Jonathan was droning on and on, and Mae just couldn’t force herself to pay attention to him any longer. She started to think about the events, so very long ago, that had led up to her meeting Jon. Mae’s parents had decided they wanted fresh air and open spaces, so they got some land and a secluded house on the edge of thirteen acres of woods. Soon after they bought it, they realized it had been cheap because the house was falling apart, it didn’t have indoor plumbing, not that worked at least, and the foundation and roof both had more holes than a sieve. Her parents gave the house a lick and a promise, and they moved in late that spring.
Mae finished third grade in the city, and her parents decided she would start that fall at the school in Firerock, the nearest town, although how it could lay claim to the name town was beyond anyone’s comprehension. She had to start at a new school where everyone was related to everyone else, even if it was six generations back, and they were all wary of anyone they didn’t know. But when they heard where she lived, they rushed to outdo each other with stories of why her house was the only one within fifteen miles of the ‘haunted’ forest. There were lots of different stories, but there were a few that they all seemed to know some version of.
One of these was a story about three young sisters who were triplets, identical except for the color of their eyes. They were playing in a field, and their brother was supposed to be watching them, but he was busy with a neighbor girl who had come to help with the harvest. When he remembered to look for them, it was after sunset, and although the family and friends looked as long as they could, the triplets were nowhere to be found. The girls were found the next morning, at the edge of the trees, and at least four people said that they had stood in that exact spot the night before looking for the girls.
The sisters were in each other’s arms, cuddled up like they were every morning when their mother woke them. With no marks to indicate how they died, and it not having been cold enough the night before for them to die of exposure, it didn’t take long for the rumors to start. All the locals said the forest gods had been angered that they had not been sacrificing to it lately and had taken its sacrifice. The girl’s family moved away very suddenly one day soon after, not taking anything with them and everyone was sure that the girls had gotten their revenge for the inattention that had killed them.
Mae was shocked to hear this story. She had spent the summer running around in the trees, playing childish games with the people she met there, and the triplets had been her chief playmates. An adult would have known instantly, had the adult been able to see them, but Mae was only seven, too young to understand that her friends among the trees weren’t alive. She made the mistake of saying that she had spent the summer playing with the triplets, and in the way of the small minded, she was instantly ostracized for being different. After that, no matter what she did, none of the students would accept her, as the story spread from the lowliest kindergartner to the snobbiest senior within days.
Almost every person who heard the story told their families, and since it was the parents who had instilled such close-mindedness in their children, it took less than a week for her whole family to be pariahs. Mae’s father was trying to get a job in town, but he wasn’t having much luck. When one of the storeowners looked at his job history and said, "You’ve got that daughter what sees things, ain’t ya? There’s no job here for you." it didn’t take long for the old man to blame Mae for his failure. It never occurred to him that it might be his own lack of skill preventing him from finding employment. So much the easier to blame his by then eight year old child.
Her life from the time she had been brought to Firerock until the time she met Jonathan could be easily summed up. She attended a school where she didn’t learn anything really new until sixth grade because she had been in the gifted and talented program from first to third grades at her school in the city. The small town school was extremely underfunded and understaffed, the two circumstances resulting in her not having to study or even pay attention in class for a few years. Those were years which Mae spent either with her nose in a book, or running half feral in the woods. Even when they finally did get to things she hadn’t already learned, three years later, Mae discovered that if she simply read the chapter the night before, she could ace the test, and generally get the highest score in the class.
Not actually having to be there when the teacher explained things resulted in her having the worst attendance record of anyone in the school, an even worse record than the kid who got run over by a tractor and spent three months in the hospital. The thing that astounded her teachers and the other students no end was the fact that if you just counted her test and report scores, she had a straight A average, not a hundred percent, but ninety six percent. Even if you averaged in all her missed homework, she still got a seventy-three, and that was when the teacher wouldn’t tell her ahead of time what the homework was going to be.
