We make it as far as the inside of the door. He falls onto my mouth and ravages it as he rips my blouse open. b.u.t.tons pop, and he mutters "I'm sorry, baby, but you've gotten me so hot, I'll buy you another one" and tears the fabric off my shoulders.

Wow, oh wow.

I'm overheated myself, and my core has burned into molten jelly, and my legs are weak and I can hardly stand. He slams me against the wall as he rips his own expensively tailored shirt off. (So mine is not the only torn piece of fabric.) He rains hard kisses upon my neck and throat as he gropes for the side zipper of my skirt. For some reason or other, it's caught.

Impatiently, he hikes my skirt up and reaches for my panties. With a decisive tug, he pulls the skimpy piece of lacy material down.

I have worn my best panties for our date, and it matches my pretty bra.s.siere. But they were all for nothing, because he doesn't even so much as look at the d.a.m.ned things as he savagely peels them off. His ardor sweeps me away.

I find myself panting as he seizes my nipples with his mouth and sucks at them with an intensity that galvanizes all the circulation in my b.r.e.a.s.t.s into those two red twin peaks. I moan and clutch at his hair all s.e.xily mussed up now. His scent of clean flesh and mystifying pheromones is driving me crazy. His hand dives for my s.e.x, already moist and aching for the memory of his clever, clever fingers to prize it apart and make it weep.

Oh Chris, I want you I want you I want you.

There's an ache in my s.e.x an ache so raw and beguiling. An ache like I have never experienced before. An ache to be taken, claimed, filled, pummeled.

Oh!

Is this what rabid desire feels like? The bodice-ripping, gut-clenching, heart-stopping desire that I have only read about in romance novels and magazine serializations? I never thought they existed in real life, but here it is and I'm in the main cast of this wondrously erotic stage play.

His fingers latch on to my s.e.x, hitting the sweet spot of my c.l.i.t, and I almost combust at the sheer ecstasy of it.

"I want you, Beth. I want you so bad." His voice is musky with need. "Are you . . . OK with it?"

I realize he's asking me for permission, of course.

Permission to be the man who takes my virginity.

I'm not even thinking anymore. I'm just reacting. All those years of moral upbringing by my parents are now taking wing and catapulting out of my window. I'm been reduced to my basest self in animal heat.

"Yes, yes, I'm ready," I pant.

He doesn't hesitate to think twice. His hands move to unzip his fly, and out springs his thick rod. His luscious, luscious manhood. The large staff of flesh that would impale me and whatever misgivings I have into a threshold I must cross.

It almost strikes my pubic area.

"Give me a sec, baby," he says, and rifles in his side pocket to take out a condom in its foil. He tears at it with his teeth. "Just let me put this on."

I watch with fascination as he rolls the damp latex onto his pulsing c.o.c.k. My mind tells me I should have doubts, but my body is too flushed, too much in want to heed it.

Once the condom is on a damp, glistening sheath on his flesh he catches my arms.

"Lie down on the floor, Beth, it'll be better this way."

We tumble onto the floor with its thin but clean carpet. Not the best of mattresses, but hygienic comfort is the farthest thing from my mind right now. He opens my thighs. Our eyes meet, intense hazel against soft brown. Oh, his melting chocolate eyes so alluring in the lamplight. I can stare into those eyes forever.

"Just lie back and relax, Beth," he whispers. "You're wet enough already."

He does something with his hands I can't see what and a hardness pushes against my s.e.x. I take a deep breath.

"It'll only hurt for a second," he says.

And pushes.

This is it. My debauchery, no . . . deflowering.

"Uh," I cry out.

The pain is sharp, sweet, exquisite. My long dormant walls are cleaved apart, and the sensation of being filled is so pleasurable, so amazing that I regret I've never tried it before. His flesh rushes into mine I can almost hear the swoosh and parting of velvety walls. It's as if he's meant to be there, and his flesh is homing in at last.

And the emotions! The complex rush of emotions this spills to the forefront. It's as if I belong to someone, and he desires me above all else. The knowledge that I'm deeply desired and wanted for my physicality is intoxicating. It's like an actual drug. I can float on this all day, all night if I have to.

A moist trickle oozes within my tight pa.s.sage. A maidenhood taken.

"Oh, Beth," he moans as he arches on top of me, "I've been waiting for this for such a long time. It's incredible . . . how you feel."

His face is contorted with bliss, and my heart expands to see it the fact that I can make someone else so physically happy by just my body alone. He stills himself on top of me, allowing me to feel him inside me.

"How does it feel?"

"Gorgeous," I whisper.

He begins to move his hips. He's gentle at first, establishing a rhythm.

"You OK?" he asks me. "Any more pain?"

"No."

There's the slightest discomfort because he's very huge, but the tendrils of exquisite and erotic warmth tremulous and in wavy frequencies that course from my s.e.x in radial spokes and shimmer their way into every part of my groin . . . and beyond . . . more than make up for it.

Oh, I didn't know it was going to be this way.

Oh oh oh!

"Bend your knees," he says. "It'll be better."

He has been right so far, and so I obey. His organ thrusts in even deeper, reaching places I've never knew existed before. I want to close my eyes to savor the intense pleasure of it all, but I don't want to tear my gaze off his beautiful, beautiful face. For he is a G.o.d. Adonis incarnate. Having someone like him make love to me is a fantasy every girl can only dream of, and I'm the living dream.

He heightens his rhythm. His thrusts and pounds become more labored, more powerful. It's the slap of flesh against flesh of moist, sticky unity. I have heard and often wondered about my G-spot, and if I indeed possess one. But there's an area within me that he's aiming for now. Every sharp nudge against it sends a flotilla of erotic sensations scurrying throughout my groin, which in turn shoot flowery spasms to my spine.

