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-------------------------------- Welcome to the Church of The Right
Reverend Cotton Mather.  This story is the sole property of the author, and
may not be copied or downloaded for the intent of profit.  Permission is
freely given for anyone to download or copy for their personal pleasure or
use, as long as there is no intent to charge money or barter for the
privilege of acquiring this material.

   ( 2001, Rev.  Cotton Mather
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   HARD PROMISE Rev.  Cotton Mather



   - 1 It seemed like such a good idea at the time.  Our anniversary was
coming up in a few weeks, and I had found a great deal on a vacation to
Bermuda that I knew my wife would really love.

   You see, six years ago, for her high school graduation, her parents gave
her a trip to Bermuda.  She traveled with three of her high-school buddies,
and it was one of the highlights of her life, she says.  Now, for our
second anniversary, I was going to surprise her with another trip to her
dream destination, a place she calls the most romantic place on earth.

   It's a lot easier, according to some of our friends who have already
started having their children, to just pick up and go when you aren't tied
down with familial obligations.  I guess that's true, because the deals I
see for people who can travel on short notice to vacation spots are very
good, indeed.  And this deal was better than even those, provided we leave
in two days.

   Naturally, I couldn't reach her by telephone, so I left work early to
try to catch her before she got too busy.  She usually got home from work
around 4:00, relaxed for awhile until she knew that I would be on my way
home, then start to make dinner for the two of us.  We would eat around
6:00, and she would run out the door right after dinner, leaving me to
clean up the dishes.  She's studying at night to be a chef, so our dinners
tended to be on the elaborate side.  My wife loves to cook, and she
considers it her sacred duty to make sure that everything she prepares is
done just right.  The result?  I've gained 10 pounds since our marriage. 
My work is sedentary, shuffling paper at a big insurance company, and I try
to exercise when I can, but my battle of the bulge is a difficult one.  I
still tend to eat like I'm still playing football, as I did in high school,
and our large dinners and changed lifestyle have conspired to change my
profile.  I do try to work it off a few times a week doing horizontal
aerobic exercises, if you know what I mean, and my little sweetheart is
always very cooperative, and even enthusiastic.  And I'll tell you, her
efforts in the sack must give her an even greater workout, since she's
exactly the same size now that she was when she was leading the cheers for
good old North High.





   It was her cheerleading, actually, that first made me notice her.  I
loved seeing her in those tight letter sweaters and short skirts, shaking
and jumping all over the football field.

   I was a junior playing on the football team, and I loved watching all
the cheerleaders.  I had a lot of trouble concentrating on the game when I
got to watching their backsides on the sidelines.  Every time one of them
would jump up in the air, I would catch a glimpse of white ruffled panties.
Drove me crazy, they did.  Of course, all the cheerleaders were gorgeous
and athletic, and a common conversation among my fellow players when we
were at practice or on the bench during a game was to rank the cheerleaders
(and all other good-looking girls at school, of course) in the order in
which we would like to bop them.  All during the season we would revise our
lists, taking into account changing tastes, how a particular girl dressed
on that particular day, or whatever rumor about a girl's reputation might
be running through the school.  We based our rankings on such things as
"boob-alicious-ness", how a girl used a straw or ate a banana, how easy we
thought she might be, if we thought a girl might be a screamer or a moaner,
her reputation in the school at large as well as in the locker room, or any
of a dozen other crude evaluation criteria.  Over the course of the
football season my list changed according to my mood: sometimes it was
Lisa, a varsity cheerleader who was a junior and arguably the hottest girl
in the school, who was at the top of my list; sometimes it was Micki, a
petite freshman with big, pouting lips who, it was rumored, was trying to
earn her way onto the varsity cheerleading squad by bedding any member of
any varsity sports team in school; sometimes it was Nicole, a senior who
was on the yearbook staff and had been a member of the student council
since her freshman year who, according to my buddies in the locker room,
gave her dates exquisite hand jobs on the third date - and no more, ever;
but always, among the top 3 on my list, was Melissa, a sophomore
cheerleader.  No "bad girl" rumors ever surrounded her, no innuendoes about
her sexual prowess (or lack thereof), nothing but a general admiration for
her All-American good looks and her quiet pursuit of excellence in all she
attempted.

   So there we all were, week after week, struggling through a mediocre
season on the football field, celebrating wins and consoling ourselves on
our losses in the same manner by converging as a group at Fabrice's, a
local pizza parlor that catered to the high school crowd.

