The New Bride

"Kitty," I said, as she dragged me up the garden path, "please don't tell Daddy,"

"Supposing I don't tell him and then we discover in a couple of months time that you're up the pole" Kitty said crudely.

I went completely hysterical in the little front porch and Kitty slapped my face hard.

"Stop it!" she said. "Stop it."

She slapped me again. And again. Then I was sobbing, and in deep shock.

In the bathroom, with the hot tap running noisily into the old-fashioned iron bath, she roughly stripped my dress off, then grabbed the sides of the waistband of my sodden panties and bobbed down, making me step out of them. "Yuk," she said, tossing them into the soiled linen basket. She let me take off my own tiny bra and I stood, ashamed, in front of her, not only because of my conduct, but with my meagre breasts, skinny flanks and total absence of hips, no trace of that full, fleshy magnificence that I now regarded as the very epitome of womanhood.. Aunt Kitty sat down on the side of the bath and tested the water, turning on the cold tap as she turned off the hot one. She turned to look at me.

"It's hard to be angry with you," she said, "Or to blame that boy. You're so sweet."

It was only two steps into her arms.

"Oh, Kitty," I sobbed, "I'm so sorry."

I nuzzled her neck, my face buried in her hair, the dense steam from the water surrounding us

"Get in the bath," she soothed me, her hands caressing me at the waist. "As hot as you can take it."

She checked my panties again as I climbed over the bath and lowered myself gingerly into the water which still felt scalding hot.

"No blood anyway," she said. "Looks like you've kept your hymen. But maybe you'd lost it already?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, settling down in the sudsy water.

"Have you ever gone farther than that?" Kitty demanded. "You haven't done any riding, have you?"

" What?" I asked, startled.

"Horses," she said, laughing.

"Just relax," she said, I'll be back.

She returned with her cigarettes and a bottle of red wine and glasses.

She lit a cigarette and then pulled the cork from the bottle and poured out two glasses, handing me one. There was a chair, missing its back, beside the bath and she sat down and drew on her cigarette. The wine was rich and delicious to my inexperienced taste and even the smell of Kitty's cigarette was deeply comfortable in the small, cosy bathroom with the soothing heavy steam rising from the water.

"That pair tonight," Kitty said. "There's a lot of jealousy over me getting married, you know. A lot of people say I'm only marrying Twomey for his money."

She drew again on her cigarette and signed with satisfaction

"Well, what's wrong with that? I don't think he can get it up any more so maybe it's a nurse he's looking for."

"Is he nice?" I asked, for I had never met him.

"He's all right," kitty said dismissively. "He thinks it's the blood-pressure pills he's taking are causing the problem and he's talking about going off them."

"Is it safe to do that?" I asked.

"It's his funeral," Kitty snorted. "His family are raging, of course. To hell with them - it's not as if he hasn't given them all a good education"

"Are you glad to be getting married, Kitty?" I asked.

"Dunno," she said. "Mind you I like men. Always did. Anyway, he has this nice house in Clontarf. He had a big job in the Civil Service and has a good pension." She sighed. "He's not a bad old bollocks. And I'm not getting any younger, am I?"

She lifted up the wine bottle and poured herself another glass.

"You've already been drinking tonight, Miss," she said. "I could smell it off your breath up there. You've had enough."

There was a distant rumble of thunder.

"That's the end of the good weather," Kitty said.

She stood up and opened the window.

"It's still warm out," she said, "there's a storm forecast." and with that there was a flicker of lightening in the part of the sky I could see.

"Some people think I killed my aunt," Kitty said. "I was driving and she didn't have a seat-belt on. But I loved her. I adored her."

"You lived with her here, didn't you?"

"That's right. She was a widow, childless, so my mother, sent me to stay with her. They used to do that sort of thing then. I don't agree with it - it's not a good idea." She stood up. "Still, I was happy enough in the end."

She then knelt down by the side of the bath.

"Let's just check this, then," she said.

She put her left hand behind my neck to steady me and plunged her other arm underneath the water, coming up, ticklish, between my legs. I felt two fingers probing, then gently opening me and I in turn opened my legs to her nervously. She was very tender with me, feeling around as if she knew her way in there better than I did.

"Okay, you're still virgo intacta," she said, bending to kiss me on the cheek.

