Naples, Missouri

She inhaled sharply, then turned back to me. "You're sure you've never done this?"

"I swear, I'm just doing what comes naturally."

"Well come naturally some more." Her voice became more husky. "Here, I'll show ya." She then turned her bra around and unhooked it, giving me free access to her bare breasts. I moved slowly toward her, unsure for only a fraction of a second. Once I was closer, I gained my confidence. I rolled them, bounced them in my hands, flicked gently with my thumbs on her nipples; finally, I leaned in and kissed the inner curve of each one. She gave a contended sigh. "Mmm, enjoying ourselves, are we?"

"Do you have any idea how ... how luscious you feel?"

"I do, do I?"

"So, so much."

"Well, fair's fair, cowboy, take your shirt off too." I did as I was told, upon which Emily traced her right index finger along the outline of the muscles in my arms and chest. "Mmhmm, God bless Missouri farm boys.* She withdrew her finger and gently slid her arms around me, leaning in to make sure she gave me the most of feeling her bare breasts on my chest. As she did, she kissed my jawline. "And I know you've been wondering all this time, so here it is ... they're 34B."

"They're perfect," I assured her.

"Mmhmm, and why is that?"

"Because they're yours," I said with another kiss.

"Mine, huh?" She grinned. "Well then, try this on for size," she said as she undid her jeans and slid them down and off. Another beam of my light showed her turning away from me so that I could take in a proper view of her ass -- at least, as framed by satin hipsters to match her bra. By this time, my erection was raging so hard I could hear it causing my heart to drum, and my testicles felt as though they weighed a pound each.

The initial hesitation I had felt in touching her breasts had left me long since; I reached over and grabbed a double handful of her soft ass, after which I traced my hand along her left leg, which she had raised by bending her knee and allowing me a better feel. "You know, I didn't know skin could feel like that."

"I shave them every morning ... what really feels wonderful is to have someone to do it for."

"And I'm happy to be that someone.". Another kiss followed, but it was short lived after Emily called something out.

"Hey no fair ... what's good for the goose is good for the gander," she half-pouted, referring to my not having pulled my jeans and underwear off. "And you feel like quite a gander, you do."

"Fair warning here -- my ass isn't as nice as yours," I teased as I undid my own jeans.

"Doesn't matter," as she kissed me again. "Oh wait, wait ... just your jeans first."

I would have done anything she suggested, but I was curious as to why. As I took them down, I asked.

"Because we're going to do this together." She held me close and softly kissed my lips. "One, two, three -- go." The next moment, I stepped out of my blue boxers and she from her hipsters.

I felt as Adam must have felt when introduced to Eve. I was, for the first time in my life, standing naked with a woman, and a deliciously naked one to boot.

She slowly drew herself away, getting situated as she sat on a green patch of grass; once there, she drew her thighs comfortably apart and held out her arms to me. "This is our moment ... come and make love to me, Jason Kelley."

I needed no additional prompting to kneel in front of her and to lean her on some more grass so that she would be looking straight up. My heart had never beaten so quickly, nor had wanted to do so.

A wry grin crossed Emily's face. "You say this is your first time?"

"Yes it is ..." I gave her a small kiss and lowered my body onto hers. "How about for you?"

"There's only one way you'll ever find out," she purred.

"How about we find out together."

Without waiting for an answer, she placed both her hands on the small of my back, sealing my mouth with hers.

I felt her pubic bush brush against me as I approached. It wasn't trimmed, but wasn't unruly -- no. Soft and billowy. That's perfectly what it was, and a wonderful, welcoming sensation. Thus spurred on, my instincts took over, causing me to feel as though my whole weight were centered on my penis. With only a single thrust, I felt something give way, tearing from the pressure. Beneath me, Emily gave a sharp, short cry of surprise as her vagina began to pull my penis in, gripping me as though she were pulling me hand over hand. Her whole body responded in kind; she threw her arms around me in the biggest bear hug I'd ever known, and the soft legs that had invited me in so shortly ago snapped themselves toward her midsection. I couldn't have pulled myself out now if I had wanted to -- which worked out fine, since I most assuredly didn't want to.

