Stargazing - Complete Novella

"Do you think you can reach inside me from there?"

It was a little awkward. I had to bend my arm a down and under between us, and she needed to raise herself a bit to give me room, which meant we needed another pillow underneath me so I could still reach her pussy with my mouth. But when we were ready and I slipped a finger up and into Jess's vagina, it was instantly worth it.

She really hadn't been kidding when she said she liked penetration. It was like an electric charge ripped through Jess. No sooner had I gotten into her then she thrust forward, and I found myself once again trying to keep up with a barrage of sex.

"Two, two, two!" She panted, urgently, as she bounced up and down, fucking herself against my fingers and simultaneously rubbing her clit against my tongue. I did as she asked, extending my middle finger alongside my index, but that wasn't enough! "Three! Fuck, three!"

This time, our relative roles were even more pronounced. Jess bucked and bounced, grinding herself into my mouth and fucking herself so hard that it became difficult to hold firm for her. All I could do was hang on and enjoy fucking her.

Feeling Jess's insides added an intense intimacy that I just couldn't get enough of. She squeezed me, embracing me with her hot, wet pussy while kissing me with her clit. It made my body, already boiling with urgent need to be touched, seem to lose itself. Like, it was still there, still very much hot and bothered, but it sort of faded and my world reduced to just pleasuring Jess and loving the way she responded to me.

And, even more so than before, being inside of her gave me a true front row seat to her orgasms. Plural. Definitely plural. Jess didn't arrive at a sharp edge, instead her contractions around me and her clit throbs gained more and more strength until they became small orgasms, which in turn gained strength until they became large ones.

"Is this what you wanted," she growled, forcing my head forward into her, being rough but not gripping my hair! "You wanted to turn me into a frantic cumming machine? You fucking got it!"

My fire-back quip seemed good in my head, but obviously just sounded like grunts into her pussy.

Despite my best efforts to keep up with reading her body, I lost track. Maybe it was a lot of individual peaks, maybe it was a few big orgasms. Either way, Jess did a whole lot of cumming. This time, when she came down from her sexual high, she was pretty spent. Her muscles relaxed and her body sagged, lazily sliding her way down beside me.

"That was... wow." She had an unfocused look, like she was half asleep after waking from a pleasant dream.

"I hoped you'd like that."

"Like it? Leah, that was..." She trailed off again, biting her lip and brushing her hair from her face. At least, I thought that was what she was doing until she lingered too long over her eyes.

"Jess? Are you--"

"Fuck, now you're going to think I'm the kind of girl who cries after sex!"

I caressed her cheek, hoping to be comforting. "No judgments here. You don't have to tell me if you don't want, I'm happy thinking I just made you cum so hard it drove you to tears."

It was a poor attempt at humor, a knee-jerk reaction to my own confusion, but Jess chuckled charitably anyway. "This whole day has been -- well, nobody has ever done something like this for me before."

And that made you cry? "Yeah, you said you'd wanted to try that position. I'm glad it was--"

"No, no! Well, yeah, that too, but I mean like this entire day. All day finding those things you said in your notes while you flirted with me." She paused again, rubbing moisture from her eyes. "What can I say? Nobody I've ever been with has done anything like that before. It made me feel... well... I guess like this?" She nodded down at our naked bodies cuddled together.

"Like a mixture of hot sex and emotions?"

"Yes! And then, when we got here, it was like you were so focused on giving me pleasure." She half choked, half laughed. "How am I supposed to feel anything but loved?"

I smiled and nuzzled myself into her so our foreheads touched. "I loved every second of it too."

We lay there for a minute, Jess coming back to herself while I tried to figure out how to feel about what she'd just lain on me. There was so much to unpack! In my wildest dreams, I never imagined things would turn out so well.

Suddenly, Jess sat up. She rummaged under her bed and pulled her phone up.

"What is it?"

She whistled a relieved sound. "Still got 45 minutes until evening activities are over."

"Oh shit, I completely forgot about that."

Jess settled back down into me. "Leah?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell me how I can spend the next 45 minutes making you feel as amazing as you've done for me?" My instinctual surge of shy panic must have shown, because Jess laughed. "What?" She played her hand down my body, still very plainly charged with sexual need. "Don't you want to get off?"

