A Friend for Valentine's

Sophia and I sat together at the downtown Burger King, enjoying a meal together away from campus. It was nearly dark out, nasty, cold, and wet. Frozen rain pelted the windows. As I looked out on Campus Drive, the window acted as a mirror. I looked at my pasty, pale, freckled skin and my bright red, curly, unruly hair that was way overdue for a trim. Then I looked across the table at Sophia: strikingly beautiful with short-cropped, thick dark brown hair, olive-toned skin, high cheek bones, and the largest, most gorgeous brown eyes I had ever seen.

Clearly we didn't belong together. And we weren't together, at least not in that way. We lived in the same dorm, and had been very good friends since the middle of last semester, when Sophia was feeling overwhelmed by school and needed someone to talk to. She grabbed my arm one afternoon, and we went to the student union, talking through her anxieties over a large bowl of Dairy Sciences Ice Cream. Since then, whenever one of us felt the weight of life had gotten too great, we could count on the other to drop everything and be available.

"It's Valentine's Day," I said. "How come you're not having dinner with Damien?" Damien was Sophia's boyfriend: Six-foot-four, half-Chilean, with chiseled facial features and an equally chiseled physique. He was the classic tall, dark, and handsome man, and everything I wasn't.

"He's in the lab. Again," she said with a sigh.

"Well, that's how grad school is," I said. "Indentured servitude. How many patents has his lab team now produced for the university?"

"Just the one."

"Still," I said, "they really push those research assistants. It's like a 100-hour-per-week job and they get, what, twenty grand a year?"

"Plus free tuition and fees," Sophia pointed out. "Anyway, he can't be with me now, but he'll make it up to me tonight," she said with a smile.

I felt a little bit embarrassed and had to fight not to blush.

Sophia looked a bit distant, like she was focusing on some point two miles behind my shoulder. "He makes me feel... so secure. So protected. When he holds me, and just towers above me, I feel like nothing in the world can hurt me. It's... I don't know if you understand, as a man, what that's like."

After a brief, uncomfortable silence, I said, "Maybe, when I was little and got hurt and my parents would be there for me... I'm sorry, that was a really stupid comparison. Forget I said anything... just... stupid."

I looked away from Sophia, back into the window getting pounded with sleet, feeling dejected. Sophia reached across the table and placed one of her hands over mine. "No, Phil," she said. "That isn't a bad comparison at all. Your parents made you feel safe and warm and loved, and that's how Damien makes me feel. At least..." and her voice trailed off.

I looked at Sophia and she had that distant look in her eyes again. I didn't know what to make of it, so I didn't press the issue. If she was having problems with her boyfriend, she'd talk to me about it, wouldn't she? I mean, we were friends and all. Everything she had said about him told me they had a great relationship.

Sophia sighed heavily. "Anyway... We should get back to the dorm. I know you've got that programming assignment to work on, and I have some... stuff to do before I meet Damien tonight."

We walked out of Burger King into the driving sleet. It was frigid and wet and ugly out. Sophia latched onto my arm, staying close to me for warmth and balance as we walked. I couldn't help but be excited; I knew I didn't have a chance in hell with her, especially with that perfect boyfriend of hers, but that didn't mean I wasn't wildly attracted to her. In fact, I hoped she didn't notice the shift in the way I walked as I immediately hardened in response to her closeness.

Fifteen icy minutes later, we were back at our dorm. Built in the 1920s, it was an all-stone exterior with a courtyard in the middle. The courtyard had a gate; I guess back when it was built they locked the students in at night. It was an upperclassmen dorm, and all of the rooms were single. That was something I was glad for after two years of having a roommate. Sophia and I lived on opposite ends of the courtyard from one another. We walked through the entrance to my part of the dorm and up to my room. Sophia walked in with me.

"Oh, Phil, you were going to show me that video, you know, the one on Xtube?"

Ah, one thing I didn't mention, a fascinating little aspect of our relationship, is we would watch porn together. One day last December we were walking downtown to do some Christmas shopping together, and Sophia just asked, out of nowhere,

"Phil, do you watch porn?"

Of course were this any other woman on earth, I would have denied it. But I knew I could be honest with Sophia and she wouldn't shun me. Besides, it was no great secret what guys did online when the door was closed.

"Well, yeah, of course I do."

