They slumped down onto the sofa together, with Marcie cuddling up under Ben’s arm. As she rested her soft hair on his shoulder, she said, “You know, I don’t think I’ve yet seen your rod, little Roddie O, when he’s not aroused. He’s not always been as long and firm as he was just now, but even after he’d spent his load last night, he still seemed a bit tumescent. I’m beginning to wonder if you’re priapic, like one of those satyrs or fauns from classical mythology, chasing those dryads and nymphs with their goaty pizzles always hard and upright.”

“I’m not,” Ben told her, “I feel turned on when I’m naked with you, I guess.”

“Well, long may it last. Speaking of fauns, though, my inner librarian has just been reminded of something. Did you read the Narnia books when you were young, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and so on?”

“It rings a bell, but I don’t think so.”

“Their author was a friend of Tolkien, who wrote Lord of the Rings. If you liked those films, maybe you’d like the other’s books. I loved them as a girl. They’re written for children, they’re a bit old-fashioned and somewhat Christian, but I reread them quite recently and there’s a lot for the adult reader in them too. They’re better than the Harry Potter books that lots of grown-ups seem to take pride in reading these days. Sorry, that’s a completely irrelevant and distracting tangent, but remind me later, Narnia, okay?”

“Okay,” Ben agreed, wondering at everything that was in Marcie’s mind, but glad she’d thought of sharing this childhood love with him.

“Oh, I guess I’m struggling to get back to how we were carrying on before our tea. I’m sorry. It was so easy then. You asked me about masturbation, and I showed you. I think when I was lying on the floor in my trousers earlier, touching myself, I had actually started doing it for real. I felt a bit slippery underneath, I think. It’s why I wanted to shower too.”

“I felt the same, pressing on those cushions in front of you,” Ben honestly admitted.

“But now I’m all shy!” Marcie said with exasperation, looking up into Ben’s eyes. “If I lay down now and opened my legs, you’d see everything. I know that’s the whole idea, in a way, that I share my pussy with you now that we’re lovers, but I’m hesitating instead of just getting on with it.”

“That’s okay. Like you said, we’ve got lots of time. Also I don’t want to rush you. I meant to say it before, but I don’t want you to think I’m expecting anything. Just because I slept in your bed last night, you don’t have to share it with me again tonight,” Ben explained, thinking of the paired stacks of pillows he’d arranged in the next-door room.

“Oh, but we’re a couple now, aren’t we? Don’t you want to share my bed?” Marcie asked with plaintive surprise.

“No, I do want to,” Ben quickly reassured her.

“Well I want to too, so it’s decided. You can stop being silly about that. But perhaps we could try another kind of game to help me face anything that might be worrying me, that’s making me hold back.”

“What are you thinking of?”

“Have you ever had psychotherapy? Have you heard of Sigmund Freud? Well, he came up with this psychoanalytic method, a way to find out what was going on in people’s minds, even if they didn’t know it themselves because they’d buried it in their unconscious. The way he did it was to have the patient, the client lie down on a couch like this sofa so they were relaxed, and he’d sit in his chair at their head so he was out of sight. He’d ask questions and listen to the client talk, drawing out what came into their minds, but he wouldn’t give his own suggestions. He wouldn’t try to solve their problems or give them advice, and he wouldn’t judge them. I think that was really important, so they could get past their own internal voice of judgment or censorship too.”

“Okay,” Ben said as his understanding of what she was telling him sunk in, “So do you want to do that now?”

“Well, we’re not doing this seriously, right? It’s just a bit of fun and a way to get us talking about sex. But I think the honesty and the open-minded attitude is really important. It does feel like this might be trying to run with knives, but perhaps it’s better if we learn where the sharp edges are now rather than cutting ourselves badly later, if we were to learn something that was a painful surprise further down the road in our relationship. Maybe I’ll ask you a question tonight, and I will be genuinely shocked by what you say, but I’ll keep that to myself. At the end of the day, whatever either of us says, we’re still the same people who we were when we woke up this morning in bed together. And perhaps at the end of the day I can promise you, whatever we learn about each other by doing this, I will still be taking you to bed and helping you to masturbate again tonight, if you want.”

