Message-ID: <59872asstr$1264810203@assm.asstr.org>
From: Uther Pendragon <nogardneprethu@gmail.com>
Subject: {ASSM} repost "Heart Ball" pt. 4 -- Uther
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Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:10:03 -0500
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IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 18, or otherwise forbidden by law
to read electronically transmitted erotic material, please go do
something else.

This material is Copyright, 2001, 2003, Uther Pendragon.  All
rights reserved.  I specifically grant the right of downloading
and keeping ONE electronic copy for your personal reading so long
as this notice is included.  Reposting requires previous
permission.

All persons here depicted, except public figures depicted as
public figures in the background, are figments of my imagination
and any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly
coincidental.


                           HEART BALL
                       by Uther Pendragon
                    nogardneprethu@gmail.com



Part 4:
Continued from Part 3


Having two personal problem to stew over and more than the
usual amount of homework Wednesday night, Shannon found when she
reached the Pollocks' that Kyle -- normally a low-maintenance
fifth grader -- hadn't been turning in his homework.  Instead of
burying himself in his room, he had to sit across the kitchen
table from her and show her his homework as he completed each
assignment. Kyle's reaction could have been have predicted; he
found ten times as many things to distract him, and her, as any
adult could possibly have found.  Half his homework was still
undone when his bedtime arrived.

She was rather frazzled when Steve appeared.  More than that,
this Kyle was a different boy; she no longer trusted him to sleep
through the night.  The house was a "ranch," and the door to
Kyle's room was not six feet from the living room.  When their
books were spread out, she led Steve into the kitchen before
giving him a welcoming kiss.

"What is this?" he asked.

"As much privacy as we are going to get.  I'm nervous."

"Where is a glass?"

"Here."  She got him one.  He ran the water, filled the glass,
poured half out.

"Now," he said, "we have a reason to be in here."  He had a
wad of tissues in his coat pocket just in case she would repeat
her delightful strokes.  That possibility was looking dimmer.

"You have a devious mind.  I like that in a guy."

When they kissed again, she began to relax in his arms.  He
felt her breasts press into his chest.  He left her mouth to
sprinkle kisses over her face, but the differences in height made
that uncomfortable.  He stopped on her forehead while pulling her
sweatshirt out of her skirt.  He raised it enough to reach her
bra clasp.

He liked the next kiss better, with her breasts a little
softer and an inch lower on his chest.  Even through her
sweatshirt and his clothes, he could feel the hardness of her
nipples.

Shannon never mentioned the annoyance of a bunched-up bra.
The alternative was obvious, and she didn't want to remove her
bra here.  The kiss was great, though, and there was always
something sexy about having her breasts swinging free.

Steve hunched down, hugged Shannon to him, straightened up,
and set her on the edge of the countertop.  After a little
adjustment, he was standing between her legs, and her face was
above his.  They kissed again, his tongue playing in her mouth.
He ran his hands under her shirt, up her back, and then around to
cup her breasts.  All that smoothness was against his palms; his
thumbs played with her nipples.

Somehow, the different angle made the kiss different for
Shannon. She had her arms about Steve and her face above his; his
hands were busy at her breasts but not holding her to him.  She
was kissing him rather than his kissing her.  At that thought,
she broke the main kiss to kiss his nose and forehead as he
sometimes did for her.  When she returned to his mouth, she
invaded it with her tongue.  She felt daring, as well as turned
on.

Steve's mind was concentrating on keeping his hands gentle on
Shannon's breasts.  It couldn't handle her tongue in his mouth.
His body, with no such limits, arched forward rubbing his
hardness along her belly.  Luckily, their clothing
interfered.

Shannon had felt his erection pressing against her many times
at dances, but usually closer to her rib cage than to her groin.
Indeed, those experiences usually marked the less erotic parts of
their evenings; and she'd always thought of the male reaction as
slightly humorous.

This time there was nothing funny about it.  This time Steve
was pressed against her mound, an inch from their having real
sex; and it turned her almost all the way on.  When she curled
her legs around him and hugged him to her body with all four
limbs, the action was only partly motivated by her realization
that they couldn't go further while pressed together.  Mostly it
was instinctive acceptance of her mate.

Somehow Steve realized through his fog of lust that Shannon's
lovely breasts were being crushed by this position.  He dropped
his hands from them and hugged her.  His left hand pulled her
hips towards him while his right petted compulsively up and down
her back.

They had to breathe, and eased back.  When Steve put his hand
on Shannon's knee, she loosened her legs.  His stroke up the
inside of her thigh tightened them again.  "I'm not trying to
stop you," she said.

"That's okay."  He reached between them to caress her mound.
They kissed again, but his fingers couldn't quite reach where he
wanted them.  Which was where she wanted them, too.

"Did you mean what you said about knowing that there were
things that you can't have?" she asked.

"I guess so.  What did I say?"

"I'm going to wear white on my wedding day.  Do you know what
that means?"

"You mean that you are going to be a virgin then."

"Will you respect that limit?"

"Of course, Shannon.  What do you think I am?"

She thought he was a male, a teenage male at that.  But she
didn't have quite the words to express that.  "Bring that chair
over here so it faces this way.  Then sit on it."

He wondered what he had done, but he obeyed her direction.
She hopped down and walked over to him.  She sat on his lap
straddling him, careful that she wasn't sitting on any part of
her skirt.  "Are you comfortable this way?"

He shifted until her weight was balanced.  "I'm okay."  More
than okay, the discomfort of her weight hardly compared to his
delight in her accessibility.

"Don't lift my top.  I don't want Kyle coming out and seeing
me." That sounded more limiting than she had intended.  She took
his hand and put it under the sweatshirt.

Steve couldn't kiss her breasts like this, but it was
Shannon's call.  Besides, she knew the kids; he had to trust her
judgment on that.  Her breasts were delightful, but he began
stroking her thigh after a minute.  She made no move to stop
him.

Shannon was actually enjoying this less than she had the kiss
on the countertop.  She'd jumped down, after all, so that he
could touch her between her legs.  Finally he did, stroking so
softly that it tickled.  Even the tickle was arousing, and his
tongue was delightful in her mouth.

Steve was trying to figure out Shannon's shape through the
layers of cloth.  He'd seen diagrams in sex-ed books and pictures
in the raunchier magazines; but all he'd seen of Shannon was the
mound, and that only once.  His curiosity didn't mean that he
wasn't enjoying the feel, of course.  He was also enjoying her
response.  She was breathing into his mouth, and he could gauge
every increase in her excitement by the raggedness of her breath.
Her hand was on the back of his neck, controlling the firmness of
the kiss.  As she would press her mouth more firmly into his, he
would press more firmly with his fingers.

Shannon didn't want to break this off, but her breast was
starting to feel sore.  She grabbed Steve's arm through her shirt
and switched it to her left breast.  "More gently," she said.

He felt guilty.  He *knew* that he should move from one
of her breasts to the other.  He touched her much more gently,
above and below.  Shannon broke the kiss and touched the arm that
he had thrust between her legs.  "Less gently," she said.  Then
she had to wait for Steve to stop laughing.

Soon, however, he was again brushing her nipple very gently.
Soon he was stroking her lips quite firmly through her panties.
Soon she, kissing him, feeling all of these sensations, started
on her journey.

Steve could feel more dampness through the cloth.  That must
have made his detection of her shape easier, because her lips
felt as if they had become larger.  The confinement of his jeans
was becoming a torture, but he could bear that torture for the
rewards his hands and mouth were receiving.  Shannon pressed
harder against his mouth and breathed more rapidly.

She was soaring.  He was taking her as high as she had ever
taken herself.  Then she shattered with a gasp.  Unable to
support her own weight, she slumped in his arms.

