An Ordinary College Sex Life

Chapter 14: Mister Independent

“I’m sorry things didn’t work out with you and DJ.” Dawn squeezed my hand and patted my shoulder.

It was Monday morning and we were sitting on a bench by Memorial Glade, just outside the Main Library. After spending the weekend hiding out inside the house with Dayna, Brandi, and Adrienne, I’d finally told Dawn the story while we had an hour to kill in between classes. She seemed a little disappointed that I hadn’t talked with her sooner, but now wasn’t the time to get upset with me. After all, SHE was the one who’d moved out of the house.

With a couple of days between me and the breakup, the sting had started to fade. I just shrugged, “It’s okay. You were right though: It would have been weird if you ended up my sister-in-law.”

“Still,” Dawn said sympathetically. “Breakups are never easy.”

I leaned into Dawn’s hand on my shoulder and chuckled. “Actually, I think your mom took it harder than I did.” I still remembered the death grip Deanna Evans had on me before I finally left to drive back to Berkeley on Friday night.

Dawn cracked up at that and looked off into the distance. “Yeah ... Mom still has it in her head that you’re going to marry one of her daughters and give her grandkids that unite our two families. Guess Dayna’s her last hope.”

I snorted at that and arched an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

Dawn laughed and nodded. She sighed and said, “I never told you but Mom got really mad when I agreed to move in with Ryan. Don’t get me wrong, she likes the guy. But he’s not you. And I don’t think she realized how serious I was with him until I moved in. And then she got really happy when you and DJ hooked up.”

I chuckled. “I always wondered about that. She was a lot more ... permissive ... with me and DJ than she was with me and you.”

Dawn shrugged. “Well, you guys are older now. And Mom let us get away with a LOT of stuff when we were just 13 or 16 or whatever.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a moot point now. Maybe you can check in with DJ later and see how permissive your Mom is with DJ’s next boyfriend.”

Dawn rubbed my shoulder and said, “Hey, there’s still a chance that it’ll be you.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Ah, did you miss the part where I explained how we’d broken up?”

Dawn shrugged. “I didn’t say right away. But when DJ gets over you and decides she’s ready to date again — which between you and me won’t be until AFTER she gets her college acceptance letters — she may very well decide she wants another shot with you. The real you.”

I sighed. “Maybe ... maybe not. DJ was right about one thing, I never really got to know her all that well. All I was thinking was ‘DJ Evans: Dawn’s hot little sister who’s had a crush on me forever’. It’s a very appealing concept to a guy.”

“A more appealing concept than ‘Dawn: Best Friend Forever who wants you back’?” She arched an eyebrow with a teasing smirk on her face.

I leveled my gaze at my best friend, feeling my heart tighten. “Don’t even fucking kid about that.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Dawn put her head down, biting her lip. I wondered how much her joke was rooted in truth.

We were both silent for a long while, and then I looked up at The Campanile to check the time. We’d spent our whole break talking about this.

So standing up, I leaned back and offered my hand to Dawn. “Come on. Let’s get to class.”

One side-effect of no longer having a girlfriend was that I suddenly had a lot more time hang out with my old crew. It wasn’t that DJ had been occupying my time during the weekdays, but I HAD been gone from Friday afternoon through Sunday night every week, and as such I simply missed out on a lot of the things going on in my friends’ lives. Plus, just knowing that I didn’t have a phone call or instant message session with DJ waiting for me at home, I automatically started hanging out at Dawn’s and Ryan’s place for a little longer than usual. And with Adrienne no longer dating Grace, she came as well, at least whenever she didn’t have a sorority event.

I took the time to play video games with Bert and Ryan while the girls gossiped about whatever. (“Boys love playing with their joy sticks,” Robin had quipped.)

Adrienne talked fashion and would go on shopping outings with the girls. (“Just what Dawn needs ... more clothes,” Ryan had sighed.)

And collectively, Adrienne and I spent a lot more time getting involved in our friends’ conversations, studied together, and generally re-became a part of their lives. We made the effort to talk with them, to bond with them. We shared homework. We talked about classes. And we started sticking around to grab dinner with them instead of heading home. I even went to play basketball on Wednesday night with Ryan, Bert, and the Seniors. Matt Kanemura, Brandi’s boyfriend, was a little standoffish with me, but nothing serious happened.

Just for the hell of it, Robin suggested we all head out to a miniature golf place on Saturday. And for the first time in recent memory, I found that I was available to go with them.

Technically, I’d never really lost them. But it felt good to have a crew again.

One other side effect of no longer having a girlfriend was that I suddenly had a lot more female attention than before. It was as if all the girls around me telepathically knew that I was no longer attached, and was in fact now ‘Open for business’.

Perhaps subconsciously, I’d been living my “not-outside-the-family” promise to DJ by keeping my flirtations with other girls in check. Yeah, I joked around some, but I had been careful not to say anything to lead a girl on. And beside restraining myself, I had somehow broadcasted at all times that ‘Yes, I have a girlfriend and yes, she makes me very happy.’

I didn’t broadcast that anymore.

Apparently, I now broadcast, ‘I’m handsome and fantastic in bed and I’m a wounded animal who needs some tender loving.’ And girls started coming on to me.

The obvious ones were Brandi’s and Dayna’s friends. With Matt and Brandi reconciled, for now at least, it was more comfortable for the group to rendezvous in our living room again, not to mention closer to campus. Kerri, Julie, Ashley, and Erica did have a house further away, but it wasn’t as big or as comfortable as ours. And those four girls were happier keeping our place as the social lounge and their place more private for their respective boyfriends.

Well, not Kerri. The hot redhead had been single for a few weeks now and even when I’d been dating DJ, she’d been making innuendoes about the two of us fooling around just for the fun of it. And in the week after my breakup, she started dropping hints about being there to comfort me if I wanted.

And then of course there was Monique. The statuesque, busty bottle-blonde had never stopped flirting with me. And during that same post-DJ week, she was far less subtle about her intentions. On Wednesday, she took one look at me when I walked through the door before stating in her gorgeous French accent, “Now there is a man who needs a blowjob. Would you like me to give it to you?”

But as appealing as a Monique-blowjob sounded, I just wasn’t ready for it yet. Sure, it would feel good. Sure, I WANTED it. But I wasn’t an oversexed 16-year-old anymore. I had other things on my mind besides raw physical relief...

That and ... well, Adrienne was still recovering from her own breakup. We knew we weren’t getting back together, but we were crawling into bed pretty regularly to mutually provide each other with the physical comfort we needed. So it’s not like I was lacking in the bedroom department.

And it wasn’t only in the house that I got this increase in female attention. Apparently, Adrienne hadn’t exaggerated the impact I’d had on the Tri-Delt sorority. At least once a day, and usually much more, some random girl would walk up to me out of the blue and start flirting, completely oblivious to Dawn’s presence next to me.

Most of the time, I had no idea who the girls were, and had to admit such when Dawn would ask, “Who the hell was that?”

But eventually, I noticed that some of the girls were wearing Tri-Delt pledge pins. Once I realized this, I started to recognize some of them, albeit only vaguely. And after the first week, I found out it would only get worse.

Adrienne returned home from the sorority one day to say, “You’re in trouble now, Tiger.”

I looked up at her with an eyebrow arched in confusion, and she went on to explain. “The Pledge Mistress set a bounty on you. First girl to seduce you gets 100 pledge points.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Is that a lot?”

Adrienne just nodded and then smiled wryly. “Actually, the initial bounty was 50 points. I spoke up and explained that you had just broken up with your girlfriend and were keeping a low profile, trying to get them to leave you in peace for a little while. But that Leighton is kind of wicked — probably why she’s the Pledge Mistress — and she promptly doubled the bounty.”

“Glad to know I’m in demand.”

“Technically, I won because of what we did last night.” Adrienne smirked. “But Leighton deemed that I didn’t count and gave me 50 points to butt out. Jumped me from 8th to 4th. She’s still siccing the other 22 pledges on you. Well, 21. She declared Misty ineligible too and gave her 25. Maybe even only 20 because I don’t think Grace is going to make a play.”

“8, 25, 22, 7, 946...” I drawled. “You lost me.”

Adrienne cracked up.

“Still, 20 girls trying to seduce me...” I sighed and shook my head in resignation. “It seems ... too easy.”

“Too easy?”

I spread my hands out. “Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against casual sex. But fact is: I’d rather be with you than just ... get laid by some random pledge.”

Adrienne smiled. “Aww, how sweet.”

I shrugged. “I want more than just a hookup. I want to be happy.”

“Wow.” Adrienne seemed surprised by the sincere tone in my voice and gave me a look of pride. She reached out and patted my shoulder. “You’re growing up, Tiger.”

I beamed but blushed. Then I flashed her a naughty grin.

Her smirk came back knowingly. “But you’re still gonna fuck some of those pledges, aren’t you?”

I grinned even wider. “Fuck, yeah.”

I felt proud of myself when Adrienne commented that I was growing up. I liked the way I felt when she said it, and I wanted to maintain that feeling as best I could.

That meant that I couldn’t let myself rebound again. Yeah, I was hurting inside from the loss of a girlfriend. Ever since I first started dating Megan at the end of Sophomore year in High School, I’d never really gone very long without having one, going from Megan to Cassidy to Adrienne to Dawn, and then Allie and back to Adrienne and Paige and DJ in rapid succession. The longest stretch I went without a girlfriend was probably my ‘nottogether’ phase with Adrienne, and even then I was so close to her that it didn’t really count. So I was used to always having a girlfriend. I was used to always having a partner. I was one of those guys that just didn’t want to be alone.

Maybe it was time that I tried.

Yeah, I missed DJ. But the driving force in me rebounding with her was the need of someone... anyone ... to be with me. I had NEEDED someone to love, someone to love me.

Maybe it was time I learned to get along on my own.

What was it Brooke had once told me? I had to grow up and stop letting stuff happen TO me. I’d made small changes, but life was still coming AT me and I was just reacting to it. Even DJ, who was two years younger than me, had figured out our relationship wasn’t what it should be well before I did. For a long time, my girlfriends and sisters had loved me and had been the ones to effect change in my life.

Maybe it was time I stepped up and effected the changes in MY life.

And it started with me. If I was going to be happy, I had to figure out how to be happy by myself. Only then could I figure out how to be happy WITH someone else. I didn’t want to depend on my girlfriend to make me happy anymore.

So where to start? Not with finding a girlfriend. But what else would make me happy?

I pondered that for a long time, sitting alone on the couch in the empty living room. It was a Friday night, exactly a week since DJ and I broke up. Dayna was with Kevin. Brandi was with Matt. And Adrienne had retired to her room to take a shower. I had nothing but time to figure out the new direction of my life.

Who am I? What kind of person do I want to be? What is it that makes me happy?

I heard a door open and turned to look, and at that moment I completely lost my train of thought.

Adrienne stood in the archway from the hallway to the living room, clad only in a silk robe. Her golden blonde hair was slicked back tight against her scalp, darkened with dampness. Her hazel eyes burned a bright gold as she stared at me, but I only stared at her beautiful face for a few seconds. That’s because the silk robe was open from throat to tails, her massive 34G/36F breasts pushing the flimsy material open to the sides so that they hung loosely over her mounds, but exposed the pink nipples which were erect and upthrust in the cool November air. My gaze trailed down her tight tummy to the juncture of her thighs. Adrienne leaned against one side of the archway, flexing one leg with a knee pushed out to her right. This opened up her freshly-shaven bare crotch, showing me that her labia were already parted and moist as she had likely been rubbing herself in the shower.