“Thank you. And if you masturbate too, will you do it while I’m still awake this time? I’d like to be involved, if you’ll let me,” Ben risked asking.

“Of course! That’s what I’m psyching myself up for, isn’t it? So perhaps we need some rules again. I’ll go first as the therapist and I’ll ask you ten, no, less than that, just four questions. You answer them as openly and honestly as possible, exploring whatever comes to your mind, and I’ll really try to avoid passing judgment or giving you my opinion. Then we’ll swap places so you can ask me your own four questions. Deal?”

“Deal,” Ben agreed, still unsure of where Marcie might be heading with this as she stood up. She pulled up a chair from the table and told him to lie back on the sofa. He made himself comfortable with his knees up and his head on the cushions, feeling the slight itchiness of the sofa’s throw on his bare back. But he was still apprehensive as she started asking her first question in a calm voice.

“I’m not sure how to ask this,” she admitted, “But would you say that you had any uncommon tastes in your sexual desires? Are you interested in bondage or fetish gear, for example, or do you find it more arousing if your sexual partner dresses in a certain way? Is there something that’s not really to do with the sex act that nonetheless makes the activities more exciting for you if it’s present?”

“Wow!” Ben exhaled, “I see what you mean now, asking questions about hidden things.” He paused, then went on as it became clear that Marcie was giving him space to talk, “No, I guess. I’m not into bondage or dressing up in leather and PVC and stuff. I’ve never had a girlfriend I did that with, who I did anything like sadomasochism with. They never dressed up as a dominatrix or got out things like handcuffs and whips. I’ve seen pictures, and bits in films I guess, and maybe I thought they were a bit sexy. Was it Uma Thurman who dressed like that in The Avengers? I guess Trinity from The Matrix, Carrie-Anne Moss, had that look too. But no, I definitely don’t seek that scene out. I don’t know about other sorts of dressing up, if I have strong feelings about it, I mean. I’ve never really asked a girlfriend to do that for me, though I’ve enjoyed seeing them in special underwear, I guess. I hope you don’t mind me saying this.”

“No, it’s fine. That’s the point. You’re doing really well,” Marcie reassured him in a calm voice, “Go on, if you can.”

“Erm, well maybe I think of women in uniform as sexy, like a policewoman or a nurse. But I didn’t have any feelings like that about the real nurses in the hospital, thinking about it. They were just like somebody’s mum, wearing working clothes, doing a hard job professionally. And the nurse I found most friendly was a man anyway. They weren’t like, I don’t know, who did it well? Maybe Jenny Agutter in American Werewolf in London.”

“Hmm, you really know those film stars, those on-screen goddesses, don’t you? Anyway, what about anything else that isn’t really to do with sexual intercourse that still seems sexy to you? A paraphilia, as a therapist might call it.”

“Well, I guess breasts count as that, if you think about it. They’re nothing to do with reproduction, well, at least before the baby’s born. Nothing to do with my sperm fertilising your eggs, so to speak,” he stumbled on, feeling embarrassed about starting this now, especially as he’d just implied that he was thinking specifically of himself impregnating Marcie. “But I think you know that already though, I’m very turned on by seeing them, by seeing your naked breasts. I like touching them, and I’d like to kiss them too. Well, the truth is I feel very turned on but it, in the past, when I’ve sucked on my girlfriend’s nipple. Maybe that’s a bit weird, like I’m acting at being a baby.”

“No, I think that’s probably very normal for a heterosexual man. It can be a turn-on for a woman too. The breasts and the nipples are very sensitive, and their stimulation is linked to sexual arousal. Anyway, this isn’t about me!” she said with a little laugh, before going on, “I’m very glad you shared all that, Ben. You’re really are taking this seriously, and I’m honoured that you’re being so honest with me. But here’s question two, if you’re ready for it. Here goes. Have you ever had any homosexual experiences? Or perhaps I shouldn’t label it like that, if the gay word is a red light to straight men. Have you ever had loving feelings for another man or done intimate things with one?”

