Learning to Love

"I'm sorry, I didn't realise that I was doing this, it's the way that I have been brought up to speak. If I'm true to myself I have to admit that I sometimes embarrass myself by the way that I talk, I used to get teased about it a lot at high school. I guess that I was afraid that if I changed, to be like the others, my mother would have been angry with me."

"You're really afraid of her, aren't you?"

"Yes, she has always had this way of making me feel inadequate, even when I have done well, it's just not good enough."

"Around here we want you to do well, to do the best you can, but if you fuck up it's not the end of the world. I know you well enough to know that you will do a good job, you just need to have the confidence to know that if you do fuck up you will tell me about it and we'll see what we can do to fix it. Okay?"

"Yes. If you'd said that a month ago I would have been upset, not so much that because you think that I would fuck up, and I can't believe that I'm using that word, but I could not accept criticism of any sort."

"Criticism, as long as it is constructive, is all a part of learning. You seem to have had a lot of destructive criticism in your life."

I was silent for a few minutes, deep in thought about this phase of my life. Maria and I had established the ground rules of our future working relationship, and this resulted in us working much better together. I was enjoying my new life, but was dreading telling my mother that I was dropping out of University to explore a life as a cook.

"You haven't told her yet, have you?" What is it with Maria, she seemed to know what I'm thinking.

"No, I haven't gotten the courage yet."

"Would you like me to be with you when you tell her, sort of moral support?"

"Hell no! That didn't come out right, did it? I would love your support, but I can't see Mother being pleased with, not only the news, but having you there, the person who has led me astray."

"Talking of leading you astray, that has been on my mind for some time."

"What are you saying? What would your father say if he knew that you were even thinking of such a thing?" I was shocked at what she had just said. From what I had gathered from the snippets of conversation around the place, and what Giovanna told me on day one, was that he was very strictly traditional in his attitude.

"Forget my father, he is so out of touch with reality that he still thinks that he's the boss of the family. If only he knew that his being able to go out drinking with his old friends is because it is convenient for Mother to not have him around. You did know that she and Gino are having it off, don't you?"

"What! No I didn't know that."

"She lets him fuck her to keep him away from me. She doesn't love him and she would never leave Father for him, for starters, if she left him he'd get half of the business, and that will never happen."

"I don't believe what I'm hearing, it goes against everything that I have been taught about relationships."

"You've never seen my father have you? He is twenty years older than Mother and hasn't been able to get it up for centuries. She has got to find relief somewhere or she'll go crazy. Gino is convenient and willing, what more could she want?"

"This is a foreign concept to me. Tell me, when you're married, will you remain true to your husband, or will you go looking for relief elsewhere?"

"That depends on my husband. Now if I were married to you, there would be no way that I would need to look elsewhere. But if, for argument's sake, I was forced to married Antonio, that's my father's choice, then I would quite happily make love to you."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Was Maria telling me that she considered me as something more than a workmate? "Are you trying to tell me that you are in love with me?" I dreaded her response, I knew that she would laugh at my presumption.

"Of course I am silly. My God, I have never met anyone so slow in all my life. Here I am sending out non-verbal messages, telling you that I'm in love with you, and you haven't even realised that fact."

"I put that down to, (a) my lack of experience in this situation, I have no idea what love is, and (b) my lack of self-confidence, (c) my concern about getting you in trouble with your father, (d) and I can also throw in my abject fear of Mother's reaction."

"Will you stop thinking things through so much, because, until you can get out of that habit you'll never get the nerve to make a move on me. Let me put it to you in words of one syllable, will you please make a move on me."

"What, here and now?"

"No silly, when we've finished for the night, you can walk me home, the long way, past a hotel where we can take a room for the night. If we leave early enough in the morning we can both sneak home without our parents being any the wiser. What do you say?"

"I'll have to think about it."

"Will you listen to yourself? What have I just been telling you? Don't think, just do it."