Starting the second quarter of sixth grade, all the teachers wrote on the board at the beginning of each new section what the homework would be, and when the test would be. When asked about it, they said it was a new policy, but the only classes most of them did it in were ones that Mae was in. A few carried it over to other classes, but not many. After that, Mae always did all the work, and the rest of the years she was at that school, she never once finished a quarter with anything less than straight A’s.
Her father had ended up having to get a job in the nearest big city, a two and a half hour drive if you did sixty five m.p.h. the whole way, so he only came home on weekends. Her mother worked two jobs in a nearby college town, and was gone by nine each morning, and didn’t get home until at least eleven, usually later, and on occasion she would just stay the night at the house of one of the women she worked with, and considered friends. Most of the time, she would go to the city for the weekend to be with Mae’s father, so Mae was alone a lot, and had to grow up and learn to take care of herself long before she should have. Mae’s mom didn’t care if Mae went to school, as long as she kept her grades up, and since Mae always did, there was no reason for her mother to even notice her.
Mae’s father had surprisingly enough gotten a fairly high paying job; so the family didn’t need the extra money from her mother’s first job, let alone her second. There was always plenty of money for anything Mae wanted, and she had her own credit card at the age of 9. Since her mother felt so guilty about leaving her alone so much, Mae had more stuff than she could ever want, and she always had a wad of cash shoved in her pocket. Everyone in and around Firerock knew just how often Mae was alone, and how much money her parents gave her, and they all expected her to be a real wild child, having parties until all hours of the night, things like that. But Mae wasn’t like that at all.
Mae much preferred to keep herself apart, at least from anyone alive, though she was wise enough to know it wasn’t all people she wanted to avoid, just the ones she was likely to encounter near Firerock. Until she could go somewhere she wouldn’t be ostracized for being different; and the longer she stayed in Firerock, the more she doubted such a place existed; until then, she just wanted to be left alone in the woods with her friends.
Mae’s friends were all dead, and some of them weren’t sure if they had ever been alive. They were as vast and varied as the trees, and indeed, some of them were spirits of the trees. Not of the kind of trees that were there now, although the wood did still have some magic, just enough to sustain the spirits that chose to reside there. No, they were spirits of the ancient trees, the kind that don’t even exist as fossils, that barely exist as legends. These were spirits of the kind of trees that grew so large that an entire family could be born, live, and die without ever leaving the safety of the branches.
Mae knew, or had at least met, almost all the spirits of the forest. They wanted to meet her, because it was so rare for a human to see them, and even more rare for a human to accept what was Seen. And knowledge of their presence gave them Power, and without Power, even the forest could not sustain them forever. In the past, they had made the mistake of letting too many people find out about them, and as a result, the stories about the horrors of the grove had left them almost drained. With such stories, no one would enter the wood, or come near it, and if no one even came near, how could they get any Power?
This was explained to her when she was nine, because she asked why she had been so very tired when she first moved to Druid Wood, as she had learned to call it; and why when she first came back from the annual family vacation was she more tired than she should have been. Her parents were also tired, but they chalked it up to travel fatigue. Mae knew better, so she asked the triplets, and once she was told, she asked why her parents were tired. They didn’t Know, couldn’t See, so why were they drained too? Because inside, in the deepest, most primitive part of themselves, they Knew, they Saw, they just couldn’t accept it, so they told themselves it was the cat, or the wind, or a wild animal.
Mae particularly spent a lot of time in Druid Wood on the occasions her father was home because he blamed her for everything that had gone wrong since they moved to Firerock, for having to get a job in the city, for the house not being in good shape, for every petty unhappiness in his life, and so he treated her accordingly. He hit her if he was mad and she didn’t stay out of his way, whether it was her fault or not. When her mom finally did make him stop hitting her (far too late, but she did eventually make him stop) he continued to abuse Mae mentally, and threatened her whenever her mom wasn’t around. A lot of the time she spent hiding from him in the forest, Mae spent wondering what might have happened ‘IF’. If her mom had made him stop hitting her the first time he ever did. Would she still love and respect him, or would he have found a million other ways to make her hate him? Would she have respected her mom for standing up to him, or would she have seen it as one last surge of maternal instinct, and disregarded it? If etc.