This started a long conversation about the oddities of the art form. It turned out Sophia was fascinated with porn, seemingly to me more as an intellectual interest than an erotic one. After that, we would regularly find whatever strange or unusual videos that we could online. To humor her one time, I even sat through a ten-minute gay love scene with her. It was the most uncomfortable 600 seconds of my life.

"Aren't you the least bit interested in how the other team plays?" she asked.

"No, can't say that I really am. Sorry."

This evening's feature was an amateur webcam video I found. Sophia threw her soaking wet coat and her backpack in my closet and sat down on the bed, while I sat in front of my computer and called up the video. It was very low quality and badly lit, but we could clearly make out the setting: it was in someone's living room, with a couch right in front of the camera. A short, pixie-haired woman and a tall, skinny man entered the frame. She was dressed in frilly lingerie, while he was dressed in ordinary street clothes. Both of them stood, their sides facing the camera.

After a brief amount of kissing, the woman unbuckled the man's pants and pushed them down. Then she extracted from his boxers what had to be the most ridiculously huge member either of us had ever seen. She got down on her knees and began to make love to this man's mammoth dick. She kissed it and licked it, and got as much of it in her mouth as she could, which wasn't much.

"Ouch!" Sophia said. "How could you possibly... with that?"

"That's not why I showed you this one. Check out the cat."

On the back of the couch, clearly in the grainy video, there sat a cat, calmly cleaning itself, paying no attention to the petite woman going down on the human tripod.

"Oh my God, that's hysterical!" Sophia said.

After a few more minutes of head, the scene changed. Now they were both naked. He sat on the couch while she, facing forward, lowered herself on his coke-can-thick phallus and slowly began moving up and down. And right next to them, on the arm of the couch, apparently fast asleep, was the cat. The couple went on fucking for several minutes while the cat happily slept, paying no mind at all to the mating pair next to it.

We both were in hysterics by the end of the video.

"Thanks for showing me that, Phil. I don't know what I can find to top that one." Then she looked at her watch. "Oh, crap, I have to run and get ready. Catchya later!"

Sophia ran off to her side of the dorm, and I got to work on my programming assignment. It wasn't all that bad: mainly an exercise in how an OS might translate virtual memory addresses. Not that that's going to mean a lot to anyone reading right now. I mean, I have a tendency to talk about my work like it's interesting to other people when I know it's not, and end up just rambling and boring people.

Sorry.

Anyway, after about 45 minutes of work, I noticed Sophia left her backpack in my closet. Figuring she would want that back ASAP, I grabbed it and ran across the courtyard to her wing. I knocked on her door.

"Just a minute... almost ready..."

I didn't know what she needed to be ready for. But then she opened the door.

Sophia stood wearing a giant red bow. And not much else. The bow hid her breasts, and the ribbons fell down to her waist, mostly obscuring what looked to be an extremely skimpy pair of red lace panties. She wore red stockings that came up to mid-thigh, and a pair of black high-heeled shoes. Her face was dramatically made up, with a red heart drawn on each cheek. I stood gaping at my friend for what seemed to be minutes, but in reality was a fraction of a second.

Sophia yelped and slammed the door in my face. Then she opened it, just a crack.

"Oh crap, oh crap, Phil, I'm sooooo sorry! I thought you were Damien. Pleeeeease, can you forget you saw this?"

I'm not sure which of us was more embarrassed. I was embarrassed and turned on, though.

"I'll just... I'll just go back to my room," I said. "I'm really, really sorry."

I headed back to my room, still carrying Sophia's bag with me. I tried to get back to my assignment, but the image of my friend's sexy outfit had burned itself into my brain, and I couldn't think of anything else. I tried taking a cold shower. That didn't help, so I switched to a hot shower and jerked off. That helped a little bit.

Calmed down a bit, I started some reading I had to do for a poli sci course I was taking. I got most of the way through it when my phone rang. I picked it up and at first all I could hear was sobbing on the other end. Then,

"Phil?" It was Sophia.

"Sophia? What happened? Are you ok?" I asked.

"No, I'm NOT," she said between sniffs. "I re...really n...need someone over here right now. Can you pl...please come over?"

"Right away," I said softly, hanging up the phone. I threw on some clothes, grabbed her bag once more, and ran down the stairs, out the door, across the courtyard, and up the stairs to her door. I knocked.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"It's me. It's Phil."

"Come in," she said quietly.