The stunningly gorgeous blonde goddess was ready for sex.

“It’s a lonely Friday night, Tiger. And I feel like earning another 50 pledge points. Think you can help me out?”

I stood up, the erection in my jeans leading the way.

I am a sexual creature... THIS is what makes me happy.

As expected, the Tri-Delt pledges started making runs at me. Jocelyn Canilao, the slender Filipina in the French Maid’s outfit at the party, showed up with two other pledges. The girls collectively giggled so much they sounded like a nest full of baby chicks, and proved to be quite entertaining to my Microecon classmates. Even Dawn just stepped aside and watched in amusement. The Tri-Delts only scattered when Professor Isakova arrived and glared at them. And oddly enough, I found that Professor Ice was giving me some strange looks of her own after that.

Tonya Brackett was an exotic-looking girl who reminded me of Thandie Newton in Mission: Impossible II. She was very casual about striking up a conversation with me when I was in the library searching for some texts, and it wasn’t until I saw her pledge pin that I realized I was being seduced. I had to admit, I was quite tempted. Despite the relatively high percentage of blacks in Berkeley — especially compared to Orange County — I’d never actually bedded one. Flirting with Erica Jackson, one of Dayna’s friends, had been the closest I’d ever gotten previously. And yes, Tonya did end up using the line, “Once you go black, you never go back.”

And then Cadence Carmichael nearly made my heart stop when she introduced herself by walking right past me and flashing me just the shortest of flirty looks on her way by. The tall, gorgeous strawberry-blonde with electric green eyes was very much my type, having a spectacular body with a slender waist and D-cup tits. I found myself turning my head to stare at her ass as she sashayed by in the opposite direction; and Dawn had to jerk on my hand to make sure I didn’t walk into a bush. It took me a second to recognize that SHE was the butterfly at the Tri-Delt Halloween party, and I was instantly filled with all of the sexual longing I for her I had felt back then. But rather than stop and come talk to me, she just continued on her way, leaving me to crave more.

They were just the beginning. Over the next week, sixteen of the pledges propositioned me in one form or another. Adrienne told me that they had to prove their social skills, that proper Tri-Delts never just bent over and said, “Please fuck me.” They enjoyed sex, but that didn’t mean they were easy. And yet fourteen of the sixteen more or less stated their willingness to have sex with me on their first attempts, only two of them taking more deliberate paths of seduction. I suppose it was the race mentality, everyone trying to be first and everyone knowing exactly how a boy’s mind works. And five of them made specific reference to being curious about the now-legendary “Big Ben Experience”.

For example, Andie Holland was another bottle-blonde, with nicely sculpted dark eyebrows and pouty lips. She told me that she and her sorority big sister, Carli Singer, had been with the girls listening outside the door that Halloween night. She promised me that the two of them would do anything I wanted... anything ... in any positions and in any holes ... if I could just make them scream the same way.

I was seriously tempted to take Andie up on the offer. But two things held me back. One, only the first pledge got the points. I didn’t yet know whether that meant the other pledges would stop pursuing me, or if they would still want to nail me just out of curiosity. For now, I planned on stringing them along as a group until I figured out a way to boink a whole bunch of them. I could afford to be greedy.

And two, Adrienne was still giving me all I could handle. Post-breakup, she seemed to require my services more frequently than usual, and the resulting encounters could still blow my mind. All-Day Adrienne and I were just so sexually compatible that our chemistry was positively corrosive, and I mean that in a good way. And with a stunningly gorgeous hot blonde with big tits and a penchant for anal sex keeping my libido in check, I was having more fun teasing the Tri-Delt pledges than actually following through. Better to keep playing than just get laid once and end the game.

The only one who might’ve gotten me to cave to my desires was Cadence. But like a true butterfly she flitted in and out of my life, passing me by frequently but only stopping long enough for a flirty laugh or a quick conversation before going on her own way and leaving me wanting to talk to her more. With her sensuously melodic voice and hypnotizing eyes, she had my full and undivided attention each and every time. But each time didn’t last long enough for me to really get to know her. The game seemed to be more than just single seduction. Unlike the others, it wasn’t about convincing me to let HER fuck ME; it was about getting me so tightly wrapped around her fingers that I would be begging her to let ME fuck HER.

But in the meantime, I still had the other pledges pursuing me. Lakhi Sharma — or Princess Jasmine as I fondly remembered — got really close one day. I don’t know what it is about Indian girls, but every now and again you come across one who seriously has tits that are just WAY out of proportion with the rest of her petite body. Lakhi was one of them, standing only 5’4” but sporting perky 34D’s that I would have HAD to think were fake if I hadn’t had my own lips and hands wrapped around them myself. And she bumped those tits into me while walking down the street after I’d dropped off Dawn but before I made it to my house.

I realized thirty seconds later that the girl had gotten my address — most likely because she knew Adrienne and I were rooming at the same house — and also figured out my routine of going from Dawn’s house to my own. So, like any good stalker, she had meandered around some spot between Dawn’s place and mine, just waiting for me to arrive. And today, since Dawn and I were a half-hour later than usual, Lakhi had probably been hanging out on that street for quite a while.

I actually felt a little flattered at the lengths Lakhi had gone to, and I played along with her. I complimented her outfit. She giggled coyly and played with her hair. She dropped a flirty innuendo and I made reference to remembering the sound of her moans from the other night. She laughed and punched my arm playfully. I enjoyed the attention and she was clearly aroused by the possibilities.

But time was running out, and by the time we reached my house, she pretty much gave up on social seduction and grabbed my shirt, saying, “Please, Ben. I need you to shove your thick cock up my ass and make me feel as completely overwhelmed with bliss the way you did on Halloween! I’ve never felt that way before ... ever ... and when you violated my most sacred place I felt like I was being taken to The Paradise after death a little early. Please ... I need you.”

I was turned on. I was horny. The thought of buggering Lakhi again set my blood on fire. And whether knowingly or not, she was using MY trigger phrases like ‘I need you’ in a perfect, pleading voice that went straight to both my heart AND my loins. Plus, I hadn’t gotten laid in a couple of days and I was really, really horny. Still, I protested that I had a lot of homework and told her maybe some other time. And in the end, I managed to slip inside the front door and shut Lakhi out.

Adrienne was already home and through the window, had witnessed my gentle but firm rejection of her fellow Tri-Delt pledge. She was standing in the hallway when I finally collected myself and turned around, a knowing smirk on her face. “Are you sure you’re the same Ben I knew in High School?” she teased. “The last time we broke up you nailed Helene McGregory and half her friends inside a week!”

“It was more than a week,” I growled. And then I strode forward rapidly, reaching Adrienne before she could move. I grabbed her hands, pinned them behind her back, and roughly shoved her up against the wall, grinding against her crotch with the bulge in my shorts that Lakhi had created. “And I didn’t have you at home.”

“So she DID get you turned on...” the blonde bombshell breathed.

“Hell, yeah. For such an innocent-looking girl, she certainly has a wicked mouth.”

“So...” Adrienne smirked, with a tease in her voice. She reached a hand up between us and pushed lightly against my chest, holding me at bay. “If I say ‘no’, then you’ll have no choice but to run after Lakhi and fuck her brains out?”

“Sure, if you want her to win the 100 points,” I groaned, continuing to grind myself against Adrienne’s body. I knew she could feel my hard erection, and as I squeezed her wrists a little tighter, I could sense her heating up with passionate lust. Every now and again, Adrienne REALLY liked it when I just dominated the shit out of her.

“Hey, that’s a pretty good idea,” she panted, trying to maintain control. At the moment, she was on top and she knew it. “I bet I could make a bunch of money if I ‘helped’ one of those girls win this task.”

“Nah...” I shook my head, deciding to take charge. After all, I wanted to be on top a few times in my life. And still holding Adrienne’s wrists tightly, I pulled us both off the wall and then started marching her backward towards her own bedroom. “I think I’ll just fuck your brains out and skip the pledges,” I growled.

“Ohhh...” Adrienne groaned, her eyelids closing halfway. But she was still fighting back. “Then I’ll say ‘no’, Ben. ‘No’. You can’t have me. Better run after Lakhi.”

I smelled bullshit. Adrienne and I had too close of a connection for me not to realize she wanted to get pounded just as much as I wanted to pound her. So calling her bluff, I let her go and immediately took two steps back. “Fine, you said ‘no’. I’ll just go in my room and jack-off. I’ll take my thick, hot, throbbing cock into my hand and stroke it powerfully, tensing all my muscles as the self-inflicted pleasure shoots through my body. I’ll find my box of tissues and blast a thick, creamy, steaming hot load of man goo into a defenseless wad of tissue paper. I’ll be fine. The pledges can simmer.” I shrugged and then turned away while Adrienne whimpered.

“Fucking bastard.” Adrienne grabbed my shoulders and yanked me back to her, gripping the base of my neck as she pulled us into a frenzied nuclear kiss.

I chuckled and scooped her up into my arms, carrying Adrienne like a newlywed bride across the threshold while doing my best to keep my tongue lodged in her throat. I forcibly kicked her door open and waltzed up to her bed. And grinning to myself, I suddenly broke away and unceremoniously tossed her onto the mattress, sending her shrieking and sprawling.

I win.

Now where were those handcuffs and blindfold?

“AAAAAHHH!!!”

“Unnnnnghhh!!!”

“FUCK!” Adrienne threw her head back as her body convulsed with her final orgasm. Her anal muscles clamped down around my invading prick, trapping it at the maximum depth of her bowels.

Trapped or not, I gave a last lunge with my hips, trying to cram even more of my dick up my adoptive sister’s asshole. The impact finally collapsed her legs, dropping her body onto the mattress with her knees jutting out to the sides. My body landed flat atop hers, causing us both to groan while our climaxes continued and I filled up her anal cavity with a few more gushes of sperm.

When I was finally done, and had also recovered my breath, I slowly extracted myself out of Adrienne’s ass and knee-walked around the bed to park myself next to her face. The stunningly gorgeous blonde had her face turned away from me with her cheek pressed against a pillow while she panted softly. I reached over and unhooked her handcuffs from the headboard, while leaving her wrists still bound together. Gently taking her still-blindfolded head, I pulled her around to me and used my fingers against her cheeks to direct her to open her mouth. And then I made her clean me off.

“Mmm...” Adrienne moaned happily, knowing she was completely at my mercy, and knowing I would only push her so far.

But I wasn’t thinking about trust and mercy just then. I looked down and saw the beautiful girl kneeling before me, her lips stretched by the wide girth of my cock and the upper-half of her face covered by a black blindfold. And a new thought popped into my head.

“Hey, Adrienne...”

“Hmm?” She popped off my cock and tilted her head up to me, somehow giving me a quizzical expression despite the blindfold.

I smirked, even though she couldn’t see me. “I’ve got an idea.”

It was an easy matter of getting into the bedroom. The Tri-Delt chapter house had balconies running the full lengths of the second and third floors. It was a cold day outside when my plan went into action, and I easily scaled onto the second floor and over to the target’s room without anyone noticing. Once there, I simply waited for her to arrive.

