Beware the Roasburies! Pt. 04

"Yes, Connie, I get the message, and yes you are stunningly beautiful. All over! Is that what you wanted to hear?" I was stern as I handed her the garment.

She took it but looked puzzled. "Pardon?" she said.

"You called me to get you a dressing gown. You could have asked from behind the door, but you opened it wide and stood there naked. You struck a pose when I returned. I assumed you wanted reassurance that you have a beautiful body. Which you have. Or did you mean another message?"

I turned and walked away into my room and shut the door. I sat on the bed and waited.

A knock.

"Come in," I said.

She came in wearing the dressing gown done up tightly, looking worried.

"I don't understand," she said. "Have I upset you? I didn't mean to. You did say you didn't mind me being naked."

"Don't be disingenuous, Connie," I almost snapped. "There's a difference between accidentally showing yourself, and displaying yourself for inspection, and you know it. So why?"

She was standing before me like a naughty schoolgirl. Very attractive!

"Come and sit down," I said.

She sat next to me. Now she would not have to face me.

"You're right, of course," she said, turning towards me and tucking her legs under her on the bed as women do. "I didn't get all that sweaty from the shopping expedition. I wanted you to see me."

She paused, reached out and took my hand, holding it and stroking the back of it with a thumb. I waited.

"I think it's time you heard the whole sorry business, perhaps it will help you to understand why I do what I do.

"At home, growing up, Derek was successful and so was Penny, and I always felt inferior. Though we're nearly two years apart, thanks to when our birthdays fall there was only one academic year between us. She was one of the oldest in her class, I was one of the youngest in mine, so I always struggled. No one encouraged me by telling me I was actually two physical years behind her so I never believed I could do as well, and I stopped trying. Mother always belittled me, called me lazy, spineless, and because I went out a lot, she called me a whore and a slag.

"I lost my virginity at my eighteenth birthday party in the last year of school. I was drunk and it hurt. I was terrified I was pregnant until I got my period.

"Well, even partying every weekend, I still did reasonably at "A" level and got into Keele. It was a brand new university, about six years old. I was doing English and Social History. I did very little work and spent most of my time partying. My fault. No one else to blame but me.

"After getting deflowered I didn't have full sex again until I got to Keele. That pregnancy scare put me right off, and I felt no interest in getting laid. I did oral and got oral, but that was the limit until I went to Keele. Once there I carried french letters and ended up getting done at parties by boys I fancied. Some of them dated me for a while, others were one night stands. I failed first year and would have to resit.

"Mother screamed and ranted, told me there would be no more money for me unless I stopped all this wild life. I laughed at her, and she told me to get out. So I did."

"Where was your father?" I asked. "I would have thought-"

"He was on a business trip abroad for a month. He wasn't there. That's not unusual in the family. I think it's his way of coping with her - absence makes the heart grow fonder and so on, you know. He was never there when I wanted to talk to him. He's quite ruthless in business, but very gentle at home. I think he has a mistress he takes on his trips.

"You know about them? Dad was married before until she ran off with someone else leaving him with Derek who was eight years old. I think he married Mother on the rebound, got her pregnant and, I think, felt obliged to stay with her. After Penny was born I came along. Two girls! Dad loved us, and I think Mum did too, but she was on the social climbing thing and we had to be the perfect family. Penny fell in with it, but I was the rebel."

"So, you left home?"

"A guy I fancied had just graduated and we had a thing going. I turned up at his place in August, and told him the sorry tale. He was packing to go to London where he had a job and said I could go with him.

"So you did go to London, your Dad was looking in the right place."

"Big place London, easy to lose yourself, disappear. The honeymoon with that guy lasted a week. Then he got kinky. Raped me in the arse, started getting other blokes in to do me while he watched. Double teaming, doing my mouth while his mate fucked me, then swapping over. Then I found they were paying him!

"I left, and lived on the streets for a while. That really is a revelation, believe me. Everyone is a user. I mean they use drugs as well as using any people they come across. It's dog eat dog for survival. They con people. I never got into the drug scene: I couldn't see the point. I actually used to think they were destroying their lives, as if I wasn't!

