In the Hands of Bernadette

Author's note: Please be aware, this story contains themes of abuse and sexual violence. If you are looking for a quickie, this may not be it. Or it might be, who am I to judge?

I want to thank EVHayes720 for their editing support, their excellent suggestions and their kind encouragement.

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I talked to Bernadette for the first time at my friend's 18th birthday party. He had just turned 18, and because in my country this meant that you could drink hard liquor, everybody brought alcohol. Being the youngest of our group, I had taken a dusty bottle from the back of my dad's liquor cabinet, hoping he wouldn't remember it had been there in the first place. The gamble paid off; he never mentioned anything.

Not surprisingly, the party turned wilder as the guests became increasingly intoxicated. Needing a break, I climbed up the stairs from the basement, still fairly steady, and headed into the large kitchen, pouring myself a glass of milk from the fridge and sitting down at the rickety table that had always felt out of place among all that family's elegant furniture. Apparently, my friend's parents had kept it around since they first moved in together.

As I sipped my milk, waiting for my ears to stop ringing and my thoughts to settle, I sensed movement, and looked up just in time to see her enter the kitchen. For an instant, the evening sun lit up her frizzy hair just right so that it looked as if she had a halo around her head. Combined with her round face and full red lips, she looked a bit like an angel. A short, slightly chubby angel with no wings, and a black t-shirt that said "No Religion," but an angel nonetheless.

She ignored me, and started opening cupboards.

"If you're looking for a glass, they're in the one right next to the fridge," I said.

"Mhm."

She filled her glass with tap water, and headed back upstairs, where my friend's older sister had her room. In the doorway, she briefly stopped.

"Thanks," she said.

Then she left. I kept staring at where she had been, until I felt my friend's hand on my shoulder.

"Still nursing your milk? I came upstairs because I was worried you may have gotten lost."

"Lost in thought, I guess," I replied and finished my milk.

I saw Bernadette again a few months later. On my 18th birthday, or more precisely, on the hungover day after, I had decided to do something about my complete lack of fitness and to start running every morning. As I struggled with burning lungs and aching legs to defeat what I'd always thought of as a gentle slope, cursing my foolish idea to head outside at seven in the morning, she overtook me with seemingly effortless steps. I was relieved that she didn't seem to notice me, but trying to keep up with her did give me the motivation to finish my run, even if I couldn't match her pace and lost sight of her quite soon.

Apparently, she followed the same early morning schedule as I did, and because she lived only a couple of streets further away from the forest, she would overtake me every day. It filled me with pride to notice that this would happen later and later, as I slowly got into shape. However, the prospect of her not being able to catch up with me anymore if I got even faster was not at all enticing. Should I start running more slowly? Should I start later? By how much would I need to adjust my start time or speed so that it would not be too obvious that I was trying to get her to catch up to me for longer?

"You're Bastian, right? Why don't you wait for me tomorrow morning?" she asked me as she passed me the next day. "If you think you can keep up, that is."

By the time I finally got over the shock of having her talk to me and of stumbling and almost falling into the ditch, she was gone around a bend in the path, and I only heard her laughter. She must have been the first woman who addressed me without being in a familial or professional relationship with me. Me, Bastian, a perfectly average guy who liked to spend his time reading, as we didn't have social media or smartphones at the time, living in a faceless German town whose only claim to fame was that it was close to the university of the nearby city.

From then on, we ran together. For the first weeks we ran silently, until one day her walkman ran out of battery in the middle of the run, then we started talking. I learned that she was an only child, four years older, studied history and German literature at the local university, and that she still lived with her parents, who were very strict Christians. Outside her small circle of female friends, she hardly had any social interaction.

We both liked Hemingway and disliked Habermas, and had written our share of cringy poetry in the past, some of which we guiltily shared, as far as we pretended to remember. I wonder whether she also started preparing poems just to have something to make fun of during our next run. Nowadays, we would have exchanged numbers and spent countless hours texting away, but mobile phones were clunky things installed in cars in those years, and the internet was not yet widely accessible.