Mae first met Jonathan on her eleventh birthday. She woke that morning full of expectations, but it seemed as though her father knew she had hopes and was determined to crush them. And he was good at it. When the night was just beginning to erase the light from the sky, she couldn’t stand him or her life any more. She ran into the depths of the woods with a knife, into the only clearing there was, the very one she sat in now, and she slit her wrists, long, jagged, deep cuts. She passed out almost immediately from mental exhaustion and when she awoke, Jon was bending over her, carefully wrapping her wrists. To her young eyes, he seemed the most gorgeous man on earth. Even now, years after that day, she still thinks the same thing every time she sees him.
She tried to sit up, but he wouldn’t let her, telling her that after losing as much blood as she had, she was going to have to take it easy for quite a while. Mae asked him if he was a doctor or something, and he answered, "Or something." Then she asked him how he found her. He told her he had been hunting, and suddenly three almost identical girls had appeared before him and dragged him to this clearing. Mae was already asking him what he was doing in HER woods when she realized what he had just said. "You can see them?" she exclaimed. She instantly began a barrage of questions.
Then she heard the triplets giggling in the background and she turned to see the three girls hovering (literally) on the edge of the clearing. She asked them what they were laughing at, but they wouldn’t say, and when she tried to get up to go ask them, she was so weak that she lost her balance and fell right into Jonathan’s arms. He scooped her up and carried her to a stump on the edge of the clearing that made a perfect chair, where he deposited her after extracting her promise to sit there and quit moving around.
Then he started to respond to her questions. "Yes, I can see them. When you passed out, they came looking for someone, anyone, and since I was hunting on the far edge of the wood, they grabbed me and dragged me back here. They couldn’t do anything for you themselves because part of the magic of this place is that if someone who knows the secrets of the forest chooses to die in Druid Wood, the spirits can not directly intervene. And normally even finding someone else and asking that person for help is considered intervention. And considering that there would have to be someone for the spirits to find, someone who could See them, who wasn’t afraid, and who was willing to help, it’s usually so impossible that they don’t even bother, because they won’t be allowed. It’s rather strange that they were allowed to get help for you. Any ideas why?" he had asked.
Mae explained "I suppose it may be because I didn’t really choose to die, it’s just that I couldn’t handle life any more. Or maybe who or whatever it is that normally wouldn’t have let them turned a blind eye. The first priestess that died in these woods, when all those of the old religion were killed, is a friend of mine. She told me that I’m the first one in over half a century that has lived near these woods that Saw, and accepted what was here, and that if someone hadn’t come soon, there might not have been enough Power to sustain all the spirits living here. So maybe the forest decided to ignore the triplets helping me. Anyway, what’s your name?" At Mae’s explanation, and her question, he laughed and told her "My name is Jonathan. I’ve hunted this forest for a long time, and not once have I ever met a human being this far in. Occasionally there’s a bum that seeks shelter from the weather on the edge of the trees, but they never last long. Now, do you think you are strong enough to go back to your house?"
"I suppose. I’ll sneak in my window and then I won’t have to worry about running into that man my mother is married to." she explained distractedly, thinking of how much she did not want to see her father again that day. She no longer wanted to end her life, but neither did she want to have to interact with her father in any way.
"Oh. Stepparent?" Jon asked knowingly. "No, he’s my biological father, but that’s all I’ll admit to, and that’s only on a good day. On a bad day, which this obviously is, he’s either that man my mother married, Fred, or just plain Asshole." she clarified. "Care to share why, or is it something you don’t want to talk about?" Jon asked. "He used to hit me, until my mother forced him to stop. Now he just threatens me, and makes my life hell whenever he’s home. Luckily that isn’t too often, and when it is, I just come hide here. But today my mother begged me to stick around, so I did, and you see how it turned out."