What followed was a chain reaction of epic strength. I felt something grabbing my penis head and molding itself to fit to me; in response, I gave another thrust. Emily gave a shout I was sure could be heard clear into town, and her vagina clamped on me three times in succession. I then felt something I had only known in certain dreams -- I was letting my semen loose, in ropes and waves. I kissed her multiple times, with tongue and without, as I felt both testicles lightening their load directly into Emily's depths.

When the last of it had left me, I noticed I was crying. This was not simply due to the massive emotional release and amazing feeling, but that I had crossed that line which can never be uncrossed. More to the point, despite her smile, there were tears in Emily's eyes and on her cheeks -- she was in pain, and I knew I was the cause of it.

I reached for a strand of her hair, so as to dry her tears. "Babe ... I'm so sorry ..." My voice cracked. "I wouldn't have meant to hurt you for anything."

"You wanted to know if it was my first time too?" She sniffled, then gave a small grin. "Guess we have our answer now, don't we."

My mind still wasn't registering as it should, so I said the only words I could think of. "I love you ... Emily Ann ... my ... my Lioness."

"And I love you too, Jason Thaddeus ... my Knight in ... hmm, whaddya know. No armor." This was her play on my school, as Heidelberg High is the Knights. She gave my penis a playful squeeze, now that it had gone flaccid and slipped out of her.

I wanted to hold her all night, and for five mostly wordless minutes, did exactly that. However, I knew the Swindons would get suspicious, if they weren't already. I spoke up. "I don't want this night to end, but ... hadn't we better get going?" Darkness had fallen by now, which would make our safety a concern as we went back to our homes.

"Yeah, we better." We began to get dressed. As we did, however, she looked back into my eyes. "I'll never forget tonight, or this."

An irrational fear began to weave around my heart. "Wait a minute -- you don't mean -- you don't mean we're through, do you, now that we've done this?"

"Through?" She touched my shoulder. "Jason ... I love you, and always will." She winced. "But this was my first, and ... my God, I had no idea you were so -- big!" I smiled back proudly as I pulled my clothes back on, and then learned another new thing -- a personal pet name of her invention. "And after this kind of royal-size royal treatment, I gotta give Little Miss Littlemiss a few days to recuperate -- if you can give me that, I'll make it well worth it for you."

"You name it, it's yours."

"Don't you mean ours?" She smiled, and with both of us having fully dressed again, slipped back into my arms one last time that night. "Through?" She kissed me. "Oh, Cowboy ... we're just gettin' started."

Truer words were never spoken.

We didn't do anything the next day, or the following day; that following day was Sunday, and therefore didn't lend itself to sneaking out. After church that night, though, she slipped me another note.

"I think I'll be okay ... tomorrow morning, usual spot?

And before you get here, measure yourself."

You had best believe we were there on time. This time, I was able to last longer and she could take it far less painfully. (And having measured, I found out that I was eight inches from root to tip, and a respectable inch thick through the shaft.) On another occasion, we discovered that if I were to take her from behind and manhandle her breasts, she could have stronger orgasms and give them to me in turn.

Emily and I hadn't simply undone Pandora's box; we'd smashed the lock and wrenched the box open with a crowbar. Two weeks prior, we had both been virgins; now, we were insatiable. The more we got of each other, the more we wanted -- and the more we wanted, the more we got. Except for Sundays, and I've mentioned why, we were soon making love once every day; if we were lucky enough to carve out time, we would do it once in the morning and once in the evening. Driving us on even harder was the specter of my having to go back to Columbia at the end of August; to that end, we made the most of the time left to us. In addition, I would constantly reassure her that I would be back to her as quickly and as often as possible, faithful the whole while.