"I suppose so, although. . . "

"Enough! You've said that you would, and I'm going to hold you to that promise."

"Maria, customers." Giovanna's voice brought the world back into perspective. It was a busy night, there seemed to be more people than usual and I was asked to help out front with clearing the tables and preparing them for new customers. I noticed a man seated in the back corner who was just picking at his food and drinking red wine, several glasses of red wine over the course of the evening.

I had just finished the last of the plates and had them stacked for tomorrow when the man came into the kitchen. "You are Malcolm?"

"Yes Sir, I am."

"Come with me." He led the way to the door leading into the back alley where we had the bins for the waste food and crates for the empty wine bottles. "Listen to me, I tell you this, if you do not stop trying to make jig-a-jig with Maria I will have Antonio's father arrange for some bad men to come to you and break open you face." He actually said 'you' instead of 'your'.

"But I have done nothing to her."

"This is not what I see with my own eyes. I watch you tonight, and you and my daughter, you think that she let you make the love with her. This is not so, she is a good girl and will not go against the wishes of her father, no matter how hard you try to change her mind. I have warn you, you seem to be a good boy, I would not like to see you hurt. Kapeesh?"

"I have done nothing wrong with her, I cannot understand how it is that you think that I would do anything with her."

He looked at me for a second or two and then he made this gesture that I had never seen before, but left little to the imagination. He took his right hand, the backs of his fingers touching the chin, and then he flicked it forward with two fingers thrust up. This was not a friendly gesture and I was now officially warned.

"What did Papa want with you?" Maria asked.

"I have been warned to keep away from you. I don't think that he is going to let you and I go to a hotel and make love, much as I would like that, would love that. It's just not safe for either of us."

"Your father is waiting to take you home," Giovanna came in. "You had better go with him, I'll help Malcolm to finish up here."

"I guess that I'd better go." She grabbed her bag and coat. "See you at home Mother," I thought that would be it, but no. " 'Bye Darling, see you tomorrow." She kissed me, in front of her mother, she gave me a passionate kiss that left nothing to the imagination.

"She is in love with you, you know that don't you?" Giovanna asked.

"Yes, she spelt it out in quite some detail this evening. I don't know what to do, I would like to make love to her as she wants, but I know nothing of this and I'm afraid that I will make a mess of things and that will be the end of it."

"She has spoken to me of this. You have never been with a girl?"

"No, I'm officially a virgin."

"This much she told me. Did she tell you that she planned to make love with you tonight?"

"Yes, and this has scared me."

"Why, this is the most beautiful of things between two people that love each other. You do love her, don't you?"

"Yes, I do, at least I think I do. If feeling a tingle every time we touch, of going weak at the knees every time she smiles at me, of wanting to be close to her all the time is love, then yes, I'm in love with her."

"Then I will teach you about love."

"What?"

"I teach you love." She had this smile on her face that told me that she was going to enjoy this lesson. I was now more scared than I have ever been. Here I was, much against my better judgement, about to be taught how to make love by the mother of the girl that I'm in love with. There is something wrong with this scenario."

"But, but if I do this I will be betraying the girl that I love. This is all wrong. I can't do it."

By the time that I had stammered this out she had begun her lesson. Her hand had found its way to my groin and was stroking my penis. "You like this, no?"

"I like this yes." I couldn't lie to her, what she was doing to me felt like nothing that I had felt before. I know that I had played with my penis in bed, but this was totally different.

She took my hand and, unbuttoning her Uniform, she placed it between her legs. She wasn't wearing panties! Her finger guided one of mine into her. "If you move your finger in and out, you will get me aroused, although I was already aroused, even before we started. Take it slowly, please." She closed her eyes and smiled as I began to stroke inside her.

While I did this she had opened the fly of my trousers and eased my penis from the confines of my clothing. As she stroked it, it seemed to grow much larger than it did when I played with it. It felt so good that I just couldn't help myself, after what seemed like seconds, but was probably a little longer, I felt myself unleashing a load of semen into her hand. What she did next shocked me. She licked the semen from her hand and then dropped to her knees in front of me and took my penis into her mouth and licked it clean.

