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  One of our toughest instructors, Kathy, who knew her shit down cold, had a Sprague Rappaport, a stethoscope I really liked. Instead of a single tube to transmit sound, it had two, plus it had two listening heads that she could switch over for pediatrics or to discern tones differently. When Kathy had let us try hers to listen for lung sounds and blood pressures, well, I was impressed with how much more I could hear with that than with my single-tube, single-head one. Sprague. Sprague Rappaport. That’s what I wanted, especially after Kathy showed us all its different pieces and parts: bells and diaphragms and earbits. It was like a customizable hot rod for your ears. Maybe I’d eventually get one, in blue or something, but black would be fine, since it was really all about the improved function.

  “Never ever ever,” Bob insisted, his tone grabbing my attention from my equipment daydreams, and I watched as he pointed in the air for emphasis, “let rescuer number one become victim number two—not by accident, not by inhalation, and not by contagion. Gloves on, masks ready to go, and eyes open, people!”

  At the end of the session I said good night to Roy, Bennie, and various other classmates, slung my bag over my shoulder, and walked out to my car.

  Kerry sat on the hood of my ’79 Grand Prix, black with a black ragtop, waiting for me. “Hey, lover!” She smiled at me as she slid to the ground.

  “Hey, yourself.” I grinned back, happy that she’d come to meet me earlier, that she’d waited for me until my class was over. I wrapped my arms around her. “You know…I don’t have class tomorrow night,” I told her, then kissed her.

  “So,” Kerry asked when we broke for air, “what are you planning—a threesome with that hot instructor of yours?” She ran her fingertips up and down my neck, a smirk playing across her mouth.

  “I didn’t know you were so into Bob,” I joked back. “No, it’s a surprise.”

  I cupped her face in my hands so I could see her wink back at me, her eyes as mysterious as a cat’s in the lamplight. “I know how much you like my surprises.”

  Kerry reached under my jacket and ran her palms over my breasts, making tiny circles that made my nipples harden and my clit twitch.

  I grabbed her ass and pulled her closer, massaging firmly because I knew she liked that, because it would shift and spread her pussy lips, force her clit to rub against whatever she was wearing. She wouldn’t be wearing it much longer; I knew that for certain.

  “Naked. Home. Now?” Kerry requested, a heated murmur against the skin of my throat.

  Oh, God, yeah, I thought, definitely—we just had to get there first.

  “I’ll race you there,” I almost stuttered as we separated.

  Kerry gave me a knowing glance as she pulled away and sauntered over to her car parked several feet away from mine. The sway of her hips was meant as a preview, and I certainly appreciated it.

  “I’ll be waiting for you,” she called as I slid into my seat. I hit the button and let the window roll down as she started her engine.

  “You better!” I called back.

  I broke no traffic laws on the ride home and slid into my parking spot, anticipating the one that waited for me once I got inside. After grabbing my books and bag off the seat next to me, I made sure the car was locked and hustled to the door, then up the stairs. I wasn’t disappointed when I got inside—this was a race we both won.

  *

  “That was fucking nice,” Kerry sighed as she stretched languidly next to me, then curled up against my side.

  “It really was.” I kissed the crown of her head while she trailed her fingertips up and down my chest. She kissed my sternum, then stared into my eyes with an amused smile.

  “What?” I asked, smiling back.

  She stroked the fine hairs that had fallen back over my brow—my hair really was getting way too long.

  “Nothing,” she said, and kissed my chin, “I just love how your eyes shade—you get this dark green ring around the brown after you come.”

  “Really?” I thought the only time they did that was when I drank or when I cried, neither of which I indulged in too often, though I was finally legally old enough for the one and not terribly fond of the other.

  “Really,” she answered in a tone that meant there’d be no further discussion. She pressed her cunt against my stomach firmly, sending fire into my groin. Letting her tongue tangle with mine, I wrapped my arms around her and gently turned us over.