I entered, quickly closing and locking the door behind me. Sophia was curled up on her bed, still dressed in her Valentine's outfit. She had her legs pulled up to her chest. I hated myself for looking, but between her legs I could see her sheer red panties, which did little to obscure her pussy lips. I tore my eyes away quickly, hoping she didn't see me look. The bow tied around her chest had also slipped, and I caught a glimpse of one of her nipples behind her knees. I decided the best thing to do was avert my eyes.

"Hi," she said quietly.

"Hi," I said, staring at a poster on the wall opposite her. It was of the Pyramids at Giza. "Do you... um, do you want to talk about it?"

Sophia sighed. "Not yet. It's too fresh." She blew her nose; I could hear the unmistakable gurgling sound. "I just need someone here."

"I'm here for you," I said, lamely.

"Can you... can you please come sit next to me?" she asked.

Trying not to look at her, I slowly, carefully backed up towards the bed and sat down. She wrapped her arms around my midsection and rested her face on my shoulder. She was wearing an exotic-smelling perfume - not overpowering, but enough to captivate my sense of smell. I wasn't sure what to do, where to put my hands. I decided just to keep them at my sides - not to touch her in any way. The worst part, to my great shame, was that I had an erection. I tried to shift my legs to conceal it from her.

We sat that way for several minutes, saying nothing. Sophia didn't cry, but she sighed a few times, and squeezed me with her arms. I continued to look straight forward, focusing my gaze on the Pyramids.

Finally, I had to say something. "Damien's not coming, is he?" I asked, knowing the answer was obvious.

"No. He's not," she said quietly. "He called me a little while ago to let me know that." She paused for a bit and took another couple of deep breaths. "I also found out that half the time he said he was in the lab, he was with someone else. And that I just didn't interest him anymore."

I took a look at her for the first time since averting my eyes. Even with her eye makeup comically smudged and running down her face, even with the silly heart painted on each cheek, she was still a stunningly beautiful woman. How she could become "uninteresting" to anyone was a mystery to me.

"I mean, it makes sense," she continued. "We haven't fucked in two months."

I did a double-take at her and blinked. Despite our porn-watching sessions, it still shocked me to hear that from her. She had never once mentioned her sex life to me, and I would never have expected her to use the blunt verb "fucked." Maybe "slept together," or "made love."

"I... I don't know what to say," I said, not knowing what to say. "I'm really sorry." More for her getting dumped than for her two-month dry spell. I hadn't gotten any since my last girlfriend dumped me nine months before.

"I'm just glad you're here. I couldn't imagine getting through tonight alone."

"I only have one class on Friday, and it's at 1:15, so I can spend as much time here as you'd like," I told her. "I can even sleep on the floor!" I joked.

Sophia hugged me tightly and planted a kiss on my cheek. I could feel my face turning red. "Thank you, Phil! You don't know how much it means to me, having you here."

I felt my breathing get just a bit more shallow and my pulse quicken. I wanted to see Sophia the way she saw me: as a best friend, as a confidant. But I had a knockout brunette cuddled next to me wearing nothing but thigh-high stockings, panties, and a ribbon, and it was getting hard to keep my mind off of anything other than sex. Despite having jacked off earlier, I started to worry I would cream my jeans. How would I explain that one to her?

I got the feeling that despite my discomfort, she was perfectly at ease. As she continued to hold me, she moved one hand down over the outside of my thigh and to my knee. I decided I ought to hold her as well. To comfort her. I cradled her head with one hand, and placed the other around her bare waist. The feel of her naked skin sent another erotic surge through my body. It was almost torture for me.

Sophia nuzzled her face into the space between my shoulder and neck. She sighed, and I could feel her warm breath against the skin of my neck. It felt electric. She smiled and made a contented "Mmmmmm" sound. We leaned back against the wall. I started to relax, and could even feel my erection die down.

After a few minutes of sitting like that, Sophia said to me, out of nowhere, "Did your last girlfriend ever suck your dick?" My cock surged back to full hardness, straining inside my jeans. My body tensed up and my breathing became rapid once more.

I didn't know what to do other than answer the question honestly. "Um, yeah, she did, now and then. Usually it was... well, right before sex. You know, as foreplay."

"I've..." she started. "I've never... "

I blinked at her.

"I've never... done that to a guy. I tried to several times with Damien but he never would let me."

I was shocked. "Wouldn't let you... you know?"

