirt."

She walked around to one side and waved to me.

"C'mere doggie!  Let's see how you get around."

I struggled to keep my breasts to the grass while I worked my
knees to move around.  It wasn't that hard, just awkward, and my
rings would catch on small tufts of grass as I moved.

Polly led me around in a circle, then she backed onto the
concrete walkway leading to the back door of the Gym.

"C'mon doggie!  Keep going.  C'mere doggie."

I waddled after her.  When I hit the edge of the poured concrete,
my nipples scraped on the rough texture.  The sound of my metal
rings dragging was clearly audible over my gasp at the terrible
sensation.

I must have raised-up some, because Polly waved the crop under my
nose again.

"If you pick those up off the ground once, I'm going to hit them
with this crop," she said, "Then we'll see how much pain you can
take."

It was tempting, but my rear still stung from being hit.  I
wasn't ready to feel that on my breasts, which she would
certainly hit much harder.  I pressed my nipples into the
concrete and struggled forward, gritting my teeth as I felt the
skin being grated off my second most sensitive parts.

I must have looked like I was dying, because after I had only
gone a few feet on the concrete, Polly took pity on me and led me
back onto the grass again.  The cool grass should have felt
better, but all I could feel was the sting of raw flesh.   I
wondered if I was bleeding into the grass.

When I managed to get my eyes uncrossed and could see again,
Polly was standing in front of me with her hands up under her
short skirt.  While I watched, she pulled down her panties and
stepped out of them.  She got down on her hands and knees in
front of me and waved her butt in my face.

"How do doggies say hello?  Come on, you know.  They smell each
other's butts, don't they?  Come on, doggie, get over here and
smell my butt."

I worked up behind her so that my nose was just under the hem of
her skirt and I sniffed loudly, so she could hear me.

"Not good enough, doggie.  Here, let me help you."

She reached back and flipped her skirt up over her lily-white
ass.  I could see the tan-lines her swimsuit made on her pretty
rear.  She spread her knees wide and I could see her puckered
anus right above her peach-fuzz bordered pussy.  Her wrinkled
hole was perfectly pink and I knew just what I wanted to do.

"Go on, smell my butt.  Get your nose right up there and give it
a good sniff, doggie!"  From her harsh tone, this must have been
something she had thought about and looked forward to.  She had
clearly had a good time imagining degrading me like this.

I shuffled up as close as I could and slowly poked my nose closer
and closer to her hole.  So she would know just where I was, I
put the tip of my nose against her cheek and traced a path
straight to her anus.

When I reached my goal, I took a deep breath and jabbed my nose
right into her hole.  At the same, I stuck out my tongue and
licked Polly's pretty pussy from front to back.

You'd have thought I had poked her with a cattle prod.  She made
a funny little 'yip' sound and she froze in place, as though
having her pussy licked was the most shocking thing she had ever
felt in her life.

I took full advantage of her momentary lapse of control and
licked her again and again, each time digging deeper into her
slit to get a good taste of the girl-cream that had started to
ooze.

"Ohhhhhhhh!" Polly moaned.  She shivered and her hips tilted
down, offering me a better angle to savor her little slit.

I probed as deeply as I could reach, pushing my lower jaw between
her outer lips and forcing my tongue all the way up into her
hole, where I felt around to see how tight she was.

"Eeeeeeeee!" Polly squealed.  Her back dropped as she put her
head down on the grass, using the ground for a pillow.

I decided that if Polly wasn't a virgin, she was at least very
inexperienced.  Probing her hole had made it clench and spasm on
my tongue.  It felt like it could only have been a half-inch
across, at best.  Either she hadn't had a cock in there yet, or
she hadn't been fucked well enough to get her loosened up.  I
decided I owed her an alternate experience.

I stuck my wet tongue as far forward as I could and lapped the
tip over her tiny clit, holding it there for a moment to gage her
reaction.  Some girls are so sensitive that they can't stand
hardly any contact there and the last thing I wanted to do was
make her uncomfortable enough to pull away from me.

"Ooooooooooo!  Ummmmmm!"

I could feel her frozen muscles loosen as she relaxed and let
herself enjoy what was happening.  I gently caressed her nub with
the tip of my tongue and she squeaked again, but she didn't move
away.  In fact, she pushed her butt back into my face, wedging my
nose into her butt-hole.

If I was going to have a brown-nose, Polly was going to have the
ride of her life.  I started licking her pussy all over, lapping
greedily at the sweet juice that started to flow from her vagina.
 When her small labia had swollen enough, I gently sucked them
into my mouth and gave them a good, thorough cleaning with my
tongue, letting them slide slowly out again afterward.

The next time I touched her clit, it was a hard knot.  I rolled
it around and flicked it from side to side, making it grow even
larger by directly assaulting it.

Polly had lost the power of speech.  She babbled and I could only
make out one word in ten.  Most of it was
"ohmigawdohohoh...whinesquealyip" repeated over and over.  Even
without half trying to, I had Polly on the verge of a major cum.

I was still playing with her clit, deciding if I should use the
BumbleBee on her, when she fell over the edge on her own.

She arched her back and snapped her head off the ground like she
had been yanked up by the hair.  I pulled my face out from
between her legs in case she tried to clamp my head in place. 
Nothing I did now would make a difference anyway.  Polly was
riding a rising climax that was about to explode like a volcanic
eruption.

Polly slammed her knees together and fell to one side.  She
clenched her fists, tearing clumps of grass out of the manicured
plot.  Her eyelids fluttered open and shut, revealing nothing but
white behind them.  If she was breathing at all, I couldn't tell.
 She lay there, making no sounds, but just quivering as her
orgasm wracked her.

Eventually, she opened her mouth and tried to suck in all the air
she had missed in one gulp.  She took several deep breaths and
tried to open her eyes and focus.  It took her the better part of
a minute before she got control enough to sit up.  It was another
minute before she could utter a meaningful sentence.

"Oh, fuck!  That was incredible!" She said.  She was quiet for a
bit after that.  I guessed she was trying to think of something
else to say, but couldn't think of a thing.

"Arf!" I said, letting my gooey tongue hang out of my mouth.

This set her off on a giggling fit.  She would get control for a
second, then look at my 'happy dog face' and break up all over
again.  When she finally wound down, she lay on the grass and ran
her hands over her body as if feeling it for the first time. 
When she got to her thighs, she pulled them away, not trusting
herself to resist the temptation of a repeat performance.

She tried to stand on her rubbery legs, and it looked so cute
that I couldn't keep from grinning.  She saw my expression and
staggered over to me, reaching down to take my arm and rather
ineffectively help me to my feet.

"Jeez, Sam.  I...I...here, let me untie you," she said, reaching
for the cord around my wrists.

I turned so that she couldn't reach my wrists and just bumped
into me while reaching for them.  The texture of her blouse came
through my raw nipples like Braille.  The warmth of her body was
soothing.

Polly didn't try to pull away.   We stood pressed together, nose
to nose, until she pulled a tissue out of her skirt pocket and
used it with a little saliva to wipe the tip of my nose clean. 
When she took the tissue away, I kissed her, my lips reaching out
for hers.

They didn't have to reach far.  Polly came to me, putting her
arms around me and pressing as much of her body against me as she
could manage without both of us falling over.

The kiss was fantastic.  Even if Polly was nearly a virgin, she
was a great kisser.  She seemed to lose herself in it
completely.

When she finally took her lips away from mine, it was obviously
with a great amount of reluctance.  I felt her hands, roaming my
naked body, searching for something she probably couldn't
describe.

"Did you have something else you planned to do to me?" I asked.

She looked sheepish.  All the vindictiveness was gone from her.

"Well, yes," she admitted.

"Then do it.  Don't leave me all worked up and not finish the
job."

"Um.  OK."

She rummaged through her bag and pulled out a combination padlock
just like the ones we used on our gym lockers.  I watched as she
worked the combination, but she held it so I couldn't see well
enough to get the numbers.

When she had it open, she hooked a finger through one of my rings
and led me like a cow around the corner of the building to the
covered walkway between the Gym and the classroom building.  She
pulled me up against a support pole for the walkway's roof and
pushed me forward so that the pole was between my boobs.

She hooked the lock through both rings and snapped it shut.  She
tugged on it to make sure it was securely locked, then she let it
drop.  The sudden weight tugged my breasts down, but they bounced
right back up again.  I squared my shoulders and the only sign of
the weight was the way my nipples were pulled downward.

Polly reached into her pocket and took out a folded bit of
paper.

"This is the combination," she said.  With a devilish gleam in
her eye, she put her hand between my legs.  "Open wide," she
said.

I did, and she shoved the paper into my pussy, letting her
fingers linger just a little longer than necessary.  When she
took them out of me, she carefully closed my labia back over my
hole so the paper would be trapped.

"Now," she explained, "the marching band is down on the field for
their practice session.  They will be finished in just a few
minutes and all forty-five of them will come right back up this
way to get to the equipment room when they are done.  You can't
reach the paper or the lock, so you have three choices.  You can
stay right here, tied up and naked when the whole marching band
shows up.  Or, if you can pull hard enough, you can rip one of
those big rings out and run away before they get here.  Or, you
can ask the next person who comes along to pretty please reach
into your juicy little pussy and take out the combination and
unlock the padlock for you.  It's your choice.  A lot of pain, or
embarrassing yourself in front of the whole band, or really
deeply embarrassing yourself   and maybe making a new close
personal friend   by asking someone to free you.  I will be back
in an hour to unlock you if you can't get free any other way.

"Are you sure you want to do this?  I mean, it sounded good when
I thought of it, but now I'm not so sure I want to go though with
it."

"Polly, you're brilliant.  I wouldn't miss this for the world. 
Run along and come back in an hour.  I'll be here.  This is going
to be fun!"

Polly looked at me like she thought I had a very strange taste in
entertainment, which was certainly true.  She smiled and ran off
around the building again.

"I'll put your bag and your clothes next to the back door!" she
called as she vanished from sight.

I was thrilled.  Polly had found something to do to me that was
just my style.  Bound, locked, naked, forced to beg a stranger to
put their hand inside me to get the combination   it was all so
titillating that I almost creamed myself just thinking about it.

As soon as I felt the warmth spreading through my pussy, I
realized that letting myself get turned on could ruin one of my
options for getting loose.  I had a limited amount of time before
my pussy juice turned the paper into a soggy, illegible mess so I
had better get on with it.

I considered the situation.  My breasts were locked firmly around
the three-inch thick steel pole.  It was hollow, but it was
bolted to the solid concrete walkway as well as to the beam at
the top that supported the walkway roof.  I was probably strong
enough to tear the pole loose, but the damage would not be easy
to disguise, when Polly came back, it would be obvious what I had
done   and she would have no trouble guessing from that just who
I was.

I had one ace up my sleeve   well, two if you counted calling
Neeka to come get me loose, but that would have been cheating. 
Polly didn't know how limber and flexible I was.  She assumed
that because she had tied my hands behind me, that I would not be
able to reach either the combination or the lock.  I was pretty
sure I could prove her wrong about both.

I slid down the paint-flecked pole until I could sit on the
walkway.  I leaned back to give myself some room.  The pulling of
the rings on my nipples felt very familiar and I sat there with
my shoulders and head back, savoring the sensation and giving
everything a chance to loosen up and stretch out before I did
anything else.  

Putting both feet flat on the ground, I scooted my butt between
them until my groin pressed into the base of the pole.  I put the
palms of my bound hands on the ground behind my butt, pulled my
shoulders as far back as I could and walked my fingers up under
my crack.

I lifted my butt and kept inching my hands underneath until I
could grab the base of the pole.  When I had a firm grip on it
that would support my weight, I raised my feet into the air with
my legs straight up beside the pole, folding my body in half in
the pike position.  

This was the limber part.  I had basically done the same thing to
escape from a similar situation, only that time I had to do it
while hanging upside down suspended by the clamps on my nipples.
Compared to that, this was easy, if a good bit more fun because
no lives were at stake, only my humiliation if I were discovered
before I managed to free myself   and even that might not have
been such a terrible fate.

With my legs pressed into the sides of my boobs and my feet
gripping the pole over my head, I had enough leverage to be able
to spread my elbows and force my hands up the pole and past my
butt, pausing only long enough to fish the soggy piece of paper
out of my pussy.  Then, resting my rear on the concrete, I pushed
my bound hands as far as I could to the left side of the pole,
bent my left knee and slipped that leg between my body and my
arms.  I repeated the process with my right leg and finished with
both feet on the ground and my hands in front of me   even if
still on the wrong side of the pole.

I unfolded the paper and deciphered the blurry combination.  Then
came the part I wasn't sure about.  After twisting around a few
different ways I found that I could reach the lock hanging on the
other side of the pole if I turned sideways and looked around one
side while reaching around the other to get to the lock.  The
lock had just clicked open when I heard the band marching up the
hill from the practice field.

Laughing with joy at my successful escape, I dashed back around
the Gym.  Polly had left my clothes right where she said she
would and I dressed quickly, even managing to get my top tied on
again without undoing the cords on my wrists.  Doing that the
hard way gave me an idea.

I stayed out of sight while the band put away their instruments
and paraphernalia they kept in the classroom building.  Since it
was a Friday afternoon, the band cleared out very quickly.  When
they had all gone, I went back to the walkway to wait for Polly.

When Polly returned, she found me in exactly the same position
and condition as when she had left, with one minor change.

"Well, I don't know what story you told to get everyone to leave
you here..." she began.  She looked at me, and then the pole. 
"...like this..."  Then she looked at the pole on the opposite
side of the walkway where she had left me, and her mouth dropped
open and stayed there.  Her astonished expression was worth every
bit of the trouble it took to get back into the same situation
with my boobs locked around a different pole.

"How did you do that?"

"I'll never tell," I said, smugly. 

Polly was so astonished at my feat that she fumbled the
combination a couple of times before she was able get it right
and remove the lock.  Since she had explained my options to me so
thoroughly, I knew she had thought the whole thing through in
detail when she planned it.  She could never in a million years
have imagined that I would be able to get free, evade discovery,
and then lock myself to a different pole.  I was so proud that I
wanted to show her just how I had managed it, but I decided that
it was best to keep it to myself so I could use the same methods
to mystify her again sometime.

She untied my hands and we went back to where she had left my bag
and my clothes.  My fingers were going numb by this time, so she
helped me put my top back on.  As she pulled it down, she ran her
thumb across one of my nipples.  I smiled, thinking she was being
frisky, then realized that she was checking to see how badly
scraped they were from being rubbed across the ground and the
concrete walkway.

Of course, they were completely healed by this time, and that
appeared to puzzle her almost as much as how I could have moved
from one pole to another, without actually getting free.

I picked up my shorts, but before I put them on I said, "Isn't
there something else you need to do?"  I spread my legs on the
grass and tilted my hips suggestively in her direction.

Polly blushed, but she stepped close and I put one hand on her
shoulder and another around her waist to steady myself as she
spread my pussy open and slipped her fingers inside me to
retrieve the paper with the combination.  She probed and felt and
pushed her hand in deeper and twisted her fingers around looking
for it.  All the while I tightened my embrace of her and tried to
keep my enjoyment from showing too much.

"Keep looking," I told her, when it looked like she might stop.

"Um," she nodded and renewed her effort, sweeping her fingers
round and round in her search for the slip of paper..

Finally, she had to give up.

"I'm sorry, Sam," she said.  "I can't find it.  I think you'll
have to douche it out."

I was nearly delirious by this time, but I managed to keep my
grin to a smirk as I slowly stuck my tongue out, showing her the
paper rolled up and stuck through the hole in my tongue.

"YOU!  You!  You rat!" She said, taking the paper from my mouth
with one hand while the other still idly swished around in my hot
and drippy pussy.  I wasn't sure she was aware that she was doing
it, and I sure wasn't going to ask her to stop.  I just pulled
her face to mine and puckered up.

Polly kissed me deeply as her fingers curled around to rub my
g-spot.  She knew what she was doing all right.  She had probably
spent the last hour doing the same thing to herself.  

She needed more practice at it, but by this time it didn't take
much at all to get me off.  My climax wasn't as strong as her
earlier one had been, but I tried to tell her all about it with
my lips and tongue when it happened.

I must have been very eloquent, because by the time we
reluctantly pried our lips apart, she was as glassy-eyed and
breathing as raggedly as I was.  I don't know which of us was
more wobbly.  She tried to help me get my shorts on and I tried
to let her, but both of us were clumsy at it.

"Ummm, Sam," she said, in a sultry, shaky voice.  "I've never
done anything like this before."  She started to giggle.  "Oh,
damn!  We just did a lot of stuff I've never done before.  And it
was all fantastic!"

"I had fun, too, Polly.  The thing with the pole was a great
idea.  I feel like Ehricha Weiss."

"Who?"

"Nevermind.  Just my ego getting out of control.  Listen, you
keep thinking of things you want to do to me, OK?  Have a good
weekend and I'll see you on Monday."

"I'm not sure I still want to hurt you, Sam.  I feel differently
now."

"What?"

"I'm not jealous of you anymore."

"Um, I fucked your boyfriend."

"I don't have a boyfriend.  But if I did, you would be welcome to
fuck him."

"Oh.  Crud.  Polly, what can I do to make you hate me again?"  

"You really like being hurt and humiliated?"

"Ohhhh, yes!  I'm a kinky bitch, I know.  And you're very good at
this.  Please don't stop.  I'll do anything you want."

"Anything?"

"Anything!"

"Tell me where you went Wednesday, after you got that phone
call."

If she had conked me on the head with her Social Studies book, it
wouldn't have dazed me as much as asking that.  I wasn't ready
for it, and I didn't have a story ready.

"Your head isn't as thick as you think it is," Polly said.  "I
could hear some of the other side of the conversation.  It kind
of echoed in that little room."

"So, what did you hear?" I asked, holding onto a thread of hope
that it might be something I could explain away with a straight
face.

"I heard someone ask for The Dragon.  At the time I didn't
understand.  I thought for sure I had just misheard it and I
forgot about it until later when I got home from school and
turned on the TV.  Before I could switch over to the movie
channel I saw the Special Live Report thingy come on the screen
and the local news people started talking about something amazing
that was going on.  When they showed the video and started
talking about Dragons, it just came back to me in a flash that
that was what I heard."