It was innocent bliss, until that fateful Sunday morning in spring. We stood in front of her house saying goodbye, when she grabbed my hand. Instinctively, I pulled back, my sweaty fingers gliding out of her grip. Undeterred, she grabbed my wrist and pulled me in her direction.

"Why don't you come inside for a moment?" she asked.

I didn't know what to reply, so I let her take the lead. The front door of her house wasn't locked, and I was surprised to see white stone floors inside. Was that marble? We took off our shoes, and she led me into the kitchen past a painting of Jesus that seemed to look at me inquisitively.

"My parents are at church, and won't be back till lunch," she explained as she put glasses on the table. She was just about to serve sparkling water, when she stopped to look at me.

"You're dripping all over the place!" she exclaimed. "That's going to leave traces."

I stammered an apology. Was she going to kick me out?

"Go have a shower. Come!"

She led me upstairs to one of the biggest bathrooms I had ever seen. They had a shower cabin, a free-standing bathtub, and a jacuzzi in the corner. I was uncomfortably aware of the damp spots my sweaty socks were leaving on the tiled floor. Was it really ok to use their shower? Then again, Bernadette had said I should. In the end, it was a burning drop of sweat running into my eye that got me moving. I started undressing, but hesitated when I was about to take off my boxer briefs. What if she came into the bathroom? Eventually, I left them on, and I was soon steaming up the place with a relaxing hot shower, letting the scalding water massage my head and my neck. Suddenly, the water stopped. I turned around, and there was Bernadette. Naked except for pink bikini bottoms. Entering the shower stall. Naked breasts. Completely overwhelmed, my brain provided me with such helpful insights as "her breasts are cross-eyed - look at how one nipple points straight ahead and the right one slightly to the left," or "she has shaved her armpits, but hasn't shaved her thighs," and finally "she is also staring at me."

She blushed when she realized that I had noticed her staring, but recovered instantly.

"I'll give you a hand", she said.

I remained frozen as she started soaping up my body. Was this normal? Shouldn't we have, like, kissed first? Would she touch my penis? Her hands moved lower and lower, until she grabbed my waist, turned me around, and started on my back, beginning with my shoulders. This time, she didn't stop as she moved lower, and soaped my ass cheeks through my boxer briefs with enthusiasm, before continuing to my legs and feet. As she stood back up again, her hands slid over my soapy shins, knees, and thighs. Then, her hands came to rest at the top of my legs, to both sides of my rock-hard penis. She took a half step forward, and I felt her belly and breasts against my behind and back. I held my breath, willing her hands to move just a little bit sideways to touch my penis through the boxer briefs - but she grabbed my waist again and turned me around. Apparently unaware of the level of my arousal, she looked at me, then looked at the bulge in my boxer briefs, then back at my face, and said: "Your turn."

I dutifully started washing her arms, then her shoulders, and gingerly moved down to her breasts. My first breasts. They felt surprisingly heavy when I cupped them to wash their undersides. Not daring to linger more, I moved down to her waist, and turned her around,just like she had done. Washing her back was a lot easier. I even got to touch the sides of her breasts a bit as I also washed her sides, and I got fully hard again as I got to her soft ass cheeks..

I felt her muscles under the thin layer of fat around her legs, and noticed how they started to twitch as I rubbed her inner thighs higher and higher up. I hesitated, not knowing how far I should go, when she grabbed my hands, making me stand up.

She turned around again, reaching around me to get the showerhead, and rinsed me down, before taking care of herself, apparently oblivious to my disappointment. The cold water of the shower made my penis shrivel back to normal, and discouraged me from lingering with her in the shower.

As I dried myself with the fluffy white towel she had prepared, I noticed that my clothes were gone. Did she want me to stay in my soaked boxer briefs?

"I put your clothes in the washer," she said when she stepped out of the shower herself. "I don't really have any pants that fit you, so you can have one of my skirts. Don't worry, skirts are comfortable and no one will ever see you. You can give me your underpants, I'll throw them into the dryer afterward. They should be reasonably clean now."