   So there is where we all went after the game.  We would all be hanging
out at the local pizza joint, the team and its hangers-on around one group
of tables, the cheerleading squads around another, and a whole bunch of
other students who had gone to the game all around us.  And there Melissa
would be, sitting with her friends, always nearby, always out of reach. 
She had to have known that I was attracted to her.  All my friends on the
team knew she was always high up on my list, and they would certainly never
let a teasing opportunity go by without taking as much advantage as I would
let them take.  And she would always play it coy with me.  Looking at our
table out of the corner of her baby-blue eyes, swishing her long blonde
hair off her shoulder, crossing and uncrossing her long legs, leaning back
and laughing at some clever thing one of her girlfriends said and pressing
her sweater tight against her boobs, all the time knowing that my friends
and I were over there drooling over the vision of all that lovely
cheerleader poontang sitting there, not being used properly (in our
sophisticated opinions anyway), and hoping that, eventually, Fortune would
smile down on us and grant us a precious evening alone with the girl of our
choice.

   Okay, I admit it, we were young and foolish.  And stupid.  But Fortune
did indeed smile upon me one glorious fall evening that year.



   - 2 The night before our homecoming football game, the school sponsored
a big bonfire out on the baseball field, and most of the kids from the high
school were there.  The mood was effervescent, and my buddies and I
contributed to the manic energy by throwing huge logs into the fire,
laughing and showing off.  Later, off in one of the dimmer areas away from
the giant fire, a bunch of seniors from the football team were passing
around a lot of cheap wine in grape drink bottles, and most of the team was
gathered around.  Since the quarterback, a senior, was hot and heavy with
the head cheerleader, a lot of her friends were there also, including
Melissa.  Mutual attraction exerted its gravitational pull on both of us,
and pretty soon we were standing side by side, shivering and stamping our
feet at the cold, taking sips and gulps from the bottles as they were
passed around, joking and chatting with each other and with those around
us.

   By the time the wine had been by us four or five times, couples had
started pairing off into more private conversations.  I had my arm around
Melissa's shoulder, ostensibly to provide a little warmth, and our
conversation got quieter and softer and more exclusive with the mood around
us.  We were still just talking about easy stuff, about teachers and
coaches, dissing our friends, that kind of thing, but there was an
undertone we were both aware of, even if we weren't actually acknowledging
it.  By evening's end we were holding hands and laughing comfortably with
each other like we had been doing this for months.  Later that night, back
at Fabrice's after the bonfire, our two groups had merged, and we were all
sitting at a bunch of tables moved together, still paired up and talking
now as couples instead of groups separated by gender.  Brad, my best friend
since 6th grade, gave me a thumbs-up when no one else was looking.

   The next day was Homecoming.  The cheerleaders were all marching
together in the parade, and the football team pretty much stayed together
and soaked up the cheers and good wishes from the town.  It's a great
feeling to know that you are a part of all that good karma, and my buddies
and I really hammed it up.  At the game we all wanted to give back to the
town and the school a team "thank-you" for their enthusiasm, so we really
played tough, and everyone on the team concentrated on the game, so there
wasn't the usual goofing off on the bench that day.  I did manage to glance
over at the cheerleading squad when I was not involved on the field, and a
couple of times I saw Missy watching me.  It kind of gave me the chills to
think that she might like me as much as I liked her.  But the important
thing at the time was that we played well, and we won the game.

   A week later a bunch of us met at the local movie theater and paired off
again.  I don't for the life of me remember what the movie was because I
was so nervous.  By the time the opening credits had finished, Missy and I
were holding hands and paying more attention to each other's body language
than to the movie playing on the screen.  By the end of the second reel,
our knees were touching, and I had my arm draped around her shoulder.  She
leaned in closer to me, and stayed that way until the end of the film.  We
were still feeling a little tentative, however, which made us sit up a
little straighter than we would have otherwise.  My arm started to tingle
and fall asleep.  but I was not going to remove it, no matter how
uncomfortable I got.

   At the end of the movie, just before the house lights came up, I
painfully lifted my arm off her shoulder and started rubbing it, trying to
get some feeling back into it.  Missy glanced at me out of the corner of
her eye, and started giggling.  My first thought was What the heck is she
laughing at?, but I couldn't hold that thought for more than a moment
before I started chuckling, too.  It was kind of funny, I thought, to think
that through most of a two-hour movie I had no feeling at all in my arm,
this arm that was closest to this girl I was beginning to really like a
lot.

