Might Have Been Ch. 01

Amy stood and glanced around the park. Reassured we were still alone, she grabbed my hand and lead me into the seclusion of the trees, perpendicular to where Dave and Sarah had sequestered themselves.

I stepped carefully through the woods, mindful of its hazards, delighting in the warmth of Amy’s hand. Tasha's romantic rebukes this morning still stung, and the contrast with Amy's open desire raised feelings of vindication, rather than guilt.

Amy pushed me against a large oak and pressed the delta of her skirt against my upper thigh, as she kissed my neck. A soft “oh” escaped her mouth. She was rubbing the womanly center of her– she was rubbing herself – against me, the closest contact with a man she had ever experienced. The new sensations released passions she didn't know she possessed.

Enveloping her lower back, I lightly stroked the exposed skin beneath her shirt. I always felt that having my hands around a woman's waist was the ready stance of sex, offering choice and control. From that perfect placement, my hands could move down the curves of her hips and thighs, rove toward her breasts, or pull her close to press firmly against me – or I could just keep my hands on her waist, feeling the intimate soft heat of her skin. I was lost in the thrill of just holding her in my arms and having such miraculous choices.

Amy leaned back and her fingers slipped to my fly. She had a challenging, sly glint in her eyes as she undid my belt and pulled down the zipper. She kissed and bit my lips, to better feel the expression on my face as she freed me from the confines of my pants.

This woman was a wonder. The best I had ever realistically imagined for this night was brief contact with her breasts before she moved my hands away. On first dates with virginal Midwestern girls, stop signs at second base were as expected as a curfew from the girl's father. I must have driven her beyond the point of self-control – or else her reading materials had inspired her own romantic fantasy, which she was now enacting.

“I promised you a birthday present,” she whispered while she worked my pants and jockeys down. She knelt at my feet, and I denied any possibility of even a Presbyterian Hell when I felt the tender warmth of Amy's mouth envelop me.

God, it had been so long since I had felt the touch of a woman's mouth there. Tasha had given up even pretending she liked giving head four years ago. The leap from the memory of Tasha's ice to the reality of Amy's hot enthusiasm sent a chemical shock through me, and I almost shamed myself by coming immediately.

This was Amy's first time, but she must have practiced on some lucky produce from Cub Foods. A frenzy of kisses and licks fluttered up and down. Just when I was convinced she had exhausted her repertoire, she shifted to consume me as she would a popsicle – lips fully encircling me.

The hot stroke of her mouth, the slight chill of the autumn breeze, and the impossible culmination of ten years of fantasies were liquid fire to my senses. I watched her tongue tease the length of me through her smiling lips, and could do nothing but moan encouragement.

Amy's smile broadened in satisfaction at my response. She had gleaned tips from her books, practiced on produce, had finally tried the real thing, and discovered she had a gift for it. Her oral ambitions validated, she took most of my length into her wet heaven and began humming “Happy Birthday”.

That does it. “Oh God, I am...” I groaned in fair warning. Half the female population can't stand men coming in their mouths. That discovery had been expensive, ruining several otherwise excellent evenings. Amy, however, took it as her cue to hum louder. She was hitting the last verse and slowed the tempo, while her lips and mouth tried to inhale me into her larynx. My head spun, I shut my eyes, and my hips matched the cadence of her fellatial caresses. I circled her face with one hand as she stretched out the last note into one long hum-syllable. My other hand formed a fist and pounded the bark of the innocent oak tree at my back, and I erupted into her hungry mouth for the remaining duration of her last note.

Spent and euphoric, I collapsed against the tree.

Amy rose, lifted her arms, and performed a combination curtsy and bow. “How did I do?”

I lolled my tongue in an expression of extended rapture.

She suddenly acted self-conscious about her actions. She covered her face, averted her eyes, and peeked back at me as if seeking approval. I could imagine the conflict within her – shame, lost innocence, and a sense of sin fighting with arousal, romantic idealism, and rapture. I could tell she needed words as absolution. “You amaze me. The best birthday present I could imagine.”

“I wanted your first time to be special,” Amy said. She extracted a Cinnamon Tic Tac from the depths of her purse and popped it in her mouth.

