The next morning I was disgusted with myself. I felt I had done a terrible thing that was really against everything I believed in. I promised myself that I would be stronger in future, and sleep with the window shut if necessary. And I was very good. I quickly returned to my usual self and had barely a sexual thought for almost two weeks. The couple next door helped out by deciding to make their bedroom on the other side of the house by combining two smaller rooms. Life quickly returned to normal for me. I was in my final year of school, which had just started. I was studying harder than ever.

One Saturday night however, I had been at my best friend, Anna's house doing some maths with her and by the time I got home my parents had gone. They had gone to dinner at a friend's house and I knew they wouldn't be back till late.

It didn't worry me that most people my age were out at parties or on dates. I wasn't really a party kind of person and since I really didn't know any boys I wasn't likely to be on a date. Besides, I was always one of those people who is happy with their own company.

I was bored, there was nothing on TV and I had done enough study so I looked for a good book to read. I was a real bookworm so I had read almost everything in the house and wandered into my parents bedroom to see if my mother had borrowed any new ones from the library. She was a reader like me and usually had a few books on her bedside table. Of the three I found there, one historical novel set in the Caribbean really grabbed my attention. The cover showed a well built handsome man on a sailing ship holding a woman in one arm and a long curved sword in the other.

I filled a bath and settled in for a relaxing hour before bed. I loved reading in the bath but this time would be different. It didn't take me long to get into the story and I was a fast reader, so the chapters flew by. Then on page 60, the hero caught a slave girl hiding on his boat, trying to escape a cruel master. He took her to his cabin and what followed over the next four or five pages was the steamiest description I had ever read. I was turned on from the first page and by the last I was short of breath and my heart was racing. I felt a strong urge to touch my breasts and rub myself. I could see my hard nipples through the bubbles. I had read in the novel that the slave girl ached for his touch, and I knew now exactly what that phrase meant. My breasts ached to be touched. And as for down there, I was already squeezing my thighs together, feeling the delicious sensations that the pressure brought.

I shook myself back to reality, emptied the bath and quickly dried myself trying not to linger over any one part of my body for long. Even so, I left my groin and bottom until last and managed to convince myself that it was important to dry myself well down there. As much as I didn't want it to, it felt wonderful feeling the towel rubbing against my sensitive vaginal lips. I dressed in plain white underwear and a long blue nightie and slid into bed. I forced myself to think of school related things and decided to pray extra hard in church in the morning, for strength to stop this temptation of my own body. I wasn't sure that I believed it was wrong or sinful but the power of the urges frightened me more than a little. It took a few minutes before I managed to go to sleep.
When I awoke I could hear my parents arriving home and a few minutes later my mother opened my door and announced softly that they were back. I turned onto my stomach and drifted to sleep once again.

The second time I awoke, the sheets were bunched under my body and I felt suddenly breathless. I had been having a dream but the memory of it was already fading except that it involved me being naked. Naked and having my breasts kissed by a man. Unconsciously, I ground my hips against the sheet below my body, feeling the pleasurable pressure in my groin. My nipples were hard and sensitive again and I felt them pressed against my bed as my hips involuntarily pushed my sensitive vagina into the bunched up sheet. It felt so good but as I became fully awake, I made myself stop and turned onto my back. I couldn't keep doing this. I felt I was losing control of my own body. As good as it felt, it also scared me. I lay awake for a long time, determined to put any sexual thoughts out of my mind. I wondered if my friends ever felt like this but I knew that it was a question I would never ask them.

It was close to dawn when I awoke a third time. I had been dreaming again. This time I thought I had been the slave girl, on the ship and the man had laid me on the bed and tore open my bodice to reveal my breasts. I could see the hungry look in his eyes. The dream may not have been about that at all, or only vaguely so, but I chose to believe that I was the slave girl. Without even realising it was happening, I allowed the dream to merge smoothly into a fantasy that I made up as I went along. The look in his eyes as he took in my breasts, the feeling of helplessness as he had ripped open my bodice, making my breasts bounce.

Then I began to think about his hand slowly descending to lightly touch them. I allowed my own hands to slide up my body, over my thin nightie and cup my breasts, my hands shaping themselves to the curve of each, imagining his hands holding me like that. I caressed them lightly as I pictured him doing the same, so gently after the violence of tearing open the thin material of my bodice.