"I slept under bridges, got raped a number of times by other down-and-outs. Since that first bloke I went to London with, I had been going to family planning clinics and getting the pill on prescription because I was high risk at first, then down-and-out, homeless. I'm no fool Graham, each time some man had me I went to the VD clinic and got tested.

Then I found a bloke who was living in a squat in a disused warehouse. It was better in the warehouse than sleeping rough, but it came at a price. I was passed around the blokes in the squat, they all used me and a couple of other girls. I hated the sex and I hated the men, but I had no option. At least I never got any diseases, and there was a bed and food."

"But you ended up in Bolton."

"Yes. After my second winter in London, I couldn't stand it any more, and when I went for my sex check-up there was a nice doctor at the clinic. I was very down at the time and my 'protector' had beaten me up the night before, so I told the doctor.

"The doc. got out the paper and showed me an advert for a cleaner in Bolton Royal. He actually pulled strings for me and I got the job. He paid my train fare and gave me some money to keep me going. Of course he did me, but he was kind and gentle, and by then it was what I expected to have to do to say thank you to men. I got the coach to Manchester and then got a bus, that way I had some of the train fare to add to what he'd given me.

"Then when I got up here to Bolton I had nowhere to go and ended up where you saw. Again sex was the price to give me a roof over my head and food in my stomach.

"Graham, look what you've done for me. No one, and I mean no one has done anything for me without getting paid. It started with my mother, I had to do what she wanted. She used money as a weapon. After that my body was used in payment. But you? You've done all this, You've said that you find me attractive and more, but you've never tried anything.

"I know you're not gay so I don't understand it. What's wrong with me? I used to get fucked without doing anything to provoke it. You confused me, you still do, so I made the usual moves and you still didn't react, I went further and further and still nothing. So tonight I went as far as I could. I actually felt embarrassed doing it, and you turned me down again.

"So here we are. You've not made a move on me and I don't understand why not. You obviously do it with Colette, and I know she's a perfect woman, totally beautiful, much more than me, but why not me as well? You say I'm beautiful too. What's wrong with me?"

She squeezed my hand, and smiled uncertainly. It had taken a lot out of her to tell me her story. I sighed.

"Connie, I'm sorry for all you've been through. I really haven't thought it through all that much, but I just have it in my head that I must not take advantage of you precisely because you depend on me at the moment, because you've been so abused sexually.

"I kind of assumed you had been taken advantage of before, your last tormenter being just one of a line. You had a battered look about you; life had put you through the wringer.

"So I'm just the latest man in a queue, and having sex with you would make me just like those other men: it would give you mixed messages. I don't want to use you Connie; I don't want sex as payment, I don't want to be the latest one in a long line selfishly to exploit you. I simply enjoy caring for you.

"Then there's Penny. I was really committed to her and I'm not over the way she treated me. Though I am over her, I'm wary of committing to anyone so soon, for fear it may be a rebound, someone to fill the gaping hole in my life that she left."

"But you have Colette, and you had Harriet."

"The whole point with Colette is that she doesn't want to get serious, and neither do I. Sex with her is a fun and affectionate thing. She has other men from time to time. Harriet and I never got serious; I steered her back to Kieran, and she tried to do the same with me and Penny, but Penny never showed.

"The point is we are all equals, they are independent women; if they sleep with me it's because they want to, not because they have to, or that they owe me anything, but with you there is the legacy of this dependency thing, of owing me. I just don't feel I can do that to you.

"You're just the sort of person I would want to commit to; I'd be looking to a long term relationship with someone like you. Your experience of sex has not been a good one. If we do get that far, and believe me I think I do want to get that far in time, if you're still willing, then I want it to mean something more than getting my rocks off, or using you as part payment. I want it clear we give ourselves to each other as equals, and in a long term relationship. So I'd say, let's just give it time."

She looked thoughtful at that and then smiled a smile I could not fathom.

"Do you want to talk about Penny?" she asked.

"I would have thought the women would have filled you in on that."

"Partly, they only said that you were in love with her, she suspected you of cheating and finished with you badly. They didn't want to say more because they said you don't want to rake it up again. Now I'm doing it. They said she hurt you really badly, and they comforted you. They really do love you, you know. I don't really understand her; it doesn't seem like the Penny I knew."

