Into My Life


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Paul showed me. He had stopped the moment I had asked him to, so now when he started touching me again, all I was afraid of was losing control myself. “It’s all right, Luv,” he whispered and I believed him and gave in to it, let him hold me and touch me, not just in places I had never been touched before, but in a way I had never been touched. His touch was not that of a guy enjoying himself, seeing how far he could get, but as a man giving pleasure to a woman. I was lost, moaning with pleasure, sighing his name, and never wanting it to end. I ooohed and aaahed every sparkler and starburst and streaking rocket. Instead of easing off as he had before, Paul went on, his touch faster and harder, his kisses insistent and unrelenting. When the grand finale began I gasped in surprise as his hands set off an explosion deep inside that sent shock waves all through me.

Afterward, I lay in his arms drifting on a cloud of wonder and contentment. Soft kisses teased my ear, brushed my neck. I opened my eyes. Dark eyes watched me. “Thank you,” I whispered, surprising myself as I said it. What was I thanking him for? For the pleasure I hadn't even known existed, for being so sweet, for not taking advantage of me when it would have been impossible for me to stop him? For all of that.

He laughed in surprise and delight. “You're welcome!” he said and leaned over me to kiss me again. Wonder and contentment were lost in a surge of emotion. I reached up and pulled him down, hugging him fiercely, overwhelmed by a rush of emotion as intense as the physical sensation of the minutes before. Overwhelmed and frightened, I thought “This is just a reaction to whatever he just did to me. That's all. Please let that be all.”

He was kissing me again. I kissed him back, bewildered by how I felt, whispering his name over and over. I gave no thought to the effect that would have on him, until he suddenly grabbed my hand, and guided it where he wanted it. I suppose it is strange, but my knowledge of sex left me more prepared for his orgasm than my own. Since I hadn’t understood that women had such a thing, that is no surprise, I guess, but now I was on more familiar territory. Between textbooks and dirty jokes, I understood the male sexual response. I knew where he was headed and had a basic understanding of how to get him there: “Doin' that crazy hand jive.”

I took my cues from his groans and timed my strokes to match the speed of his movements. His breathing was fast and labored and I knew when he abruptly moved on top of me again that this was it. I didn't panic though because I could feel the hard rod of his penis on my belly. (Yes, that is the word that I was thinking. Technical, anatomical. Penis. I just wasn't comfortable with the other names for it. “Dick” was a word in a joke and this was no joke. “Cock” was a dirty name for it and there was nothing dirty about this moment.) Anyway, I didn't panic because I knew he wasn't going to try to put it in me. He began to gasp and moved faster and harder against me.

Another revelation: “Ooh, yeah, yeah!” isn't just the chorus in a song. No wonder our parents objected to the music. They knew where the words, the feeling came from!

So many things were racing through my mind at that moment: Astonishment at the almost violent storm of passion it took for a man to make it. Wondering how it would feel to have him in me, thrusting, pounding in me like that. How could that not hurt? A feeling of awe and power to know that I could bring on such an intense experience. Was it pleasure or pure relief that caused him to cry out at the last moment? An incredible sound.

All those thoughts disappeared as I felt the warm wetness spreading across my stomach. Ten cc's of fluid the textbook had said. This felt like much more. Once again romance collided with reality. This was messy!

He collapsed on me, breathing raggedly in my ear. I lay there, suffocated by the dead weight of his body, wondering what I was supposed to do now. Just when I thought I was going to have to push him off or suffer brain damage from lack of oxygen, he stirred. He shifted position, kissing my neck and working his way to my mouth. I could breathe again and I could have enjoyed the sweet gentleness of his kisses more if I hadn't been worrying about how to handle the fact that as soon as he rolled off I was going to have to do something about all that wetness.

I had no idea what good manners called for in this situation. Emily Post had never addressed this. Or maybe she had. “The well brought up young woman carries a clean linen handkerchief at all times.”

When he rolled off, I just lay there. The sheets had long since been pushed to the foot of the bed and I couldn't even cover myself.

“Ach,” Paul said, looking down at himself. An echo of movie dialog ran through my head: “I'm all sticky!” I heard it so clearly I wasn't sure for a moment if he said or I had just thought it. He sat up, reaching for the sheet, swiped at his stomach and then turned to me. He must have seen something of my embarrassment in my expression because he looked a little subdued and thoughtful as he tugged more of the sheet up and handed it to me.

“You've never done any of this before, have you?” he asked softly as he watched me awkwardly trying to blot up the thick wetness with a nonabsorbent sheet.

“No.”

“I'm, sorry. I shouldn't have … ”

“It's ok! I just didn't know … ”

“What?”