"Does your mom not know how he treats you? Why’d she ask you to stick around?"
"She knows. She asked me to stick around because it’s my birthday."
"Yeah? How old?"
"I’m eleven."
"What?! How can you be eleven? You look at least fifteen, and talking to you, you seem like you could easily be older then that. I don’t believe you’re only eleven." Jamie exclaimed. "If I were going to lie about my age, why would I make myself younger?" Mae asked, truly wanting to hear the thought behind that one.
"I don’t know. Maybe you’re scared of me, and you think that if you’re younger, you’ll be safe."
"No, for some reason I feel perfectly safe around you. Must be because the triplets trust you. I really am eleven."
"I guess I believe you. You just seem so much older. Anyway, if you’re that worried about going home, I’ll walk you back, and I could hang around outside your window for a while, just in case you need me, if he flips out or something." Jon offered. "I’d like that. Thanks." Mae replied. She really had felt safe with him, even though logically she knew there was no reason for her to.
So Jonathan walked her home, nearly carrying her most of the way, and lifted her through bedroom window. He hung around for a while, which she knew, because every time she looked out the window, he was standing there. She was very tired, she presumed from the combination of blood loss and emotional trauma, so not long after she got home, she leaned against the window frame and quietly told him, "I’m going to bed now. I really appreciate you walking me home and hanging out. It was very nice of you. If you’re ever around again, feel free to stop by. Oh, um, one thing though.
Fred doesn’t let anyone but his friends hunt on our land, and normally, his being against something would be plenty of reason for me to approve of it. In this case, however, I don’t approve of anyone shooting at innocent animals, unless they actually need the food. And you don’t look like you need the food, so next time, leave the gun home, ok?" Jon replied, "I didn’t bring a gun. That’s not the kind of hunting I was doing, and I agree that animals shouldn’t be hunted for sport."
"What kind of hunting is there, other than with a gun? Bow and arrow?" she asked. "Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of hunting for photo opportunities." he answered. "Oh. In that case, you’re welcome any time."
Remembering that meeting, Mae smiled to herself, thinking how clever that had been of him. Jon hadn’t said he was hunting with a camera, he had implied it. Of course he really wasn’t hunting for photo opportunities at all. He had been hunting for food he very much needed, and without a gun or any manmade weapons, but she had long ago forgiven that misdirection. In fact, she had forgiven it as soon as she learned of it, the same day she learned that he had kept watch a little longer that night, and had seen her get ready for bed. She knew she should have been mad that he had stayed and watched her undress, but if she hadn’t kind of hoped that he would, she wouldn’t have left her light on and her window shade up while she undressed that night. She might have only been 11, but, as Jon had said, she looked much older, and mentally, was much older. She was mature enough to like the thought of a guy enjoying the sight of her body.
Mae remembered the time he had told her all this. She had been fourteen and not much had changed in the 3 years she had known Jon. Her father still hated her, and she him, both parents still neglected her, and school was still just something she did once or twice a week at most and excelled at. School had ended three weeks earlier, so she spent each long summer day, and most nights, in the woods. Mae was playing hide-and-seek with the triplets that particular day. The ghosts of the three girls had existed for nearly two centuries, but the girls were still the young children they had been when they died, and so enjoyed childish games. Mae, Catherine (the green eyed triplet) and Alicia (the violet eyed sibling) were hiding, while Lynn (the blue eyed sister) was looking for them. Since three of the four players were ghosts, there were special rules. The spirits had to stay visible once they were hidden, and the one looking had to be substantial as well. The girls sometimes forgot that rule, and occasionally Mae hadn’t been able to find one of them until the other triplets went and looked. It also resulted in Mae sometimes being left to hide for a long time, which was what it had looked as though was going to happen that day.