I hesitated, but eventually put on the skirt she pointed out for me; it looked like it was part of a school uniform: a gray pleated skirt with an elastic waistband that reached just past my knees. I did refuse to wear the top she suggested, though, as the sleeveless shirt seemed too short for my taste, hiding my slightly hairy chest while not covering my slightly pudgy belly. My resistance didn't last long against her insistence, and so we ended up looking like matched girlfriends - the short self-confident minx with a short skirt with her awkward tall friend who doesn't feel comfortable exposing her knees.

We headed back into the kitchen, drank some water and juice and continued our discussion from the run as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and as if I wasn't waiting for my clothes to be washed and dried while wearing a skirt with nothing underneath.

Over the following week, Bernadette never mentioned Sunday, and I did not ask, too afraid that she would say that this had been just a one-time experience. I barely slept Saturday night, and during the run on Sunday morning, I kept falling behind, because I couldn't seem to get enough oxygen into my lungs. Instead of my legs, my mind was racing. Bernadette staring at me in the shower. Bernadette grabbing my wrist. Bernadette doing a little twirl that lifted her skirt to show more of her legs. My hands on Bernadette's legs. The leg muscles twitching. Bernadette's breasts touching my back. Bernadette's hands as she is pouring a glass of sparkling water. Bernadette's hands touching my penis.

"Hello, anyone there?," she asked suddenly as we approached her house.

"I... err... can you repeat what you just said, please?" I blinked, as if this was going to make my mental image of her in the shower disappear.

"Do you want to come inside again?"

"I... I mean, of course, I am a bit thirsty... and... maybe..."

She smiled at me with that beautiful mouth, and it was only now that I saw that she was wearing a bit of lipstick. She grabbed my wrist and pulled me inside.

Everything happened like the week before, except that she offered me some of her dad's shorts to wear. As soon as I put them on, she went pale.

"No, please take them off again," she said, turned, and rushed to grab a skirt for me.

She didn't want to talk about it when I asked her in the kitchen later.

For the next two weeks, we would follow the exact same routine. On Sunday morning, Bernadette invites me in, we walk past Jesus and the kitchen, heading straight for the shower. I would go in first, while she would put our clothes into the washer and join me. We'd wash each other, getting ever so slightly bolder each time, but without getting entirely naked, dress in skirts but no underwear, and head downstairs to the kitchen to drink and chat until the clothes were washed and dried. The third week, things changed.

Bernadette had been nervous all throughout our run, and didn't even look at me when she pulled me inside her house. She washed me in a hurry, and her touch was so hurried that I didn't even get hard. She didn't wait for me to wash her, but quickly lathered herself. By the time we exited the shower, I was bursting with curiosity.

Then I saw: She had laid out the short skirt for me. As I was putting on her clothes, I was a bit disappointed. Surely, that was not worth the rushed shower.

"Do you trust me?," she asked, looking down at her feet, which made her hair cover her eyes.

"Yes?" I ventured, not sure where she was going with this.

"Just...," she began, and grabbed my wrist. She pulled out of the bathroom along the hallway in the opposite direction of the stairs. We passed by her parents' bedroom, the door of which was slightly ajar, and she opened the last door in the hallway, the door to her room

Pink, flowery wallpaper, posters of horses and of beaches with horses, and a metal, open frame bed with a bunch of medals hanging front the horizontal bar at the top of the headboard and covered by a pile of pillows and stuffed animals. If not for the desk with stacks of books and papers on top and next to it, it could have been a preteen girl's room.

Bernadette pushed the fluffy pile on her bed toward the headboard, then made me sit on the bed with my back toward that pile. She climbed on the bed herself, straddling my legs so that her knees were on either side of my hips. She raised herself on her knees, so that her breasts touched my cheeks. She grabbed my right wrist, raised it up, and swiftly tied it to the horizontal bar at the top of the headboard with what felt like a strip of silk.

"What...?" I was so overwhelmed with all that was happening - and the breasts in my face - that I didn't know what to say.

"You mustn't touch me," she replied with a hoarse whisper, and tied my left hand to the bar.

She sat back down onto my knees, which was uncomfortable, and looked at me with an intense expression I couldn't read. Fear? Desire?

"Can you... please not sit on my knees?" was the best I could manage.

"Oh," she said, and took her weight off my knees. "Could... could you spread your legs a bit?," she asked, and moved to kneel between my legs instead of sitting on them.