  I nibbled on her neck, working toward that soft spot under her ear. “Ready for round two?” She’d already wrapped her legs around my waist.

  Kerry reached over my ass and slid into me. “As ready as you are, babe, as ready as you are…” She sighed as she fingered my willing cunt. I was more than happy to return the favor.

  *

  Even though I’d been scheduled for only a half shift, the day dragged, and I raced home to get ready for everything that I had planned for later. Kerry came home from work just as I was drying my hair, but we didn’t have much time, and I told her so as I kissed her hello briefly, then rushed her to get ready.

  “So…what’s the big surprise tonight?” Kerry asked as she walked out of the shower. All I’d told her was that tonight was formal, formally funky: dress to impress—everyone.

  I handed her a towel and checked my watch, my good one.

  “Hurry, Kerry,” I urged with a smile as she took the towel from my hands, “the car will be here in forty-five minutes.”

  “I like this on you—a lot,” she murmured, and licked her teeth. She played with the collar of my jacket, a slightly fitted, oxblood red leather that hung about four inches down my thighs over a black turtleneck and black leather pants. I liked it too.

  “Thank you.” I grinned a bit self-consciously. I didn’t want to let her get too close—we had to leave.

  Kerry understood and slipped past me to the bedroom to finish dressing while I waited in the hallway. I was nervous—she didn’t know it, but she’d meet my whole family tonight—and I had planned another surprise to take the edge off. Besides, Kerry really did like my surprises, usually. I just hoped tonight followed the typical pattern.

  While I waited for her I thought about the impending meeting. I’d lived with my mother and sister until I’d moved in with Kerry. It had been one thing with the other girls I’d dated, casually or otherwise, but…Kerry was a little different. Honestly, I’d gotten tired of fucking in my car or at her place, and no way would I take her back home, that was simply too…I just couldn’t do it anymore, and it wasn’t because I had issues at home. My mom really didn’t care about my being gay, and neither did my younger sister, Elena.

  The only thing my mom had ever said to either of us about sex was that waiting until marriage was stupid and just don’t “get pregnant,” while her only comment about my being gay was that it gave her one less thing to worry about, one less potential disgrace for the family—I wouldn’t bring home a bastard.

  Otherwise, my mom didn’t care about anything. When I was tiny we’d moved to South America, and there, she and my father had split. She brought us back here when I was seven or eight.

  And then? My mom just…broke like a fucking porcelain doll—arms and legs in place, head shattered, only she said it was her heart. I’d always thought it was because my father had remarried and wanted nothing to do with his “old family.” Fuckhead.

  We had moved into her sister’s, my aunt Carolina’s, home, where she and her husband had created an apartment out of the basement for us so we could have our own family unity.

  It was a beautiful place. They’d constructed stairs so we could have our own entrance, enlarged the windows so we’d have plenty of light, and really, we treated the rest of the house as if it was ours too. In fact, my aunt gave us girls our cousin’s old bedroom—but it wasn’t ours, not really, as my mom reminded me and Elena every day.

  “This is not your home, girls,” she’d cry from the sofa as tears streamed down her cheeks, “this is not your station in life.” She’d sob
, then sob some more about how one day someone would lift the curse they’d placed on her life.

  And despite the light and the room and the unconditional and unquestioning love that my aunt and uncle and cousins gave us, all my mom did was lie on the sofa all day with the shades drawn. Some days she didn’t bother to dress at all because she had headaches, her chest hurt, she had “too many troubles.”

  Oh, she had her moments, great ones, like when Elena broke her ankle playing in the schoolyard and my mother not only made sure Elena was well taken care of, but also somehow managed to convince the board to replace the old steel climbers with newer, safer construction and to lay rubber tiles on the tarmac. And the time a teacher unjustly gave me a detention and then lied to my mother, who pulled me out of school until he was removed from teaching.

  She even belonged to some international legal association that asked her to come and speak from time to time, and on those days my mother shone. But really, all she wanted was to be brought back to her “place in life,” her proper station, back to the respect she’d had as a prosecuting attorney, then later as a judge, and the inheritance that waited for the family back in South America.

