by Kerri Sharpe
Our innings in bat got off to a modest start, with Scott hitting safety strokes and notching up ones and twos nice and steady. Levington’s bowling was a bit shoddy and, apart from their prize seam bowler, Haynes, setting up a couple of catches off our boys, we inched towards victory as the sun cast long shadows over the green. I went in as fourth man and determined to liven things up. After a frustrating start I got my chance on the final ball of the over when their bloke bowled short and I had time to really get behind my stroke. In a resounding crack, I was rewarded with the perfect sound and sensation of hitting the ball in the optimum part of the bat and I sent the ball flying over the boundary for the first six of the game.
The spectators got to their feet and their encouragement spurred me on to greater heights. As my partners changed through being caught out, and we suffered one LBW, I went on to realise that the game would be ours within the half hour, if I managed to keep my head and play it steady. Just as I predicted, their strategy fell apart under the onslaught of our tactical game and I began to feel as if I was in the right place at the right time. I wondered fleetingly if I’d ever feel like that when I went to university but I didn’t have the luxury of idle reveries; we had a game to finish off. With two men on our side still to pad up and 80 runs on the scoreboard, I put my all into it. I was paid back in full, and as the minutes clocked by and the chances of Levington’s taking any more wickets looking decidedly slim, victory was in sight.
The large white numbers came round on the scoreboard and we’d done it. Levington’s were all bluff and bluster with their fancy South African batsman, but they couldn’t play the long game. The cup was ours and my name would have a place in the school records. The spectators got to their feet and cheered and the headmaster made his cheery announcements over the loudspeaker system. As we walked back to the pavilion I waved my bat high in the air and felt like a young god. Then I heard my name being called and Melinda was at my side. She was nodding her head vigorously and mouthing me to join her. I mouthed back ‘scoreboard’ and she nodded. It wasn’t easy to slip away so, to avoid suspicion, I went into the pavilion and shot out the back door so I wouldn’t be noticed by the others. She was waiting for me for me in the appointed place.
* * *
I hadn’t had time to shower, and yet she told me how good I smelt. It takes a real woman to appreciate the scent of schoolboy sweat. I bounded off in my grass-stained clothes with much haste. At least she allowed me time take off my box.
Before I knew what was happening she had dragged me into the allotments that back on to the sports ground. The college grounds cover a huge area and there are riding stables and a tennis club as well as an ancient stretch of woodland within easy reach. As we jogged across the allotment – over the patches of string beans and cabbages – one or two eager gardeners glanced our way and we nodded to them. They probably thought we were mother and son. I didn’t dwell on the fact Melinda was more than twice my age. There was only now and this moment that I’d waited a good couple of years for. I wasn’t about to put obstacles in front of my imminent pleasure.
Once we were out of sight of anybody she took my hand and we slipped lightly into the woods. Every crackle of every twig set my heart pounding. I was excited beyond a level I had ever experienced and nervous as hell. When Melinda ducked down into the undergrowth she gave me a flash of her brown legs and I couldn’t wait to get my hands around them. She came to a stop by a small sheltered clearing surrounded by overgrown brambles, fell against a tree and spun round to face me as I advanced on her.
I must have looked incongruous in my sports gear – adrift from my teammates and intoxicated with lust and joy – the happy cricketer in the woods. I eased my hands around her tiny waist and she wriggled against me, feeling for me between my legs. She hooked a leg up around my thigh and then, for the first time, I made contact with her private parts. Even the feel of it – like a plump hot fruit – drove me near to the edge of letting go too soon. I needed the real thing and I hoped to all the gods that she wouldn’t back out on me now.
I kissed her deeply, feeling electrified by my desire. I’d looked at a lot of porn on the net and had a good stash of magazines but that fabricated stuff can never convey the feeling of a woman’s heat and the beguiling softness of her touch. Her tiny hand was rubbing me along the length of my extremely hard penis. She was cooing and smiling; telling me how big I was. After a minute of this I could stand it no longer.