"Unhunh."  I had thought that I might have said something that
she picked up on.  I never thought that she might have been able
to hear Sheriff Foster.  I didn't have enough experience with
cell phones to know how un-private they were.  It didn't really
matter.  Polly had learned something that she didn't need to know
and it was my fault if it got her into trouble.

"I didn't mean to eavesdrop!" Polly said, apologetically.  "I
wasn't trying to snoop, really.  I promise.  Please don't be mad
at me."

"I'm not mad at you.  It's just that this is getting out of hand
too darn fast.  Listen, you have to promise me that you will
never tell anyone.  Please!  Please!  Please!"

"I promise!  I swear.  I'll never tell a soul."

"Good.  Thank you."

"So, you really know The Dragon?"

"Hunh?"  There was that feeling of being whacked on the head
again.

"I mean, at first I thought it might be you.  I know that's
silly.  The person on TV looked much bigger than you.   I mean,
she'd have to be, wouldn't she?  Fighting tanks and all.  And I'm
even bigger than you.  Then I get to school yesterday and
absolutely everyone is talking about her.  She's got to be
somebody that just moved here because no one had ever heard of
her before.  So tell me, do you really know her?"

"Sort of."

I really wasn't sure where I could go with this.  Should I
correct her misunderstanding and confess my secret?  That would
be defeating my purpose just to pump up my own ego.  I took a
deep breath and tried not to tell too awfully big a lie.

"I met her a couple of weeks ago when she arrived.  You're right,
she is much bigger than I am."  That was true in that I had
created a larger-than-life version of myself, anyway.  "In some
ways, that is."  I pulled my shoulders back to imply that I had
the advantage in certain key measurements.  That was something no
one was likely going to get to check.  "But you know, I promised
never to reveal her secrets and she is someone you really, really
don't want mad at you!"

"Oh, I understand!" Polly said.  She was getting very excited
about this.  "I promise I'll never say anything.  It's just that
I've never known anybody, you know, 'famous', and all.  Do you
think I could maybe, like, get her autograph?"

"Aaaah.  Sure.  I think I could do that."  It sounded so easy and
so simple. I just had to scribble "To Polly from The Dragon" on
something and give it to her and she would be happy.  Why did I
have a sudden feeling that I was about to make a terrible
mistake?

"Oh, thank you!  Thank you!" she bubbled.  "This is so great!"

Polly's enthusiasm was infectious.  She had me laughing along
with her as we bounced along the sidewalk.  It wasn't until she
turned off down Osceola Avenue and I walked on home alone that it
hit me that she might not be alone in her infatuation with my
Superheroine side.  I had been so caught up in trying to come up
with a persona that would scare the crap out of the bad guys that
I hadn't thought about the effect that an incredibly strong young
female out there fighting for truth, justice, and the right to
wear as much make-up as we wanted would have on girls my age.  I
was a role-model, whether I wanted it or not.  I had a fan club.
Which reminded me that I needed to get Sara in the loop ASAP so
that Polly would have someone safe to talk to and share her
autograph with.

The autograph idea got me thinking that maybe I needed to try to
get ahead of this thing before it snowballed on me.  This could
be turned from a possible liability into an advantage if I worked
it right.  Neeka would probably have some constructive ideas
about this.

As soon as I thought of her, she pulled up to the curb beside me
and I hopped into the car.

"How's that for timing?" she asked.  "I just finished running
some errands and I came to pick you up so we could go see Mr.
Morton.  Unless you are too worn out from playing Houdini?"

"Thanks.  I'm OK.  It was a lot of fun.  Not to mention good
practice."

"What part?  Being bare-assed in public, escaping from being tied
up, or playing doggie?"

"All three!" I laughed.  "And I swear it was all her idea.  Now
what do you think about Sara and the Fan Club?"

"I agree that the buzz we got from all the TV exposure is just
crying out to be spun.  We need to do something with it before
some reporter puts their own slant on the story and makes it
stick, but I'm not sure bringing Sara into the spotlight is the
right way to do it.  I like the autograph thing, though."

"Really?  That just kind of happened.  I'm not sure if that's a
good idea."

"No, really!  Think about it.  Who's going to be afraid of
someone who hands out autographed pictures of themselves?  Does
this strike you as something Bad Guys would do?"

"No.  It sounds like something a movie star or a celebrity would
do.  Wait a minute...pictures?"

"Like it or not, we're celebrities.  Do you know I haven't had a
single conversation in the last twenty-four hours where someone
didn't mention us?  I think we should take a picture with us and
the bike and hand them out."

"OK, you talked me into it."  

Actually, I was pretty excited about the idea by this time.  The
more I thought about it the more eager I was to do it.  We got so
wrapped up talking about it that we went home instead of going on
to see Mr. Morton.

When we explained the idea to Mom, she liked it right away.  She
even volunteered to let us use her fancy digital camera to shoot
the photo.

"Ben bought the thing and I never bothered to learn to work it. 
This will be the first time I've tried to use it."

"Don't worry," Neeka said.  "I use one all the time to take
photos for the school web page.  Did you know I'm the school
Webmaster?"

"No, dear.  I didn't."  Mom looked at me like she didn't have a
clue what that was and wanted me to explain it to her later.  

I just shrugged.  My geeky partner was going to have to explain
it to me first.  I was just happy that one of us was up on this
stuff.

"How do we get the photographs printed?" Mom asked.

Neeka said, "Whoever sold you the PC for the Lair included a
pretty good dye-transfer photo-quality printer.  Even if we don't
have any photo paper, we can get some good prints right away."

Mom went to get the camera while Neeka and I changed clothes. 
Once we had everything all set, it was only a matter of minutes
to take the picture, load it into the computer and print it out
on the glossy paper that Neeka found had come with the printer. 
The whole thing went so quickly that we tried three or four
different poses to get just the right one.

The picture that we chose to use was of the big black and chrome
bike sitting in front of the dazzle-art wall of the workshop with
Neeka sitting on it, leaning on the handlebars, and me standing
beside it with my fists on my hips and my feet shoulder-width
apart.  The camera was setup to shoot slightly up at us, and with
me standing a couple of feet in front, it made me look much
larger than I really am; which worked with what Polly had said
about The Dragon appearing much bigger on TV.  

We were both in full costume and I had the non-animated version
of my make-up on.  Neeka insisted that I pull the zipper of my
suit down to show some cleavage and I gave in after putting up
only a token argument about it freaking people out.

"You've been on TV like that," she explained.  "Anyone who might
freak has already done so.  Besides, a little sex-appeal is a
good thing.  We want to appear approachable, if mysterious.  And
it distracts from the fact that your suit is trying to blend in
with the room."

So the photo acquired a kind of pin-up character as well.  I had
to admit, when the final version came out of the printer, that
with the background, the bike and the dramatic pose, we looked
darn good.  We all agreed that we probably couldn't get it much
better, so we used up the rest of the small package of glossy
paper making a supply to hand out when the opportunity came up. 
I could hardly wait.

Of course, the first person we gave one to had to be Mr. Morton.
After we changed clothes again, we fought the rush-hour traffic
to get over to his shop to see him right away.



***



"I hope we're not getting here too late," I said as the chime
above his shop door announced our arrival.  Morton popped into
view immediately, wearing his professional expression.

You've probably heard the expression, 'face lit up with a smile'.
 Let me tell you, Mr. Morton's face suddenly looked like sun rose
inside his head.  I could see every tooth in the man's mouth.  I
started to introduce my partner, but he recognized her
immediately and even knew her nom de guerre.

"You've been watching TV, haven't you?" I asked him.

"Oh, yes!" he admitted, nodding jerkily.  "Every second.  You
were wonderful!  You were both wonderful!  Please, come back to
my office.  I have something to show you."

Mr. Morton showed us back to his office and offered us coffee,
which we declined, or a soft drink, which I accepted.  As we sat
down, Neeka handed him the garment bag with her jacket in it and
asked if it would be possible to get a big ace of diamonds logo
on the back.

"Not a problem," Morton said.  "I do custom artwork all the time.
 I used to use a silkscreen for things like this, but now I have
this very nice computerized airbrush system that can handle
contoured images.  Very handy thing it is."

"How many degrees of freedom does it have?" Neeka asked.

"Six," Morton said.  And with that the two of them fell into a
discussion that I followed for about five seconds before it got
too techie for me, so I just sipped my drink and nodded like I
knew what the heck a degree of freedom was.  Eventually, Morton
noticed that only one of us was actively participating in the
conversation and he politely closed the subject.

"But I'm sure we will have plenty of time to get into that
later," he said.  "Now, let me show you some sketches."

He pulled a big pad out of a locked drawer in his desk and opened
it on the table.  The first drawing was of me, and a nice one,
too.  Morton had an artistic flair, but I supposed that went with
the territory for custom clothing designers.

The drawing showed a costume with a panel of fabric running from
my wrists down my sides all the way to my ankles.  In the sketch,
I had my arms up and out and the fabric was stretched taut, like
a stubby wing.  I thought it looked ridiculous and so did Neeka.

"Makes you look like a flying squirrel," she said, stifling a
giggle.

I hadn't thought of that, but she was right.  I covered my mouth
so I wouldn't laugh right in Mr. Morton's face.  Fortunately, he
was used to rejection.

"That's all right," he said.  "I guess it does at that.  Oh,
well.  I thought of this after seeing you jump so far off the
tank.  It's clear that you can jump quite a ways.  I thought that
it might help you guide yourself in the air."

"Oooo, now that's a good idea," I said, regretting having
laughed.  "I've had problems with that.  But my solution is to
keep my feet on the ground as much as possible.  And I think the
flying squirrel thing has been done."

"Ah, quite so.  Well, how about this   when I did the first suit,
I wasn't aware that your, ah, chameleon-like ability extended to
your whole body.  We could take advantage of this by realigning
the weave so that the optical property would operate through the
fabric, rather than around the surface."

"You mean it would be like the Emperor's New Clothes?" Neeka
asked.  "The cloth would be invisible?"

"Effectively so," he said.  "It would transmit the dragon
design..."  Morton paused to wave a finger in my direction.

I knew a cue when I heard one and lit up the full animated
version.   Morton paused and stared.  When I turn it on, most
people's eyes get big and they look either scared, sick, shocked
or some combination of the three.  Morton looked fascinated and
more than a bit smug.  I remembered that, for him, I was the
embodiment of a life-long fantasy.

"...the, ah, design through the cloth.  That really is amazing,
you know.  Making it move like that is really stunning.  I'm
sitting right in front of you and all I can see is Dragon.  It's
a truly visceral effect."

"So, it makes your guts crawl?"

"Yes, it certainly does!  This is a wonderful design.  And the
archetypical symbolism is a simply ingenious choice."

I went back to being me again and Mr. Morton discovered that he
was perspiring, even though the air in the office was on the cool
side.  He mopped his neck with his silk handkerchief.

"I don't know," I said.  "I can do a skin effect quickly only
after I've practiced it.  I can't really be a chameleon and use
it to blend in.  And I tried using the full-body thing the other
night.  That didn't work out too well."

"The other night?  Wednesday night?  You were involved in the
destruction of that drug factory?"

"Yes, that was me.  It was a busy day."

"It certainly was.  Did you see the story in the morning paper
about that?"

I shook my head.  Reading about my exploits seemed very
narcissistic and I usually spent my spare time in the morning
doing other things than reading newspapers.

"The police think that the gang was responsible for a large
number of unsolved crimes ranging from fencing stolen property up
to extortion, and even murder.  They say they may have been
behind as much as 30% of the drug trafficking in the area."

"That's not the whole story.  They were into much nastier stuff
than that.  Believe me, you don't want to know."

"Remarkable!  But what could be worse than murder?"

"Making a video of it for 'special customers'."  I had warned
him.

"Oh my God!"  Morton turned green.  I thought he might lose his
lunch, but he got control before things got out of hand.

"I'm sorry," he said, swallowing firmly.

"That's one you don't see in the comics."

"No," he agreed.  "Not even Miller or Moore has gone that far. 
Some of the stronger horror titles have themes along those lines,
but no one confuses that with reality.  They were actually making
'snuff films'?"

"Yes.  They made one teensy mistake, though."

"Let me guess   they cast you in the lead role?"

Nothing slow about Morton.  I began to suspect that he was the
one who programmed all that computerized equipment he was so
proud of.

"I was doing pretty good at acting, too!  Then they tried to
cancel my contract and things kind of went to heck."

"The paper said they found several bodies in the ashes."

I wondered if Morton was asking if I had killed them.  I hadn't.
But that didn't mean I wouldn't have, in self defense, or while
protecting someone else.  I thought maybe I should just clam up
and let him think I was responsible, but I couldn't do it.

"If I could have saved them, I would have," I assured him.  "They
blew up the place by accident.  I just barely got out myself."

"Oh!  Was the suit I made adequate protection then?"

"Well, I didn't have it with me.  It was in the wash.  That's one
of the reasons I wanted to talk to you.  I think a second suit
would be a good idea   if you have enough fabric to make one."

He chuckled, almost to himself.  He looked down at the tabletop
and didn't look up again for a few seconds.  He must have been
trying to decide what to tell me.  While he thought about it, I
remembered that I wasn't the only one with secrets.

Morton must have decided that since I had been honest with him,
he would return the courtesy.

"That will not be a problem," he said.  "I got that from a friend
at a research lab who had tried to interest the military in it
for battle dress uniforms.  I believe I told you that they turned
him down because it would have been too expensive to manufacture
as military uniforms?  Well, I emailed him a copy of the clip of
you destroying the tank.  He's going to go back and offer to make
t-shirts of it using my process.  He's going to show them the
clip as part of the presentation.  He's sure that having a
successful field demonstration will get their attention."

"Oh, wow!"  I was stunned that I had something to do with such an
important thing.

"I hope you don't mind me sending the clip.  It was on TV, so I
didn't think I was violating a trust."

"No!  That's great.  I'm glad your friend is getting something
for providing the fabric.  I just hope he doesn't want a live
demonstration."

Morton went quiet again and that answered my question.

"Actually," he said, "He asked that very thing.  I told him I
didn't think you would want to go quite that far, but he made me
promise to ask."

I shook my head.  "I don't think I should be using my abilities
to directly promote someone's business.  I mean, I'm very
grateful, and I don't have a problem with him using me to
field-test the fabric, but I think I should stop at that."

"I understand completely.  He felt he had to ask.  And now I have
a favor to ask as well, mostly because I feel I have to ask it as
well.  You know I'm a Fan?"

"Yes.  Mom explained it to me.  Something about for some it's
just a blankety-blank hobby and for others it's a way of life?"

"Yes.  I used to be one of the 'Fandom Is A Way Of Life' crowd,
but as I got older I became less dedicated.  Now, it's just a
hobby, but I think I may get more involved than I have been
lately.  You have made a big difference in that.  You see, people
get into Fandom for many reasons, but they all are strongly
attracted to the idea that there are people whose abilities put
them so far above the norm that they may as well be gods.  From
that perspective, Fandom is like a religion.  I have had some
arguments over this, but I think it's a valid point.  Anyway,
meeting you has completely removed the element of faith from the
equation.  You may not think of yourself as a goddess, but you
qualify on most of the criteria.  You certainly qualify as a
superhero."

"Superheroine," I corrected.

"Even better," he said, smiling at my Politically Correct
version.  "There are women in Fandom, too.  Not as many as the
male contingent would like there to be, but some.  Can you
imagine the impact you would have on them?  Can you imagine how
meeting a real heroine would empower them?"

"You want me to go to a convention with you?"  Now it was my turn
to show some insight.

"Yes.  There is a big one in Miami over the fourth of July
weekend.  I am on the committee and I am almost certain that I
can get them to make you two the Guests of Honor.  In addition to
the Honor part, that means they pay for your room, meals, and
travel expenses."

If I was ever going to go press-the-flesh in public as The
Dragon, Morton's convention would almost certainly be the
friendliest crowd I could appear before.  Neeka agreed on that
point, too.  But July was several weeks off, and things had been
moving so fast that I had no idea what might happen before then.

"I'll think about it," I told him, and shut up before he figured
out that we had both decided to go if it was at all possible. 
Neeka was even more enthusiastic than I was, and I was already
looking forward to it.

Morton nodded and smiled, accepting that as the best answer he
could have hoped for.

"Thank you.  If you come, you should be prepared to see other
girls made up to look like you.  Many Fans like to dress as their
favorite character at Cons.  You have the advantage of not being
a work of fiction, so I expect there will be a number of girls
who will go as you."

Morton smiled broadly as he though of something.  He stifled a
laugh and explained, "I was going to say that you might even be
able to blend in to the point where no one would recognize you as
the real thing, but then I realized how silly that is.  You will
stand out in any crowd.  No one will be able to match either your
make-up or your figure."

 "Are you going to be making costumes for some of the Fans at the
Con?" I asked, picking up the jargon.

"Why yes!  I always have.  It's how I got into the clothing
business.  You'd be surprised at the number of girls who want to
dress up as Wonder Girl or Martian princesses and expect the
costume to make their fantasy real.  And I once did all the
costumes for a group who wanted to be the cast of Rocky Horror. 


"But don't worry.  I won't dress someone up like you.  That would
be a conflict of interest.  I won't let on about our
relationship.  I won't even be the one to introduce you.  It will
be enough for me to see the reaction of my friends at having the
two of you there."

Now I really had to go to this convention.  It looked like it
would mean a lot to Mr. Morton to have me there, and Mr. Morton
was my friend.



Neeka watched while Morton created the diamond design on his
computer and applied it to the back of her jacket with his fancy
automatic sprayer.  They swapped techy jargon back and forth and
pretty soon they were getting on like old friends.  I amused
myself by flipping through some of Morton's sketchbooks from a
stack on a shelf in the corner of his workshop.

Every one of the drawings was as good or better than the ones he
had done of me.  They all showed women in gorgeous clothes  
everything from stunning formal gowns to casual clothes to
lingerie.  The poses seemed a little strange to me, though.  Not
that I had seen enough designer's sketches to know, but these all
looked like they were more flattering to the models than to the
clothes.  The poses seemed more sultry and seductive than was
really necessary and the amount of detail in the faces made them
appear more like portraits than clothing sketches.  I had admired
several pages, before I turned the page to the next one and saw
Bambi wearing the Native American costume that she had let Lori
Henderson wear the morning after our sleep-over party.  

