I was leaving for a year’s leave to study and teach at two German universities. Unlike business travellers, I was not pressed for time. The travel agent had secured for me not only a cheaper but a, possibly, more interesting flight. Its first leg was Melbourne to Manila, a two-day stop-over, and then an Air Pakistan flight to Frankfurt.

At Melbourne Airport, next to me in the luggage queue were two young women. We started talking and as nobody was seeing them or me off, I joined them for a coffee while we waited for our departure gate to open. They were friends, primary teachers from a country town in Victoria, and were setting out for a working holiday in the UK. Neither of the two had ever been out of Australia. They were excited, as well as a bit scared about their daring. My, what they took to be, sophistication and overseas background and experience seemed to impress them.

On the eight-hour flight to Manila, I had a window seat and they were seated, further back, in the centre rows of the wide-bodied DC8. There was one seat vacant next to them. For part of the flight, I sat with them, bought them drinks, and we chatted. We eventually compared our hotel bookings in Manila, without up to then saying anything about continuing our acquaintance. They, like I, seemed to be in the mood for a holiday diversion, perhaps, even dalliance. Unfortunately, we were booked into different hotels. So, I offered to come to their hotel and invite them for an authentic Philippine dinner. I had been to Manila before and liked their special dishes.

They happily accepted my invitation. Of the two, the shorter one was conventionally pretty. She had a nicely proportioned, quite voluptuous body. It already suggested that it would change into a comfortable spread in a few years hence. She readily laughed. The other woman’s name was Kate. I found her more interesting. She noticed and quite readily responded to my attention. She was darker, more serious and self-contained than her friend but, as her subtle body language in responding to me indicated, far from being discouragingly detached. We seemed to naturally pair and the two friends seemed to agree among themselves that it was to be so.

Their hotel was larger than mine and had quite luxurious bars, dining and function rooms. On arriving, I booked at the reception a table for our dinner at seven, before going up to their room. They welcomed me like an old friend but their immediate attention was elsewhere. They were in a giggling flurry in making themselves presentable with the limited means they had brought in their cabin luggage. They succeeded well.

The six-course dinner, accompanied by Spanish champagne, was excellent and was enjoyed. The reception had placed us into their function centre and not their dining room. Our dinner, therefore, was followed by a lavish floor-show, and later by a five-piece dance band. What seemed peculiar to me was that after the floor show so many of the patrons left. We were in great spirits and stayed. The women talked and told me about what they left behind and what they hoped to find overseas.

Finally, it was only 11 o'clock, the band stopped playing and the place emptied. It was time to say goodbye. It had been fun but with the women sharing a room and me in another hotel, my hoped-for romance was not meant to blossom. Kate and friend accompanied me to the reception, where I could, I thought, order a taxi. The receptionist apologised. Didn’t I know that there was a 10 o’clock curfew, because Manila was, for the time being, under martial law? I could, therefore, only return to my hotel after six in the morning.

The two friends were quick to exchange meaningful glances and a few whispered words before they offered me the spare single bed in their room. The receptionist extracted from me the extra charge. I suggested a nightcap in the bar before retiring. Kate liked the idea, but her friend was quick to decline. She grinned at Kate with a wink when she said she was too tipsy and tired: She would go to bed.

Kate and I, now definitely coupled, went to the bar for a leisurely drink. We were already holding hands. I told her about myself and she told me about the boyfriend she had broken up with, and about the boredom of the small country town she was leaving behind. In the lift up, I took her in my arms and kissed her for the first time. She willingly pressed her shapely body against me, but her kissing was girl-like, almost innocently clumsy. Yet, she pretended no virginal innocence.

In entering their darkened room, Kate did not switch on the light. With some light seeping through the gaps in the curtain, I could just make out that the large bed was occupied. Kate did not hesitate; she tiptoed, drawing me with her, to the single bed in the corner. Without a word we sat down, undressed to our underwear, slipped under the blanket and into an immediate embrace. I felt her nervous shiver. All in total silence because her friend, only meters away, was not to be woken. I was certain that she only pretended to be asleep!

For me, this one night given to us was a new experience. Kate was so much younger than I, so girl-like, and we barely knew each other. We had to find a way to each other in the almost total darkness and silence of our surrounding solely by touch. I freed myself from our initial, almost panicky embrace to begin a fingertips-only, caressing exploration.

It was like a blind man’s reading of her face, her hair, throat and neck. Then I bent over her to make my lips follow, with the lightest touch, what my fingers had traced. Every time they passed over her lips, they parted just slightly more; I could taste her quickening breath. It was her hand cradling the back of my head that stopped me eventually from just passing. Our lips met, and when my tongue began to caress just lightly over her lips, a murmur escaped her. Her hand pressed me closer, her lips parted more, and a curious tongue found mine. We kissed for a long time. Her tongue’s play began shyly but soon dared more, to finally promise all. Kate’s responsiveness delighted and excited me.

When I broke our kiss, my hands, followed by my lips wandered down to her shoulders, down her arms into the crook of her elbow, up the inside of her arm, then for a repeat journey down and up the other side, back to her throat. She had stretched out, thrown back her head as my lips and tongue slowly kissed a path down into the cleft of her breasts, still constrained in a bra.