In all the love we made, I neither ever brought condoms nor thought to ask if Emily were using anything; all we knew or cared about was being with each other right now, and being back together again over breaks and holidays. She and I were reason enough, we thought -- until we met at our stand of trees a week before I was due to go back.

"I went into Joplin for supplies yesterday," she said with a faltering voice. Out of her jeans pocket, she pulled a small thin box which I recognized immediately as a supply she could not have bought in Naples. Small town that it was, people would talk in such a way as it would get back to Mr and Mrs Swindon before Emily was able to tell them. She made me stand aside while she used it; when it was time, she said a hollow "And now we wait."

Two minutes later, we watched the little minus sign turn to plus.

Our tight embrace felt like the only thing holding our world together as we cried and told each other we loved each other -- if we thought we had before, it was in overdrive now.

Emily straightened up. "I don't know what we're going to do -- but I do know what we're not going to do." She kissed me gently. "I could never do that to my baby, let alone ours."

"Thank you," I said as I felt a gratitude and a protectiveness fill me. "I'll drop out -- I'll do whatever I have to." I kissed her with a new tenderness. "You two are all that matter."

We finagled a way to tell her parents and Grandma Fiona together the following Sunday afternoon, under the pretense of getting us all together for dinner after church. We told them everything -- how long we'd felt this way for each other, how we'd become a couple, then sexually active, culminating in Emily's resulting pregnancy and her adamant determination to carry the baby to full term. I asked, of course, to marry her right off.

"No, you won't."

"What's that?!" Emily and I recoiled, our hands holding each other desperately.

Mr Swindon had commandeered the discussion. "No grandchild of mine will have parents who don't finish what they start."

Grandma Fiona leapt to our defense. "Can't you see he wants to do the right thing by this girl -- by your girl?

Your grandchild, my great! "

"He can and he will -- but not right now."

"When then, Gil?" Mrs Swindon offered. "Next year? Two years, five, ten? When their grandson gets accepted to medical school?"

Mr Swindon turned to me. "How long on your studies, Jason?"

"Two years on the degree I'm doing now -- but I can drop out, work full time --"

"Then two years it will be." He turned to Emily and to me. "It'll be all right, you two ... Jason, you'll go back up to Columbia, come see us over holidays and summers. Emily, we'll take care of you here in town. And both of you -- you have both our families, and a whole town of people who'll love you all so much you won't know what to do with yourselves -- or I'll know the reason why." He, Mrs Swindon, and Grandma came over to hug us. "You'll be just fine ... think of it on the level of a soldier and his deployment. He's got a battle to fight for those who love him back home, and this is your battle. Godspeed to you ... Son."

I told my Heidelberg family that weekend, as I helped Aaron get situated for his freshman year and my junior. I went on to tell them about Mr Swindon's proposition, as well as his directive that, should they have a problem with this, they were to consult him directly.

Dad sighed and then smiled. "I know you'll do right by everybody -- you were raised the Naples way, after all."

Mom brightened. "And you've got a home away from home here -- a real Kelley man."

Since I still lived in the dorm for my junior year, I only needed the part time job I took for ways to afford calling Emily while I was gone. Our families would gather in Naples for holidays, which took the load off my mind as to where I should go. And through it all, Aaron did his best to keep my spirits high and my nose in my books. The latter worked; that fall, I worked the hardest I had yet, making the Dean's list, never to go off it. My spirits, though, were another matter; they would stay mostly low until I was with Emily again.

On the Tuesday evening two weeks before spring finals were to start, I got the call to get down to Joplin as quickly as possible. (Naples does have a County Hospital, but most Campania County babies are born in Joplin or Springfield, in case something unforeseen should arise.) Five hours' driving, half a tank of gas, and seven cans of Mountain Dew later, I got scrubbed up and masked, well on time.

