It was still relatively early when the first show of the evening was over. It was fun and entertaining, but Jane’s mind was more on what was still to come that evening. Rick . . . well, she couldn’t tell. He laughed at the jokes, marveled at the pageantry, but still didn’t say very much. That left her a little lost when considering what might come in the next few hours.

As they got to the hallway where both their rooms were located, Sophia said, “Well, I think that pretty well does Rob and me in for the evening. We just can’t go as late as we could when we were younger. We’ll see you kids in the morning for breakfast.”

Even Jane was able to tell that Rick didn’t really comprehend what was to come. He seemed dazed, and she couldn’t figure out what that meant. Even after everything so far had gone fairly well, if rather low-key, over the course of the day, this was the part she was worried about. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had sex before, for she had, although not much. But how was it going to work with Rick? There was room for plenty of doubt, and it was no trick to imagine that this was going to be a “make it or break it” for them.

Oh, well. There was only one thing to do: be competent and take the lead, as Sophia had said. Maybe this will work out for the best. “Come on, Rick,” she said, taking him by the hand. “We’ve got things to do.”

He followed along silently, almost numbly, and she used the key card to open the door to their room. They’d been in there together before, opening suitcases and setting things up, but Sophia had been with them. As Jane closed the door, they were alone with each other for the first time ever.

No matter what happened this was going to be awkward, but somehow a big, torrid romantic approach didn’t seem quite like the right thing to do. Keeping things low-key had worked so far today; maybe it still would, she thought. “That was a pretty good show, wasn’t it?” she asked.

“Um, yeah,” he said, seemingly too flustered to say anything else.

All of a sudden another memory from Sophia came across her mind. “We probably could both use a shower,” she commented lightly. It would be a good icebreaker, and there was no doubt there was plenty of ice to break right now. “We could do it together. Does that sound good to you?”

Rick didn’t say anything, but she could see his eyes were wide and his jaw was hanging down even at the suggestion. Now wasn’t the time to stop; she kicked off her shoes as she reached down to pull the sundress over her head. In only seconds, she was standing in front of him only wearing a pair of bikini panties, and those didn’t last long either.

If Rick was shocked before, there were no words to describe how he looked as he stared at her. “You’re . . . you’re naked . . .” he finally managed to say.

“It usually happens that way when you take your clothes off for a shower,” she snickered. “Come on, join me.”

“But . . . but . . .” he stammered, still looking at her.

All of a sudden she could see that tears were running down his face. Had she really screwed up somehow? “Rick?” she asked mildly.

“You’re . . . you’re naked . . .” he said again, the tears flowing now. “I never . . .”

She walked the few steps over to him, put her arms around him, and asked, “You never what?”

“I never believed this would really happen,” he finally managed to sob. “Never. Ever. All those times . . . all my life . . .”

“You never believed you’d have a woman at all, let alone in front of you with no clothes on,” she replied understandingly. “Is that right?”

“Yeah,” he managed.

“Rick, it’s happening. And there are other things you’ve wanted but never believed would be real, but are about to happen. Put the past in the past, and let’s enjoy it.” She pulled him close, and planted a big kiss on his lips. It wasn’t a very good kiss, but as far as technique went, well, that could happen when the time was right. Feelings were more important just now.

She could feel the wetness of his tears slide onto her face as she held him close. After a minute or so, he pulled back from her a little. “I still can’t believe it,” he said in a quiet, distant voice.

“What?” she smiled. “That you just kissed your naked wife?”

“None of it,” he sighed. “I never kissed . . . I never . . . I can’t believe . . . no clothes or anything. Nothing. I mean, your breasts . . . they’re beautiful. I can’t believe I’m seeing them. May I touch them?”

She smiled and replied softly, “Rick, you can touch me anywhere you want. Oh, I’ll get flinchy if you touch me around my eyes, but everywhere else is just fine.”

“Are you . . . uh . . . sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she grinned. She reached out and took his hand, putting it on one of her breasts. “Do you like that?”

“It’s . . . uh, it’s soft. Softer than I imagined.”

“Most women’s are,” she replied gently. “That’s why we wear bras, to firm things up a bit.”

