Chapter One

 

On the whole, Willow generally approved of her parents. They seemed smart, capable, dressed well, and provided her with most of the things she felt she wanted in life. She had not wanted to be sent to a private, conservative girls' school in southern England for her high school years, but she could see, logically, why her parents had made that decision.

She could follow their logic, even if she had disliked the end result. Especially since she understood that it was important to approach these things from the perspective of the people making the decision. From their perspective, it made perfect sense given the poor quality of the public schools here in America.

They could have selected private schools closer to home, but most of the conservative schools here were apparently affiliated with this or that religious group. Willow was just as glad they had avoided that since she had a lot of issues with the logical consistency of the stories the major religions taught. Asking questions about those inconsistencies tended to irritate their more faithful adherents.

And there was no question the school they had sent her to was gifted with superior teachers and taught to a high level. They were also quite good at preventing the spread of the sort of self-indulgent immorality her parents saw as an issue with teenagers.

Since the girls all wore uniforms, and since there were no boys to impress, there was little point in trying to dress in revealing outfits, or wear too much makeup, especially since makeup was forbidden anyway. Nor did they engage in most of the other activities teenagers generally got in trouble for. Social media was banned at the school, and discipline was enforced in everything from diction to posture to manners.

However, this left them, and certainly her, a little behind the curve once graduated, without the same level of experience that normal young people had in interacting with each other, and in particular with the opposite sex.

Willow was aware of this failing, but it did not overly concern her. She had been a solitary girl since before adolescence, fascinated by how things worked and were put together. Her interests lay in the engineering behind everything from computers to toasters, though over the last few years videogames had caught her attention in a big way.

She read voraciously, though she disdained the normal romance books that most teenage girls preferred in favor of science fiction and fantasy. Rather than going to internet sites which featured celebrities and models she went to the ones which spoke about computer gaming, interface systems, artificial intelligence, and computer-aided design.

Another area in which she differed from most girls her age was that Willow made little effort to improve her appearance. She certainly wore nothing designed specifically to make herself look more sexually desirable or to flaunt her physical assets.

She'd never worn makeup and saw little point in doing so. She only occasionally remembered to brush her blonde hair, and usually just used her fingers to comb it back from her face. Her large, round eyeglasses were framed by thin silver rims. She had a slender nose and full lips which had never known lipstick.

Her favorite items of clothing were long, loose rugby shirts, generally dark in color and striped, which hung down to just below her buttocks. They were easy to put on, easy to take off, and easy to care for. They also generally warded off unwanted attention from people she wanted little attention from, which was almost everyone. Willow was definitely not a social butterfly.

Of course, her parents had expected her to attend university the following year, and she had not disappointed them, though the world had disappointed them all. Because of the ongoing pandemic, classes would be done from a distance over the computer. From home, in other words. That was fine with Willow, and she thrived in that atmosphere, getting top marks.

However, this failed to greatly add to her store of experience with social situations. Particularly with boys, she supposed they were, at this point, properly to be referred to as men. Willow did not have an abundance of respect for the male gender, though. They seemed to be obsessed with sex, and in particular with the physical components of the act, as opposed to anything one could term emotional or romantic.

Some of the girls at school informed her that when they were going to regular schools they got from half a dozen to a dozen requests a day for nude or semi-nude pictures. And they would often find intimate unasked for pictures of boys in their message queues.

Willow valued logic, discipline, and self-control. And it seemed to her that most boys had none of these things. And since the school had done a good job of teaching manners, she frowned on the idea of sending requests for such things to people you barely knew.

Not that she overly approved of most of the girls she went to school with either. They seemed altogether too emotional, frittery, obsessed with small things like their appearance, their hair, and desperate to emulate personalities who Willow thought very little about.

She thought of herself, then, as something of a weird nerd, different from most of the other girls her age. But this rarely bothered her. She was largely content with her own amusements, including playing video games, and building and programming computers with the parts her parents were more than willing to pay for.