“These questions are epic, Marcie! I’ve never spoken to a girlfriend so honestly about stuff like this. But no, I’m not bisexual,” Ben said, then he considered, as Marcie’s silence lengthened, recognising that perhaps he owed this a bit more thought, for her and for himself, “I’ve never kissed or cuddled a man, only given, well, like hugs to say hello or goodbye, or well done perhaps. I’ve never wanted to, and I don’t think I’ve ever had dreams about it, about intimacy with another man. Maybe I’ve sometimes kind of admired other men, close friends sometimes. Perhaps I did that more when I was younger. Maybe they seemed more confident, to have qualities I wanted. But that was perhaps more that I actually wanted to be them, like they were my hero, not a fancying thing.”

Ben paused, searching his memory, before going on, “I don’t think a guy has ever come on to me. I remember a boy at school who showed us his cock, erect, you know, in the changing room. Maybe that was his way of coming on to me, or to anyone who’d take an interest. He got teased, but he’d keep doing it every so often. I like my own cock, my rod. Maybe I could learn to like another man’s, in some parallel world, if I felt like I loved him. I guess if a man hit on me now though, I’d just say, ‘Sorry, thanks, but no thanks,’ like I do if a woman I don’t fancy hits on me. I guess some straight guys would be horrified, but I might even feel flattered, though I can’t imagine myself ever saying yes.”

“Thank you, Ben. You really are being very thoughtful and candid about this,” Marcie said as he found himself winding down, reassuring him by reaching over and squeezing his bare shoulder with her warm hand. “Okay, question three’s another big one. Have you ever visited a sex worker?”

“Okay, yes, that is an important question, isn’t it? I feel awful about admitting it, but the truth is, there was something, just the once.”

Ben paused, then realised that Marcie was expecting him to go on. So reluctantly, he told her the story, “I was with a crew in the Baltic, sailing. You know the Hanse, the old merchant league? Well, this was a kind of trading route re-enactment trip. That’s not relevant at all, is it really? Anyway, we were in Estonia, but we’d seen girls working in Latvia too. So the whole crew was out in Tallinn, and it was getting to the end of our trip anyway. We were drinking and the girls, the prostitutes, were flirting with us. One seemed quite cute, and she asked me if I wanted to go with her for fifty Euros. I had the money in my pocket and I just thought, ‘Why not?’ Well, I had my fun, and no one else on the crew seemed too surprised, but I didn’t feel proud of myself later. I feel much more guilty about it now, looking back. I was part of the problem of men exploiting women out there, of their sex tourism problem, the blot on the name of Western visitors to the Baltic States. Hell, I’m part of the worldwide problem of men exploiting women, degrading them, encouraging them to sell their bodies for men’s gratification.”

“This isn’t about guilt, remember?” Marcie reminded him gently, “We’re just pulling these things out to check them in the light. We can put them away again when we’re done. You’re hardly the first man ever to give in to temptation, and it sounds like you realise now that it was a mistake from the point of view of your ethical beliefs. Was it a while ago, and do you want to tell me what you did? Can you tell me her name, too?”

“She called herself Baby Spice, which perhaps tells you when it was, and something about what she looked like too. I would have been twenty. This was just before I got together with Phoebe. As to what we actually did, well, it was the obvious. She took me to a room, I guess like a hotel that let this kind of thing go on. There wasn’t much ceremony. She undressed straight away, so I did too. She gave me a condom to put on, then lay on the bed with her legs apart. She just said, ‘Are you ready?’ then I got on top of her, and she let me put it in. I’m sorry, are you sure you wanted to hear this?” Ben asked, feeling a prickly anxiety crawling across his skin as he stared up at the ceiling.

“It’s fine. Tell me more, if you can,” Marcie reassured him in a calm and encouraging voice.

“Well, I was a bit drunk, so it was quite a dodgy performance anyway. She had to help me, to get my penis in the right place to find her vagina I mean. More than once, actually, as it kept slipping out. But yeah, I paid her, I fucked her, I got dressed again, then I went back to the boat to sleep. Phew,” he sighed dramatically, “I’ve never told anyone about that. The crew knew what I’d done of course, but I’ve never talked about it.”