My first? I remembered getting head from seven different women – well, eight now. My first time was an inexpert attempt by Heather at one of Dave's parties – an oral mauling that left me covered with hickeys and caused me to swear off fellatio forever. (I had kept that promise all of three weeks. Heather wanted another try while sober and redeemed the act of oral love).

Then I understood what Amy meant. I had not graduated yet in this... (I grasped for a word – “timeline” had the mildewed smell of old pulp science fiction magazines, but it worked) ...in this timeline. Here and now, I had just started my senior year of high school and was technically a virgin again, just like her. “How did you know it was my first time?”

“Sarah,” she said.

Sarah? I never told Sarah or Dave about my sexual experiences, or lack thereof. I had always been private about sex, much to Sarah’s annoyance. But Sarah knew all of my high school girlfriends, and with her skills in social interrogation had likely wheedled it out of them. Bitch.

Amy's saliva was quickly evaporating from my skin in the dry autumn air, causing a chill in my loins. As I redid my pants, I saw a flash of disappointment cross her face. She had brought me to climax, but had received no joy herself. She wanted more. Romance required reciprocity, and so far I had given little. So far.

I reached out to hold her, and Amy backed into my arms. The unreleased tension of her desire incited her hands, and she ran them over the length of my thighs, pressing against my own warmth. How far was she taking this? Folding my arms around her, I was filled with a sense of hope – an alien emotion to me since my earliest days with Tasha. Was I going to stay here? Could I?

At the thought, a sudden dissonance broke my euphoria, as if I awoke one morning realizing I had come home to the wrong house the night before, and had slept in a stranger's bed. This wasn't me. This wasn't my life. My fantasies were vacations from Tasha, not real escapes. This woman in my arms was a seductive trap, distracting me from my responsibilities.

Amy stifled my unease, leaning back to kiss my neck while her hips writhed, demanding attention and response. She tickled my inner thighs and pressed her curves against me. I was pleasantly surprised by the short duration of recovery I had needed – it was fun being eighteen again.

I kissed Amy's neck, nuzzling under her ponytail and nibbling toward the back of her ears – my hands enfolding the convex slopes of her breasts.

“I have wanted to do this since June,” she said, her hands squeezing me through the fabric of my pants.

“Yeah? Why June?”

“You don't remember? You gave my little brother Jack swimming lessons this summer. I would watch you at the pool. I could have sworn I saw you watching me.” She paused and I sensed a smug grin. “A lot.”

Of course. Jack Attack was one of my favorite swimming students. He was cute, hyperactive, and wanted to be the best swimmer in his class. He reminded me of me, and I once lifted him onto the lifeguard stand during open swim. His eyes scanned the pool with an intensity I thought adorable. I caught hell from my boss, but it was worth it. “You were the Mysterious Sexy Sister!”

“What?” Amy moved her hands on top of mine, encouraging any and all contact with her flesh.

“A Dave-ism. Jack's sister was the subject of much speculation. She – you – always wore shades and a sun hat, so we never saw your face, but your swimsuit showed a hell of a body. You always sat in one of the sunbathing chairs shortly after classes started, and you left when they ended, so none of us ever had a chance to talk to you.”

She laughed, then cooed as my hands slid under her skirt. “What did you notice?” Amy asked, eager for more validation of how hot she had been. No wonder she had been so aggressive tonight. I had thought her romantic ambitions toward me were only a few weeks old, but she had been stoking these particular fires since early summer.

“You liked to wear this sky-blue string bikini top, with a floral wrap around your hips. The bikini top was spandex triangles. You never showed much of your legs, but we could imagine.” Such imaginings were now obsolesced by what my hands were doing as they moved under her skirt.

Amy's breath was hot against my neck as she parted her thighs, inciting me further. “You did notice me!” She was rising and falling from her tip-toes – keeping beat to some 50's-era torch song, resulting in steady pulses of friction. “But I was talking about you,” she purred. “You were so sweet to Jack, and I kept hearing from everyone how smart you were, and I was curious about you. Did you know, when I took a computerized dating test at school two years ago, you were number three on my list?” Her flesh opened to me as I touched her through damp satin fabric.

“The computer must have thought I was charming.” My eighteen-year-old self would have been fumbles and sharp edges. I was determined to make Amy’s first sexual experience a mind-blowing one, drawing on ten years' worth of sexual activity with women who had all been prelude for her.