There was no doubt at all that it was Bambi.  The fishnet top
looked great on her and the location of the feathers was perfect.
 They framed her breasts without hiding them.  The seductive look
on her face told me that the outfit had been commissioned for her
husband's benefit and maybe even at his suggestion.  The art and
the model and the clothes came together in a way that made the
drawing just jump off the page.  Morton not only had great
designs, but he had a way of presenting them that could make you
feel that not wearing one would be a crime.  No wonder his
customers were so loyal.  One look at the sketch of yourself in
one of his creations and you would be willing to pay anything on
the chance that you would actually look that good wearing it.

I was fascinated by the sketchbooks and I went through them all
very quickly, looking to see if there were any more of Bambi. 
There were several of her   all lovely outfits and beautiful
works of art.

The last book in the stack was different from the rest.  Where
the others had been seductive and beautiful, the drawings in it
were more blatantly erotic.  The clothes were more impractical. 
The models on the whole were even more dramatically proportioned
and in many the poses were more than slightly pornographic.

I turned the pages of this one more slowly than the others. 
Where some of the other books had some faces that were familiar,
these women were all strangers.  Their bodies seemed to radiate
lust and their expressions told of a deep passion that no words
could express.  The paper itself felt warm with their silent
heat.

"Ah, that one wasn't supposed to have been left out," Morton
said, gently taking the book out of my hands.  

My fingers were reluctant to let go and my hands brushed my rings
as they rose up.  The rings were standing out like semaphores,
signaling my aroused condition.  Trying to hide it would have
just drawn more attention, so I didn't bother.

"You are a very good artist, sir," I told him.  "I may have the
distinction of being one of a very few clients who has declined
one of your designs."

Morton smiled as he put the book away in a drawer of his desk and
closed it.

"Thank you, your appreciation is noted."

He meant my physical reaction and I smiled at the diplomatic way
he put it.

"I know about your other clients," I confessed.

His head came up and his mouth opened as if he wanted to ask me
to keep it to myself.  He closed it again as he realized that my
knowing his secret merely bound us closer to each other.

"Have you done anything for Summer Winters?  Her cousin is a
friend of mine."

"No, I haven't had the pleasure.  She must work for another
studio.  I don't advertise that side of things and I have only
done work for a couple of the larger companies.  The smaller ones
aren't much for production values, I'm afraid.  The costume
budget is nearly zero for most films, anyway."

"As are the costumes.  But nudity has a limited appeal.  You need
to spice it up to keep things fresh and interesting," I said,
offering my insight into the purpose of clothing in a
near-tropical climate.

"Exactly!" Mr. Morton said, his eyes lighting up.  "Exactly what
I try to do with my designs.  You should enhance, not obscure. 
Elevate, not cover-up.  The body of a beautiful woman is one of
nature's greatest masterpieces.  It should be framed and
displayed, not bound and hidden."  He seemed to have forgiven me
for snooping where I shouldn't have.

"I see I need to reinforce some areas of your new suit," he said,
changing the subject.  Surely his attention wasn't merely drawn
to me by the subject of the conversation.  Even I wasn't
egotistical enough to think of my body as a masterpiece.

"Yes, the rings normally lie flat enough to be inconspicuous. 
When I get turned on   which happens a lot, to be completely
honest   my nipples get really hard and they try to stand up."

"There does seem to be a correlation between a woman's beauty and
her sex drive," he observed.  "Many of my clients   both types  
buy clothes that have the life expectancy of a moth in a forest
fire.  I do a brisk business in mending ripped seams and
re-attaching buttons; so much so that I have started using Velcro
on the more, ah, 'commercial' items."

"Including the catalog merchandise?" I asked.

"You are well-informed.  Yes, I take orders over the Internet,
too.  And here I thought I had secrets."

"Your secrets are safe with us.  If I can, I will be happy to
repay you the same way we are repaying your friend who provided
this wonderful fabric."

"Thank you, but I have all the business I can handle.  I am the
most fortunate of fellows.  I am doing exactly what I want and I
am quite successful at it.  And now, I have a confidant who has
made one of my most cherished dreams a reality.  You have done
more for me than I could possibly ask.

"Speaking of your new suit," he said, before we both got too
sentimental, "I had another idea."

He took out a shallow box and sat it on the table.  Inside was
another pair of the suit-gloves.  I pulled them on and they fit
as perfectly as the others.  These seemed to have more layers of
fabric, and they had stiffer overlapping segments over the
knuckles.

"These have been reinforced with a special type of plastic," he
explained.

"Something else from your friend at the research lab?"

"Well, he was so happy that you had saved his latest project that
he tossed several other failed items into a box and shipped it
overnight.  I made these just this morning.  The other things I'm
still figuring out."

"What's special about the plastic?"  I could move my hands with
ease, and my dexterity was just as good as with the other
gloves.

"It hardens instantly on impact.  It was supposed to be used to
make bulletproof vests that were lighter and more comfortable to
wear than those with metal or ceramic inserts.  Here, punch that
column behind you."

I turned and walked to one of the steel supports for the
building.  The manufacturing area in the back of the shop had
been left in Industrial Cheap dcor and the stout columns were
exposed, complete with cross-members and rivets.  I made a fist
and punched one of the columns gently, so as not to break my
knuckles on the steel.

I felt only the shock of my arm coming to an abrupt halt when it
hit.  The entire surface of the back of the glove, all the way
from the tips of the fingers across the back and around my wrist,
had turned instantly rigid.  The stiffness eased off gradually,
but quickly, and I was able to flex my fingers again in seconds.

"Wow!" I said.  "This is great!  I can punch things without
worrying about busted knuckles.  This is perfect!"

I made a fist and hit the column again.  This time my exuberance
got the better of me and I hit it with a burst of Power behind
it.  There was a loud clang and the steel column buckled, bending
at least four inches out of plumb.  The three of us were showered
with dust from the overhead beams and the ceiling.

"Sorry," I said, as apologetically as I could.  "I need to work
on pulling my punches."

"Not a problem," Morton said, chuckling as he brushed us off with
a whisk-broom.  "My fault completely.  I saw you destroy a tank
and still I cannot imagine the power that you must possess.  My
other clients tend to be a pampered lot.  They think their beauty
is as fragile as glass.  Yours is stronger than steel."

I fixed his column as best I could, pulling on it and punching
from the opposite side until it was mostly straight again.  In
the process, I again covered us all with insulation from the
ceiling and we all laughed like loons while Morton brushed us off
once more.

"That's fine," he said, when he though I might try to fine-tune
my efforts.  "At least I know the structure is sound.  The damage
can be explained as a fork-lift accident when moving the
equipment.  Some of these pieces are quite heavy."

He laughed again, "And this is even better than my paperweight."

Getting serious, he asked, "Do you know how strong you really
are?"

"No.  But the Power seems to be growing all the time.  Hitting
the tank with that driveshaft thing was the first time I ever
intentionally tried to use it all.  I was shocked when I saw it
split open like that.  Oh, and the suit did a good job of keeping
the bits of metal from flying off and cutting me.  I came away
without a scratch."

"Good!  How are the optical properties working out for you?"

"Did you see the interview with Deputy Murphy about the grocery
store holdup?"

"Yes, I did.  They ran that as a sidebar story during the
coverage they gave you."

"Remember when he said I went into the front of the store and
disappeared?  I was too preoccupied to notice at the time, but I
got down on the black and white tile floor to sneak up on the
robbers and the suit blended in perfectly as I crawled across
it."

"That's very good.  The effect should logically be weakest in a
brightly-lit, high-contrast environment.  It should be at its
best in a diffuse light with a homogenous background.  You may be
almost undetectable in that type environment."

Talking with my partner had brought out the techie side of Mr.
Morton.  I thought we had better get out of there before they
started affecting me.  I was already curious about what else
might be in that bag of stuff Morton's friend had sent.  I might
have even given in, but we had a big date coming up and I wanted
to have plenty of time to get ready.  I cut off the discussion by
presenting him with the first-ever Dragon and Ace 8 x 10 glossy
photo.

Mr. Morton was delighted.

"This is marvelous!" he told us.  "I'm going to have this framed
and hang it in my office."

"Would you like a personal message on it?" I asked him, hoping it
wouldn't be too specific about our relationship.  That might make
him a target.

"Just 'To Sylvester', please.  And the date."

"Sylvester?"

"Yes, that's me.  Sylvester Felix Morton."

I shut my mouth just in time to keep from asking if his parents
had a thing for cartoon cats.  While I was making teethmarks in
my tongue, I wondered if Mom knew and if this was one of the
reasons she liked him so much.  Neither of them had been very
fortunate in the name department.  

Maybe I shouldn't judge.  Samantha isn't that 'normal' a name. 
Nor is Sam.  At least no one had ever mistaken me for a boy while
I was growing up.  Certainly no one would now.

Neeka did the honors, since her penmanship was much better than
mine.  A point that I had conceded willingly since it meant she
would have to do all of the work autographing the photos.

Sylvester took the photo like the ink was still wet.  I started
to tell him it was OK, but I was getting better and holding my
tongue, so I just watched him carefully lay it flat between two
pages of a sketchbook and close the book on it so it wouldn't get
damaged.

I wondered about him asking for the date as well, then I
understood that it would be a much more desirable collector's
piece if it could be fixed to an early date in our careers. 
Having it part of the autograph was as good as having it
notarized.  Sylvester was a very shrewd cat.  He could now prove
that he had the very first photo we had given out.

Neeka and I gathered up her jacket and my new gauntlets, said
goodbye to Mr. Morton and headed back home again.

On the way, I thought of something I should have earlier.

"We should have asked if he could make something for you out of
that fabric," I said.

"Don't worry.  He will.  He suggested that while he was showing
me how his system worked.  He's going to make me a bodysuit to
wear under my jacket and replace the lining in it with the same
stuff in your gloves to make it bulletproof and impact-resistant.
 He took my measurements for some slacks, too.  I guess you were
busy looking at the porn to notice."

"Yes, well, some of those sketches were very good."

"Good and hot.  I thought we were going to have to mop up the
seat of the chair you were sitting in."

"Oh, they were.  Especially the one of Mom in her Pocahontas
outfit."

"Ooooh!" she said, looking at my memory of the drawing.  "She
still has that one, doesn't she?  I may ask her to model it for
us."

"Good idea.  I wish we had more time."  I was thinking about the
side-trip we had discussed before.  The sooner we got moving on
some of the PR stuff we had talked about, the better.

"We still have time," Neeka said.  "We need the roll-out practice
anyway.  And you don't need that much time to get ready for
tonight.  You already know what you're going to wear and the only
thing you have to fool with is your hair.  You'll change your
make-up three times during dinner."

Busted by a mind-reading partner   again.  She also knew that I
wanted time to fuss and fidget, and that would probably not lead
to anything good.  

"OK," I sighed.  Let's pretend we have a call in that
neighborhood with all the big trees.  What was it, University
Avenue?"

"Yeah.  Someone lucked-out on the shade.  Those oaks must have
been planted during the Civil War."

"You mean 'The War of Northern Aggression'," I said in my best
Southern Belle accent.

"That one," she laughed.  It was something they made a point of
telling us in History class; that the victors got to write the
books and if the South had won, the books would be written very
differently.

We drove right home, parked behind the workshop and, this time,
out of the path of the bike when Neeka rocketed out of the
double-doors with me hanging on behind her.

I had a real close look at the Ace of Diamonds logo on her jacket
with my nose pressed against it.  It was gorgeous.  The shading
from black to red made it look like it was floating above the
surface of the leather.  Morton had done his usual excellent job,
even in the short time he had to work on it.  I just hoped that
the paint had dried; otherwise I was going to be Rudolph the
red-nosed Dragon.

Neeka slowed to under Mach 5 going into the tree-shaded
neighborhood with all the old houses, so I worked up the courage
to peek over her shoulder, something I could do only because she
drove in a racing crouch like she was afraid the wind would slow
her down.  

I knew the houses had to be old because they had nice porches in
front and people were out sitting on them in wooden chairs and
swings.  They were also much larger than the ones in the new
subdivisions on either side of the highway south of town and were
farther from the street, giving them good-sized front yards where
groups of kids ran around shrieking and squealing as they played.
 I felt a sharp pang of nostalgia for my own childhood, even if
it was only a few years ago.  I wanted to hop off and go join
those kids.

Neeka throttled back on the bike to the point where window-glass
wasn't endangered.  She just goosed it often enough to keep us
moving along.  Even so, the growl of the big motor was attracting
attention and I could see heads turning and people pointing as we
rolled past.  I searched their faces to try to spot someone who
looked friendly, but all I could see was curiosity and concern.

We were about in the middle of the block when I felt Neeka's
sudden stab of fear.  It was so quick and unexpected than I
reacted without thinking.  She hit the brake hard, which made the
bike nosedive.  I shoved off the pegs and vaulted over her head
and into a somersault, landing in a defensive crouch just in
front of the bike as it came to a stop in the middle of the
street.  

I didn't have to scan the area to find what made Neeka react like
that; it was standing right in front of me wearing a striped
t-shirt, a crew-cut, and a big grin.  He looked about seven years
old and he must have run out into the street in front of the
bike, scaring Neeka half to death.

"Hi!" he said, interlacing his fingers in front of his chest and
wiggling them around nervously.

If I had stood up, I would have been taller than he was by about
the same amount that most people were taller than me.  Since he
was already nervous, I decided to take a knee instead and keep my
face at his eye level.

"That's neat!" he said, pointing at my face and the dragon's head
image writhing around on it.

Apparently there is some kind of lower age-limit on being
freaked-out over how people look.  It certainly seemed to upset
adults more than teens, and this kid wasn't bothered at all.

"What's your name?" I asked.

The answer came not from the boy but from a woman I took to be
his mother, who dashed down from her porch calling, "Matthew!"

"Pleased to meet you, Matt.  I'm The Dragon," I said, holding out
my hand, which he shook.  "And that's Ace."

My partner smiled and touched the brim of her cap in
acknowledgment.  She turned the bike toward the curb to get it
out of the way of traffic, which fortunately was absent at the
moment.

I led Matt up onto the sidewalk as his mom rushed up.  She had
her arms out like she expected to him to leap into their safety,
and she seemed puzzled when he just stood next to me holding my
hand.

"Hey, Mom.  This is The Dragon!  Isn't she neat?"

Matthew's mother was torn between being protective and being
polite.  She was a nice-looking woman in her late 20's with light
brown hair the same shade as her son's, wearing a sleeveless
yellow top and a pair of rather wrinkled khaki shorts.  I thought
she was probably a homemaker who had been taking a break on her
porch while waiting on her husband to get home from work.

If he worked at the same plant as Yvette and Jan, he would be
getting off in about twenty minutes and then have a forty-five
minute drive through heavy traffic to get home.  Since I needed
to be home myself before then, we had plenty of time to chat.

"Hi.  I'm Darla Gresham," she said, politeness winning out over
protectiveness.  The way she failed to roll the 'r' in Darla told
me she was a local girl.

Mrs. Gresham and I shook hands and she seemed to relax at the
normality of the introduction.

"I'm..." I started, realizing that I hadn't thought ahead this
far.  I couldn't very well give my real name, and 'The Dragon'
seemed a trifle formal.  I think Darla picked up on my problem
because she squeezed my hand and came to my rescue.

"Pleased to meet you, Ms. Dragon," she said, buzzing the
nonexistent 'z' in Ms. In a way that showed she rarely used that
form of address.  I understood that she was giving me the most
cordial honorific she could think of.

"And this is Ace," I added turning to indicate the girl in the
chauffeur's cap and newly decorated leather jacket.

Neeka was bracing the bike upright with her feel spread widely
apart.   She leaned over and shook hands with Darla, but left the
conversation to me.

"Would you'all care for a cool drink?" Darla asked.  "I have some
lemonade I just made.  It's only the concentrate, I'm afraid, but
it's not bad."

Her old-style hospitality was so charming I had to accept.  I
tried not to let my own accent mirror hers when I said, "We'd be
delighted."

A crowd of kids had started to gather around us.  The adults
within sight were standing on their porches and in their yards,
trying to watch the goings-on without being too conspicuous about
it.  Most were failing terribly.  A couple of the busier-bodies
were even heading this way.  

Neeka backed the bike behind us so it would be to hand and she
could keep an eye on it.  Darla glanced back, but said nothing
about having the machine parked on her walkway.  

As we walked up to Darla Gresham's porch, all but the nosiest
neighbors retreated back to their own yards.  It's an unwritten
rule in the South that you don't barge in on folks when they are
having company.  

Some of those rules of polite behavior have a stronger hold than
the force of law.  By the time we set foot on Darla's porch, all
the adults and most of the kids had vanished.  There were only
one other boy and two girls standing with Matt.  All seemed to be
about his age and probably felt entitled to be there when
something this interesting was going on.

Neeka and I sat in a couple of plastic lawn chairs while Matt and
his friends dropped down on the porch and scooted their backs up
against the railing.  The kids were fascinated with both of us. 
They leaned this way and that to get a peek at every part of us.
The boys seemed torn between watching us and wanting to go check
out the bike that was sitting only a few feet away, ticking with
the heat coming off of it.

Darla brought out cups of lemonade for everyone and then settled
into the porch swing once we had been served.

"I guess you're not from around here, then," she said to restart
the conversation.

I smiled at the implicit assumption that I must be from a very
distant place   maybe even some other galaxy.  "No," I said,
"we're both local girls.  But that's just between you, me and the
tree."

Darla smiled and nodded at my confiding a detail like that.  It
confirmed to me again that the fastest way to gain trust is to
give it.

"We watched you two on TV the other day.  They took off the soaps
the rest of the afternoon."  She looked like she regretted
mentioning that I had made her miss her shows.  "Then we saw the
helicopter chasing you and ran outside when you came through. 
That was very exciting.  We don't get a lot of excitement around
here."

"Yes, well, I wanted to apologize for raising such a ruckus
racing through here like that."  Darn!  Was that me?  Darla was
bringing out the local girl in me and I was starting to sound
like Jolene.  I could feel the extra vowels clogging my throat. 
"We were just trying to get home without having the TV people
following us.  They lost us under the trees, I guess."

