The Way She Looked That Night

"You remember that?"

"Of course I do! And when we were older..." She looked around to make sure we had a modicum of privacy, and whispered in my ear. "I always wanted to explore you, Matthew!"

My room was a hotel room. A perfectly ordinary, clean but plain hotel room. Compared to where I'd been all night and where I had left ahead of me, it felt like a palace. As soon as I had my damp shoes and socks off, the carpet felt perfectly orgasmic to my toes. Or was it the memory of what Rachel had said to me that had me feeling that way?

Either way, I was safe in my own little palace somewhere near Verdun, and it had a bathtub. I was feeling strung out from the road and it wasn't even eleven o'clock yet. No use trying to go to sleep this early, ever since that phone call back in October when my latest love had told me her boss was getting a divorce and she was going back to him. Some nights I was lucky to sleep at all.

As I undressed for the bath, I resolved that tonight would not be one of those nights. Luxembourg was over, and after tomorrow I'd never have to go back there.

Anyway, a much nicer memory was bubbling up, and it had me hard as a rock as I unzipped my jeans.

No one noticed Rachel and me as we collected our coats and slipped out the McQuades' rarely-used front door -- at least I didn't think so. But Rachel caught me looking over my shoulder as we crossed the street to my house. "Don't worry, if they did notice, they're probably happy we're finally getting together!" she teased.

"Are we?" I asked. "I mean, you're going back to LA and I'm going back to Massachusetts..."

"Not tonight we're not, silly! Just think of this as the rite of passage we should have had together years ago." She laughed. "God, that's melodramatic, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but I like it," I admitted as we climbed the steps to my house, which was dark and quiet. As I unlocked the front door, I asked, "Have you ever been in my room?"

"Your mom wouldn't let us study up there, remember?" Rachel asked. "Guess she was afraid even then I was going to jump your bones."

"Well, you could've done that on the dining room table," I pointed out. "I wouldn't have told."

Rachel's laugh was nothing like the girlish titter I remembered from years ago. Thank heavens. I could only hope I'd grown up as much as she had.

She took but a moment to admire the lingering hints of childhood that my room betrayed ("Love the antique car wallpaper, Matthew!" she enthused) before she turned out the light. I turned on the little Snoopy lamp on my dresser, at the far corner of the room from my bed. "You like to do it with the lights on, do you?"

"The first time with a partner, anyway," I said.

"Oh, of course. Guys always want to see you naked first and foremost."

"Rachel..."

"Matthew, it's okay! I read about it in psychology, the primary male stimulus is visual. God, that sounds so clinical, doesn't it?" So far she'd only kicked her shoes off, but she looked ready to rip her dress off if I didn't get there first.

"Well, it's not much more romantic to say 'I want to see you naked,' is it?" I asked.

"I guess not, but do you?" She gave me a saucy grin and turned around and held her hair out of the way to reveal the clasp of her dress. "And does it help if I say I want to see you that way?"

"Since when?" I stepped up and undid the clasp and unzipped her, enjoying the tantalizing view of her bra clasp, which I left intact for the moment.

"At least since the algebra days," she said, turning back around to embrace me. "I didn't really notice boys at all until right around that time, and I loved how quiet and studious you were compared to most of them. And of course I knew what a nice guy you were because of our bike rides."

"And all these years you'd rather have been riding me," I quipped, drawing an uproarious laugh just before we kissed.

I turned on the water tap and put the plug in the tub, and got a wad of toilet paper, and stepped back out into the room and did my best to remember as I stroked myself. Just how did she undress me? Was that before or after I got her dress off? I couldn't remember for sure. I did remember how beautiful she looked in her lavender bra and panties, and that was what I pictured now.

"You're cute," she said as I traced the edges of her bra along the tops and sides of her breasts. "Most guys just want to rip it out of the way."

"I'd never rip your bra. Don't you think I know how expensive they are?"

There was that laugh again. "Matt, you can stop joking! Don't you want to make love to me?"

"Doesn't it look like I do?"

She must have already had my clothes off by then, because I remember her grabbing at my erection and saying, "Feels like it, too!"

Remembering that sensation now, I took a deep breath and rubbed harder, standing between the bed and the window (with the curtains drawn -- I'm no exhibitionist) and did my best to remember the first feel of her breasts once I'd freed them.

Rachel had always been slightly on the heavy side, and she had breasts to match. Probably at least a D-cup, but I was too much the gentleman to look at the tag. I much preferred to look at her breasts anyway. They stood out proudly, with big dark nipples that demanded my attention. My lips were drawn to them like a magnet, and I leaned down and kissed them one by one, bringing out the first moan from her as I reached down and pulled her panties out of the way.