I begin to grunt with each stab he makes upon it.

His arms are on my arms, holding me tenderly for support, for leverage, for further nails in the cross of my surrender. The waves I have felt yesterday only more florid and coming from another spot begin to build again, sweeping magnificently and broadly up my entire pelvic region. On and on they rush, until I'm floating above the flotsam . . . higher and higher upon the white capped peaks . . . and even higher towards the sun, which is a red voluptuous fruit for the plucking in the sky.

My plucking.

Chris, Chris, Chris.

I want to moan his name over and over, but I have no voice. I'm reduced to my very basic state. I have become a vessel, a receptacle for pleasure. It is shockingly liberating.

I burst white hot shards like a mirror splintering in all directions. I come and come, and he believe he lets himself come too with a cry . . . that shuddery, shimmering paean of two infinite wills merging. And it's as if we are one continuous plane of fireworks in the night sky on the Fourth of July, completely of our making.

We hold each other, and revel and luxuriate in each other, and let our sticky, sweaty bodies merge as we pant and gulp in deep breaths and stare into each other's eyes. His brow is beaded with moisture, as is his upper lip, and he has never looked more beautiful and contented.

This man. This wonderful sensual man whom I feel so safe with, no matter what people tell me on the contrary.

And it's so warm and wet and wonderful and peaceful that I wonder if I'm already lost in him.

I cannot lose myself in him.

Oh G.o.d.

Is it already too late?

We fall asleep in each other's arms on my narrow single bed. When we wake up the next morning, we make love again, and this time, there is no pain only the slow suffusion of luxurious pleasure through all our body parts and limbs. It's as though we are moving in a sea of mola.s.ses. I explode again, and this time the colors are painted on a different palate hues unseen on any rainbow.

Later, much later, I make him some breakfast in my little kitchenette. Scrambled eggs on toast. He watches me frying at the stove, smiling. He's sitting at my tiny dining table, clad in nothing but his underwear. And even that is tight.

"Thank you for last night," he says in that slow, s.e.xy, upper cla.s.s Midwestern drawl of his. "It was fantastic."

I blush a little. I'll bet you say that to all the girls.

The air between us is compressed, still torpid. It's as if time trickles more slowly in here, and I never want this to end.

"No regrets?" he asks.

"No."

Not now, but I may have some later.

"What do you want to do today?" he says.

"Relax."

"You want to take a walk in the park?"

We go out to Grant Park, where we walk hand in hand to the Field Museum, and then to the Aquarium to see the manatees. We're almost like any other loving couple, except that I know better. But the day is too nice to quibble about things I cannot change. The sun is out and whole families are having picnics. Children frolic at the lakeside while policemen on two-wheel cyclers keep a watchful eye on everyone. A light breeze whips through the rustling trees.

Chris's cheeks are pink and he's the very epitome of health. He radiates a glow that makes everyone men and women alike turn to stare. And yes, they stare at me too, but with envy.

I should be so lucky, except that this is the fourth day we're together, and it's all going to end pretty soon.

Unless I make a decision to sell myself out.

A sliver of dread curls within my stomach. The day has been so nice. It's a shame to have to spoil it, and yet I must forge ahead.

"Do you mind if I ask you something?" I say.

We are sitting beneath a shady tree. Our bodies are sprawled on the gra.s.s. Just ten feet away, some kids are playing Frisbee with an overgrown golden retriever.

"Sure."

I steel myself. "Who's Selena?"

The atmosphere between us seems to congeal with sudden friction.

Oh shoot. I have ruined it.

His relaxed features take on a troubled cast. "I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that."

"Why? Who is she and why does your mother think I'm her?"

I have to know. It's a key piece of the jigsaw puzzle to help me with my decision-making. Do I look like her? Who is she anyway a former lover?

He doesn't meet my eyes. He says, "Honestly, you do resemble her in coloring, that is."

A dawn of understanding begins to break over my horizon. It's a semblance of dawn peeking above the clouds like a burst of skylight that is almost there, but not quite. I'm frankly afraid to embrace it.

I'm suddenly scared. Desire is a rare, uncategorized beast, and I'm about to find out the complex psychological roots of his desire for me.

"I would like to know," I press firmly on. My pulse starts to beat a little faster, like a train heading towards an unknown wreck.

"It happened a long time ago." His voice takes on an almost lyrical quality, and there's a tinge of deadness in it. "I was sixteen. She was my English teacher."

I hold my breath. All those hints his mother gave me "I see. So she seduced you."

"No. It wasn't like that all. Don't ever think that. Many people make the a.s.sumptions, but the reality was that I was deeply in l.u.s.t . . . and later on in love with her. I think she was initially attracted to me for my physicality, and later on for my mind. I was a pretty mature kid, and I looked much older than I really was."

I don't say anything.

He goes on, "So we seduced each other. The first time we did it we were in a cla.s.sroom after school. We didn't plan for it to happen or anything. It was one of those things where the fever just overtakes you."

Oh yes, I've had it happen to me. So I'm not the only one.

The pieces are starting to fall.

"I couldn't help myself, I wanted her so much. And she wanted me too . . . every bit as badly as I wanted her." He takes a deep breath. "She was the only woman I've ever loved, and I loved her madly, truly, deeply body, soul, mind, everything I had to give. I was so deep into it that it was almost like a drug. That's when it turned destructive."

He raises his eyes to mine.

"I'm not good when I let myself fall into an emotional relationship. I couldn't eat, sleep or study. I thought of her every day and night. I wanted to spend every waking moment with her. It was worse than an addiction. It was an obsession."

He pauses.