"Can you really hide from them for long?  Looking like that, I
mean.  I'd think you would kinda stand out.  No offense."

"None taken.  But this isn't me.  This is just a disguise.  Fancy
makeup.  Look...."  

I held out my hand and pulled the glove off.  Darla leaned over
to see, but shrank back when my scaly hand and yellow claws
appeared.  I turned off the design and made my hand several
shades whiter than my usual tan.  I would have made it 'normal'
but I had forgotten just what shade that was.  I had been living
in custom skin for the last few weeks and I had started to take
it for granted.

Darla looked again, fascinated by my trick.  Matt crawled close
to have a look, too, so I held my hand down where all the kids
could get a look and I put a happy-face right on my palm for
them.  It was an instant hit and I was peppered with requests for
various designs, colors and cartoon characters.  I tried to
oblige as best I could, but I had never done most of the things
they wanted and I never heard of a couple of the characters.

"Who is Bubba Bear?" I asked Darla, feeling old and out of touch
with the Saturday morning shows.

She shugged.  "Darned if I know," she said.  "So, how did you get
into this...."

"Line of work?" I finished for her.  

She nodded.

"One day I realized I could do things that other folks couldn't,"
I told her, shortening the story to the minimum.  "After that, it
was just a matter of doing it when people needed it.  The tank
thing is just the most public thing we've been asked to handle."

"The TV said you stopped a robbery.  They said there was other
things the police wouldn't talk about, too."

"It's interesting work, there's no doubt about that.  Some of it
is fun, too."

"Is that why do you do it?"

"The fun?  No.  I do it because...."  I ran down.  I had been
about to give her the same old story, and I was tired of that
explanation.  "If you're sitting in a hamburger joint and someone
at a table next to you starts choking, would you jump up and give
them the Heimlich   if you knew how?"

"Sure."

"Why?"

She thought about it for a bit.  "Because I'd never have another
decent night's sleep if I didn't try to help someone when they
needed me."

"Bingo."

"OK, but beating the...stopping someone from running a tank
through someone's house or a school...that's dangerous.  You
could have been killed."

"How should I decide?  Where can I draw the line?  When do I say,
'This is too dangerous.  Let them die.'?"

Darla was quiet for a moment.  Then she said, "You can't.  I
never thought of it like that.  When my little brother went off
and joined the Marines, I didn't understand why he would chose to
do something that might get him killed.  I guess I see it now. 
He thought it was something he could do and he couldn't stand it
if he didn't try.  You can't never back down, or you'll always
wonder."

"Yep."

"I think there's a word for that."

"Stupidity?" I asked, trying to lighten the tone.

"Courage."

She had me there.  There wasn't any way I could respond to that
that wouldn't sound terrible.  I looked down at the kids on the
porch.  Matt and his buddy had lost interest in the talking and
were staring and pointing at the big bike parked at the foot of
the porch steps, but the two girls had been hanging on every
word.  They were staring at me like I was...I dunno.

"A Heroine," Neeka supplied, silently.  "This is your big chance.
 Say something inspirational."

"Like what!  'Eat your vegetables'?"

"What would you need to hear, if you were them?"

I took a deep breath.  This had better be good.

"Courage is nothing more than doing what you know is right, even
when you know it's gonna hurt to do it," I said aloud to the
girls.  It sounded OK when I said it, but the more I thought
about it, the dumber it seemed.

"No, that's perfect," Neeka said.

"Why did you come back here?" Darla asked.  It was probably an
innocent question, but it cut to the quick.  I couldn't very well
tell her that we were using her to improve our public relations.

"We want people to know that we're the Good Guys," Neeka told
her.  As usual, it sounded better the way she put it.

"You could go on TV and say that to a lot more folks."

"People say things on TV all the time," I said.  "Not all of it
true.  Most of it is BS designed to get you to buy something. 
We're not selling anything."

"So when it gets out that you were here, what should I say?"

"That we had a nice chat for a while on a warm Friday
afternoon."

Darla laughed.  "That will drive the news people crazy!"

"Yeah.  'No story here.  Go away.' That about says it.  We want
them to leave us alone so we can get on with the job."

"I understand," Darla said.  From the way she said it, it sounded
like she did, too.

We thanked her for the lemonade and we both said goodbye to her
and all the kids.  We were getting on the bike when I handed Matt
a copy of our photo, making him the center of attention while we
rolled down the street as discreetly as we could.  Neeka waited
until we reached a wider cross-street before she resumed her
usual speed.  After that, I just hung on for the ride home.



***



After trying on five dresses three times each, I had the
selection narrowed down to five dresses.  It wasn't that progress
hadn't been made; my hair was done, my make-up was fine, but I
could not make up my mind which dress to wear.  They all fit
perfectly and they were all not too formal and not too casual to
wear on a date like this.  At least I hoped not.  That was the
root of my problem   I wanted to look really nice, but I didn't
want to be overdressed.

I was pacing and chewing my nails when I heard the door open and
Mom stuck her head in.

"Need some help, honey?" she asked.

"Only all I can get!  Which dress should I wear tonight?"

"Wear one that Steve hasn't seen you in."

"But he's only seen me in school clothes.  Any of these would be
new to him."

"Well, then what do you think you will be doing?"

"I don't know.  We're just going to go over to his cousin's
apartment for the evening.  Although I've heard that the complex
is notorious for wild parties."

"Ah!  A club dress then.  Something tight, but something you can
dance in.  Do you want to attract attention?"

"Excuse me?"

"Sorry.  Silly question."  

She went into my walk-in closet and flipped through some hangers
before coming back with a garment I had passed over because I
thought it was a negligee.  She handed it to me and after turning
it around a couple of times, I stepped into it and pulled the
halter around the back of my neck and fastened the clasp.

The dress was made of an extremely light and thin blue synthetic
material.  It had a drape-front that showed off my cleavage
wonderfully and a wide plunge back that stopped just short of my
crack.  The hem was asymmetrical, going all the way down to the
back of my left knee and up to just above mid-thigh on my right
leg.  

It was so light and fit so perfectly that I could hardly feel it
on my skin.  Again, I marveled at Mr. Morton's genius for
design.

"It's perfect!" I said, giving Mom a hug before going back to the
mirror.  "By the way, I was snooping in Mr. Morton's sketchbooks
this afternoon and I came across the one he did of you wearing
that Indian Maid outfit.  The one with the feathers."

"I remember that one.  I think we had it out a few days back,
too."

"You looked fantastic in the sketch.  Was that done before or
after he made you the outfit?"

"Before.  He usually sketches his client wearing the outfit he
has in mind for them.  Sometimes it's to order, but mostly he
just comes up with something he thinks you will look good wearing
and then shows you the sketch.  That was the result of a
suggestion by Ben, but Mr. Morton did all the work."

"Well, you looked seriously hot.  Can I see you in that outfit
sometime?"

"Of course, honey.  Anytime you want."

"Great!  Did you know Mr. Morton's full name is Sylvester Felix
Morton?"  I was rambling because I was nervous.  Mom was
wonderful about letting me run on; even though I was sure she
hadn't come into my room just to help me get dressed.

"Yes, I did," she said.  "He uses it about as often as I use
mine.  I'm surprised he told you."

"We got to swapping secrets and he felt comfortable sharing that,
I guess.  He wants Neeka and me to go to a Con this summer."

"A what?"

"A convention of Fantasy Fans.  Remember?  You told me about it
after we were there the first time."

"Well, that sounds like it would be fun."

"He wants us to go as The Dragon and Ace of Diamonds.  He wants
us to be the Guests of Honor."

"Oh!  In that case we better get started on printing some more of
those pictures.  You are going to be signing autographs until
your hands fall off."

"I knew there was a down-side to this."

"Now come on downstairs and have a bite of supper.  Steve strikes
me as the sort who is likely to be on time to pick you up."

I slipped on my silver shoes with the two-inch heels.  I wanted
to wear something higher, but I had to settle for something I
could walk in and not topple off of.  They matched a small purse
that I planned to carry, but not the fanny pack sitting on the
chair by the door pretending to be a lump in the seat cushion. 
It was going along, too.  Another lesson I had learned the hard
way.



***



Supper was about over, judging from the almost clean plates in
front of Bud and Jim.  Mom went to the kitchen and brought mine
out for me.

"Mind the plate, honey.   It's hot."  So I had been late for
supper, and she hadn't said a word.

"Thanks."  I picked at it for a bit, moving peas around and
occasionally putting one in my mouth.  The boys finished theirs
and ran down to watch TV after carrying their plates to the
kitchen.  I was too preoccupied to wonder when they had started
doing that.  I almost missed noticing that Jim had on a nice
shirt and a pair of slacks.  He looked at least two years older
when he was dressed up.

"You better eat some of it," Mom said.  "You never know when you
might need the energy."

She had a point there.  I had just been thinking that going out
on a call would be a lot less stressful than waiting for my date
to pick me up.  I forced a few mouthfuls down and started to
notice that the food was very tasty when Bud came running in with
an urgent bulletin.

"Check out what's on TV!"  

He rushed over to the small set on the far end of the sideboard
and flipped it on.  I had never seen this one used before.  I
suppose it was a rule of the house that if you ate with people,
you had to talk to them, not suck on the glass teat.

The image came up to a picture of Darla Gresham sitting on her
porch swing with Matt standing beside her, wiggling with
excitement at the idea that he was going to be on TV.  The same
reporter who had tricked Deputy Murphy into an interview about me
was talking at the moment.

"But she was here, The Dragon was here.  Is that right?"

"Oh yes," Darla answered.  She was smiling like the cat that
swallowed the canary and I had a good idea where this interview
was going.  "They were both here.  Ms. Dragon and Ms. Ace, too. 
We all sat right here on the porch and had a nice chat."

I winced to hear Darla say 'right here' so it sounded like 'rite
cheer'.  Her accent was even stronger than Jolene's.

"What was your impression of them?"

"They were both very nice young ladies.  I was happy to have them
stop by."

"What did they say to you?"

"They said they wanted to apologize for the ruckus they raised
when they came through here on that motorbike the other day. 
They said some folks was chasing them with a helicopter and they
just wanted to get home in peace."

The reporter wisely let that one go by without comment.

"Why did they come here?  I mean, why stop and talk to you?"

I'm sure the reporter didn't mean that the way it sounded. 
Darla's eyes narrowed slightly but her tone stayed friendly.

"That was Matt's doing.  He saw them coming and ran right out
into the street.  Ms. Dragon jumped right off that bike and
grabbed him before he could get hisself run over."

That was a little embroidery of the truth on her part.  She made
it sound like the danger was from something other than our bike,
which I appreciated.  Even if she was coming across like someone
talking about 'what the tornado sounded like tearing through the
mobile home park', Darla wasn't saying anything that could be
contradicted by her neighbors; even if any of them were willing
to talk to this reporter after hearing how condescending she had
been to Darla.

I think the reporter realized that she wasn't making a pal out of
Darla Gresham, so she shifted to Matt.

"Young man, what did you think of The Dragon?"

"She's neat!"  He shouted into the mic like it was an oatmeal-box
and string telephone and you had to shout to be heard on the
other end.

"So you didn't think she was scary?"  When she moved the mic back
to Matt, she held it several inches away.  Even then, he leaned
over and shouted into it.

"No!  She's neat!  They gave me a picture.  Signed and
everything!"  My fan.  Not too eloquent, but very emphatic.

Darla held the photo in her lap so the camera could focus on it.
It had been put into a pretty frame with silver filigree around
the edge.  I wondered which family photo had been swapped out so
Matt's treasure wouldn't get wrinkled while it was being handed
around.

The camera zoomed in close enough so the writing was visible, if
not completely legible, then it widened out to a shot of the
whole porch swing.  For the first time, I could see Darla's
husband sitting beside her with the swing's support chain messing
up the back of his hair.  He looked uncomfortable with what was
going on, but proud that his family was going to get their
fifteen minutes of fame.

The reporter moved back to Darla for what I hoped would be the
last question.

"Is there anything else you can tell us about The Dragon and
Ace?"

Darla looked right into the camera and said, "Yes.  They're Good
People.  God bless 'em."

The camera shifted back to the reporter, who wrapped it up before
the picture went back to the news anchors.  There was some talk
of further coverage and the usual banter with the sports guy, but
I quit paying attention.

Neeka had told Darla that we wanted folks to know we were the
Good Guys.  She had gone further than that and told everyone that
we were Good People.  As anyone brought up in the South can tell
you, that's a very high compliment.



***



I was up in my bathroom brushing my teeth when Neeka came in. 
She had on a short green top with spaghetti straps and a matching
skirt that rode low on her narrow hips and clung to her thighs. 
I saw she had on heels higher than I could wear and I was briefly
jealous.

"Sorry," she said.  "But green is my color.  Besides, I'm the one
who should be jealous."  

She looked into the mirror beside me, took out her lip gloss and
smoothed on another coat.  I spat out the mouthful of foam and
pursed my lips.  They turned a brighter shade of peach and became
even glossier than hers.

"And that's exactly why!"  She said.  She glanced down my front
and added, "No chain?"

"Not with this dress.  It screws up the drape in front and makes
it try to slide off to either side."

As soon as we were both ready, we went down to the family room to
wait for Steve to arrive.  As it happened, Steve was already
there, playing a video game with Jim.

"Boys!" I said to Neeka via brainwave intercom.

"Really!" She agreed.

I was tempted to go stand between them and the TV screen to get
their attention, but since we were all here, there really wasn't
any hurry and no reason to interrupt their game just so they
could admire all the effort that we had put into making ourselves
as attractive as possible, all for their benefit.  The ingrates!

So we stood quietly by while they finished the current level of
whatever 'blast the heck out of everything in sight' game it was
before we walked into their view.  We stood to either side of the
screen and posed to see if we couldn't lure them away before they
got into another round of the game.  My patience was rewarded
when Steve glanced over at me and never looked back at the
screen, even though Jim was already blasting away.  Steve put the
controller down on the coffee table and rapped Jim on the knee
with his knuckles, all without taking his eyes off of me.

"You're losing, man," Jim said, still fixed on the screen.

"No, I don't think so," Steve laughed.  

He glanced over at Neeka, who was starting to tap her foot
impatiently at being ignored in favor of a screenfull of
explosions.  She reached out and hit the off switch on the TV,
making the screen go blank.

"Hey!" Jim said, angry that his toy had been turned off.  "Hey!
Hey!" He said, catching sight of Neeka in her tight dress.  "Hey,
hey, hey.  Don't you look good tonight!"

"About time you noticed," she said, going to sit next to Jim on
the sofa.

Steve was looking at me the way Brute would eye a raw piece of
meat.  It made me feel all tingly to be looked at like that.  I
went and climbed into his lap.  It was my favorite place.  He was
big enough, and I guess I was small enough, so that we were
almost at eye level with each other like that.  I snuggled up to
him and he put his arms around me.  When his hands went across my
bare back, he smiled.

"Nice dress," he said, stroking my back with one hand and my knee
with the other while admiring my front down the deep neckline of
the dress.

"Thank you," I said.

Steve looked me up and down like he was trying to locate
something.  I had a good idea what it was.

"The halter hooks behind my neck," I told him.  "Undo that, and
the whole dress will drop right off."

"That's good to know.  Just for future reference, of course."

"Of course."

Steve and I spent a few minutes getting reacquainted and Neeka
and Jim did the same.  Nothing too hot or intense, just some
mutual affection and casual making-out to set the mood for the
evening.  The heavy stuff would be later, after we no longer
needed to worry about our hair or getting our nice dresses
wrinkled.  I thought about how it was so nice just to sit and be
with each other.  Steve and I had been throwing ourselves at each
other in those few stolen moments we had during school and it was
just so wonderful not to have to worry about a bell ringing for a
change.

I nuzzled his neck and he stroked my leg.  The smell of his spicy
aftershave was thick in my nose.  I inhaled deeply and found I
could also detect the aroma of his deodorant, the soap he had
used in the shower and even a faint tang of his sweat underneath
it all.  The combination was just so masculine and delicious that
I wanted to see how he tasted as well.  I licked his neck gently,
but before I could decide what he tasted like, he swung me around
and kissed me hard.

The intensity of the kiss told me that I had hit an erogenous
zone.  The throbbing I felt under my butt as Big Steve swelled
into life confirmed it.  The way he was crushing me to his chest
and driving his tongue deeply into my mouth flipped all my
switches to the On position.   I loved him being rough with me. 
It made me want to shuck out of that dress right then and let him
screw me right there on the coffee table.  From the darker part
of my libido, I imagined having my arms and legs tied to the four
corners of the table while Steve ravished me.

The idea was almost too attractive.  I moaned and kissed him back
hard before pulling my mouth away from his.  I was almost panting
as I told him, "Whoa there!  Save some of that for later.  We've
got time.  Tonight, we've got time."  I don't know if I said it
more for his benefit or mine.

Steve took a deep breath and cleared his throat.  "Right.  
You're right.  But damn, Sam!  It's so hard for me to keep my
hands off you.  You're just so damn sexy I can't stand it
sometimes."

"You sweet-talker!  I want to hear some more of that.  But right
now, we'd better get going or we're never going to leave the
house!"

We disentangled ourselves and Neeka and Jim reluctantly did the
same.  Neeka and I dashed into the bathroom under the stairs
while Steve and Jim tried to calm down enough to be able to stand
without being uncomfortable.

"Tempting, isn't it?" Neeka asked me while she unsmudged her
lipstick and I ran a brush through my hair.  She meant forgetting
about going out and just staying home with our boyfriends
instead.

"It sure is," I said.  "But I want to go out and have some fun
first.  Sex can wait."

"Well!  That's a first.  Are you feeling all right?"

"Ha, ha.  Maybe I'm just maturing.  Maybe I'm just practicing
what I've been preaching   that denial makes the fulfillment all
that much sweeter.  Maybe I just want to see if this place we're
going to is as wild as I've heard."

"I've never been there, either, but it should be interesting. 
It's close to the college campus and there are a couple of
fraternity houses on that block, so there are parties going on
every weekend.  If we're going, we'd better go on, then. 
Otherwise the party will be right here.  How do I look?"

"Beautiful!  Now let's go and see if Jim and Steve are ready."



