What You See, What You Get

Note: This is a sequel to my earlier Theory and Practise and Shocking the Family. It should stand alone, though.

*

"Hey," said Nina, "what's your opinion on nudity?"

I looked at her over the top of the book I was reading. "Is that an offer?" I asked.

"No it bloody isn't!" Nina snapped. Then she caught herself. "Sorry," she muttered. "I didn't mean to bit your head off. It was a straight question, though."

I put my book aside. We were hanging out in my room, supposedly both catching up on some reading, but Nina had been distracted and fidgety ever since she'd arrived. If she wanted to talk, I wanted to give her the chance. "Do you mean in movies?" I asked. We shared a lot of interest in that subject; it was what had brought us together. "Or paintings or something? Artistic nudity, like they call it?"

"No," she said, shaking her head, "I mean in real life. Public nudity, I suppose you'd say. Not just two people together in private."

I shrugged. "Can't say I worry about it much," I said. "I mean, I suppose I'd have to say ... it's just bodies, right? Everyone's got one. We shouldn't have hang-ups about it, blah blah blah. But on the other hand..." I pulled a face. "I guess, well, I don't think that the world needs to see my dangly bits."

"No, said Nina, sounding as though I'd given the right answer. "And there's the sunburn problem, too."

"Uh, pardon?"

Nina pulled a face. "I burn easily," she muttered.

"Oh, right. And you don't want to lose your death pallor, after all."

Nina stuck her tongue out at me, but I reckoned that I might not have been entirely wrong there. Nina took her Goth status quite seriously, when she wasn't trying to wind up other Goths.

"Anyway, why do you ask?" I said.

She sighed. "It's about next week," she answered.

"Uh, pardon?" I said again and blinked. Next week was when I was going to be meeting her family for the first time. She'd already met mine, twice, and got along with them pretty well, considering, but she'd seemed uncertain about inviting me to her home for the next vacation. She'd been quite cagey about the whole subject, up until now.

Nina sighed. "I've told you about my mother, haven't I?" she said.

"Well, you've said she's a bit of an old hippy," I said, and then I began putting things together. "Oh... Do you mean..."

"Don't worry," Nina said quickly. "She doesn't wander around the house naked or anything. Well, not when we have visitors. You're probably safe there. But she did spend years telling me -- well, what you just said, really. Nothing to be ashamed of, wonderfully natural, all that crap."

I shrugged. "So she's a bit drippy-hippy, but not totally crazy. What's the problem?"

Nina sighed. "Grace," she muttered.

I frowned. "Your sister?" I asked, and Nina nodded. She'd said even less about her older sister than she had about her mother, except that the pair of them still lived at home together. I gathered that her father wasn't around; apparently, there'd been a fairly amicable divorce, and he now lived over in France somewhere. "What about her?"

"She's a pain in the arse," Nina said. "And since I got into university, well, she's just got worse. She didn't put the work in herself -- she's happy sponging off Mum, helping with the pottery business, supposedly -- and I reckon that me getting away annoys her somehow. She can be a bit of a bitch sometimes."

"Sorry to hear that," I said, "but you'll have me around now. I'll try and help."

"Thanks," Nina said. "but this isn't one of those things you can handle with a quick technological fix, geek-boy. I'll just have to deal with Grace head on."

"I'll try and provide moral support. But anyway, what's that got to do with nudity?"

"Nothing, I hope," Nina said, drawing a deep breath. "Though I guess that Mum's funny ideas about freedom and honesty and being natural are something else I'll just have to deal with somehow, one day. Anyhow -- you know how you asked if what I said was an invitation?"

"Yes?"

"Well, if you like..."

"Yes?"

"Feel free to get nude. If that's what you want." And with that, Nina sat down, picked up her own book, and gave me a casual look and a shrug before she started reading again.

I sighed, stood up, and began hauling my shirt off over my head. This sounded like a challenge, and one thing I'd decided was best was not to turn down any of Nina's little challenges. It was probably going to get me into trouble, sooner or later, but the truth was, I was scared that Nina might decide that I was just a wimpy geek if I backed down too easily. I'd rather take a few chances than have her decide that I was no fun.

When I was completely naked, I just stood there for a moment, until Nina looked up from her book. "Turn round," she said. "Right round."

I obeyed, and she nodded and sat forward, on the edge of her chair as if to take a better look. "Actually," she said, "your dangly bits aren't that bad."

