Goal-Oriented

And, at last, Kelly's fingers settled gently on her pubic bone, and her thumb brushed Brin's clit: once, and again, and again. Brin lost the battle to stay silent, and at her groan Kelly's thumb moved lower, circling the open, hungry mouth of Brin's cunt.

She circled again and again, a little more pressure with each circuit, until the pad of her thumb lingered at the top, just above the spongy, sensitive place inside where Brin knew, from her own explorations, she could be taken over the edge. That thumb would enter her in just a breath, and she needed it, she needed more than that, she wanted Kelly to fill her with every finger, with her whole hand. She became aware that she was moving her hips upward to meet the pressure of Kelly's thumb, trying to push onto that single point, and Kelly, smiling, was letting her hand ride with Brin's movements, but in a moment she would, she must, drive into her or she would ...

You have to tell her. You can't let her do this not knowing. Before she could think about it too much and chicken out, she said, "Kelly." The urgency in her voice registered, but Kelly obviously thought it meant something else, because she shifted her hand and suddenly Brin felt fingers ready at the entrance to her body—and she didn't want to, but she said, "Kelly. Wait."

Though her own eyes were half closed, she could see Kelly look up at her, surprised, and then confused as Brin took her wrist and moved her hand, pulling her down toward her.

"I have to tell you something," Brin said, feeling and sounding tragic. "Before we. Before you." She couldn't find words.

Kelly, now half lying on Brin's chest, propped on her elbows, said, "Before I fuck you?" There was a laugh in her voice.

"Yeah," Brin said.

"Okay," Kelly said. "Tell me. And hurry."

Brin said, stumbling, "I just ... I haven't ... I've never actually done this before."

Briefly, silence. Then Kelly asked, "You've never had sex with a woman before?"

Brin took a deep breath. "I've never had sex. With anyone."

Another silence. And then, to Brin's surprise, Kelly started to laugh. "Damn," she said at last, "you coulda fooled me."

Brin grinned. "I almost did."

Kelly got suddenly serious, reaching up to touch Brin's face. "If you're not ready for this," she said, "I understand. I don't want to push you."

"No!" Brin cried. "I mean, yes. I'm ready. I want this. I want you. I just wanted you to know. I figured it would be sort of weird to tell you afterward."

Kelly snorted. "Yeah, it would. 'By the way, you just popped my cherry. No big deal.' "

Brin said, "It's not. Not really." The last thing she wanted was for Kelly to decide that what they were about to do was too heavy a responsibility, and not do it.

Kelly said, serious again, "It is, actually. It should be." She looked into Brin's eyes. "I want to make this a good memory. It's—" She struggled for a moment to find a word. "There's not a way to say it that isn't cheesy. But it's a privilege for me to do this for you. I want you to get what you want." She kissed Brin on the breastbone, and Brin thought with relief, We're still going to.

Low, almost in a whisper, Kelly said, "You must have thought about this before. What it would be like. Tell me what you imagined."

"For starters," Brin said, "I figured we'd both be naked."

Kelly laughed. "Yes. All right." She sat upright and pulled her white button-down shirt over her head; she wasn't wearing a bra, as she often didn't—lean and small-breasted, she didn't need one, and said going braless was the sole payback for her underendowment—so with one smooth movement she was half nude. Brin had seen her body before, of course. They undressed and dressed in the same room, and then the same locker room, daily. But that was utilitarian, and this was something totally other: She was looking now at a body that she was about to touch. Those nipples (surely they had never looked quite like that before, dark against Kelly's pale untanned breasts and tightly erect, little fists of desire) would be in her mouth. Kelly's belly, a graceful swell where she had just enough flesh over the cords of her abdominal muscles, would be under her hand.

Kelly smiled down and lifted up onto her knees. Brin reached forward and hooked her fingers into the waist of Kelly's cutoffs, flicking the top button open with her thumb, popping the rest of the button fly open with a pull. Then Kelly came forward onto her hands, and Brin was able to push the shorts off Kelly's hips; some wriggling on Kelly's part, and she too was gloriously, completely naked, and Brin pulled her down on top of her for her first taste of another person's skin bare against her own. She closed her eyes to enjoy the feeling fully: smoothness and heat, and closeness, and completeness.