I lightly teased Amy's satin-clad flesh, and a soft panting emanated from her mouth. Her tip-toe motions stopped, and she spread her legs, while the cadence of her hips shifted from a torch tempo to swing time. Amy shuddered and sighed. Her neck swanned toward me, and I met her open mouth with mine. I collapsed against the oak tree, bringing her to the ground with me.

Her hands worked frantically at my belt, demanding me. Yes, Amy, this is how good it can be for you...

“Please...” she said, once my pants were undone, and she started to pull her shirt over her head. I tried to help, but accidentally pulled in the wrong direction and heard a quiet tear of fabric.

“Um,” I confessed, “I think I ripped your bodice. I thought a romance fan like you might appreciate that.” Her convulsions of laughter added delicious friction.

I guessed at the desires she could not express and moved to free her breasts from their sartorial prison, revealing them to the stars. I looked up, and saw Rigel and Betelgeuse as a pair of mismatched eyes blinking down in appreciation as I squeezed the apex of a breast between thumb and forefinger.

Amy's mouth opened wide. She gasped and began licking my upper palate. She had never felt sensations like this and could only follow primitive instinct, which must have told her to reach into my cargo pants, and return the favor.

“What do you want, Amy?” I asked.

She pivoted, presenting me with her topless form. Her youthful pertness reminded me of Amy’s age, and I felt a pang of conscience over whether I was taking advantage of an eighteen-year-old girl. Twenty-eight wasn't ancient, but it was old enough. I knew mothers' tongues would cluck if I showed my real age, and if my twenty-eight year old self appeared at Amy’s doorstep, I was certain her dad would have fetched the shotgun he was always threatening to use on errant Mexican migrant workers.

Such thoughts were driven from my head when she pressed her nipple into my mouth. Amy leaned hard into me, and her hands pulled at my pants. “This is what I want.” Her voice was a sensual growl. She had placed her cleft against me, and the feeling exulted her.

I moved my hands to brace her shoulders, and the scent of her arousal on my fingers was maddening. I felt a coldness on my groin from the night air, and I realized she had removed my jockeys with my cargo pants. How far was she going to take this?

She answered my unspoken question. “I want you. I have wanted you for months. Please... inside me,” she requested. Amy removed her panties while ensuring her breast never left contact with my lips or tongue. She sat astride me, and I was embraced by a wet heat. She sighed, losing herself in the pleasure of raw contact. She had never had a man this close before, and she could not prevent herself from taking what she wanted.

“I didn't bring protection,” I murmured between kisses. Always the gentleman, terrified of accidental fatherhood even in alternate universes. I knew this was a token resistance, however. The feel of her against me destroyed my will. I offered to sacrifice a condom on the altar of Trojanus, the Roman God of Contraception, if he provided Amy with a solution.

“Don't worry... pill,” she said.

Trojanus would get his offering tomorrow – not bad for a god who hadn't existed thirty seconds earlier.

I entered her, incensed by her torrid embrace. Her head tilted, and I watched her silently howl at an invisible moon. Her hips convulsed, and I noticed goosebumps rise on her breasts as I nuzzled them. I liked noise from women during orgasm but was prepared to forgive her silence, given the compliment she was providing of having an orgasm upon first penetration. What greater first sexual experience could there be? However, Amy had another surprise in store. The noise began as a low keening, and it increased in volume as she pistoned her hips, rubbing herself against me, and taking me as far inside as she could. My hands descended from their perch on her lower back, and I pulled myself to her very depths.

Her keening crescendoed, becoming a wailing police siren that pierced the night. The sights, sounds, and sensations of her orgasm elevated me to the same heights. This was the downside of having eighteen-year-old hormones again – I was only lasting a minute on my second orgasm of the night – but Amy was so warm, tight, and real – my ten-year fantasy was outliving my wildest expectations, and I could no more stop myself than stop a hurricane.

Tasha and I had practiced Tantric control exercises when we were first dating, but all those lessons were forgotten now, dispelled by an orgy of sensual distraction. I felt my own explosion build and detonate deep inside her. In response, Amy's wailing rose even louder than before.