"Yeah," she said. "He said that was for 'whores,' and it was no place for a 'lady's' face to be. That he wouldn't want to kiss a woman who did that."

"Wow," I said. "That's... different."

"I see girls giving... um... giving blowjobs in these videos, and it looks... so... exciting. I've always wanted to..."

How on earth was I going to get through this evening? This was more than any man should have to bear.

Sophia's breath was starting to get heavy - nearly as heavy as mine. "Phil, I want to ask you something, but... I don't know. You're such a wonderful friend..." (Worst words a guy can hear from a smoking-hot woman.) "...and I don't know if friends can do this. You know, and not ruin the friendship, or make things weird."

"What is it?" I asked. She couldn't possibly...

"It's just... I see those videos we watch, and those women giving head, and it just... does something inside of me. I don't know what. But it fascinates me, and I want so badly to try it. At the same time I'm worried about trying that on someone I'm dating, because I'm afraid they would see me as a 'whore,' and they wouldn't respect me."

"You're not a whore if you give a blowjob," I said, feeling just a bit indignant at this attitude Sophia seemed to have picked up from Damien. "Everyone gives blowjobs," I said, quickly blushing. "I mean, women. Er, straight women. And gay guys, too."

"See, that's what I love about you." Did she just use the word love? "I know you won't judge me. You're so cool that way."

I still couldn't believe what I knew was coming. "What were you going to ask me, though?" I said.

"Well," she said, obviously trying to gather up the nerve, "Can you and I... as friends... I mean... can I, maybe... suck your dick? Just to see what it's like?"

Oh jeez. This was insane. Could friends just give friends blowjobs? There was no way we could do this and keep the friendship as we knew it intact. Then again, she had already crossed a line just suggesting such a thing, and there was no way things couldn't get awkward. Even if I said no, nothing would ever be the same between us. In fact, things would likely be more awkward if I did say no.

On the other hand, she was hurt, lonely, feeling rejected. Vulnerable. Would I be "taking advantage of her" if I let her do what she was suggesting? Put that way, it was wrong. And at the same time it felt perfectly fine. We were so... comfortable together. This clearly was something she needed; otherwise she wouldn't have taken the enormous risk of suggesting it.

My base desires were screaming at me to say yes. I rationalized my decision by convincing myself that after she had put herself on the line like this, to reject her would only add to the pain she was going through. The bottom line was that it just felt right.

"Yes," I said softly. "I would like that. I mean, if it's really something you want to do." I had to at least give her an out. "If you aren't absolutely, one hundred percent sure you want to do this, you shouldn't, though."

Sophia swung around in front of me and looked me straight in the eyes, her face two inches from mine. "I am absolutely, one hundred percent sure I want to do this." She then kissed me passionately, her tongue prying apart my reluctant mouth. Her hand moved down to my crotch, rubbing the bulge she found there. Any reservations I may have had at this point dissolved.

She got up from the bed and walked across the room, revealing for the first time to me that her panties were a thong. The back disappeared between the firm, round, smooth halves of her ass. I was no longer shy about looking; I stared at her. Her back away from me, she removed what was left of the bow around her chest, letting it drop to the floor. Her bare back was soft and gentle, but just a little bit muscular.

She grabbed a bathrobe and threw it on, then turned to face me. "I'm going to clean up my face. I know I'm a mess right now," she told me, grabbing her makeup kit and a few tissues. She slipped on a pair of pink bunny slippers, which looked comical over her red stockings. The last thing I wanted to do at this moment was giggle, though.

Sophia closed the door behind her, and for the first time I noticed the hiss of the radiator and how warm it was in the room. The heat in our dorm had two settings: fucking freezing, and surface of the sun. I took off my sweatshirt and hung it up with my coat in her closet. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, I wasn't sure if I should have gotten any more undressed. I decided to let her undress me, if that's what she was going to do.

I couldn't believe this was happening. Maybe it was some kind of joke, or a test. Maybe Damien was listening out in the hallway, ready to pummel me if I went along with Sophia's temptations. But I knew it wasn't a joke. Somehow I knew when Sophia was serious and when she was joking. There was nothing but utter sincerity in her offer, and I could read behind her eyes that this was something that she needed. For some reason she required this validation of her womanhood - the ability to please a man this way. I was excited more for being there to help her than for the fact that I was about to get blown by a beautiful woman, if that makes any sense at all.