“Well, I really am privileged then,” Marcie said softly, “It sounds like a one-off.” Ben earnestly agreed that it was, then she went on, “I said I wouldn’t judge, but I want to set your mind at ease. It really is okay, you know, to have had a little adventure like that but then realised it was perhaps a mistake. I guess what you were doing was perfectly legal for the locale, and it certainly sounds like you’ve put it behind you now. Are you okay carrying on? So my last question might be another tough one. It’s this. Have you ever abused a woman?”

“Right. I think I know what you mean, but I can truthfully say that I have never coerced, well, raped, a woman,” Ben sighed, feeling a little ashamed of being so blunt, but knowing that honesty really mattered now. So he went on, “There’s a game, isn’t there, when a couple are getting it together? The man wants a bit more and the woman makes a performance of saying no. I’ve played that game a lot, pushing my luck, trying to get away with one more touch, somewhere a little more intimate, trying to get her out off one more piece of clothing, pleading for her to stroke it just a little longer. I can see how that might go wrong, how a man could push it too far, and how that ends up being date rape. Obviously that’s just wrong, but also it’s counter-productive, right? If the ultimate prize is having sex, anything a man does to put a woman off him is going to ruin his chances. Maybe if he forces himself on her, he gets some kind of sexual experience once, but she hates him, even if she can’t bring criminal charges. But if he’s nice to her and makes her feel good, then he might get sex again and again, and it will be a much more enjoyable kind of sex.”

He paused, staring up at the ceiling, hearing his pious act and wondering if he was still hiding something. “Maybe sometimes I’ve done things that weren’t right, that weren’t what the woman thought she’d agreed up to. I guess things can slip sideways if you’re both a bit drunk for example, especially if you’ve both got undressed and into bed together. It can all get a bit fumbled and chaotic. You might both be into it together at the time, but afterwards, you might not be sure if you had really followed an agreed plan, a shared script. Like in Tallinn, I guess, though that time Miss Baby Spice was absolutely crystal clear about the script.”

He tried to think of specific examples, but only one came to mind, “Like, I remember one time with a girlfriend, a woman from Edinburgh, who I dated for a while, well, she wanted me to massage her. We were in her bed and she had some oil. She was lying her front, naked, and I was on my knees, naked too, straddled on top of her. I was rubbing this oil into her back, across her shoulders but down to her buttocks too, right between them, and up her sides, feeling her breasts a bit. I was very turned on, and I sort of ended up pushing down on her, squatting on her buttocks. My penis, my rod was rubbing against her as I rocked backwards and forwards, all slippery with this oil over her skin. Well, I didn’t want to stop, and then I came, ejaculating across her back. She was very surprised, shocked really, and quite upset. I had to do a lot of work to get her to trust me again, but I think she stayed suspicious, and maybe that’s why it didn’t last.”

“Hmm, if you were both naked and pressed together, perhaps she shouldn’t have been all that surprised,” Marcie said above him, “It sounds almost as if she might not have been so keen on your semen. Another woman might have quite liked you to rub that over her skin too, adding a little bit of extra sticky warmth in with the massage oil. Anyway, was that all?”

Ben realised that Marcie was talking about her own attitude to his semen on her back, and the thought pleased him. But as he listened to her voice, another thought occurred to him. “Well, there was this one other time with a different woman. We were cuddling, but I was naked and she was still in her nightwear. I was turned on and hard, and I’d backed her up against the bathroom door. She couldn’t really move, but I just kept pushing my rod against her breast, getting more and more turned on. I realise now that I was letting my impulses get out of control.”

“But I think that time the woman in question asked you to stop, and then you did straight away, and that’s the really important thing. It sounds as if she was being a bit of a flirt anyway. Also, I think she wouldn’t have really minded at all if you had carried on and creamed her boob through her nightdress.”

“Thank you,” he said, feeling a little embarrassed but also a little turned on at the fresh memory of his penis against Marcie’s breast.

“No, thank you, Ben,” she said, springing up from her chair. She gave his shoulder a shove to get him to sit upright, then sat on the sofa herself, cuddling up next to him, letting him put his arm around her shoulders. “Had you not guessed one of the reasons why I was asking that stuff?” she asked as she planted small kisses on his cheek and forehead, “Your real-world sexual journey has many touchpoints with my fantasies about being with an experienced lover.”