‘Can I?’ I breathed raggedly into her ear, picking up on her lemony perfume.
‘I think so,’ she said. ‘I mean, you are old enough, aren’t you? Seventeen? I should have done this a year ago.’
‘I think a year ago it would have been all over in the car the other day and I’d had to have done my own laundry again.’
She laughed and told me to kneel at her feet and pull her knickers down. With absolute determination not to press against the seam of my trousers too ardently I slowly prolonged the delicious agony – and the earthy scent of her womanliness drifted into the air and seduced me. I pressed my face to her sex and breathed gently on it, before taking my chances and allowing myself the thrill of poking my naughty little tongue between her lips. She began grinding her hips against me, clawing her fingers through my hair and telling me to work it faster.
At the same time I eased two fingers along her slit and was shocked by how damp she was. Which was nothing compared to the moisture that coated my hand as I slid into the silky interior, pressing my knuckles up against her pubic bone. I was in her at last – a dress rehearsal for the real thing that surely would be mine in a matter of minutes. I became more creative with my tongue, using its muscular dexterity to bring her to a climax as quickly as I could. I was worshipping her to be allowed my own release. But she was to have hers first – and oh my God did she go for it! If I hadn’t have been so aroused by feeling her give under my ministrations, I might have been concerned that someone would hear us. But at that moment I didn’t care; I had waited too long.
I was so hard by the time I managed to extricate myself from my white trousers that I was shaking with need. Melinda had sunk down the tree to squat on her haunches, and in that position she parted her knees to allow me to see her in all her glory. I stretched out an arm and aimed my thumb towards her clit. She seemed to like it so I rubbed her softly, feeling the warmth and moisture she had just oozed from her orgasm. I tilted her gently over on to her back, into the leaf mulch and ready for me. I nudged my cock against her, and I knew I would have to exercise supreme control not to spurt my hot liquid over her. The sight of her lying there with her wispy satin panties stretched between her knees and her ripe, plump lips glistening in the shadow between her thighs was a living porn tableau. I held myself tight in my hand, rubbing the slippy moisture that had seeped from the eye over my shaft. I was ready to blow.
I reached in my pocket for the condom but she told me not to worry about it; she was on the pill. And she then announced rather than asked, ‘This is your first time, isn’t it?’
At least she hadn’t used the ‘V’ word. I nodded my head, unable to look her in the eyes. But she insisted I relax; that there was no shame.
‘The first time should be a tribute. I want to feel you let go inside me. I want to feel the seed of a virgin. It’s my first time, too. I’ve never taken a boy’s cherry before.’
I felt a brief moment of panic but it didn’t stop me; nothing would have. I wanted to come so badly. And then it was there; the first silky feel of her smooth moist slit on my dick was all it took to send me to heaven.
We looked into each other’s eyes. She played the coquettish maiden, biting a finger and drawing her breath in sharply. She was driving me insane.
‘Talk to me, Chris,’ she said.
I didn’t know what to say. I just kept telling her she was beautiful.
‘I love it that you’ve still got your cricket whites on,’ she continued. ‘I’ve got a special thing about cricketers. I like to watch
them slowly rub the ball along the inside of their thighs. I watched you do that earlier and it made me wet for you.’
It was her that was doing all the talking but I didn’t mind.
‘I was so ready for it when we were in the car. I knew I wouldn’t take long to come. I loved it just now when you flicked your tongue into my cunt. This is your reward, Chris.’
That was it. I felt the molten fire build in my balls and began to push harder.
‘Oh God,’ I panted. ‘Oh, that’s it, I’m coming, I’m coming.’
And with my hands roaming over her breasts and the sound of the lewd words she had uttered in my ear still ringing in my consciousness as being such a very wrong thing for your mate’s mum to say, there was an explosion of exquisite excitement as I let it all go inside her. To look up and stare directly into the face of my dad.