Kelly shifted, and Brin felt her muscled thigh between her legs again, but this time bare skin was what touched her. On her own thigh, she felt the wiry prickles of Kelly's pubic hair, and she deliberately brought her leg up to press into Kelly's cunt.

"Oh," Kelly gasped, and she slid her hips back and forth, back and forth, and Brin could feel the wet slickness on her thigh as Kelly opened into the friction. She could feel her own cunt, too: wide, soft, and enormously alive. One of her hands was low on Kelly's back, riding the motion of her hips and holding her tight against herself, and the other hand found the back of Kelly's neck. Then her lips, too, found Kelly's neck, her tongue pressing to Kelly's pulse on its way up to her ear.

"Oh god," Kelly was saying, whispering really, but with her lips so close that it sounded loud, "oh god christ jesus Brin I'm going to come. I'm going to come. I can't—" and she shuddered, clenching Brin's leg between her own and thrusting her hips with sudden force. "I can't stop, I can't stop," she cried, and Brin instinctively grabbed her ass with both hands and pulled her even more tightly against her leg.

Kelly groaned, throwing her head back, pushing up with her arms, her eyes closed, and then she held herself tight against Brin's thigh, rocking, clutching, crying wordlessly in her throat. Finally she seemed to settle and deflate, and she sank back onto Brin, the full length of her body heavy on top of her.

Brin pushed the long, untidy hair back over Kelly's shoulders so that she could see her face. Kelly's eyes were still closed, and Brin was surprised to see tears at the corners. "Are you all right?" she asked, alarmed.

Kelly giggled, a low happy sound that made Brin smile. "I'm great," she said. "Surprised, but great. That was super fast, for me. I wasn't expecting it. And don't worry," she added, turning her head slightly to catch Brin's eye, "I'm not done. That was a warmup.

"I'm sorry, though," she went on.

"Sorry?" Brin was confused. "What for? That was amazing." Watching and feeling Kelly come, holding her while she shuddered, had been quite possibly the best thing she'd ever experienced.

"I meant to start with you," Kelly said.

"You kind of did," Brin said. "I mean, that was ..." She searched for a word other than "amazing."

"Amazing," Kelly supplied. "All right. I believe you. But there are even more amazing things." She kissed Brin, smiling, and rolled off her to the side, drawing her hand down Brin's ribcage as she did so. She traced further down to Brin's hip, then grazed her fingertips across her belly. The center of Brin's attention, which had shifted to Kelly and the intense pleasure she had been taking, came back to the fierce ache just inside her. Kelly's fingers moved down, through her pubic hair, and as her palm settled to cup her mound, her fingers parted Brin's lips and touched her again, still fiery and tender. She could hear the slick sound of her own wetness as Kelly opened her with her fingers, brushing her inner lips now. "God, you're so ready," Kelly murmured. "You're just melting." She glanced up at Brin, her face now serious and wondering. "You have to feel this," she said, taking her hand away—Brin groaned—and reaching for Brin's. "I bet you've never felt yourself like this." She brought Brin's fingers between her own legs and, yes, it was like nothing she'd ever felt before: swollen, soft, soaking, hot.

"Please," Brin said, hardly even aware of what she was saying. "Please, Kelly, please. Please."

Kelly could have asked her what she wanted, made her wait and beg longer, but she must have heard in Brin's voice the real urgency that she felt. She answered Brin's demand by pushing two fingers into her—slowly, deliberately, firmly, deep. The animal sound of Brin's response clearly pleased her, because she laughed softly, a wondering laugh, and began pulling slowly out, pushing back in. It was exquisite: a feeling as intense as pain but nothing like it, a burst of sensation with every thrust that she could not even have imagined before she felt it. "Oh yes," Brin heard herself say. "Fuck, fuck, oh fuck, Kelly ..."

"Fuck you, right?" Kelly whispered. "You want me to fuck you. You love feeling me fuck you, don't you." Hearing that somehow intensified what Brin was feeling inside, and her own voice went from single coarse words to wordless halting cries. She thrust her hips up as Kelly pumped inside her, forcing Kelly's fingers deeper. Kelly pulled out, added another finger, pushed back in, sped up; "Yes, yes," Brin groaned.