Leighton Barrister was a Senior and this year’s Tri-Delt Pledge Mistress. Relatively tall at 5’9”, she was a beautiful young woman with dark blue eyes, lustrous dark hair, chiseled cheekbones, and an upwardly-tilted imperious nose. She also had a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model’s body, as I could clearly tell when she entered into her bedroom wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around her torso, fresh from taking a shower.

Predictably, she tried to scream when I came out of the shadows and grabbed her around her waist while clamping another hand over her mouth. Personally, I was against this part of the plan, especially given my skittishness over abuse of females. But my girls insisted it was necessary.

“Please don’t scream. I won’t hurt you,” I said in as calm a voice as I could, even though I knew it wouldn’t calm her down at all. Hopefully, the next part would. “My name is Ben. And I understand your girls have been instructed to find me.”

She stopped struggling immediately and simply tried to turn around. I loosened my grip enough for her to turn her head while still covering her mouth in case she decided to try and scream. She looked at my face with terrified eyes, clearly recognizing me. After all, the bullet scar along my left cheek was pretty identifiable. And only then did her body relax.

“I’m taking my hand off your mouth now,” I said calmly, and removed my hand. Immediately I fished the fur-lined handcuffs out of my pocket and firmly but not violently began slipping them around Leighton’s wrists behind her back. And then I finished, “But I’m not letting you go.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked fearfully, resisting my grip on her wrists but not completely trying to fight me off.

“Simple,” I replied while focusing downward as I cinched the cuffs closed. “I’m going to fuck your brains out.”

She inhaled sharply and tensed up, but didn’t try to break free. I reached a hand up to her cheek with my thumb beneath her jaw, gripping it firmly. And as I forcefully pressed my lips to hers, I yanked her towel away and then jerked her naked body against the bulge in my jeans.

The beautiful brunette groaned and melted against me. I’d learned how to kiss a girl from the best. Dawn had first taught me the basics. Keira had refined my skills. Going nuclear and volcanic with Adrienne and Dawn had honed me to the point where I could potentially induce an orgasm just by kissing a girl. And now Leighton looked well on her way to doing just that.

I had the blindfold around her head before she realized what was going on. Her eyes flew open for just a second before the black cloth slid down to cover them. And when I gripped her bound wrists and jerked her down to the floor, she was panting rapidly from both adrenaline and arousal.

Leaving Leighton kneeling upright before me — naked and with her wrists bound behind her back — I noisily opened up my belt and unzipped my jeans. Staring down at her, I extracted my erect cock and took it in hand, shuffling forward until I was within reach of her face while she breathed heavily, her mind probably still racing from the suddenness of this all. Holding my prick, I then lightly tapped my mushroom head against her cheek, smiling to myself when she instinctively turned her mouth toward it.

“You can scream all you want. You can say ‘no’ all you want. I won’t pay any attention,” I said calmly. “But I am not here to rape you. If you want me to stop at any time, just say ‘apricot’. Do you understand?”

I could clearly see the gears working in Leighton’s head as she kept her head down, and for a second I thought she would say it. But then she tilted her head up and looking at me, sight unseen, she said clearly, “I understand.”

I grabbed her head, used my fingers against her cheeks to open her mouth, and then pushed my cock inside. Leighton moaned and immediately began sucking.

While erect, I hadn’t been completely hard. Yeah, I got off a bit on physically dominating a girl, but not being 100% sure that Leighton was a willing participant had tempered my lust. Now, her full acquiescence — not to mention her hot, wet mouth — had me hard enough to break steel. And she moaned again as she felt me getting even thicker to stretch her lips.

But I wasn’t here to go off in her mouth. Gripping her head firmly, I pulled Leighton’s head away from my hard, wet prick and then scooped my hands beneath her armpits. She wasn’t a small girl, but I yanked her up onto her feet like a rag doll and then frog-marched her the few feet over to her bed, where I pushed her down face-first with her legs hanging off onto the floor.

She grunted and turned her face to the side on impact while I stopped to divest myself of my clothing. Once I was naked as well, I grabbed her hips and shifted her into a better position. And then I knelt beside the bed and sank down between her spread thighs. Leighton’s crotch was now hanging off the edge of the mattress, and I leaned in to take my first swiping licks at her puffy pussy lips.

“Ohhh, shit...” Leighton groaned when she felt my oral attention. She went limp on top of the mattress, her hands still cuffed behind her and on top of her ass. And whimpering softly, she moaned her way through a couple of orgasms while I played around with my tongue and fingers, automatically seeking out her erogenous zones and trigger spots the way I did with every new girl I was with.

But I wasn’t here just to eat her out. After her second orally-induced orgasm, I wiped my mouth off and stood up. “I’m going to start fucking you now,” I said calmly. Her only response was another moan.

Gripping her waist, I lifted Leighton up onto her knees, forcing her face a little more into the mattress since she was still cuffed and unable to use her hands to brace herself. She did finally scream when I lunged forward and swiftly impaled her with my cock, burying myself to the hilt on that first thrust and ramming her with enough force that my balls swung forward and slapped against her swollen labia. After that first scream, she turned her face and literally started gnawing on the sheets, grunting and whimpering while I steadily pounded her pussy from behind.

“Oh, shit ... oh, shit ... oh, shit,” Leighton whimpered while I rhythmically long-dicked her, getting her tight tunnel used to the sensation of being spread wide by my invading prick. I kept up that slow, steady pace long enough to decide how much she liked that style of stroking. And then I started varying my thrusts and threw in a few corkscrewing motions, experimenting to figure out just how this girl liked to be fucked.

Turned out that short and hard was her thing. Most girls are more sensitive around their vaginal lips than deeper in their tunnels, and Leighton was no exception. When I got to the shallow, rapid thrusts, I heard a noticeable increase in the pitch of her whimpers. She clenched her eyes shut and bit down on the sheets, and I felt the tightening of her pussy muscles as she ramped up toward orgasm.

“Ah, you like that, bitch?” I growled, concentrating on the new thrusting style. And surprise, surprise, I felt her tighten around me even more when I called her “bitch”. On a whim, I let fly with my right hand and spanked her asscheek.

“FUCK!” Leighton yelped and bounced her ass back at me, taking me deeper for a single thrust. So I let fly with my left hand and reddened her other cheek.

“FUCK!” she yelped, jerking back again. I just grinned and went to work.

“FUCK! ... FUCK! ... FUCK!” Leighton yelped three more times in rapid succession before I yanked her off the bed and planted her feet on the floor with me. Bending my knees slightly to maintain the angle, I then gripped her hips and started slamming myself against her bright pink buttcheeks harder and harder.

“You like that, bitch?” I growled. “You like feeling me spanking your naughty ass, Miss High-and-Mighty Pledge Mistress? Tell me. Tell me!”

“Yes!” Leighton whimpered against the mattress, flexing her arms still restrained at the wrists behind her lower back. “Spank me again!”

I let fly with a wicked slap, causing her to yelp once more. Then I grabbed onto her handcuffs, using them as a hand-hold to jerk her body against my pistoning prick. “You love this! Being helpless. Being held down and savagely fucked. Don’t you? Tell me. Tell me!”

“Yes!” she screamed and I spanked her again.

“You’re used to being in charge, aren’t you? You get off on it, bossing around all these young girls who are so desperate to please, don’t you? Well you’re not in charge right now, bitch. You’re blindfolded and handcuffed and pinned to your own fucking bed beneath me while I ram my big dick up your self-righteous cunt. You’re at MY tender mercies now, and I’m not fucking leaving this room until you’re passed out on the fucking floor in a puddle of sweat and cum. You wanted to get some voyeuristic thrill out of setting all your little pledges after me? You wanted to know what the Big Ben Experience is all about? Well now you’re gonna fucking find out. Take it, bitch! Take my cock up your prissy little cunt! Take it! Take it!”

“FUUUCK!”

“Take it! TAKE IT!” I bellowed, spanking her ass again and ramming myself even harder.

“FUUUUUCKKK!!!”

“CUM, bitch, CUM!”

“FUUUUUCKKK!!!” Leighton screamed loud enough to announce to the whole house that she was getting a royal pounding.

“ARRRGHHH!” I bellowed, announcing to the whole house that I was the one pounding her.

And together, we CAME.

Leighton’s toes dug into the carpet as she strained against the mattress. Her ass quivered and her pussy spasmed as the incredible climax tore through her body. And she trembled beneath me while my cock spat out wads and wads of scalding hot cum into her sucking cunt.

We’d never spoken to each other before this day. Literally, my first ever words to her were ‘Please don’t scream’. But now she was pinned naked, blindfolded, and handcuffed beneath my body while I held my pelvis against her buttcheeks, gushing my sperm down into her vaginal cavity. So maybe it was a soulless fuck with a near-total stranger. At least it was a fuck on MY terms, and on MY initiation.

When I stopped humping her ass and just leaned against her, flexing my slowly softening dick inside her saturated pussy, Leighton sighed and turned her face to the other side, away from the puddle of drool that was forming beneath her cheek. “That was incredible.”

“We’re not done with you yet,” I intoned as I slowly withdrew from the bound and blind brunette’s tight snatch. I then released Leighton’s left wrist, rolled her onto her back, and repositioned her lengthwise along the bed.

Only then did my choice of words filter into Leighton’s brain. “Wait, ‘we’?”

I looped the handcuffs through the headboard and re-bound her wrists together. Leighton tugged against them in a mild panic and futilely looked around the room, her blindfold still preventing her from seeing a thing.

“Yes, ‘we’,” I finally answered. I grinned and looked to the door, where my two assistants had entered in upon hearing Leighton’s first orgasmic scream and then stayed in the shadows to watch me fuck the shit out of her. My first assistant came straight to me and wrapped her arms around my neck, sealing her lips over mine and giving me a fierce nuclear kiss. “Fuck that was hot,” Adrienne growled right in my face.

“Go on,” I nodded to the panting, naked brunette. “You told me you’d been fantasizing about doing this to her ever since I told you about my idea.”

Adrienne giggled and then swiftly moved between Leighton’s thighs, where she split apart the Pledge Mistress’ legs and dove in to noisily slurp my cum out from her still trembling cunt.

“Ohhh, shit...” Leighton moaned as she felt the agile tongue and lips go to work on her nether regions. She probably had no idea it was even a girl going down on her.

Meanwhile, my second assistant finally approached. She wrapped her arms around my neck just like Adrienne had, and gave me a searingly passionate kiss. When she pulled away, Misty Madsen blinked her smoky-gray eyes at me and smiled. “Thanks for inviting me.”

I smiled right back. “Thanks for getting me into the house. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

She blushed prettily and then reached down to tickle my semi-soft cock. “Would you like me to help get you hard again?”

I grinned and pushed down on her shoulders, getting the slender brunette to kneel with my dick right in her face. “Please,” I said encouragingly as Misty opened her mouth and slurped me inside, her active tongue going to work. “And then I promise I’ll make you scream just as loud as Leighton.”

“Holy shhh ... Holy fuuuhh...” Misty groaned and let her head loll back against the mattress and away from Adrienne’s crotch. The two beautiful 19-year-olds had been sixty-nining, Adrienne on top, when my adoptive sister signaled to me that Misty was ready for the final act.

