Kelsey entered Jack's bedroom, wearing nothing but her white robe. It was unbelted, and he could see a strip of her naked flesh, from her neck, all the way down to her sex. She walked slowly toward him, where he was sitting up in bed.

"Hi, Jack," she said with a low laugh.

"What are you doing?" he asked, swallowing.

"Isn't this what you wanted?" she asked, pulling the sheet off him.

They both looked down at his huge, throbbing erection.

"Wow," Kelsey breathed, bending forward. Jack could feel her warm breath tickling his length.

She straddled him, slipping the robe off her shoulders and letting it slide back onto the bed. Jack could only stare at her breasts, which were milky white, with dark pink nipples, hard and erect, right in the middle.

His glance drifted down to her sex. Her pubic hair was shaved into a small, neat, triangle.

Interesting.

She rose up on her knees and lowered herself deliciously onto him, enveloping him inside her, and they were fucking.

He looked up at her, and she was riding him, and he was coming already, and it was mind-blowing.

"Fuck me, Jack," she said, looking into his eyes. "Fuck. Me. Jack. Jack. Jack. Jack--"

"Jack!"

He sat straight up in bed, automatically pulling the sheet up to cover himself, looking around wildly.

"Jack? Are you still in bed?" He could hear Kelsey calling through the open window.

"Yeah," he answered, pulling even more sheets onto his lap, even though there was absolutely no way she could possibly see into his room from the porch, which must be where she was.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "It's ten after eleven. Didn't you have practice?"

"Uh, practice got canceled this morning," he explained, so I just went for a run and got back in bed. I guess I overslept. Sorry, I'll be out in ten minutes, okay?"

"Oh, okay," she said, and he could hear her footsteps retreating down the walkway.

He looked down at himself.

God, what a mess. He hadn't done this in years. Seeing Kelsey naked, even just for those few seconds, had really done a number on his mind.

Sighing, Jack got out of bed, stripped it, stripped himself, threw everything in the washing machine, and hopped in the shower to rinse off before going out to the pool.

*****************

"Jack, are you all right?" Kelsey asked. He wasn't acting like someone who'd gotten extra sleep. In fact, he wasn't acting like himself at all. She herself had jumped right in the water, ready to work on her flip turns, and Jack's mind seemed to be orbiting Pluto or something. She put a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm fine, what do you mean?" he asked, jerking his shoulder out from under her hand.

"Jesus, I'm sorry," Kelsey said, chastened. "You just seemed out of it, that's all. Never mind, okay?" She let out a deep breath and readjusted her goggles, trying again to do the somersault without holding her nose.

"Just blow bubbles out your nose while you do it," Jack said for the hundredth time. "If there's air coming out, then water can't go in, see?" He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. "Watch while I do it--"

"It doesn't help if I watch you," Kelsey interrupted. "I've seen you do it, Jack. I just can't." She made a sound of frustration. "When I turn water gets up my nose, that's all." She turned to him. "Maybe if you push me?" she suggested. "You know, you could just give me a little shove on my butt and shoulders, just so I know what it feels like?"

Jack rolled his eyes in irritation. "I shouldn't have to put my hands all over you for you to figure out how to do this, Kelsey!" he said, turning away.

"Okay! Okay! Never mind, forget I said anything!" Kelsey shouted in his face, struggling not to cry. She turned around, took a deep breath and plunged head first into the water, kicking hard and trying to turn over underwater. Of course, she inhaled some water into her nose, and she came up, coughing, choking, and crying.

Jack just let her wander over to the steps and sit for a minute, her face in her hands, before wading over to put a conciliatory hand on her back. He only intended to pat her back, nothing else, but Kelsey leaned into him immediately, continuing to cry.

"Why are you so mad at me today?" she asked, her voice muffled from her hands, which were still in front of her face.

Jack sighed as he put his arm around her shoulder. "I'm not mad at you," he finally said as he patted her. "I just, um, had a bad dream, that's all."

