Chapter One

 

I don't know how people looked for apartments before there was an internet. Honestly. Imagine having to go somewhere and look at something based just on a few words in a newspaper ad! I spent hours and days and weeks surfing the internet trying to find a place that looked like somewhere I'd feel really glad to come home to.

Especially since it would be my first home away from home.

I had just graduated from UCLA, and since staying at home with my family meant a big savings on the cost of dorms or rooms I had let them persuade me to do so. That meant I'd missed the life-experience of being away from my family and getting out on my own.

I had graduated from its digital media school and had selected from several job offers before agreeing to one in San Francisco. I have to admit, it being away from LA was a major reason I'd agreed. It was a smaller shop and I'd have more room for experimentation, but it would also give me a chance to spread my wings, so to speak.

Finding a place had not been easy. I mean, I was going to be paid a really nice salary, but even so, prices in SF were not cheap, especially if you wanted something - nice. Something homey. Something with atmosphere, but not something old-fashioned.

I had mentioned my difficulties to Malcolm Ross, the guy who had hired me, and the next thing I knew I got an email with a link to a web site which had a number of gorgeous loft conversions, including one in the Bernal Heights area that literally dropped my jaw.

The rents were high, but not outrageously so. I mean, it was affordable, if just barely! So I arranged to view it, and rented it on the spot.

It was an attic in an older house. The walls are vertical to about my hips, then angle in, but not super sharply. This isn't a place where roofs have to be steeply angled to keep snow from accumulating, after all. In fact, the angled walls didn't meet, for they join a flat, horizontal roof above, which is about half the width of the floor below.

The bedroom has two double windows carved into opposite walls, vertical, not angled, which left deep window wells. It had French glass doors. The wall at the far end is all cupboards and closets, and the room is painted a sort of very light lavender, or perhaps lilac is a better term.

The really neat thing is there are thick beams running up at an angle on both sides of the walls, then crossing overhead. They're also braced by a crisscross pair of beams running between the two walls just below that. And they're covered in gray leather. I thought it was uber cool!

Past the cupboards is small hall with a small closet on either side. Past that is another glass paned door leading to a wooden balcony which overlooks the nearby houses, and then downhill to the bay. Amazing, right?

On the other side of the bedroom is another narrow hall with a bathroom on one side, and a small kitchen on the other. And I mean small! It has a built-in fridge on one side, a built-in stove and microwave on the other, and a sink with counter on the third. There isn't much room in there for putting together banquets!

Past that is a living room which is a mirror of the bedroom, except for the absence of cupboards. Instead there's another French door leading to a second balcony, and stairs leading down.

That is a bit of a drawback. I'm on the third floor, basically, and the only way up or down is along a narrow wooden staircase. Fortunately, my new queen-sized bed came in pieces, and the living room furniture was lightweight. Lightweight enough for big healthy men to carry up three flights of stairs anyway.

What, you think I was gonna do it? I'm a girl. Or hadn't I mentioned that yet? The lilac room might have clued you in. Then again, it is San Francisco.

I celebrated my first night in my own apartment by basically walking around naked. Well, not entirely. I wore a thong. Why? Because of the sense of freedom I had and which I was embracing with glee. I couldn't do that at home! There was always someone calling my name or knocking on my door - a door which never had a lock because my parents didn't believe in locks.

I did my yoga exercises in the middle of the living room floor in just a thong. I ate dinner in just a thong while watching TV, and I almost went out onto the balcony in just a thong. Almost. I wanted to but chickened out. Yes it was dark. No, it wasn't likely anyone would see me. But I still chickened out and slipped on a gray cotton jersey.

But to compensate for my silliness in wearing it, I left the buttons open. It was a crew neck, but it had buttons down from the center. Leaving them undone showed a very generous amount of cleavage if anyone was looking, especially from above. Of course, no one was above so...

I wandered out and sighed as I leaned on the railing and looked out on the bay and the city lights around. My own place! I felt very grown up, and also a little nervous. My parents were so omnipresent in my life! Not to mention my brothers! I'd never been alone before!

There was a lot of greenery around, but most of it was below me, and if I moved to one side of the balcony I could see the towers of the financial district! What a place! I marveled that I'd found it and that it was affordable!

The only drawback was the landlady. Christine seemed to be a humorless diesel dyke. You know, one of those women with the crewcuts and an attitude? Never wears makeup or jewelry? Sneers at 'breeders'? Hates men, even though she seems to be trying to imitate one?

Okay, well, I wasn't going to spend much time around her. So that shouldn't really matter. Of course, she lived in the house below, so I couldn't avoid her entirely.

When we had met she'd made it clear she wouldn't have even considered renting to a man, even a gay man. She didn't seem to like them much more than she did straight ones. She also made it very clear I had better not make noise or cause any damage. In fact, the way she put it was that if I did she'd 'tan my butt', which I thought a bit weird.