I’d left Leighton panting on the floor, exhausted and still blindfolded. And with Adrienne guiding my way, I’d sunk my throbbing dick into Misty to drill her overstimulated pussy while Adrienne nibbled on her clit.

This evening wasn’t the first time Misty and Adrienne were having sex together. From what I understood, being Grace’s roommate had provided Adrienne with several opportunities over the last year and a half. But the two hadn’t been together since well before Adrienne’s and Grace’s breakup, and tonight my stunningly gorgeous adoptive sister had been eagerly attacking not only the prissy Pledge Mistress, but also her old friend. Together, Adrienne and I had really worked quite a number on both brunettes, and I realized that we made a pretty damn good team. Heck, my brain was already percolating with ideas about the “Big Ben and A.D. Experience”.

Speaking of which, Adrienne slid herself off of Misty, since the brunette was now too overwhelmed to focus on completing the sixty-nine. Adrienne’s right hand went to Misty’s breasts while she slid her left hand beneath the panting girl; and then she popped her index finger through Misty’s anus. Predictably, Misty screamed, “AAAAA-urp!”

Adrienne had muffled Misty with a wet, steamy kiss.

At the same time, I went for Misty’s trigger — that L2 vertebra — and scraped my cock against her G-spot. Misty promptly convulsed just once, as if she’d been hit with those heart-attack paddles they use in the ER. And then her eyes rolled back in her head and she started drooling as she passed out from the force of her orgasm. “Nnnnnggghhhaaaa...” Misty’s now unconscious body sighed without her, and she wilted into a lifeless puddle on the bed.

One down. One to go. I’d saved Leighton for last.

The beautiful Pledge Mistress was already a limp pile of sprawled limbs and sweaty skin. The handcuffs were long gone. Only the blindfold remained, such that she never saw the other two girls who had joined me in royally screwing her brains out for the last two hours. She may have already guessed, but she’d never actually seen them.

Leighton was just barely still conscious as she tried to recover from our last fucking. And she was as limp as a de-boned fish when I hoisted her legs and hooked them over my shoulders while reinserting my rampant prick into her oversaturated pussy.

“I can’t...” she whimpered plaintively when I started fucking her. “I can’t take anymore...”

“Just one more,” I intoned. “But if you want me to stop, you know the word.”

“Apri ... Oh, shit...” she groaned as I long-dicked her a few times, holding her still red asscheeks in my hands. I kept my pace slow and steady, waiting to see if she would attempt the word ‘apricot’ again. But in the end, she merely whimpered, “I don’t know...”

I didn’t give her time to really think about it. After coating myself with the abundant fluids in her cunt — countless orgasms from her and two from me — I pulled out my now-soaked dick and lifted her hips a little higher. Leighton’s body was still completely limp and compliant, and before she ever realized what was happening, I’d slid my cock through her relaxed anal sphincter.

“Oh, SHIT,” Leighton grunted and tensed slightly when she felt the anal penetration. “I can’t ... I can’t...” she pleaded blindly while shaking her head side-to-side, the black cloth still covering the upper half of her face.

“You are...” I intoned calmly. “Take it, bitch,” I growled without any real heat. “Take it...”

“I can’t ... I can’t ... Oh, shit ... You’re too big...” she whimpered.

With a sigh, I felt my pelvis push up against her crotch, my cock fully embedded in her tight asshole. With a satisfied grin, I growled, “You just did.”

“Oh, shitttt...” Leighton’s head tilted back and she moaned as the pleasure took over.

Even after two hours of fucking, I still had enough energy to give Leighton a proper reaming. She, on the other hand, was already running on fumes. Barely conscious, the beautiful brunette simply lay there and took the pounding up her ass, completely unresisting. My hands mauled her tits and stroked her clit while I rutted her against the floor of her own bedroom. And in the end, she tightened up and squeaked out the one final orgasm that put her over the top, sending her into the welcoming bliss of unconsciousness where I couldn’t get to her anymore.

As Leighton exhaled her last and let her head loll limply to the side, I was momentarily reminded of when I’d done the same thing to Lakhi. I finished my final strokes and then relaxed as the final flood of cum poured out of me, shooting in pulses along my cocktube and squirting into the Pledge Mistress’ bowels. I held myself above her wilted body with my arms locked and hands beside her shoulders, careful not to smother her. And when I had squeezed out the last drops and even felt a little shiver run down my spine, I finally pulled out.

Adrienne looked ready to dive in and suck my jizz out of the Senior Sorority girl’s stretched asshole, but I took her hand and held her back. The gorgeous blonde turned and arched an eyebrow at me.

“Let her be,” I said. “I promised her she’d pass out in a puddle of sweat and cum on her floor, and I kinda like seeing the creamy trickle running down her buttcheeks.”

Adrienne giggled and hugged me. “That was fun. We should do it again.”

“C’mon. Let’s go take a shower.” I gestured to the door with my head.

“What? Like this?” she gestured up and down at our naked bodies.

“Sure. Why not?” I grinned. We moved around to pick up our discarded clothes. Tucking the clothes under my left hand, I reached out to Adrienne with my right hand and interlaced our fingers once again. And then with all the confidence in the world, I opened the door and led us outside.

As expected, there were about a dozen girls in the hallway who looked up in shock and awe when Adrienne and I stepped out, completely in the nude. Sweat was steaming off of both our bodies, and our muscles were still hard in the immediate aftermath of so much exertion. My hair was messy and my bangs hung down over my eyes. I drew myself to my full 6’0” height and held my neck erect. I had just royally fucked the Pledge Mistress up the ass with two other hot babes by my side, and I felt like a Greek God.

Adrienne looked like a Greek Goddess. Her golden blonde hair fell in waves over her naked shoulders. Those massive tits were proud and firm and glistening in the hallway light. She was gorgeous clothed. Naked, she was intimidating. And to have her holding my hand beside me only made me look even better.

I calmly led us past the awed crowd and headed for the hallway bathroom. Behind us, I heard excited chatter start up as the girls squealed about me and Adrienne emerging fully naked and obviously post-coital. The volume sharply went up when they peeked into the bedroom, smelling the pungent aromas of sex and seeing the two unconscious brunettes: Misty on Leighton’s bed and Leighton on the floor wearing a blindfold, my cum still leaking out of her ass.

The hot shower felt great on my sore muscles. The way Adrienne rubbed soap into me felt even better. We hadn’t had much contact for the past two hours; after all, we could fuck all we wanted at home and we were more interested in blowing Leighton’s and Misty’s minds. But now we kissed passionately beneath the spray, enjoying the simple feel of each other’s body. It felt so wonderful to just tenderly hold her in my arms. We loved each other. And we were lovers.

We were family.

Some of our audience had followed us into the bathroom. With the same confidence, Adrienne and I simply walked out and started getting dressed, neither of us needing to blush. What was there to be embarrassed about? And after making sure our clothing was set and our hair halfway decent, we kissed and then walked out of the house hand-in-hand.

The bounty went up to 250.

Back in Orange County, Keira McNeil gave birth to a healthy boy: 7 pounds, 8 ounces. She emailed me a photo and a note thanking me for everything I was willing to do to help her, even if things didn’t turn out the way she’d originally expected.

She also told me the baby’s name was Benjamin, after me.

I hyperventilated for the three seconds it took to scroll down and find out that she was joking. The baby’s name was Colin, after her dead husband. And I wasn’t worried about paternity. The kid in the photo had a small thatch of red hair, a ruddy Irish baby. And I’m not Irish.

I hadn’t realized that I’d carried around just a little bit of uncertain tension for this entire time. Even though Keira had told me back in late-May that the baby wasn’t mine, I’d never been completely sure of it until the photo arrived. And finding out that I was NOT a daddy gave me an extra boost of energy to jump into my new life feet first, ready to go.

Everything was starting well. My grades were fine and I was cruising toward an excellent semester and hopefully, an acceptance letter into the Undergraduate Business program next Spring. I had friends that enjoyed my company and shared their lives with me, keeping me social and keeping me entertained. And I had the most amazing fuck-buddy at home in Adrienne, who was compassionate sister and nubile nymphomaniac rolled into one.

Plus, the Tri-Delts were absolutely CRAZY for my cock. I still wouldn’t touch the pledges — toying with them and the 250-point bounty was way too much fun — but the full-fledged sisters weren’t subject to the same rules. Including Leighton, I wound up nailing a half-dozen of them before Thanksgiving Break.

Just like I’d imagined, Adrienne nailed them right along with me. After our little naked walk down the hallway to take a shower together post-Leighton and Misty, the Tri-Delts correctly figured that the easiest path to get into my pants was through Adrienne. They didn’t have the authority to give her pledge points or anything, but favors were promised and I’m sure there were a few one-on-ones between the upperclassmen Tri-Delts and Adrienne without me. Once again, the gateway to my dick was through her pussy.

First up was Bridget Marks, the Playboy Bunny who had stolen a kiss from me at the Halloween party. I’d turned down the busty blonde’s advances at the time and she’d declared me a monogamist. Adrienne invited me to go with her to the chapter house one afternoon and I soon found myself ensconced in Bridget’s bedroom with two hot blondes clad only in their underwear. Adrienne and I double-teamed the Senior Tri-Delt through dinner time, tucking the girl asleep into her own bed with my last deposit of cum still oozing out of her well-fucked cunt.

Next up was Carli Singer. The redheaded Junior tried to pull a fast one on us, as her Freshman pledge Andie Holland walked in halfway through and tried to join in. Fortunately, the rules stipulated that Andie couldn’t just mount me unawares and get the points; she actually had to seduce me into it. I’ll admit, watching the pretty bottle-blonde fully naked and getting tag-teamed by Carli and Adrienne made me quite tempted to crawl aboard and rut away to my heart’s content; but I wouldn’t budge and in the end, the only dick Andie got inside her was a strap-on that Adrienne used to send the Freshman teenager into orbit. We still left Carli unconscious and leaking my cum out of her pussy. Andie was merely dazed and whimpering with desire for me to finish her off.

Josephine Beart, Kelly Park, and Leah Hirsch soon followed, every one of them a Senior or Junior Tri-Delt double-teamed into a sexual stupor by me and Adrienne.

And it wasn’t even just Tri-Delts I was fucking. Monique St. Claire rather unceremoniously walked into my bedroom one evening, knelt beside my desk chair while I was working on the computer, and gave me that blowjob she’d been hinting at for weeks. After I nutted down her throat and she raved in that adorable accent about how wonderful I tasted, I tackled the French bombshell onto my bed and pounded her through three orgasms before spending myself again deep inside her cunt.

Then there was the time that Adrienne was busy at the chapter house, whether for an actual sorority event or auditioning our next conquest I don’t know. But the point was that I got that itch to scratch and decided to pay a visit to Brandi’s and Dayna’s friends’ house. Thankfully, I found that yes, Kerri Trainor was home and yes, she was still looking for a good shagging.

Not too unexpectedly, Julie Carpenter was also home and after listening to Kerri’s screams for a half-hour, the pretty brunette with the wide mouth crawled into bed with us. Julie admitted that she probably shouldn’t be there with us and I stated plainly that I didn’t want to get between her and her boyfriend. But Julie just whimpered and explained, “I STILL can’t help myself. There’s just something... primal ... about you, Ben, that I can’t resist.”