   We walked out of the movie holding hands, bundled up against the cold,
and joined our friends as we all piled into cars to go back to the pizza
joint.  Missy and I jumped into my friend Brad's car with about 6 other
kids, and she sat on my lap the whole way.  I was not comfortable at all,
seeing as how I had about 110 pounds of cheerleader sitting almost directly
on a part of me that was getting distressingly larger and stiffer by the
second, but I wouldn't have traded the moment for anything.  Missy,
meanwhile, kept on wriggling around, trying to make room for the other kids
also wedged into the car, and incidentally increasing my discomfort.  She
made no indication at all that she felt me rising beneath her, other than
glancing over her shoulder at me occasionally and smiling, but she
certainly had to have noticed it.

   By the time we got to the pizza parlor, I was in no small amount of
pain, and had difficulty straightening up once we got out of the car. 
Fortunately, my coat was sufficiently long to hide my erection, which
managed to spring up once Missy got off my lap.  Standing by the car, she
asked if I was all right, all the time trying to hide a rather large grin
behind her solicitude.  By the time I managed to stand up straight she was
already tugging me into the restaurant, laughing and joking with everyone.

   I imagine that nearly everybody remembers their first really good kiss.
My first really memorable kiss was with Missy later that night on the ride
home.  Sure, I had been out with other girls before, and had played
suckface and grab-ass with a couple of them, but even at the time I knew
that they really didn't mean anything much to me.  But that night, back in
Brad's car, it was just the four of us left.  Brad and his girlfriend
Lindsey, me and Melissa.  Brad and Lindsey had definite plans for later, I
was sure, and they were gracious in agreeing to drop us off.  On the way to
Missy's house, the radio was playing softly, and it was lightly snowing,
making it seem like we were the only people left in the world.  Even with a
center console on his car, Lindsey was leaning on Brad's shoulder as he
drove, and Missy and I had our arms wrapped around each other in the back
seat.  At least part of the reason we were so close was because of the
cold, but we both knew, also, that this night held something special for us
as a couple, that it kind of marked the beginning of our relationship.

   As we turned down Missy's street she turned to me, and her eyes were
soft and blue and wistful and irresistible.  I leaned over her, closed my
eyes, and we softly kissed.  And held that kiss for what seemed like a
year. Her lips were moving slightly against mine, parted just a little, and
her lipstick tasted of strawberries.  After we broke the kiss we gazed at
each other, both slightly breathless, both with nothing and everything to
say, all of it left unsaid.  We came together again for another kiss, but
this one had the strength of a hunger behind it, and our embrace was
tighter and more demanding.  She opened her mouth slightly and touched my
lips with her tongue, causing my internal temperature to flare.  I reached
out just a little with my tongue, touching tips with hers, and fireworks
seemed to go off in my head.  As Brad pulled into her driveway we pulled
reluctantly apart, breathing hard.  Missy's face was flushed, and she took
a deep breath, and said, "Wow."

   It's a moment that will live within me forever.





   By the time I came out of my trance Brad was in front of my house and
anxious for me to get the hell out of his way so he and Lindsey could head
out to their favorite parking spot, so I said my good-byes and headed into
the house and up to my room.  I was tempted to call Melissa right away to
try to make the magic of the night last a little longer, but decided that I
had better not call her house so late and incur the wrath of her parents.
After all, they were going to get to know me very well quite soon, I was
sure, as Melissa and I became closer.

   It was a very long time before I was able to go to sleep that night.





   - 3 And so it began.  We started hanging out after our respective
practices ended, talking for as long as we could.  Missy's mother would
always pick her up from cheerleading practice, and Brad was just as happy
to stick around and wait for me since that gave him and Lindsey more time
together, too.  Missy told her mom that practice was being extended by
twenty minutes, a little white lie to buy a little extra time for us.  When
she saw her mother's car pull into the school lot she would jump up, give
me a quick wave and a smile, and run down the drive so her mother wouldn't
see she was sitting around talking to a boy.  The good news about this
routine is I really loved watching her run down the drive.  The bad news is
that all the other football players who were still around also were
watching her appreciatively, which I didn't particularly care for.  Even
Brad, as seriously in lust as he was with Lindsey, took a moment out of
whispering in her ear to watch Missy run, for which he earned a killer look
from Lindsey along with a slug to his arm that I'm sure stung for quite
awhile.  And, to top it all off, I had a feeling that Melissa's name was
going to be added to a few more lists the next time we got around to
revising them.