Steve felt her gasp into him.  Then he had to abandon his
stroking to keep her from falling.  She gasped an inch from his
ear for what seemed like a really long time.  Maybe it was merely
that his foot had fallen asleep.  Anyway, he figured that an
armful of Shannon was worth a little discomfort.

Finally, she gathered herself together and stood up.  She was
not quite steady on her feet, but better than Steve.  He didn't
even attempt to rise for another few minutes.  He was on his
feet, and considering whether to mention the Kleenex he had
brought for his own relief, when the garage door opened.  It made
an unholy racket, startling them into action.  Shannon fixed her
bra immediately; Steve headed for the other room.  His coat would
hide his erection.

Mr. Pollock didn't seem to be in a very good mood when he came
in, especially considering how much liquor he had obviously
consumed.  He paid Shannon, though, and accepted Steve's offer to
drive her home.  Steve would have worried with Mr. Pollock at the
wheel.  Steve thought about the Kleenex again on the short drive,
but there wasn't really anywhere to park.  Shannon stopped him a
block from her house to give him a big kiss.  He dropped her off
at her door, drove home, marked the mileage and gas level, and
went upstairs.

In his room, he savored his memory and the odor still on his
fingers.  He felt too sleepy, though, to linger on his road to
completion.  He still had the sticky Kleenex in bed with him when
he awoke the next morning.

 - = -

"Tell me, Shannon," Ken asked her Tuesday morning in
school, "do you think the ball for Valentine's Day should have
more slow dances or more fast dances?"

"Valentine's Day?  Definitely more slow dances."  For that
matter, Steve and she sat out half the fast dances these
days.

"Well, you know, if you were on the committee for that dance,
you could represent that view."

She laughed.  Ken might play the fool, but he wasn't one.
"Why don't you ask Steve to be on the committee?"

"I plan to," he said.  "I thought that he'd be likelier to
agree if you already had."

"I hadn't thought about us both being on a committee
together."

"Do think about it," he said.  "Frankly, there are places
where I wouldn't want a pair of lovebirds like you.  Get twice
the attention to the subject from one of the couple than from
both. But this dance is about romance, and *my* ideas aren't
going to be sufficient."

"I'll think about it."  She would also think about a new view
of Ken.  Student council was enough of a joke that having the
class prankster as president had made a twisted kind of sense,
but it had functioned under Ken as well as it had the previous
three years.  And the themes for the balls had been somewhat more
original.

English, her only class with Steve, was already over for the
day; but she mentioned Ken's question at lunch.

"We're both awfully busy," Steve said.  "And we'd have to help
decorate on a Saturday morning.  I work then."

"Well, neither of us has been what you'd call active in
extra-curricular activities, your chess club excepted.  This
might be sort of fun.  'What did you do in high school, Mommy?'
'I babysat, dear.' That doesn't sound like much."

The concept of Shannon with her children distracted Steve.
Would they be his children?  "You decide.  If you want it, we
can." He'd worked extra time for Hauksbee to cover for others;
he'd dropped the chess club because too many of their matches
were on Saturday mornings.  The old man would let him off for one
day. "Tell me what you decide."

Their conversation veered in other directions, and the subject
had entirely slipped Steve's mind by the time he walked into
calculus class.

It hadn't slipped Ken's mind.  "You know, Steve," he said.
"The ball for Valentine's Day is coming up.  I talked to Shannon
about having the two of you on the committee.  Frankly, when I
think of romance, you and Shannon spring to mind.  The school has
a lot of more demonstrative couples, but I don't think that their
idea of romance would fly by the administration."

"She told me."

"What do you think?"

"It's her decision."

"For both of you?"  Ken raised an eyebrow.

"You sure aren't going to get me on the committee without
her."

Ken didn't get to Shannon before the end of the day; he had
other people to ask as well.  The first thing he did was to raise
her left hand for an ostentatious examination.  "Steve said that
you are going to decide for the two of you," he explained.  "I
thought that I should check for a wedding ring."

"It's not like you think."  Though she didn't mind the
suggestion that it was.  "He said I could decide *this* for
the two of us."

"And have you?  We could really use your input.  The two of
you come to the dances, so you must know what you've enjoyed and
not enjoyed.  You show brains in class, which many on the
planning teams don't, quite frankly.  Some of them have brains,
but shut them down for class; even so...."

"I think Steve was just tired of your bull.  If I decide, you
won't bother him.  I haven't decided yet."

"You won't be disappointed if you decide to do it," Ken said.
Since she had no particular expectations, the promise was more
certain than Ken probably had intended.

Steve was still taking the bus; the weather -- while clear --
had been windy and bitterly cold.  This afternoon, however, was
still and only a degree or two below freezing.  You could almost
see the piles of snow receding from the center of the sidewalks
while you watched.

On the walk home, she could stroll and think about deciding
for Steve.  She had previously thought of marrying Steve, from
picturing him in a tux waiting for her at the end of the aisle,
to imagining a honeymoon with him, to considering what their kids
might look like.

She hadn't thought about couples sharing decisions; indeed,
for the last four years she had been anxious to get out of her
house and make her *own* decisions.  But her parents shared
decisions, especially about her.  She had a pretty good idea
about the fault lines, but seldom could use that knowledge.  The
last time her dad had spanked her, it was because she'd gone to a
horror movie with his permission after her mother had refused
hers. "You don't have permission," he'd told her, "when you cheat
to get it."  But, she had figured out even then, he wouldn't have
spanked her for sneaking out.  Trying to play one parent off
against the other raised the penalties.

The past few months, however, Steve and she had been sharing a
lot of decisions.  School was most important.  But was it really?
Several times, Steve had backed off because she wouldn't make out
when he expected her to.  Was that sharing a decision?  Maybe it
was just his realization of her body belonging to her, and he
didn't have a right to vote on what he did with it.  Even in the
meadow, when he had gone *way* over the line, he had let her
end it when she wanted to.

And, if it was her body and her decision, where did breaking
in on him in the bathroom fit?  It had been his body then.  He'd
tried to hide, and she hadn't let him.

She was thinking so hard that she almost walked into Mr.
Markham from two doors down.  "My!  Shannon," he said, "you were
really concentrating there.  What do you have to bother your
pretty head about, a pretty young girl like you?"

Her face flamed.  "I'm really sorry I wasn't watching where I
was going."  She ducked away before he could repeat his
question.

 - = -

Her mother was off showing a series of houses to demanding
clients and not due back for hours.  She'd left detailed
instructions for dinner, and Shannon started in on them
immediately.  Half an hour later, her mother walked in saying,
"They made an offer on the first house.  Now we have to see
whether the seller will come down."

"Want me to finish?" Shannon asked.  If she did, she didn't
have to do dishes.

"Let's work together.  We'll shove the dishes off on Dad."

So they cooked together, her mother actually taking the helper
role when the jobs divided that way.  The good feelings lasted
through dinner, which was dominated by her mother's blow-by-blow
account of getting the clients to see the advantages of the house
she had been showing.

Allison Bryant broke out the mint chocolate chip ice cream she
had bought to celebrate.  Next year, they'd be celebrating her
sales and Wayne's raise with wine again.  But she'd rather have
her daughter with her and stick to ice cream.  For that matter,
they let Shannon drink when she was home.  Better learn
moderation at home than taste her first booze in the company of
boozing fellow adolescents.

"Do you have a job tonight, Shannon?" she asked.

"No.  Not even a date.  I need to get on top of 'Romeo and
Juliet.'"  And Steve needed that more, although she didn't want
him getting on top of Juliet.  She felt her smile, and was
briefly afraid her mother would see it.

"I was just thinking," Mrs. Bryant continued.  "Your father
and I used to celebrate my sales with wine.  The ice cream was to
include little Shannon in the celebration."

