A Reputation Ch. 02 - Referral

Fair warning to readers new to this series: I usually don't bother with much in the way of recaps, and this story is no exception. You can certainly enjoy it on its own, but it will make a lot more sense (I think), if you were to start with Chapter 1. Regardless, as always, do not hold your breath for realism in my work. I aim to be plausibly ridiculous.

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A REPUTATION 2: REFERRAL

So the whole thing with Rachel turned out to be a mixed bag.

I mean, I had awesome, wet, loud, shower sex with a very attractive girl in my dorm, with the promise of the odd future encore, so no matter what else, I was chalking it up as one of the biggest wins of my life... But, there were consequences.

For instance, no matter how much I wanted to publicly ignore what happened, there had been multiple, obvious ear-witnesses. And when two people in the dorm put on the kind of audio performance that Rachel and I had, and those two people hitherto had not been on the general populace's mental list of 'people who had sex,' much less the on the far smaller list of 'people who have epic, freaky sex'... there was going to be talk. Thank God there had not been anyone ballsy enough to sneak into the bathroom and become an eye-witness.

As it was, we both suddenly had a reputation.

Rachel dealt with it in her own way, and perhaps more effectively. She certainly managed to defuse her own part in things, and avoided becoming a subject of discussion. First, she resolutely stayed away from me in the closely following days, while remaining open and friendly when we met by chance. She neither was, nor acted, hostile, but she made damned sure that the two of use were never so much as walking in the same direction in the same hall for quite a while after. Second, she rather irritatingly continued to hang out with Chad. It wasn't like she was suddenly his girlfriend, but you did see them hanging out more, in the dining hall and common rooms. She presented the face of a normal student who was mildly involved with someone else other than me. For people who heard about the shower second-, and especially third-hand or more, it was easy to dismiss her as really being the rumored female in question. She had a completely normal relationship that seemed to be utterly unaffected by what happened, so it didn't sound like her. How she persuaded Chad to act like nothing had happened, I don't know. But I had my suspicions.

Her process worked fairly well, I thought. She certainly avoided the dreaded S-word label.

As for me, I handled things differently--which is to say, I took no steps to handle the situation at all. Also, I had not slunk away in the immediate aftermath, but just owned my embarrassment. And I had no other casual relationship to hide in. Most importantly, I had a loud-mouthed roommate with impulse control issues.

*

Later that same Saturday, the evening after it went down with Rachel and me, I was in my dorm, having gotten dressed for the upcoming planned night of crashing frat parties and drinking their beer. I was way more relaxed about that prospect than I had ever been in the past. I had gotten quite thoroughly laid already that day. My dry spell was over, and I had no rush to go on the hunt again. I was finally going to be able to just relax from a hard week of work, get a buzz, and maybe meet some new friends.

The door to our room slammed open, and Mitch stood in the doorway, feet spread wide, one hand balled into a fist on his hip, and the other pointing dramatically at me. "You!" he said breathlessly. Honestly, from my vantage, sitting on the floor working on my shoe, he looked like someone in a dramatically over-wrought comic book panel from my vantage. I just bent back to putting a new showplace in my Nike. My roommate slammed the door behind him and flopped into his desk chair. "You!" he hissed a second time, exhausting his temporarily limited vocabulary.

I looked up at him passively. "It's usually me," I said, looking down at my shoe again. "I live here, you know?"

"You..." he sputtered. "You nailed Rachel!" I gave him no response. "In the showers!" He gathered himself to find more words. "In the middle of the after-fucking-noon!"

My inner gentleman wanted to deny or at least refuse to confirm the situation. But he had obviously heard the word. Denial would be pointless, right?

I looked up at him and just grinned. I could not help it.

"Holy shit, man," Mitch groaned. "I am not worthy to breathe the same air as you. I know you've hung out around her some, but how long have you been working up to this?"

"I wasn't working up to it at all," I said. "It just kind of happened." It was rapidly occurring to me that I should not place an iota of trust in Mitch's discretion, or even in his simple ability to keep his mouth shut in the least. But still... Bro Code. I would have to give him something, didn't I?

"Details," Mitch demanded. "I want them all!"

