Adelyn returned to her room that night in the light of the moon still feeling things were undone with Dan. Knowing he needed time to think about all she had told him that evening, still left a lingering doubt that he would accept her wishes. Asking him to help her experience what she had so far missed out on sexually was not a normal request of a person she had just met. After all, why would he even care about her if he indeed still thought of her as just a silly high school girl.

As she walked back to the cottages along the wooden-planked trail, the moon shone brightly, now higher in the heavens, and was almost full. She wondered how Dan must really feel after their first visit and what had transpired. How she had laid bare her heart to him that evening—and even shockingly offered up her body to him. Was it all too much for the young man, just trying to be responsible, she now wondered? Would he only think less of her now? There were still eight more days of camp and she knew if anything would ever happen with the handsome counselor, it should not be rushed. Nevertheless, she knew it should be gradual over those remaining nights, and hopefully enjoyable for both of them.

As still a virgin, there was always the fear of that first time. Adelyn considered this pragmatically, though she still classically wondered just how much it would hurt. How much blood there would be. But of these matters, though troubling as they were to so many of her girlfriends over the years, she now took on the hurdles less prohibitively. From the beginning of time, she reasoned, women had to have that first encounter with discomfort and pain to come to enjoy sex later. This then had to lead to a fuller, more enjoyable life, and hopefully, with the accompaniment of that pleasure and a supportive, loving mate—children from the process later in life.

Perhaps, she also wondered, it was just her stubborn instincts to find a gentle soul like Dan to be her first. Though everyone—and society itself, told her 'true love' had to be in the process of sexual fulfillment, being from divorced parents and not seeing any of her girlfriends in any meaningful relationship currently, she knew just the physical act itself was a milestone she wanted to make. And experience for herself now as an adult. 

Being impressed with Dan from the beginning told her he had the natural patience and caring presence she knew could facilitate this desire she had to accomplish the act. Dan's gentle qualities, she reasoned, might assure he would be careful with her that first critical time. And with some courage and endurance, maybe the rewards of more enjoyable times later with him before she would have to leave were in store. As with all which Adelyn took on in her life, it was with a sense of determination that she would set her sights on things---and then went on to accomplished them. For it was this very drive that had set her out to be an outstanding student in high school, and now, as she faced college, to envisioned herself attending medical school one day.

Entering the area of the cottages, she remembered the flirtatious Courtney once telling her and her friends back when they were all just freshmen, how painful the whole ordeal of first sex was. It was just after Courtney had crossed that threshold herself with one of the football players of their school. And she related how it took her many more times before she felt any real pleasure from the ordeal. 

Another friend, Melany, who had maintained a steady boyfriend since her sophomore year, told her and her girlfriends, just the opposite scenario. For it was she one night during a sleep-over who shared with her closest friends the whole 'first-time' process. How it was surprisingly tolerable. The girls that memorable night had all just finished watching a romantic film with several hot bedroom scenes, and this sparked an all-night discussion on the controversial subject.

"You just have to be really brave . . . and realize it's not going to hurt that much," Melany told her enthralled listeners, all curled up around her in their pajamas. "Kyle was just really sweet about it," she said. "He knew I would be afraid . . . and super tight down there. Thank God he knew what he was doing! He just took things really slow. And he got me as excited as he could, beforehand."

Adelyn remembered how she and her three friends there in the darkness hung onto every word as their wise young lecturer described. Especially the requisite foreplay between herself and Kyle. Even the technicalities of the lovers' positions on the celebrated couch was described in lurid detail to the girls to assure an 'easy, slow entry' as she erotically described it.

"Kyle was so sweet," she assured them. "And so smart about it all. He even put a towel under us and covered both . . . his thing and my . . . you know, with a special gel he got from the pharmacy just for that purpose . . . to make things, well just  go more easy."

Adelyn remembered the deafening silence in the room, the pedantic whispering of Melany, and how the whole mysterious process was given the importance of some ancient, sacred ritual that should be followed with adherents perfect precision.

Of course Adelyn realized this could not—would not, be the case if she were to make love with Dan there at camp. She could only hope if it were to happen, that he would be as mindful and sensitive to her vulnerability to fear and pain as Kyle had been with the younger, and boastful Melany. In any case, she realized this first critical time, with any or all of its discomfort, was a necessary part of growing up and maturing as a young woman.

The moon shown brighter across the vast forest and around the camp facilities as Adelyn made her way to the walkway outside the campers' bungalows. Opening her door with a key at 11:40 PM, she found no one inside. As she stepped out and went next door to knock on Courtney's and Julie's room, it was obvious the girls were still at the hypnotist show, over in the main theater building. Walking in that direction for several minutes, she began to hear the crowd cheering inside and the shouts of spontaneous laughter by the audience. This excitement and amusement of the camper community  rose and fell in waves as she could only imagine what entertaining and embarrassing antics the hypnotist was getting his volunteers on stage to perform. For just a moment she tied to imagine the dark-skinned and animated Cheryl cavorting around the stage, perhaps dancing or singing, or worse—all to the howls of laughter from the deprived audience, all of whom would find such a debasing thing entertaining.

Not wishing to go inside the auditorium, Adelyn walked in the bright moonlight back to the bungalows. Along the way, she could hear an unfamiliar sound just beyond the planked walkway on the lawn behind the bushes. Stopping to listen and trying to identify this very human sound, she determined it was the voice of a female either crying or moaning in some condition of anger or pleasure. As Adelyn stepped slightly through the barrier of foliage separating the soft lawn from the hardwood sidewalk, she instantly could make out in the bright, moonlit sky, a couple obviously in the act of making love, oblivious to the quiet of the empty camp or even that single observer who had suddenly stumbled onto their sexual scene. To Adelyn, undetected by the couple, it was a spectacle at once repulsive, yet at the same time alluring in its raw physical and erotic attraction.