"You can't just spring that on me! It's like asking somebody to plan their own birthday party, or say what they want for Christmas, or give themselves compliments! Besides, this was supposed to be all about you!"

Jess laughed harder, and she shook her head slightly. "What did I do to deserve you, Hot Stuff?" She murmured, under her breath. Before I could think of something, she brushed suggestively along my legs. "How about we start with you spreading these for me, and see where it takes us?"

"That sounds good."

As if to contrast the hard fucking we'd just been doing as much as possible, this was very gentle and sensual. We lay facing each other, our arms and legs entwined, communicating with hums and sighs instead of words. One of Jess's legs rested between my thighs, spreading me open and giving her room to comfortably press her hand into my pussy.

She was gentle without being hesitant or shy. Gazing into my eyes and guided by my sighs, she adjusted her positioning and rhythm, ending up doing something very similar to my favorite masturbation technique.

Except, it felt so, so much better. Her other arm wrapped around me, her legs and body surrounding me, her eyes filling mine and her musical voice softly humming to me while she worked me towards climax... it was like something out of a dream. Like her touch was drawing me into her pleasure dream from before, sharing it with me. Her eyes were still a little wet, making the greens in them shine. Jess's lips parted slightly, and she gave a soft "oh". It took a few seconds before I realized she'd felt me rocking my hips forward to meet her. I hadn't even realized I was doing that. I felt so warm, so light and relaxed and filled with pleasure, it was hard to keep thoughts going.

How did she already know how to do this to me? Turn my brain off and turn me to mush? And she wondered what she did to deserve me? Insanity. I was the lucky one.

My orgasm was so big I couldn't believe it. I was expecting it to be a low key orgasm, if that's even a thing, but my body had other plans. In retrospect, it was probably because Jess licked her lips the second before I started cumming. Like my orgasm was a yummy treat for her that she was looking forward to gobbling up. Something about that clicked with me, and my clit exploded. Everything inside me spiked, like cumming was adding sexual pressure to me rather than releasing it, and I grabbed at Jess for all I was worth.

"Mmmm," Jess purred to me. "That's it, cum for me, Hot Stuff."

She felt so good, so fucking good! Her strong body responded to my sudden urgency, holding my legs apart and keeping her heavenly motion on my clit going while I squeezed her into the tightest hug I could manage.

I was a little dazed when I finally came back down. I must have released Jess at some point, because I was lying flat on my back with her leaning over me, lightly petting my hair, murmuring sweet nothings in my ear and occasionally complimenting the apparently incredibly sexy sounds I make when I'm cumming.

"You say that as if you weren't infinitely hotter doing your cum dance on top of me just now," I said.

"There she is, you're back!" Amusement clear in her voice. "Did you have a nice trip?"

"The best. Many more exactly like that please."

"Of course! Jess beamed at me, looking about as happy as I felt. "Except we kind of have to get back to real life now. We're gonna have company in like fifteen minutes."

It was hard to feel a sense of urgency, despite the imminent threat of being discovered by Jess's campers naked and reeking of sex. The plan hadn't accounted for thinking up an excuse for that. Fortunately, Jess had equipped her cabin with two big bottles of Febreze. Hopefully nobody would be too suspicious about the area surrounding Jess's bed smelling of chemically enforced freshness. If this had been school, it would certainly have earned me a raised eyebrow from my roommate.

I lingered in the doorway, not wanting to leave but desperately needing to take a shower before everybody came back. A real one this time, not just an excuse to feel Jess up.

We both spoke at the same time.

"So--"

"That was--"

Jess giggled. "We're so good at this," she said, sarcastically. Off in the distance, sounds of chatter drew nearer. She gave me a little nudge. "Off night is tomorrow, see you then!"

-------------------

Chapter 10

It was a magical evening. One of those breathtakingly beautiful twilights with big, fluffy clouds that blossom in shades of pink and red as the sun drifted downwards. There was a cool, almost damp feel to the air that spoke of rain to come that night, which was most welcome after the scorching heat we'd had. Calm contentment was so infectious, even the campers felt it. Or maybe they were just worn out after spending all their energy hurling balls at one another.