Mae was hiding in the basement of the old sawmill, and she had already been there for fifteen minutes. Since it was one of her favorite spots to hide, that meant Lynn either wasn’t really trying to find her, or she was off in another realm looking for her sisters. It was likely the latter, as Lynn was the sort who played to win, even as simple a game as hide and seek. Mae didn’t mind waiting, because she had a cozy little corner in a secret room. She had some books, a flashlight in case she needed it, extra batteries, a mattress, pillows and blankets, some colored pencils, a pen and pad of paper, beef jerky and dried fruit, cans of soda, and a plastic container to get water from a stream if she wished. Her parents had run electricity to the sawmill with some idea of getting it working again, but that had quickly been abandoned when her parents moved onto their next project. So running an extension cord to her secret room had been easy, and a microwave, a little fridge, space heater, and lamp had followed soon after. She had spent countless nights in this underground sanctuary avoiding her father, so half an hour waiting for Lynn was no big deal.
Mae’s little hiding spot had been a stop on the Underground Railroad, one of the few actually underground, but it had been old even then. Not falling apart, poorly cared for old, but well cleaned and upkept by many different hands old. None of the spirits in the forest could remember when it had been built, but some of them could remember when it hadn’t been there. Someone who knew what they were doing had obviously built it, as it was very complicated to get into, and anyone in the room would get plenty of warning if someone was coming.
To get to it, you had to lift a trap door in the floor of the sawmill (the sawmill seemed to have been built purposely to disguise the entrance to the secret room) and go through a normal storeroom. There was a hidden sliding panel in the back wall of the storeroom, and you had to press on the wall at a certain spot to open it. Then you descended through a long, narrow, dark hallway that had originally had pointed metal embedded in the floor, and broken glass and more jagged metal hanging from the ceiling and lining the walls. Mae had taken the things down from the ceiling, and had put boards over the metal embedded in the floor and walls.
Finally, you had to go through a door, except that there was no handle to open it with. You had to press the exactly correct small spot in the ornamental carving that decorated the door to get it to open. Anyone in the room would know you were coming long before you got there, because opening the sliding panel in the storeroom wall caused a small bell to ring in the secret room.
In the three years she had known Jon, they had gotten to be good friends. Lately she had begun to think he wasn’t telling her something, and the fact that none of the spirits of the forest would tell her anything about him just confirmed this suspicion. She had decided to ask him about this the next time she saw him. Looking back on that day’s events, Mae knew that he had realized she was going to confront him, and he had done his best to prevent a confrontation he knew she wasn’t ready for. He had been right, but she still occasionally got upset at him for the way he had attempted to prevent it, since it hadn’t worked and had just made the discovery that much more difficult, and had caused her a lot of emotional pain.
Jon knew her hiding places as well as she did, and if she was at one of them for long, he usually showed up. That day was no exception, because almost as soon as she realized that she was going to be there for a while, the bell rang, and she heard Jon call, "Don’t worry. It’s just me." And five minutes later, the door to her retreat opened, and Jon entered, saying, "I come bearing pizza."
"The pizza is certainly welcome, and since you brought it, I guess you can come in too." By the time she finished the teasing remark, he was sitting down on the mattress where she already sat and passing her a slice of pizza. Mae stretched back and got them each a soda from the fridge on the floor, and they both ate quickly, enveloped by a comfortable silence.
When they were done, Jon asked, "So what are you doing here? Is Asshole home, and you’re hiding from him?"
"No. I’m hiding from Lynn. The four of us are playing hide and seek, and she’s it, but I think she had to go chase after her sisters, because otherwise, she would have known to look for me here."
"Aren’t you a little old for hide and seek?"
"Kind of, but, they wanted to play, and it is fun."
"All right. So if she hasn’t shown up, why don’t you run for home base, so you can win?"
"The way we play, you don’t try to get to base until you’ve been seen. Then you run."