“It feels . . . very nice. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Of course I’m sure. I have some other places that are nice to touch, and where I’d like it if you touched me. You don’t know much about this stuff, do you?”

He just looked at her and shook his head sadly before he finally managed to say, “I’ve seen some . . . uh . . .videos and stuff, but it’s not the same thing as having you in front of me.”

“Not a problem,” she grinned. “There was a time when you didn’t know how to write code, wasn’t there? You can learn this stuff, Rick, and it’ll be fun. It’ll just take time, and we’ve got plenty of that. Let’s get your clothes off, get in the shower, and we can spend some quality time touching each other.”

It took a while, with both of them working at it, to get his clothes off. It was clumsy and tentative, and she could see by his quick glances at her body that he was still having problems believing this was happening to him. Along in there came a pleasant surprise, when she discovered his package was average sized, at least as far as her limited experience went, maybe a little bigger than average; she’d wondered more than once if his shyness might stem from limited size there. Apparently not. To top it off, it was hard as the proverbial rock, so it was clear she was turning him on.

However, with his clothes off, she got a better opinion of his true shape. He was lean, but from the way his ribs showed it looked to her as if he was undernourished; it appeared he had a bigger frame than his weight would imply. In a way, it wasn’t surprising; the impression she got from Sophia was that he was a little careless about eating. That was something she knew she had to work on – but she knew better than to mention it right now.

“Come on, Rick,” she said when she had his clothes off. “I can’t wait to feel your wet, soapy hands sliding all over me. And I mean, all over me. What’s more, I think you’re going to enjoy it, too, just like I’m going to enjoy sliding my hands over your body.”

Before long they were in the shower, and she was making good on her promise. His hands on her naked, soapy, slippery body felt just as good as she had imagined they would, and she really enjoyed the effect her hands had on him.

They had an effect she’d half been expecting – almost the instant she got her hand on his package, he spurted off, letting go a groan at the same time; it went on for a while before it died down. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I thought I could hold onto it better, but you’ve got me, well . . . I never could believe it would be like this.”

“Hey, Rick,” she grinned. “The night is still young and the show isn’t over yet. I’ll bet you’ll be hard and ready to go again in a couple minutes. Then I’ll probably do it to you again.”

“Why would you want to do that?” he asked, still obviously not quite believing her.

“Because if I do it to you two or three times, you’ll last longer when we hit the main event.”

“Jane, you’re unbelievable.”

“No, I’m not,” she protested. “I’m really just pretty average.”

“Yes you are. No one has ever . . .” his voice drifted off.

“No one has ever treated you like this?” she asked gently.

“No. Never.”

“First time for everything,” she smiled. “The best part is yet to come, and there’ll be plenty to come after that.”

The best part was still a while in coming, not that either of them were sorry in the slightest about spending time in the preliminaries. It was pretty clear to Jane that the shower was not the place for it, at least this time, so after a while they got out, dried off, dried their hair, and went to the big bed. Rick was still obviously pretty nervous about the whole thing, although considerably less so than he had been an hour or so previously.

It went pretty well, considering. It was a little on the awkward side, but it worked, and that was all Jane really had hoped for. “So,” he asked when it was over and they were lying side by side on the bed, covered in sweat. “Was that OK for you?”

“Rick,” she smiled. “I have to be honest and say that was the best I ever had sober.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m afraid I’m not,” she said. “Look, Rick. Whatever it may look like, I don’t have much more experience than you do, and until now it’s always been drunk, or at least pretty drunk, which is part of the reason I don’t drink much anymore. If I’ve had any better, I don’t remember it as being better.”

“You’re saying that it wasn’t very good and you’re trying to be nice.”

“No, I’m saying that while it could be better it was far from unacceptable. Besides, Rick, do you know the good part about bad?”

“What?”

“There’s no way to go but better, and we’re going to get better. Both of us. Ask me in two weeks if I’m not right.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she grinned. “This is not a one-night stand, Rick. You’re my husband, and I’m your wife. I know this whole deal has been over-the-top strange to both of us, but I think Sophia came up with some real wisdom in wanting to do it this way. That is, it keeps us from making it a one-night stand. It forces us together, and it forces us to work on things we might ignore otherwise.”