Alexis had her first off night tonight, making this the first time I had to manage them by myself, but it was chill. We all lounged lazily on the porch as dusk turned gently to night. Crystal and Sylvia took turns braiding each other's hair, Bonnie and Ally were trying to pick songs from the counselor-approved playlist, a circle of girls played a card game involving passing cards from one to the next and sticking their tongue out when they got four of a kind, and I interviewed Kim about her week for her activity card.

There was an old camp rule that all the campers had to send at least one letter home every week. For nearly all of my crew, this would be the first time they'd ever used the postal service for anything other than Amazon deliveries. Alexis and I were already sick of explaining which portions of their home addresses went in what order, and which corners of the envelope the return address and stamp belonged on.

And then there were activity cards. The legend went that one camper had ruined it for everybody. They couldn't be bothered to write anything, so they sent blank paper to their parents every week all summer. The parents had been justifiably annoyed, so after that, counselors were all required to write an overview of our camper's week, along with a record of all the activities they'd done. Because the campers couldn't be trusted to tell their parents themselves.

The way everybody talked about it had made it seem like the worst drudgery imaginable. And, admittedly, manually looking up activities from the weeks' worth of sign-ups and then physically ticking them off on each camper's card was a bit tedious. But, whereas others complained about struggling to fill the required page of space, I found myself having to write smaller and smaller to fit things in.

"Okay, so your favorite activities so far have been archery, dodgeball, soccer, crafts, climbing and softball," I said, a little proud of myself for holding back any sarcastic twists on 'favorite'.

"Yeah."

"Anything you'd like to be able to do more of?"

Kim thought for a few seconds, then rattled off that same list of activities again, this time adding canoeing in.

"Okay, that should be everything I need," I said, trying to cram in a few words at the bottom of the page about how enthusiastic Kim was about everything. Parents probably liked hearing that kind of thing. "Send Lilian over, will you?"

Lilian was the only one sitting by herself, engrossed in reading. She had been in the circle of card players, but she'd moved off after winning twice in a row, looking bored. Her look over the top of her book when Kim tried to get her attention wasn't the most friendly in the world, but her tone didn't seem too annoyed at being interrupted.

"Good part of the book?" I asked, conversationally.

"I don't know yet. Just starting."

"Really? I thought I've seen you at it lots before this." The image of her reading by flashlight came back to me, along with her look at the time of having been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

"Oh yeah, this is book two. The first one was pretty good, but this one is kind of dry so far." She shrugged in a so-so kind of way. "There's potential for it to heat up again, but right now it's mostly characters I don't really care about, and a bunch of reminders about world building that drag on a bit." She shrugged again, looking off at the clouds. "I know it makes sense for books that come out years apart, but it's frustrating because I just read all of this stuff this week."

Maybe it was because I'd just gone through five of these interviews, but the difference between the way Lilian spoke compared to the rest of the kids was even more striking than usual. Not only that, the way she thought. Crystal had complained about missing being allowed to play Candy Crush, Sylvia could barely sit still for long enough to answer my questions, Kim had only the loosest understanding of the word "favorite", and by contrast, Lilian was here being analytical about storytelling methodology. I shook my head, wonderingly.

"What are you reading, anyway?"

I should have known, by now, not to expect something like Percy Jackson or Harry Potter or anything aimed at her 11-year-old age group. It was still surprising when she held up the cover and said, "The Great Hunt," in an offhand way that sounded like she'd been asked a hundred times before and was tired of nobody ever recognizing it.

"Wait wait wait. You're telling me you read all the way through Eye Of The World in--" I quickly counted backwards. "Six days?"

Lilian had given a little excited jump of surprise hearing me say the name. "Yeah. Do you know it?"

"Of course I know The Wheel Of Time!"

And just like that, we dove together down the rabbit hole of fantasy bonding. Without spoiling too much, I couldn't help revealing that Rand never stops being a whiny bitch, that she should consider giving Mat and Perrin a second chance, and that the author repeats the description "she crossed her arms beneath her breasts" literally hundreds of times in every single book. We lost track of time, continuing in excited waves of breathless chat until the announcement echoed from the office for bedtime.