So now I’m sitting here biting my nails and feeling a mixture of elation at finally losing my V and terror at what he’s going to do? Will he tell mum? Surely not! And Jason. Will he know about it? I did the only thing a boy would do, and legged it. I said thank you over and over to Melinda and sorry about twice that amount. They couldn’t really blame me, could they? I was man of the match, after all.
Oh God, that’s the front door. Oh Christ, Cavendish, you’ve really dropped yourself in it.
There’s a knock at my door.
‘Come in,’ I croak, standing up ready to face the music and the wrath.
‘Surprise!’
In fall Melinda and my dad. Dad’s swigging from an open wine bottle and the pair of them look beside themselves with glee.
‘What?’ I begin. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Look, son. Don’t you worry. Nothing’s going to happen. Mum doesn’t know a thing.’
‘And neither does Jason,’ said Melinda.
‘And that’s the way it’s going to stay?’ I suggest.
‘In one,’ says Dad. ‘The thing is, I was so determined to see your name on that cup, I knew that a little incentive would work wonders.’
‘It was no chore, Bill,’ says Melinda. ‘He’s a beautiful boy.’ She looked at me with genuine affection, and the worry eased out of my body. But I was still confused.
‘We’d better be getting back to the grounds, before there’s any hoo-ha,’ said Melinda.
‘Chris needs to come back too, don’t you, son? Mingle with the local nobs and celebrate with your team mates.’
‘But, how …?’
‘Look, let’s just say me and your mum are a bit friendlier with a select few neighbours than we might have let on. You’re going off to university and you’ll have your fun. We need ours too, you know. What fun would there be in suburbia without a bit of swinging?’
‘You mean, you and Melinda …?’ I ventured.
‘No, you and Melinda,’ he said. ‘We met socially recently at an informal group. I’m not going into details but let’s say we were talking about what a shame it was that most young men have to fumble around with girls their own age when they’re, you know, that age when they get all emotional and silly on them. What better than to revert to the ancient ways of a lovely older woman deflowering the young heroes of the village! And then we got to talking about the match. We’d had a few drinks and one thing led to another and so Melinda and I concocted a fiendish plan.’
He said it with such gusto. I guess he’s always been a bit of an old pagan, with his fondness for real ale and Morris dancing. All that ‘deflowering’ stuff was pagan, after all, wasn’t it? Not exactly sanctioned by the C of E.
‘Let this be your summer solstice ceremony,’ he said. ‘So come back and take the cup for the college. You went into bat a boy, and you return to take the cup as a man!’
So now I’m standing by the pavilion, and the headmaster is holding the microphone to my dad as an old boy of the school to say a few words.
‘I’ve waited years for this day,’ he began.
And as the sun set over the pavilion and the sounds of glasses tinkled around the green, all was well with England and my future. I was beaming.
‘And so have I, believe me,’ I chipped in. ‘So have I.’
Jan Bolton’s short stories have appeared in numerous Wicked Words collections.
Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter Fiona Locke
‘REPORTING FOR DUTY, sir,’ Emily said, touching the brim of her cocked hat.
Sebastian gaped at her.
She stood stiffly to attention, keeping her eyes front as her twin brother circled her, scrutinising her. The Royal Navy uniform was a perfect fit. The bum-freezer jacket and buff waistcoat hid her feminine curves well. Below the stiff turnback collar, her dainty neck was disguised by the black stock and white shirt-frill. Not even the tight white breeches betrayed her true sex.
Her dark hair was pulled back away from her face and tied with a velvet ribbon. But the bicorn hat would draw the eye away from her delicate facial features. And Emily knew that life at sea would harden her. She could never pass for a grown man, of course. But in Sebastian’s uniform she looked every inch a midshipman in His Majesty’s navy. A young gentleman in training to become an officer.