“How wet this whole process is!”

That got his smile back. “Being wet and slippery is half the fun,” he said and began to finger paint on my stomach! I watched, embarrassment slipping away.

“I'll never look at whipped egg whites the same way again!” I giggled.

He burst out laughing and took the sheet from me, gently wiping my stomach. When he lay down again, he put his arm around me and pulled me close, my head on his shoulder. I snuggled against him, thinking I had never felt so physically relaxed and mentally high in my entire life. I nuzzled up to kiss his neck.

“Now who is your favorite Beatle?” he asked.

“John Lennon,” I answered promptly.

He gave me a look of exaggerated dismay.

“You'll just have to settle for being the one I want most,” I consoled him, kissing him again.

“That's better anyway,” he said and we settled down for a few minutes of gentle kissing and soft touching.

“Is it always like that?” I asked.

“It is never the same twice, really,” he answered after giving it a bit of thought, “and it is even better when you don't have to be careful. Still wet, mind you, but better!”

“Better? I can't imagine it,” I said, and he laughed. His laughter embarrassed me a little because I realized that he no doubt meant it was better for the guy if he really got to “do it”.

“I mean, I know it would have been better for you if... ." and I ran out words.

“No, Tess. Not just for me. For both of us. You'll see. And don't think this wasn't enough for me. Don't ever think that. Just touching you, watching you, that is enough for now.” His voice was husky and he was kissing me again.

“Remember that first morning at the hotel when you came out of the shower wearing John's shirt?”

I nodded.

“I took one look at you, standing there in the sunlight and my knees went weak.” He laughed a little. “I haven't felt like that since I was fifteen. I've wanted you ever since. I can wait a little longer.”

I didn't know what to say. I had thought he just didn't recognize me! “I wanted you before I ever even saw you,” I told him. “That first day there in the hotel, in the big dining room. You walked up behind me and put your hand on my shoulder and leaned against me. I had never, ever felt what I felt when you touched me. I never imagined what it could lead to.”

He smiled and ran his hands over me. “It led to this.” He slid his hand between my legs. “And this. And more one of these days.” He took his hand away and I sighed with disappointment. He grinned at that. “I take it you enjoyed this evening?” he teased.

“It was incredible,” I whispered.

“And sticky. Come 'ead. I'll run a bath.”

A long soak in the tub, his hands gently, almost absentmindedly touching me as I lay back in his arms, slippery with soap. His soap. A blend of herbs and lavender, distinctive, but still masculine. It was a scent that clung to him but was perceptible only at very close range, as when my face was buried against his neck. I'd never forget that scent now, and tonight would have a sample of it to carry away on my skin.

He asked if I had a boyfriend back home.

“You're asking that now?” I laughed. “Seems like the kind of question you'd ask before you take a girl to bed!”

“I thought you took me to bed!” he said pretending to be shocked at the idea of his initiating such a thing.

“I guess I might have given the impression I wanted you.” I teased.

“I feel so cheap!” he teased. “You won't respect me now!”

That hit a sensitive note. I suppose I should have been concerned about him losing respect for me but I didn’t even consider that. What hit me was that this was so backward from the usual situation. Although I hadn't thought of it in those terms, I was just playing around, having fun. My wild summer vacation. My summer to remember. I was using him! Subdued, I said seriously, “It is weird to think of a girl doing that to a guy. It's always the guy who just wants to have sex, but that is what I'm doing isn't it? Making you my summer fling. I'm sorry.”

There was a long silence and I wondered what he could be thinking. Then he started to laugh. I sat up and turned around to look at him. I couldn't help but laugh with him.

“I guess the idea of any red-blooded male being upset at being used for sex is ridiculous!”

“It's more than that, Luv,” he finally managed to say. “This whole thing is so backward. I have managed to get a reputation for using girls. Now I am being used. You said I am the one afraid to get close, but you are the one talking about a summer fling. If that isn’t loony enough, I have finally gotten used to the idea that birds think I am something incredible—Beatle Paul, the best catch in the world—and you reel me in and then tell me you are throwing me back!”

“I'm not throwing you back, I'm setting you free!” I said, laughing with him. “Just like letting a bird out of a cage. I'm being noble, releasing you from a life of serving my sexual needs!”

He laughed again as he pulled me back into his arms. “But I like that idea! I think I can handle a few weeks of meeting those needs.” He kissed my neck, sliding his hands up to my breasts and generally behaving in a way that guaranteed I would have needs.

“You better,” I murmured, turning to kiss his neck, looking for that soft, tender spot under his chin that needed kissing. “It's all your fault. I never had these needs until I met you!”