Our beaus seemed to have calmed down, but when they stood up, I
could see that both of them were still excited.  With the
unselfconsciousness that boys of any age seem to have, both of
them casually reached down and shifted their bulges to a more
comfortable position.  I noticed that Jim favored the 'down the
leg' position, while Steve was more of a 'sideways' guy.  I
wanted to ask them about why they preferred different ways of
carrying themselves, but you never know what will embarrass a
boy, so I held my tongue.



***



On the way out the door, Neeka and I stopped to pick up my small
duffel and her garment bag.  Steve grinned at that, and I had to
break the news to him.

"Sorry, Steve.  Don't get your hopes up.  This isn't overnight
stuff."

"Hunh?  Then what...."

"It's our uniforms."

"Uniforms?"

"Yes, you know; our costumes.  We carry them around with us now
so we don't have to go back home and change in case we get a
call.  It's a pain, but it's better than being late.  We'll leave
them in your trunk.  OK?"

"Uh, sure."

Poor Steve looked like he had been slapped with another small
dose of the reality of dating a member of a team like ours.  

Steve drove us over in his boxy, four-door sedan.  His cautious
driving gave us plenty of time, so I turned on the radio and
tuned in the salsa station in Port Charlotte.  By the time we got
there we were all moving to the music.

The apartment complex was one of those modern-style buildings
that was put up before I was born.  It was three stories high and
all angles and patios and overhangs surrounding a big swimming
pool on three sides.  It was painted in a number of different
pastel colors and there were lights all over whose only purpose
seemed to be to show off the building.  I thought either the
owner wanted it to be a showplace or the architect was in love
with his design.

The walkways on each level looked like a maze, passing behind
some parts of the building and in front of others.  The doors to
the apartments were set in walls that faced every direction
except directly toward the street or the pool.  Moving in and out
of this place must have been quite an ordeal.  I couldn't see how
you could ever get a sofa up those stairs and around all those
corners.

At least three different stereos seemed to be competing to see
which was the loudest and they were all playing a different type
of music   rock, latin, and rap.  The combination was
disorienting and I found that if you wanted to keep your sanity,
you either had to concentrate on listening to just one of them or
try to ignore them all.

There were people all over the place.  Some were on the small
patios that overhung the courtyard wherever the walkway turned
back into the building, some were around the pool, and some were
in the pool, splashing and laughing.  Most were holding drinks
and the beverage of choice seemed to be beer.  Judging from the
number of cans and cups either lying around or tossed in the
general direction of a trash can, quite a bit of beer had been
drunk already and it was just now fully dark.

Most of the people looked like they were college students, but
there were a few people who had to be at least thirty or so.  I
guessed that you had to either be young or be a real party animal
to live in a place like this.  I thought Steve's cousin must get
most of his rest while he was on the road, because he sure
wouldn't get much here if this sort of thing went on all
weekend.

Steve led us up the stairs on one wing of the building to the end
unit on the second floor.  We had to go around four corners to
get there.  If you got too drunk in a place like this you might
have to sleep with a friend, because you wouldn't stand a chance
of finding your way back to your own place.

On the way up, I discovered that the apartment doors all faced a
blank wall, which I thought was for privacy, not that the people
living here cared much for that, because it looked like most of
the doors were standing open, with people going in and out as
they pleased.

The apartment we went into was very plush.  It had a nice music
system and a widescreen TV, too.  I thought the furniture was a
bit too 'male' with the chrome and leather sofa and the coffee
table covered with clickers for all the electronics.  A Tiffany
lamp would have made it look much more homey.  I didn't care for
the maroon and brown plaid curtains either.  

It all looked fairly new and well-treated.  Apparently Steve's
cousin wasn't one of the regular hosts for the ongoing wild
parties.  With the door shut, it was fairly quiet, too.  By
fairly, I mean you could still hear the jumbled music, but not
the laughter and shouting from the pool and deck below.

Neeka and I made ourselves comfortable in the living area while
Jim and Steve poked their heads into the fridge.

"We've got Coke and Coors," Jim announced.  "Who wants what?"

"I'll take a beer," Neeka said.  "Sam will have Coke."

"Hey!" I said, just to be contrary.  "Maybe I want a beer, too."

Steve stuck his head around the cabinet and looked across the
counter at us.

"How about it, Sam?  Beer for you?  Don't worry.  I won't tell
anyone you got plastered."

"No," I told him.  "Don't waste it.  I can't get drunk.  Make
mine a Coke."

Steve came out with a soft drink for both of us.  I noticed that
Jim was having a beer, though.  I almost said something to him,
but I squelched my maternal instinct just in time.  There were
two people here who would keep him from doing anything stupid,
even if he did have one too many.

"Can't get drunk?  Really?" Steve asked.

"Nope.  It lasts about a minute, then I burn it off.  It would
just be wasted.  You have one if you want," I said, pointing to
his can of soda.

"Nah.  Training.  Have to wait until the season is over before I
pollute my body with noxious chemicals.  Wait 'til Prom Night.  I
can let loose then."

I waited to see if he would say anything else about the Prom,
specifically who he might be thinking of inviting to go with him.
 One name in particular came to mind and her initials were SK. 
Steve just looked at me with his usual nice smile and his
ruggedly handsome face that any girl would just die to have in
her Prom Photo and said nothing else about it   the rat bastard.

I tried to keep the sigh to myself.  I wondered if maybe he had
already made a commitment to someone before we met.  Maybe he
wasn't sure if he wouldn't find someone else before the Prom. 
Maybe he didn't feel comfortable taking me to the Prom.  Whatever
his reason, I was darned if I was going to push him, pressure
him, needle him, twist his arm, or slap him around until he
talked.  Not me.  Well, not tonight, anyway.

"Let's go out on the patio and scope out the action," Steve
said.

We followed him out the sliding glass door onto a deck that was
just big enough for the four lounge chairs and a small table. 
You could bring a cooler out with you, but not much else.  Any
dancing or stuff would have to be done down on the main pool
deck.

There was a partition between us and the other decks on our side
of the building, but we could see right across to the others on
the opposite and adjacent sides.  The U-shaped courtyard faced
south, so in the daytime, I could see this being a good place to
lie out and catch some rays.

When I looked up, I saw that the decks were staggered and the
ones on the third floor overlooked all the others.  There were
people on several of those and I saw a guy poke  his head
curiously around the partition of the one above us and peer down
to check us out.  I waved, and he waved back, but it was too
noisy to talk without having to shout over the music.  If you
wanted privacy while sunbathing, this wouldn't be a good place. 
Because of the layout, you could have privacy inside your
apartment, but anywhere outside was very public.

The ratio of guys to girls was high.  It looked like there may
have been one girl for every three guys.  That was fine with me,
because, as they taught us in our Economics section, short
supplies made for high demand.  I could stand being in demand.  I
saw one girl in a red bikini, running, laughing and shrieking as
she was chased around until they cornered her by the diving board
at the deep end.

The four guys grabbed her and hoisted her overhead and marched
around the pool with her as though she were some kind of hunting
trophy.  Then they went to the edge of the pool and started
counting.  At the count of one, her bikini top was whipped off. 
At the count of two, her bottoms were yanked down her legs and at
the count of three, they threw her into the pool, screaming and
splashing.  Then one guy took her top and tied it around his neck
and another took her bottoms and put them on his head and all
four ran back to their cooler for another round of beers.

The poor girl swam around in the pool for a bit while she worked
up the courage to climb out, holding one hand between her legs
and the other across her breasts while she made her way back
through the crowd around the courtyard to where they were hanging
out, amid cheers and whistles from the other people around the
pool and those watching from the patio decks.

When she got to the guys who had stripped her, the two who had
her swimsuit stood on either side of her with their trophies held
high over her head.  It was clear from the way they were talking
to her, that they were going to give her clothes back, but she
had to reach for them, and in the process, expose herself.  The
game, then, was which hand she would use and what part she would
be willing to show.

The girl turned to the guy who had her bottoms and one-upped
their game.  She took both hands away and stood there boldly
naked with one hand on her hip the other held out for the return
of her bottoms.  The guy's jaw dropped and so did the article of
clothing he held, right into her outstretched hand.  She didn't
even turn away when she stepped back into them.  Ignoring the guy
holding her top for ransom, she accepted a beer from the third
guy and took a big gulp from the can while everyone around
cheered and applauded her being such a good sport.  The guy
holding her top gave it back then, but she didn't put it back on
right away.  Instead, she just draped it around her neck while
she drank her beer.

"So, what do you think of the place," Steve asked.

"It's great!  I wish I had brought my swimsuit," I said,
grinning.

Steve wasn't watching what I was.  He'd been checking out the
action on the floors where the music was playing.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't think of that.  I should have known
you'd want to go in."

"I don't know about swimming, but I think I see how I could get a
lot of free beer," I laughed.

"Wait a while.  Sometimes they have wet t-shirt contests.  The
girls who enter get all the beer they want.  But you said.... Oh!
 You're not interested in the beer, are you?"

His mind was clear as glass.  He thought about watching me
dancing in a soaking-wet paper-thin rag and his grin got real
big.  Then he remembered that every other guy in the place would
be watching me as well and his grin fell away and left him with
his teeth clenched.  He wasn't even torn between the two, he just
reacted possessively.  Then the near-snarl vanished and his lips
turned back up as he put on a fake smile for my benefit.  He was
obviously trying his darnedest not to say something super-macho
that might tread on my independence and the strain was showing.

I just batted my eyelashes and pretended not to notice the spot
he had put himself in.  After all, I hadn't suggested the
contest, he had.  Now that I knew about it, I really wanted to do
it, but not if it was going to be a big deal for Steve.  I'd
rather have Steve be happy than to be in any old contest.

Then the whole business backfired on me when Steve tried to find
some way to change the subject and fell back on something that
I'd hoped he had forgotten about.

"So, when do we get to see that video you told me about?" He
asked.

I was startled, but prepared.

"Oh, I'm sorry!  I forgot to bring it.  Maybe some other time," I
said, consolingly.

"I have it right here," Neeka said.  "Where is the DVD player?"

I don't know what surprised me more, that she had brought the
disc or that she had managed to keep me from knowing that she had
snuck it out of my room and had brought it with her.

"Because you were so focused on the Hunk here, I could have
smuggled the bike along and you wouldn't have noticed," she said
silently and way too smugly.

I was speechless.  I thought I had found a way to chicken out of
letting Steve watch the video.  But now that I couldn't back out,
I found that I really wanted to see it myself.  I had to know if
it was as hot to watch as it was to make.  I still had lots of
reservations about this, but the big one was what Steve would
think after he had seen what had really gone on in the barn while
he waited out in the car.  He'd seemed eager enough to watch it
when he thought it was Bud and Jim banging me.  Would he choke
when he saw the kinds of stuff I really got up to 'on the job'? 
The answer could cost me a lot and I was trying not to imagine
how badly this could go.

I kept my mouth shut while Neeka led us back inside the
apartment.  Geek that she was, she figured out the expensive
home-theater system in no time, so I didn't even have a chance to
think of a compelling reason not to watch it.  I just sat there,
clutching my Coke as a sinking feeling in my stomach accompanied
the sight of the disc being sucked into the player.

We all sat on the couch with Neeka and me between Steve and Jim.
Neeka tapped the remote and the show started.

The first image to come up was me standing in the stall with my
arms strapped behind me and the steel cable hooked to my rings. 
I was looking past the camera with a kind of scared/curious look.
 I started to explain the scene, but I changed my mind.  I
decided that this would either be good or bad all on its own,
with no confusing narration from me.

The quality was remarkably good.  The bright lights in the barn
made everything bright and sharp on the TV screen.  Even the
sound was good.  All that hay muffled any background noise so all
you heard was what was happening on camera.  This meant that
Smith, Jones, and Winslow's parts in the larger story wouldn't be
there and what went on in front of the camera would be all there
was.  

It was weird seeing myself doing something that I remembered
doing.  The point of view seemed wrong.  It was as if I was
watching someone else playing the part of me.  I supposed that
was good.  It meant I could be more objective about my
performance.

Roxy walked into view.  She was just as gorgeous on screen as she
had been in person.  She maneuvered me into posing for the camera
as she tried to coax me into telling her who I was and I noticed
how her touching me played as well on camera as it had in real
life.  I felt myself getting turned on all over again, and I
couldn't tell if it was from remembering or from watching.

Their sound system was better than I expected, too.  Every word
she said to me was clear, even when she was whispering in my ear.
 

I shivered when I saw her almost give me an orgasm from playing
with my nipples.  I sure looked hot on the screen.  For a moment,
I let myself relive the feeling, but I choked back a moan before
I got too carried away and started a competing performance.

When she hoisted me by my rings, I felt Steve tense up beside me.
 I stole a glance at his face and saw that his jaw was set and
the muscles in his neck were tight.  He didn't relax until Roxy
announced that I was enjoying myself.  He tensed up again when
Roxy sucked on my clit, but it was a different bunch of muscles.
When he straightened his leg out and shifted his butt, I knew he
was getting turned on watching her bring me off.

Jim squirmed a bit, too.  Watching girl-on-girl sex sure has a
powerful effect on boys!  I could see the bulge in his slacks
very clearly.

When I came on screen, even Neeka was breathing hard.  She seemed
to be empathizing more with me on screen than with me sitting
next to her.  When I screamed on screen, she jumped a bit and
clenched her fists.  I could feel her nearly cum herself.

While I enjoyed my climax on the video, everyone on the couch
tried to get control of their breathing.  Steve cleared his
throat, but no one made a comment or even looked away from the
TV.

The camera stayed with me while I tried to signal my need for
cock to anyone watching.  I thought this might be a weak point in
my performance, but it seemed to come across fairly well.  

When the three stoner punks came into the scene, they somehow
managed to spend most of their screen time blocking me with their
butts.  It wasn't until one of them got between my legs that you
could really see me again.  Smith had zoomed in for the insertion
shot and that made the punk's cock look much larger than it
actually was.  His 'this bitch is tight' line and my making it
hard for him to stick it in me really sold the idea that he was
raping a virgin.

The rest of that part went pretty well, I thought.  The timing
was credible.  No one blocked me.  Everyone came on cue and the
tight shot of my cum-covered breasts was beautiful.  There was
even an extreme close-up of a bit of cum running down the side of
my cheek that I thought was a great touch.  Smith was certainly a
good cameraman.  I already regretted losing his talent, if not
his criminal bent and sadistic nature.

I was the one who tensed up when Roxy came back onscreen and we
did the 'clit sacrifice' scene.  Everyone was very still up until
she flicked the tip of the dagger through my clit and them
everyone jumped out of their skin   me included.  Seconds later,
when she drove the knife through my chest, everyone jumped again
and I almost screamed.

I was suddenly acutely aware that the room was totally silent,
but for the sound of my surprised gasp on the video.  Even the
music in the courtyard had paused for dramatic effect.  The sight
of me dying on screen had everyone frozen in their seats.

The me on screen got quite still and her breathing slowed to
inaudibility as she died.  I knew it was really from me going
into a trance, but it still worked as a death-scene.  The camera
zoomed in nice and close on my face, glistening with sweat and
cum, and my boobs, with the hilt of the dagger poking up between
them, barely visible behind the curve of my flesh.

That last bit was good, because it hid the fact that the dagger
was moving with my heartbeat.  That was something I couldn't slow
because I needed to keep my blood flowing to heal the wound.

The shot ran on and on with nothing moving.  I thought it might
be a little too long, actually.  Finally, the hilt of the dagger
started to rise out of me.  When it disappeared out of frame, the
camera suddenly shot back to a wide shot as a startled Smith
bumped the control.

The shot of me breaking free was great.  I wanted to cheer as I
tore out of my bonds, kicked out of my restraints and took on the
aspect of The Dragon.  When I roared out my defiance to my
murderers, it was one of those great moments in film that you
remember forever.  I wanted to give myself a standing ovation.

When my kicking the hay bale knocked the camera over and the
screen went black, I was actually disappointed that it was over.
I looked left and right to see everyone's reaction.

"Sam, could I see you in the bedroom," Steve said with a funny
catch in his throat.  "Please."

"Sure," I said, wondering if letting him see the video had been
the serious mistake I thought it could be.  I got up and meekly
followed him out of the room so he could say whatever he needed
to in private.

Steve shut the door behind us and pushed on it to make sure that
it had latched.  He turned to me with the strangest look on his
face and put out a hand and pointed at me.

"That's a nice dress," he said.  "But if you still have it on in
three seconds, I'm going to tear it to shreds."

It took at least two seconds for me to figure out that Steve's
strange look was that of a guy who had been aroused past his
ability to control his actions.  It took all of one second for me
to get the dress off.  Exactly half a second after that, Steve
tackled me onto the bed and proceeded to fuck me harder and
rougher than I had ever imagined was possible.  He didn't even
bother to take his own clothes off.  As far as I could tell, his
cock just burst out of his slacks the instant before he slammed
it into my pussy and knocked the wind right out of me.

Steve was totally out of control.  He fucked me with absolutely
no consideration for anything but pure, raw animal passion.  He
pounded his cock into me as hard as he possibly could, and he
kept up a triphammer pace that was simply unbelievable.  The
mattress slid sideways off the bed.  The lamp and everything on
the bedside table hit the floor.  The headboard banged into the
wall hard enough to crack the plaster.  He dragged me around the
room, slamming me against every piece of furniture, the walls,
and finally the floor as he snarled and growled like a wild
beast.

It was the best fuck of my life.  I put my arms around his neck
and wrapped my legs around his hips and held on tight for the
whole wild ride.  I came again and again, better and bigger and
louder each time until I lost touch with the world and blissfully
passed out.

I woke up on the floor with Steve on top of me, snoring softly
into my ear.  At first, I didn't want to move, but the telephone
receiver was under my back and it was uncomfortable.  I eased
Steve off me and picked his limp body up in my arms.  Sometime in
the last hour he had lost his slacks and briefs, but he was still
wearing his shirt, socks and shoes.  I kicked the mattress back
onto the bed and lay him down on it before joining him on the
rumpled and twisted sheets.  As I stroked his cheek, his eyes
fluttered open.

"Oh, hell, Sam.  I'm sorry.  I couldn't stop myself.  That was
the absolutely most amazing thing I've ever seen."

"So, you liked my movie?"

