I was leaving for a year's leave to study and teach at two German universities. Unlike business travellers, I was not pressed for time. The travel-agent had secured for me not only a cheaper but a, possibly, more interesting flight. Its first leg was Melbourne to Manila, a two day stop-over, and then an Air Pakistan flight to Frankfurt.
At Melbourne Airport, next to me in the luggage-queue were two young women. We started talking and as nobody was seeing them or me off, I joined them for a coffee while we waited for our departure-gate to open. They were friends, primary-teachers from a country town in Victoria, and were setting out for a working-holiday in the UK. Neither of the two had ever been out of Australia. They were excited, as well as a bit scared about their daring. My, what they took to be, sophistication and overseas background and experience seemed to impressed them.
On the eight-hour flight to Manila I had a window seat and they were seated, further back, in the centre rows of the DC9. There was one seat vacant next to them. For part of the flight I sat with them, bought the drinks, and we chatted. We eventually compared our hotel bookings in Manila, without up to then saying anything about continuing our acquaintance. They, like I, seemed to be in the mood for a holiday diversion, perhaps, even dalliance. Unfortunately, we were booked into different hotels. So, I offered to come to their hotel and invite them for an authentic Philippine dinner. I had been in Manila before and liked their special dishes.
They happily accepted my invitation. Of the two, the shorter one was conventionally pretty. She had a nicely proportioned, quite voluptuous body. It already suggested that it would change into a comfortable plumbness in a few years hence. She readily laughed. The other woman's name was Kate. I found her more interesting. She noticed and quite readily responded to my attention. She was darker, more serious and self-contained than her friend but, as her subtle body-language in responding to me indicated, far from being discouragingly detached. We seemed to naturally pair and the two friends seemed to agree among themselves that it was to be so.
Their hotel was larger than mine and had quite luxurious bars, dining- and function-rooms. On arriving I booked at the reception a table for our dinner at seven, before going up to their room. They welcomed me like an old friend but their immediate attention was elsewhere. They were in a giggling flurry in making themselves presentable with the limited means they had brought in their cabin-luggage. They succeeded well.
The six-course dinner accompanied by Spanish champagne was excellent and was enjoyed. The reception had placed us into their function-centre and not their dining-room. Our dinner, therefore, was followed by a lavish floor-show, and later by a five-piece dance band. What seemed peculiar to me was that after the floor-show so many of the patrons left. We were in great spirits and stayed. The women talked and told me about what they left behind and what they hoped to find overseas.
Finally, it was only 11 o' clock, the band stopped playing and the place emptied. It was time to say Good Bye. It had been fun but with the women sharing a room and I in another hotel, my hoped-for romance was not meant to blossom. Kate and friend accompanied me to the reception, where I could, I thought, order a taxi. The receptionist apologised: Didn't I know that there was a 10 o'clock curfew, because Manila was, for the time being, under martial law. I could, therefore, only return to my hotel after six in the morning.
The two friends were quick to exchange meaningful glances and a few whispered words before they offered me the spare single bed in their room. The receptionist extracted from me the extra charge. I suggested a night-cap in the bar before retiring. Kate liked the idea, but her friend was quick to decline. She grinned at Kate with a wink when she said she was too tipsy and tired: she would go to bed.
Kate and I, now definitely coupled, went to the bar for a leisurely drink. We were already holding hands. I told her about myself and she told me about the boy-friend she had broken-up with, and about the boredom of the small country-town she was leaving behind. In the lift up, I took her in my arms and kissed her for the first time. She willingly pressed her shapely body against me, but her kissing was girl-like, almost innocently clumsy. Yet, she pretended no virginal innocence.
In entering their darkened room, Kate did not switch on the light. With some light seeping through the gaps in the curtain, I could just make out that the large bed was occupied. Kate did not hesitate; she tiptoed, drawing me with her, to the single bed in the corner. Without a word we sat down, undressed to our underwear, slipped under the blanket and into an immediate embrace. I felt her nervous shiver. All in total silence because her friend, only meters away, was not to be woken. I was certain that she only pretended to be asleep!
For me, this one night given to us was a new experience. Kate was so much younger than I, so girl-like, and we barely knew each other. We had to find a way to each other in the almost total darkness and silence of our surrounding solely by touch. I freed myself from our initial, almost panicky embrace to begin a, finger-tips only, caressing exploration.
It was like a blind man's reading of her face, her hair, throat and neck. Then I bent over her to make my lips follow, with the lightest touch, what my fingers had traced. Every time they passed over her lips, they parted just slightly more; I could taste her quickening breath. It was her hand cradling the back of my head that stopped me eventually from just passing. Our lips met, and when my tongue began to caress just lightly over her lips, a murmur escaped her. Her hand pressed me closer, her lips parted more, and a curious tongue found mine. We kissed for a long time. Her tongue's play began shyly, but soon dared more, to finally promise all. Kate's responsiveness delighted and excited me.
When I broke our kiss, my hands, followed by my lips wandered down to her shoulders, down her arms into the crook of her elbow, up the inside of her arm, then for a repeat journey down and up the other side, back to her throat. She had stretched out, thrown back her head as my lips and tongue slowly kissed a path down into the cleft of her breasts, still constrained in a bra.
After I drew my tongue several times over the firm roundness not quite covered, and sunk my tongue as deeply into the cleft as it could reach, I bit into the bra's edges to pull it away and let it snap back. It was a suggestive, asking tease, as I had not laid a hand on her breasts. I wanted them given to me, and her eager to have them touched and kissed.
And Kate did reach for the bra, pulled it over her head and dropped it on the floor! She quickly pressed my face between her freed, firm globes and started to guide my mouth to a nipple. She pressed and stroked my head as my tongue and teeth excited it into perky hardness, then moved me to the other breast. All this in darkness but no longer in total silence. I had begun to hear the whispering song of her excited breath.