And so the three of us fucked the entire night away. Kerri and Julie proved once again that they were far better together than just the sum of their parts, and I fell asleep between their nubile bodies before we woke up in the morning and did it again. And by the time I finally emerged from Kerri’s bedroom to head home and get ready for school, the girls’ roommates Erica Jackson and little Ashley Tran were giving me intensely appraising looks.

I was living large, getting laid, and enjoying my life. I had more pussy than I could handle, and even Cadence Carmichael started to realize she couldn’t just hang back and wait for me to come to her. I found my gorgeous strawberry-blonde butterfly flitting around me a little more often, and lingering a little longer than before. And one Sunday afternoon, she caught up to me just outside of the gym after a session playing basketball with the boys.

“Hiii, Ben,” Cadence greeted flirtily as she sauntered up to us, clad in low-rise jeans and a long-sleeved knit sweater with a high collar that hugged her curves and stopped short of her belly-button, revealing a nice expanse of creamy skin across her midsection. She then glanced across my basketball companions. “You boys look like you got quite a workout.”

“I’ve still got enough to give you a workout,” remarked Larry, one of the guys. He whistled approvingly and openly leered at the gorgeous young girl.

But Cadence completely ignored him and latched onto me. “Hmm, hot and sweaty,” she frowned while clutching my arm. “Not my favorite, actually, unless I was a part of making you hot and sweaty.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” I drawled.

“Not at all,” she shook her head. “Nothing a nice shower can’t fix. Now if only I could drag you away from the guys, I might be interested in washing your back.”

“Laters, Ben.”

“See ya next time.”

“Adios.”

Looking out for my best interests, the boys quickly moved away to leave me alone with Cadence, chuckling to themselves while also looking back at me with some envy. She WAS freakin’ hot. I wouldn’t put her in a class with Dawn and Adrienne on pure beauty, but she exuded a sexiness that more than made up for any raw physical shortcomings.

The strawberry-blonde babe giggled and then clutched me tighter as I nodded in appreciation to the boys and turned to head for home. As I expected, Cadence willingly went along with me.

But I only expected her to tag along up to a point. Her style so far had very much been hit and run, popping in, flirting for a minute or two, and then flitting away almost as suddenly as she’d arrived. We traded innuendoes and compliments while walking through the campus. She talked about my muscles and squeezed them appreciatively. I complimented her on the sweater, asking if it was new since I hadn’t seen it before. She giggled and seemed flattered that I’d noticed, and in general we were having a good time for far longer than I would have thought.

Then Jocelyn Canilao found us. The pretty Filipina hopped up and latched onto my other arm. “Hi guys!”

“Hey, Joss...” I grinned.

Cadence practically growled, “Jocelyn...” in a threatening tone. Despite being on the other side of me, it looked like she was trying to glower downwards at the shorter pledge. Jocelyn wasn’t that short, maybe 5’5”, but Cadence’s 5’11” plus heels had her towering over the other girl.

“Ooh, hot and sweaty. I like,” Jocelyn giggled and smiled at me, completely ignoring the threatening looks from her fellow pledge.

“Won’t last long,” I shrugged. “I happen to like feeling clean and there’s a shower in my near future.”

“Ooh, can I watch?” Jocelyn waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

I glanced at the strawberry-blonde on my left arm and then back to Jocelyn. “Long as you don’t mind watching Cadence wash my back.”

Jocelyn giggled. “Not at all. Actually, I’d love to wash your front while she’s doing your back.”

“No, thank you,” Cadence bit out rather harshly. “I don’t play well with others.” Her eyes were cool and hard and I could feel her nails digging into my arms with her tension.

“Well dear,” Jocelyn said with wide, falsely-innocent eyes and a bit of a smirk, “If you don’t need any help doing him, I’d love to do you.”

There was no mistaking the grimace on Cadence’s face. While she didn’t say anything obvious, I got the distinct impression that she was uncomfortable by the idea of having Jocelyn’s hands on her. In fact, the look on her face reminded me of the time Megan and Cassidy tried kissing each other for the first time, then immediately broke off and declared it “not sexy”.

Okay, so Cadence was 100% straight. I could deal with that, as long as she was willing to fuck me. But I had to admit it dashed a few fantasies I was having of her and Jocelyn — or especially her and Adrienne — sharing a shower with me.

Anyways, Cadence made some excuse about a rain check and then flitted away again, leaving me alone with Jocelyn. And as much as I’d enjoy having a girl join me in the shower, I wasn’t ready for the pledge game to end. So I ultimately told Jocelyn we’d have to hook up another time and she went her own way as well. And I returned to the house alone and feeling just a little bit disappointed with the way things had turned out.

But that feeling didn’t last long. I entered into the house just in time for Monique and Adrienne to get up and greet me. Monique quickly walked up and for the third time in the last fifteen minutes, a hot girl was commenting about how I was hot and sweaty.

“Nothing a shower can’t fix,” I shrugged.

“I got a better idea,” Adrienne drawled, catching Monique’s eye and winking. “Why don’t the two of us take you into your bedroom where you can make US hot and sweaty, too? And only after we’re done, after we’ve exhausted every single possible method for three people to wring pleasure from each other’s body, then we can all get cleaned up together.”

I grinned and opened my bedroom door, beckoning the girls inside. Even though it was less than three weeks since breaking up with DJ, I felt good.

I felt free.

And I was getting more tail than a friggin’ peacock.

My life was perfect, right?

Neoclassical economics holds that when each individual maximizes their utility, the utility of society is also maximized. This requires that individuals’ utilities can be summed (i.e. individual utilities are additive).

Dawn had been typing up her paper for Microecon while I studied on my bed. It was an important paper we’d have to turn in before the Thanksgiving break. Since her apartment had become social central, there were just too many distractions there. And so we’d decided to come finish our work at my house.

I’d ribbed Dawn about how slow a typist she was and claimed I could do better blindfolded. She’d decided to skip the blindfold and simply sit in my lap, letting her body block the view. And I’d typed out a perfect couple of sentences without being able to see the screen.

“How do you DO that?” Dawn snorted and turned around in my lap to look down at me, her crystal blue eyes flashing.

I craned my head around her shoulder to look at the monitor and confirm that I’d typed the sentences perfectly. Then I smirked up at my best friend. “It’s a gift.”

“Yeah, well I think you have too many ‘gifts’,” she sighed and turned herself to the side so we could better talk with each other. And then she showed off her flexibility by kicking one leg over my head so that we were face-to-face, her long legs reaching down to let her feet rest on the floor on either side of me. “You can type without looking. You can recall every damn thing you read and ace your tests with ease. And you can eat all those fatty foods without gaining any weight. I hate you.”

Realizing our new position, I lightly thrust my hips upwards, digging the front of my jeans into her crotch. “Yeah, and I can take a girl from zero to climax in under a minute. That’s one ‘gift’ you haven’t experienced in a long time.”

“Stop that,” she admonished without any actual heat in her voice, lightly slapping my cheek without any actual force. In fact, it felt a little more like a caress, and for a brief second, her eyes became heavy-lidded.

“Sorry,” I replied sincerely. “It’s a good thing Ryan’s not around to see that.”

“Oh, he knows we won’t do anything,” Dawn said dismissively.

“Maybe. But speaking as a guy, there’s always a niggling of doubt no matter how sure you are.”

“Ffppt. My boyfriend is secure in who he is and in how much I love him,” she declared. “Besides, we all know that just getting laid isn’t exactly a problem for you right now.” Smirking, she reached down and actually tapped my bulge with her index finger.

I smirked right back, the shit-eating grin of a well-fucked young man. “True,” I admitted.

“What’s up with that, anyways?” Dawn sighed, giving me a tired look.

“What’s up with what?”

“You. Screwing around. I mean, I know you’re horny, but you’ve never been quite this much of a slut before.”

I frowned. “Slut?”

Dawn giggled and patted my shoulder. “Yes, Ben; you’re a slut. How many different girls have you slept with since you and DJ broke up?”

“How many? Uh...” I started going back to calculate.

She giggled almost immediately. “Too many to count?”

“Hey, gimme a second,” I protested.

“What, like a dozen? In a month?”

“No! Not that many.”

“You sure?”

I bit my lip, having lost track and trying to start back over with the Halloween party and counting on. Misty, Lakhi, Leighton, Bridget...

“Forget it. You already proved my point.”

“What point?”

She shrugged. “You’re a slut. Accept it. I’m not criticizing you for it. Just stating the fact.”

“Okay fine. So?”

“You feel happier?”

“Yeah. Kinda.” I smiled. “Makes me think that maybe I’m better off not getting involved in a relationship with anybody. Why go through all the headaches and drama of a girlfriend? I’m getting laid. I’ve got time to focus on my schoolwork. And I’ve got more time to spend with you and the rest of the crew. Yeah. I’m happy.”

Dawn rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Sometimes I feel like we’re sharing the same brain. But then sometimes, I don’t understand you at all.”

I arched an eyebrow questioningly.

Sighing, she then pushed down with her feet, lifting herself free of my lap and made ready to kick her leg over to step free of the chair. But the instant I felt her begin to move away, by instinct I wrapped my arms around her and sat her back down in my lap.

“Oof,” Dawn huffed in surprise when I tugged her against me, and against the slight hardening in my jeans. Her eyes darted down to mine, and I found myself staring right back at her while continuing to hold her against me.

It felt like we both just sat there, Dawn in my lap looking down at me, for hours ... even though it must have just been a second or two. At last, Dawn asked softly, “Ben ... What are you doing?”

As if only now becoming aware of the situation, I blinked rapidly and abruptly released her. I rolled my chair back, separating us from the desk. And with my hands on her hips, I helped her stand up away from me. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I don’t know what came over me.”

Dawn looked at me with a curious expression on her face. “It’s okay. No harm done.”

I turned and got out of the chair, gesturing for Dawn to drop back into it so that she could resume editing her essay. Without a backwards glance, I headed to my bed to collect my book. And then I sat down heavily, wondering to myself: What HAD I been doing?

I wasn’t sure what had come over me, what instinct had possessed me to react the way I did. And when I looked back at Dawn, I realized that while she had seated herself in the chair, she had not rolled back up to the computer. She was staring right at me with that curious expression still on her face.

“What?” I asked nervously.

Dawn bit her lip and then took a deep breath. “Nothing,” she said quietly. And then she turned and rolled back up to the keyboard.

We resumed our work. And for some reason, I didn’t feel so happy anymore.

Dawn and I got our papers turned in. Professor Ice gave us a heartwarming Thanksgiving benediction of: “Enjoy your days off while you can, because you can look forward to the most difficult part of this course in December.”

Then Thursday morning itself rolled around and Dayna, Brandi, Dawn, Adrienne, and I all piled into Dayna’s Impala for the drive to the Evans house. Brandi rode shotgun. I sat behind Dayna in the back on the left side. And Adrienne and Dawn had agreed to trade off who got stuck with the middle seat. Adrienne was next to me for the drive down, and she very casually rested her hand on my leg. But I barely noticed since my eyes were out the window, my mind on seeing DJ for the first time since our breakup.

I needn’t have worried.