She could hear the fleshy sucking of Kelly's fingers in and out, in and out, and it was all she could hear, the loudest sound in the room, the only sound in the world.

Her universe narrowed to Kelly's fingers inside her body. She could barely sort out the different shades of sensation—the rich, delicious feeling of the friction at the opening and along the walls of her cunt, the sharper stab inside at the deepest point of every stroke, the breath-stopping buzzing when Kelly slowed and rubbed up toward her pelvis, toward her tightening abs.

Maddeningly, Kelly didn't let her get used to a rhythm or an angle; as soon as Brin settled in enough to be able to focus, Kelly would move her arm, slow down, speed up. She fucked Brin so hard that Brin slid slightly up the bed with every pounding thrust and finally had to throw her arms up and push away from the wall so that her head didn't hit. Then Kelly backed off and moved so gently, so shallowly inside that Brin had to grip with the muscles of her cunt to feel her at all. And everything she did was better than the thing she'd just been doing.

Brin could feel the sheet under her back, wet from sweat and sex. She had no idea how long Kelly had been fucking her: forever, and not long enough at all. She did start to worry, in the back of her mind, whether Kelly could possibly keep doing this without her hand going numb. "Are you okay?" she gasped out, focusing on the top of Kelly's head where her hair curtained down, obscuring her face.

"God, yes," Kelly breathed, a note of something like awe in her voice.

"Your arm ... must be ... falling off," Brin panted. She could feel Kelly smile against her belly, where she was resting her head as she continued pumping her fingers in and out.

"I'm fine," Kelly murmured. "I could do this for days." And for more long minutes there was no sound except the wet sounds of Kelly's fucking her, and her own inchoate grunts of pleasure, and a sort of musical growl that Kelly was making in the back of her throat. Then Kelly lifted her head and looked directly up at Brin: "I want to make you come," she said, soft but urgent. "I want to feel you come. Can you come this way? From being ... from me inside you?"

Brin struggled to speak in words again. "I don't know," she said. "I've never ..."

"Right," Kelly said. "Sorry. How do you come when you're by yourself?"

"I ... uh ..." It seemed ridiculous that she should feel self-conscious about talking about it to the woman who was lying between her legs with her fingers buried inside her, but she did.

Kelly seemed to understand. "Show me," she said. "Show me how you touch yourself."

She pushed herself up off Brin's body with her free arm and, kneeling back, took Brin's hand gently and brought it down between her own legs.

This—which should have been more embarrassing than simply speaking a few words aloud—felt natural. Brin put her fingers where she liked them and started to circle. It was nothing like it was when she was alone, though. Slicker and more swollen, of course, but also accompanied by the fullness of Kelly's fingers inside, moving again, stroking the front wall of her cunt where she was most sensitive. And on top of everything, Kelly was watching her, focused on her fingers and her clit with a look that Brin had never seen on any face before. She was moving her lips a little, soundlessly, as if she were saying a silent prayer.

Brin started to feel the charge building between her own fingers and Kelly's. She had always thought of orgasm as a dull red coal hidden just behind her pubic bone, pulsing and growing until it exploded in a shower of red-gold sparks. This one, though, she could feel not just between her legs but at the back of her throat, in her chest, deep in her belly. She heard herself saying, "Oh god I'm so close," and felt the paroxysm a moment later. Bigger than she'd ever felt, but more focused as well: a golden spear piercing her from cunt to heart to throat.

When she was able to open her eyes, some indeterminate time later, she realized she was clenching Kelly's hand between her thighs in what must have been a fairly painful grip. "Oh god, sorry," she breathed, letting her legs relax.

Kelly laughed and pulled out, slowly, dragging the tips of her fingers along the slick flesh inside Brin and making her shudder and jerk her hips. "I don't think," Kelly said, drawing those fingertips along the soft cleft up to brush her clit, "that you're quite done."

Brin groaned aloud, and Kelly laughed again. "I'm done for now," Brin said. "I'm fucking exhausted."