"Oh, shit yes!  Pardon my French.  I just thought I had seen hot
before.  Huh!  That was the hottest!  Damn!  You're fucking
amazing!"

"Thank you!  Thank you!  Thank you!  You're pretty amazing
yourself, big guy.  I hope we didn't break too much stuff in
here."

Steve looked around at the demolished room.  

"Oh, no!" He said.  "Are you all right? ... Oh, right.  Stupid
question."  He started to chuckle, but it looked like the effort
hurt.

"A better one would be are you all right?" I asked.

"I'm OK.  Nothing broken.  Just some new bruises, I guess. 
Nothing I wouldn't get in a match."

"Really?  I'm going to have to come to one of your matches, then.
 They must be very exciting."

"I'd like that.  There's one next Saturday that we're hosting. 
It's the last one before the Regionals in Tampa.  I'll save you a
seat in the front row."

"I'll be there."

Steve eased up to sit on the side of the bed.  He looked worn
out, but very happy.  I felt happy, too; but instead of worn out,
I felt energized.  I wanted to get up and dance   so I did. 
Steve watched me and his smile got even bigger.  Seeing that, I
switched from dancing for me to dancing for him.  The difference
being the amount of eye-contact and a lot more overtly erotic
moves. 

"Do you still want to get into the contest?" He asked.  

"Would it bother you to see me up there, shaking my boobs for
every guy in the place?"

He thought that over before answering.  While he pondered, I
danced.  When I thought he had forgotten the question, he said,
"No.  It wouldn't be fair for me to get mad about that.  I guess
I knew you were a show-off before.  After watching that video,
it's obvious that you have a...talent that shouldn't be hidden."

"So you won't be jealous?"

"Jealous?  Definitely.  It's in the blood of any guy to be
jealous when his...date flirts with other guys.  But I'll
survive.  Besides, I really want to see you out there on that
diving board making everyone crazy."

"I'm going to need a t-shirt."

"Oh I think my cousin won't have a problem donating one to the
cause.  Let's take a look."

The bedroom was such a mess that we had to straighten it up again
before we could find anything.  Fortunately, aside from the wall
behind the headboard, nothing seemed to be broken and we were
able to get the room back into order pretty quickly.

Steve had just found an old shirt with a few holes in it when
there was a knock on the door and Neeka stuck her head in.

"Everyone indecent?" She asked.  When she saw that he was, but I
wasn't, she came on in with Jim in tow.  "I want to be in the
contest, too," she declared.

Jim just shrugged in a resigned sort of way.  From the grin on
his face and the way he failed to ogle my nakedness, the same
thing had been going on in the living room as the bedroom, only
without all the violence.

As I looked at Jim's stupid-looking grin, I realized that girls
aren't the only ones who get that 'freshly fucked' look.  Boys
get it too.  It just lasts a lot longer on girls.  Must be
something to do with being the superior sex.

Steve located a pair of scissors and Neeka and I hacked up a
couple of shirts.  We cut off the sleeves, then cut them in two,
so that there would be a short, sleeveless crop-top and a
mini-skirt for each of us.  

When I tried on our first effort, we discovered that the top
wasn't nearly long enough.  Whenever I would raise my arms, it
would pop up off my boobs and ride up into my armpits.  Neeka
tried it on and it worked fine for her, though.  

On the second one, I cut much lower.  The top was fine on me,
meaning after we pulled on it to get it stretched out in the
right spots, it fit almost was tightly as my catsuit.  The skirt
looked like it was going to be a problem, though.  I had to cut
so low that it was barely wide enough to hide anything, and it
was way too big around my hips.  I tried tying a knot on one hip,
but that looked dumb.  Then Steve had the great idea of looping
it around and putting a twist in it, like you do to put a rubber
band around your pony-tail.  Putting the twist on one hip with
just a small gap between the loops made it fit perfectly and look
darn sexy on me.

Taking that as my inspiration, I did the same thing to the
sleeves we had cut off and slid them onto my wrists and rolled
them up like bracelets.  The effect was a t-shirt ensemble almost
worthy of Sylvester Morton.

Our timing couldn't have been better.  When we went outside, we
saw that the contest was just getting started.  Everyone had gone
down to the pool to watch and there were so many guys in tubes
and on floats in the pool that you couldn't see any water.  They
had turned a few of the small landscape spotlights around to
shine up onto the diving board so that anyone dancing on the end
of the board would be well-lit.

The girl up on the board when we got downstairs appeared to be
pretty well-lit herself.  She was a nice-looking brunette who
wore a regular t-shirt that hadn't been cut up or anything, just
soaked with water so that it showed off her figure.  She looked
like she had drunk so much that she was having a hard time
staying on the board.  While she tried to dance without falling
in, Neeka and I went around to the small group of girls waiting
their turn on the diving board.

The other girls were all older than us.  I didn't recognize
anyone that I knew, so I figured they must be college coeds from
out of town.  I looked for some sign of order in the group to
indicate who went on next, but there didn't seem to be any.  One
of the girls saw us coming and waved to us.  We all had to shout
to be heard over the music.

"Hey!  Welcome to the group!  I'm Bev," she said.   She seemed to
be on the verge of breaking into a giggling fit.  "This is Marcy,
Lisa, and Evie."  Bev grabbed each of them by the arm in turn as
she introduced them.

"I'm Sam and this is Neeka," I told them.

"Hi!" Lisa said.  "Neeka?  That's pretty.  I've never met a Neeka
before."

"Haven't seen either of you before," Evie said.  "First time
here?"

"Yes!" I said.

"Well, welcome to the club!" Marcy said.  "Need some liquid
courage before you go on?"  She held out a clear glass liquor
bottle that they had been passing around before.  I could see a
red label and the word Vodka on it.

I hesitated and Neeka reached out and took the bottle.  While we
all watched, she lifted it up and took a big swallow before
holding it out for whoever wanted it next.

I couldn't turn it down after that.  I took the bottle and
sniffed it.  I smelled alcohol, but it wasn't nearly as awful a
smell as Fiona Morgan's bourbon.  I shrugged and tried a swallow.
 Big mistake.

I tipped the bottle up too quickly and the vodka gushed in,
hitting the back of my throat and squirting out the corners of my
mouth.  I swallowed quickly to keep from choking, but it still
felt like I had a mouthful of liquid fire.  When I blew out my
breath I fully expected it to be a gush of flame.  It burned all
the way down my throat and when I inhaled, it burned my lungs as
well.  I clapped my hand over my mouth and tried to keep from
throwing up.

"What's the matter?" Lisa asked Neeka, hooking a thumb at me
while I doubled over and tried valiantly not to retch.

"She doesn't drink," Neeka told her.

"Yeah?  Charlotte's the same way," Lisa said, nodding toward the
girl on the diving board.  "Two drinks and she can't walk
straight.  But it's the only way she can get up the balls to
dance."

"No!" I wheezed.  "I don't drink at all.  Thass my first one." 
The alcohol had quit burning, but now it felt like it had numbed
my mouth like Novocain.  I had been trying to burn it off, but it
wasn't into my blood yet and all I managed to do was speed up the
process and get myself drunk off one swallow.

"You're really going to do this sober?" Bev asked me, ignoring my
slurred speech and watery eyes.  "You're brave!"

"She is that," Neeka confirmed.

"She's also going to win this one," Evie said.  "Look at those
tits!  I wish I had tits like that!"

When I heard Evie's compliment, I straightened up and smiled
through grit teeth.  My head was spinning, but no one else was
puking, so I had to grin and bear it until the slug of alcohol
wore off.  I held the bottle out and, mercifully, someone took it
away from me.

Evie had spent more time on her dancing clothes than anyone else.
 She had slashed a t-shirt into ribbons so that it showed skin
everywhere.  I noticed that the other girls either wore their
underwear or bikini bottoms under their t-shirts.  Neeka and I
were the only ones who made skirts.

"Now that's a fact, Jack!" Lisa said.  "You go last!  OK, Sam?"

I nodded.  It was very flattering that none of my competition
wanted to follow me, even without having seen me dance.  Although
if Charlotte's staggering gyrations could be called dancing, I
probably had the advantage by being sober.  Well, more sober than
Charlotte anyway.

Whoever was manning the music turned the volume down suddenly,
apparently signaling the end of Charlotte's turn.  For her big
finish she pulled her t-shirt up and flashed her boobs at the
crowd.  That got her a wild cheer from everyone, but it also
meant she couldn't see with the shirt up in her face.  She took a
step in the wrong direction and her foot slipped, sending her
tumbling the couple of feet off the board into the arms of a guy
on a float.  With her arms wrapped up in the shirt, he took
advantage and grabbed her breasts.  Another guy grabbed her legs
and a third yanked the string on her bikini bottoms, pulling them
off.  In seconds, Charlotte was naked in a pool full of horny
college guys, all of whom wanted a feel.

"See that?" Bev asked.  "Try not to fall off the board!  They're
like sharks!"

"Fall off?" I shouted back.  "Heck, I might do a twisting
half-gainer!"

That got a much bigger laugh than it would have if everyone had
been soberer.

Marcy was the next to go on.

"I can't dance for shit," she said.  "But I'm better than
Charlotte!"

She was some better.  I watched her, and Bev and Lisa after her,
to see if I could pick up some moves from them.  Each of them did
pretty much the same thing   going out the end of the board to
dance while the guys in the pool tossed plastic cupfuls of pool
water at them until their t-shirts were soaked and clinging to
their boobs.

Each girl had a good figure, too.  And each had no problem
showing it off to the crowd, but every one of them had the same
finish   pull up your shirt and flash the crowd when the music
stopped, take a quick bow and dash off the board and up to an
apartment to dry your hair and put your top back on.  They
obviously enjoyed the attention, but it was all just a tease.  I
thought Charlotte had topped them just by falling in and getting
gang-fondled.

Evie followed Lisa.  Of all the girls who performed, she was the
best dancer.  She had the flattest stomach I'd ever seen.  It was
so concave that I thought I should be able to see her backbone. 
She also had some great moves and she played to the crowd like a
pro.  In the middle of her routine I wondered if she hadn't
danced professionally to earn money for school.  Surely they
didn't teach those moves in a local girls' dance academy!

She didn't flash the crowd at the end, because her shredded
costume showed everything anyway once it got wet.  Her pink,
puffy nipples showed the whole time she was out there.  When she
finished, the crowd cheered loud and long.  I thought she might
go back for an encore, but she skipped off the board with a smirk
that I thought looked like a challenge.

Neeka went next, leaving me to watch and wonder if she could top
Evie and if I could top her.  She put her hands on her hips and
strutted down the board like it was a runway and she was modeling
this year's haute couture.  When she got to the end, she stopped
and posed, ignoring the rhythm of the music and standing still
while the guys closest to her shoveled water like it was a
backward waterfall.  When she was drenched, she used both hands
to smooth out all the wrinkles in her little outfit so that it
clung to her body perfectly and showed her every curve.  Then she
posed some more, not so much moving to the music as using it to
time her movements.

Each pose was calculated to give everyone a good look at her from
every angle, but I noticed that she spent the most time facing
the balcony patio where Jim sat watching the contest.  Some of
her poses were a good deal more suggestive than just standing and
shaking her boobs at the crowd, like the other girls had done. 
She kept running her hands over her body, smoothing out her top
across her chest, stroking her nipples in the process, turning
them into little hard points.  She smoothed her skirt around her
butt and between her legs, so her short strip of hair showed
through it.  When she turned to give the crowd a look at her
butt, I saw that she had a sultry look on her face that
practically screamed, 'Fuck me!'  I know I sure wanted to by the
time she was done.

For a finish, instead of flashing and running, Neeka peeled off
her top slowly and gave one last pose before strutting back up
the board the same way she had gone down it.  This time she did
it to deafening cheers and whistles.

Then it was my turn.  I thought I was ready, but I was so nervous
I nearly stumbled getting up on the diving board.  When I got to
the end, they turned the music on, something with a fast latin
beat that I didn't recognize.

I started to dance, but the water the guys in the pool threw at
me kept getting in my eyes and I didn't want to fall in before I
had a chance to perform, so I stood in one place and just turned
around slowly with my arms up to let them get me good and wet.

After a couple of turns, they quit and I stood there with water
running down my face and my top drooping and hanging off me like
a heavy curtain.  I stole a move from Neeka and smoothed it
around and under my boobs to show them off.  It was a good idea
because it made their actual size and shape much more visible.  I
was disappointed when the crowd noise dropped; until I heard one
guy in the pool say, "I have died and gone to heaven!"  That made
me smile and I started to dance then with a better attitude.

I tried to use some of what I thought were some good moves, but I
was having a hard time doing them on the end of a diving board
that kept bouncing up and down all the time.  It was another part
of the curse of being small.  When I almost fell in, I decided it
was time for a change of strategy.  Instead of doing the dance
moves, I did some of my cheerleading moves that didn't involve a
lot of jumping around.  They seemed to like that better anyway,
judging from the cheers and applause, or maybe because it was
just something different.

Once I got used to the bouncy board, I got bolder and did some
more athletic moves and stunts.  When one of them sent me a foot
into the air, I realized that my nervousness had given way to a
surge of adrenalin, and with the adrenalin came the Power and
possibly a better sense of balance, although it was probably just
that the last of the vodka had burned off by then.

The rush of adrenalin made me feel much better than the slug of
alcohol did.  But here I was, trying to perform on the end of a
diving board and feeling like I wanted to tear something in two.
There was nothing handy except my top, so I decided to tear it. 
I started to just rip the thing off quickly, but when I grabbed
it, the wet cloth stretched and the crowd screamed when they saw
what I was doing, so I teased them by doing it in a kind of
slow-motion.  I slowly pulled until my arms were almost
completely outstretched.  The top reached its limit then, tearing
up the middle, both front and back.

This was very popular, so I stood there for a moment with my arms
out and flexed like a bodybuilder, making all my
weightlifting-built and Power-enhanced muscles stand out all over
me.  And that was very popular, too.  Apparently jocks like
muscular girls.  This was something I should have figured out
from my relationship with Steve, and judging from the reaction of
the hunkier of the guys in the pool, it was certainly true.

I tried a handstand on the board, which was absurdly easy because
I could grip the sides hard enough to hold myself vertical with
one hand if I wanted to, even with the board moving.  I did try
and make it look hard by waving my free hand and splitting my
legs wide apart as though for balance.  This got the biggest
cheer of the night, complete with whistles and shouts.  I thought
it was for my gymnastic ability, until I realized that my skirt
had slid up my waist and exposed my pussy to everyone.

I couldn't do anything about fixing the skirt in the middle of a
handstand, so I ignored it.  I put both hands back on the board
and put my legs together, lowering them between my arms until
they were parallel with the board.  Then I got fancy.  The last
move left me facing away from the crowd and I wanted to get back
to my feet facing the other way.  I swung my legs up in front of
my face and pushed off with my hands at the same time.  The
result was a backward somersault with a twist and a perfect
landing with my feet together and facing the crowd.  The one
extra element that capped off the move was that when I landed, my
soggy skirt fell down from my waist, slipped right off my small
butt and landed around my ankles with a plop!

I couldn't do anything about that, either, so I stepped out of it
and kicked it into the pool, where two guys grabbed it and
started a tug-of-war over possession of the rag.

Somehow, my just standing there naked got the loudest cheers of
all, so I stayed, posing and smiling, until I thought I had
hogged the spotlight enough and I walked off the board back to
where Neeka was waiting with Evie and Bev, who had both changed
into clothes while I was performing.  

Marcy and Lisa hadn't come back and Charlotte was still in the
pool, making new friends and negotiating for the return of her
swimsuit.

"Congratulations!" Evie said.

"You're definitely the winner tonight," Bev said as she handed me
a towel.

I took the towel and used it to dry my hair, which was a drippy
mess.  Bev looked at me funny and it occurred to me then that she
gave me the towel to cover up with, not to dry off.  For girls
who liked to be in wet t-shirt contests, they seemed to have more
hangups about their bodies than I would have guessed.  I thought
that might explain their fascination with it   for them it was
still somewhat naughty to be doing it.  They were flirting with a
taboo, where I was just enjoying being naked and showing off. 
Having an appreciative audience was a bonus that was a turn-on
for me too, making it a win-win situation for everyone.

"Thanks," I told Evie, "but I think you were the best dancer. 
You had the best outfit, too."

"Well, thanks!  My roommate Amy made that for me."  She pointed
up to a patio on the third floor and waved at a brown-haired girl
in a pink top.   I waved too and Amy waved back.  "She's too
chicken to come out here and dance herself," Evie explained.

"So she enjoys it vicariously by making your costume and watching
you dance?  That's sweet!  I'd like to meet Amy."  Actually,
after the success Jolene was having getting over her phobia, I
thought I might be able to help Amy, too.  No one should have to
enjoy things by proxy.

"She'd like to meet you, too," Evie said, emphatically.  I wasn't
sure how she meant that, but it sounded interesting.

Bev asked, "Are you going to go claim the prize?  They have a two
story beer bong ready to go for the winner."

"No thanks," I said.  "I've had enough to drink tonight.  You go
ahead, though."

"Then it goes to Second Place.  Neeka?"

"Not me.  That vodka was enough for me.  Puking is not my
favorite hobby."

"Evie?"

"I guess I won't either.  I want to talk to Sam and Neeka some
more, Bev.  You go ahead."

Bev shrugged and ran off to try to drink herself stupid.  I shook
my head.  I was having a hard time empathizing with someone who
wanted to get very drunk.  The way I felt, my limited experience
with alcohol was going to remain just that   limited.  An
occasional beer might be OK.  I could see how the flavor would
grow on you.  But hard liquor tasted too awful and it was way too
easy to slip past having it just relax you and slide right into
full drunk.  A lot of the people here were well past relaxed.

The competing music started up again and it got hard to hear. 
Evie had said she wanted to talk, so Neeka and I took her back up
to the apartment.  Jim and Steve saw us coming and opened the
door before we knocked.

Evie seemed surprised to see Jim and Steve.  After we introduced
everyone, she said, "I thought you were here by yourselves.  I
thought that if your boyfriends had come they would be down by
the pool with you."

"Better view up here," Jim said.  "Our own beer.  Comfortable
chairs. Why mingle with the hoi polloi?"