   Missy's parents were very conservative and wouldn't allow her to go out
on a date.  Group activities were all right, however, so the next Friday we
arranged to meet, as usual, at Fabrice's after the football game.  Brad and
I had concocted a scheme to take off right away from the pizza parlor and
head out to one of the public beaches with the girls.  We made sure we had
some beer, some wine, and lots of blankets in the car.  Missy was nervous
about leaving her friends at Fabrice's, but I think she was as anxious as I
was about having a little time alone together, and that sentiment
prevailed.

   It was a clear, cold night.  We brought along a large pizza and ate it
in the car at the beach, popping open the beer and wine at the same time.
The windows of the car were steaming up from the pizza and the combined
exhalations of the four of us, and we were all as happy as it was possible
to be at that age.

   When the pizza was gone we all jumped out of the car, each with a
blanket or two, and we ran down toward the waterline.  There were fire pits
built into the ground and we found enough sticks and wood to build a small
fire.  The four of us dropped our blankets and ran down to the lake, where
Brad and I tried to teach Lindsey and Missy how to skip stones on the
water. Their efforts were pitiful, and we all ended up falling on the
frozen sand, laughing until our sides ached.  As we were lying there
catching our breath, Missy just naturally rolled against me, and I wrapped
my arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer.



   We all got up and headed back to our meager fire.  It had burned down to
mere embers, giving us a point of reference, instead of heat or light. 
Brad and Lindsey wrapped themselves under two blankets on one side of the
pit, and Missy and I spread one blanket on the ground and pulled two others
over us, covering ourselves from our feet up over our heads.  Within this
dark cocoon we were insulated from the cold and from the rest of the world.

   As we lay there we were facing each other.  I had one arm around her
neck, hand resting on her shoulder.  I unzipped her heavy coat and slipped
my other hand under her coat across her waist.  Gazing into my eyes, she
slowly unzipped my coat and threaded her arms inside and around me, then
lifted up her face to me.  She closed her eyes, and without saying a word,
kissed me tenderly on the lips.  Her lips were soft and creamy and again
tasted faintly of strawberries.  We separated momentarily, remembering to
breathe once again, then slipped into another kiss.  Her arms clenched, and
heat suddenly poured into the kiss as I felt her mouth open against mine
and the tips of our tongues met for only the second time.  I felt more than
heard her moan softly, and I heard myself growl as sensations I had
scarcely imagined began coursing through my body.  I couldn't seem to get
her close enough to me as my arms tightened.  I felt her leg reach around
mine as if she, too, was trying to remove some distance between us.  By
this time our tongues were wrestling with each other, first within her
mouth, and then inside mine.  We were both breathing heavily, sharing the
close air underneath the blankets, and the air temperature around us
moderated with our exhalations and the release of our body heat.  My hand,
already warmed, found its way under her sweater to the soft skin beneath,
and I pressed my palm against the small of her back, luxuriating in the
softness of her skin overlaying the hard muscles just under the surface. 
In response, I felt one of her hands snake under my sweatshirt and T-shirt,
caressing up and down my back and side.  I ran my hand up the smooth length
of her back until I felt the tight band of her bra, and slipped under the
strap between her shoulder blades, and pressed her even more tightly to me.
I twisted, turning her under me so that she was on her back and I was over
her, still engaged in our kiss.  My hand slipped back down her back, then
across her waist to her stomach, still under her sweater.  She broke the
kiss, and I bent to kiss and suck on her neck and earlobe, creating a
purring sound from deep within her.  She stretched her neck up, giving me
more to caress with my lips, and she brought one hand up to the back of my
head, fingers running through my hair as she pressed me closer to her
sensitive throat.  Her leg was still running up and down mine, her knee
creating contact from my upper thigh to nearly my shin.  Her breathing was
ragged as she pulled my face up to indulge in another open-mouthed kiss.  I
thrust my tongue deeply into her mouth, and felt her lips and teeth nibble
along its length.  At the same time she sucked in, drawing breath from my
lungs into hers.  My hand slipped up to her small breast, and I could feel
her nipple poking into my palm through her bra.  As I gently squeezed, her
breath caught, and she pushed my tongue out of her mouth with hers and
roughly entwined it with hers.