"Exactly," Kelly said. "Exhausted by fucking." She lay down next to Brin and kissed her shoulder.

Brin closed her eyes. "I'm gonna do all that to you," she said. "And then some. As soon as I recover a little."

She felt Kelly's smile on the skin of her shoulder. "I've got more for you too." She reached down and cupped her hand between Brin's legs, protectively or possessively. "I haven't even tasted you yet," she whispered. "I want my mouth on you."

Brin gave a helpless little bleat.

"It can wait," Kelly went on. "A little while, anyway. We've got all week."

It had to wait, because after they had drowsed for a while, holding each other, stroking each other lightly and murmuring to each other not quite in words, there was a knock on the door and they heard Gina's voice: "Hey! Back to the field. Coaches want to see more footwork. Bus leaves from the quad in fifteen."

Brin half sat up, heart in her throat, expecting Gina to burst in as she usually did, but instead they heard her pounding on the next door down the hall and braying the same message.

"Drills. Jesus," Kelly said. She disentangled herself and started collecting the clothes she'd thrown off and some clean practice things. She glanced at Brin. "We should probably both shower," she said. "I'm sure we smell like sex."

Sex. Brin thrilled a little at the sound of the word in Kelly's voice. "If we shower before practice," she pointed out, "everyone is going to know something's up."

Kelly sighed. "You're right."

They cleaned up at the room's single tiny sink, getting pleasantly in each other's way, and dressed. Brin's legs felt wobbly and her breath was still shaking a little, but she was also flooded with an incredible energy. She was actually looking forward to repeats.

They joined the others in the quad. The bus hadn't come yet, and the team was sitting in a loose circle.

"We're talking about first times," Gina said.

"Really?" Brin said. "First times for what?"

"Shut up," Gina answered. "You know. First time you had sex."

Brin, still wet and tender from the first time she'd had sex, could feel Kelly sitting just behind her to her left. "And what are you all sharing about that?" trying to keep her voice light and merely curious. Her heart thudded.

"Everything," Gina replied joyfully.

Michele, the undersized midfielder from Boston, leaned over. "We just got through the L word," she said. This truly did confuse Brin. "Lesbian?" she said cautiously. "I didn't think we were all ..."

A chorus of no. "Love," Michele clarified. "Were you in love with your first?"

"Wow," Brin said. "That's a big question."

"Yeah," Gina said. "So were you?"

"Wait a sec," Brin protested, stalling. "I missed everyone else's answers."

They went around quickly: mostly, somewhat to Brin's surprise, yeses. Gina gave an emphatic "God no."

"So?" Michele prompted. "Were you?"

Kelly was radiating light and heat behind her shoulder. Brin hesitated, then thought, Why not. "Yeah," she said, and found herself grinning. "I was."

A murmur, approval or envy or vicarious enjoyment. Brin could not sense a reaction from Kelly, and she was glad she couldn't see her; if she had been watching Kelly's face she would surely have given them away.

"Was he in love with you?" asked pink-faced Ellie.

"He?" For a moment Brin was genuinely asea; had the subject changed? Then she got it. "Ellie, have you met me? She."

Laughter.

And then she realized she'd have to answer the question. She considered carefully, aware of the length of her pause, of Kelly's active attention. "I don't know," she said at last, deciding on the truth. "I know she cared about me. I know it was meaningful to her, that she was my first. She took a lot of care to make sure I got what I wanted."

"And how was it?"

"It was perfect," Brin said.

"Ohmygod that's so romantic," someone said, Brin didn't know who. "Sweet!" said another voice. All Brin could think about was Kelly's face behind her, what she might look like, whether she was betraying anything, and if so, what.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, but she didn't dare look at it.

"So who was it?" asked Gina, bulling over the barriers as usual.

"None of your business," Brin said shortly. Anxiety clutched her throat. This was the kind of thing Gina was unlikely to let go of until she'd worried more out of her inquisitee than she wanted to reveal. And then, with exquisitely lucky timing, came the call: "Hey, come on over! Bus is here!"

In the general commotion of everyone's getting to their feet and brushing off, Brin took a quick look at her phone.

fyi: she was in love with you too