“You might be right,” he said. “I’m beginning to think that she had something after all. I can’t believe that I could have ever wound up with a woman as nice as you are, as beautiful as you are, if she hadn’t come up with the idea.”

“It started out from a strange place, but I’m beginning to think it has a chance of working. Now, I almost hate to bring this up, but we’ve got a choice to make.”

“What’s that?”

“We can take a shower again just to get rid of the sweat, then get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to start early and is going to be another long day. On the other hand, we could lay here for a while, cuddle and talk a bit until we rest up, then do it again. We still probably ought to take a shower afterwards, but we’d be really tired then.”

“Not much of a choice, is it? If you don’t mind, I’d like to work on getting better a little bit.”

“Funny, that’s pretty much what I had in mind.”

It was well after midnight before they finally settled down to attempt to go to sleep. They were tired to the point where they agreed to put the shower off until the morning. It felt really strange to Jane; while she’d been in bed with guys before, if not very many times, this was the first time she’d ever tried to sleep naked skin to naked skin – and this time with her husband, more was the strangeness.

In the quiet time of holding each other before they went sleep, Jane thought that there had been some real progress made – and not just where sex was concerned; that held excellent prospects for the future. But, once Rick had gotten used to their intimacy, he’d seemed less shy, more communicative. Maybe they were on the right track there, too.

The phone rang while it was still very early; it proved to be the front desk with a wake-up call. Jane was surprised to get it, since she hadn’t set up such a thing, but realized it must have been more of Sophia’s work. While Jane knew they needed to get organized to have breakfast and get around for an early departure from the airport, it was still irritating, but no matter how much she knew she’d like to have some more sleep, she also knew she had to get up.

Still, as she pulled herself together, she realized how strange this situation was – waking up next to her husband, whom she barely knew. She’d thought more than once that, though many couples are still pretty much strangers to each other when they marry, there probably weren’t very many who were quite as unknown to each other as she and Rick were. There was still plenty to learn about each other.

Quite amazingly, the call hadn’t bothered Rick at all; he was still sawing logs like he meant it. Well, both Rob and Sophia had said at one time or another that he was hard to wake up, and they’d had a short night, preceded by a long day, and a long and thankfully hard evening. She pulled herself a little upright to see if she could get him stirring, and in the process discovered that he was still hard. Perhaps it was the “morning wood” she’d heard guys sometimes got. Too bad we can’t do something about that, she thought, then glancing at the clock, decided that she did have time after all – Sophia must have set the call with plenty of time in anticipation that there might be a little morning activity. She wondered, has that woman got us pegged, or what?

Not that it was a bad idea. A little amused at her audacity, she rolled Rick onto his back, climbed astride of him, and plugged herself in, a little stiffly since she really wasn’t prepared for it, but it still felt good. She let herself get comfortable, feeling him inside her, and started giving his chest and sides a gentle massage to try to wake him slowly.

It took her longer than she thought to get him awake. He seemed groggy at first, then came to with a start. “You’re still here,” he said. “It must be a dream,” he said as he looked up at her.

“Afraid not,” she said. “But I hope you weren’t having a better dream than this.”

“It has to be a dream,” he protested. “You can’t be real. This can’t be happening, not to me.”

“I’m not a dream,” she smiled at him as she began to work him lightly. “But it may be a little bit of a bad dream, since we can’t do this for long. We’ve still got a shower to take. Then, we’ve got to get packed up and meet Sophia and Rob for breakfast.”

“I don’t want this to stop.”

“I don’t want to stop, either,” she smiled down at him. “But we’ve got a little extra time, so we might as well make good use of it.”

In the end they got tight for time and might have been late if Jane hadn’t insisted on avoiding showering together this time – “We get started and we’re not going to want to stop.” – Rick had reluctantly been able to see the wisdom of that. Jane wound up using the shower first, since, as she told her husband, it takes a woman longer to put herself together than it does a guy. However, she dried her hair and did a few of her other morning chores in the nude, just for the sake of letting him watch.

Afterwards, she started to get dressed in another one of her new outfits, this one layered tops over a shortish dark skirt. The tops were such that a bra would be a good idea, and she pulled one on, but before putting the tops on over it, walked over to her husband, took one of his hands and put it on one of the cloth-covered breasts. “Feels a little different that way, doesn’t it?” she snickered.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I think I like the other way better.”