A blow-by-blow was not going to fucking happen. Unlike Mitch, I am capable of discretion when appropriate. But I was also hardly going to stay totally silent either. The urge to brag was warring with the dawning realization that I must not fan the flames. I bit my lower lip in consideration of what I was going to give him, and what he was going to have to live without. Finally, I said slyly. "It was hot. It was epic. It was soaking wet. And it was unwisely loud, as illustrated by the fact that you had already heard about what happened before you came in here. Who told you?" I asked.

"Rob Gerande," Mitch said promptly. "He saw the two of you come out of the bathroom. I hear there was applause. He says his hands still hurt from clapping."

I let my head sag in despair. All I said was a long, low, "Fuuuuuck..."

"What's the matter?"

"Rob Gerande was not one of the people standing outside the bathroom," I said firmly.

"Nooo!" Mitch said in distress. "Then he was lying? Wait... but you said it did happen."

"It did happen," I sighed. "But this is fucking bad. It has only been a few hours, the story has spread so fast, and douches like Rob think it is so juicy, they are claiming to have been there. By next week, half the house will have themselves believing that they were in that hall. I'll be a laughing stock."

"Or a god," Mitch snorted.

"Do I look like a god?" I grimaced.

For a moment, Mitch looked at me seriously, then we both burst into laughter.

"DKE House tonight?" he said, shaking his head and getting up to change his shirt. The Deltas were usually good for frontline, brand-name beer. I shrugged and nodded. Anywhere not in our own dorm that evening sounded just peachy.

The party was fairly calm, for a frat open house, and I enjoyed myself. No one there knew who I was. This was a situation that always used to make me feel frustrated and a little sad, but that night, it was just what the doctor ordered. Only once did I catch sight of someone who even looked like they might be talking about me.

*

I grabbed a very early breakfast the next morning and was at the Frederick H. Donaldson Applied Engineering Laboratory before my partner, Dale. I set about my work with new energy and a very positive attitude. Getting laid, and laid hard, sure did wonders for the old motivational centers.

Dale strolled in shortly after me, and aside from noting at one point that morning that I sure seemed to be in a good mood, we worked in a blessed absence of discussion about my shenanigans the day before. Dale lived in an off-campus apartment by himself, and was a clueless shut-in to boot. He would hopefully never learn about the episode at all. It would suck if he ever did hear about it, because he would either demand a detailed breakdown of how sex actually worked, with diagrams of the leverage employed, etc., or he would pester me about why anyone would want to waste time on girls anyway. I was unsure which it would be.

Dale was a strange ranger, but a helluvan engineer.

Our new design came together very well and, due to my not lazing in bed that morning, very fast. Fast enough that we were able to take the vehicle out and see how it took at least the straight part of the test hill. Our steering mechanism was not ready yet for the curve at the top. Our little beauty scuttled up the hill like a mountain goat, even with a couple of good-sized pebbles taped on top to make a simulation of other components to be added later.

It was a gratifying and successful morning.

During our third run up the ramp, testing rubber band tensions, I heard a friendly, "Hey Will!" from behind us. I turned, puzzled, and saw Felicia from the third floor of my building, riding by on her bike, toward the library.

"Hi, Felicia," I called back, puzzled. Since when did she bother to say hi to me?

"Girl?" Dale asked intelligently. Yes, Dale, that was a girl. I was not going to have to answer questions for Dale, at least.

*

I ditched my partner after a lunch spent planning new components. We were now able to think realistically about some of the extra-credit stretch goals after the morning's successful work and tests. I rode my bike back to my dorm, hoping to grind out an hour or so's worth of writing for my English class.

Most of my engineering brethren viewed English with fear and distrust, but for me, it was an easy grade to keep up my GPA. A little bit of time was all it took. What can I say? My mom made me learn how to string sentences together.

I entered my dorm and headed to my room, unbothered by my neighbors, except for a, "Right on, Will!" from some dude whom I did not see as I headed up the stairs.

Great. Now I was a celebrity among the meathead horndogs. Whoever that sonofabitch was, he probably only learned my name in the last 24 hours.

I closed my door firmly behind me and sat down with my laptop to try to come up with something new to say about Shakespeare's sonnets that was not stupid. It had been our professor's earnest plea.

It had also been an evil trick. After centuries of scrutiny, anything new said about the Sonnets, or any other work of The Bard, is always stupid, off topic, and stupid. Anything intelligent you can say, has already been said by scores before you.

Shakespeare scholarship is a mug's game.