I turned to kiss her back so she missed my cheek and her lips brushed mine. We kept them pressed deliciously together for long moments. I was waiting, hoping now she would open my lips with her tongue and enter me. But she didn't.

I wasn't frightened by the storm, which had now broken in earnest with heavy rain rattling the windowpanes and the thunder following only seconds after the lightning flashes. But I pretended to be. When Kitty asked if I wanted her to sleep with me I nodded, mutely. I was already in bed in my nightdress and the room was almost in darkness, just the light from the narrow hall through the half-opened door. I watched Kitty undress, trying to pretend I wasn't really looking. She was only a vague white blur when she removed her dowdy old dress and then a brilliant flash of lightning lit the room and her body glowed like fire and I was able to stare greedily at her for two or three seconds while her head was enveloped in her dress. There was heavy shadow below her breasts and between her legs. She must have been raiding her trousseau, because she was wearing a minuscule pair of brilliant white silk panties which didn't even cover her pubic hair, so stiff and golden that it made me think of the straw woman, the Goddess of the harvest. Then she pushed in beside me and put her arm around me.

She was lying behind me and we were spooned together. She didn't touch my breasts or anything really private, just held me around the middle of my tummy, her finger stroking up and down occasionally, but it was driving me wild.

"It only happened over a long enough period of time," she said. "My aunt and me."

The finger, stroking, stroking, exploring my navel, then stroking again.

Again the thunder cracked; it seemed almost directly overhead now. It was warm in the bed and Kitty's body seemed to me to be giving off a fierce heat. I was drowsy, but intensely alert at the same time, acutely conscious of her naked body behind me. I longed to turn to her, but I knew this could be only at her invitation. It would be much too easy for me to be mistaken or to do the wrong thing.

"Just kissing at first," Kitty said. "She was starved for affection and so was I. Her husband had been a poor lover, a cold man."

Again her fingers explored my navel. She sighed contentedly.

" We kissed on the lips at first," she continued. "It was a long before we shared a bed. And even then it was kissing, kissing all the time. Incredibly sweet kissing, hours on end. She was so gentle."

Kitty lifted up on one elbow and kissed my shoulder.

"My God," I thought," this is it!"

"You've a sweet little body," Kitty said. "Did you know, when you walk you lift your legs very high? It's lovely. Like a young filly does."

She lay down again, pulling me tighter to her. I could feel the points of her breasts against my back and her thighs cupping my bottom.

"We became very passionate," Kitty said sleepily. "She turned out to be a very passionate woman. And she'd never known it." She yawned. "I adored her."

I slept very badly, even when the storm had passed over. I had a confused dream that I was in a bedroom with Kitty and she was at the open window, displaying something to a cheering crowd outside. She was dressed as a straw woman, but her breasts were bare. As she turned back into the room I woke up. Kitty was turned away from me, breathing gently. I waited another twenty minutes before I dared to masturbate. I wouldn't even have tried it, with someone else in the bed, if I thought I was going to have any dificulty, but I knew, the way I was on fire, that just a touch would bring me off. I had to bite my lips to stifle the desire to cry out. Kitty turned over heavily, sleepily and her arm flopped over me again.

"Mmmm, bet that was nice, my little darling," she murmured.

The next day, the day before the wedding, we were full of affection for each other, kissing every time we met in a doorway or passed each other at the table or the sink. Sweet kisses. Kitty drove to Dublin in the afternoon to get her hair done and I had to go into the village to collect the flowers for the church and the hotel, and also to check on the cake which was being iced by a friend of Kitty's. When Kitty came back she'd had her hair tinted a lighter colour, with blonde highlights and a sleek bobbed cut. I was surprised how well it went with her square-cut ,masculine face, her lop-sided grin, but I knew I was totally in love with her. But that night, instead of coming to bed with me as I'd hoped, Kitty got drunk and vindictive and started cutting her neighbours to pieces, talking about how annoyed they were that she'd finally "pulled it off" and was getting married.

"You wait," she said. "You'll hear the priest saying he's pleased I'm getting hitched at last. I'll bet he is. And they'll all be saying it."

She lit another cigarette.

"But they all think I should never have got this place. Oh yes, they don't say it to my face...."

"Please Kitty, come to bed.." I said, taking her arm.

"Piss off," she said, shaking me off roughly.

"What's wrong, Kitty?" I asked.

"What's the point?" she said. "What's the fucking...fucking point of it all?"