"Oh, and if Lynn’s off looking for her sisters who-knows-where,"
"Then I’m stuck here. I could just quit playing, but it’s no great hardship to wait here for her. With all the stuff I have stocked up around here, it’s actually kind of nice. And now that you’re here, it’s perfect, because I need to talk to you about something."
"What would that be, your undying eternal love for me?" Jon had joked in a manner that even then, Mae had recognized as his way of trying to cover nervousness, or avoid something he didn’t want to say or do.
"Sorry to shatter your fragile ego, but no. I wanted to talk about the fact that you’ve been acting really weird lately, and I want to know what’s up." Mae informed him.
"Weird? Weird how?"
"Weird like that. Like avoiding answering questions. Like pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about, when we both know you do. I don’t know what’s going on, but it would be much simpler if you would just tell me, and soon, preferably somewhere in the region of now." Mae said heatedly.
"There’s nothing going on."
"Bullshit. Something’s up, and if you don’t share, I’ll, well, I don’t know what I’ll do, but it’ll be something mean. If there’s some reason you can’t tell me, tell me what that reason is. Just tell me something! You’re the only person, only living one anyway, who I trust, and I don’t like feeling like you're lying to me!"
"There is something, but I don’t know if I should tell you, because it could completely freak you out, or any of a million other possibilities, and very few of them are good." Jon replied in a hesitant tone.
"Well, just tell me, the suspense is driving me insane."
Jon moved so that he was facing Mae, both of them sitting with their legs crossed, knees touching. "When you went to that dance the last week of school, you were complaining about it so much that I figured it would be a nice gesture if I had some takeout and a video when you got home. You said you’d be home around eleven, and I got here at about eleven fifteen. You weren’t here yet, so I waited behind the outside basement door, so that if your mother happened to come home she wouldn’t see me. Well, when you pulled in the drive with that guy you went to the dance with, you looked miserable. I figured that you’d say goodnight as quickly as possible, and go running into the house.
I went to go get the food and the video from where I had left them, expecting to hear a car pull out of the driveway any second. When I didn’t, I was worried that this guy might be getting grabby, so I stuck my head around the door and looked, and he was all over you. I was all set to come charging to your rescue, when I realized that you weren’t fighting him. You were kissing him back, and for some reason, I stood there and watched, even though I tried to tell myself to walk away. I couldn’t figure out why it bothered me so much to see you making out with some random guy, but it did. I watched for a minute or three, then I took the food and video, and left." Jon finished speaking.
"That’s why you were so weird just after school ended?"
"Yeah."
"You got upset because I kissed Henry?" Mae asked incredulously.
"It looked like a lot more than kissing. Well, it looked like it was leading to a lot more."
"It didn’t. He was kissing me, and at first I was kissing back because it was easier than shoving him away, and, I was kind of curious. After a few minutes, I said I had to go in, and ran like hell. I wish you would have stuck around, because I was in the worst mood for the rest of that night." Mae stopped, suddenly lost in thought. It had been quite a while before the dance that she had started to feel like there was something odd going on.
Why would he have been that upset to see her kiss another guy? She was about to ask him, when he leaned forward, whispered "Because I wanted to be the first to taste your kiss.", and touched his lips to hers. For an eternal second she was too surprised to do anything, and then she tentatively kissed him back. He traced her mouth with his tongue, then nudged her lips apart and teased her tongue with his until her pulse was racing and she was breathing shakily. She felt heat curling through her body, and when he started to move away from her, she bit his lip to hold him. She felt his whole body shake, and she released his lip from between her teeth. He pulled back, but only far enough to look at her, and his breath came out in a low hiss.
He reached out and lifted her to straddle his lap, all the while saying, "This is a bad idea." She pulled his shirt off over his head and agreed, "Very bad. Definitely shouldn’t do this.", then unbuckled his belt and undid the button and zipper on his jeans. He stopped her before she could push his pants off of his hips, lifting her hands and placing them on his shoulders. She slid one hand into his hair and pulled his face back to hers, kissing him frantically. He returned the kiss, showing as much urgency as she was feeling, unbuttoning her shirt quickly, sliding his hand across her skin.