Her family lived in California, but inland, well away from the cities along the coast. Things were much more conservative inland, and there were smaller cities and towns. Her family's house was large and had a two-acre plot. That left plenty of space for a large swimming pool, her mother's garden, and a comfortable gazebo, while still having room to throw a Frisbee back-and-forth or play a game of lawn darts or croquet.

Willow rarely used any of this space herself. She was not much of an outdoors person, nor into physical activity, aside from the exercise routine she rigorously applied herself to. When she did go out back she was normally alone. Her parents used the backyard rarely, themselves, except for hosting guests and occasional parties.

Her father swam a number of laps every morning, but otherwise the pool was largely empty during the day. Both her parents worked long hours, so she was often the only one in the house anyway.

The Tuesday morning when she found the naked man in the pool she was supposed to be at a summer course in machine learning. It had been canceled at the last minute, which left her alone in her room playing video games.

If the man had not chosen to use the diving board she probably wouldn't have noticed him at all. But some movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and she looked to the window to see nothing for a moment. Then a man bounced into view, or at least some of him before he disappeared.

She frowned, got up and went to the window to see a man in the pool diving off the board. He was underwater but came quickly to the surface then pulled himself up over the pool and went back to the diving board.

Her first thought had been confusion as to why a strange man was in their pool in the first place. That rapidly gave way to a sense of astonishment and then a very unfamiliar rush of heat through her body for he was entirely nude. Not only was he nude but he was a large man, in every respect.

He was an older man, perhaps in his thirties, quite fit in that she could see the muscular development of his chest and abdomen as he moved. He had very impressive shoulders, and a penis which from what she understood seemed to be unusually large given it was not erect.

He had a sprinkling of hair across his chest, belly, and face. He had short dark hair and gray eyes. And he seemed very focused as he stood tall on the board, his arms stretched above his head, his masculine frame stretched out very... nicely, before he dove down into the water. He did not seem to be a crazy man. Surely crazy men weren't as fit as this one. It required constant exercise to have that kind of musculature, which meant discipline.

He had a nice ass, too.

Aside from watching him, Willow was at first confused about what if anything she ought to do. She could call the police, but that could be embarrassing if he had some justification for being there. And she had a vague recollection of something her father had mentioned a few days back about a new neighbor. Someone had bought the McConnell place next door. And he might be dropping by? Why would she be told that? Wasn't it something to do with the pool? She hadn't really been paying attention.

She watched him climb out of the pool again and found herself enjoying the spectacle. He was very fit, and he moved very... graceful was the wrong term. Women moved gracefully. He was athletic and moved with a strong, confident gait.

And he really did have a great ass.

Everything about his body was impressive and she couldn't help imagining running her fingers over those muscles, from his shoulders to his chest to his abdomen and down to that large appendage dangling between his well-muscled thighs. This was an uncommon thought for her, but then viewing naked men in person was an uncommon thing.

Willow wasn't entirely unfamiliar with sex. She had, after all, read much about it. Her actual physical experience with it however had been limited to a couple of the girls at school. That had been pleasant, but doing it with guys was considerably more complicated and fraught with risk. From everything she had read most of them weren't very good at it, and finished fairly quickly, well before their female partner was even nicely heated up.

It would probably be different with an older man than a guy her age. He had certainly had more time to accumulate experience. Perhaps he would have more self-restraint, more discipline. She had never really considered sex with a guy before, not seriously, not in the immediate nature that she was now considering this naked man below.

He was extremely fit! And Willow found herself physically drawn to him in a way she had never been drawn to a man - or boy - before. Just watching him had roused a sense of pressure within her body, especially down there.

She was aware that she was somewhat naïve and inexperienced with men, but she knew what they wanted, and she knew what society considered a sexually attractive girl should look like. So she was quite confident that the man would be interested in her, unless perhaps he was married and had no interest in other women.

He was older, true, but from what she understood, men responded to their sexual instincts as far as women were concerned, much as women did. Women looked for tall, powerfully built men with broad shoulders because their instincts told them they needed such a man as a provider and protector. It didn't really matter that this was no longer the case. You can't argue with instinct.