"Can I undress you, Kitty?" I asked.

She glared at me suspiciously, then pointed at me with two fingers, a cigarette balanced between them.

"Piss off," she slurred.

An hour later, just as I was getting off to sleep she staggered into my bedroom and collapsed across the end of the bed.

In the morning I led her, hung over, to the bathroom and, with incredible excitement, began slowly and reverently to divest her of her dress and then, after staring wonderingly at her nearly nude body, her bra and panties. I tied a scarf around her head. I had the water already running and helped her flop heavily into the bath. Reluctantly I left her soaking there and went back to the bedroom to lay out her clothes for her. I hung her suit on the outside of the wardrobe door and put the basque and the black panties on the bed, the stockings beside them and her shoes, which I had given an extra polish last night, on the floor beside the bed. When I returned she was lying back in the bath, her head resting against the tiles, her beautiful arms spread along the sides and I lifted her head and put a dry towel behind it to prevent her hair getting wet. Then I took up soap and a sponge and began washing her body, taking advantage of her somnolent state to touch her far more than was necessary, soaping her breasts and washing her back, then her belly and legs, then between her legs, excited, yet full of sadness that this was her wedding morning. Then she pulled my hand away, threw the sponge into the water and pulled me to her naked breasts, her body shaking with sobbing.

"Please, Auntie, mind your hair," I said, struggling to keep her upright.

"Fuck my hair," she bawled, finding my mouth, pushing her tongue in to capture mine.

We ended up on her bed, wrestling, kissing, frantically grappling with each other, first me on top, then Kitty while I tried desperately to encompass her sturdy waist with my legs. I ended up flat on my back on the counterpane, sobbing with joy while Kitty rode me triumphantly to climax.

She was stunning in the silky black basque although, for me, nothing could equal Kitty in her pure unadulterated nakedness, but the "merry widow" gave her a waist and breasts a different glossy, sexy quality. And for me there would always be the exquisite body beneath the clothes. I eased her stockings carefully up her legs, trying not to stare at her glossy straw-coloured bush, smoothing the tops evenly, snapping them with her garters and carefully checking her seams, then assisted her to pull on the dainty black panties. I helped her into her blouse, which fastened with about twenty tiny buttons at the back, then she stepped into her skirt and I knelt at her feet to ease on her shoes. I took one of her feet in my hands, looking at the narrow toes inside the sleek nylon covering and I was unable to resist taking her foot and kissing it.

When I straightened up my eyes were full of tears.

"Please, Auntie," I said. "Don't get married."

She didn't answer me and I sat watching her while she applied her makeup, taking a long time to colour her lips and then she let me help brush her hair. She took a hatbox from the bottom of the wardrobe and opened it, lifting out the broad-brimmed black hat with black silk roses above her head, lowering it slowly to rest on her hair. She held me to her and it was curiously intimate there, under the broad-brimmed black hat, pressed against her bosom.

"Christ, I didn't mean it to go that far," she said. "Not yet. I thought we'd just kiss. I only meant us to kiss for a long time yet. Kissing can be so sweet..."

"Mind your lipstick," I said, but she planted her lips on mine and I tasted the jammy, boiled-sweet taste of the lipstick as she forced her tongue into my mouth

"Christ," she moaned and for a moment I thought we were going to end up again, struggling on the bed, but we broke apart, panting heavily.

"Please, Auntie..." I said, "do you mean...?"

"Get dressed," she said thickly, "The car'll be here soon."

"Auntie," I pleaded

"Listen, just forget this ever happened," she said, dismissing me as she sat down crossly to repair her makeup.

Because it was such a small wedding party I was sitting beside the groom. He tried to make conversation, telling me about his interest in sailing.

"Dinghies mostly, he said "I had an Enterprise," he said. "Then a Dragon."

He looked as though it was a long time since he had had a sailor's tan, his face was tired and grey "

"The tides in Dublin Bay can be tricky, though." he explained, "As much as four knots in either direction."

"Yes," I said, as if I knew what he was talking about.

"That's right," Kitty said dryly, "You wouldn't want to be caught with your spinnaker out."

She was obviously tired of these reminiscences of an old salt and had been snappy with her new husband all day. Twenty or thirty more people had joined us for the evening part of the reception and the band was playing a selection of jigs and reels. There was a lot of changing partners and swinging around, but sometimes Kitty held on to me longer than she should have, causing confusion, before swinging away with her new husband who was doing his best to pretend he was enjoying himself.