  She hated that I was becoming an emergency medical technician. Why couldn’t I be more like my cousin who had gotten scholarships everywhere? Why couldn’t I just go straight to medical school? My cousin could have if she had wanted to, or so my mom had told me more times than I could count, but instead, she’d started a very successful record label. At least, my mom said, my cousin knew her place in life, what she should be.

  I sighed and shook my head. If I didn’t work, who’d support my mom and my sister? And yeah, my grades were decent enough, but not enough for a scholarship—how could I get a scholarship if I didn’t have time to study because I had to work? I was trying, that was for sure…

  Fuck that for now, though, I thought as I checked myself in the hall mirror one last time. Everyone, the whole family, would be there tonight, and for at least one night, my mom would feel okay. She was great at these social occasions, situations where she felt she was again in “her place,” the guest of honor. I suppose it reminded her of who she’d been in South America—known to the politicians, feared by drug cartels, and loved by the poor and the underclass.

  *

  The car was waiting for us when we came out of the apartment building—nothing ostentatious, but definitely a nice black sedan with a uniformed woman holding a sign that said “Tori” in green block letters.

  “She’s hot,” Kerry told me with a grin as we got in for the ride.

  “Is she? I didn’t notice.”

  “Really?” Kerry drawled with apparent disbelief. “What did you notice, then?”

  “You,” I told her, and kissed away the pout on those pretty lips, “and your little black velvet skirt, the cadet-gray jacket nice and snug over your…” and I let my hands show her what I meant.

  Kerry sighed as she kissed me back. “So where are we going?” she asked, her fingers tracing down my neck. “Is it that very, very special that you can’t tell me now?” She edged even closer and I gently took her hands in mine before they traveled anywhere else.

  “You’ll never get it out of me,” I teased her back, still careful to avoid her hands when she tried to tickle me again as we sprawled across that luxurious backseat.

  “Is this that Angel tour concert? The breast cancer fund-raiser with all those artists?” she asked excitedly, and rattled off the list as we pulled in front of a multilevel nightclub, Nox, that had private parking below it on Manhattan’s East Fifty-seventh.

  “Yeah, that’s the one.” I grinned at her. “Cool, right?”

  Kerry seemed to be lost in thought. “Yeah…that is really cool,” she answered almost absentmindedly before she gave me a dazzling smile. “How did you manage to score tickets for this?”

  “My cousin’s performing tonight.” I was rather pleased with myself as the driver opened the door for us.

  “Aha!” Kerry said, her eyes evaluating me. “And can I ask who that is?”

  “Well,” I drawled, “that would be part two of tonight’s surprise.”

  She raised her eyebrows at me.

  “We’re invited to the after-party—I’ll introduce you then.” I grinned as we walked over to the door. I knew how popular my cousin and her band were. This was going to be cool.

  As I cupped Kerry’s face, I didn’t know if I really loved her or not, but I knew I cared about her and really did love the way she looked at me like she did at that moment, with a mixture of amusement and affection.

  She laughed and took my hand as I felt in my pocket for our passes. I gave them to Kerry, who promptly draped one around her neck, then did the same for me. “Let’s show these people how to dance.”

  I agreed as the bouncer glanced at our passes and waved us in, past the waiting crowd and into the club.

  It was a great show—four bands, then my cousin with a rockin’ DJ in between sets, and honestly, my cousin was phenomenal. I’d attended her performances before when she was in town, but never in such an intimate setting—she rarely played anything smaller than a concert hall—and it was great to watch the way she interacted with the crowd, she and her wife, her partner, who played bass behind her.

  When she saw me from the stage she waved and said, “Hey, Tori!” into the microphone.

  I waved back and beamed at her—she was just way too cool.

  Kerry tugged on my sleeve lightly. “You know her?” she asked in my ear, then stared back at the stage.