I knew the insects in the woods had been killed by autumn frosts, but when Amy finally stopped screaming, it sounded as if the forest itself had been holding its breath to listen.

Amy rolled her eyes back in her head in an expression of exhausted ecstasy and collapsed in my arms, able to utter nothing but a sigh.

A rustling to the left caught my attention. Something was moving through the bushes, and it shifted a rock, or a fallen tree. It was night in a rural park, so it was probably a raccoon or a deer. Amy didn't seem to notice.

We lay connected together. I touched her naked skin, feeling the sweat evaporating from a shallow pool in her lower back. I feathered the sides of her breasts and savored the warmth of her thighs, and the searing, gentle grip she had around me.

My touch induced wonderful aftershocks in her. She must have had similar feelings – her first time with a man, the feel of a strong presence both without and within her – a night that had been perfect, the way it had been meant to be.

This. This is how love was supposed to be. Euphoria. Ecstasy. Romance. I had missed it, and didn't want to return to Tasha, where love meant self-hatred punctuated by moments of sheer terror. This moment with Amy was nectar and ambrosia. Years of sexual rejection had whittled me down deeper than I knew, and the realization of what I had lost, and now found, filled me with hope. I had driven an innocent, inexperienced girl so far into the throes of lust and longing that she couldn’t help herself. She must have seen something in me Tasha didn’t.

Tasha. She was a gnat buzzing my subconscious with guilt and a feeling of betrayal. Would it matter if I never returned home, instead staying in this fantasy timeline, leaving Tasha to face her demons alone?

Dave's voice shouted in the distance. “Lance, Amy?” It was coming from the direction of the car. “Olly olly oxen free!” Hide and seek was done, and it was time to return to base.

We dressed and walked toward the car, drunk on sexual release, stumbling through the brush. I surveyed the forest, trying to memorize every tree, leaf, and shrub. I was never going to forget a single moment.

Dave noticed my hand in Amy's, and he nodded to me as we emerged from the woods. A slight smile crossed his face in the dome light of my dad's Taurus.

Dave. It had been too long since I had last seen him. I noted his slim features and perpetually bemused expression. I wanted to give him a back-slap, or even a hug. I wanted to cringe and apologize for what had happened the last time we talked – events of which this Dave would have no memory. I held my conflicting emotions in check and just smiled at him, probably too much. With luck, Dave would just take it for a dude-I-just-lost-my-cherry smile.

“Where is Sarah?” Amy asked.

“The Exquisite Sarah went to the powder room over there.” He pointed uncomfortably close to the large oak tree, where Amy and I had made our love nest. “I'm surprised you didn't run into her.”

Just then, Sarah's porcelain face emerged from the darkness, an apparition floating amidst the trees, moving toward us. To me, she was even more a ghost, as she had been dead to me since her breakup with Dave over nine years ago. All nine years of resentment returned. This version of Dave wouldn't know what was coming his way, but I did, and I still hadn't forgiven her.

Despite this, my heart still caught in my throat as Sarah stepped from the shrubs, shaking a pant leg ensnared by buckthorn. Once extricated, she turned, and I saw she was as fatally mesmerizing as ever. I had wanted Sarah for two years during high school and somewhere deep in the hippocampus of my brain, I just remembered how to do it.

Sarah returned my stare as she approached. “I had to avoid the large poison ivy patch near the big oak tree.” In the dim starlight, I caught Sarah's phantom smile.

At the mention of poison ivy, Amy's eyes widened in horror and she scratched herself. It was all in her head, I knew. I had camped enough weekends with my father and Boy Scouts. I instinctively scouted for poison ivy when I walked through woods, and there had been none near the tree.

Sarah was lying. I realized she had been the “raccoon” I had heard in the woods – but I didn't understand. Sarah knew I was an experienced camper, and if she knew we were there, she should also know I would catch the lie about poison ivy. If she didn't know we were there, there was no reason to lie. She therefore must want me to know she was there – Q.E.D – but why? What game was she playing?

Dave held open the car door for her. “You took long enough, but when I see how well your nose is powdered, all is forgiven.” Dave followed her into the back seat of the car. “Let's go. I promised I would have The Exquisite Sarah home by midnight. She says the glass slippers chafe when I make her try them on the next morning.” Sarah took that as her cue to kick off her shoes.