“Really? Can you tell me how?” Ben asked.

“Oh, the carefully curated and hidden worlds of a woman’s sexual fantasies are too much to reel off just like that!” she rebuffed, “You’ll have to try asking the analyst’s questions to get some ideas of what’s in there. Are you warm enough by the way?” she asked, rubbing his bare chest vigorously with her hand.

“Aye, I’m fine,” Ben reassured her, rising to his feet, “Shall I start now?”

“Yes, if you’re up for it. I’ll just get comfy,” Marcie said, shuffling down onto the sofa until she found the position that Ben had been in.

As he sat down in the chair that Marcie had used, at her head now, he looked down at her. He could not really see her face below her fulsome dark hair, but he could see her hands resting on her stomach, her white nightdress covering her knees, and the bare skin of her chest above its low neckline. He almost felt like a voyeur himself now, looking at the curves of her softly spread breasts rising and falling with her breath. He realised that Marcie may have been looking at him in the same way all the time that he was talking about those difficult topics.

“Okay, if you’re ready, I’ll start by asking you the question about bisexuality. Have you ever been that close to another woman?”

“Ooh, yes! I won’t pontificate about why you might have chosen that topic straight away. It’s a bit of a cliche for a straight man to get turned on at the thought of lesbian lovers in action, isn’t it? But I did ask you this question first, didn’t I? So to simply state the truth of it, I think it’s possible that I am a little bit bisexual.”

Marcie paused before beginning her own story, “It may be different for girls in general, but my own experience at school was that we were quite honest about getting crushes on each other. We’d hold hands and pet at each other a bit anyway, and it wasn’t a big deal if we had a cuddle in bed together on a sleepover,” she paused, as if reminiscing.

“But it went further than that with one friend that I had, red-haired Amber, with curls even wilder than mine,” she went on. “When we kissed we would say that we were just practising for the boys, but it felt like we were both doing it for real at the time. And we’d talk about everything too, way beyond the usual shocked sharing of what we’d learnt about sex from Just Seventeen and then Cosmo. We’d spin these elaborate stories about what we’d done with boys, both knowing full well that we were making them up completely. Yet somehow those stories would miss out most of the things that boys would really do. Instead we’d just talk about stroking chests and pussies, kissing, rubbing and fingering, even receiving cunnilingus once we understood what it was.”

A thought seemed to occur to her as she interrupted her own train of thought, “Hey, I don’t want your imagination running away with you though! Don’t go picturing us bursting out of our school uniforms to squash our breasts together or make scissors. We just kissed, cuddled and talked. That friendship was a one-off, though. We both got into boys for real a little later on, through sixth form, but we really drifted apart when she went away to university. No one else ever took her place. I wasn’t bothered about finding someone who might, and I’ve not been interested enough in other girlfriends to get that close, to fill that gap so to speak.”

“Well, I don’t know what I expected, but thank you for telling me that,” Ben said, feeling a little embarrassed at encouraging Marcie to share these personal secrets with him. Nonetheless, he pushed on, “Okay, my second question might be tough, like some of yours. But if you’re able to tell me, I’d like to know if you’ve ever been the victim of abuse?”

“It’s okay to ask, Ben. I’m happy to talk like this with you. I absolutely trust your discretion, as you should mine. But it’s interesting, isn’t it, how I asked you if you’d abused a woman, then you asked me if I’d been abused by a man? We assume these stereotyped roles for the male exploiter and the female victim, probably quite accurately in ninety-nine percent of real-world cases. Anyway, this is about me, not human society in Britain today or throughout world history, right?”

Ben let her pause before she went on, “Well, the short answer is no, luckily I’ve never been sexually abused. There have been specific incidents when I’ve seen that side of men. Once, when I was a teenager walking home from school, a stranger showed me his erect penis. I just ran and he didn’t follow, but it was a shocking and disgusting thing to have to experience. I was pretty upset, and my parents took me to see the police, but I think everyone’s attitude was that these things just happen sometimes, that I should forget it and move on. I don’t know, maybe the police did take it seriously and caught the bastard. Maybe he’s languishing in some prison right now, being given hell by the other inmates for being a paedo. But I did get over it pretty quickly really.”