Though she tried to. She admired logic, and attempted to behave in a logical manner wherever possible. Just because this man was so... powerfully built and large and had those lovely broad shoulders was no reason for her to start getting fluttery over him. What good were such things in the computer age?

Yet fighting her instincts seemed futile, and why should she when the logic behind seeking an older man for... instruction seemed quite clear?

And men, well, men wanted young women of perfect breeding age with good-sized breasts to feed the young even if they had no interest in having children. She'd seen herself naked enough in the mirror to acknowledge that she met all the proper criteria.

There remained the question of what to do. Being a little socially awkward placed her at a disadvantage. She wasn't exactly an expert at seduction techniques. If she tried something like that she would likely just make a fool of herself. The preference among women, as she understood it, was to make men come to them. Then they could act reluctant, but let themselves be persuaded into doing things they wanted to do anyway.

Men were very judgmental, and disapproved of both women who were too prudish and women who were too easy with their favors. But did she care about his approval or not? He was far too old to be anything but an experimental dalliance. He could be as much as fifteen years older than her.

There were a number of advantages to this, though, including the fact he was most unlikely to be bragging to any of the people she knew, since he would not know them or likely anyone around them. He was old, after all. He would be more accomplished at the physical act, have more composure, more restraint, and expertise, and be less likely to become emotionally involved.

She wondered how big that thing got when he became aroused. It looked impressive enough as it was. And didn't men get smaller in cold water? Of course, it was quite hot out so the water likely wasn't very cold. She watched him swim the length of the pool and back again and thought he moved quite well.

Finally, she got up and went to her closet, and searched among her things. She could just walk out and talk to him as she was. But that didn't give her an excuse to hang around nor would it likely interest him as much as showing him something of what lay below her rugby jersey.

Willow decided that her quiet personality would be unlikely to excite a man so her body was what she had to put forward. She had very little that might be described as revealing. That included her swimsuits. But yes, there in the far back, in a box, was the plastic bag with the bikini her cousin Hannah had sent her as a joke birthday present when she was sixteen.

She remembered it principally because it had a thong bottom, and while the mere thought of wearing it around this man was starting to make her stomach flutter wildly, she knew she only had one opportunity and needed to make the most of it.

The swimsuit's bottom fit, after a fashion. The rear was nothing but an upside-down triangle at the top of her buttocks, and the front was a small V of material over her groin. If she had not accepted a gift from her mother of laser hair removal a few years earlier it would have been far too gauche to wear it. Visible pubic hair was so gross around a swimsuit or panties!

The top was another thing, for she had grown somewhat since then. Even loosening the strings, the cups left half her breasts bare. She blushed just looking at herself in the mirror as she imagined him staring at them. Still, she would be wearing far more than he was. If anyone was going to be embarrassed, it would be him.

His level of embarrassment would also be informative. A strong, confident, logical man, aware of just how good a body he had, would be considerably less embarrassed than a man lacking such qualities. Men were generally far less self-conscious about being naked than women anyway.

Willow grabbed a towel and dropped it across her right shoulder as she headed downstairs. She considered various pretenses including acting shocked or angry, but decided that her normal calm demeanor would be best. Also, it would be best to address him while he was still in the pool in case he was a crazy man. Then she'd have time to run back inside before he could climb out.

Her stomach was still fluttering in her chest and got worse, to the point that tension was making it difficult to breathe properly as she watched him dive in again. She steeled herself and slid the door open and stepped out onto the back patio. He was in the pool, swimming, so noticed nothing as she approached.

She cursed herself as she arrived, thinking she should have taken off her glasses and replaced them with the contact lenses she had upstairs. But it was too late for that now. She watched him swim back and stepped closer to the edge of the pool. And then he seemed to realize she was there and stopped, treading water.

"Good day," she said. "Have you gotten lost, somehow?"

She had a slight British accent developed over the last four years at school but was proud that she kept her voice is calm and even as it was.

"I'm James Hudson," he said in a deep voice. "You would be Willow."

"I would be," she agreed. "I live here."

He swam slowly towards her. "Yes, I know. Your parents mentioned you."

"I wish they had chosen to do the same about you. Finding a naked man in my pool is an unexpected event."