"Gee thanks, Mom."  The response was perfunctory.  She knew
her mother only currently used the term to describe her in
earlier times.  Still, it was worth some response to remind her
she shouldn't.

"So.  Should I have bought wine for the three of us
instead?"

Well, Shannon appreciated the offer.  On the other hand, it
was a *big* bowl of ice cream, and her mother usually poured
Shannon half a glass of wine -- sour wine, to boot.

Wayne Bryant didn't like the idea at all.  He remembered the
wine less as celebration than as getting Allison in the mood for
the real celebration.  He could pour his own glass of Maker's
Mark when he chose, but his diet didn't allow for ice cream
unless Allison made the exceptions.  He looked longingly at the
bowl of ice cream until inspiration led him to the liquor cabinet
in the living room.

He came back to the table with a bottle of creme de menthe.
He poured a little on Shannon's ice cream, more on his own, and
passed the bottle to Allison.  She took very little.

"This is good!" Shannon said.  If she had known that her
parents had this stuff, she'd never have sampled her father's
whiskey back when she was in eighth grade.  Of course, if she'd
sneaked samples of this stuff, she might not have stopped so
soon.

They tasted chocolate, and mint, and a small celebration.
They tasted the good feelings of being in a family.  "Really,"
said Mrs. Bryant, "we're going to miss you next year,
Shannon."

"I'm going to miss you, too, Mom.  Miss both of you."  And she
knew that this was true, crazy as they drove her sometimes.

"We know you have to grow up and leave," Mrs. Bryant
continued.  "By the way, have you sent your acceptance in
yet?"

"No, Mom.  I haven't even decided *where* I'm going to
send the acceptance yet.  I have until May first, and there are
good reasons to wait till nearly then."

"I can't believe that you are considering going to the U of I
when Albion has accepted you."

Wayne Bryant sighed for the feeling of togetherness which had
lasted so briefly.  Maybe he could lighten the conversation.
"Well some people choose their schools for the faculty; some for
the student body."

"If Steven felt as strongly as she does about being together,
he would go to Albion."  The two of them were going on fewer
dates; Shannon had stopped campaigning for a later curfew.
Allison could see that the first intensity was wearing off; why
couldn't her daughter.  She turned towards Shannon.  "Maybe he's
right; maybe it's time for you two to give each other a little
space."

Shannon stared at her mother.  Steve had never asked for "a
little space."  A little privacy for immediate relief was the
maximum he'd wanted.  He'd never said that he wouldn't go to
Albion, though he had never said that he would, either.  The
point that her mother couldn't see is that asking Steve to change
colleges for her was promising to marry him.  It was worse than
accepting an engagement ring.  Break an engagement, and he had a
ring that another girl might not want; her mother wanted her to
ask Steve to accept a *life* that he did not want in order
to be with her.

And, of course, if they did marry, she wanted Steve to be well
prepared for his profession.  They would get more money, and
Steve would be happier.  He wanted to be a good chemical
engineer, maybe a good chemist.

"You know, Mom," she said, "if I had to choose today between a
future in which I certainly will marry Steve, and a future in
which I certainly *won't*, I'd choose the future including
Steve.  Just so you know what the choice is, if you make me
choose."

Allison couldn't guess what had brought that on.  The last
thing that she wanted was to make Shannon choose so young.  The
problem with Shannon's fixation on Steven at seventeen was
seventeen not Steven.  She knew that Shannon would never admit
it, but it was her happiness they worried about.  Steven was
great from a parental viewpoint -- sober, hardworking, reasonably
clean cut.  It wasn't as if he wanted to play baseball
professionally or even go to medical school; chemists were paid
well, but anybody who took the classes could get the work.

She would love to see them give each other a little space for
four years.  If Shannon still wanted Steven after seeing a
college full of boys, God bless her.  And if Steven's eyes
wandered, better before marriage than after.

"Well, Chick," Wayne said.  "I think you should consider what
your mother is saying.  But this is *your* decision.  If the
school will take you and we can possibly afford it, we'll send
you off and pay the tuition."  Which was, he figured, the minimal
expression of what he and Allison had decided years ago.

They continued eating their ice cream as separately as three
people can at the same table.  Strangers thrown together by
restaurant crowding would have related more closely.  Shannon
went upstairs to do her studying; her parents stayed behind.

Wayne suddenly remembered what Shannon was going to read.
"'Romeo and Juliet'!  Why can't the school system teach them
*The Story of O*?  She'll be planning an elopement within
the hour."

His wife wasn't amused.  "It's generous of you to promise her
the college fund that I earned."

"As opposed to the money which bought this ice cream?  And
this house, and the gas you put in your Taurus to take your
clients around, for that matter.  That's all *our* money,
the money that I earned.  Look, we agreed that your commissions
would go into college bonds for Shannon; we didn't agree that
they would go into a fund which you could use to blackmail
her."

"First she tells me that I am forcing her to marry Steven, and
then you tell me that I am blackmailing her."

"No," he admitted, "you are not.  If she sent a rejection
letter to Albion and an acceptance to U of I, you would agree to
her decision.  But you can't have it both ways.  If telling her
that fact is a betrayal, then you want to use that money to
persuade her to accept your school choice."

"I still don't see why they couldn't both go to Albion.  Do
you?"

"Yes."  He figured that, if Allison wanted to hide from the
truth, she shouldn't ask point-blank questions.  "If you want to
do something, something particular, you prepare as best you can
to do that thing.  You don't buy the generic-brand education and
pretend that it is as good as the custom model.  And employers
know that.  Go to the personnel department of a chemical firm and
say, 'I have a good, well-rounded, education; I want to be a
chemist.' They'll ask you, 'Then why didn't you get the best
preparation to be a chemist?' And the best preparation is
*not* in a small school with no great interest in the
natural sciences."

He could distinguish among her tears, even from her back.
They had been married more than two decades, for God's sake.  The
tears she took from the table were those of anger.  He finished
her bowl of ice cream before stacking the dishes in the
dishwasher.  He figured that he deserved the treat; he wasn't
going to get any other pleasure that night.

 - = -

Shannon did the minimum necessary on her other homework before
opening "Romeo and Juliet."  She wished she could look up the
notes in the big copy of *Folger's Shakespeare* that her
parents kept downstairs, but she didn't want it badly enough to
return to the front lines.  The language was such a trap, both in
its beauty and in its strangeness, that she'd read passages
without noticing what was happening.  This time, she put a list
of the parts of each scene down on paper, then she listed what
she knew because of that section.  The flow of the play started
to become clearer.

Midway through this exercise, she got a call from Mrs. Jensen.
They wanted her for Tuesday a week from then.  She checked her
calendar and agreed.  While she was downstairs, she did get the
Folger's and lug it upstairs.

Apparently families had *always* resented their
daughters' falling in love.  The Capulets, at least, had some
excuse.  The only thing that her parents had against Steve was
that she loved him.  And, for her mother, that he might interfere
with Shannon's going to Albion.  She should send an acceptance to
the U of I tomorrow; that would show Mom!

The problem was that she didn't want to go there without
Steve. And Steve might get into IIT.  Would he go to IIT without
her? Should he go to IIT without her, if it were her decision to
make?

Well, he shouldn't because that would tear them apart.  But a
degree from IIT might produce a greater income for him for their
entire lives together.  And would their lives be together?

At this point, Shannon realized that she was done studying for
that night.  She got into her night clothes and into bed to do
her worrying in comfort.

Albion was not that much farther from Chicago than Champaign
was. Either distance would require an overnight stay to make a
visit worthwhile.  With any luck at all, IIT would turn Steve
down; but she felt like a dog for even thinking that.  She added
a quick mental note to God that she had *not* asked for
that.  If they accepted Steve, the same conditions applied as the
ones on Albion which anyone but her mother could see.  If Steve
turned down his best chance at education to be with her, she owed
him permanence. (If he wanted it; he hadn't quite said that he
did.)