She paused again, then went on, “I think you do hear more these days about paedophiles being brought to justice, especially when they’ve been hiding in institutions like the Roman Catholic Church perhaps. Recently it’s made me wonder about some of those men I knew who did clubs and things for the kids when I was growing up. It seems quite likely now that some of them were doing it for their own sexual thrills, perhaps with the boys more than the girls. I just hope the kids I grew up with have come forward for retrospective justice now, if it was going on. I was lucky, maybe.”

Ben wondered if she’d finished, but it seemed she did have more to say, “And I sympathised with what you said earlier about the games men and women play, too. I would never claim I’ve been the victim of date rape, but it’s a fragile topic. I think it was only in 1992 that the UK recognised the criminal severity of marital rape, and obviously many other countries still don’t prosecute for it at all. You know now that I’ve been in a couple of lousy relationships, but I don’t really feel that I can say I was a victim of exploitation by either Jason or Richard. Once I’d invited them into my bed once, I couldn’t stop them from imagining it might happen again, from pressing me to have sex with them again. Neither of them ever forced themselves on me though. Mother of God, we can definitely put all that back in the box now we’ve got it out to have a quick look at!” she concluded, making a kind of shivering noise of disgust.

“Okay, I’m sorry to have brought up painful memories,” Ben said.

“No, don’t apologise!” Marcie reassured him, “That’s the point of all this, perhaps. Getting it off my chest shows that it’s really working, that you’re good at making this work for me. So don’t stop. Next question, please!”

“All right. Have you ever been in a threesome, or more perhaps?” he asked, boldly.

“What a great question!” Marcie exclaimed, “I wish I’d asked you that now. But what would you do, what would you think of me, if I said yes, I wonder? Anyway, I have to say no, I’ve not. Maybe when you asked you were hopefully thinking of me and another woman getting it on together with a lucky man, but I have to say that the first thing I imagine when you ask that is of myself being pleasured by two men at once. I think it’s a really common fantasy for women, and I admit I’ve daydreamed about it, but I’m not even sure how it would work. Would one of them have to be anally penetrating me? I’m not actually very keen on that idea, with the rectum not really being a place for a penis to go. There doesn’t seem much point in poking around up there either, for me at least, as I don’t have a prostate. Still, I suppose I must admit that sometimes I quite like my anus being touched when I’m turned on. Anyway, those specific details aren’t the point. At the end of the day, I can’t imagine it ever really working out. The best kind of sex is about showing your love for one special person, isn’t it? So this is something that can definitely be left as a fantasy for me. I can’t even really imagine being able to attract the attention of two guys who’d be up for it anyway.”

“Are you kidding?” asked Ben, recovering his concentration after the unexpected insights into her attitudes about anal sex, “You must be beating them off with a stick down town on a weekend. You’d easily find guys who’d be eager, who would definitely be well up for it, if you just came out and asked.”

“But I don’t really do that big night out thing, Ben. I’m not like you. It might be nice to try it occasionally though, the proper night out in Newcastle I mean, not bringing two guys home! But I don’t feel confident in a crowd like that, and I’m not sure I really look the part. I can’t compete with the lassies dressed just in their slips, made up like show-girls with yards of bronzed skin showing.”

“You don’t have to go that far to attract attention. I reckon if you just showed a bit of cleavage and put some lippie on, you’d totally fit in. I could even take you down to the Bigg Market tomorrow night, when it’s a bit quieter, and you could see just how friendly the guys, the cheeky Geordie charvas, can be.”

“Well we’ll call that a date then!” Marcie eagerly agreed, “But I’ll try not to make another new friend to bring home with you.”

“Great,” Ben said, but perhaps Marcie could hear the uncertainty in his voice. He still felt unsure about what to think of her desire to have sex with two men at once, or what he could do about it.