We sat like this for a moment. Bernadette kneeling between my legs, looking down at her knees, I with my wrists tied above me, a pile of plushies and pillows behind my back, and feeling the warmth of her legs radiating to my thighs.

"I want to know what it looks like," she whispered, barely audibly.

Gingerly, she grabbed the hem of my skirt and flipped it across my belly, exposing my limp penis. She and I both looked at my penis for a while, then she softly touched the tip of my penis with her index finger. Her touch was like electricity, sending shivers radiating across my body. Blood started to flow into my penis, so when she touched it again, it twitched. With a little yelp, she jerked back her hand.

"It's all good," I said, wanting her to touch me again.

"You sure?"

"Yes, please," I replied, sounding much more pleading than I wanted.

Again she touched the tip of my penis, but lingered this time, and I started to grow, pushing against her finger that lightly rested on the tip.

"Ooooh," she said.

"You can hold it, if you want," I said hopefully.

She gently enclosed my penis with her fingers, which felt so much better than my own hand.

"You can squeeze harder," I encouraged her.

"Doesn't it hurt?"

"Not at all, in fact you can squeeze even harder".

"Like this?"

"Harder still. Mmhm, like that." It was wonderful.

Still holding my penis with her right, she cupped my scrotum with her left hand. I moaned involuntarily.

"You like it?"

I nodded. "But don't squeeze, my testicles are really sensitive."

She moved her head closer, so that I could feel her hair on my belly and her breath on my penis. My heart beat as if it was about to burst, and I started to feel a tingle in my fingers and toes. I couldn't remember ever being that hard. Was she going to make me explode just by blowing on my penis?

Alas, she wasn't. She wasn't trying to stimulate me; she was just breathing heavily, while studying my scrotum.

"It keeps moving," she mused.

"What?"

"Your scrotum."

"Really?"

"You don't know?" she wondered.

"No, I have never really studied it."

"No?"

"My penis is blocking the view, and it always seemed to be a more interesting object to study," I admitted. My heart had returned to a normal level of excitement, and the tingling feeling was gone.

"Is that so?" she replied, looking up at me with a mischievous grin. "Is this how you studied it?"

Letting go of my scrotum, she grabbed the root of my penis with her left, and slid the right hand up along my shaft and the tip, not letting up any of the pressure. I winced. She let go immediately.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"If you 'study' it like this, you need some lubricant, otherwise it hurts."

"Lubricant," she murmured, grabbed my penis with her left, and touched the droplet of precum with her right index finger. "Like this?"

I grunted in acknowledgment, as she started rubbing my precum all over my glans. When she went from using one finger to holding her hand above my penis and sliding all five fingers down and up the side of my glans, my body started twitching with every downstroke. My breath became shallow as my chest constricted and as the world shrank until all that remained was the tip of my penis and Bernadette's fingers.

Finally I exploded. My orgasm was so intense that I felt nothing but a little bit of relief at first. Only when the aftershocks washed over my body, and all my being seemed to want to escape through my penis did I experience one immense wave of pleasure.

When my eyes started focusing again, Bernadette was staring at me.

"Are you ok? You weren't breathing for a while," she said.

"More than ok," I said weakly, and closed my eyes, trying to recall that intense sensation again.

Bernadette untied the knots, and my arms fell to my side.

"Are you really ok?" she asked again.

"Mhm, just give me a moment," I replied without opening my eyes. I couldn't help but smile.

I vaguely remember how Bernadette had to steady me as we descended the stairs, and I have no recollection whatsoever of what we talked about in the kitchen, nor how I got home after.

The following week, I didn't masturbate at all, as nothing I'd try could ever match what I had just experienced with her. I couldn't help but wonder: if I could come that hard from a mere hand-job, how much more intense would sex be?

The following Sunday, we ran in silence, because both of us were using all our energy to complete our run as fast as possible. I was grateful for our shower routine, as it allowed me to regain some of my strength.

My fingers trembled in anticipation as I put on the skirt, and my heart skipped a beat when she grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward her room. I was hard even before she brushed my lips with her hard nipple while she was tying up my wrists.