The Evanses greeted us all like family on arrival. I made eye contact with Jack and Deanna Evans as we entered the house, but my gaze was instantly drawn to DJ. I knew immediately that she looked different, but it took a few extra seconds before I realized why.

She’d let her hair out of the braids.

I wasn’t sure what to think at first. DJ’s braided pigtails had been a signature part of her look since before my family left for Orange County. True, I’d seen her without the braids — in the shower for example — but to see her fully dressed and with flowing blonde hair with waves in it both surprised and amazed me. The braided pigtails had always made her look youthful and energetic, perhaps even younger than her 17 years; but now she could pass for a college student.

With two parents and DJ waiting, and five of us college kids, it took a few minutes to get in all the hugs. Surprisingly, DJ showed absolutely no hesitation to wrap her arms around me and give me a quick peck on the cheek. I felt a familiar stirring in my loins at the sight of the gorgeous teenager and the feel of her body pressed against me, but tamped down on that urge. I’d really been having almost too MUCH sex lately, if that were possible.

“Hi, Ben,” she looked up at me with big blue eyes.

“Hi, kiddo. I like the hair.”

“Really?” She blushed and ran her fingers through it. She took a deep breath. “I thought it was time for a change. Didn’t want to just be a little kiddo anymore.”

I frowned and tensed up. “You don’t want me to call you that anymore?”

Her eyes popped up. “Oh, no! I still like it when you call me ‘kiddo’.” She patted my chest and looked at me with somewhat aroused eyes. But she took a deep breath and cleared that look away. “So how’ve you been? Feels like forever since I’ve seen you.”

“I know. Can you believe it hasn’t even been three weeks?”

She shrugged. “The short time hasn’t stopped you from moving on, from what I hear.”

I blushed and looked over at Dawn. The beautiful blonde caught my look and raised her hands defensively. “I didn’t tell her everything.”

“She told me enough,” DJ stated with raised eyebrows.

I winced and looked down at my pretty ex-girlfriend. “Are you upset?”

DJ blushed and giggled. “No. Not at all. Flattered, actually.”

“Flattered?” I arched an eyebrow.

“Flattered that the only way you can make up for losing me is by banging half of Adrienne’s sorority,” DJ giggled.

“It’s not half of Adrienne’s sorority,” I drawled defensively. But everyone was smiling and I soon chuckled along. Changing the subject, I then turned to DJ and asked, “How about you? Any news on the boy front?”

“Psshh...” Deanna Evans swooped in. “Boys started calling here the instant word got out that DJ was single again. But she won’t give them the time of day.”

I arched an eyebrow and looked at DJ. The young blonde shrugged and said, “I just don’t feel like dating.”

I frowned and looked at her with concern. Even though she had been the one to call things off, I felt like I’d hurt her and she was still in mourning or something over our relationship.

DJ read my reaction and smiled. “No, you didn’t damage me or anything, Ben. I’m not all depressed and moping around the house. I just don’t feel like dating right now. I just want to finish the semester and get the best grades I can, and life is simpler without any romantic hassles.” She smirked at me. “I can get a lot more work done without a needy boyfriend pining away for me.”

I chuckled at that and tugged DJ back into a hug. She squeezed me firmly and sighed. Then tilting her head up to my ear, she whispered, “Still ... I’m wearing out the batteries in my vibrator and I’m really, really horny.”

I tensed up slightly and darted my eyes to hers. There was a definite note of invitation in her voice that surprised the hell out of me. And there was a teasing smile on the tip of her lips.

But before any of us said anything further, the conversation was already picking up with the others. “And how are things going with Matt?” Mrs. Evans was asking inquisitively.

Brandi sighed in resignation. “Not so great. It’s like ... It’s like we’ve just lost whatever magic we had. We’re both trying really hard and there’s a lot of love still there, but things just aren’t the same.”

“Aww, I’m sorry, dear.” Deanna was holding Brandi’s hands and patting them gently.

On the verge of tears, Brandi finished, “I don’t think we’re going to last through the winter break.” She started crying then and Mrs. Evans pulled her into a hug. Whenever our mom wasn’t around for support, Deanna Evans made a great substitute.

And Dayna was on hand to provide a little comic relief. “Seriously, who ever thought I’d be the one in the stable, committed relationship?”

Everyone, even Brandi, cracked up a little at that.

At first, I settled onto the couch in the family room to watch football with Jack Evans. We watched Joey Harrington and the Detroit Lions actually beat Brett Favre’s Packers in the early game. As lazy men in front of a TV that was playing football, we pretty much stayed in place while the girls brought us food for lunch. And we seemed ready to do the same for the Dolphins-Cowboys game as well.

But when I got up to go to the bathroom, I noticed that Dawn and DJ were deep in a conversation back in the living room. I wouldn’t have paid them any mind except that they both turned to look at me as I walked back, and something in the way Dawn specifically was looking at me triggered some sense in the back of my head. They were talking about ME.

Curious, I detoured over with a casual smile and watched amusedly as both girls suddenly looked nervous at my approach. “And what are YOU two up to?”

DJ grinned right back. “Just talking about you,” she admitted.

I nodded and pointed back and forth between my head and Dawn’s, referencing our almost mystical connection. “I figured.”

Dawn blushed, “I’m not telling her everything.”

I smirked. “You know, the way you keep saying that makes me think you ARE telling her everything you DO know. You’re just not able to pass along what you don’t know.”

Dawn blushed even brighter and then smiled. “So what are you saying? That you’re keeping secrets from me?”

“Secrets? No. I’ve never kept secrets from you.”

“So tell us. Just WHAT is going through your head, Ben?” Dawn leaned forward eagerly. “I know we’ve talked a bit about it, but there was just so much going on with school and everything else we never really sat down to figure it out.”

I shrugged. “I dunno. I’m just trying to find happiness like everybody else, I guess.”

“And are you happy, Ben?” DJ asked curiously.

I nodded. “Yeah ... I guess. Don’t get me wrong, I miss you, kiddo. And I miss being your boyfriend, Dawn. But in the end, I think things have worked out for all of us.”

The girls looked thoughtful and I kept going. I gestured to DJ. “You look more relaxed now than at any time we were dating. I don’t know if that’s a condemnation of the way I was as a boyfriend, but it’s true.”

DJ shrugged. “I feel like I’m finally on top of my studies. I feel good about my college apps and I aced my SATs. This semester is going well and I think I’ll actually get all A’s.”

“That’s great!” I said warmly.

DJ’s eyes twinkled. “Of course, just because I’m not stressed about academics anymore doesn’t mean I’m not anxious about... other ... things.” There was a world of innuendo in her voice and in the sultry look the gorgeous young blonde flashed me.

I chuckled and then looked at Dawn. “And I don’t think you could ask for a better boyfriend than Ryan. He’s been sweet and attentive and loyal. The guy adores you and let’s face it, he’s doing a better job of making you happy than I ever could.”

Dawn just smiled wanly and blushed while looking down.

“Besides,” I continued. “I don’t know if we could be the friends we’ve been if we’d stayed together. I just know I would have found a way to fuck it up a long time ago, the way I’ve fucked up almost every other relationship I’ve ever had.”

“It’s not all your fault,” DJ admonished me.

I shrugged and looked back and forth between both girls seriously. “Maybe. Maybe not. But right now I think I’m just better being Mister Independent. No relationship. No commitments. No expectations. And no disappointment.”

Dawn looked at me softly, her eyebrows canting to the sides. “But aren’t you lonely, Ben?”

“Lonely?” I snorted. “Not hardly. I finally did the math. You were right: it’s been 12 girls since DJ. 13 if you count Adrienne. Although to be fair, they’re not all new.”

“I call slut,” DJ drawled.

“Too late. I already called it,” Dawn interjected. Then her smile dropped away. “But I don’t mean that kind of lonely, Ben. You never had a problem just getting laid. I’m not even IN that sorority and I hear girls whispering around campus about the Big Ben Experience.”

I smirked, my ego puffing up.

“But do they really make you happy?”

I frowned and looked back at her. Clearly, for once, Dawn didn’t understand me at all. And it felt like she’d already asked me this same question a hundred times. “Of course they make me happy. I’m getting laid by a dozen hot babes with more waiting in the wings. I’m having more incredible orgasms in more exotically pleasurable ways than I can believe. I’m friggin living the ultimate male fantasy with a college sorority stacked with girls who are practically in love with me!”

DJ snorted. Dawn just rolled her eyes and stated, “You know they’re not in love with you.”

I shrugged. “Okay that’s hyperbole. But I get no complaints from them. And they keep coming back for more.”

Dawn sighed. “Fine, you’re incredible in bed; we know that, don’t we Deej?”

DJ smiled and nodded.

“But there’s more to a relationship than orgasms,” Dawn continued. “Heck, there’s more to SEX than orgasms. You’ve nailed a whole bunch of girls, and gotten repeat business from some of them. Great for you. But you’re just a living vibrator to them. The most important part of sexual satisfaction for a girl is not orgasm, it’s the connection to the person they’re with.”

“Oh we’re pretty tightly connected when she’s got all four limbs wrapped around my body while I’m buried deep inside her,” I chortled.

“Ben!” Dawn admonished. “I’m being serious. Can you really say that any of those girls feel intimately connected to you?”

I sighed. “Maybe not. But that’s up to them. They’re not coming to me for feelings of intimacy, certainly. But then neither am I.”

“So where ARE you getting your feelings of intimacy?”

“’Feelings of intimacy’?” I snorted. “I’m a guy.”

“You still need them, Ben,” Dawn scolded. She looked at me seriously and asked, “What was that on Tuesday night, Ben? You know, when you held onto me after that blind-typing test?”

I arched an eyebrow. “Huh?”

Dawn reached out and patted my knee. “It felt like you needed a hug.”

I snorted. “Naw, I get hugs all the time: Adrienne, Brandi, you, and of course all the Tri-Delts.”

She shook her head. “It’s not the same and you know it. You’re a more sensitive guy than your macho ego may try to insist.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m fine. Craving intimacy is what got me into trouble in the first place with you, DJ.” I turned to look at the younger Evans sister. “Isn’t that what got us started? You jumped at the chance for a fantasy relationship and I rebounded because I needed intimacy. And look where it led us.”

DJ blushed and looked at her hands.

I turned back to Dawn. “The last thing I want to do is rebound again, okay? Fine, I’m lonely by your definition. But I really think it’s best if I’m alone for a while, okay? I need to take a step back and not get myself into another relationship just for the sake of being in a relationship. Make sense?”

Dawn exhaled slowly, her mouth eventually forming an ‘O’ as she blew air straight out. When her breath gave out, she finally conceded, “Fair enough.” But she wouldn’t totally give up. “Just don’t try to tell me you’re looking for happiness, Ben. You’re just looking to get laid and you’re running away from your feelings,” she scolded.

I rolled my eyes. “FINE. Jeez. Didn’t realize I was going to walk into a lecture.”

“I’m not trying to lecture you,” she protested.

“Look. DJ and I broke up less than three weeks ago. Cut me some slack.”

“Cutting you slack is giving you space to think about your life and time to get over your ex-girlfriend. But you’re not doing that, Ben. You’re doing what you always do. You’re drowning your feelings in a sea of lust and naked sorority sluts!”