I raised an eyebrow at Jim and Steve.  Jim's vocabulary usually
didn't run to ancient Greek.  Steve looked sheepish.  Suddenly
the implication of Jim's first comment hit me.  He'd had a couple
more beers while watching us dance and he was tipsy.

Neeka eyed Jim with a stern maternal look and I tried not to
giggle.  Words would be said later, but not in front of our
guest.  Neeka would be ashamed if she brought Jim home drunk. 
She had more respect for Bambi than that.  I decided that after
my vodka-guzzling experience, I couldn't put my two cents in
without being a hypocrite, even if I had already sworn off the
stuff.

"No," Evie said, "I mean, all those drunk and horny frat guys
running around out there.  I would have thought they would want
to be there to...protect you."

The laughter following that comment totally mystified poor Evie.
She deserved an explanation before she got the idea that we were
laughing at her, but I couldn't think of one.

Neeka leaped into the breach.  She said, "Sam is a Master of a
particularly deadly Martial Art."  Which was sort of the truth,
if you didn't look at it too close and if you allowed Minivan
Mangling or Tank Splitting as a Martial Art.  It seemed a white
enough fib at the time.

That seemed to satisfy Evie, so Neeka went to the bathroom to get
out of her wet things and Steve went to the kitchen to get our
new friend a Coke.  I spread out the towel that Bev had loaned me
and sat down on the couch next to Evie, who had changed into a
pair of shorts and a knit top after her performance.  Jim sat
rather heavily on an armchair and smiled blearily.

Since I was still naked, Neeka didn't bother to change back
either.  She just toweled off and came out au natural.  As she
passed by, Jim tried to pull her into his lap, but she gently
slapped his hand and sat down next to Evie and me, leaving Steve
to take the other chair.

"Am I overdressed?" Evie asked, smiling.  "Or do you two just
have no shame?"

"We're shameless," I agreed, laughing.  "Seriously, I think we
both want to take a shower before we get dressed again.  We wore
some nice dresses over here tonight, and there's no telling how
much chlorine they put in that pool!"

"I noticed that when Bev handed you the towel, you didn't bother
covering up.  You just dried your hair."

"When I had just performed naked in front of nearly fifty people?
 Why bother?  As for being naked now, these two have seen
everything before."  As I said that, I remembered that Steve
hadn't seen Neeka, and Steve might not have known that Jim had
seen me, although he had certainly fantasized about it.  But
since our performance, it was all a moot point anyway.

"Does it bother you?" I asked.  "Would you rather we got
dressed?"

Evie thought it over.  I loved doing that to people.  Making them
think, that is.  If there was something I wanted to be remembered
for when I was gone, it wouldn't be the Superheroine stuff, it
would be someone saying, "She made me think."  In my opinion,
there wasn't nearly enough thinking going on in the world.

"It bothers me.  I can't explain why," Evie said.  "But please
don't dress on my account."

"Would you feel more relaxed if you were naked, too?" I asked.

"You mean, if I didn't stand out?  If I conformed?"  Evie was
really thinking.  I was happy.

"Yes, your choice is to be dressed and stand out because you're
not naked, or to get naked and be just like every other girl
here, but you get ogled by these two strangers.  Pick one."

Evie chewed a fingernail for a moment, then she stood up and
said, "Amy is not going to believe this." And took off her top,
her shorts, and a pretty pink thong.  "I don't believe it
either!"  

She sat down again and Neeka and I took turns kissing her on the
cheek.

"What was that for?" Evie asked.

"Positive reinforcement," Neeka said, a beat before I did.

"Is this some kind of Psych project?"

"No.  This is a Sam project," I said.  "We haven't had Psych yet.
 Although I'm looking forward to it, in a couple of years."

Evie didn't bite on my bid to change the subject.  She said, "I
don't feel as strange as I thought I would."

"Because you're following convention?  Or because you're not?"

"I don't know!  I just feel more at ease about being naked than I
expected.  Maybe it's because I'm such an exhibitionist.  Now
this is fun, but this isn't what I wanted to tell you."

I had assumed it was our great bodies and sparkling personalities
that attracted Evie.  I thought she wanted to have some fun with
us.  Now she sounded positively conspiratorial.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I'll tell you, if you'll stop touching my leg for a minute. 
You're distracting me."

I hadn't even thought about it.  I suppose my hand wandered over
to her thigh just to say, Hi!  She didn't seem offended, though,
just distracted.

"Sorry.  Go ahead with what you wanted to say.  I promise to keep
my hands to myself for awhile."  As I said it, I realized that I
really did want to run my hands over her flat, muscular abdomen.
And her pretty pink nipples that were the exact shade of some
divinity candy that Yvette had bought for us last Christmas.

"OK.  When I got through dancing, I went back to my and Amy's
apartment to dry off and put my clothes back on.  We live across
from the Resident Manager, Mr. Thompson   the older guy you may
have seen around.  Well, Mr. Thompson is pretty cool about all
the parties and stuff.  He even has some fun himself.  But he can
be a tight-ass when something serious goes down, like drugs, or
breaking stuff, or when it looks like people are going to get
hurt.  He's got, like, 911 on speed-dial or something.

"Anyway, I'm coming out of our place and here is Mr. Thompson
talking to these two cops.  He's telling them how he saw some
girl he's pretty sure is underage drinking liquor   like this is
some big deal, right?  Anyway, he's going on about how he could
get fired and all, because the owner has a couple of teenage
daughters who are always sneaking out to party, so he's got this
bug up Thompson's ass about it.

"This is all fascinating stuff, so I hopped back inside and
scoped it all out with the door cracked open enough to poke my
nose through.

"Thompson could really give a shit, right?  But he's got to
report it, blah blah blah.  So the cops do their 'thank you, good
citizen' routine and ask Thompson to step back inside for a
minute while they check it out.  One of them sneaks around the
corner and has a peek at you doing your thing on the board.  When
he comes back, he's got this weird smile on his face.  The other
cop looks at him and goes, 'It's her, isn't it?'  The first cop
just nods and says, 'Yeah, she's blowing off steam, I guess.' 
The second cop pokes his head around the corner and comes back
like, 'Shit, man!  She's stripping!'  The first cop says, 'I
think we need to be somewhere else before we screw up her party.'
Then they knock on Thompson's door and give him this
'everything's cool' BS and they split.

"So I came out to ask you what the fuck is up that the cops are
scared to mess with you.  Are you some Senator's kid or
something?"

Neeka turned her head so Evie wouldn't see her trying not to
laugh.  That left me to try to talk my way out of this.

"Do these look like bodyguards to you?" I asked, pointing at
Steve and Jim.

"This one does," Evie said, pointing at Steve, who casually
flexed his muscle-on-muscle bicep in response.  Even under his
loose woven shirt and curly hair, his chest looked darn sexy with
his bulging pectorals and broad shoulders.

"But this one..." Evie probably started to say that Jim was too
young-looking to be a bodyguard.  She stopped in mid sentence and
I followed her gaze to see why.

Jim's inebriation had got the better of his self-control.  The
sight of three naked girls in such close proximity had him all
hot and bothered again.  We could all tell because of the
conspicuous bulge down the inseam of his lightweight slacks.  It
was this lump that had caught Evie's attention and derailed her
train of thought.

Neeka leaned over and whispered something in Evie's ear, making
her turn a bright shade of crimson from her face all the way to
her puffy nipples.  I didn't catch it, but I didn't need to read
her mind to know the sort of comment she might have made.

Evie shifted her rear and crossed her legs as though she suddenly
had an itch she wanted to scratch, but couldn't in polite
company.  Jim had no such compunction.  He reached down and
tugged his pants-leg to give his big cock some more room to
expand into.  Evie followed the action like there would be a test
later.  

This turn of events was taking Evie's mind off her question of
why a pair of law enforcement officers would go out of their way
to avoid raining on my parade when anyone would logically expect
them to march in and demand ID from the suspect, a lowering of
the decibel intensity, and a general reduction in the fun level;
so I planned to fan her flame as brightly as I could to keep her
distracted.  I could hardly explain that my stock was so high at
the moment that if I had passed out drunk and naked in the middle
of downtown, the cops would probably have carried me home, tucked
me into bed, and tiptoed quietly away.  It would be true, but
very egotistical to say.  I felt guilty even thinking about it. 
Well, just a little guilty.

Neeka got up and leaned over Jim to whisper in his ear.  This
time she clued me into the conversation.

I put my hand back on Evie's thigh and stroked it very lightly
with my fingertips.  I felt her muscles twitch, but Evie didn't
object this time, probably because Jim had got up and was
casually stretching, as though he had been sitting too long and
she was still fixated on the bulge in his slacks.  Evie
apparently hadn't met one as big as Jim's and the possibility of
getting acquainted with it had her mesmerized.  

The idea of vicariously reliving the experience of being totally
filled with cock for the first time through Evie was very
tempting.  I might have thought of it myself even if she hadn't
told us about her friend Amy and how Amy used Evie to spy for her
and report back on what it was like to have fun.  We could give
Evie a story to carry back that Amy would want to hear more than
once   preferably with diagrams and footnotes.

Evie's pretty puffy nipples were growing as she imagined what Jim
could do to her.  Mine could get nice and puffy, but I'd never
seen ones quite as large as hers were becoming.  I watched them
grow until I thought they'd pop and then they grew some more.

Neeka knelt on the low coffee table and put her hand on the bulge
in Jim's pants to give Evie a better perspective on the scale of
his organ.  Even if she had used both hands, it wouldn't have
been enough to cover Jim's cock.  Neeka watched Evie's eyes get
almost as big as her nipples, then she slid her hand up to Jim's
fly and take hold of his zipper.  When she started to pull it
down, Evie made a squeaking noise deep in her throat and she
leaned back against the sofa like she thought something might
jump out at her.

I dipped the hand I had on Evie's leg deeper between her thighs
and she responded by moving her legs apart.  I wasn't sure if it
was to allow me to reach higher or if it was just a reflexive
leg-spreading reaction to the presence of a giant cock.  I
certainly know how strong that compulsion can be, especially
after you know how it's going to make you feel.   

Neeka had to tug Jim's slacks over his butt so that she could
reach in and haul out his big cock.  She scooted around on the
low table so that her back was against Jim's legs and she draped
his cock over her shoulder, where it lay in the hollow of her
collarbone, still swelling as she stroked it.  It made a lovely
picture, her dark red hair cascading down one shoulder and his
pink and tan cock down the other, lying against her
alabaster-white skin with the sprinkle of red freckles across her
chest.

Neeka turned her head and began to kiss Jim's shaft.   Her
nipples were as dark and red as her hair and they were very
stiff.  I could feel how hot she was getting by showing off for
Evie like this and it was making me hot, too.

I looked over to see how Steve was taking our little show for
Evie.  He had a grip on the arms of his chair that threatened to
tear it to pieces and his own cock was also about to rip through
his slacks, it was so hard.

This wasn't going to go on much longer.  Someone was either going
to get fucked right here or there would be a general rush into
the bedroom.  I pressed my hand all the way between Evie's legs
and slipped a finger between her pussy lips.  She was so wet that
my hand was soaked instantly.  As soon as she felt my finger
looking for entry, she jerked her hips and tried to fuck my hand.
 She was as thoroughly turned on as any of the rest of us.

I put my free arm around Evie's shoulders and put my mouth up to
her ear, pausing a second to nibble her earlobe before
whispering, "We're going to go into the bedroom now.  Would you
like to join us?  Would you like to get to know that nice, big
cock?" I asked, teasingly.  Then I whispered to her all the fun
things that might happen.  I told her all about the nasty stuff
she might get to do, and might get done to her.

"Oh, yesssss!" She said, just when I was getting into telling her
about it.  

The eagerness in her voice put an end to the show and the
discussion.  We all ran for the bedroom. Those who still had
clothes on shed them along the way.  If Steve or Jim had
reservations about the idea of being in the same bed together,
they didn't mention it.

When all three of us girls jumped onto the bed, it became clear
that there wasn't room for the five of us at one time.  Jim and
Steve seemed to recognize this and instead of jumping on with us,
they stood on either side with their lovely cocks at full
erection, prepared to service whoever needed it.  We all did, but
with three wet pussies and only two cocks, some organization was
needed.  I pulled Evie to the middle of the bed and stuck my head
between her limp and unresisting legs while kneeling on the edge
so that Steve could ram his cock into me at the same time.

Neeka crawled on top of Evie, offering her pussy to Jim in the
same way, but with Evie's head directly below, so that she would
have a close-up view of Jim's huge cock sliding into her.  She
then joined me in clicking Evie's clit to attention and beyond.

Neeka and I were in tune, so we started cumming in a matter of
only a few minutes, egged on by each other's heat and erotic
thoughts.  But judging from the way she squealed and screamed,
Evie was ahead of everyone.  She even raised her head up and
licked Neeka's clit and Jim's cock while Jim pounded away,
something that made Neeka, and then me, lose control.

Having cum once already that evening, our two studs were able to
stay in the saddle for a nice long time on the second go-round. 
Steve's cock was so hard that it felt like a fat steel bar as he
shoved it into me over and over again.  He seemed to be trying to
see how many times he could make me cum before giving in to his
own needs.  

Jim, Neeka, and Evie got into a rhythm of cock in, cock out, Evie
suck cock, Evie suck clit, cock back in again.  I tried to watch
while keeping my tongue on Evie's clit, but I kept getting
distracted, especially when Steve would make me cum and I would
get lost in the sensation.

At one point, Neeka had to lie down and rest.  You know you're
out of it when you can't maintain enough muscle control to stay
on your knees and elbows.  Evie immediately crawled around to
offer her pussy to Jim as a replacement, since it looked like his
alcohol-numbed cock was going to outlast everyone.

I managed to force my eyes open when this happened, since I
wanted to watch Evie getting 'deflowered'.  Even if a girl has an
active sex life, if she hasn't had a really big cock, her first
experience is just like never having had sex before.  It can be a
really profound moment and something you don't want to miss if
you get the chance to watch.

Evie was almost limp by this time, so I helped her out by holding
he head up so she could watch as Jim pressed the broad head of
his cock into her slit.  I heard her breath hiss through her
teeth as he leaned into her, forcing himself inside.  I heard her
fingernails skritch across the sheets as his cock stretched her
wider and deeper than she ever thought possible, and I heard her
sob as she realized that all the sex she had had before only
qualified as foreplay for this moment.

Steve pressed into me, Jim pressed into Evie, and I pushed Evie
back against Jim.  In this way the three of us were connected and
Jim and Steve fell into synch as they fucked both of us.

Neeka lay on her side, watching us with one eye open.  She had a
'terminally-fucked' look on her face and she was barely
conscious, but she wanted to see this, too.

Jim pressed his cock into Evie as hard as he dared, bottoming out
with three or four inches still left outside.

If Evie missed getting it all, I couldn't tell.  Her face was
screwed-up tight and her body was rigid as she fought futilely to
impale herself even further.  After a few seconds of trying, she
lost the battle and started to cum with a total loss of control
that had her legs and arms twitching, her eyes rolling, and her
abdomen convulsing as her pussy went crazy on Jim's cock.  

I think she quit breathing then and I was just becoming
concerned, when the whole scene got to be too much for me and my
own orgasm peaked so high that I thought I would scream.

Steve must have been right there with me, because as soon as I
lost contact with the world, he came too, filling me so full of
cum that it ran out of my pussy and down the backs of my legs.

The next thing I remember was waking up with my legs apart and
someone's tongue licking my pussy.  I was so dizzy from all the
intense orgasms that it took me a coupe of tries to raise my head
to find out who it was.

Whoever it was, they were doing a magnificent job of bringing me
back from a nearly comatose condition and getting me back into
the game.  The touch seemed very familiar and seeing a cascade of
red hair across my stomach confirmed my suspicion.  I looked
around and saw Evie lying on her side with her knees near my
head.  Her face was stuck between Neeka's legs and she was taking
long licks at her pussy.

My first reaction was to close the circle, but first I wanted to
see where the guys had got to.  I twisted my head around to take
a look at the rest of the bedroom.  Jim and Steve had dragged a
couple of bar stools into the room and were leaned up against the
folding closet door, each with a cold drink in his hand.  I was
glad to see that they were drinking Cokes instead of beer.

They looked pretty worn out, but both their faces wore smirks
that might be hard to remove.  They just sat there with their
gorgeous cocks dangling fatly over the edge of their stools,
watching us three girls on the bed, sipping their soft-drinks and
enjoying the show.  I could tell they appreciated what they saw
because their cocks were just starting to rise from a
straight-down dangle to a higher angle.  This was my first chance
to compare them side-by-side, and it was very interesting to see
that although Jim's was quite a bit longer, Steve's was much
thicker, even more so than I remembered Bud's as being.

As wiped-out as I was, an opportunity to show off was something I
couldn't turn down, as Neeka knew perfectly well when she decided
to wake me so I could get in on the performance.  With those
lovely cocks as an infallible audience appreciation indicator, I
could hardly refuse.  I reached out and pulled Evie's legs
closer.  She must have been hoping for something of the sort,
because she raised one knee up when she felt my hands on her
butt.

I gave her a long, deep lick, plunging the tip of my tongue into
the now well-dilated sphincter that was her vaginal opening. 
When I came up with a coating of slick stuff with a
salty-metallic flavor, I knew that Jim had favored her with one
of his huge loads.  Rather than let it ooze out onto the sheets,
I opened my mouth and sealed my lips onto Evie's pussy-lips,
sucking gently to coax Jim's cum out of her.

This must have felt pretty good to Evie, because she tried to
clamp her legs around my head.  I had to change my grip on her
from her ass to her legs, so I could hold them open enough for
our audience to be able to see what I was doing to her.

"Eeeee!  Unnngh!  Mmmmf." Evie said, the sound of her voice
partially smothered by Neeka's pussy.  She squirmed a bit, like
she was trying to get away, but it was too late for that.  Her
pussy belonged to me now, and I was going to give as good as I
was getting.

What I was getting was darn good, too.  Neeka already had an
advantage then it came to knowing just how to lick me, but it
seemed that she had been picking up pointers from Bambi, too.  I
didn't know if I was feeling this good because of the cumulative
effect of lots of climaxes, or because of what she was doing with
her mouth.  I was inclined to award her all the credit, but it
really didn't matter a bit.  All I could think of was passing on
the sensation to Evie, who passed it on to Neeka, who...well you
get the idea.  I think the technical term would be positive
feedback loop.  When it happens to your music system, it's bad. 
When it happens to your pussy, it's freaking marvelous!