   I broke the kiss and we both gasped for breath.  She pushed her chest
up, pressing her breast into my hand as her mouth opened in a silent
scream. I bent to taste the skin at her throat again as I slipped my hand
beneath the elastic edge of her bra and cupped her soft breast.  She moaned
and ran her own hand down from my back to grab my ass and pull me against
her, her hips bumping against my erection almost of their own accord.  I
moved my hand across her chest, pushing her bra up over her small breasts,
and caressed her other nipple and breast.  I reveled in the shape and
texture of her flesh, marveling in the sensation of finally, actually
touching sensitive female parts for the first time in my life.

   I slid down from her throat and licked and kissed around the
circumference of her breast, massaging the other one at the same time.  I
took her engorged nipple into my mouth and sucked on it, causing her to
groan and hold my head close to her.  I opened my mouth wide and tried to
suck in as much of her breast as I could, until I felt her nipple against
the back of my tongue.  I then licked my way over to her other breast and
tasted it the same way.  She was moaning the entire time, and was slowly
shaking her head back and forth, lost in the feelings being transmitted
from her aroused body.

   Emboldened, I slipped my hand back down her as I was feasting on her
breast until I reached her waist and the waistband of her tight jeans.  As
my fingers tried to wiggle under the denim, she stiffened slightly and,
grabbing my wrist, said softly, "No, Ray.  Please don't."

   I acquiesced and brought my hand back up to play once more with her
turgid nipple.  I scootched back up and kissed her eyelids, her cheekbones,
her earlobes, and finally planted soft kisses on her lips.  As our lips
touched, she once again opened her mouth and stretched her tongue in search
of mine.  I squeezed first one breast, then the other, as our tongues
battled, alternately pinching and caressing each distended nipple in turn.
Finally, almost as an antidote to the intense heat we were generating for
each other, our mouths slid apart, leaving trails of moisture along each
other's cheeks, and our arms and hands left their caresses and moved to
each other's back, each of us pulling the other into a fierce hug.

   "Oh, Ray," she whispered in my ear, "I'm afraid."

   Surprised, I arched back and looked into her eyes.  They were soft and
doelike in the darkness of our hideaway.

   "Why are you afraid?" I asked her.

   She pressed herself back against me, hugging me, and didn't answer for
what seemed like a long time.

   "I'm afraid of my feelings for you," she said so softly I almost
couldn't hear.

   I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything.  I did kiss
her again, though, and it must have been the right answer, because she
kissed me back, hard.

   Just at that moment we both heard a keening wail that started low and
quiet, and built up into a very loud, ululating cry.  It seemed to come
from just on the other side of our fire pit.  It caused us to sit up in
alarm and look over at the pile of blankets just beyond the embers.  All we
could see was the pile jerking up and down, and then stopping as the cry
faded into the night.  When we realized that the sound was coming from
Lindsey's throat, we looked at each other and began to giggle and extricate
ourselves from our own twisted covers.  When the blankets fell off us, the
cold air hit us hard enough to take our breath away as we struggled to
rearrange our clothes and zip up our coats.  As we were getting up and
folding our blankets, Brad and Lindsey emerged from their shelter, clothing
completely disheveled.  They saw us and stopped, apparently having
forgotten that we had come with them, then looked at each other sheepishly.
They stood up, blankets around them, and hustled off toward the woods, away
from the dim firelight, to put their clothes back on.  They walked back
toward us in a few minutes, arm in arm, and we all started laughing again
as we packed up our gear into Brad's car.

   As we climbed into the car, Brad started it up.  We were waiting for the
car's interior to warm up, cuddled together two by two, when Brad said,
"Sorry about that, guys.  We didn't realize we were making so much noise."

   This caused us to break up laughing again at the ridiculousness of the
situation, four voices raucous in the enjoyment of their youth.

   "Just drive, Bucko", said Lindsey, giggling.

   All the way back to Missy's house we were holding tightly onto each
other, alternately kissing with a renewed passion and gazing wordlessly
into each other's eyes, until all too soon we were pulling into her
driveway.  Almost immediately her porch light came on, so she reluctantly
let go of me and slid over to the door.  She leaned back over and gave me
one last scorching kiss, then opened the door, and with a soft "Good
night", left me cooling and suddenly lonely in the back seat.

   I stared into nothingness, thinking about Missy and the evening until
Brad dropped me off at my house.