1.
It was the summer before my senior year in high school. I was eighteen, restless, and unhappy. My parents and I had just moved to a new apartment in a new city. I didn't know anyone. I'd tried and failed to find a job. I had nothing to do and no one to do it with, and also I was also hornier than I'd ever been in my life. Like all teenage guys, I had a naturally strong sex drive, but that summer – due to some combination of inactivity, loneliness, and hormones – I was going crazy.
I was also a virgin and pretty shy. I'd spent most of my adolescence pizza-faced and scrawny, growing too fast for my frame. I was coming out of it that eighteenth summer – my skin had cleared up and I had filled out a little – but I still thought of myself as a homely, friendless geek whom no girl would ever want. Which made the constant longing for sex all the more frustrating and depressing.
It was about eleven on a hot night, and I was sitting on a bench on the sidewalk outside the apartment building. My parents had already gone to bed, and they thought I was in bed as well. I was too hot to sleep, in more ways than one. I couldn't get away from the fantasies in his head – fantasies I was morbidly certain would never come true – and I was really sick of my own company. So I'd gone out to the street to distract myself by watching the cars and pedestrians go by.
A well-dressed couple came walking up the sidewalk towards me, and I couldn't help but stare. The woman was a knockout. She was dressed in a red satin evening gown that was molded to her body as she walked. Her head was thrown back to look up at the man beside her, and the whole tender line of her hroat was exposed. I sat there and looked at her bare throat, the way her skin was stretched taut over her collarbones, down her chest to the tops of her full breasts, which were round and swelling above the low top of her dress. I was so busy gawking at her chest that I didn't even notice her face, until they were passing right in front of me. Then she looked down and saw me.
"Hi, Jesse!" she said cheerfully.
It was Carmen and Sergei. They lived in my building. I'd met them the day we moved in, and I'd seen them around a lot since then. Carmen was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Once I'd helped her carry groceries to her apartment, dry-mouthed and half-aroused the whole time. She was older than me, of course – in her thirties – but she had the most stunning figure and an amazing face, Italian-American with rich brown eyes, a prominent nose, and thick dark hair. She was self-confident and funny and kind, with a smile that lit up her whole face. She was exactly the type of woman I will always be attracted to: small, curvy, vivacious, intensely feminine.
I wanted her so bad. She had a starring role in my adolescent daydreams – I spent most of my time imagining her naked, red lips smiling as she kissed me, or went down on me, or climbed on top of me. I have to say I felt pretty guilty about this because she was really nice – too nice to be defiled by my pornographic grubby teen fantasies while I jerked myself off. But I did it anyway. Frequently. I couldn't help myself.
And then there was Sergei, Carmen's boyfriend. He was a big, fairly scary guy: tall, thin but with big shoulders, pale white-blond hair cropped short, and really spooky, pale gray eyes. He was from Europe somewhere; he had a faint accent. If you were casting a movie and needed a dangerous Russian mafia assassin, you'd want a guy who looked just like Sergei. I hadn't talked much to him, although he'd always been polite. He seriously intimidated me. I had such a huge jones for Carmen, and I doubted that I hid it well. Sergei could kick my ass. Sergei looked like he would kill me without even thinking about it.
And here they were. They'd just caught me staring at Carmen's tits.
"Hey, Jesse," said Sergei. "You're out late."
"So are you," I said. I was relieved that I managed to sound reasonably calm, but I was blushing furiously. Maybe they hadn't noticed. "You guys look sharp."
"Thanks!" said Carmen.
It was true. Sergei was wearing a suit that looked like a million bucks; Carmen looked like five million, at least. Uninterested in men's clothes, I naturally noticed hers: a dark red satin evening gown, sleeveless, with some sort of v-necked bodice that crossed in front, cupping her breasts and pushing them up. In the orange light of the street lamp, she looked incredible. Neither of them was wearing any kind of coat on this hot night, and Carmen's long dark hair waved sexily around her shoulders.
They had been out; they'd had a few drinks. Carmen giggled, loose and a little tipsy, and leaned into Sergei, her arm around his waist. They were obviously going to go back up to their apartment to have sex. I was eaten up with jealousy and longing.
Then Carmen said, "Jesse, do you want to come up to our place for a while tonight?"
I thought I'd heard her wrong. She could not possibly mean –
Sergei gave a little snort, and Carmen turned to him, putting one hand intimately on his chest. "Oh please, Sergei. You know you want to."
"I don't know him," Sergei said.
"But I do, and he's very nice. He's always been very respectful. He's eighteen, and he's
cute
, and he thinks I'm cute, too. Don't you, Jesse?" She was leaning into Sergei's body, her breasts pressed against his chest, and looking up at him through her eyelashes. "Come on, Sergei," she murmured, her voice going all husky. "Don't you want to?"
Sergei was gazing down at Carmen as if he was captivated. I couldn't blame him. God knew what they were actually talking about, but if Carmen ever looked at me like that, I would give her anything. Anything. I was getting hard just watching them. I shifted a little on the bench, tugging my shirt down over my lap.
Then Sergei smiled a little and put an arm around her shoulders, hugging her close. He looked up at me over the top of her head. "Well?" he asked. "You think she's cute?"
Oh shit, I thought. My erection shrank. "Uh," I said. "That's not the word I'd use."
Carmen twisted in Sergei's arms to look over her shoulder at me. Her dark gaze was knowing. Sergei was still smiling. "Do you want to come up?" asked Sergei.
I swallowed nervously. "To do what?"
Sergei's smile turned wicked. He didn't answer. The two just stood there looking at me: Sergei's pale gray eyes gleaming, Carmen's dark, long-lashed ones smoldering. She looked straight into my eyes and caressed Sergei, running her hand down his chest and stomach to the waistband of his pants.