"Thanks," I said.

She reached forward, took my still-limp cock in one hand, and began caressing it gently. Then she looked me in the face. "Do you really fancy me?" she asked.

"Wrong time to ask," I said, as calmly as I could manage. "Answer's got to be yes..."

"That's fine," she said, standing up and shifting her grip on my cock, which was getting quite hard now. "By the way, you realise that I've been on the pill for long enough now?"

"Mmm," I said. I had been counting, in fact, but it hadn't seemed cool to say anything. "You trust me, then?"

She glared at me. "Of course I fucking trust you..."

"Yeah," I said, trying to stay calm despite how my cock was now feeling, "after all, you'd kill me if I let you down."

"Don't run yourself down," she said, now simply squeezing my cock firmly but carefully. "I trust you because you're a good guy. Not because I reckon I've got you terrified."

She let go of me, took a step backwards and towards the bed, and began unfastening the tight black trousers she was wearing. Then she dropped them and her black lace knickers together to the floor, stepped out of them, and -- still in the black T-shirt and red socks she'd been wearing, and for that matter without taking her glasses off -- she sat down and then lay back on the bed. I knelt between her thighs and she guided my cock into her cunt, without a condom for the first time.

"Mmm," she said.

"Feel any different?" I asked.

"Maybe a bit. How about you?"

"Yeah, a bit." I began moving carefully, the way that seemed to work, and her soft gasps suggested I was doing okay. She wrapped her legs around mine, and I felt the soft cotton of her socks against the back of my knees.

"You fancy me?" she asked again. "I don't have to be naked? You don't think I'm too skinny?"

I frowned. This was a lot more insecure than the usual Nina. On the other hand, I was kind of distracted by her arse, as my increasingly eager balls brushed against it. "You're fine," I managed, "just fuck me."

She suddenly grinned. "Already on it, geek-boy," she said, and sank her fingernails into my back, not hard enough to draw blood. I gasped, and concentrated on moving the way she liked and not getting carried away. Then she moaned, clenched me harder with all four limbs, and shivered against me. I smiled a little uncertainly -- she didn't normally come this quickly -- but I decided not to complain. Instead, I speeded up my thrusts until, within seconds, I couldn't hold back any more, and I poured myself into her.

A few seconds after I'd collapsed with a gasp, I rolled off her. Then I turned my head to look at her.

"Fuck," I said, "you're gorgeous."

"And this gets messy without a condom," she said, but with a quick grin, as she fumbled after a box of tissues. "Still, it's fun, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I said with feeling. "You and me together... We can handle your sister, you know."

"I hope so," said Nina. "Us together. Yeah."

****

But she still seemed a bit on edge, and she stayed that way most of the time, every day for the next week. She seemed doubly uncertain when the minicab we'd got from the railway station pulled up in front of the slightly shabby detached house, on the edge of a village, which I gathered was her family home. As we hauled our bags out of the boot, the door opened and a slightly overweight woman in her 40s, with large-lens glasses and dirty-blonde hair, in a linen dress and low-heeled shoes, came hurtling out.

"Nina darling!" she cried, "lovely to have you back!" The woman placed quick kisses on both Nina's cheeks, and Nina smiled cautiously. Then the woman turned to me. "And you must be the famous boyfriend!" she announced, gave me two kisses in turn -- she smelled of some kind of floral perfume with a mixture of earthy smells, and I realised that she had smears of potter's clay on the back of her hands -- and she smiled. "I'm Harriet, Nina's mother!" she proclaimed, unnecessarily. I could see some of Nina in her face, although she probably weighed twice as much as my skinny Goth girlfriend as well as being more than twice her age.

Well, she seemed a bit effusive, but nice enough, and she towed us indoors. "And this is Grace, Nina's sister," she announced as Nina closed the front door behind us.

Grace was coming down the stairs, and she fixed me with a careful gaze and a cool smile. She looked more like her mother than Nina did, although she was quite slim -- not skinny, though, certainly not where it counted. That fact was nicely emphasised by the skimpy red tank-top and hipster jeans she was wearing. She was brunette, with green eyes -- Nina and her mother both had brown eyes -- and she stared at me hard for a moment. Than she smiled, which was nice, swept down the last couple of steps, and gave me a quick hug and a peck on the cheek, which all felt even nicer.

"Hi!" she said. "You're the one who caught little Nina! Amazing!"

"Hi, Grace," said Nina from behind me.