Ken had thought that putting them both on his piddling
committee needed a wedding ring.  Now she was making decisions
for both of them for their entire future.  Assuming that Steve
would go along, and she had to assume that for these decisions.
She could sure see being married to Steve.  What she'd told her
mom was perfectly true.  But she didn't want to make that
decision tonight, and it was likely that Steve didn't either.

And was it fair for her to decide in ways that she would
resent Steve's doing?  What if Steve had broken into a bathroom
knowing that she was there?  Of course, he was really in that
house under her invitation; but that didn't work.  She'd have
screamed if he'd interrupted her in a bathroom in his own house.
And that didn't even take into account what she'd known he was
doing.

Somehow, it was different; but she couldn't say how.  Steve
might well disagree with her on the difference, and it would be
fair if he did.

They could wait for the next step until she was ready; it was
still her body.  Steve could decide to go to school where they
couldn't be together; it was still his future.  She didn't want
to put the same demands on him that her mother was putting on
her.  She would even give him one more chance to back off before
she put them on the dance committee.

And she would apologize for breaking in on him and holding him
there without his permission.  That, however, led to her memory
of the sensations when she did that holding.  It had been hot and
firm, it had jumped in her hand when the stuff had spurted
out.

That, she realized, was how it would act inside her.  It would
not only penetrate her, it would jerk in her depths as it had
jerked in her hand.  Somehow, the thought was very sexy.  Her
nipples were suddenly hard, and she stroked them.  After she
moved her right hand between her legs, when her tension was
building, she remembered the moment.  Something inside her, where
that pulsing would be some day, pulsed in sympathy with it as her
time came.  Her mind was still struggling with putting all these
sensations together as she curled up to sleep, but she didn't
worry much about that.  Her body seemed ready enough.

 - = -

She caught Steve when they were leaving English the next
morning. "We have to talk," she said.

"Here?"  He turned in her direction.  Her next class was clear
over on the other side of the building.  Usually, she was the one
who didn't want to talk that time of the day.

"No.  We need to talk at some length.  But one thing.  Do you
mind if I sign us both up for Ken's dance committee?"

"Go ahead.  I said that.  But I didn't drive today."  Which
meant that he couldn't drive her home.  His mother, who was the
office worker for a suite of dentists, worked Saturdays but not
Wednesdays.  Sometimes Steve took the car.

"I'm sitting for Mrs. Green tonight.  Come over after
work."

That was news worth slipping half a minute late into physics
class.  All that earned him was a glare from Mr. Babaian and the
next question.  He had to fumble with his notes, but his answer
was correct.

 - = -

Shannon caught up with Ken on her way out of lunch period.
"You can sign both of us up," she said.

"That's great!  Thanks."  And he was off pursuing another
victim before getting into line himself.

In AP history just then, they were studying the election of
1860. The war itself would occupy the rest of the year.  Mr.
Peters took the whole period to deal with the Constitutional
Union party, which refused to discuss the slavery issue, even
though that was *the* issue.

 - = -

The Green brats were at war with one another.  She had to
referee three fights and patch up a bloody nose, but it was
better than when they were conspiring together.  She fixed dinner
for them while they bitched about the menu.  Each of them ate
twice what she did, and then complained about the meal until she
chased them to bed.  As a substitute babysitter, she assumed that
their mother was taking care of baths.

She took a second helping as soon as her nerves settled down.
Then she ran through her homework, leaving Shakespeare for last.
She made her preparations for Steve a few minutes before he was
due, taking off both bra and panties.  Somehow, she always felt
hotter in the time just before her period.  And, of course, the
consequences of going too far were less.  Not that she was going
to go too far tonight.

She looked out when the bell rang, and then opened the door to
Steve.  "Lo, what light through yonder doorway breaks?" he
proclaimed.  "It is the east and Shannon is the sun."  Meanwhile
she was holding the door open and getting cold.

"I'll kiss you," she said, "but keep those cold hands to
yourself."  Even so, his lips and face were cold.  They ended up
rubbing noses.  Cute, but Steve's was a bit runny.

"Want me to wash my hands?"  He figured that it had worked
before.

"Later.  We have to talk."  She pointed him to the other side
of the dining room table from her books.

He took off his coat; then he spread his schoolwork out while
he asked, "What's wrong?"

"I am.  Or I was.  The last time you were here."  She took a
deep breath.  "If you ever come into the bathroom when I'm using
it, I'll kill you."

"Okay, I won't."  He wondered briefly whether she would
consider that promise binding in marriage, but they never quite
used that word.

"But I did that to you.  And I'm sorry."

"Look, that's different."  He couldn't say how it was
different, but it was.

"I thought so too, but I couldn't really see how."

"Let me think about it.  Anyway, I accept your apology even if
I think you're making too big a deal over what you did."

She had more on her agenda.  "The way that I see it, either
we'll both go to U of I or I'll go to Albion while you go to IIT.
I don't want to be at U of I without you."

"I don't want to be anywhere without you.  But..."

"Yeah.  But!"

"How will you tell your mother?" he asked.  The trouble with
fights at home is that you have to go back there sooner or
later.

"As late as possible.  Now, why don't you go wash your
hands?"

He used the facilities first, then left his hands under the
hot water as long as he could stand it.  Instead of anticipating
the pleasures awaiting him, he thought furiously.  She was
standing by the couch when he came out.

Shannon found his tongue nice and warm, even if his cheek was
still cold.  Steve could tell from the softness against his chest
that she had removed her bra.  Instead of diving inside her
shirt, he clasped her face to guide her response to his kiss.  He
broke for air.

"About our last time here," he said while his hands began to
unbutton her shirt.

"Yes?"

"I would rather that you *don't* come into the bathroom
when I've closed the door.  On the other hand, you say three
things to me about... well, about things like this.  You say
'no,' and 'not yet,' and 'not now.'"

"And if that's all I say, how come you're so sure that you can
open my shirt?" she asked, pulling away from him.

"Oh, you say 'yes,' too.  Or at least give permission.  I
don't mean that you are always negative.  It's just that those
are the three negatives.

"Anyway," he continued, moving over to her again, "I want you.
Of the three, I will never say 'no' to you.  I can't imagine
saying 'not yet.' I might say 'not now.' So, your breaking in on
me to take us to another step is quite different from my breaking
in on you for the same purpose.  Does that make any sense?"

She'd try to figure that one out later.  "Kiss me."

He did.  Slowly, as the kiss grew hotter, he moved his hand up
her side until he was cupping her breast through the shirt.  Her
nipple firmed into his palm in greeting.  Shannon, he thought,
was right; this was much more important than expressing things in
words.  He gloried in her warm mouth and the soft breast in his
hand.

Shannon enjoyed the taste of his tongue on hers, and the warm
lift that his hand gave her breast.  She'd made a risky decision,
however, and worried still whether it was the right one.  Steve
didn't seem to be in any hurry.  That was good to know in one
sense, but her nervousness increased.

When he had unbuttoned her entire blouse and she was soft in
his arms, Steve helped Shannon lie back on the couch.  Even
kneeling there, he enjoyed another duel with her tongue and the
feel of her smooth skin against his fingers before he kissed down
to her breast.  Once sucking on the hard nipple, he allowed his
hand to roam down her leg and back up under her skirt.  She
clasped her legs together.  Didn't she want this?  He raised his
head to see her expression.

Shannon felt him abandon her breast.  She guessed that he was
looking her in the face, but she kept her eyes closed.  For
another minute, she kept her legs closed too.  When she eased
them open, Steve kissed the other breast before sliding his hand
forward.