I went rigid. I didn’t mind Dawn calling ME a slut; I deserved it. But I’d never liked anyone calling a girl I cared about a slut, not even Dawn. “You don’t call them that,” I barked coldly.

“What? Sluts? They ARE!” Dawn’s voice elevated. “They fucking made a competition out of seducing a complete stranger!”

“It’s not that simple!”

“But it’s true!”

“What’s your problem?” I exclaimed. “What the Tri-Delts do is none of your business.”

“It IS my business when they’re going after YOU!” she yelled, her eyes a little wild.

I looked at my best friend as if there was suddenly a bad taste in my mouth. “What, are you jealous or something?”

“Jealous? What the fuck are you smoking?” Dawn screeched. “Why would I be jealous of some skanky SLUTS?”

“Dawn! Stop calling them that! I’m warning you!” My voice was elevating as well.

“Or what? You’re gonna hold me down and rape me, too? What would that make me? Number 14?”

“DAWN!” My eyes flew open in abject shock at her words. “What kind of guy do you think I am?”

“A boy! A stupid, stupid boy!”

“Is everything okay in here?” Deanna Evans stood in the archway, a look of concern on her face.

Dawn immediately turned red and averted her face. I winced and gave an apologetic nod to Mrs. Evans. DJ just looked stunned by what had happened.

Dawn just planted her forehead in her palm and squeezed her eyes shut. Without turning to her mom, she muttered, “Everything’s just fine.” And then without another word, she stood up and practically raced out of the room.

Mrs. Evans, DJ, and I were left blinking in surprise and looking at each other a little awkwardly, none of us exactly sure what to say.

Eventually, Mrs. Evans just took a deep breath and looked at me. Her eyes searched through mine for a moment, and then she nodded knowingly, as if she understood exactly what was going on. Without another word, she turned and left the room.

“What just happened?” I asked quietly.

DJ didn’t say anything right away. But eventually, she sighed and leaned over, patting my leg. “Dawn just cares about you.”

“What?”

DJ smiled wanly. “My sister is the most level-headed person I’ve ever met. She only gets that way over you.” She shrugged. “She cares about you.”

I blinked a couple of times, not quite following.

DJ stood up, leaned over to peck me on the cheek, and then turned and walked out of the room, leaving me alone.

I’ll never understand women.

I wound up back on the couch in the family room in front of the football game. If Jack Evans had heard me and Dawn yelling at each other in the living room, he didn’t show it. When I sat down he simply took one look at me, cracked open a fresh beer, and handed it over. I chugged half of it without even thinking about it.

One by one, the other girls trickled down to join us. Dayna was first, sliding onto the loveseat. Adrienne came with her, cuddling up and using me as a backrest the way the twins had been doing for their entire lives. Brandi popped in and out, choosing to spend more time helping out Mrs. Evans in the kitchen.

After a while, DJ came back from wherever she had gone and mirrored Adrienne by leaning against my other shoulder. All in all, the girls saw a pretty boring game. The Dolphins had things well in hand by the second quarter and the Cowboys sucked. Quincy Carter threw two interceptions in the fourth to ice things. After the game, we all talked about random nothings until it was time to eat.

Dawn didn’t come back down until dinnertime, spending most of the day in her room. I didn’t want to say she was outright avoiding me, but on the few occasions she DID venture downstairs, she’d never so much as looked at me.

Things thawed a bit at dinnertime itself. I was seated along a long end with DJ and Adrienne, but Dawn wound up directly across from me and once dinner started, she seemed to sigh in resignation and at least became polite with me. She gave me a small but hopeful smile when I made eye contact and she responded when I asked her to pass me the potatoes. And as the meal wore on, the tension between us leeched away until there was nothing left.

After the meal was over, everyone pitched in to help bus the table and put away the dishes. With eight people helping out, things got put away and the dishwasher loaded pretty quickly. Jack and Deanna invited everyone to have some wine and veg out for a bit while we all went into turkey tryptophan-induced comas. But I went looking for Dawn and found her looking for me.

For a second, she darted her eyes around to everyone else in the family room. Without words, our eyes met again and I gestured with my head, getting a confirming nod from Dawn. I then turned and she followed me back to the main hallway. Once there, I paused and let her lead me upstairs. I involuntarily checked out her fine ass on the way up and then into her bedroom, where she flopped onto the bed while I dropped myself onto the desk chair.

“I want to apologize for what happened earlier,” Dawn began.

“It’s okay, really. I—”

“No, I need to apologize,” she interrupted me. She took a deep breath, looked me in the eyes, and continued, “I was out of line. I shouldn’t have called those girls ‘sluts’. I know the word really bugs you.”

I shrugged. “Clearly, it didn’t really bother me when you and DJ both called ME a slut.”

Dawn giggled and looked down. “Yeah, well. You know what I mean.”

I smiled. “Apology accepted.”

She sighed and then looked away. “And I realized that in a way, I AM jealous.”

My eyebrows furrowed and I pulled my head back. “You mean?”

She read the expression on my face and shook her head. “No, no. Not like that. Well, yes like that. I mean, I do remember how wonderful we were together in bed. But no, not like that.”

I blinked, working to follow as she’d rambled a bit. “Huh?”

She broke out into a big, slightly embarrassed smile and sighed. “What I mean is: I was a little hurt that you didn’t come to me after you and DJ broke up.”

“I did.”

Dawn shook her head. “Not until Monday. You two broke up Friday night.”

I winced and shrugged. “It wasn’t on purpose. I just kind of locked myself inside the house for a bit, you know? And Adrienne and Brandi and Dayna were all there to talk to me.”

“But you didn’t even tell me it happened.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Did I need to? I thought you girls all communicated telepathically.”

She chuckled and shook her head. “Not exactly.”

“But you DID find out right away, didn’t you?”

Dawn nodded. “DJ called me that night.”

“So you knew. What’s the problem?”

“You still didn’t call me.”

I frowned. “You didn’t come visit me.”

“I didn’t know if you would want me to.”

I sighed. “Of course I would. You’re my best friend.”

“Am I?”

I stopped and looked at Dawn. She looked genuinely hurt and my eyebrows furrowed as I tried to figure out what was going on in her head. In good times, our emotions and feelings flowed back and forth between each other as if they were written in neon letters above our heads. But there were times when I had no clue what she was thinking. “Dawn, of course you are.”

“Then on the night you broke up with your girlfriend, why didn’t you come talk to me? Not even a phone call?”

I shrugged. “I’m a guy.”

She shook her head. “Not what I mean. You used to always tell me what was going on in your love life, and what you were going through. You told me about Keira way in the beginning, even though you didn’t give me her name. We talked a LOT about your relationships with Adrienne and Paige. You know I’m always here for you to talk about whatever you’re going through. You know I’m here to help you figure things out. But this time, you didn’t. When you and DJ broke up, you just went off and did your own thing. Yeah, you came back and reported what you were up to, but you never told me what was going on in your head.”

“I didn’t know you wanted me to.”

“Of course I did. I’m your friend. I’m your Dawn. I’m here for you.”

“You didn’t want to talk much with me last time,” I said bitterly. “After Adrienne and Paige broke up with me.”

She sighed and looked away. “That’s because you pissed me off. You more or less said, ‘Okay, I’m free now. Why don’t you break up with Ryan and get back together with me since it’s convenient?’”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Yeah, you pretty much did.”

“I’m sorry. I never meant anything like that,” I sighed. “I was just kind of messed up after all that in May and I was grasping at straws.”

“I know. And things didn’t get much better for a while.” Dawn leaned over and traced the bullet scar on my cheek with her fingers.

We both went silent as I pondered all the traumas of the Adam-incident; and Dawn gave me the space to ponder them. But then I took a deep breath and looked over at her. “Seriously, I didn’t know you wanted me to come to you.”

“I’m your best friend.”

I exhaled. “Are you?”

She looked surprised at the little reversal. Two minutes earlier she’d been challenging whether or not I considered her my best friend.

I sighed. “You don’t share much with me anymore, either. I mean yeah, we spend all day together. We go to classes and we study and we do our homework and everything. But you’ve never talked to me about what’s going on in your relationship with Ryan.”

Dawn smiled wryly. “You’re a guy.”

I rolled my eyes. “So? Same difference. You share your romantic complications with other girls, probably Gwen, right?”

Dawn nodded. “But it’s not like you share your romantic complications with another guy. Who do you talk to, Adrienne?”

I smirked. “Adrienne’s mostly lesbian. That makes her a de facto ‘guy’ since we’re both looking at girls the same way.”

Dawn rolled her eyes and quipped, “I like looking at girls, too.”

I grinned. “I know, I know. I dunno. Maybe because I’m a guy I just don’t talk about it much. Even when I talked to you about Keira and Megan and everything else, it was all kind of after the fact. You were in NorCal and I was in OC.”

Dawn sighed and nodded. She looked thoughtful and as her eyes stared off somewhere in the distance, I simply stayed quiet and waited her out.

Eventually, she pursed her lips together and rolled those crystal clear blue eyes over to me. In the spot lighting of her bedroom, shadows were cast across her pretty face making her look even more alluring as she smiled at me radiantly. “I want to change that, Ben.”

“Change what?”

“I want to talk to you. I want to share with you. I feel like we’ve drifted so far apart over this last year and a half.”

“Last year and a half?” I arched an eyebrow. “Two years ago we were 500 miles apart. The last year and a half has been the first period we could really spend a lot of daily time together.”

She smiled. “I’m not talking about time. I’m talking about being close to my best friend, being close to my Ben. We may not be a couple anymore, but I want to get back that feeling of intimacy with you. It doesn’t have to be sexual intimacy. But that personal ... closeness ... Do you know what I mean?”

I smiled and nodded. In the last few weeks ... heck, for most of this entire 2003, I hadn’t really felt close intimacy with anyone. I had started to feel a bit lonely back when Adrienne first pulled herself away that Valentine’s Day to pursue her relationship with Grace. We’d gotten some of it back in a more sibling affection ever since, not to mention a great sexual partnership, but things hadn’t been the same. I’d never really gotten that intimate with DJ, either, she being more in love with her fantasy Ben and me just clinging to the idea of having A girlfriend. And clearly, I hadn’t had anything remotely resembling intimacy with the dozen or so chicks I’d been banging the past few weeks.

Dawn continued. “I want to share what I’m going through with Ryan. I feel like he and I have reached this really important turning point in our relationship; something that will change the rest of my life. And I’d love to be able to share that with you, to talk it out with you.”

I smiled and got off the chair, moving over to the bed and sitting sideways on the edge just in front of her. “And I want to share what I’m going through right now. I bluster a lot about being Mister Independent and living the ultimate male fantasy. But yeah, I’m still not sure what I’m doing. I want to be happy, not just get laid, and I’m not entirely sure how to go about that. It’s still too soon for me to think about a relationship. I know I don’t want to rebound and I’m not sure what I should be looking for in another girlfriend anyways. But I’d love to be able to share what I’m feeling with you.”

Dawn broke into a delighted smile, the kind that carried up through her cheeks and into her eyes, making them sparkle. With a little giggle, she raised a hand and touched my cheek, brushing it with her fingertips gently. “I missed you, Ben. I know we’ve been seeing each other almost every day, but I missed you. I missed the Ben I loved at summer camp.”