“I do too. And you’ll get your chance, but it’s going to have to wait.”

“It’ll be hard,” he smiled back.

“I know it will, but we have to take the bitter with the sweet.”

“Jane?” he asked, his attitude getting more serious. “I, uh, know I should have said something about this before, but, uh, but I know we ought to be doing something about, uh, not getting you pregnant.”

There was still plenty of shy left in him, she thought. “I have,” she told him. “I don’t think getting pregnant right now would be a good idea for either of us. It may not always stay that way, but I don’t think either of us is ready for any little accidents just yet. Maybe someday, and we’ll have to talk it over before we let it happen. I happen to think you can’t be too careful about that, so I have both injected birth control and an IUD. And when we hit my fertile periods I may make you wear a condom anyway. So that’s something you don’t have to worry about.”

“Thank you. That’s something I, uh, should have asked you before, but, uh, I thought it might be a little too personal.”

“Not that, not when it involves the future for both of us. Look, Rick, there are a lot of things you’ve been too shy to ask about, aren’t there?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Well, I know you’re shy about it, but you don’t have to be afraid to ask, at least ask me. I don’t bite, Rick, and I’ll try to be as honest as I can be, just for the sake of our getting to understand each other. It’s just you’re going to have to ask me and tell me these things, not be afraid to.”

He shook his head. “How did Sophia ever find a woman like you?”

“She got lucky, I think,” she smiled. “But I’m beginning to think I got lucky, too.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Of course I do.”

“I still can’t believe it,” he shook his head as she turned back to finish getting dressed; he stood there watching in amazement until she had to urge him to start putting clothes on himself.

They were close to being packed up when the phone rang again. Jane picked it up to discover, not surprisingly, that it was Sophia. “Are the two of you about ready to go?” she asked.

“Pretty close,” she replied. “About five more minutes should do it.”

“Good. I was afraid Rob and I were going to have to come over there with pry bars or something.”

“Sophia, we are responsible adults, believe it or not,” Jane chided her.

“What a pity. Being responsible is something you don’t want to admit to on your honeymoon.”

“Sophia, we’ll see you in a few minutes,” Jane replied dryly, and hung up the phone.

Rick looked over at her with what appeared to be a look of concern on his face. “Sophia, right? I suppose she wanted to know how everything went.”

“She didn’t come out and ask, but I think that was what she was looking for. I don’t think I told her anything.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t say much,” Rick replied slowly. “Sophia is, well, nice, but . . .”

“I get the picture,” Jane agreed. “She’s pretty involved with this and she wants to make sure her plan is working out. I can see how that could get a little too snoopy real easily. Maybe we shouldn’t say much and let her wonder.”

“I think so.”

“I think so too. I’ll tell you what, Rick. Sophia and Rob got to be friends real quickly, but I think I’m going to be just as glad to have them in Boulder while we’re in Hawaii, just so she can’t get too involved in things. She’s a great person, but she’s meddled her way all through this, and it’s not going to be easy for her to give it up. I think we need a little space from her as much as we do anything else.”

“Yeah, I think so too.”

An evil grin stole over Jane’s face. “Let’s have a little fun with her,” she suggested. “You remember how we were yesterday morning? I mean, a little afraid of each other, not saying much, not daring to touch each other? I mean, a little embarrassed at the whole thing?

He nodded, but there was a smile and a glint in his eye that told her that he was getting the picture. Just to make sure, she went on, “Let’s sort of act like that again. I mean, act sort of like not much happened, or that we’re both too embarrassed to talk about what did happen. That’ll give her two good weeks of worrying. Maybe it’ll teach her something.”

“It might,” he grinned. “Just not say much, and not get real close.”

“She ought to be fit to be tied before it’s over with. I wonder what the chances are that she’ll be flying to Hawaii to check us out.”

“I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“It would be pretty rude,” Jane smiled. “But I wouldn’t put a phone call or two past her. Did you bring your cell phone? I brought mine, but let’s leave them off.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

“I think so too. Come on, let’s get finished packing and go face the meddler.”

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