Sebastian Vane had no stomach for adventure, despite their father’s ambition that he command a King’s ship one day. Conversely, Emily deeply resented the thought of being sent to finishing school while her brother fought glorious battles against the French. At eighteen, she was a burden on their father, as she had no intention of marrying. She refused to condemn herself to a life of domestic duty, and she skilfully alienated every potential suitor her father chose for her.
‘Will I pass?’ she asked, pitching her voice a little lower.
Unable to speak, Sebastian simply nodded his head in admiration. ‘I think you just might.’
‘Thank you.’ Emily turned to regard herself in the cheval mirror. She and her brother might be satisfied with her appearance, but it was Lieutenant Trevelyan she must convince.
She was nervous, but she did her best to conceal it from Sebastian, lest he change his mind. The twins had traded places before and no one had known the difference. But this time there was no going back.
Lieutenant Trevelyan was the son of a post captain who had known the Vane family for years. The twins’ father, a prominent member of parliament, had prevailed upon the captain to get Sebastian a midshipman’s place aboard HMS Nemesis. He thought some time in the navy was just what the lad needed.
The redoubtable young lieutenant had dined with the Vanes many times and Emily always pleaded with him to share his stories about life at sea. Trevelyan naturally assumed she wanted to hear about brave victories and he indulged her with accounts of capturing French and Spanish prize ships.
She listened politely; however, her interests were a little less romantic. And when Trevelyan happened onto the topic of naval discipline her heart gave a little leap. She found it remarkable that the men subject to such harsh punishments did not resent it. But Trevelyan assured her that it was necessary for maintaining order on board a ship. The men would sneer at a captain who was lax in his discipline and think him soft. The cat-o’-nine-tails wasn’t used indiscriminately, but it was used often. However, that was a punishment only for common seamen. Midshipmen were treated differently.
Sebastian dreaded any talk about his impending naval career, but Emily couldn’t get enough. She loved hearing about the midshipmen most of all.
The ‘young gentlemen’ were not put to the lash. Instead they were punished with a rattan cane. Trevelyan told them once about a young gentleman who had failed to batten the hatch to the powder magazine properly. This was a serious oversight and Trevelyan ordered him below deck and sent for the boatswain. The lad was bent over a cannon and caned severely across the seat of his breeches, which offered scant protection. The position was known as ‘kissing the gunner’s daughter’. The image had been indelibly imprinted in Emily’s mind.
‘He was most attentive to his duties after that,’ Trevelyan said with a meaningf
ul glance at Sebastian.
The boy looked forlornly at his untouched dinner.
Emily pressed her thighs together.
Another evening Emily had the lieutenant to herself in the library. As usual, she insisted on stories and he obliged. She had to rein in her fascination as she teased out the details and nuances that intrigued her, grateful that her brother had gone to bed.
Occasionally an even more severe punishment than caning was ordered. Then the miscreant’s hands would be tied together underneath the barrel of the cannon and he would be flogged on the bare bottom with the boy’s cat, a smaller cat-o’-nine-tails made of whipcord. Trevelyan explained that the miscreant was required to make his own cat, which the first lieutenant inspected personally.
His authoritarian voice made Emily squirm with secret delight as she pictured herself in the place of the unfortunate who had displeased him. And late at night, alone in her bed, Emily replayed her fantasies while her fingers strayed inside her night-dress. It was the stern face of Lieutenant Trevelyan she saw when her body writhed and bucked in guilty pleasure.
Her punishment fantasies centred around Trevelyan disciplining her as a boy. But sometimes her struggles caused her to reveal her feminine charms to him. He never broke stride; with a rakish grin, he told her he’d known she was a young woman all along. Then he took her to his cabin and had his wicked way with her.
But this was no longer merely fantasy. What would he do if he did discover her true sex? A man who impersonated an officer would be hanged from the yardarm. But there was nothing in the Articles of War about punishments for ladies. The lieutenant would have to devise his own.