Feeling at first ashamed to linger there behind the bushes with the lovers so close to her—so close in fact that she could hear their harsh breathing and moans of pleasure, Adelyn's civility told her to immediately depart--back for the cottages. Yet, there was another force inside her that night which seemed to paralyze her steps. For it was that voyeuristic impulse which compels people to eavesdrop on conversations and secretly like to watch impassioned conflict between their fellow humans. Only here it was more base and reprehensible to Adelyn's nature to remain observing two people in the throes of passionate sex. Yet, to witness so firsthand the act of their sexual union, with all its live movement and emotion, she found it irresistible.

For there on the lawn in the moonlight was a girl naked and on all fours. Her head was down almost touching the grass. And kneeling behind her on their beach towel was a muscular young man, also naked, who was holding the bare sides of her shapely buttocks in his hands. Adelyn watched breathlessly as the young stallion thrust back and forth with his body, his erect manhood penetrating deeply in and out of the girl's most private part.

Adelyn was incapable of moving during that beguiling moment. For she could not do the ethical thing in letting the aroused couple have their heated moment of coitus in privacy. She simply could not pull herself away from the lurid spectacle, wishing it to continue further, while taking in the erotic sounds and rapid movements of a man and woman performing live in their peak of sexual bliss. And so she stayed on, frozen—hidden behind the thick bushes several minutes more. She witnessed the naked girl's head drift up, skyward as she moaned loudly, all the while pushing her buttocks back and forth rhythmically against the young man's hard and swollen instrument of pleasure.

After several moments of the couple's final, excited moans--it was over. They appeared totally spent from exertion and both lay on their towel, cuddling and kissing in the afterglow of their well-earned satisfaction. Fearing she would then be seen, Adelyn began to quickly walk on, in the direction of the cottages. 

As she found herself again alone, her friends still obviously enjoying the evening program, she tried to make sense of her present raw and aroused feelings. Her sensations ware similar to when Brent had been kissing her while drunk—touching her breasts and thighs, and for just a brief moment, so close to her own center of arousal. Yet, perhaps because there was no alcohol now to deaden the feelings, she felt even more aroused by having witnessed the naked lovers on the grass.

Not being one to ever understand the attraction of pornography on the Internet, which several of both her male and female friends had spoken so enthusiastically of at times, she now felt the full power of a voyeuristic episode, bringing her body vicariously to a readiness to engage itself in the same sexual activity she had witnessed.

Adelyn went over to her bed and removing her yoga pants and silk top, she just lay on the top sheet in her underwear and tried to imagine Dan kneeling behind her as she had seen the young man doing with the girl. She imaged the feeling of him entering her slowly from behind and then more rapidly. Instantly she could sense that her panties had become wet, just from the visual images of it all. As she allowed her palms to slide up to her bare breasts, she felt her nipples harden and become ultra-sensitive to the little squeezes she used to teased them. Never having consciously masturbated before, always avoiding the curiosity to even try it, Adelyn now felt qualitatively different about that urge to continue pleasuring herself.

Uncontrollably, her hand drifted down to her panties and she began to explore the sensation of her fingers moving lightly across the damp surface of them. The pulsing she had felt from Brent's kisses had returned with a vengeance, and Adelyn had the powerful urge to manipulate that very place where she now pulsed—to make the sensation grow with her directed touches. Just as her hand slid down inside the waistband of her bikini underwear, and her finger tips began to roll across the swollen surface of her wetness, all the while feeling her body uncontrollably pushing up and down, seemingly under its own stubborn volition—she suddenly heard the hysterical laughter of her giddy friends walking up to the cabins just outside!

Quickly covering herself with the sheet as  the door swung open, she saw and heard her friends enter, barely able to speak from peals of laughter. All three were lost to their hysterics and that communal laughing attack which girls seem to get irrepressibly when they are having a maximum of fun at the embarrassing expense of others.

For the rest of the night, until 4:00 AM, Adelyn had to listen to a blow by blow account of the divine comedy---seeing ordinary young people make complete fools of themselves under hypnosis.

"Adelyn, you should of seen Cheryl there on stage," Courtney expressed, barely able to speak. "The hypno-guy told her when he clapped his hands . . . she would be Rianna! In one of her videos! And she did it , Ads . . . My God it was hilarious!"

The other girls concurred by their hysterical giggles.

"Yeah, Adelyn, the whole audience was clapping and singing along with our superstar here, Miss Rianna,." Julie added.

"But now hold on, ladies," Cheryl rebutted defensively, "Ya'll said I sounded good!" 

The other two just laughed even more hysterically.

"Yeah, well, girlfriends," Cheryl weighed back in. "It was pretty damn funny when that guy of yours, Julie . . . that Mr. Felix?  When he went bark'n like a dog every time the guy say 'camp Harmony!'"

More uncontrolled laughter.

And so it went with her friends that night—never even asking how her evening went with Dan, her mysterious "new friend." 

Adelyn just lay on the bed, feeling her aroused body under the sheet cool down from its electrified state. But it was definitely a place she knew she wanted to return to. And the next time, she promised herself, at the hands of her gentle, romantic friend by the river.

* * *