He slowly stroked back and forth on her smooth thigh while
sucking the nipple, going a little further every time.  On the
one hand, he certainly wanted to clasp her panties; on the other,
he wanted to postpone the end of the evening.  Finally, however,
he brushed back to the soft concavity just above her knee and
returned more slowly than ever.  He stopped sucking to
concentrate on the first touch of her panties.

Shannon knew that his hand wouldn't stop this time, his stroke
was too determined, and too slow.  She held her breath.

He didn't feel her panties, however.  He brushed forward until
his hand was tickled by her hair.  Her legs came together, not
quite trapping his hand because there was still space just there.
"Oh Shannon!" he whispered.

She couldn't help clutching her legs together, his presence
was so ticklish, and so scary.  But it was exciting, too.  And
there was awe in his voice as he spoke.  She parted her legs to
give him more access.

He loved the warmth, loved the acceptance he felt when her
legs relaxed.  He could finally feel those folds he had guessed
at for so long.  But he didn't know what to do.  He stroked the
outer folds lightly, acquainting his fingers with her hair.  Then
another thought struck him.

"I don't have anything," he said.

It took a moment for her to understand what he meant.  He
thought that they were going to....

"We can't do more than this," he continued.

"We aren't going to do more than this.  Not ever.  I told you
that I would wear white on my wedding day."

"Well, I can't even do this right.  Tell me what to do."

She pulled him down for a kiss.  "The first thing is to be
very gentle.  I'm full of nerve endings down there."  He nodded.
She moved his head back to her right breast.  "And you don't have
to stop doing other things."

"Tell me when I'm doing something wrong."  But he kept doing
things right, first clasping her mound while he kissed over the
breast.  Once attached to her nipple, he slowly moved a finger
between her lips.  She was nervous about the moisture down there,
but his only response when he reached it was a harder suck on her
nipple.  He explored her with one finger in her valley and then
two.



Steve was about to explode in his pants.  He'd have liked to
see her, but touch was more important.  He recalled the diagrams
he had seen, the hard-core pictures of women revealing
themselves, fingering themselves.  He located himself on those
pictures as he would orient himself on a map.  He moved one
finger into Shannon, tentatively feeling the entry into her
ultimate secret.

"No," Shannon said.  That was too intimate, even for Steve.
Besides, she wanted him to stroke her like she stroked
herself.

Steve immediately pulled his finger out.  Now he'd fouled the
whole thing up.  Instead of Shannon's pushing him away, however,
she lay back.  He clasped her for another minute, taking that
time to kiss the smoothness of her breast again and lick around
the areola.  When he dared part her labia again, it was to stroke
the inner ones.  He had no problem remembering to be gentle with
these, they were so thin and delicate -- and delightful; but he
finally parted them and ventured into the wealth inside.  She was
wetter than before.

Biology was Steve's weakest science by far; he knew that the
ulna was somewhere in the arm, but would have one chance in three
of locating it on a diagram.  One aspect of human anatomy,
however, was imprinted in his memory.  He could locate the labia
majora, labia minora, vagina and clitoris on a diagram.  He could
even draw the diagram.  He knew that Shannon's moisture meant
that he was doing something right, that the two of them were
doing something right.  And it meant that Shannon desired
him.

Which meant that touching that moisture was its own reward,
but he knew that it served a practical purpose as well.  Gentle
as he tried to be, he was conscious of the grossness and
roughness of his fingers.  So he returned repeatedly to the pool
of lubricant and spread it upwards as he went.  The only thing he
could think to do was the same game he played on her legs.  He
stroked slowly upwards, returned, stroked as slowly but just a
little further.

When he actually touched her clitoris, however, he couldn't
stop himself from feeling all of it.  Shannon jumped, and he
stopped immediately.  "Did that hurt?" he asked.

"No.  Go on."  Now, his stopping had hurt, had done something;
but she could tell that wasn't what he meant.  She felt his
motions resume tentatively, teasingly.  He could have been a good
deal less gentle for her taste, but the gentleness was part of
Steve's care for her.  She could trust him, could lie back and
let him take her where she had only gone alone.

Yet, his slow tickling was leading her past that point.  She
needed something more, something now!  She hugged him more
tightly to her, pulled his face and chest into her breasts.
Still, his suction was soft, still he only licked her nipple
occasionally, still his fingers moved slowly -- playing around
her instead of rubbing the bump insistently.  She felt herself
moving against him, pressing herself into his hand.

But, somehow, it was too late to tell him anything.  She was
growing hotter and hotter.  She could feel perspiration bursting
out of her face and running down into her hair; every time he
licked a nipple, she felt a burst of fire in her breast; her
center burned like a furnace, and yet his fingers scorched her
there.  When he switched breasts, the fire ran to her toes and
lifted her off the couch altogether.  She pulsed and pulsed in
time to his suction.

Then his mouth hurt her nipples, the weight of his head was
pressing one breast and his chest was crushing the other, his
hands rasped her most sensitive parts. She pushed him away.

Steve had been reveling in Shannon's response to his efforts.
Her nipples had hardened to his mouth, her hands had pulled him
against her, her legs had spread to his hand's approach and her
groin had risen to meet his hand, her lungs had sped until he
could hear the breath rasp.  Her center had run with the magic
liquid.  The sudden rejection broke his rapturous mood.

But, from the end of her left arm, he saw a stranger -- a
Shannon he had never believed possible.  Her skin was mottled
from her chest to her face, and the facial expression was
stranger yet. There was a wildness in her eyes, a grimness to her
mouth; tangles of her hair were stuck to her face.  Then, as he
watched, Shannon reappeared in her own face.  It softened and
grew familiar.

He kissed her then, welcoming her back.  First her forehead,
eyebrows, hair-streaked cheek; then her sweet mouth which opened
for his as always.  There was only the faintest taste, almost
metallic, to remind him of the passage of that stranger through
the girl he loved.

Instead of letting his hand go, she relaxed that arm.  It
tensed again when he returned his hand to between her thighs, but
it didn't push him away.  He held that sweetness, warmly,
closely. He was careful, though, to keep his hand still.
Gradually, her arm relaxed.  With her mouth against his, one
breast pressed into his chest, and warmth radiating from her sex
into his palm, his own arousal returned.  The erection was in a
new position and even less comfortable.  He staggered when he got
to his feet.

She felt cuddled and comforted.  She almost pulled Steve back
when he got up.  Should she follow him in?  He'd said that he
didn't like it; besides, she was comfortable just lying here.  A
little later, though, the chill made her don her bra and
rearrange her clothes.

Steve thought of the Kleenex he had brought, but Shannon
didn't look as adventurous as she had looked the previous times.
In the bathroom, he sniffed her odor from his hand.  Then he
brought himself off rapidly using his memories of her rising
against his hand and of her face afterwards.  That face had
scared him then, but it spelled passion in his memory.  He was
determined to see that response again sometime soon.

When he got back, Shannon was sitting at the table writing in
a notebook.  "Look," she said.  "I shouldn't have done that.  I
wouldn't have if I'd known that it would give you ideas.  We've
done all we're going to do.  I *am* going to wear white on
my wedding day."  She didn't know why she was being so hard on
him. Maybe she was a little afraid that she was fighting herself
as well.

"I'm a little tired of hearing about what you'll wear on your
wedding *day*!"  He said.  "What about your wedding night?
Whatever you're wearing, will I get to take it off, remove each
piece of clothing?  Will I see my bride in her skin?"

She thought that she'd just heard a proposal.  She'd thought
of him as her future husband.  All this talk of staying together
was nonsense if they didn't plan to get married, but they'd never
quite said that.  He was rushing on.  "Will I get to kiss you?
All over?  Not just your face, not just your sweet breasts?" When
she started to answer, he held up his hand.  "Because, if that is
so, Shannon, there are a lot of things we haven't done yet.  I'm
not saying we'll do them before that night, though I hope so.  I
am saying that agreeing that you'll wear white to your wedding
doesn't mean that we stop here."