“Hey, I’m teasing!” she said with emphasis, seeming to read his mind, “I absolutely don’t want to get squashed between two guys in the real world. Remember this is fantasy stuff. With women’s fantasies especially, but I guess with men and their porno too, we can always be very clear about which are daydreams and what’s reality. Even if I completely disappear off in my head when I’m in some blissed-out ecstasy, perhaps to a full-on fantasy Elfland in the clouds where the satyrs have glowing tree trunks for cocks, it would still be you that’s taking me there, your body that’s in my arms and, I hope one day, your rod that’s really inside me.”

“Aye, I hope for that too,” Ben said, feeling quite stirred up himself now by her imagination. He pressed on, “So, I guess this is my last question. How old were you when you first had sex, and could you tell me about it?”

“Oh, that’s a classic, isn’t it? I should have asked you that too. It’s something we’d talk about time after time as teenagers, but I was still a virgin then, so I actually made a story up. Shall I tell you that as well as the time that I really lost my virginity, at nineteen?”

“Aye, yes please,” Ben replied, intrigued.

“Don’t you hate that phrase, by the way? You skilfully avoided it in your question, but I stumbled right into it. For a boy, it’s like a rite of passage, something to be proud of, that your mates would probably congratulate you on if you boasted about it to them. But for a girl it’s a loss of something precious, unique and irreplaceable, a medieval idea of purity that’s punctured when the hymen’s torn and bleeds. It sucks. Anway, let me tell you about the made-up version first.”

She took a deep breath, then went on. “There was this German guy called Hans who I met when I was sixteen on our regular family trip to Malta. He was on his summer holidays with his younger sister and his parents, and he was two years older than me. This is totally fictitious, by the way, though I could tell you a whole lot more in exact detail, where he came from, what he was studying, what he looked like, all tall and butch, with dreamy blonde hair. Well, you get the idea! We’d met because I was about the same age as his sister, but then we hit it off too when we all hired bikes together. On his last night there, he escaped his family’s rented apartment and found me. He climbed in through my bedroom window and we had a wonderful illicit night of passion, muffling our cries of ecstasy, both knowing we’d never see each other again. He let me go on top and I rode him like Joan of Arc on her mighty Teutonic warhorse, pumping away until we were both slick with sweat. I don’t know if any of my friends really believed me, and I shared this story with more than just Amber, but they all enjoyed everything that I described about it.”

“It sounds like it would have been fun, and romantic too. So do you want to tell me about the real one as well?” Ben asked.

“Well, as you might expect, like many people’s experience in their first time, it was a lot less glamorous, and overall a bit of anti-climax. It’s like a fairground ride, isn’t it? You queue up, waiting what seems like forever, then when it’s finally your turn, it’s just some slightly bored kid that punches your ticket to let you on. Then suddenly you find you’re locked into something that’s a bit uncomfortable, getting thrown and pulled about all over. It’s giving you some thrills for sure, but it’s making you feel a bit sick too. And then it’s all finished almost as soon as it got started, so you feel disappointed, but also perhaps a little bit relieved that it’s over too. But despite all that, you still want to go around and queue for the ride again.”

“That’s a great description,” Ben remarked with sincere respect.

“Thanks, but I’ll share the actual details with you too. His name was Giacomo, and he looked Italian but he was English really. He was a fellow student, and perhaps we’d originally been aware of each other on the course because we were both second-generation Mediterranean immigrants. Well, we were just at the start of our second year, part of a group of undergraduate lawyers who’d gone to a fresher’s disco. I think he’d gone there with the deliberate intent of trying to pick up a naive new arrival, but he’d had no luck. He thought of himself as a bit of a handsome Roman stallion, but really he was just a bit short, and vain too. Anyway, it started between us towards the end of the evening when we were sat close together and a little tipsy. I think I initiated things by putting my hand on his knee, giving him an excuse to touch mine. We got to kissing and necking, then he asked if I’d like to go back to his room. I said I did, but I knew what was on his mind and I was quite blunt. We had a bit of a debate about protection, which ended up with him realising what was at stake when it came down to the bottom line, that no condom meant no sex.”