I sucked on Evie until I had sucked, licked, and drunk all the
boy-cream she had in her.  Then I sucked some more, making her
squirm even harder in a futile attempt to escape.  When I felt my
tongue brush her cervix, I knew I was on the verge of turning her
pussy inside out, and maybe I should ease off.

Before I did, though, I gave the little round knob a couple of
swirly licks and flicked it into the tiny hole in the middle. 
Immediately, she went rigid and I felt her hard knob start to
jerk up and down as it tried vainly to find a pool of cum to suck
up into her uterus.  I plugged the hole with the tip of my tongue
and I was surprised that I could actually feel some suction. 
It's no wonder they say that your chances of getting pregnant are
much better if you climax.  Your womb is literally trying to
vacuum cum out of your vagina to get you knocked-up.

With Evie jerking like a caught fish, I eased off and let her
internal organs return to their normal place.  I even backed off
her pussy a bit so I wouldn't over stimulate her in mid-orgasm. 
When I did, I noticed that she wasn't fighting to close her legs
any more, she had them splayed open as wide as she could.  Her
small, rosy lips trembled and her clit quivered as she came.

I should have quit while I was ahead, but her clit just looked
too tempting.  I edged up closer and gave it a little suck,
followed by a quick flick of my tongue.  Evie instantly went as
limp as a dishrag, passed out cold from too much climax.  She
would need time to recover before I could play with her some
more.

"Pooh!" Neeka, thought to me.  "She's out like a light and I was
just about to cum again!"

"Come here, love," I answered.  "I'll finish you."

"Yes, but be gentle.  OK?  I'm pretty sensitive after all that."

So Neeka crawled around so that we could 69 each other.  I had
just started to tenderly caress her pussy, staying well away from
her raw clit, when my mouth was brushed aside by the arrival of a
very large cock-head.

Our show had been good enough to get Jim back in the action. 
Even if he wasn't totally hard, he still had enough stiffness to
fill Neeka's pussy.

The sight was quite a turn-on, even as over-stimulated as I was
by that time.  I tried to help as best I could.  I licked Jim's
shaft until there was no more room and his balls slapped me in
the face.  When he pulled out, I licked some more.

Jim's second thrust was matched by Steve, who had apparently been
revived as well and was reintroducing his own rubbery cock to my
well-worn hole.  It closed around him like it was welcoming an
old friend.

Neeka and I made great progress in getting our guys hard again,
but neither of us was up to it for the time it would take to get
them off.  We had made each other so hot already that it only
took a few dozen strokes to bring us off.

When I came, it wasn't the same Earth-shattering climax I was
expecting.  Instead, I was so fucked-out that the room just
seemed to recede and return, like a rubber band being stretched
and released.  Even the sound went away and came back with a dull
twang.  I grabbed the bed and hung on so I wouldn't be sucked
away with the rest of the world.

I was so stimulated that I was going to have to come down some
before I got back to being able to feel pleasure again.  Right
now I was just high, buzzing, and numb, barely aware that Steve
was still fucking me with his thick cock.

"I think I have had enough," I managed to say.  

There was silence for a moment, then Neeka announced, "The end of
the world has arrived!  That is surely the sign of the
Apackalops...Apackalips...Apocyl...oh the hell with it!"

I wanted to say 'Apocalypse', but I was too far gone myself.  I
just lay there and grinned until sensation started to return and
I felt the orgasm that I had missed before wash over me.  It felt
very strange, as though I were having it backwards.

Steve caught up and I felt him jerk and his cock pulse twice in a
dry-cum before he fell onto the bed behind me, totally spent and
incapable of any further ejaculations.

Another shudder of the bed told me that Jim had suffered the same
fate as his buddy.  That meant there were five of us on a piece
of furniture intended for two that Steve and I had badly abused
earlier in the evening.  Just as I was wondering how much more it
could stand, the foot collapsed, rolling all of us into a tangled
heap on the floor.

None of us had the energy to do any more than lie there and laugh
softly but hysterically at our predicament.  Someone was on top
of me and I was on top of someone and I had no idea who was who.
At the moment, it didn't matter at all.  I was perfectly content
to lie there in a pile of bodies and chill.

"Amy is never going to believe this!" Evie's voice cracked.  She
had been laughing along with the rest of us.

The pile of naked flesh would have been more comfortable with a
mattress under it instead of the hard floor.  I seemed to be
partly on the bottom of the pile, too, and it was my back that
was lying on what may have been someone's shoe.  It was
uncomfortable enough to be annoying, and without thinking, I
pushed up on the pile and tossed everyone back up onto the bed
while lifting the collapsed frame to check out the damage.

One of the metal struts holding the frame was twisted.  I reached
down and yanked it back into place, holding it for a second to be
sure it wasn't going to collapse again.

I stuck my head up when I heard Evie shout, "What the hell!"

"What?" I said, looking around for the reason for her cry. 
Everything looked fine, if 'fine' could be described as four
naked people in a pile on a bed, laughing.  Well, three laughing
and one very puzzled.

"Oops!" I thought.  "Got to watch that."  At the moment, my slip
didn't seem any more than amusing.  But I was in a state where
most everything was funny.

"One second, we're all on the floor.  The next, we're flying
through the air onto the bed.  Which seems to be level again." 
She said the last part in an 'in case no one has noticed' tone of
voice.

"Trick spring?" Jim suggested.  He meant to be helpful, but the
querulous tone he used destroyed the credibility of his idea.

"Cheap bed," Steve clarified, in a more confident tone.  "The
frame must have just flexed under the load.  When the weight was
off, it snapped back.  We better get up in case it does it
again."

That was such a good story, it almost convinced me.  I stuck out
a hand to help Evie scramble off.  She was followed more slowly
by everyone else, as they were able to get untangled.  

Neeka looked disappointed.  I felt the same way.  This meant the
evening was about over.  It was time to get dressed and go home
to our own beds.

Neeka and my dresses were on hangers in the closet.  The guys
clothes were all over the floor.  Only Evie's were in the other
room.  She went out to round them up while Neeka and I took turns
jumping in the shower, onto the john, and getting dressed.

"Thanks," I told Steve as he and Jim helped us on with our
dresses.

"No problem.  I guess it's time to go, hunh?"

"'Fraid so.  This was really great, though.  Thanks for bringing
us here.  And thanks for letting me run amok like that," I said,
referring to the contest, and bringing Evie along.

"My pleasure.  Really.  I've never done anything like that
before.  It was a blast."

Steve looked at me with a big goofy smile.

"What?" I said, laughing.  I thought I might look funny or
something.  I tugged up on my dress and brushed my hair back to
try to get more presentable.

"Damn, I love you," Steve said, completely out of the blue.  Jim
and Neeka were both standing right there, but he ignored them
like they were on the moon.

There was only one thing I could possibly say to that, so I said
it.

"I love you too."

The clich would be for us to fall into an embrace then, but we
were too worn out to appreciate the physical contact, so we just
looked into each other's eyes and shared the emotion of the
moment.  It was actually very special that way, I found.

With all need or desire for sex quenched at the moment, Steve and
I still connected emotionally.  That answered one of the bigger
questions about our relationship, and I think we both realized
it.

Jim and Neeka recognized the special moment, too.  They had their
arms around each other and were watching us.  Neeka's hair was a
mess that Medusa's hairdresser wouldn't touch, and mine was
little better.  The bed was a wreck.  The room would smell
strongly of sex for days.  None of this mattered.  It was the
perfect end to a perfect date.

We picked up the room as best we could and marched out of the
bedroom to find Evie sitting on the couch watching TV.  The scene
on the screen didn't register at first, but when it did, I
slapped the eject button on the DVD player.  The few seconds it
took for that disc to slide out seemed to stretch on forever.

When I had it, I tossed it to Steve.  I expected him to smash the
thing, but instead he put it in his pocket.

"Well, that explains a lot," Evie said.

I waited for the other shoe to drop.  The scene she had been
watching was of me and the stoned muggers.  I was very grateful
that Evie hadn't had time to get further than that, but I
couldn't tell what she might make of it.

"You're a Porn Star!"

"Works for me," I thought.  I was in no shape to come up with an
alternative, not a believable one, anyway.

"I guess you could say that," I allowed.  I felt proud.  Having
someone think my acting was Star caliber was very nice for my
ego.

"I can't wait to tell Amy!" Evie said.  "I can tell her about
everything, can't I?" Evie asked.  "I mean, the orgy and
everything?"

I put my hand over my mouth so Evie wouldn't see me grin and I
nodded.  I hadn't thought of our fun in the bedroom as an orgy,
and it hit me funny to hear her describe it like that.  I held
back a giggle while I wondered if there was really a minimum
number required to have an orgy.  If two was a couple, and three
was a mnage-a-trois, did it become an orgy at four, five, or a
dozen?  It was something else I needed to look up   maybe orgies
were covered in someone's book of etiquette. 

Jim covered for me while I tried to stifle.  "Maybe we could put
Evie on the guest-list for the next party?" He suggested.

"On one condition," I said, grateful for the distraction.  "You
have to bring Amy with you.  You tell her that I want to meet
her.  Tell her that I've got lots of stories to tell her that I
guarantee will make her cream her panties."

"Ooooo!  She'll love that!  She had a good time watching you from
upstairs.  She ran down to our apartment to meet me when I went
in to change so she could tell me how much she liked your
performance.  And how much she wished she had the courage to come
tell you herself."

"She's shy?"

"She's the original wallflower.  We roomed together on campus our
freshman year and she hardly said a word to me for the first two
weeks.  I thought she didn't like me.  Then one day I caught her
looking at me in the shower."

"Oh?" I said, thinking that there was nothing like water and soap
for getting people together.

"Yeah.  She was staring at me and rubbing herself.  When I caught
her eye she knew she was busted.  She grabbed a towel off the
hook and ran back to our dorm room, but on the way she dropped
her room key.  When I caught up with her, she was in the hall
with her back against the door, desperately trying to cover up
with this little hand towel.  She was so darling!  Before I let
her back into the room, I made her admit that she had been
eyeballing me in the shower, then that she liked what she saw,
and finally made her confess that for days she had been wanting
to climb into bed with me."

"Hmmm.  Is she just into girls, then?"

"Oh, no!  No more than I am, judging from how turned on she gets
when I tell her about my dates with boys.  I think she's just
'inexperienced', if you know what I mean?"

"A virgin?"  I wondered if Amy could be on her way to becoming an
old maid.

"No.  Well, not technically, anyway.  But she may as well be. 
She just has a really hard time meeting new people.  She needs to
learn to relax and go with the flow, you know?  She needs someone
who can talk her into coming out of herself."

Jim said, "You've sure come to the right place.  Sam can talk
anybody into anything."

"Hunh?" Evie said.

"That's for sure," Neeka added.  "She talked you into jumping
into bed with the four of us, didn't she?"

"I guess she did," Evie said, blushing prettily as she remembered
the stories I had told her.  Stories that had mostly come true,
as I recalled.  "And I'm very glad she did, too.  That was the
best sex I've ever had.  I think I may still be   you know  
having the big 'O'.  I'm still shaking all over and I can't stop
thinking about how great it felt when...you know."

"When you got to ride a big one?"

"Yeah!  God!  That was almost a religious experience.  You were
so right about that.  Thank you so much!"

"You're welcome.  I hope we can get together again soon."

"Can't be real soon, I'm afraid.  Mid-terms are coming up.  This
is the last big rave for awhile."

I was sorry to hear that, but relieved at the same time.  My
professional responsibilities were going to be cutting into my
own party schedule as well.  Things were going to be
catch-as-catch-can until I got more skills and more confidence. 
Every time we went out, I learned that I wasn't nearly as ready
as I thought I was.  I had been getting by, but just barely in
some cases.  My luck couldn't hold out forever.  I promised
myself that after the beach trip on Sunday, I would really
buckle-down to it.

Evie gave me her number, and with the usual vague promises to get
together soon, we all left the apartment.  Evie went down to
entertain Amy with her 'orgy with a porn star' story and the rest
of us to Steve's car to go home.

We walked out of the complex past the pool.  It was pretty late
by now, but the party was still going strong, with only a few
casualties of strong drink or whatever lying on the grass or in
the lounge chairs.  

I spotted Charlotte on one of the chairs, sitting on the lap of
one of the pool sharks.  She had recovered her swimsuit, but the
straps of her top were off her shoulders and the guy had his hand
inside one of the cups.  Charlotte seemed to be enjoying this,
because I saw her lean over and whisper into his ear.  Then they
both got up and she led him toward the stairs.

I wondered just how drunk Charlotte had actually been and if her
plunge into the pool was really an accident.  She might have been
counting on being rescued by the biggest and strongest shark,
because that's what it looked like she ended up with.

That made me wonder just how much of human behavior is due to
some kind of strategy, whether we are aware of it or not. 
Charlotte might not have consciously planned to fall into the
pool to be groped by every guy within reach, but the outcome
seemed to be something she was happy about.

Unfortunately, my head was still buzzing from all the fun and I
lost my train of thought before I could get any further with my
theory of Human Mating Strategies.  And so a brilliant
contribution to the field of Anthropology was lost to orgasmic
overload.



When Steve pulled into our driveway the clock on his dashboard
said it was just after one in the morning.  I had a flash of
terror at the consequences of coming home so late from my first
'real' date.  Neeka reached out from the backseat to put a hand
on my shoulder and mentally reassured me that nothing awful was
likely to happen.  Even so, we are all the product of our own
private Histories and my stomach was sure that my butt was in for
a whupping.

I waited for Steve to come and open my door, both to allow him to
exercise his urge to be a gentleman and to postpone the moment of
reckoning.

In fact, I had never been 'out' this late before in my life.  The
far side of midnight was as alien to me as the far side of the
moon.  Even the quality of the moonlight shining onto the
concrete driveway seemed different somehow.

Seeing me looking uneasily around at the strangeness, Steve
pulled me to him and put his arms around me.  His size and the
warmth of his embrace were reassuring, but the gnawing sensation
inside me refused to go away.

I kissed Steve goodbye and walked to the side door.  I put my
hand on the knob and turned it, only to find it locked.  This
puzzled and shocked me.

"Forget your key?" Neeka asked.  She and Jim were just finishing
their 'goodnights'.

"No.  I...uh.  No," I stammered.  I opened my purse and pulled
out the set of keys that Mom had given me.  The one with the
rounded head went to the side door and I slipped it in and turned
the key.  I pushed the door open a crack into the kitchen.  It
was dark.  The only light was from a small lamp on the hall table
where the mail was usually dumped.  No other lights seemed to be
on and I heard no sound that might indicate the presence of
someone waiting for me.

As soon as I had the door open, Neeka and Jim walked off toward
her house and Steve went back to his car, leaving me to go in by
myself.

I pulled the door shut behind me and, after taking my shoes off
so as to make as little noise as possible, I tiptoed through the
kitchen and into the hall.  I went up the stairs to the second
floor and down the carpeted hall to Mom's door.  There was no
light coming from under her door.  I carefully turned the knob
and peeked inside.

In the moonlight I could make out her distinctive form under the
satin sheet.  Her breathing was deep and slow.  I eased the door
shut and carefully released the knob.

Grudgingly, the knot in my stomach eased off.  I wasn't in
trouble.  I wasn't going to be whipped, or screamed at, or
grounded, or anything.  I had come home very late and the only
person who might have had anything to say to me about it was
sleeping peacefully.

I was stumped about how I should feel about this.  On one hand, I
was glad that I was being treated like an adult.  I could stay
out as late as I cared and answer only to myself.  On the other,
I still felt guilty about coming in so late, and I felt kind of
disappointed that Mom hadn't waited up to make sure I got home
OK.

I stood in the dark hallway and tried to decide which way I
wanted it.  Was I a responsible adult or not?  Did I need someone
to monitor my coming and going?  Did I want someone telling me
what I could do, where I could go, and when I should be back?

There was no answer in the dark.  Only silence.  I went back to
the stairwell and climbed up to the third floor and my own room.
Without bothering to turn on a light, I sat in the chair by my
window and looked out at the night.

Slowly, it came to me that I was simply being treated as an
adult.  But becoming an adult meant losing those things that, as
a child, we treasure as symbols of security   a warm blankie, a
favorite cuddly toy, sleeping in the backseat of the car while my
parents drove through the dark, and having someone sit up and
wait for me to come home.  A tear rolled down my cheek as I
mourned the loss of my childhood.

After a bit, I blinked the moisture from my eyes, got up and took
off my dress.  I hung it up in the closet and put away my shoes.
Then I went to stand in front of the long cheval mirror.

"Look!" I said to myself, as I changed my whole skin into the
best Dragon version I could manage, "That is you.  Does that look
like it needs to be pampered?"

In the moonlight the moving Dragon seemed startlingly real.  The
sight of a tail twitching behind me would not have been a
surprise.  I raised a hand to remind myself that I was only
looking at a reflection.

I stared into the mirror, turning so I could see the rippling
scales that covered my body and the talons on my hands and feet.

"No," I thought, making the Dragon's maw open to show the
blood-red tongue and the rows of yellow teeth.  "Nobody here
needs coddling."  

In life, there are always doors closing behind us and doors
opening ahead of us.  As much as we might want to go back through
one of those doors, it is our nature to keep going ahead, to
abandon the safe and familiar and move into the sometimes
frightening future, hoping that what lies ahead will be worth the
effort it took to get there.

I went to bed then, still wearing the Dragon's skin.  I wanted to
reinforce to myself that what was in the skin was me, and that
from now on, if I wanted to feel safe and protected, it was up to
me to make that happen.





<1st attachment end>


----- ASSM Moderation System Notice------
Notice: This post has been modified from its original
format.  The post was sent as an email attachment and
has been converted by ASSTR ASSM moderation software.
----- ASSM Moderation System Notice------

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| alt.sex.stories.moderated ------ send stories to: <ckought69@hotmail.com>|
| FAQ: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/faq.html> Moderators: <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|ASSM Archive at <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org>   Hosted by <http://www.asstr-mirror.org> |
|Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d; look for subject {ASSD}|
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+