He had no idea where that had come from.  He wasn't going to
tell her that, though.  And he did want to see her lovely mound
again. "Did you look?  Isn't it shaped like a heart upside
down?"

She was lost.  He didn't quite sound angry, but almost.  She
stuck to the most important question.  "Are you asking me to
marry you?"  If he were, she'd ask for more time.

Was Shannon really so naive as to use preserving her virginity
for her husband as an argument on him without implying that he
was that future husband?  There was a limit on anyone's self
control.  He could wait for Shannon to be completely his.  He
certainly wasn't interested in restraining himself to see her
completely another's.  "I'm nowhere near the Christian you think
I am."  Turning the other cheek had its limits.

They stared at each other while she tried to figure what
relationship his answer had to her question.  Then she realized
that she didn't want an answer to her question.  She started back
on her homework.

He pictured a faceless stranger stripping a wedding dress from
Shannon.  His stomach felt sour, and he started to harden again.
Time for him to dig into his own books.

 - = -

But they kissed goodbye sweetly when it was time for him to
go. Shannon returned to her books while Steve drove home.

He figured that he had taken quite the wrong tone with
Shannon, but that his basic position was correct.  Shannon had
been controlling their making out, which was fine while she was
drawing new -- more permissive -- lines every time.  If she
thought that they had reached the real limit, then he should take
back control.  No rapist, he would honor her limit.  It's just
that they could do so much more without crossing that limit.

And, one day, those limits would be gone.  He lay in bed
imagining that day.  Hampered a little by ignorance of what
brides wore under those fancy dresses, he got her down to some
sort of underskirt while he kissed her breasts.  Then his current
needs overtook his imagination of their future.

 - = -

Shannon, meanwhile, stretched on Mrs. Green's couch with her
coat over her.  It had been quite an evening.  Steve, she
decided, hadn't proposed to her.  He just assumed -- as she did,
as Ken did, as even her parents did -- that they were headed
towards marriage.

It was also too late to argue about what he had said earlier
in the evening.  Really, he had said that they could *not*
go farther.  Merely mentioning it had scared her, but it wasn't
like he'd said that they would.  He had his own boundary; a
rather weak one, though.  He worked in a drugstore, after all; he
could get protection any time he wanted.

And what had he really said about her breaking in on him in
the bathroom?  He wished that she wouldn't, but that he would
never say no to her.  That wasn't the clearest statement he had
ever made.  She remembered his thing jumping in her hand; did she
want to feel it again?

And his description of their wedding night.  Now, she did want
to hear *that* again.  She wanted to have sex; her
reluctance didn't mean absence of desire.  She thought of it as
something that married people, all adults really, did.  They did
it instead of making out, or -- rather -- she and Steve made out
instead of sex.  Steve seemed to think of it as something in
addition to making out, and the bodice-rippers agreed with
him.

She was fairly sure she knew what Steve meant by kissing her
"all over."  Did she want him kissing her down there?  It was
rather gross to think about, especially this time of the month.
She knew she wouldn't allow it when she wasn't excited, and
getting excited meant getting all messy down there.  If he really
wanted to kiss her 'all over,' there were parts he hadn't touched
since the summer.  On the other hand, the books made a kiss there
sound out of this world.  Could it happen?  What she'd had
tonight, then more?  And sex was more after that?

She held the memory of what she had experienced that night in
her mind while she dozed off.

 - = -

They didn't speak after English because Mrs. Foster kept Steve
back to give him a warning.  The whole class had been confused by
Shakespeare in the beginning, but most of the kids who usually
got good grades were showing some comprehension.  Steve was a
conspicuous exception.  Shannon ate lunch with a group of girls
sharing half a birthday cake.

Steve found a table full of his friends.  They weren't really
geeks -- Jeff was even on the football team -- but they were all
interested in science and got decent grades.  All of them were
taking an Advanced Placement course in either Calc, Physics, or
both.  "Nice you could make it, Mr. Anderson," said Terry.  Steve
grinned and nodded politely.  The more he responded, the more
they would ride him.

"He heard I'd made another," said Dave.  The others passed a
disk apiece down towards Dave.  He gathered them up.

"Actually...." Steve began.  He hadn't known that Dave had
made another disk.  Then he thought again.  He rummaged in his
backpack until he found a disk.  "Sorry.  You'll have to wipe it.
Is tomorrow okay?"

"Monday morning, and you'll have to wipe mine too." said Dave.
That got a few chuckles.  His father had Adultcheck; his mother
had computer ignorance.  His parents had a divorce.  Dave
downloaded pictures every other weekend.  He packed a disk every
few visits.  If you lent him a disk, he would return a disk later
-- always off school property.

It wasn't the same disk, and you'd have to remove his files to
use it for storage.  If you didn't wipe it, of course, you would
see all those horrible pictures of naked women or of people
having sex.  But Dave wasn't giving you those; he was returning a
borrowed disk.  Whether that would persuade a principal, much
less a judge, was another question.

Steve was not wild about the pictures, many of which were
fuzzy. The colors seemed off, maybe because of his monitor; and
you couldn't take them to bed as he did the magazines.  On the
other hand, disks were a lot cheaper than magazines.

They all started to tease him.  "Steve doesn't need your
pictures.  He reads all those magazines at Hauksbee's."

"Doesn't need magazines.  He has Shannon."

"For as much of Shannon as he sees, he could read
*People*."

"No.  *Modern Bride*."

"Look," Steve said, "I don't read the stock at Hauksbee's.  I
pay for everything, full price -- not even a discount."

"The question isn't how much of Shannon he is *seeing*.
I see a Honda parked around after dances.  Steamy windows."

"So that was you creeping between the cars and peeping in the
windows."

"Get smart, Steve," said Phil.  "You're a senior.  You're only
in high school once.  Shannon's price is a wedding ring.  Find
yourself someone else, someone fun."

"Y'know, Phil," he answered.  "Sometimes I think that one time
is quite enough to be in high school."  There were some smiles at
that.

He'd thought about his a lot in the past couple of months.
"Most of the girls in this school will be married in a few years.
Shannon will,..." he couldn't use the name of Phil's current
girl, Tanya.  He searched for a name that he *could* use.
"Jennifer will."  Jennifer was an even more notorious slut.
"Girls like Shannon will; girls like Jennifer will.  And,
horrible as it sounds today, most of us will end up married,
too."  There were a few groans around the table, but fewer and
less heart-felt than they would have made their freshman
year,

"Now, Shannon is already taken.  But I don't see girls
*like* Shannon falling into the arms of a guy who says,
'Well I'm tired of playing with sluts; will you be my loyal
wife?' Maybe it will happen, but I don't see it.  I expect that
the one-guy girls will mostly end up with one-girl guys.  So who
is left to marry the Jennifers?"

"Do you really think that you and Shannon will end up
together?" Terry asked.

"I *hope* so!  I'll try to make that happen, but I know
that the odds are stacked against us.  On the other hand, look at
the prize I'm trying for.  A less than half chance at a lifetime
with Shannon.  Against what?"

"I dunno," said Jim.  "Life is now.  Maybe we will all end up
as old married people like Steve says.  But I wouldn't trade
experience now for a comfortable old age."

"Growing old doesn't look so horrible when you consider the
alternative."

"I'm not sure that Steve was talking about retirement living.
More, you know, getting married and having your own room in your
own house.  No more back seats, no more picnic blankets, no more
'What if her family finds out?'"

"You're taking all the fun out of it."

"I bet I could find a way to have fun going to sleep in a bed
beside a woman, waking up beside her.  I could find
*something* to hold our interest.  It would be hard, I know.
But I...."

"It would be hard, you *hope*!"

"I know there are people not much older than us married," Jim
said.  "Heck, kids in this school.  It's just that when I think
of married people I think of, you know, my parents and their
friends."

