Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 73013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
We wanted kids, yes—but these days you didn’t actually have to have sex to have children, did you?
Rick could be patient, I knew. Maybe he could be patient forever? I knew enough from Wellness class to know that men could take care of their own physical needs without shame, and that they all did that before they got married. With their hands, girls whispered in the cafeteria—one of my friends had caught her older brother doing it in the shower. I blushed, thinking about it, looking down at my salad.
What would happen when we got back to the room? I definitely couldn’t expect that Rick wouldn’t bring it up again. Maybe I could say that it was alright with me if he went to the bathroom to take care of himself? That I wanted to cuddle, but only to cuddle, right now?
I caught Rick looking at me a little guardedly during dinner. He took my hand atop the table, but he didn’t try to kiss me, let alone make any other sort of advance like the night before.
When he thought I wanted him to make love to me—and now he knows I don’t.
Once or twice, for just a moment, I felt my loving smile slip, and the growing grief of the just-opened gap between us swell in my chest. I managed to gather my emotional will, out of sheer desperation, though, each time. I renewed the sweet expression, and I even snuggled up to Rick during dessert. He rewarded me with a radiant smile and a little peck on the lips.
I can do this, I thought. Can I do this?
CHAPTER 4
Rick
By the time we got back to our room I thought everything would go fine. That just proves that I really didn’t get it. Not then, anyway, on the third day of our honeymoon—the third day of our wonderful new life together, me and Mandy.
I knew our wedding night hadn’t gone perfectly. I had tried to go slow and to be gentle, but I hadn’t felt like I understood at all what Mandy had expected. Every time I tried to talk about it with her, communicating the way everyone said you need to do in a healthy marriage, Mandy said something like, “Oh, we don’t really have to talk about that, right?”
I couldn’t even tell whether my gorgeous, petite, golden-haired girl even registered those little conversations that confused me so much. I had definitely gathered, by the time I came out of the bathroom naked and hard as iron at the mere thought of having sex at last with the bride of my dreams, that Mandy simply didn’t want to communicate about sex. I had started to feel guilty about even trying.
I had no doubt on that wedding night—or after the unusual conversation with Scott and April and the distressing confrontation about it in our room—that Mandy’s physical attraction to me remained strong. I had enough experience to know when a woman responded to my touch and when she didn’t, and Mandy definitely did: even when she pulled apart from a hug, or pushed my hand away from her bottom or from between her thighs, I could feel the trembling in her limbs and the way she had consciously to force herself to stop whatever little seduction I had started.
I didn’t mind. Well, I hadn’t minded. Especially while we had courted, I understood how she had grown up, and why she would want to stay a virgin until her wedding night. Cuddling in my bed, our voices hushed to keep our words private from my roommates, I had felt her body’s need for me even as she seemed to want to keep that need in check.
It had surprised me a little that it seemed to hurt Mandy so much when we had sex for the first time. I had tried to go slow, and I had turned all the lights off the way she wanted. I had thought we would cuddle for a while first; I’d always loved the sweet, teasing kind of foreplay that can get a girl so hot she begs for a good hard fucking. But Mandy had spread her legs before I’d even gotten into bed, clearly feeling she wanted me to make a woman of her, like in some old book.
So I had, and she hadn’t cried out—Mandy clearly wanted to be brave, and her courage at her body’s first submission to mine turned me on. I had come quickly and gratefully, thinking she would feel grateful, too, since her tears of discomfort in the near-darkness told me I should give her time.
I had tried to take her in my arms, wondering if we might be able to try again before we fell asleep, since I’d started to harden almost at once. Mandy had gotten out of bed and gone to shower, kissing me lightly as she passed by my side of the bed, her nightgown once again covering the intimate places I still, three days later, hadn’t explored or even glimpsed the way I—as a healthy, typical guy—so urgently wanted to do.