"Hi, Nina," said Grace, leaning back from the hug to throw a one-second smile over my shoulder at her sister. I looked around; Nina's smile in reply was even less convincing.

"Looks like you've done good, little sis," Grace said, looking back at me. "He's really cute."

Well, that was something I hadn't been called before. I'm afraid I probably grinned stupidly in response. But then Harriet swept Nina and myself up the stairs and (with a very small but embarrassing giggle) into what I gathered was Nina's old bedroom. This was pretty much bare -- no surprise there, I knew that Nina had taken virtually all her old decorations and souvenirs off to university with her -- but the bed was made up and covered with a patchwork bedspread, and seemed comfortable enough when I sat on it. That left me looking at Nina.

"So," she said, "you've met Mum."

"Yep. She seems okay."

"And Grace."

"Yep."

"So -- what do you make of her?"

"I haven't had much chance to judge yet. But she was nice enough to me."

"Yeah. You're honoured. She doesn't get all hug-hug kiss-kiss with just everyone. Not at first."

"Right."

"What do you think of her looks?"

"Honestly?" Nina nodded coldly. "She looks great," I said, plunging into dangerous territory but knowing that Nina's bullshit detectors would go off at anything else. "Nice figure and all that."

"Right."

"But..."

Nina looked at me carefully. "But what?" she demanded.

"But -- she's years older than me, isn't she? She must think I'm just a kid. And she's exactly the sort of girl who's never looked at me twice, even without the age difference."

"Uh-huh?" Nina sounded interested at that.

"Yeah. Not that I'm complaining," I added quickly. "I've done just fine anyway, haven't I?" Nina smiled slightly. "But her being all nice to me -- well, perhaps you've made me too suspicious with what you said about her, but..."

"You're suspicious."

"Right."

Nina definitely smiled. "Fine. You probably shouldn't take my word for this -- you probably ought to call it all bitchy kid sister stuff -- but honestly, I'm glad you feel that way." She sat on the bed beside me, took a deep breath, and looked round the room.

"How does it feel to be home?" I asked.

"Weird. I dunno if it's home or not, really. I don't wanna be the person who left this place last year."

I shrugged. "What's the difference between you then and you now?" I asked.

"What?" Nina stared at me. "You know what the difference is!"

I smiled. "Apart from that..."

"No! Not apart from that! It's important!" She jumped to her feet again and faced me. "I like that difference!" she declared. "Stand up!" she added.

I obeyed, confused, and Nina stood a foot or so from me, staring into my eyes. She was wearing a black dress with a fancy multi-layered skirt, and suddenly she pulled that up at the sides, grabbed the hem of her knickers, and pushed them down to the floor. She kicked her sandals off as she removed the knickers completely, though she left her black socks on, then she began to unfasten my belt.

"Hey," I said, "won't your mother..."

"With any luck, Mum will guess that we're fucking," Nina said. "Knowing her, she'll approve."

It's hard to rebel against an old hippy mother, I guess. But anyway, I wasn't sure how exactly to respond as Nina got my trousers unfastened and pushed half-way down my thighs. My underpants followed, and she stared at my cock. Once again, she was rushing me into sex before my body could respond, but I caressed her head, feeling the downy, soft stubble at the sides where she shaved her hair away completely, leaving only the centre strip which she always wore in a bleached ponytail.

Then she took her glasses off and dumped them on a bedside table, and leaned forward. We were still getting the hang of oral sex, and I wasn't even sure if Nina enjoyed giving it that much, if only because I could be clumsy how I responded to it, but now she engulfed my cock with her mouth and sucked, hard. My cock responded predictably, and after moving her head back and forth a couple of times, Nina released it, stood up, and more or less threw herself onto the bed.

I took the hint and joined her, and within a few seconds, I was inside her. I was trying to be slow and careful, but she grabbed me with arms and legs and pulled me close to her.

"Yes, do it," she hissed softly. "S'lovely. Fuck me hard. Deeper... Ooh, yes, deeper!"

I don't think she actually came, but after a couple of minutes of this, I couldn't hold back any more, and she didn't seem to want me to. I came in her, strangling my reaction down to a soft gasp -- well, I wasn't sure if her mother or sister might be listening.

She grinned at me. "Your come-face is still hilarious," she told me.

I collapsed on top of her and gasped. "Just so long as you're amused," I mumbled after a moment to draw breath.

"Yep. And not a virgin any more, either."