"You're here, aren't ya?"

"But," said Dave, "these days, when your parents go in their
room and carefully shut the door, they're just afraid that their
snores would keep you awake."

"You," said Jim, "are just jealous."

Everybody was quiet at once.  Teasing was one thing, this was
another.  Dave had asked for it, but he wasn't the only guy at
the table whose parents were divorced.

Soon, people were finishing their food or talking to those
next to them.

Shannon stopped by Steve's table on her way out of the lunch
room.  "Remember the first committee meeting is today after
school."

"I remember," he said, "and speaking of dances, Miss
Bryant...."

"We'll talk," she answered and hurried out.  She had to get to
the girls' to change her Tampax before class.

Steve knew that he should have invited her to the Friday dance
earlier than Thursday afternoon.  The invitation was a mere
formality, but his mother had dinned into him that formalities
like that were important to girls.  Still, it wasn't like Shannon
to react that way; she preferred to read him the riot act.  Well,
they would talk.

Steve got to the committee meeting early.  He was surprised to
see Mr. Babaian there, not who you'd expect to see as faculty
advisor for a dance.  Probably the teachers were required to put
in so many hours on Mickey-Mouse stuff.  There were small paper
hearts and saucers with straight pins already on the table.   Ken
ushered Shannon in.  He began talking before she sat down beside
Steve.

"I expect a few more people, but let's get started.  I'd like
to call this the Heart Ball.  To get in the spirit of things,
let's pin the hearts you see here on our shirts.  I would
especially like every boy here to have a heart on."

"Ken!" said Mr. Babaian.  "I'd hate to write the U of C that
you'd been suspended from school.  Even a one-day suspension
would mean that you lose your position as president of the
student council.  And this is a committee.  You may
*propose* playing 'Heart Ball' with this dance, but the
committee makes all those decisions.  I had to read Robert's
Rules of Order to be advisor to this committee, and I'll play
hard ball with *that*."

"Yes, sir," said Ken.  And he was strangely subdued from then
on. After a half-hour of wrangling over the name, Ken's
suggestion won.  The decor scheme, not something Steve thought
had many alternatives for St. Valentine's day, was not quite
settled when Ken had to call time.

Shannon waited while Steve got his bike.  "Look," he began, "I
know that I should have asked you to the dance sooner...."

"If we go to the dance Friday, when are you going to study?"
She did want to go to the dance; she did want to park afterward.
On the other hand, her period rather spoiled both.  And he did
have to study.

"Well, tonight," he answered, giving particular attention to
the bike he was wheeling along.  "And Saturday afternoon."

"You don't know," she said, "whether Romeo or Juliet is the
girl."

"Hah!  It's Juliet.  I think of her looking just like
you."

"I'll call you tonight," she said.  She called much less often
than he did.  She blew him a kiss from her door.

"Mom," she said at dinner, "you made me help the other day
when we were cleaning out the attic."

"After all, Shannon, it's your house too."  Allison Bryant was
surprised.  Despite a few complaints about timing, Shannon had
participated pleasantly enough in the workday.

"And that means that I should be able to invite my friends
over? Right?"

"Why do I always walk into these?  Anyway, who do you want to
invite over when?"

"Steve," Shannon answered.  "For a study date.  Tomorrow."
That shouldn't cause trouble, but who could predict her mother's
reaction?

"Fine."  Mrs. Bryant said.  If Shannon had to be with Steven,
studying was the best activity; and their house was the best
location.

"I'll clean up my room tonight,"  Shannon said.

"Now dear."

"Then where are we going to study?"  Her parents pretty much
monopolized the living room evenings.

"I think we can allow you a little space, dear," Mrs. Bryant
said.  "Could we watch the TV in our room, Wayne?"

"Sure."  It was really the only solution, not that he couldn't
see through Shannon's manipulations.

"Invite him to dinner first if you wish," Allison finished the
subject.

 - = -

The snow was already coming down, having deposited an inch of
a threatened six, when Steve arrived in his mother's car.  He was
dressed in a suit.

The conversation at dinner reminded Shannon of the lecture on
the Constitutional Union Party, which proposed to solve the
slavery issue in 1860 by not discussing it.  Everybody studiously
avoided the topic of Albion College.  By that time, her mother
was avoiding the topic of the U of I even when she had Shannon
alone. They spent more time on the dance committee than it
deserved, and her mother expressed pleasure at their social
success.  Shannon didn't mention that the prime requirement for a
senior to be on a dance committee was willingness.

"I'm interested in synthetic chemistry," Steve answered a
question.  "I want to make things.  There are a lot of career
decisions within that field, but there is no sense in trying to
make them when I don't have the knowledge.  Even so, I suspect
that I would enjoy almost any phase of that."

Later, he helped Shannon clear the table.  Her mom filled the
dishwasher.  "Mom," Shannon asked when that task was done, "can
Steve use the *Folger's*?"

Allison Bryant was perplexed and a little annoyed.  Steven was
welcome to the coffee that was sitting in the pot, and he had
turned that down at dinner.  But she thought that guests
shouldn't express a brand preference; this wasn't a restaurant.
"I don't think we have any, dear."

"It's right there in the bookshelf."

Oh that.  It was Wayne's book, they should ask him.  Why the
hell should they?  "That's perfectly all right, Steven.  Help
yourself."

"Shannon asked me to lend your copy of Shakespeare to Steven,"
she told Wayne in the bedroom.  "I told them to go ahead.  After
all, what's mine is yours.  *Isn't it?*"

"I brought my copy," Steve was telling Shannon downstairs.
"I don't have to borrow your mother's."

"Much better notes," she said and walked over to kiss him
briefly.  "That's for your performance at dinner.  Tonight we're
operating under the positive reinforcement principle."

"In that case, I deserve a longer kiss than that one.  I feel
like I was being interviewed for the position of son-in-law."

"How do you think you did?"

"Didn't seem in any hurry to fill the position."

"Anyway," Shannon said, "the *Folger's* comes later.
Look in your book.  What happens in Act One, Scene One?"  She
kept standing while he sat down.

"Well first these two guys," he glanced down at the book,
"Samson and Gregory, trade insults."  He'd needed to read that
passage a dozen times to get those insults, and some of them
still went over his head.  "And then they,..." well, they tell a
dirty joke, but he could skip that, "they pick a fight with guys
from the other side.  And then...."

"Steve," their first kiss was scheduled for his identification
of the parts of that scene.  He might be there the whole night
before that kiss.  "It's nice that you're reading the book now,
but you were supposed to have read it earlier.  What are the
three things that happen in the first scene?"

He looked at the book to check where that scene ended.  "There
is a fight, the Prince breaks it up, and Romeo shows up."  A
*lot* of things happened in that scene.

She was about to correct him.  Her notes put the prince in the
first third, Lady Montague's description of Romeo mooning about
in the second -- Steve had missed that completely.  Then she
realized that if Steve didn't remember Mrs. Foster's summaries,
he wouldn't remember hers either.  He needed to learn to do
summaries.  "Okay, write that down on this card, leaving a third
of the lines after each statement.  This card is for this scene."
She handed him a three-by-five card.

When he'd written it down, she put a finger on his chin to
tilt his head up.  She kissed him.

The card was already labeled "Act I, scene 1" in her pretty,
if not very neat, script.  He filled out the information with the
lettering he'd learned in drafting class.  Her kiss was sweet,
but a little grade-schoolish.  He reached out to pull her in to
it.  She pulled away.

"No hands, no hands at all.  If my father came down and saw
your hands on me, he'd throw you out and call the cops.  Now what
do we learn in the first part of the scene?"

His answer earned him another kiss.  Finally, she asked: "And
what do we learn in the third part of the scene?"

"About Romeo."