And just like that, the tranquility vanished. Girls rushed into the cabin, the habitually clean ones dashing to take showers and the ones who actually needed to shower insisting they didn't. Half of them pretended they'd already brushed their teeth, including Kim, who seemed to forget that she'd just been telling me how much ice cream she'd had for dessert. Bonnie complained that she couldn't find her toothbrush, which I didn't really believe was more than another excuse until it eventually turned up in Evelyn's bag.

Bonnie gave Evelyn a dirty look, snatching it back from her and stalking off while Evelyn apologized for the mistake. Those two weren't on the best terms, but from the surprised and confused look Evelyn had, it was clearly an accidental mix up.

It wouldn't have stuck out in my mind at all if not for Lilian. Quietly sitting on her bed, ready for bed and unobtrusive as always, she had the same look of evil self-satisfaction she'd worn at archery after rigging the bench to dump Tabby on her ass. Which I'd completely forgotten about until now. I should have said something to her, but since I hadn't, it felt harder to confront her now.

I sighed inwardly. Just like that time, I had no practical reason to think Lilian had done anything. I hadn't seen her doing anything, and I didn't even know of anything Bonnie or Evelyn might have done to provoke her like Tabby had. But there was really no mistaking that impish look.

An embarrassingly large part of me wanted to pretend I didn't notice. Just ignore it. Go on enjoying Lilian's company as my lone mature camper. The only one I could bond with over things I actually enjoyed, rather than feigning an interest like I felt I needed to with all the rest. We'd just had such a great conversation, why did she have to go ruining it like this!

But ignoring it couldn't be sustainable. Twice now, and that's just what I'd seen. Who knew how much I'd missed. Something had to be done.

Right. Decision made, now what? Was this the sort of thing Lilian's parents had meant in that cryptic apology dropping her off? Whatever they were doing to discipline her clearly didn't work, but I couldn't exactly try something different without knowing what that was first.

Seconds ticked by while I stood, desperately thinking in the middle of the chaos of the cabin, with half the kids trying to play games and the other half yelling at them to get to bed or I wouldn't read them Harry Potter.

What would Jess do? What would Sarah? Fuck, why was I so nervous about confronting a kid? This would be so much easier if it was anybody else. Any of the other kids who, as much as I liked them, I didn't really respect or care about nearly as much. Why did caring about Lilian have to make looking after her so much harder? Parenting was fucking hard, even when it wasn't even my kid!

When I could finally stall no longer, I sat beside Lilian on her bunk and dove right in. "So, what's the story with Bonnie's toothbrush?"

She looked surprised for half a second, but then her expression shifted to curiosity. "What gave me away?" I was about to tell her about her demonic looks and how she didn't have a future in acting, but then I realized she was trying to deflect. I raised an eyebrow and waited for her to answer. She met my gaze for a few seconds of tension before backing down. "They keep pestering me to do things with them," Lilian eventually said. "They won't leave me alone and they get all salty when I give in and beat them at whatever they're nagging me to play. Ping-pong, that card game of theirs, doesn't matter. They're terrible at all of them, and it's not fun beating them, but they still won't leave me alone."

"And you think stealing their stuff and framing the other one will make them stop that?"

"Oh, no." She shook her head, showing a strange smile. "But it does make me feel better."

What the hell was I supposed to say to that? The worst part was, I kind of understood. Bonnie and Evelyn were annoyingly persistent, and the most charitable one could be about their abilities is that they weren't too horrible for pre-teens. There's only so many times anybody could chase after their wildly hit ping-pong balls without losing their minds.

Lilian watched me thinking with that same half curious look. Like I was a boring TV show she was only continuing to watch to see if she was right about how it ended. Again, I was reminded of the night she'd been reading after lights out and she expected me to punish her, except this time she was probably right this time. I couldn't not punish her.

But I also hate playing into people's expectations. And when I was a kid, anticipation and dreading something was often worse than the thing itself.

So I shook my head slowly, letting my disappointment and frustration with her show. "You're better than that. At least, I thought you were."