The Book of Firsts

Thirty-One

Scoring the doggie challenge was a little easier, since I felt that Rin had taken the best approach. I put Kyou second and Bran third, though it was not as if Bran had been bad. If I’d been scoring him on the kissing, he’d win every time.

"Will you three really not be bothered by the final score?" I asked Rin on Friday, finding him contemplative over a cup of tea, and at least not composing this time around.

"Final—?" He looked blank for a moment, then shrugged. "Probably a little. But then we’ll tell each other that whoever won was just your type, and do something uncomfortable to the winner, and only brood about it occasionally."

"Has your tunic been unconfiscated yet?"

"I believe it was donated to a second-hand store." He poured me a green tea. "Did you enjoy your treat, Cheshire?"

"Very much. Would watch again, any time."

"It’s good to stir the school up occasionally."

His smile hadn’t faded, but his eyes were distant. I considered him as I sipped, then asked: "No progress on the investigations?"

"Nothing. Well, extensive surveys of the security cameras have given us a list of people who couldn’t be a candidate for gate-painting, which in turn gives a list of staff and students who fall in the suspect pile. But it’s such a long list, and I really can’t think of anyone who hates us that much. There’s more than a few that would enjoy us being uncomfortable, embarrassed, or even given a thorough beating. But these have been things that had the potential to kill."

"Are you in danger of being beaten up regularly? Or are you all black belts or something ridiculous?"

"We attend a very practical self-defence course, for common sense’s sake rather than any devotion to fighting. Kyou practices kendo in order to please his maternal grandfather."

"Is there a Kendo Club?" I hadn’t seen anything on the school forums.

"No, it’s entirely after hours. We make something of a game of keeping as much as possible outside school private."

"Mm, I hadn’t heard anywhere that you’re going to Banff over the break, so there’s one success. Just you three, or a family thing?"

"Just us. First the Book Festival, then clan kowtowing over Christmas before heading to Canada for the New Year. Our families think we’re going to Saint Moritz, and I hope Sirocco enjoys her time there very much."

I considered that purely cold smile.

"Your family is actively trying to get you together?"

"Both my sets of parents consider Sirocco charming and capable. My mother and my step-mother both socialise with her mother. My father and her father crew the same boat for competitive sailing. They consider us an inevitability. Sirocco, despite a firm no, thinks I will mature into her. Do you ski, Cheshire?"

"Yes, though I prefer snowboarding. I won’t, however, be going anywhere near Banff."

"A month seems like a very long time, just now."

He was looking at me through his eyelashes. I smiled back at him blandly.

"I was wondering if you were also going to let me trounce you at go bang."

"Let’s play a game you’re bad at instead."

"That doesn’t sound fun at all. We also need something with relatively quick rounds, unless you want to take all day to get me naked."

"Hm. No, let’s skip the formalities."

"Okay? Pick a table then."

"Is outside too cold?"

"Not if we’re in the sun. I expect we’ll heat up nicely anyway."

It wasn’t like Rin to be impatient, so I watched a little surprised as he took the tea things inside, and brought out a couple of the blankets to spread over the picnic table.

"To avoid giving you splinters in awkward places," he explained.

"Fun conversations with the school nurse."

"I’m sure she’s seen it all." He turned from making a little pillow out of one of the blankets, then said: "Will you strip for me, Cheshire?"

I considered him, trying to gauge his mood, then shrugged and kicked off my shoes, and then pulled off my socks. With a faint curl of my lips, I stepped up onto the bench and then the picnic table and tossed my tie down onto him.

Rin is most interesting when he stops smiling. He watched me silently, moving only to catch the clothing, but his very lack of expression spoke volumes about what would happen next. When only my bra and pants were left, the white with tiny blue flowers pair Kyou had enjoyed, I stopped, looking down at him.

"I think you should catch up."

He stripped completely, eyes never leaving mine, moving with an efficiency that seemed unhurried but spared very little time. When he was done, I walked to the edge of the table, then paused as I felt it shift a little at the imbalanced weight.

"Having this thing catapult me onto you isn’t quite the effect I’m going for," I said wryly.