"And what about Romeo?"  She felt that she was pulling it out
of him.  Telling him would have been so much easier.

"Why he was so melancholy." At her exasperated look he
continued, "It was because he was in love."

"In love with who?"

"With Juliet, of course.  No.  With...."  He scanned the page
but couldn't find the name.  Shannon looked like she was going to
cry.

"Fair Rosalind."  She had so looked forward to his positive
reinforcement, too.  Besides, Mrs. Foster had covered that, and
it was the entire point of the play.  Well, she would give him a
chance.  "Extra credit.  Closed book.  What were the
families?"

That he could do.  "Montague and Capulet.  RoMeo Montague," he
emphasized, "and JuliET CapuLET."  Shakespeare confused the issue
with all of this fancy language and byplay, but the dramatis-
whatever in front had been in plain English.

Those had been three of her planned extra-credit questions.
Shannon figure he certainly deserved a reward.  "Stand up with
your hands behind your back."

She pulled his head down into a kiss.  Lip met lip, breast met
chest, tongue met tongue.  Steve, with his mouth invaded and the
touch on his chest much softer than when he was in control,
hardened immediately.  What Shannon felt was not a roll of flesh
pressing out from his stomach; it was still pointing down but
felt hard as wood.  She twisted her belly against it and stepped
back.

He visited the downstairs john to readjust his clothes, coming
back with the jockeys pulled up high enough under his trousers to
keep the semi-erect member pointing in the right direction.

"Now," she said, "are you ready to deal with Scene Two?"  They
got back to work, and that scene was shorter.

Wayne Bryant rose while the closing credits to "Norm" were
playing.  With any luck, he could make both the bathroom and the
kitchen before "CSI" got into the actual plot.

"And the last half of Scene Three," Shannon asked, "what does
that tell us?"

"Her parents are pushing her towards this Paris guy."  Steve
was starting to get the hang of this.

"Oh Steve!"  And she had thought that he was starting to see.
"This is what the play means!  Shakespeare tells us that she has
never been in love at all.  Her parents want her to love Paris,
and she'll give it a try.

"On the morning before Romeo wanders into her garden
complaining of the fate that deprives him of Juliet, he roams the
outskirts of town complaining of being deprived of another woman.
He is in love with being in love, but she....  But her love is
genuine. She has never been in love at all."  Steve clearly
didn't know the play, but how could he have missed
*that*?

Steve felt accused.  Hell, he felt guilty.  He just couldn't
figure out what the crime was.  He hadn't wandered the outskirts
bemoaning another love.  "And I wasn't your first love," a voice
sounded in his head.  He almost said it aloud, "How about
Curt?"

Wayne saw them as he came downstairs.  She was standing about
four feet from where Steven was sitting.  The emotion between
them was thick enough to cut with a knife, and quite different
from what he had expected.  He went to the kitchen for a can of
mixer and a glass, stopped for the whiskey from the liquor
cabinet, and went back upstairs without hearing either of them
say one word.

When her father had retreated from his intrusion, Shannon
sighed. Steve had to know the test details, even if he overlooked
the point of the play.  "Okay," she said, "what happens in Scene
Four?"

Although her reinforcement got more positive during Act Two,
Shannon could tell that Steve had passed his limit well before
they got to Scene Six.  And the class was in the middle of Act
Four!  "Well, here are the rest of the cards.  Don't come to Mrs.
Green's tomorrow unless you have Act Three filled out."  It was
too late for the Folger's; Steve didn't need any more facts
tonight.  They could try the language.  "Do you want to act out
the balcony scene?"

This was the first that Steve had heard about Mrs. Green's.
But that was all right, he'd find a way to study his other
subjects on Sunday.  And anything, let alone the balcony scene,
was better than filling out another card.

Wayne was thinking about getting the mixer for another drink
when the sounds reached them from downstairs.  "What light
through yonder window breaks?  It is the east, and Juliet is the
sun."

"It's good that he wants to go into engineering," he told
Allison.

She chuckled.  "He does sound like a ham."  It was the warmest
moment they had had together in more than a week.  He put his
hand over to her bed.  She held it until he got up.  They
couldn't go any further.  After all, both were fully dressed; and
Shannon was not only still up -- Steven was visiting her.

He got up.  He'd go around the kids and get another can of
diet ginger ale.  He was silently cursing his diet when he got to
the head of the stairs.  Shannon was, reasonably enough, using
the stairs as her balcony.  He retreated to the doorway of his
room. He didn't mind the kids declaring their love, so long as
they were on different levels.  Besides, he could hear Shannon
from where he stood.  She wasn't bad, not projecting like an
actress, but not hamming it up like Steven either.  He'd seen the
book in her hand, but she *sounded* like she knew her
lines.

Steve had long had that first speech by heart, the second less
so.  And, after he had sailed upon the bosom of the air, he had
to sail upon the bosom of the book.  That was fairly choppy
sailing.  He, having most of the longer speeches, could rarely
even look at her.  Still, it was fun; and it was a chance to
declare his love in a way that would have been utterly mawkish if
they hadn't been playing parts.  Finally, he read, "O, wilt thou
leave me so unsatisfied?"  She didn't respond.

When he looked up, she was grinning impishly and slowly
nodding up and down.  Tease!  He slid his book through the
bannisters to have both hands free, then seized the hand she had
resting on the rail.  He kissed the back, kissed down her middle
finger to the end, and then kissed the end of the other fingers
as well.  When he looked up, she looked pleased but embarrassed.
He drew the index finger into his mouth for a gentle suck and
lick.

Her first thought was where her hand had been.  She would have
washed it before putting it on one end of a spoon whose other end
would go in her mouth.  But the kisses were exciting
nevertheless.  By the time that he was licking and sucking her
palm, her nipples hardened.  And then her father came out.

The recitation was over.  Wayne figured that he could get his
mixer now.  Steven was still hamming it up when he got to the top
of the stairs, kissing Shannon's hand.  He knew it was a real
kiss pretending to be a Shakespearean kiss, but so what?  They'd
done worse on his front step for the neighbors to see, and God-
knew-what in Steven's car.  His daughter rushed past him up the
stairs to the bathroom, while Steven pulled his book off the
stairway.

When he came back from the kitchen, he told Steven, "I don't
mind your borrowing my Shakespeare, but be sure to bring it back.
Okay?"  On the other hand, he could keep the book at home if he
let Shannon alone.  But Wayne could see that this wasn't in the
cards; Shannon was flying out of the nest sometime soon.  Getting
rid of Steven would disappoint her -- he could still remember the
month after she dumped Curt, but it wouldn't keep her in the
nest.

"Uh?  Sure I will."  When Shannon got back he told her, "He
says that I can use the Shakespeare, but I should put it
back."

She couldn't see what was so important about putting it back
in the same place.  She'd already used it, and put it back in the
hole she'd made removing it; but her father hadn't said a word
about that.  "It's too late for the footnotes tonight."

Parting was more sweet than sorrow.  She flowed into his arms,
put both hands on the back of his neck, opened her mouth for his
kiss.  When he clutched her hips and placed his leg between hers,
she arched a bit to reduce the pressure on her too- sensitive
breasts.  That increased the pressure of her groin on his thigh.
His tongue played with hers, and she rubbed against his leg.  Her
belly warmed; her nipples firmed. She felt lovely, though there
was no danger of the desire spiraling out of control.

They stopped saying good night, however, long before it was
morrow.  It was, indeed, well before her eleven-o'clock curfew
that he drove home.  Now how would he do his other homework and
still have time for this?  Well, he could do the calculus
tonight.


Continued in Part 5
Heart Ball
Uther Pendragon
nogardneprethu@gmail.com
2001/01/18
2003/01/23
2010/01/29

 all my stories can be found at:
/~Uther_Pendragon/index.htm
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