I really didn't want to tell her, mainly because Penny was her sister.

"I don't want you to hate her, Connie. I think she had so little experience, she didn't know and still doesn't know how to handle it. I hope she's over it and can settle down with her new fiancé."

I told her how we met, how we made slow progress into deeper intimacy. Then the engagement and first sex, and even then the inhibition. Then there was the misguided intervention of Patty, Penny's erstwhile flatmate resulting in Penny cutting me out, leading to her lie about going to Derek's and her relationship with Martin. Finally there was her misunderstanding Zena's presence night and morning in the flat. Then her sending the watch back with no message.

"From there on Colette began taking me to bed. It helped."

She laughed at that, but not in a nasty way. "Stupid cow," she said, then hastily, "I mean Penny not Colette!" She laughed louder at the idea of Colette being stupid.

I continued.

"Then Harriet and I celebrated being dumped, by going to my favourite restaurant with her, Zena and Colette. It turned out we chose the exact same night that Penny decided to celebrate her engagement to some man called Nigel. What were the chances of that pray?"

"I know who you mean, that Nigel" Connie said. "He always fancied her. Carry on."

"Well another friend of Penny's came over before Penny arrived and berated me for being unfaithful. Well, we put her right and she was horrified.

"Apparently they told Penny in public at the meal that she had been wrong, and they had all got it wrong. It seems Penny was so upset she ran out.

"Derek turned up here with Ingrid to beg me to talk to Penny. I told them she knew where I lived, and yes, I would listen to her.

"She never showed. Never has. In fact she hasn't spoken to me since the lie about going to Derek's."

I sat back, feeling miserable again. Connie sat silently, then took my hand, kissing it.

At length she spoke.

"I'm very sorry I asked you to bring up all those memories. I can see it still hurts."

I shrugged. She seemed hesitant but gathered herself.

"You were with her over a year without sex?"

"She was worth it. At the time she was the one. I'd have a lifetime of making love with her, so I held off and let her make the running."

"Oh, wow, that's really something. No wonder it hurt you so badly."

"It was the speed she fell into someone else's bed that still gets to me. All that time going gently with her, and she's with someone else in weeks, and engaged to still someone else within months."

Connie put an arm round me and laid her head on my shoulder. There was little more to say, we both now knew each other's stories.

Then she sat up. "Now it's time for you to see what you've bought me. Best in the living room. Come on!"

She pulled me up and dragged me to the living room and placed me in 'my' chair.

I had mixed feelings. I could think of nothing less interesting than Connie trying on jumpers and skirts and slacks, while on the other hand she was so excited by the whole clothes thing that I wanted to share it.

"You do want to see it?" she asked with a worried frown.

"Yeah, that's fine," I said. My tone seemed to be a giveaway for she gave me a quizzical look. I said nothing more.

She left for her bedroom and returned wearing a V necked jumper and a demure skirt, and carrying a pile of clothes. The outfit looked superb. I smiled. She twirled then pulled the jumper over her head and unzipped the skirt. The underwear revealed was sexy! A semi-transparent bra, matching skimpy briefs and a suspender belt. The straps of the belt hung down; no stockings. She saw.

"I've a lots of pairs of stockings and even some tights for the really short stuff, but I don't want to put them on in case they ladder."

I nodded. The underwear was definitely having its effect on me.

After that came a welter of clothing of all sorts: shirts, trousers, slacks, jeans, miniskirts and dresses and a couple of very mini skirts and dresses.

I commented: "You have the most amazing legs, and those dresses are perfect on your figure."

She smiled enigmatically.

There were two other dresses, a 'little black' number which was really black, mid thigh and shaped to her curves, and then an emerald green version, same shape and same length.

"Connie that dress is breathtaking, it sets off your hair, but more it's identical in colour to your eyes."

She smiled again, and this time it was pride in her attractiveness.

Seeing her strip and dress had me raging hard, all the more so when at the end of the show she stripped off the bra and knicker set and put on another.