Kelsey lifted her head to give him a tearful look. She sniffed. "Really? It's not something I did?"

Jack shook his head. "No, honest, nothing you did. I'm sorry I've been being such a dick." He patted her shoulder again, trying not to remember how she looked and felt in his dream. "Come on, let's get this done, okay? That was a good idea. You exhale through your nose as hard as you can, and I'll push you."

So she did, blowing as she tucked, and he pushed on her shoulders and bottom, flipping her in the water, and she finally got it. Then she practiced swimming into the wall and flipping over, untucking halfway through and kicking off, which was a whole new thing.

"I definitely do better when you have your hands on me," she said with a laugh. "And I don't see how it's faster than an open turn, honestly."

"Well, a lot of swimmers' times go down when they first start doing them," Jack said, ignoring her comment about his hands on her. "Just like learning any new skill, it takes time to get good at it, but eventually, the times get faster again, and faster than before they learned the skill, you know?"

"You're a good teacher, Jack," Kelsey said with a smile.

Jack couldn't help but smile back. It was a nice thing to hear.

Finally, hours later, during the hottest part of the day, she practiced diving in, swimming across the pool, turning at the wall, and swimming back.

"Yeah!" Jack crowed. "Looks really good, Kels! Really good. That's probably enough for today."

"Felt good," she responded. She pulled her cap off and wet her hair. She swam up to Jack and enveloped him in a very wet, very close hug.

"Thank you, coach," she said softly.

"You're welcome," he replied, smoothing her loose hairs away from her face.

She looked at him speculatively for a second, blinking the water out of her eyes. Then, very deliberately, she leaned in and kissed him.

Jack was frozen, his arms locked around Kelsey's body. Her lips were so soft, and shockingly warm in the cold water of the pool. They were completely wet and plastered together, her body warm and pliant against his.

Kelsey finally pulled back from the kiss and opened her eyes, smiling at him.

"Jack?" Her voice was soft.

"Mm?"

"Do you have any response to what just happened? To what I just did?"

He slowly released her and backed up a couple steps.

"That's not exactly the response I was hoping for, you know?" Her voice held a little amusement, and maybe a little pain. She took a small step toward him, and he backed up once more.

"Kelsey, it's not really a good idea for anything like that to happen between us," Jack began. "You know that, probably better than I do, right?"

"Right." Kelsey bit her lips together for a minute and just looked at Jack. "Right, then." She got out of the pool, dried off and went in her house without another word.

Jack sighed and got out, quickly drying off before opening the French door and letting himself into her house.

"Kels? Kelsey?" he called.

She was coming down the stairs, having changed into shorts and a tank top.

"Oh," she said, as if surprised to see him. "I thought we were finished for today?" She went into her kitchen and got a bottle of water from her fridge after first offering him one, which he accepted.

"Come on, you're obviously upset about what happened," he began.

"No," she cut him off. "I'm not upset at all about what happened. I'm upset about how you responded to it," she corrected. She sat down on the sofa. "I mean, how lousy is it you make me feel cheap and obvious for showing you how I feel?" She took a drink of water.

Jack sat down a measured distance away from her. "It wasn't my intention to make you feel cheap and obvious, I swear," he said, putting his arm on the back of the sofa.

She looked at him wryly, and finally smiled. "Ah, hell, maybe it's just my pride, you know?" she finally said, taking another drink from her bottle. "I honestly can't remember the last time I kissed someone that he didn't kiss me back, that things didn't um, progress, shall we say." She smirked at Jack over her water bottle. "I am what you call a hot piece of ass, Jack LaGuardia," she announced. "Two hundred years go, men would have fought duels and shit over this ass, you know what I'm saying?"

Jack sighed and looked away, shaking his head. "I can't believe I'm going to tell you this," he finally said. "I've never told anyone this, and I mean anyone, not even Father Benedetto, and he's been our priest since I was born, you know?"

Kelsey nodded and tucked her leg under body, curious. What was he going to say?

