Three Girls and an Appology

I agreed to it because I wanted to sleep with them. Both of them. Who wouldn't. They were beautiful. They were my height, the three of us all under 5'2", blond and sandy brown and breasts so pillowy that it was all I could do to stop myself from burying my head in their chests every time we had a conversation.

I wanted to ease those breasts out of their twin plunging necklines right then at the very mention of it.

"But not until we find a man who will sleep with the three of us together."

Ah. You see, here was the sticking point.

We listed names one after the other. Men we all wanted (one name). Men we could all tolerate (two names). Men one or the other of the girls would absolutely refuse to sleep with (a whole list of names stretching out over four blank pages). I didn't veto anyone. I just wanted to sleep with the two of them together and whoever the man was seemed superfluous.

One of the tolerable two found himself at our kitchen table. There were only two of us girls there, the third was still at work. We discussed it. The boy seemed amenable to the idea, and he, like myself, wanted too ease my flatmates plunging neckline down just a little. I watched him fumbling with the sheer fabric and I wished I had just got right down to it without waiting to be invited. His head fit snugly between the rise and fall of them. I saw peachfuzz, a flash of nipple-pink. She giggled. She seemed to enjoy the attention for a moment till she slipped away from the kneading of his fingers and settled herself back inside her dress. She told him to wait until it was a complete contingent.

The boy leaned back in his chair and locked eyes with me and lifted an eyebrow. I knew what he meant and he knew that I knew and I had found an unexpected ally in all of this. I could already see us down at the pub for a post coital beer, discussing the ins and outs of the thing, comparing and contrasting notes as if we had just sat through a game of soccer.

When we were finally in bed, he gave me a wink as if to say 'how good is this?' It was indeed fine. The girls were like unwrapped presents, pink and drenched in perfume and with hair that spilled out over each other's chests. Every part of them was fragranced. Each strand of hair dripping sweetness, the smooth shaved skin under their arms, the underside of the necks, both blooming with scent.

I would be a contrast to them. I would underline their femininity by my musky skin. My nipples olive, my flesh a dark tan, my hair too rough and wiry to run your fingers through. I kissed them each in turn, soft kisses scented with Cointreau, orange blossom tongues, the hard line of their teeth, and suddenly it was his mouth against mine. The boy that we could all tolerate. A battle of lips and cheeks and the roughness of his re-emerging stubble. He measured the generous bulk of my breasts in his palms and I wondered suddenly if I was something alien to him, not a boy, but something other than the perfumed paradise of girl-flesh. I broke away from the kiss and returned to the promise of breasts, such an animal urge to suckle, such an overpowering urge to bite down on the pillowy swell.

One of them got cold feet and it was over, almost before it had begun. The boy had submitted to the disappointment of a condom reluctantly, found his way inside me with more enthusiasm. They were lying down, the two of them, four breasts in a row. I was completely occupied with flesh. I suppose I was the easiest beginning for him. I was his place of entry and he took it. No preamble, no negotiation, just a sliding inside, a reaching over my shoulder. I felt his finger pinch the nipple that I was licking, I felt a thumb in my mouth. He was reading my actions like braille, touching the hard nipple, the soft wetness of my tongue. He was there at the point of our connection. I could feel him moving inside me and I wondered if I would be able to feel them through his body as well, lie on his back and edge his hips closer to theirs, force his thrusts to follow my preferred rhythms, slip my finger into their bodies beside his penis just as his thumb was nudging in to my own mouth in the wake of a nipple. He was moving towards this. I could feel him withdraw suddenly, shift to one side. I was ready to sidle over, on top of him when one of them told us to stop.

They left us alone in bed. First one of them, suddenly teary. Gasps of pleasure replaced by sniffing and sobs. The second was up and after her and the hot space where her body had been touching mine turned icy in a second. I lay in the bed and listened to the conversation playing out in the kitchen. The boy lay facing me. His brow a knot of complicated muscles flexing and relaxing in their confusion. I shrugged. If I was a real girl I would have understood. I would have explained the complex web of their emotional shifts and changes.

I just shrugged and rolled my eyes and knew then that I was different to them in some fundamental way.

The evening was over. I could tell by the little sniffles and the sound of the kettle being filled. I was all wound up and I wanted to finish what we had begun. I climbed on to him quietly. I didn't want them to know. I wanted to be in the kitchen with the girls, all female solidarity, but I had to finish this off first. He seemed to understand and he was ready for me. This in silence as if we were having an affair and the wives in the next room drinking tea and debriefing (endlessly debriefing) what we had begun together but were finishing without them.

We both closed our eyes and I was imagining the swell of breasts and the soft moist places that I had barely touched but that were livid in my memory. I buried my head in the pillow when I came and there was the smell of flowers and of fruit and somewhere, a hint of the true smell of them, something clean and earthy.

We rolled apart and listened. It was over, and we knew it. We dressed quietly and paused in the doorway.

"I feel like a beer," I told him, "and a cigarette."

He nodded, "The pub is just down the road."

We snickered. We steeled ourselves. We walked into the kitchen where the girls stopped and stared at us, and pulled their satiny robes around their soft pink bodies. I wondered why I didn't have a satiny robe. I sat beside the tolerable boy and listened as they explained the impossibility of it all to us. We nodded and made calming sounds, little grunts and sighs that made us seem understanding and sympathetic. They started from the beginning and explained it all again and again.

Eventually I yawned. "I should walk him to his car," I told them, placing an understanding hand on on of their shoulders.

We sat at the pub and I lit his cigarette from the end of mine and we drank beer.

"Well, that was something." he said and I grinned.

We sat and drank beer and said nothing until I remembered something I'd read in the paper about experiments with rats and mazes and he had read it too and then we talked about that until our glasses were empty. We hugged awkwardly, like blokes hug, stiff bodies bouncing off each other, and then he got in his car and drove home.