He paused. “So back to the boyfriend issue. There really isn't one?”

“No.”

“But you have had.”

“Oh, yes. Of course.” I thought for a moment about embellishing my past to make him jealous or at least to make it interesting, but that was silly. He knew better than anyone how inexperienced I was. So I told him about the few boyfriends I'd had. My first date, first kiss, first make-out session in the back seat of a car at the drive-in, the boy I dated the summer after graduation, the petting sessions that left me feeling guilty about my impure thoughts and deeds but not so guilty as to dampen my enthusiasm for the next opportunity. I told him about the sparse parade of dates in the last couple of years as I worked my butt off to stay in school, about how they either yielded polite kisses at the door or wrestling matches. Boys didn't seem to have a middle ground.

He listened, laughing at times, and then asked, suddenly serious, “So why now? In a few days you are going to give me what you never gave any of them. Why now? Why me?”

It was a fair question, one I had already asked myself. “If you are asking if it is because you are one of the Beatles, well, if all I wanted was to crew a Beatle, I could have done that back at the hotel,” I told him. “John couldn't have defended himself!”

“Wouldn't have,” he corrected with a laugh. “So why me?”

“Because you are gorgeous. Sexy. Irresistible.” He blushed. Actually turned pink. It was my turn to laugh at him. “And you are nice, and fun to be with, but really Paul, I don't know the answer to that any more than I know why green is my favorite color or why I only like chocolate ice cream and no other flavor. You are just the one I want even if the time and the place are all wrong.”

“Wrong?” He sounded startled and I thought—wanted to believe?—a little dismayed.

“OK, maybe not wrong. I don't know how to explain it. It is sort of... just not real. This whole trip is a fantasy, a fairy tale. You aren't real. Maybe that's why I want to do it, because this is all a dream. Nothing I do here counts as part of my real life. In a few weeks, I'll wake up and go back home, finish school, live a normal life. This will just be a beautiful once upon a time story.”

He was quiet for a minute, then picked up the soap and began lathering my back. He did it so casually that I was sharply reminded that this was nothing new to him. I had a vivid image of him in this same tub washing Jane's back. Or Ellen's. Or the owner of the pink bathrobe.

“So that is all you want from me?” he asked, jolting me back.

It sounded like a loaded question. He still wasn't sure of me. “That's all I want,” I reassured him. It seemed to do the trick. Instead of answering me, he began slowly lathering my chest, caressing my slippery body and giving me another memory to take home.

After a while, we both decided we were hungry. He suggested a small restaurant he knew where the manager would let us use a little private dining room. He got out of the tub, toweling off unselfconsciously. I hesitated, suddenly feeling very naked. He noticed and with no comment, he opened up a towel and held it out for me, wrapping it around me as I stood up. He smiled at me and went out into the bedroom as I dried off.

With the towel around me, I went out to get my clothes and took them back into the bathroom. I got dressed and moved over to the mirror to brush out my hair. As I picked up the brush, I noticed a tube of lipstick on the counter. I smiled, wondering which girl had left it behind. Then I noticed a powder compact and a trace of loose powder spilled beside it. Paul had said something the night of the party about Mrs. Grady's cleaning schedule. Someone had spilled an ashtray in the music room and Paul remarked that unless he cleaned it up, it would stay until the next Friday when the housekeeper did the upstairs. Whoever the makeup belonged to had been here last night or this morning.

That brought me down to earth quickly. As wonderful as tonight was for me, it was the routine for Paul. I had set the ground rules. Sex with no strings attached. No matter how he made me feel, I had better not forget that was all it was for him. As if to prove that I could handle this, I used Miss Whoever's powder before I went out to rejoin Paul.

Gatebirds were waiting as we pulled out of his driveway, another reminder of who I was with. I sat with the tape recorder and notebook on my lap, as if the girls would look in the car and recognize that I had a business reason for being with him.

The manager at the restaurant seemed to know Paul and his dates. He smiled a smile that said “Well, well, well. A new face,” but said nothing as he escorted us to the private dining room. The waitress looked me over carefully as if she were solely responsible for seeing to it that Paul McCartney only dated the best. I was grateful for the fact that the room was dimly lit. The only makeup I had on was whoever's powder. My hair was a little wild, and my yellow dress was a little rumpled. I hadn't exactly taken the time to hang it up and linen was rather unforgiving of such treatment.

After she left I looked up to see that Paul was grinning at me. “I don't think I passed her inspection,” I said.

“Passed mine,” he said. “and she is probably out there telling everyone we just got out of bed.”

“Oh, God. Do I look that bad?”

“You look that good,” he said.