I had a sudden urge to feel skin on skin, to feel my hands on my breasts without the fabric of the nightie between them. I knew I couldn't stop, I knew I felt guilty doing it and I knew I might hate myself in the morning but the urge and the need were too strong. I got out of bed and lifted the nightie over my head, looking at my body in the full length mirror, fascinated by the way my nipples stood so erect and felt so sensitive to every touch.

I lay back on the bed and resumed the fantasy, hands caressing, fingers finding the hard little peaks of my nipples, tweaking and tugging them gently, each time sending jolts of pleasure through my body to my groin. I could feel the wetness down there now, soaking into my undies. I fought contradictory urges to stop completely and to touch myself there. I wanted to do both and wanted to do neither. Instead I allowed myself to indulge in the fantasy. I had never slept topless in bed before and that alone thrilled me. It felt bad which made it feel very good. He was rubbing his hands slowly up my belly, over my ribcage and then slowly but firmly over my breasts. My hands copied the moves. Then his fingers circled each nipple, with a tantalising slowness, making me want more. Then his fingers were teasing each nipple, the lightest touch, pressing on them so softly, sliding them between his fingers. My hands did everything that his did.

I could feel my heart pounding and I knew that I should stop. I knew I had to stop. Several times I did stop, briefly. But the pleasure was too intense and soon my hands were busy again. Then came the thought which made it impossible to stop.

It entered my head so suddenly that I took a deep breath and shook my head at the shock of it. Men wanted to touch my breasts. They wanted to do what my hands were doing. They wanted to tear open my nightie and slide their hands up my body and over my breasts. Instantly a wave of greater pleasure swept through my body. I parted my thighs and arched my back feeling the cotton of my plain white underwear press against my pubic mound and conform to the shape of my vaginal lips. My hands were squeezing my breasts harder now. And the thought continued to echo in my mind. Men want to hold my breasts and tease my nipples. My breasts seemed so perfect, so sensitive, any man would want them. I groaned softly at the thought.

It occurred to me then that a man, like the one in the novel would want to kiss my breasts. He would want to lick them. I pictured it, that man from the cover of the novel, licking and kissing my breasts. Another powerful wave of pleasure swept through my body and centred on my groin. Again I arched my back and felt the exquisite pleasure brought by my undies pressing against my vagina. A hand left my breasts and found the most sensitive spot near the top of my vaginal lips, rubbing gently.

I felt better than even the first time I had touched down there. The feelings were much more powerful. I developed a rhythm, arching my back and applying pressure with my fingers, rubbing them up and down over that one spot as I moaned softly and the fingers of my other hand caressed my breast. Then as the wave of pleasure subsided, I relaxed for a moment until the next one arrived. Again my back arched and my fingers were busy.

My whole body was alive but I needed more. Of what exactly I wasn't sure. There was no question in my mind of stopping now. The pleasure was too great. I tried to keep my fantasy going in my mind but it kept getting jumbled by new images and thoughts that arrived with each surge of pleasure. As the tempo of my rhythm increased, the thoughts came faster.

I imagined him licking my breasts as he looked into my eyes, then his hands were on my breasts, then his lips, kissing softly. Then he was looking at my underwear. Then sliding his hands up and down my body. Up and down my thighs. Parting my thighs. Hungry eyes looking at my groin. Then more attention, tongue, hands, lips on my breasts, images spilling rapidly from my imagination as my own hands applied almost unbearable pleasure to my body.

The next thought I had was the single sexiest thought I had had up to that point in my life. He slid his hand down my body, over my smooth belly to the top band of my underwear. I allowed my own hand to do the same. Pausing there, then one finger pressing under the waistband, and a second and a third, all just a little under the elastic. I pictured him looked deep into my eyes as all his fingers slid under the cotton of my white undies. They were touching the curls of hair over my pubic mound. The thought was another strong one, a man's hand, bigger and stronger than mine, inside my underwear. I was wearing modest white cotton with a little pink heart on the front. It occurred to me that his hands would be under that heart now, just as mine were. I loved the thought of a man's hand inside such innocent looking underwear.

I slid my fingers down, through my pubic hair. I had been kind of mortified to even have hair growing down there, I had trimmed it carefully, mostly out of embarrassment that it might be visible when I went swimming. I would have died knowing that someone could actually see it. Now it didn't matter. I loved the feeling of my hands sliding through the curls.