I mean, granted my parents and babysitters had talked like that over the years, but she was neither. Nor was she old enough to be one. She was probably in her early thirties while I was twenty-two. And while she had frowned a lot and acted grumpy when she showed me around I'd caught a certain look at times.

It's the look of someone enjoying my looks.

I had been wearing cutoffs and a t-shirt at the time. The cutoffs didn't do much to hide that I have a nice butt and nice legs. The t-shirt did even less to hide the fact I have a slim waist, flat stomach and nice sized chest.

In fact, she'd done less than most men to hide that she was looking at those particular areas with interest, and that had made me a bit nervous. It wasn't that I didn't have a lot of experience in turning people down who were interested in me. I did. But mostly they're men. I've had women sort of making exploratory conversations, but none had ever come on to me, not directly, not like men do.

Maybe if I'd lived at school and in a dorm I'd have had one of those clichéd 'explorations' with my roommate or something, you know, away from home, caution to the wind, that sort of thing? But no such luck. It wasn't that the idea of doing it with a girl was totally out of my considerations should the opportunity arise. But the kind of girl I'd be thinking of would be more like me, you know, feminine, with long hair, and closer to my age?

Her living below was one of the reasons I'd worn the jersey. Mind you, it was night, and even if she was out in the back yard, well, I was three stories up and on the balcony. Still, I didn't want her to get any ideas.

Which was a bit of a pity. The thought of being out on the balcony completely naked was kind of kinky cool.

But oh well.

Kinky is a pretty broad term for me. It encompasses almost everything about sex which isn't strictly generic, ordinary and vanilla. I'd never been naked out of doors, so the idea was kinky to me. My sex life had been infrequent to that point in my life, and not terribly impressive. I'd looked at videos on the internet with varying degrees of awe, delight and disgust, tried to figure out what I ought to do by reading material about what made a good lover. I was, from what guys said, really good at blow jobs, for example.

Blow jobs aren't kinky, though. They're very ordinary.

None of the guys I'd made out with to that point in time seemed to have put the research and practice I had into becoming good lovers. Their kisses were often so rough they bruised or even cut my lip. Their hands tended to maul my breasts so they hurt. And none had much patience for foreplay. They wanted to stick it in and be done.

Nor had the reviews I'd heard from my girlfriends been very impressive either.

That didn't mean I was ready to give up on guys and try girls, mind you. I just figured I'd wait a bit or try older men, the ones who had some experience and a sense of restraint, who knew how to please a girl.

In the meantime, I had a dildo with a vibrator base, and that served me much better in obtaining orgasms than any guy I'd met.

I went back inside and peeled off the jersey. It skimmed up my body across my bare breasts in an unfamiliar way, since I rarely wore anything without a bra underneath. My nipples tingled at the contact, and hardened almost instantly.

My nipples and I have a love hate relationship. They're very sensitive, more sensitive than most girls, as far as I've been determined without asking girls I know (and I have no intention of doing so!) about how sensitive their nipples are. It doesn't take much to make them hard, and rolling, stroking and plucking them send hot little quivers of excitement through my body.

The right kind of suction on them, which I only ever occasionally get, can make my eyes roll up in my head!

But they can be embarrassing when they get all erect in a public place, or where other people might notice! My nipples are small and pink, but when they harden they push out fairly obviously if I'm wearing something lightweight. Which, in California, is most of the time.

I rubbed them almost absently as I walked into the bedroom. The curtains were drawn on both sides, so there was no one to see me, and I was aware - yet again - that I was alone and need not fear being interrupted or disturbed.

At home, there was only two ways to masturbate, in the dark of my room at night, or in the bathroom with the shower on. Maybe that's why I got the idea to do it in the living room. I turned on the TV, hooked it to my laptop, found a video, then put a towel down to cover the soft fabric of the sofa.

I went to the night table beside the bed and smiled as I opened the drawer and took it out. Putting it in there, so obviously, had been a symbolic gesture. I didn't have to hide it here! I didn't have to find a clever spot no one would ever come across it!

I peeled off my thong, feeling a little wave of sensuality as I did so, my nipples prickling as I bent to pick it up and tossed it in the clothes hamper. Then I took out my little squeeze bottle of lube and squeezed a bit onto the head and along the shaft.

I padded naked out into the living room, sat down, drew my legs up and apart, and turned on the video, keeping the sound low. Then I examined the dildo.

As I usually did, I knew a sense of doubt about whether I was dooming myself to an unsatisfactory sex life by using it. No man could ever stay hard as long, and no man had a vibrator function on his balls. And it was... thick and long.

Yes, yes, I know size doesn't matter. Except it matters as far as my sense of the erotic went. For whatever reason, I was more turned on by long and thick than short and slim. Not a lot of men were going to match the size of "Harvey" as I had named my little toy.

Harvey looked very real, complete with helmet head, and thick veins along the shaft. It was made of some sort of soft silicone that imitated human flesh. And when I began to rub the slippery head up and down along the naked line of my sex I felt a sudden sharp rush of sexual energy spreading up my body.