Fortunately, I am a mechanical engineer, so all I need to do is spell "The Bard" correctly, and the teachers get all gooey with relief.

I sat at my desk, banging out 1,200 words about,"When in the chronicle of wasted time, I see descriptions of the fairest wights." I was arguing to the effect of... I honestly don't remember what BS I was peddling. But furiously peddling it I was... until my door opened.

I looked up to see Kate poke her head in and follow it with the rest of her tall body. She closed the door behind her casually.

Well, this was going to be awkward.

Ordinarily, having a girl like Kate just casually enter my dorm room would have sent my mind off in all sorts of interesting fantasies, fantasies that were not going to end up playing out... or so I supposed, since having girls like Kate enter my dorm room was pretty much Terra Incognita for me. But now, when it actually happened, instead of feeling excited, I instead felt like a snake of undetermined venomousness had slithered in.

Kate had been the sixth audience member the day before, while Rachel and I were in the shower. She must have shown up looking for Rachel, found the door to her room open, and decided to wait for her to return. While waiting, Kate had been treated to a front-ear position, hearing the two of us going at it so enthusiastically. At what point in the proceedings she had arrived, I did not know, but the look on her face yesterday had told me that she'd been part of the crowd for a while.

Her face now was more unreadable.

"Hello, Handsome," she said after a pause, amusement in her voice.

I snorted involuntarily. "Handsome?"

"Well, I thought you'd like it better than 'The Shower Guy'," she replied laconically. Kate was no classic beauty, but she had her attractive elements, chief among which was her voice. It was a super-rich, deep alto that flowed like velvet over silk. Everything she said sounded vaguely... sensuous, even when she was talking to Rachel about things like Psychology. Having that voice turned directly on me, speaking in amusement and alluding to sex, was a powerful, heady experience.

I only knew Kate through Rachel. She didn't live in our dorm, and only came by to see my neighbor. She had always been friendly enough before, but I don't think we had ever had a direct conversation between just the two of us.

"'Shower Guy'?" I asked in horror. "People aren't calling me that, are they?"

"The phrase is beginning to be used," Kate drawled.

"Fuck!" I growled, then apologized. "Sorry."

"If you think that word, coming from you, is going to throw me at this point, you really are not thinking," she scoffed.

I restrained myself from banging my head on my desk. Instead, I paused for a second to actually think. "Look, Kate, what do you want?" I said softly. I was going to get very tired of this story being in people's minds. "If you are concerned about Rachel. The two of us are fine. It was just a spur of the moment thing that was good or both of us."

I stopped, fear grabbing me. "Wait... she and I are fine, right? She hasn't freaked out in retrospect? Do I need to..." I started to babble, concerned. I would never want Rachel to have regrets.

"Easy there," Kate cooed. "No, Rache is cool. In fact, all day, she's kind of been like Sylvester the Cat, if he'd ever actually managed to eat Tweety Bird," she laughed. But then there was just the tiniest flash of hesitation. I'd have missed it, except for the fact that I'd never seen hesitation from her in any circumstance before.

Confidence was Kate's thing. It drove that voice of hers. I suppose her self-assurance should not be surprising, she is literally a world-class athlete... captain of our women's volleyball team, and a TeamUSA Olympic alternate at the moment.

Relieved, I summoned the courage to shut up and simply cock an eyebrow at her, trying to regain some strength by leaning back against her uncharacteristic uncertainty.

"I just came by to... well... I'm curious," she said at last, in a rush. Nope, hesitation did nothing to make that voice seem less hot.

"Curious?" I said in surprise. "How? You followed Rachel into her room yesterday, while she still was soaking wet. Any details you didn't get out of her then, you aren't getting from me!"

"What a gentleman," Kate drawled, suddenly back on keel. "Oh, no. I got the details. All the delicious nitty gritty."

"Sure," I snorted. Rachel wasn't going to give her a blow-by-blow, anymore than I was going to give one to Mitch.

"Oh really, Mr. I Choked On All The Water I Sucked Off Her Tit Through Her Shirt?"

Ouch.

Rachel... you blabbermouth!

"That isn't really the most complimentary of tales," I said, feeling disappointed.

"O, even that bit was complimentary. Rache was effusive about the experience. You got five stars down the line, let me tell you."

"So what has you curious?" I asked, momentarily off-balance at that revelation.

"You," she said, her voice at full power.

