Chapter 01: His Story
Forbidden fruit is a joint writing effort with a promising new author, redhairedandfriendly. I'm writing here about his side of the experience. You'll definitely want to compare it to her side!
Note: To me, one of the sexiest and most terrifying moments with a woman I care for is touching her intimately for the first time. At one point, there's no turning back. I tried to put this experience into words in the first part of this little story. It starts out slowly as I work through the mental process. Be patient.
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I couldn't believe I was reaching to touch her breast. It was like falling; a moment's wrenching sensation followed by a feeling of weightlessness in which the world changes, but there is no feeling of movement, no feeling of control. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. With something like alarm, I viewed my arm, and the hand at the end of that arm, as if they belonged to someone else. They belonged to someone much bolder, more straightforward, and maybe even rude.
Slowly but without hesitation, the hand opened, palm forward, and traversed the short distance from my body to Sue's. The fingers and palm curved to match their landing place, a puzzle piece shaped like the inside of a bra. They very gently came to rest, making delicate contact with all the areas of the hand at once; the palm where the nipple would be, if the nipple could be seen, the fingers on the gentle upward slope of Sue's generous breast, the thumb underneath where the bottom of the breast bowed outward, rounded under its own weight. Not her breast, really, but the snow-white ribbed surface of the turtleneck she was wearing. It was a blatant move, not like me at all.
There had been ample time for her to say "No. I'm spoken for," or "No, we shouldn't be doing this," or "No, I like you, but not in that way." I don't know whether I expected her to say one of those things, but instead, she said nothing. I didn't know her very well, but I was infatuated with her beauty. From the time I met her I could hardly keep my eyes from looking at her expressions, her face, her body, and especially her breasts. I knew she was aware of this β she had caught my admiring stare several times. She did nothing to discourage it and even sometimes smiled invitingly at me, or so I imagined. Was it a signal? An invitation? Politeness in an awkward moment? I didn't know.
We had hugged in social greeting on a couple of occasions and there was the slightest suspicion that she had applied a bit more pressure with her chest, had held the hug a bit longer than necessary, and had tried to make me aware of her breasts. Or was that fantasy on my part? Had it been me, pressing harder against her?
I had spent weeks, balanced exactly on the painful razor edge of uncertainty. At times I absolutely convinced myself that she was inviting me to something further. At times I absolutely convinced myself that it was all in my mind β that she would be shocked and offended if she knew what I was thinking. Yet no matter how convinced I was, each time I met her I was thrown once again into a quandary. As long as this was unresolved, all I could think of was her.
Now I was sitting on her couch next to her, closer than necessary, but not as close as boyfriend and girlfriend; the distance friends keep. There had been a conversation about something. The conversation had crumbled awkwardly into silence. My words stumbled and fell without meaning in pieces on the floor, an unfinished sentence about a thought not completely formed, like backward counting on the operating table. In mid-sentence, I thought, "What was I saying? How did my speaking stop?" The penetrating look in her beautiful eyes stabbed me to the core, shoving a splinter deep into my heart. While my brain was thus disengaged, trying to understand this weird moment, the hand launched itself uncontrolled toward Sue's chest. It had its own mind about such things.
In the silence as my hand crossed the intervening space, her expression changed. How shall I describe it? Her eyes uncoupled. She didn't look at the self-controlled hand. She had been looking at my face with her bright eyes, and then they drifted, focused on something thousands of miles away in the direction of my ear. The smile that had danced on her lips began to disappear, her jaw slackening. It was as if her mind and being had left her face entirely. Had migrated downward into that breast, so that all her consciousness was waiting there under that ribbed cotton, straining impatiently to experience every tingling delight of the hand that was approaching. Or perhaps she was collecting her thoughts during this brief moment of shock to voice the words, "How DARE you!" Neither of us breathed.