I felt the wetness then, a slippery smooth wetness against my fingertips. I moaned and thrust my hips upward, off the bed. I could no longer focus on my fantasy, only the sensations of my body. I allowed a single finger to slide down the slit between my vaginal lips at the same moment as I spread my legs wide. The wetness was everywhere, even in the slit and I realised, even inside me. My fingers returned to that most sensitive spot and I began rubbing.

From that point on I could no longer control my actions or thoughts. Brief flashes of thought ran through my mind, without order or meaning, just random thoughts associated with the pleasure. Breasts licked, male hand in my underwear, wetness, rubbing, rubbing, the surges of pleasure getting stronger, sounds of the couple next door doing it...rubbing that sensitive spot, faster and harder.

My fingers were rubbing rapidly, that hard, sensitive little spot, circling it, over and over, faster and faster. My hips were thrusting, arching my back, lifting my bottom off the bed. My free hand was clenched tightly, holding the sheet, my mouth open. I couldn't believe such pleasure was possible. I felt like i would die if I continued but I continued anyway, more urgent than ever. My breath came in short soft moaning pants now and I needed to keep doing it faster and faster. I was going to die from pleasure. I lifted my whole body from the bed, supporting myself on my shoulders and feet, the rest of my body arched upward, every muscle rigid. The biggest wave of pleasure yet swept over me and I held my breath. My fingers too had paused their movement, my mouth was open wide. The sheet had slid from my body, the pleasure reaching a peak. For a brief moment I was completely still and silent. It seemed even my heart stopped beating for that fraction of a second. My body still raised off the bed. I was going to die.

The tidal wave that swept over me began low down in my belly and spread throughout my whole body in an instant. It was more than pleasure, it was complete ecstasy, complete fulfilment. It centred on my groin, centred on that sensitive spot under my fingers, suddenly too sensitive to rub even a little. My body twitched, hips thrusting higher into the air. I moaned a soft, high-pitched but long sigh as wave after wave consumed me. I felt my vagina spasm and tighten again and again. My bottom clenched tightly. My mind was blank, every thought wiped away by the extraordinary feelings that overwhelmed me. There were tears in my eyes and my face was covered in a thin sheen of perspiration.

As the surges of ecstasy began to ebb I slumped back onto the bed, breathing hard, heart racing wildly, the tension draining away. Several more soft sighs escaped my lips as I regained some control of my body and my thoughts. I slid my fingers out of my drenched underwear, gasping as the cotton shaped itself once again to my vagina, almost too sensitive now to even stand that touch.

I lay for a few moments, simply too stunned to think anything clearly. My mind seemed hazy and I absently dried my fingers on the sheet and pulled it over my near naked body. I was shaking now and I began to analyse my actions. That much pleasure had to be bad and dirty. It was beyond anything I could ever have imagined. It was then that I realised what had happened to me.

I knew orgasms occurred and knew women could have them and knew they were wonderful things to have but nothing had prepared me for this. Nothing had prepared me for the loss of control I had felt at that moment, the way it had begun in the pit of my stomach and then consumed me completely, the way I couldn't have stopped even if I wanted to.

I was both horrified and overjoyed at what I had done. I had done something that I knew was wrong. The nuns at school had told us that self-pleasure was a dangerous and selfish act that only the worst sort of girls indulged in. At the same time, I felt like a woman, a real woman that men might desire.

I got up and put my nightie back on. I changed underwear, choosing light blue this time, dry and clean, leaving the white undies, with the little heart over the front, crumpled, stained and wet, beside the bed.

I decided that I had done this once, and once only. Well, OK, twice really. But only once had I gone this far. I had explored my body and it worked the way nature had intended. I wouldn't need to do it again. I wouldn't do it again.

But as I lay in bed again, slowly allowing sleep to overtake me, my thoughts were of the pleasure, the unbelievable, wonderful pleasure I had felt. Even now I could still feel my vagina, wet and hot and I could smell a scent, the scent of a woman's orgasm. My orgasm. I was a woman.

I went to sleep with that smell, with the fading memory of the ecstasy, with the beat of my heart and with the knowledge that now I knew. I knew what all the fuss was about. I knew why a woman would want sex, would want a man, would want to orgasm as often as possible. Already I knew that despite my promise to myself I would have to experience those feelings again.