"Until I came to school, I was very religious," he began. "Like, devoutly religious. Even more than my parents, in a lot of ways. Part of it was that I loved the pageantry of the church, you know?"

Kelsey nodded. She'd seen movies of priests wearing robes, of incense in burners, of music. "But what does this have to do with what happened?" she asked. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Give me a minute, I'm getting there," Jack answered, staring off into space. "So I was really into church," he repeated.

"Oh god, Jack, are you going to--were you molested?" Kelsey whispered the last word.

"What?" Jack stared at her, eyes wide with shock. "No! Where'd that come from?"

Kelsey blinked, holding up her hands in a gesture of supplication. "I'm sorry, I was just jumping to conclusions."

"Well, stop jumping, Jesus," Jack laughed, eyes wide. "Anyway, I came to UCSM, and my world got a lot bigger, really quickly, you know? And I kind of lost my religion, I guess you could say." He shrugged. "Maybe part of me, somewhere deep inside, is the little Catholic kid I used to be, but not really. I'm cured of it. Too much of it doesn't make sense to me anymore, you know? I don't believe in original sin." He shrugged. "I'm pretty liberal now, considering how I was raised. All of us boys are, it's kind of amazing, really."

Kelsey sat back and listened, not saying anything. She knew he had something to say, and this was the fastest way to get him to say it.

"So," he said, looking at her. "God, this is so hard, so embarrassing."

He looked down at his hands, which were in his lap.

"I'm a virgin."

Kelsey didn't move, though she did swallow, very loudly, so loudly her throat clicked. She must have misheard.

"What? What did you say?" She leaned forward, brows drawn together.

"You are not going to make me say that again, are you?" And Kelsey could see that same blush from before creeping up under his tan.

"You're a virgin?"  she repeated softly. She began to smile.

He twisted the cap off his water bottle and threw it at her face. "Stop smiling like that," he begged.

"I'm sorry," she said, and she stopped, though it was so, so hard.

"How?" she finally asked.

"Well, like I said, until I was in my late teens, I was devout, I believed it was a sin," Jack said reasonably. "I was also pretty shy, and in the water a lot, so I didn't have a lot of time for socializing. I wasn't super social, or particularly handsome, so girls weren't super interested in me, and I didn't go looking for them, you know?" He shrugged for the third or fourth time.

"And then?" Kelsey asked. "You were on the swim team, for crying out loud, in Los Angeles. Living in a dorm!" She waved her arms at him. "Look at you, look at your body, my god. Girls must have been crawling all over you, Jack! How did you avoid them?"

"Honestly?" Now he just sounded sheepish. "I ran away a lot. I think for a while, a lot of people thought I was gay. That rumor petered out after a while, too, though, when no one could get me into bed." He grinned. "After a while it wasn't even that I didn't want to, you know? It just turned into such a huge hurdle that I didn't even know how to overcome it."

"So have you never, uh, you know--" Kelsey asked delicately.

Jack looked at her. "Oh, no, I've done that," he answered, laughing. Thank god she didn't know what happened that morning, he thought to himself. "I'm a dude, you know? Just never with another person around."

"So, yeah, there you have it," he said, sitting back.

"Okay," Kelsey said, nodding. "Okay." She looked around for a minute before looking back at Jack. "But I'm curious. Why did you tell me?"

He stared at her. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Did you tell me as a reason for why nothing can ever happen between us, or did you tell me so I'll know when you're not as experienced as other lovers I've had when we finally get together?" she asked, scooting forward to halve the distance between them.

Jack swallowed. "Wow, you can be very direct," he said.

"You should know that from when I kissed you in the pool," she said, looking at him primly. "Look, Jack, everything you told me is really interesting and everything, and I'm glad to know it, because it helps me get to know you better, but it doesn't help with the original issue as I see it."

"And what is that issue?" Jack asked. His embarrassment seemed to have passed, and only curiosity remained in his voice.

"Do you like me?" Kelsey asked. "Do you like me the way I like you?"