“I missed you, too. I missed ... my Dawn.”

“I’m right here, now,” she said softly and leaned towards me. “You don’t need to be Mister Independent. You’ve got me right by your side.”

I took her hands in mine and squeezed them gently. “And I’m right here, now. I’ll always be here for you.”

Her smile got bigger and what seemed like a happy tear rolled down her cheek. I wanted to move to intercept it, but couldn’t bear to break my hands free of hers. So on impulse, I darted forward and kissed the tear away, my lips lingering just an extra second against her silky smooth skin.

She smiled even bigger and another tear squeezed out onto her opposite cheek. I quickly darted around and kissed that one away as well. She turned her face fractionally toward mine. I brought my face in line with hers. And then moving forward, our lips met together.

It wasn’t a kiss of passion. It wasn’t a kiss of lust. It was just a kiss of love, the timeless love that had bonded Dawn and me since we were first born. The touch of her lips filled me with a joy I hadn’t felt in a while, and this time there was no Ryan to stop by and cause us to awkwardly split apart.

The pressure of her lips increased and I pushed a little harder to match her. I tilted my head to the side and probed forward with my tongue. She parted her lips for me and touched my tongue with her own. And as our kiss deepened I felt the waves of absolute bliss and contentment filling my soul.

This was my Dawn.

This was the way things were meant to be.

But not yet.

Dawn pulled back and quickly moved up to peck my nose. She was crying again, albeit with bright eyes and a happy smile. Her eyebrows popped up and with just a touch of embarrassment, she giggled, “We should probably stop before this gets out of hand. I have a boyfriend, remember?”

I groaned and realized that I was rock hard. Dawn just had that effect on me, and I grimaced with the realization that indeed, we had to stop before going past the point of no return. “I love you, my Dawn.”

“I love you too, my Ben.”

“I don’t want to leave right now,” I whispered harshly, my voice strained with passionate lust.

“I know. But we both know you should.” She sighed. And then her eyes darted over my shoulder as a little smile spread across her face. “Besides, my little sister needs you now.”

My eyes suddenly focused and I backed my head away. “Wait, what?” I twisted my head around to see the gorgeous 17-year-old leaning against the doorjamb, an eager expression on her face.

“C’mon, honey,” DJ reached a hand out to me. “I’ve gone three weeks without getting properly pounded and there isn’t much time.”

Blinking fast, I turned back to Dawn. “But ... but...”

“Go,” Dawn giggled and pushed me away. “Go on. It’s okay. Get out of here.”

DJ came forward to take my arm and she physically tugged me off the bed. “C’mon, honey. I’ll take that big problem you’ve got in your pants and make it go away.”

Still slightly shell-shocked, I merely hung on as DJ dragged me out of the room.

The impish young blonde then giggled uproariously. “I’ll even let you call me ‘Dawn’.”

“Fucking hell...” DJ groaned as my prick glided forward the final inch, my pelvic bone bumping up against her crotch and coming to a full and complete stop. She was breathing shallowly as her hands clutched at my forearms. I could feel her heartbeat through her vaginal walls, slowly pulsing at me in a steady [bum-BUMP] [bum-BUMP].

“I forgot how fucking big you are,” she groaned and let her head fall back against the mattress.

“I forgot how fucking tight you are,” I grunted in reply as I held myself above her, my arms shaking slightly as I fought to keep still.

“Mmm ... fuck me, Ben. Really fuck me,” the beautiful young teenager moaned as she began rolling her hips, fucking herself a couple of inches along my shaft and gradually stretching her vaginal tunnel around my invading rod. “I’ve gone three weeks without feeling your magnificent cock splitting me wide open and I don’t know how long this fuck is gonna have to keep me.”

I growled and dropped myself down onto my elbows, high enough to keep my weight off her but low enough to feel those marvelous 34DD tits rubbing against my chest. I hooked my hands beneath her shoulders and gripped her as I began to pump in and out of her clasping pussy. And I tilted my head down to start nibbling at her neck.

“I missed you, kiddo.”

“Ha!” She giggled and rolled her eyes. “It was my big sister that got you this worked up.”

“Maybe,” I conceded. “But I still missed you. What we had may not have been ideal, but it was real to me.”

“Oh, Ben...” DJ sighed and continued rocking her hips, undulating her lithe body to meet my every thrust. “It was real to me, and I appreciate everything that we were together. But we aren’t meant to be. I know that now. You were my fantasy, but the real you belongs to Dawn.”

“Ahhh...” I sighed, feeling the curious mix of pleasure from DJ’s exquisitely caressing pussy and sadness over Dawn. “Dawn and I aren’t like that anymore.”

“Hmm ... not for now you aren’t; but give it time,” DJ breathed and rubbed my spine, gripping my shoulders and using the leverage to press her crotch against me a little harder when our loins met. “Not everyone has a soulmate you know. And that sort of thing doesn’t go away that easily.”

I looked down at the beautiful girl writhing beneath me in pleasurable ecstasy. Her sunny blonde hair was loose and haloed around the pillow instead of coiled into its usual braids. Her crystal clear blue eyes stared straight back at me. And the scent of her body was so familiar. DJ really looked like a slightly younger, slightly skinnier version of Dawn, and for a brief moment, I pictured her older sister beneath me.

“Ohhh...” I moaned in rapture as the idea of grooving my cock in and out of Dawn sent a tingle up my spine. DJ was right, the connections to a soulmate don’t go away that easily, and even now, as Dawn contemplated the seriousness of her relationship with another man, the mere concept of making love with my Dawn caused a surge of power into my strokes.

“Ooh, you like that, don’t you?” DJ teased. “Talking about Dawn.”

I groaned again and shut my eyes, letting the fantasy take over for a few brief seconds. My hands tightened against her shoulders. My lips pressed against her skin. And my loins drove harder and deeper into her body. Already I could envision the ecstatic thrill of blasting my load, pouring out my liquid love, into... her ... body...

“Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck...” DJ grimaced and groaned as I pounded her with increased energy. And the sound of her familiar chanting brought me right back to reality.

I shook Dawn from my head and looked down at the pretty girl beneath me, the youngest Evans daughter who had put her heart into becoming the very best girlfriend I’d ever had. In many ways, she hadn’t succeeded; but that didn’t discount everything she’d gone through for me, and for us. I opened my eyes wide and moved a hand up to caress her cheek. I tilted my head and pressed my lips to hers, giving her a tender kiss. “Let’s stop talking about Dawn, kiddo. I’m with you.”

She giggled. “I meant it when I said I’m okay with you fantasizing about Dawn while you’re fucking me. I know we’re not meant to be in love, and I really just want to get laid right now. Hell, if you’ll fuck me even better, I’ll let you fantasize whatever the hell you want.”

For a brief moment, I thought about accepting her offer. No, that’s a lie. For a LONG time, I thought about accepting her offer. I wanted to be with Dawn; I really did. Yeah, I was fucking a dozen hot babes from Dayna’s hottie Senior friends to nubile sorority girls, but of the thousands of girls on the entire campus at UC Berkeley, Dawn was one of the few that were completely off-limits. You always want what you can’t have. And that desire was multiplied a hundredfold for my Dawn.

But I was with DJ. It was important to me that I pay attention to the girl I was with, and not just... use her as a receptacle for my pleasure. Keira’s golden rule was still locked into the very foundations of my lovemaking, and I had to please DJ first.

“I’m with you, kiddo,” I said in a serious, deep voice. “Whatever else we may have been, whatever we could be in the future, and whoever else we may be with someday, right now I’m with you. And I want to be with you.”

I held her face in my hands and brought mine down to hers. We didn’t quite kiss. Our noses lightly bumped against each other as I stared into her eyes, holding my gaze until I was sure she was staring right back into mine. I didn’t have words for how I felt in that moment; it wasn’t quite love, not quite gratitude, not quite lust. But I put the way I felt for DJ into the way I looked into her eyes, and with a deep satisfaction, I sensed more than saw the smile tugging up at the corners of her lips.

Only then did we finally kiss. Our eyes closed and our heads turned and my body surged forward to press deeply into hers. DJ kicked her hips up and wrapped her legs tightly around my waist, flexing and tugging to fuck herself harder against me. I felt a wondrous surge of pleasure coursing through both our bodies as our lovemaking kicked up another notch. And with a passionate intensity I hadn’t felt in the last dozen-plus screws with random hot girls, DJ and I really started fucking up a storm.

I’d given DJ better orgasms before this night. She’d cum harder and squirted more and thrashed about the bed in a glorious cocktail of sexual agony and ecstasy. I’d also given DJ far more orgasms than this night, because tonight she only had the one.

But it was GREAT orgasm. Not the most powerful, not the best feeling, but it was perhaps the most satisfying orgasm of her young life. When she came, it was with our eyes locked onto each other. When she came, it was with her entire body vibrating at the peak resonant frequency of maximum happiness. And when she came, it was with my own cum splashing against her inner walls at the same time.

“Oh, GAWD! BEN!” DJ cried as the climax tore through her body. “BEN! BEN! BEN!”

“DJ! DJ! DJ!” I chanted right back as we shuddered and rocked against the mattress. Our names were clear and our hearts were open. This wasn’t love. It was just pleasure. And it was happiness and thankfulness for the person we were with.

Dawn was right: The most important part of sexual satisfaction for a girl wasn’t the physical orgasm; it was the connection to the person they were with. For the first time, with DJ at least, I hadn’t just concentrated on giving her the greatest fuck, or even the most luxurious lovemaking. I simply made sure she knew I was with her.

When we were done, DJ stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, as if unable to believe what we had just done. She wasn’t physically drained. She wasn’t half-unconscious. Actually, she still seemed energized, eager even. And yet her body was completely relaxed with total satisfaction despite having only a solitary orgasm.

“Wow ... that totally wasn’t what I was expecting...” DJ breathed. “But it was incredible!” She pushed my face into the crook of her neck and squeezed me tightly, hugging me down to crush her smaller body beneath her.

“Nrrgghh,” was all I could groan in response. I’d had a pretty good orgasm myself and my brain was still mush.

DJ giggled and rubbed my back. “Hm, if you’d been making love to me like that this entire time, I might not have let you go.”

“Nrrgghh...”

DJ sighed and then patted my back. “We’ll have to do that again sometime. Maybe when you come back up north after winter break?”

I turned my head to the side and smiled. My mouth felt full of cotton but I managed to say, “I’d like that.”

The pretty blonde smiled and moved her face forward to kiss me. And then we rolled apart. It was time to go home.

By prior agreement, Adrienne and Dawn traded places in the back seat of Dayna’s Impala for the drive back to campus. That put Dawn beside me, and she dropped her hand onto my thigh. And as we pulled away from the curb, my beautiful best friend turned to me with an impish smile.

“Quite a number you did on DJ back there.”

I blushed and looked down. I thought about my response for a few seconds before picking my head back up and looking into Dawn’s crystal blue eyes. “It was special,” I said finally.

Dawn smiled back and blushed. “Sounded like it.”

I moved my hand on top of hers, squeezing it gently. A thought came into my head that I didn’t verbalize. But no matter. From the way Dawn’s eyes brightened and widened for a brief moment, I think she got it anyways.

’Next time, it’ll be you.’