Over dinner we talked like we had before all the stuff about the articles had come between us, and there were only a couple of times when it seemed he hesitated, held back. I didn't push it. Whatever he was comfortable with was fine with me. After dinner, he asked me to go back to his place for the night. I hesitated. “I have to be careful, Paul. If anyone sees me going to your place at this hour, if reporters start talking about us—"

“You don't want anyone to know about us?” he asked in surprise.

“I guess not,” I said, nearly as surprised as he was. “I just don't want to deal with reporters. I want to be with you as much as I can but I don't want people to think that I, that we... "

“We haven't, technically,” Paul pointed out with a grin.

I had to laugh. “True, but everyone will think so. I just don't want the whole world watching, and I sure don't want my mom to find out!”

“Then I guess I won't ask you to get your stuff from John's and stay with me.”

I caught my breath. Thoughts of spilled powder and a pink bathrobe were pushed aside by the thought of spending nights in his bed. As tempting as that was, this was happening too fast. I simply couldn't make the leap from virgin to shacking up that quickly. Shacking up. Living together. An option completely unknown in my world. No one I knew was doing that, absolutely no one. It was a step too far over the line. There were certainly people who did that, but if anyone of my acquaintance did, it would be a shameful secret the family would not talk about and would probably lie to hide. It was no doubt being done with increasing frequency by the beatnik/hippie young people, but I had little contact with that slice of society. Even for celebrities, the press would tip-toe around the obvious, and teen fan mags didn't even hint that such things were happening all the time among the rock and roll stars.

“I can't. I really can't,” I told him. Let him think I was afraid of publicity. “I would like to, but—”

”No. You are right. It would be impossible to keep quiet.”

“It's not just that,” I admitted. I didn't want him to think that I didn't want him enough to risk some talk. “I want to be with you, but I am just not ready for that.”

He reached across the table to take my hand. “It's OK, Tess.” He was grinning at me. “Even though it is unheard of for a bird to resist The Cute One—Parliament passed a decree you know—I can handle rejection.”

We drove slowly back to John's in a typical London drizzle. John and Cyn had gone over to Ringo's for the evening and Mrs. Powell was there. We watched TV with her for a bit, but she soon excused herself and went off to bed. Curled up on the sofa together soon deteriorated to stretched out side by side, hands roaming in unhurried caresses. Unhurried perhaps, but definitely with a goal in mind on Paul's part. Once again he started to unzip that yellow dress and once again I stopped him.

“John and Cyn could be back anytime.”

“Upstairs then,” he said. It wasn't a question or a demand, just an assumption.

He was right in assuming I wanted to but, “Mrs. Powell's room is right next to mine. She leaves her door open so she can hear Julian and she reads for a long time before she goes to sleep.” I don't know why I cared what Cyn's mother thought about me but getting caught was getting caught no matter whose mother it was, I guess.

Paul didn't seem more than a little surprised at my sudden attack of propriety. He argued laughingly that I was being a tease.

“I don't mean to tease,” I apologized. “I want this too, but we just shouldn't."

“I know. Are you free tomorrow?”

Free? Nothing short of needing life-saving surgery would have stood a chance. “Yes!”

“Good. I'm free. We can spend the whole day together. Maybe do a little sightseeing?”

I could feel my eyes widen with surprise. Paul laughed. “OK. We can do the ‘Just Sex' thingy and throw in a bit of sightseeing. Don't you be using your feminine wiles on me to make it more. Sex and sightseeing. That's all it will be. Well, maybe dinner.”

All this was punctuated with kisses, each growing longer. “Maybe a movie, but that will be the extent of it. Maybe some shopping someday but nothing more, you understand.” More kisses. “Maybe a few hours each day just holding you and talking to you, but that is it, I tell you!”

“That is more than enough,” I whispered through the kisses.

Once in bed that night I tried hard not to think. I had thought that the hour in his bed was an incredible, earth-shattering turning point. It was, but in retrospect, I thought that evening of dinner and TV probably was every bit as important. The time in his bed was wonderful heartnote but, after all, it was sex, not ordinary time together. He didn't turn cold, was in no rush to leave, was, in fact, downright, well, loving! We talked, and laughed, and were together. It felt so right, so comfortable, so promising, so meant to be.

“Don't do this,” the voice in my head warned. “Just go to sleep, don't think about today, don't think about Paul, don't think about what he did to you, don't think about how it felt, and don't, no matter what, don't think about how you feel about him.” As I drifted into sleep I knew that in the morning I would have to face the facts. I had decided to have sex with this man, to let him be the first, knowing full well I would never see him again after this summer. If that was foolish, then falling in love with him was beyond any reason, and that is exactly what I feared was happening.

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