The next afternoon, the last thing I could have expected, Kitty and I were standing in the large front drawing room of the big house in Clontarf which stood well back from the busy road, facing the park and the bay beyond.. Although it was Saturday the traffic was still heavy on the Howth Road and sailboats were circling in the misty distance in the bay. On the wall were paintings and black and white photographs of yachts, gaff-rigged and Bermuda-rigged, a younger Mr Twomey at the helm of one of them, another photograph of him with a pretty blonde-haired woman standing beside a dinghy on the slipway of Clontarf Yacht Club, another picture of sailboats on a sunlit sea at Skerries. On the huge marble mantlepiece were several large silver sailing cups.

"Even if Twomey doesn't have a second stroke and can come home, I'll have to arrange a bedroom for him downstairs," Kitty said. "One thing's for sure, we won't be sharing a bedroom."

It had happened while he was watching her undress in the suite in the Gresham. As if, I thought, the vision of the Goddess had been too much for him

"They said it was a direct result of going off those beta-blockers," Kitty said, "so he has only himself to blame"

I thought of the frenzied dancing Kitty had made him take part in towards the end of the wedding, everyone up on the floor, going mad like they did at country weddings.

"Listen," Kitty said, as we went into the hall and climbed the heavily carpeted stairs with the ornate banisters, "In a couple of months you'll probably be going to Trinity,"

"If I get the points, I suppose," I said.

We went into the big main bedroom, with its heavy walnut bed, dressing table and wardrobe, its wonderful view over Dublin Bay.

"This connecting room used to be a dressing-room," Kitty said, opening another door, but it's big enough for a bedroom and study. It'd be yours. Both rooms need doing up of course."

"Mine?" I said.

"It'd be much handier for Trinity than Glenageary is. I'm sure your Mum and Dad would agree."

"You mean...?" I said delightedly. "Oh, Kitty...!"

"Pleased?"

"Oh, Yes, YES!"

"Show me how pleased."

I was instantly in her arms, and our lips collided hungrily, then became gentle as we sucked our sweetness from each other, our tongues exploring deeply, finding and learning each others bodies delightedly again. Kitty gently but forcefully pressed her thigh between mine, lifting me so that I was riding her thigh, creating a delicious friction between my legs that made me almost faint with pleasure as I was pulled helplessly against her opulent breasts and belly which cushioned me with their sweetness. We collapsed on the bed with Kitty on her hands and knees, kissing me while I tried to unbutton my dress and maintain the kiss at the same time, desperately trying not to withdraw my lips from hers, to hold the kiss as if my life depended on it.

"Oh, Kitty," I said, "Kitty, please..."

I didn't know if I could release her for long enough to give her enough space to undress. Kitty took my face between her hands and started to give me dry pecking kisses on my lips and, in the chilly air of the bedroom, I could already smell her arousal.

"No, not here," she said. "Come on"

The bridal suite in the Gresham was the sexiest room I had ever entered. The wallpaper was red and the sofa and chairs of soft white leather. The bedroom was filled with flowers, not just the usual ones supplied with chocolates, fruit and champagne by the management, but the two hundred red roses that Kitty had bought in O'Connell Street earlier that afternoon and arranged at both sides of the canopied bed, in silver champagne coolers and borrowed vases. I sat on the bed and stared in disbelief as Kitty stepped out of her blue dress. She was wearing pure white underwear, a skimpy push-up bra, a garterbelt with narrow lace straps supporting her shiny tan stockings and the smallest pair of panties I had ever seen in my life, a tiny triangle of white silk that barely pretended to cover her pubic area and left her blonde bush tantalisingly exposed above where the material was dimpled by the elastic. She worked the panties down over her thighs and tossed them to me, then busied herself with her garter straps. The panties were still warm from her body and I unashamedly pressed them to my nose, inhaling a deep draught of her Goddess scent.

She tossed her stockings to me then and reached back to unclip her bra,

letting it fall to the floor as she turned and bent over a side table to pick up a champagne bottle from its ice bucket. I had never looked at her in glorious nakedness from a rear view before and I could only gasp at the magnificence of her high, muscular buttocks set on those heavy thighs, the deep sway-in towards her solid waist and the rippling, glorious femininity of her upper back and shoulderblades, the swelling magnificence of her shoulders.