"Me?"

"You. A guy who can do that to a woman, with no notice or ramp up, and then be willing to let her walk away to do her own thing, and not be clingy?" Kate asked rhetorically. "Let's just say that I like the cut of your jib, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter..."

I looked at her, eyes wide.

"...Maybe right now, if you are available."

Being a winner and a leader all your life certainly does something for the confidence, I realized. Kate sure had it in spades.

Kate was now leaning on my closed door, feet braced out away from it, ankles crossed, making for a rakish angle. Her sleekly muscled arms were crossed under her small breasts, and her arrestingly muscular, but achingly shapely, legs extended straight. The tight, very short shorts she wore left the eye of the beholder an uninterrupted vista along their considerable length. Her plain, imperfectly complexioned face looked at me in amused challenge.

This whole getting caught having epic sex thing might have its upsides, I realized in a flash.

And the look on my face from that realization was all Kate needed to broaden her smile.

Serious upsides.

"Fuck Shakespeare," I said, slapping my laptop closed and standing up with a smile.

"I was kind of hoping that you'd fuck me instead," Kate laughed.

This was a week that had started with the most epic, publicly humiliating shoot-down in my life, but I was beginning to think it was going to go down in the ledger as overall pretty good...

I stood, summoning self-assurance from I don't know where. Even my experience with Rachel should not have been enough to send me confidently toward Kate, but that is what I did. She slipped away from the door, somehow straightening without even bracing herself to do so. I reached out, rested a hand gently on the small of her back, and pulled her toward me, leaning up to kiss her.

Yes, I leaned up. Kate is listed on the Olympic roster at six feet--three inches. I was the one leaning upward. And yes, let me tell you that to my actual surprise, I did not mind it at all.

Her momentary hesitation was back for a moment as we started, and she kept her lips together. I kissed her like that for a few seconds, before I parted my own and brushed the tip of my tongue across her lips. For being the portal of that golden voice, Kate's mouth had never struck me as particularly attractive... more authoritative, to be honest. But in the ensuing moments, let me tell you, it began to feel amazingly alluring.

As my tongue brushed her lips, they parted softly and invitingly, drawing my tongue inside, where she tasted fresh and clean, and her own tongue met and challenged my intruder. We embraced and just kissed for a few exploratory minutes, arms embracing each other as we did. My cock was hardening hopefully, wishful for another bout of unaccustomed action. I worried it was getting ahead of things.

But Kate had not come here to explore a little potential making out. She broke off, looked into my eyes and smiled. "Oh, there's a bonus, Handsome," she said slyly. "Unlike Rache, I'm on the Pill."

My relaxing prospective afternoon of downtime with some bad Lit-Crit, followed by a potential nap had just gotten somewhat better, if not as restful, in outlook.

I tugged upward on the colorful, university-logoed Adidas shirt she wore, and eagerly slipped it off her. Kate seemed to sport half the rack that Rachel possessed, but she was nevertheless wearing a full sports bra. Force of habit, I guess. I cupped a small mound happily, then tugged upward on the bra as well. It was obviously much tighter, and it took little effort for me to remove it. This was reasonable, I supposed, since I'd never taken a sports bra off before. They really are the chick equivalent of a jockstrap. I fleetingly hoped, for Kate's and all women's sake, that they aren't as uncomfortable.

The tits that spilled forth were worth the effort, I was pleased to see. Unrestrained, they were really very nice, petite but shapely, with the tiniest little set of pink nipples that nevertheless were as hard as diamonds.

It's easier to bend and suck the nipples of a tall girl. Who knew?

"Fuck yeah, you do know how to suck tit," Kate groaned, making it hard for me to continue as she ripped my own yellow IZOD off my torso. She ran her hands over my shoulders, which were barely as muscular as her own, then bent and sucked on one of my nipples! Yeah. That was nice as fuck.

"Sit," Kate said suddenly, and pushed me back toward my bed. As the backs of my legs hit the mattress, she pulled down on my shorts, tugging the elastic waistband out and over my raging bulge. I stumbled back into a perch on the edge of the mattress. We both worked to yank down my underwear, working them out from under me. In the process, Kate settled down on her knees in front of me. She took my very eager cock into her hand, smiled up at me, then, holding eye contact, drooped her tongue from her mouth and lavished it up and down the upper extent of my dick.