Matthew David Kelley was born at five o'clock the next morning. I, of course, thought he was the second most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Who could be more so, you ask -- why, his mother, of course. My leaving a couple days later tore at our hearts even more, especially at mine; despite Mr Swindon's counsel, I still had difficulty shaking the feeling that I was abandoning my post. My heart told me that my place was with my son and his mother, but my head told me to get back to Columbia and finish what I had set out to do. How to make up the difference? By the high grades I got on my finals.

I spent that summer in Naples as well, helping out again on Grandma Fiona's place; the difference, however, was my holding Emily as we drifted off to sleep at the Swindon house, with Matthew's nursery in the next room.

In contrast to the previous summer, we never made love at all this season, preferring to hold each other and be a comfort at day's end. As much as we loved Matthew and each other, and wanted more children as soon as possible, we wanted to recuperate until he was a little older, and wasn't taking so much of our energy by each nightfall.

When I was home for Christmas my senior year, I proposed to Emily again; Mr Swindon didn't say "No, wait" this time. We were thus married two weeks after I graduated; after all his efforts in keeping me as sane as possible, Aaron readily accepted my offer to be best man.

As for me and my -- Emily Ann Kelley. God, I'll never get tired of saying that name -- now that we were an honest man and woman, we had nearly two years of lost time to cover, and cover it we did. In fact, we covered it so well and so often that Michael James followed nine exact months later.

In 2002, my brother Trevor married his high school sweetheart, Amanda Callison. Since the families wanted me up in Heidelberg the afternoon before, I had to leave Emily and the boys home for the weekend, since Matthew couldn't be pulled out of school at noon on a Friday. Even if Emily couldn't go, she did give me a proper, red-blooded sendoff.

McCord Swindon could and would have been born on the Fourth of July, if he hadn't dragged his feet and waited until 12:30 the morning of the Fifth.

In February 2005, I turned thirty. I already owned (as I still do) my own construction and farm consultation business, and was doing well enough to help finance Emily's return to school for the CNA she would soon obtain. Still, something was missing. To her mind, there were only two solutions for that: throw one party for her husband and their friends, and a far more private soiree afterward. This last led to an extended hospital visit in November: the vasectomy Emily insisted I get, and did get two days after the birth of our last one, Number Four -- Maureen Mallory. (The sure sign that she's truly befriended you, however, is that she allows you to call her Moe directly to her face. That's what her mother and I do.)

Just as Dad had done, I had indeed set up shop with my wife and her family. Emily had been to St Louis a few times with her 4-H club in elementary and junior high, but these are different visits we pay as a family. Grandpa Jack and Grandma Becky have never loved anything more than to have their Naples grands come up, so they could show them the Arch, Busch Stadium, the Italian restaurant district, and so much more that they could and have. In their way, Grandpa Gil and Grandma Marlee keep us all grounded, teaching a proper respect for the small town life that drives America.

Grandma Fiona hadn't had much to leave us when, in 2012, she passed away; what she did have, to any of us cousins who wanted it, was her house. We had to sell most of the land, as none of us could maintain proper farm upkeep; the house, though, we moved out from living in town and therefore kept. With one stroke, Gil and Marlee are my mile-off neighbors again.

And yes, Emily and I and the kids are proud, blue-and-white-bleeding Naples Lions.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

One morning, two weeks or thereabouts into our affair so long ago, Emily looked into my eyes after we'd made love and asked, "Promise me something?"

"Anything you want, babe."

"Promise me you'll love me just the way you do now."

With all the conviction of a young man's heart, I answered unhesitatingly. "I promise I will ... I will love you just that way."

That's one promise I've not fully kept. How, you ask.

If our first love had been the standard brown hair and blue eyes I thought she had had, these years of the life we've built are the sun turning her to auburn and iridescent green. In that same way, we've innovated and upgraded our love onto deeper and different levels in these many years -- but even though we feel those levels every day, we still have the hearts of those two junior high kids who kissed in a church parking lot in my hometown ... of Naples, Missouri.