"This is not making love, this is sex. While we wait for you to get hard again I will show you how to make love. The first thing that you must remember is that this should come natural to you. Have you ever kissed a girl?"

"Yes, Maria and I have kissed."

"I meant other than Maria. It was she that kissed you, not you kissing her."

"Then no."

"I have schooled Maria in the art of making love, but I think that she is wanting you to be the lover and she the loved, that way she will know that you are a man, a man not afraid to show his feelings. She has seen me and my husband and she knows that what we have is not love, She has seen me and Gino, and knows also that this is not love, it is a having of sex to replace what my husband is not able to give me."

"How will I know how to make love like a man?"

"I can show you how to make a woman feel pleasure, but that is not something that will make Maria happy. When you know what to do, you must learn how to do it, and that comes from the heart. This I cannot show you, it is something you must learn for yourself. Come, I show you where to touch a woman and how to kiss a woman. I will not let you put your cock into my pussy, but I will show you some different positions for making love. You must discover for yourself which gives Maria the most pleasure. Remember, when you make love to her it is not about your pleasure, or even her pleasure, it is the giving and receiving pleasure from each other."

On the couch in her office, on the floor in her office, and her desk, Giovanna showed me a variety of positions. By the time that she had finished I found myself with another erection. "You must take this to Maria." She said as she tucked it back into my trousers. "She waits for you at the hotel that she planned to take you to this night. Don't worry, her father will not know."

"But how? How did you know all of this?"

"Maria and I have been discussing this for weeks now, ever since she came to me asking my advice on how she could get you to make love to her. She said to me that once you could make love to her you would be able to stand up to your mother and tell her that you have dropped out of University to work in a kitchen, and marry the daughter of the proprietor."

"I don't think that I will ever be that strong."

"You will. Maria is a very determined young woman."

"My mother is a very determined old woman."

"Malcolm," She had lost the 'l' and now pronounced it the way that I had always done. "If you love Maria you will have to prove to her that you can not only make love to her, not just have sex with her, but that you can be strong when you need to be."

"What you are telling me is that I need to have the strength to tell my mother what I have done, or she and I will have no future."

"Yes. You can do it, I have seen in you a strength that was not possible when you first started working for me. Everything is up to you now, and the rewards are many."

I wondered what she meant by that as I walked, deep in thought and anticipation, to the hotel and my destiny.

The door opened to my almost forceful knock, and Maria flung herself at me. I took the initiative and kissed her, really kissed her, not a trying to push her teeth down her throat kiss, but one that told her that I was ready to take control. Her lips parted in response to the probing of my tongue, something that I remembered from seeing a passionate embrace on TV. In an embrace we waltzed into the centre of the room where I released my pressure on her lips far enough to whisper, "I love you".

Her response was, "Thank God." And we returned to our embrace, until she found the space to whisper to me, "I love you."

I could feel her trembling in my arms, and she had to have felt my penis hardening between us. We parted, but just far enough for me to reach the buttons of her white waitress blouse. Somehow my fingers stopped shaking enough to release them and my hands went around her body, feeling her warm, smooth flesh, until they found the clasp of her bra. I slipped her blouse from her shoulders and it hung limply from the waistband of her skirt. Her bra straps slid down her arms and it dropped to the floor. "They are beautiful." I whispered to her as I ran my fingers lightly across her breasts to her nipples. "Caress them," Giovanna had told me, "you are not trying to get milk from them." Her words guided me well, and Maria was moaning softly as my fingers traced patterns across the slopes of her breasts, touching her hardening nipples.