She took a deep breath before carrying on, “Well, we went back to his place and he made a bit of pretence at offering me a drink, but of course what he really wanted me to do was get undressed. I was quite happy to comply. I knew the plan, the script as you put it. So after all that talking about it as a teenager and all that reading about it in Cosmopolitan and so on, it just came down to me lying on my back on his not so fresh duvet while he had a bit of fumble about, then awkwardly letting him put his cock up inside me almost as soon as he’d got it out. I think I made a bit of a performance of writhing around and moaning, and it was nice to feel him there, but overall it was really just a bit uncomfortable. I was quite glad when he finished quickly. Afterwards we had a bit more of a cuddle, I said some polite words and then fell asleep with him, but we never tried to do it again. Maybe I’d disappointed him, or maybe he just thought he could do better. I don’t think either of us was ever really interested in seeing the other as more than just a casual acquaintance. But for me it felt like I’d got the job done, at least.”

Marcie found her own conclusion, “It was a rite of passage, like I said, but it would have been nicer to have passed through that gateway into womanhood in sunny Malta, rather than a student room in dreary Manchester. So maybe I’ll keep the fantasy of Hans, rubbing his big hands over my still budding body, slippery with sun cream and the sweat of a hot Mediterranean summer.”

“Wow, you took my questions so seriously,” Ben said as Marcie sat up and beckoned him back to the sofa with an outstretched arm, “I’m really glad you shared all that.”

“It was worth doing, I think. I feel unburdened somehow, or perhaps better able to look forwards instead of worrying about the past. It feels right that you should have heard it too, that I don’t need to feel guilty about keeping secrets from you or anxious about how you’d react if you found them out, even if there are probably still all sorts of things that we didn’t mention. But you shared a lot with me too.”

As Marcie had started talking, Ben put his head against her shoulder, but then somehow he’d found it natural to settle down lower, perhaps as if it were his turn to lie down on the sofa again. He ended up with his head in her lap, gazing up into her contented smile over the rise of her breasts under her pleated white nightwear, whilst she gently played with his hair.

“Aye, I feel the same way, more so maybe,” Ben said reflectively. He went on, “That was some awkward, unpleasant stuff I wound up sharing. But you described things really well, you know, and your imaginary things were really vivid. Maybe you should write that stuff down, publish your own book.”

“Maybe I’ve already started,” Marcie said enigmatically, “But who would read it? Anyway, I’m really glad that you opened up and told me so much. I’m thinking now that I might need to find a nurse’s costume to wear for you, and that I’d better keep a tight grip on your hand if we go to Tallinn, or a Spice Girl’s reunion for that matter. I’m teasing!” she exclaimed as Ben opened his mouth to protest, then immediately carried on, “It also sounds like my pussy will be safe from unexpected visitors if I end up falling asleep when we’re a bit inebriated too, but I might need to expect some spurts of extra lubrication if I ask you to give me a massage. Hmm, and I’d better be prepared for my nipples to end up feeling a bit tender too. But that’s all just fine,” she concluded, gazing down tenderly at him with a beaming smile.

“I’m glad,” Ben said as he returned her warm smile. Even though he still felt a bit ashamed of some of the things he’d said, he knew that he was also a bit aroused. He was aware that his head was close to Marcie’s pussy, as she kept calling it, and he could feel the warm skin of Marcie’s firm thighs on his cheek through the thin fabric. This arousal started coming on more strongly when she began playing her nails over his bare chest.

“Were you turned on by what we talked about at all?” she asked him.

“Yes, I guess I was, at times. Your fantasies intrigued me. But how did you feel? We were talking about some heavy stuff too.”

“Well I’ll admit it wasn’t as straightforward as it felt earlier, when we got down on the rug to act out how we might masturbate. Perhaps I did get a bit turned on, perhaps even by the simple act of openly sharing such private things out loud with you. But what I feel now is more like a kind of itch, a physical condition that I need to just get on and do something about. So what do you say, Ben?” she asked, giving his chest a vigorous rub, as if it were a dog’s coat, Ben thought, “Do you want to come through to the bedroom with me now to really see I go about pleasuring myself?”

“Hell yes!” Ben agreed eagerly, lifting his head from her lap.

“Well come on then!” Marcie said, grinning flirtatiously as she pushed him up, using both hands against his back.