He stopped at the edge of the pool and looked up at her she backed up a foot or so.

"I spoke with your father, about moving in next door. It seems we share a love of water exercise in the morning. He invited me to make use of yours until mine is ready."

"I doubt he was aware you intended to do it without a swimsuit," she said. "Not that you don't have the right to be proud of your body."

He grinned up at her, seemingly not at all embarrassed, and then to her surprise placed his hands on the edge of the pool and pulled himself up and out. She blinked and repressed a gasp of mixed alarm and anxiety. Her eyes widened, though, as she found herself before so much powerfully built, naked male flesh as water dripped down onto the stone interlock below.

Hudson made no effort to hide his body, and in fact reached out and casually snatched the towel off her shoulder, using it not to wrap around his waist but to towel off his head and face before dropping it down to do the same to his chest.

"I'm not ashamed of my body," he said. "That would make no sense. It's far better than most men have. Are you ashamed of your body, Willow?"

Willow redoubled her efforts to look and sound calm in the face of her racing pulse.

"No, but I don't habitually go around naked outside, especially in other people's yards."

"I was given to understand you would be away this morning. And that you rarely use the pool anyway."

"Both of these are normally correct," she said. "Today was an exception."

He dropped the towel down around his waist to continue toweling off, then wrapped it in place there before holding out his now merely damp hand.

Reluctantly, Willow took it and found her small hand completely enfolded in his much larger, more powerful one.

"Your parents describe you as a bookworm and computer nerd," he said. "You don't match the description."

"Because I'm wearing a bikini?"

"Because you look like a model, and a gorgeous one at that."

Willow was not immune to flattery, especially when it was said as confidently and convincingly as his while his eyes raked up and down her body.

"I'm not tall enough nor skinny enough to be a model," she said, aware he was still clutching her hand.

"You seem fairly tall for a girl. Skinny? You mean because you have breasts? Some models have good-sized breasts. You can model lingerie or bikinis."

His casual discussion about her breasts made her chest tighten even further, and she was aware that her nipples were tingling and hard under the suit.

"Why would I want to do that? It sounds painfully boring."

"That's right. You're going to Caltech."

He released her hand at last.

"Would you like to join me in the pool?"

"I don't think my parents would approve," she said firmly.

He grinned and walked away towards the diving board, then he bent over there and picked up a small scrap of fabric. He dropped the towel and then stepped into a bathing suit, giving her a very good view of him from behind as he bent over before pulling it up his legs and settling it around his hips.

She gulped, feeling a rush of heat both to her face and between her legs. The man had an amazing body!

The swimsuit was a speedo, and covered almost as little as her own bikini bottom did, except in back.

He turned around he grinned at her. "Now I'm decent," he said.

He walked back to her, still grinning a little.

"I understand you went to school in England."

She blinked in surprise. Obviously, her parents had been talking to him about her.

"My parents wanted me kept away from the immorality and dumbing down of the California school system."

"And did they succeed? In keeping you away from immoral things?"

"Not entirely."

"Good. Virgins can be boring."

She flushed slightly. "What makes you think that one of the immoral things involved sex?"

He shrugged. "A boarding school for the children of the well-to-do is unlikely to have escaped at least a little dabbling among the student bodies."

"I don't think my parents would like to hear or talk about that."

"No doubt you're correct."

"And in any case, it was an all-girls school."

He raised an eyebrow. "So?"

She felt her skin flush slightly.

"Your father said they teach discipline there. That's always an excellent subject for girls to learn."

"And boys?"

"They need to learn self-discipline."

She frowned uncertainly. "What's the difference?"

"Self-discipline is imposed on yourself. Discipline is imposed upon you by another."

"Should boys learn discipline, too?"

"Boys are less emotional. They need to learn to control themselves. Girls generally need someone else to control and discipline them. That used to be their fathers, and then their husbands. But nowadays we've gotten slack, and a lot of young women are quite undisciplined. I don't suppose they still used the cane in that school of yours?"

"Of course not!"

"A strap? A paddle?"

"Certainly not!"

"Ah, well, so much for discipline among young women."