"You haven't been for months," I pointed out.

"I just wanted to make sure," she said.

I extricated myself from her and made a feeble attempt to get my underpants and trousers back up. "Hope we haven't made a mess of the bedspread," I said, looking at Nina.

"Who cares?" she said with a shrug.

We wandered downstairs after a decent interval, and found Harriet cheerfully cooking and puttering around the place and Grace lounging around, watching TV. Grace aimed another smile or two at me, and I found that I couldn't help liking that. She also tried talking to me -- while including Nina in the conversation just enough not to look obviously rude -- but we soon discovered that we had very little in common.

Dinner, when it came along, was okay in itself; it helped that I actually like cheese and vegetable bake and home-made wholemeal bread. Grace, running out of stuff to say to me, turned to the other two.

"How's Sean?" Nina asked her.

"What? Oh, Sean and I split up months ago..." Grace replied.

"Grace is going out with Laurie West now," Harriet added.

"Well, sometimes," Grace said, and Harriet pulled an amused smile.

"I thought you went out with him years ago," Nina said to Grace.

"Oh, no," Grace said. "I did go out with his brother a couple of times... Anyway, shouldn't you be telling us about your time at university?"

So Nina told them about her courses, while Grace looked bored. I was glad when we finished eating and Harriet made coffee, Grace slipped off to her room, and Nina called some old school friends to arrange to meet up later that week.

"Grace had a few boyfriends?" I eventually asked Nina when we were alone together in her room.

"You have no bloody idea," Nina muttered. "Nor does Mum, entirely."

"She didn't seem like she'd disapprove," I said.

"You didn't see some of them. And Grace was spinning two or three of them along at the same time, sometimes." Nina flopped on the bed and stared at the ceiling. "Mum did tell her off for being mean to them, believe it or not. Just not very hard." She rolled over and looked at me. "God," she said, "she's as bad as I remembered, and I'm knackered. So come to bed, lover. I'm not up to any more nookie, but it'll be nice to have you in this bed. I didn't realise how much I'd like that, when I used to sleep in it before."

So I obeyed. I didn't feel up to any more nookie myself, but she was right about sharing a bed.

In the morning, Nina and I both woke up late, and ventured downstairs straight away. Nina dug muesli and milk and bread out from somewhere and we put together some breakfast. As we were eating, Harriet breezed in, wearing some kind of work smock. "Hi, Nina darling," she said. "Do you two mind amusing yourselves for the morning? We've got a batch of pieces due by the end of the week..."

Nina shrugged, and I nodded and tried to say something obliging, and Harriet swept out again. I finished my muesli and started making myself toast.

"What is there to see round here, anyway?" I asked.

"Not much," said Nina. "I ought to look up some old friends, but I thought that we could just chill out today..."

But then Grace swept into the kitchen, and I looked round and blinked. It looked like she was wearing a large towel and not much else.

"It's a lovely day," she said to no one in particular. "I thought that I'd go sunbathe a bit."

She strolled on through, and I got a flash of bare, tanned back down to the edge of a pair of bikini briefs. Then I saw that Nina was glaring at that back, and hastily turned my attention back to her.

"Christ," muttered Nina as Grace went into the garden. She gulped down the last of her toast, drained her coffee mug, and stomped out of the kitchen. I hastily finished my own food and went after her. She stomped upstairs and into the bedroom; I followed more carefully.

"I knew she'd do something like this! I just knew it!" Nina stormed

"What, sunbathe?" I asked.

"Oh, she just loves sunbathing." Nina hurled the curtains open, and I saw that our room overlooked the garden. Hence, I could see the topless Grace delicately lowering herself onto her towel. I tried not to get distracted. "She completely agrees with my mother about being confident in her body," Nina continued as I dragged my attention back to her. (Damnit, the fact was that Grace had gorgeous boobs.) "Especially when there are boys around. I guessed that bringing you home would set her off again!"

"You didn't say anything to me beforehand."

"I didn't want to get your hopes up!"

We stared at each other for a moment, then we both laughed, briefly. Well, I knew that this situation was manageable now. Nina hadn't lost her sense of humour.

"Look," I said, "I get it. Your sister is the pretty one who gets all the boyfriends, and she rubs your nose in that because you're the clever one who hasn't had many boyfriends before. And now she's trying to distract me, to prove a point or something. And your mother isn't going to help, what with her let-it-all-hang-out stuff."