She stripped naturally without a hint of seductiveness, and it was all the more erotic for that. She did that leaning forward and dropping her tits into the cups and waggling for comfort, then the stretch behind to fasten it. Then there was the hip and bum wiggle as pulled on the flimsy gauzy panties. Settling them into her bum crack and accentuating her camel toe.

"There's a suspender belt as well," she said.

There were still some thin scraps of clothing yet untried, but she stopped in her bra and knicker set.

"They made me get some nightwear as well," she said. "It's pretty sexy. Unless you want to see it, I thought I'd keep it until..." Here she stopped and bit her lip.

"That's fine," I said. "You keep it for a lover."

She looked on the edge of saying something. Then shook herself, gathered up everything and left the room, leaving me with a vision of her retreating bottom swaying, showing both cheeks as they moved alternately up and down. She looked gorgeous.

I settled to read my book, and a while later she returned. She was wearing new pyjamas. They were silk and though loose fitting hid nothing of her shape. Her nipples were clearly defined and her bottom pushed out the fabric tightly over her cheeks. She sat across from me and picked up her own book, sitting cross legged on the chair. The silky fabric stretched over her sex and defined it.

I looked, looked away, and looked again. I felt she was refusing to look up and catch me staring. Each time she moved, one knee up, both legs down on the floor, both legs tucked under to the side, and back to cross legs. Each movement attracted my eyes as it showed her off in a different way. My cock was raging stiff and my balls were aching. Eventually I closed my eyes.

"Graham," she said at length.

"Yes?" Eyes still closed.

"You know you can have me whenever you want to."

I opened my eyes.

She was sitting demurely on her chair, legs primly together, though her nipples still showed: how could they not? She looked a little worried, as if she had said too much. She had.

I must have frowned, for she suddenly looked fearful.

"No," I said, "Don't worry. That came as a surprise. Don't get me wrong, Connie, I feel very warm towards you, even hot. You really do get me going, but-"

"Yes, I know," she said. "My 'but' is that I know I've fallen in love and I already feel completely at home with you and don't ever want to leave. That's never happened to me before."

This girl was really up front in a way I'd never experienced before, though Colette came pretty close, doing it physically without a word. Connie had been rescued and was enjoying her new life, and of course she would be on an emotional high. Was that all it was? Would she still feel the same after a few months, when she'd got used to it all?

Of course I wanted Connie, but I had to get rid of all that baggage first. Yes, I admitted it to myself, I did want her. However, she was Penny's sister; did she share some of her older sister's traits? Big worry.

"Time for bed," I said. "We need to close up."

"I'll get the kitchen," she said.

Afterwards she was waiting outside my door in that silk set, and as usual we hugged and kissed. She smelt fresh and warm with only the thin material of the pyjamas between us. I could feel every curve of her nubile young body, and my erection began to rise.

"Good night," she said, smiling up into my eyes, "I feel so much closer to you after our talk."

"Me too," I replied. "Good night."

I felt good as I lay in bed after another near naked embrace and kiss good night from my flatmate. She was so attractive in every way, not just looks. She was up front with her wants and needs. I knew I was falling for her In the same way I fell for Penny, but the knowledge Connie was her sister was unsettling and even off-putting.

I reflected that with Penny I knew I wanted her for life after only a few weeks. There was no inhibition, no reserve, I dived in and she was the reluctant one. I was not even aware it was a risk to commit so quickly.

Now I had her sister returning that impetuous launch, and I was the reluctant one; I could see big risks. I could see disappointment and bereavement on the horizon like an impending thunderstorm. I could see her attitude change after a few months, and then she would be gone, like her sister.

Oh well, give it time, let it grow if that was to happen. Roasburies - hmph!

--

Chapter Seventeen

Wednesday 23 December 1970

On Wednesday morning at 6.30am, I rolled out of bed into my running gear and emerged quietly only to be confronted by Connie wearing a running kit most women would die for (at least the ones who love running), and would have given most men a heart attack. Tight tee shirt top with obvious sports bra underneath, and brief, brief shorts displaying more than their fair share of bottom cheeks. Was this legal? I asked myself. Further, the temperature outside that morning was well below freezing.