It wouldn't go in easily. That was part of the thing that excited me about it. I had to prod and twist and dip and pull back and push, and only slowly force the lips of my sex in and back wide enough for it to start to slide inside.

That always excited me, the moment when it started to push into me. I raised my eyes to the video on the TV, my breathing already increasing as I slouched down and let my legs spread wider.

I cupped and kneaded my breast as I twisted and turned and slowly pushed the dildo into my body, while my eyes flicked up to the video - one of my favorites.

It was a Chinese girl, slim and pretty, though her face looked pretty fucked up as a big Black man rode her from behind. She was going out of her mind, in fact, as he used her. Her body dropped to the bed, then he'd yank it up and slap her bottom. She'd cry out again and again, cursing dazedly, and he'd grip her hair and yank it back as he rode her hard.

It was her reactions as much as the sight of him which aroused me. But both were important. Because he was acting like a boss. A boss! You know what I mean? A big, strong guy who didn't take any shit, and who did what he wanted and did it well! And he was doing her really well!

He was riding her like a bull, jerking back on her hips, slapping her ass, jerking on her hair, even wrapping his hand around her neck at one point to pull her head up and back so he could kiss her roughly.

But he clearly knew what he was doing in the way he was altering his strokes and rolling his hips and the way his hand would dive under her hip and rub her clitoris, which always made her cry out.

She was going out of her mind as he fucked her. And as I watched I imagined that was me! I imagined some big, powerfully built guy was riding me like a bitch in heat and driving me out of my mind as he pounded against my ass!

I fed the dildo deeper and deeper, my breathing becoming ragged as I pumped in and out. My other hand alternated between rubbing my clitoris and squeezing my breasts. I sank down until I was basically laying on my back on the sofa, with my head propped forward by the backrest and my knees dawn back so wide the tendons in my thighs ached.

I got the dildo deeper and deeper, though that ached too. And then it was deep enough, and my trembling fingers flipped on the vibrator thing! I pushed in and shuddered as the vibrator began to grind over my clitoris, and I moaned low in my throat, imagining I was the Chinese girl!

My hips began to buck up as the sexual heat grew in intensity.

The video was a long one, and real, not one of those fake ones with actors. You could tell that just from the look on her face, the sweat on her skin, and her cries and words. If she was an actress she was a super good one!

I'd never had sex like that, and that made me feel resentful. All those guys pestering me for sex, and so few seemed to know much about it beyond where to stick their dicks! Shit, maybe I did need a woman. At least she'd know what to do. Then again, I'd never have that kind of wild, savage sex with a woman!

I pulled the dildo all the way out of me, gasping, and then licked it, sliding it into my mouth as I fingered my clitoris, then sliding it deep, even into my throat! I gurgled and gagged a bit as I brought my head up and back, and moaned, plunging two, then three fingers into the moist, slick opening to my sex, pumping them in and out as I drew the dildo back up my throat and out of my mouth.

Then I thrust it into myself again, moaning as I forced it in all the way, until the vibrator was pressing against my clitoris. I ground it against myself there as I squeezed my breasts, and the orgasm took me into that delicious part of the universe where the pleasure was all that existed!

Almost.

I might be in my own place but I wasn't in a separate house. There were people downstairs. The awareness of people being nearby had always been a part of my sex, and so my orgasm was quiet, consisting of gurgles and gasps and whimpers and moans as my hips jerked and spasmed against the dildo/vibrator.

I sighed and slumped there, chest heaving, filled with the delicious languor of afterglow. I slid the sex toy off of me and turned it off, then slowly sat up with a groan. I turned off the porn video, then pulled on the jersey again, though I didn't bother with the thong. The jersey was soft and covered my butt - if only just.

It was comfy warm in the apartment but not that warm. I had the window open and San Francisco had some nasty breezes and chilly winds sometimes, even in summer. Anyway, the jersey was quite thin, sort of halfway between a t-shirt and sweatshirt.

Plus it kept my breasts from moving around too much as I moved. I mean, I'm not huge, but no one has ever called me flat-chested either. And as much as I exercise my chest muscles the girls do respond to gravity.

And I was feeling restless. I mean, I'd been working all day to set up the apartment, and when I wasn't doing that I was on the phone with people about other details. I felt there was still more to be done. I wandered through the small apartment tidying, examining, adding things here or there.

I went to the door and slid it back, intending to go out on the balcony again, when I was startled by a figure that moved forward from the shadows. I don't mean they were there peeping, for they were clearly just climbing the last stair.

It was a woman, a blonde, perhaps thirty, with a short, sort-of pixie cut that sent heavy bangs across her forehead. I'd have called it long hair on a guy. She seemed a bit startled to have me open the door before she even reached it, but reacted quickly with a smile.

"Haley?" she said, though not looking in much doubt. "I'm Jessica."