Maria’s longtime girl crush makes the first move.

Sheila was the girl who I hung out with when I visited family in Connecticut. She was tall and fair and liked to wear her hair in two long braids. She was the same age as me, and her hair was the color of lemon cream. I crushed on her for ages until I turned twenty-one. That was the year my crush became my lover.

We were out on the lake with a bunch of other people, but Sheila and I had gone out to the float alone. Her swimming in crisp even strokes, me doing the breaststroke because it was the only way I could swim with any speed. She was like some mythical mermaid. I felt like the beast that attacks the submarine in the horror movies.

We pushed up onto the worn wood and immediately sprawled on our backs. I flung an arm over my eyes to blot out the intrusive blinding sun. We lay there for a few minutes feeling the bob and dip of the water, and then she took my hand.

“I was glad you came back this summer. I didn’t think you would.”

I tried to find my voice. It was buried somewhere deep inside me, being held prisoner by my pounding heart and the flushed arousal that had flooded my pussy the moment she touched me.

“Why would you think that?” I managed in response.

She squeezed my hand and then let go. My hand unfurled, flattening palm up to the sun as if exhausted from coming in contact with such an amazing creature. One I’d gotten off to plenty of nights in my dorm-room bed, making sure to be quiet so my roommate wouldn’t hear.

When her finger began drawing spirals on my palm, I was glad my arm was over my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look. I could lie there and bite my lip and feel her touch sink deep into my flesh until I feared I’d come just from her drawing invisible marks on my skin.

“We grew up. We’re getting jobs,” she said matter-of-factly. I finally peeked at her through one squinted eye, and she shrugged. “I just figured it would all come to its eventual end, is all.”

“Well… I’m here,” I finished weakly. “I came.”

I pushed my lips together, feeling stupid for my choice of words. But truth be told, if she kept stroking my skin that way, it wasn’t a far reach of my imagination to think that I could.

She moved so suddenly I didn’t have time to think or to brace myself, which was good. It was as sincere as moments get in a lifetime.

She kissed me. Her face pressed close to mine, her lips cool from the water. She kissed me, and when the kiss grew more intense, I parted my lips to let her small, soft tongue slide against mine. She pushed her fingers to my belly, and my lust-warmed skin felt hot in response to her lake-chilled flesh.

Sheila broke the kiss. “All those jokers will see, and we’ll never hear the end of it. Meet me out by the jogging path tonight. By the cave.”

I nodded, unable to speak. And then we simply sprawled there in the sun for hours, thighs touching. I don’t know what was going on in her head, but my mind was racing. I could barely fathom making it until nightfall.

When I met her later, she was dressed in a dark sweatshirt and cutoff shorts. She smelled like strawberries and coconut suntan lotion. She took my hand and led me back to the cave. It was really just a small grouping of large rocks that formed a deep semi-circle but we’d all nicknamed it “the cave” years ago.

“I brought a blanket.”

Before we were even really sitting, we were kissing. And the kiss took on a life of its own. I pushed my hands beneath her sweatshirt, covering her small breasts with my palms. A rush of pleasure coursed through me when I felt her nipples go hard beneath my touch.

Her lips slid down my neck and then she was pushing me back, shoving my t-shirt up and hooking her fingers in my shorts to tug them down. Her lips skittered along my belly, my hip and then lower. When her mouth touched me — the searing, wet heat of it — my entire body arched up to meet her. Her tongue slid along my nether lips, nudged my clit, and when she sucked it into her mouth and scraped that hard knot of flesh with her teeth, I had to stuff my hand in my mouth to keep from crying out.

Sheila pushed my thighs wide, and her fingers circled my wet slit as she licked me. I gripped the blanket tight, trying so hard to keep quiet and not come. She suckled me again, the pressure on my clit nearly overwhelming. She pushed a finger inside me, and when I moaned and moved against her, she added a second.

I listened to her breathing, to the sounds of her mouth on me as we lay there tangled in the dark. She thrust a third finger deep inside me, and I clenched my internal muscles to add to the thrill. I came when she nipped my clitoris with her teeth, all the sound freezing in my lungs. But my body language told the tale, and she laughed softly, sitting back.

“Take your pants off,” I said.

She laughed again. “I know you’ve never been with a girl. You’ve never even — ”

“Sheila,” I sighed. “Shut up and do it.”

“Oh, and she’s bossy,” she said, but I heard the tremor in her voice. The excitement.

Her zipper sounded unbelievably loud. The full moon gave me just enough stark white light to see the sharp contours of her face.

When she was bare from the waist down, I ran my fingers up her thighs. I traced the prominent angle of her hipbones and the lush flare of her hips. The small dip of her waist and the small swell of her belly. I parted her nether lips and inhaled the scent of her before lowering my head to taste her. She was sweet and musky, the hard bump of her clit beneath my tongue exhilarating.

I sucked softly, and she groaned a bit harder. When her hips thrust up and she shoved her hands roughly in my hair, I licked her more aggressively. I slid the tip of my tongue along her nether lips, parting her and tasting salt on my tongue.

Then I pushed her legs flat to the blanket, pinning her there, and licked her over and over and over — relentlessly until she came, whispering, “Jesus, fuck. Fucking hell.”

She’d gone from wet to wetter, and I slid my fingers through the lake of wetness. I worked a thick bundle of fingers into her cunt and fucked her, my lips moving softly over her belly and down her slender thighs. She squirmed and bumped against me saying, “Stop, Jesus, stop. You’re killing me.”

But she didn’t mean it, and we both knew it. So I fucked her harder, deeper, rougher with my fingers, and when she went utterly silent, I delivered one final lick across her still-swollen clit and she climaxed again.

She tugged on my hair to urge me upward until we were belly-to-belly, pussy-to-pussy, face-to-face. She kissed me. Her mouth tasted like me, mine like her.

That night is a memory that’s seared in my brain. A wonderful, steamy first. I’m heading back to Connecticut to visit my family this holiday season, and I heard Sheila still lives in town. I’m thinking of looking her up. Maybe we can take a walk out by the cave.