I didn't look down below just yet. I was enjoying her breasts too much, and apparently they were enjoying me as well, for she rubbed my head playfully but with a firmness that made it clear I was not to pull back.

Once I had her panties off, she pulled me back down onto the bed on top of her. I settled on her left breast for my kisses and went to town on the right one with my hand. "Oh, Matthew, don't stop!" she said, as if I could have done any such thing if I'd wanted to! I hadn't seen her pussy yet, but with one hand at loose ends, I was now free to touch it.

Gazing at the hotel wall, I was nearly overcome as I remembered both the feel of her soft, wet flesh and her gasp of joy as I caressed it. Was this what I wanted to come to? The tub was filling up.

"Two fingers!" she ordered. Nothing like a woman who knows just what she likes, and I more than willingly obliged. In no time she was thrusting her hips up in a wonderful rhythm with the pattern I made with my fingers inside her. "Gonna come!" She barely had time to get the words out before she did come, loud enough to make me glad my parents were still across the street.

I went to check the bathtub, still only half full and I wasn't done.

She got me pinned sitting up against the headboard of my bed, and was right at my eye level as she took me inside her. "Ohhhhh, Matthew, that feels so good, doesn't it?" The girl next door was a woman now, all right!

"So good!" I agreed. I wrapped one arm tightly around her, and reached down between us with the other one to tease her clit. That had her howling before she even began rocking on me.

As she was soon flailing with abandon, I made to pull my hand away, but she placed both her hands on it. "More of that!" I went on flicking at her clit as best I could.

Now, standing just inside the room door, I looked at the evacuation plan but I saw her breasts bouncing in a wonderful rhythm as she humped me, and I felt our intermingling pubic hair tickling my fingers as I tickled her clit, and I heard her screeching. For years afterward I'd remembered just what she'd said between her many gasps and moans -- something like "Fuck me harder, I'm not the girl down the street anymore!" -- but now I couldn't recall for sure just what she'd said.

I did remember her coming, hard and loud, and throwing herself at me as she did. And I remembered hugging her back and wriggling as hard as I could to come just after her, and I remember letting her know nice and loud myself when I succeeded. Was that what I wanted to come to now?

No, there was one more vivid memory.

I went back to the bathroom and saw the tub was full, and turned the water off. As I wandered back out into the room, I conjured up that one last memory. I didn't remember how long she'd stayed perched on me and clutched me inside her after we'd come -- it had been a pleasantly long moment. But I did remember what she said next. "Should I be sorry you didn't get a good long look at my body before?"

"You shouldn't be sorry for anything," I gushed.

"Still and all, this is probably it for us," she said, sliding off me. "I mean, you're not coming back to Denver after college, are you? I'm not."

"Haven't decided," I said. "But probably not."

"What was that song you played for me that day? The first time we studied?" She slid off the bed and stepped over to the dresser, where the Snoopy lamp cast a warm glow on her beautiful body. "About remembering the way you look tonight? I hope you want to remember this," she added, looking down at herself.

Standing over by the curtains again, I closed my eyes, and there she was. That welcoming smile and big dark eyes that I'd loved half my life, heavy breasts with big pert nipples that surpassed my greatest imagination of what they might look like, curvy hips framing a lovely dark triangle, whose hidden charms I had just partaken of completely for the first and only time. And she hoped I would want to remember it?

I came hard with a quiet grunt, and my beloved hotel room came back into focus.

I hadn't kept in touch with Rachel. I'd seen her once or twice from a distance while visiting my parents over the next couple of years, but we'd never approached one another again. Couldn't top our last encounter, after all. I didn't know where she was now -- probably not France, anyway, but I couldn't help thinking she was probably a successful professional something or other with a couple of kids by now and a husband straight out of a GQ spread. I'd have bet she'd never fallen flat on her face like I had in Luxembourg, or with that class I had to repeat now.

But I remembered. Oh, how I remembered.

I'd be off to Asia too in a few months, and in the meantime I would enjoy my lingering time in Paris, which would end with me getting my degree at last. I didn't know that for sure as I eased myself into the hot bath that night, of course. But with the happy memory of Rachel's beautiful body, I resolved not to let that bother me. No matter how cold the winds were blowing outside, I was safe in my little room, and I would be getting some sleep that night.

Sure enough, I got the best sleep I'd had in months, with Rachel striking a pose on the ceiling as I drifted off.