He cupped her breast in his hand, then stopped and said, "We should slow down a little. I know you want this, but first times should be savored." She just looked up at him, her eyes already darkening with need. He chuckled at the expression on her face, and said, "Ok, if you are sure it is what you want, but I’ll have to go slow." She exhaled sharply, and then urged, "Just go." He lowered his mouth back to hers, pressing his lips against hers, sliding his tongue into her mouth, curling his tongue around hers, slowly, teasingly. He ever so lightly skimmed his fingertips over her skin, brushing her nipples, feather touches causing her nipples to tighten. She leaned into him, and wrapped her arms around his neck, and broke the kiss to slide her tongue along his jaw, loving how he tasted. He tasted wild, and cool, and primal, like the way you smell when you have been outside for a long time on a crisp autumn day. She slid her hips forward, pressed her lower body tighter against his, feeling the small sharp edge of the zipper on his jeans.
She wanted him, so much. Wanted his skin against hers, his mouth, his lips, his hands, him. She raised her head and shoulders, quickly pushed her shirt off, letting it fall behind her onto the mattress, and looked at Jon. The look in his eyes, the wonder, and caring, and the touch of fear, amazed her. She lay back against the mattress; her legs still wrapped around his waist, and looked at him, wondering if what she was feeling shown in her eyes as strongly as it did in his. He moved to lay over her, and they ended with Mae on her back, knees bent, feet against the mattress, and Jon stretched out on top of her, his cock, restrained by his jeans, pressing hard between Mae’s legs, easily felt through the thin summer shorts she wore.
Mae reached down between their bodies, and worked her fingers down to the fly of his jeans. She deftly unbuttoned them, but couldn't move the zipper. Jon sat back on his knees, and Mae watched as he slid one hand into his pants and over the easily discernable outline of his cock, and undid his zipper with the other. She ran her hands down her body, cupping her breasts for an instant and lightly catching her nipples between her fingers before moving her hands further down her stomach, under the waistband of her shorts, and then down off her hips, and past her thighs, neatly removing her shorts. She saw Jon's jaw clench at the realization she wore no panties, and she playfully kicked her shorts at him.
Then she lay back, one hand on her upper thigh, the other palm resting low on her hip, the tips of her index and middle fingers questing lower, finding skin already damp with want. Mae slid her fingers across the slick skin, her index finger catching a bead of moisture and applying it to her already tight clit, while her free hand came up to caress the smooth skin between her breasts. Jon moaned, a low, purely masculine sound, and said "This is so very wrong. Where the hell did you learn to do that?"
Mae replied in a voice husky with need "All the inbred jocks at school decided last year that I must be a lesbian, since I wasn't spreading my legs for them like their cousins. So they started breaking open my locker and leaving stacks of magazines in it. The kind of magazines that show women stripping, posing, touching themselves, being fucked. And I did enjoy the magazines, not because of the women in them, but because it showed me what guys like to see. What you would like. That, and the letters and stories in them were great to get off to. Now take those jeans off and come here."
Jon sighed, the sound of a person giving in to a very pleasant inevitability, and did as Mae had instructed, standing to remove his jeans, and then stepping toward her. He froze when she said wait, and looked down at her quizzically, wondering what had prompted her to make the request, in a tone that unmistakably spoke of command. He raised an eyebrow, silently inquiring as to her wishes. "I just want to look at you for a minute babe. Guys seem to enjoy looking at naked women so much, I'm trying to understand the appeal."
"Oh. Let me see if I can help you with that at all," Jon replied helpfully. He reached down and wrapped a hand around his cock, slowly stroking himself while looking into her eyes, showing her how much he wanted her.