She whimpered when I took a hand from her and it found the button and zipper of her skirt. She stepped back into my embrace and out of the pile of clothing on the floor. Her black panties and pantyhose were in stark contrast to the pale flesh of her body. I held her from me and my eyes feasted on her perfection. My God my penis was so hard it hurt. I dropped to my knees and peeled her undergarments from her as one, my nose sucking in the aromas from between her legs. Again her mother's instructions led me to my next actions. My tongue was sliding between the lips of her, what was it that Giovanna called it, pussy. With a sob she pulled my face into her, encouraging me to continue, which I did for several minutes until her hips began to tremble. "Oh my God, this is wonderful."

I took her in my arms and led her into the bedroom. I folded back the bedclothes and lifted her onto the bed. I leaned over her and kissed her gently on the lips, and nipples, and belly button and pussy, before standing beside the bed and removing my clothes. She stared at my cock, now standing out from my body, and her hand reached out to touch its tip. I slid onto the bed beside her and her fingers engulfed me, "It is so big."

"I wouldn't know about that, I have nothing to compare it to."

"Neither do I, but I imagine that it is big."

"Have you never seen one before?"

"Not one standing up like this. I walked in on my father peeing into the toilet and it was so small and floppy."

"Have you made love to a man?"

"No, never." Her answer surprised me, from the way that she spoke I had assumed that she was experienced at this sort of thing. "But, I don't understand, you seemed surprised that I had never made love to a girl, so I assumed that you were speaking as someone who had experienced this."

"No. you have to understand that in traditional Italian families, the boys are encouraged to gain experience from an early age, but that girls are forbidden from gaining the same experience. I was raised in a very traditional family, I have never been allowed to go out with a boy without a chaperone. The opportunity to have sex never existed."

"I would have thought that your mother would have organised something along those lines."

"No. My mother is a romantic, not in her personal life, in that she is a realist, but for me she wants the happiness that she never had." As we talked my hands were busy caressing those places on her body where I could feel that she gained the most pleasure, and her fingers were touching my penis just enough to keep him interested. "My mother has been giving me lessons too." She whispered, "She did not want us to be fumbling around not knowing what to do."

Her legs had parted in response to my finger's caressing. I moved between them and she led him to her pussy. "Please, be gentle with me."

I was gentle until he reached her barrier. I pushed against it several times without success, she flinched each time and I thought that she was going to tell me to stop. "There is nothing for it, I have to push harder."

"Yes my love, do it." She tried hard not to cry out as he at last breached her barrier. "Don't move, let me feel him inside me." I held him there for several minutes as she clung to me. "I have read books that tell me what I am supposed to be feeling when this happens, but nothing can describe how good this feels with you inside me."

I moved tentatively, and then with more purpose when I could see that this was what she wanted, he slid in and out of her and she rose with each thrust, forcing him deeper inside her. We came together a short time later, neither of us able to hold back for any length of time. "I love you," A soft whisper came from her lips, "and I know that you love me, I can feel it, you make love from the heart."

"I feel it too. Your mother told me what to do, but then she told me that she could not tell me how to do it, that, she said, must come from the heart. I didn't have to think what I was to do, it just happened."

"I have dreamed of this moment for some weeks now, but my dreams did not prepare me for how wonderful this is for me, for us."

"It is, isn't it?" My finger was now covered with a mixture of our juices as it moved within her, preparing her for some more loving. Her hands were gently stroking him and soon he was ready. I rolled onto my back, pulling her with me. She straddled me and fed him into her pussy. She sensed that I wanted her to take control of our lovemaking this time, not to relinquish power to her, but to allow her to make love to me from the heart. After several minutes she drove hard down on him and he flooded her with semen.

"Darling." I whispered to her as I cuddled her to me.

"Mmm?"

"I was thinking, shouldn't we be taking precautions?"

"I'm on the pill." She mumbled.

"But how, why?"

"Mother's idea, she knew that this day would come."

"Smart mother."

"You'd better believe it." That was the last thing said between us until the morning.

"Good morning my Darling man." I was desperate for a leak and tried hard to get out of bed without disturbing her. I had done my thing and was heading back to bed, naked, when she sat up with her arms open for me. "You are a man."