  “Know her?” I answered in Kerry’s ear as the people cheering around us made it almost impossible to speak. “Nina Boyd’s my cousin.”

  Kerry faced me again, plainly shocked, and I smiled even bigger.

  “That,” she said, and pointed, “that’s your cousin?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, still beaming, “can’t you tell?”

  She stared again at where Nina waved to the crowd with a smile, my smile. She tossed her head and her hair, same texture as mine only longer, a bit redder, settled around her shoulders as she laughingly agreed to “one more!”

  Kerry scrutinized me again. “Yeah…I can,” she said finally, “that’s so…so…wow.” She shook her head. “Any other surprises?” She grinned crookedly before returning her attention to the stage.

  “Just one…” I whispered into her neck as I wrapped my arms around her. Kerry pressed her hips back against me.

  “Oh…” she said, and wiggled harder. My groin jerked into her, an automatic response whenever she was that close to my cock, and she turned in my arms. “Is that for me?” A smile played at the edge of her lips, and her eyes simmered as they hooked onto mine and she rubbed suggestively against me.

  I caught my lip between my teeth and let my breath hiss out. “Do you want to wait for it or do you want it now?” I asked her. I’d learned in the last few months that Kerry liked to live dangerously. I’d also learned I liked to help and, in fact, I enjoyed it.

  “How about both?” she teased, kissing my neck, pressing her body even harder against mine.

  The place was jammed with people. No one would notice if we left, and maybe we’d make it back for the after-party—maybe not.

  “Let’s go.” I knew how to get down to the garage, as well as every quiet hallway along the way.

  “I like the way you think,” Kerry said as I took her by the hand.

  We eased through the press of the crowd and out a side door to the hallway that led to the stairs—and the garage. As the door slammed behind us, Kerry shoved me up against the wall and began to jerk me off.

  I bit her neck none too gently as I cupped her breasts under her jacket, then tugged on the hardened points beneath my fingers.

  Fuck it. No one came down this hallway, and if they did, well, I didn’t care.

  “Now,” I breathed harshly into her ear, “I’m gonna fuck you now.”

  “You better,” she agreed as I pulled that tiny bit of
her satin thong out of the way, letting my fingers glide along that thick, wet fold. “Fucking hot,” I groaned, because the slip of my fingers along her waiting cunt, the feel of her clit so hard under my hand, fired my clit to bursting.

  Her fingers slipped nimbly along my fly to release my cock, and she gripped it firmly, pumping me.

  “You wanna play or you wanna fuck?” she asked, her eyes glinting as she reached around my neck to bite my lip.

  I widened my stance so my groin would be level with hers.

  She bit me again and her body lurched into me when I dipped into her slightly, so I could feel the tighteninggrip of her cunt around me, that slick tight feeling, the smooth entry that wanted me. When I took my fingers away I held them to her lips, and her tongue played around my fingertips as we both tasted her cunt. With my free hand I gripped the head of my cock and teased it between her lips, rubbing up and down, spreading that slickness, and as her hips started to rock, I let her clit ride my head.

  “C’mon, baby…please,” she asked, a throaty moan that made my stomach clench.

  My dick was now against her opening, just the very tip inside her, and I pushed lightly, maintaining pressure without really entering. But that’s not how I wanted to fuck her, and I knew for a fact she’d like what I had in mind even better.

  “Turn around,” I growled into her ear as I eased my hips away.

  Kerry’s breath caught a moment, and she grabbed my dick roughly before she did as I asked.

  I slipped an arm around her waist, bent my legs, and eased up under her, and together we guided my dick into her waiting cunt.

  “Oh, yeah…” one of us sighed as I filled her.

  “That’s…nice…” I huffed out as I felt myself sink into her.

  The sounds of the band on the other side of the wall made it seem that “one more” from Nina had turned into “okay, another,” which meant that we had some time, but not a lot.

  When Kerry craned her head around, I leaned over to kiss her as I slid slowly in and out a few times and reached for her clit.