Rin lifted one hand and slid it up from my knee to my inner thigh, and then skipped upward a few inches to hook my panties and pull them slowly down. I stepped out of them, then gaped when he turned away and crossed to the café table where his backpack was sitting, tucking them into a pocket.

"You have a collection?" I asked.

"Kyou described these in great detail," he said, coming back to me. "I’m going to leave them on the floor of our hotel suite on New Year’s Day."

I laughed, then covered my mouth, because I’d been louder than I usually allowed myself in the garden.

"Sit down, Cheshire. I can’t quite reach."

Once I had obeyed, he unhooked my bra, but left it with the rest of our clothes on the bench. Then he kissed me.

The table was a good height. I wrapped both my arms and my legs around him, and felt him grow harder with every passing moment. Eventually he pushed into me, but then leaned me back so he could taste my chest, not riding at all. He lowered me further, so I was flat on the tabletop, and followed me down to kiss me more, and I gasped because of how that pushed him into me. Knowing he worried about being too big, I wrapped a hand behind his neck and kept kissing him, and after a moment’s hesitation he began to gently thrust.

Rin’s intention appeared to be another long, drawn-out session, but he lost himself somewhere along the way, straightened and sped up, thrusting harder and harder, and coming almost before I did.

"Big fan of tables?"

He chuckled, and relaxed down on top of me, nuzzling my throat. "We’re all having new experiences with this. I had no idea." He licked my neck, then said: "Cheshire?"

"Mm?"

"Did any of that hurt you? Be honest."

I thought about it, wondering if he’d really given a girl a painful experience, then said: "You haven’t hurt me at all so far. I do have to relax myself when you’re going in, which is something of a mental exercise. But, Rin, I’m not reticent about things like this. I’m pretty physically strong, and I’m not in love with pain. If you’re hurting me, I will tell you. If you don’t stop, you’re surely going to notice me boxing your ears, or trying to kick you where you’re tender. I suppose in the positions where you can get really deep, it might hurt if you let go, but so far it seems to me that your endurance is more likely to make me sore."

"Hm."

He didn’t say anything further, just gathering me up and lifting me easily off the tabletop, though only to take a couple of steps to one side and sit down on one of the table’s benches with me in his lap for a long session of touching and tasting. I really do have an enormous appreciation of Rin’s collarbones, and the awareness that I wouldn’t be touching them for a month gave them an added attraction. But it was also too much fun to scrape his nipples lightly with my fingernails and watch him get increasingly worked up. He was so sensitive there.

The fourth time I did it, he stood up abruptly, catching me around the waist before I spilled onto the ground, and then with a sudden flurry of movement he had me face down on the table, pushing inside me.

"Is this too deep?" He pushed back and forward a couple of times.

I laughed, and the sound came out unexpectedly husky. "Let’s find out."

He allowed himself to be far less restrained than any time previously, and I was grateful for the blanket he’d spread, because otherwise I would definitely have had a few splinters after being ground into the tabletop. There was no immediate pain, though I suspected I might be quite sore later, and fortunately Rin didn’t draw things out, letting go not long after a muffled mewl escaped me. No matter how I tried, I found I couldn’t stop myself making that tiny noise, and couldn’t decide if I’d made it with my first boyfriend, or had been brainwashed into doing it. Just a moment when my body tensed up completely, and a little bit of breath escaped me.

Rin bent forward and bit my shoulder, a slow and deliberate pressure that also didn’t really hurt, and probably wouldn’t leave a mark. He lay there for a few breaths more, then murmured: "It’s going to be a very long month," before moving off me.

I agreed, but decided not to analyse too deeply whether he was talking simply about a lack of sex, or specifically playing games with me. Of course, I had no guarantee they wouldn’t hook up with someone on their holiday, which would be a physical risk to me, and also something I would rather didn’t happen during the time of our challenge. Overall, I felt they wouldn’t, and so simply listened to Rin humming as we cleaned up.

The background music paused when I pulled spare underpants out of the pocket of my backpack and put them on.

"You’re not going to give me something to think about all afternoon?" Rin asked.

"Art Club’s going to the movies tonight, and being pants-less would distract me. Besides, the tights would completely change the effect—mainly by riding up uncomfortably."

He smiled, and continued his humming, finally bidding me goodbye with a light kiss on the forehead.