After I drew my tongue several times over the firm roundness not quite covered, and sunk my tongue as deeply into the cleft as it could reach, I bit into the bra’s edges to pull it away and let it snap back. It was a suggestive, asking tease, as I had not laid a hand on her breasts. I wanted them given to me, and her eager to have them touched and kissed.

And Kate did reach for the bra, pulled it over her head and dropped it on the floor! She quickly pressed my face between her freed, firm globes and started to guide my mouth to a nipple. She pressed and stroked my head as my tongue and teeth excited it into perky hardness, then moved me to the other breast. All this in darkness but no longer in total silence. I had begun to hear the whispering song of her excited breath.

Now I allowed myself to enjoy the feel of her breasts; I regretted not being able to see. They had a sensuous, firm, apple-like roundness, each one fitting perfectly in a caressing hand, with a perky nipple rubbing against the palm.

While I indulged myself so, my lips and tongue moved up and down her side, across her belly and started to tease the seam of her low-cut panties. This, however, made her uneasy. Her hands, up to now so encouraging, were holding me back. So, I kissed my way slowly up her body, lingering over her sexy breasts until I reached her mouth. It had become hungry, and so was mine.

We stretched out side by side as we kissed. Both of us were greedy for more. I slid my hand down Kate’s back, not stopping at the seam of her panties but sliding in right under it. I felt the muscles of her firm, shapely buttocks tense in my grip as I pressed her ass against my no longer deniable erection. Although she sharply drew in her breath and suppressed a cry, her tongue diving deep into my mouth told she was not protesting. She was not withdrawing: All of her body was saying emphatically "yes" to what it hoped would come.

When I slid my hand down her thigh, she immediately responded. Her leg angled up and moved over to straddle me. She, thereby, spread herself open. Her little panties were easily pushed down; her pelvis lifted to help. My hand moved up the warm, velvety inside of her thigh and my fingertips brushed over her pussy. Then, pressing lightly, my fingers and the knuckles of my thumb stroked her pussy-lips open.

When my thumb pushed into her tight, slippery heat, her nails dug into my back. She gave a drawn-out gasp into my mouth before she buried her face against my neck and bit into my shoulder. For quite a while she twisted and shivered, grinding against my hand and hotly embedded thumb.

If we were going to fuck, my conscience told me, I had to break the silence. I reached for her head, pulled her in for a calming kiss, put my lips close to her ear to tell her that I had a condom in my wallet. I confessed that I had never put one on in the dark. I would need to go to the bathroom.

The beginning of a giggle escaped her. Kate whispered, her voice huskily sexy with pent-up excitement, that I need not worry. She trusted me and she was on the pill. As we had broken the silence and my unromantic concern had broken somewhat the mood, I kissed her deeply before moving to her ear to whisper, “Do you want us to fuck? Are you sure?”

Her body shivered as she pressed herself close. “Yes! Yes, I do! Do you want me?”

She lay back and spread her legs, obviously expecting me to mount. I, however, reached out for her near leg, lifted it high and in one move brought my cock to touch her pussy. I searched for her free hand, put it on my cock and whispered, “You show cock what you want. Make him kiss, caress, excite your pussy. Teach him that your pussy wants to be loved, not just fucked.”

It made her laugh but Kate was still too shy. Whilst she so freely offered herself to be fucked, she now hesitated to do more than just hold my cock. I held her hand for a while, without guiding it, until she began, tentatively at first, to stroke her pussy-lips with the tip of my cock. When I released her hand and reached up in search of her face, she had thrown back her head. My fingers, in caressing over her face, found her lips half-open as if in a gasp.

Like a blind man reading Braille, my hand moved over her body, discovering its pleasures. My fondling hands wandered over her sides and breasts, her firm buttocks and belly, and she shivered in excited response to so being caressed while she gripped my cock and pleasured her pussy. By now she had begun to guide it deeper; no longer was cock just kissing her luscious lips. When my fingers found their way into her bush and begun to circle over her clit, her pelvis jerked up. Her hand released my cock, urging it to slide deep into her pussy’s by now slippery heat.

On a narrow bed, Kate and I, still almost strangers, now began not just to fuck. We truly made love. Blind in the surrounding dark, silent, so as not to wake her friend, confined by the narrow bed, we were intimately close, barely moving. It was a miracle that our desires and moves and feelings were so well aligned and, especially, that Kate was such a sensual and sensuously intelligent young woman. She never considered withdrawing from the compelling oneness that our circumstances imposed on us.

The paradox was that the immutable and supposedly hindering circumstances we found ourselves in made it impossible for us to just fuck. We could not rush headlong into an explosive, self-centred, purely bodily release that would have left us spent but emotionally apart and uninvolved. The stealth in our situation compelled us to be gentle, always tentatively listening, touching, and then responding to each other. It made our love-making a true search for mutual pleasure and fulfilment.

Our foreplay had been long and voluptuously arousing and now, the hot grip of Kate’s pussy threatened me with a much too quick discharge. Deeply in-bedded, I held still for a while, whilst Kate’s fingers tried to read my face and stroked over my hair. When I slowly drew my cock almost totally out of its embrace only to slide it teasingly slowly back into her cunt’s hot grip, her hand fevered lower with her fingers digging into my shoulder. I could only repeat it a few more times before Kate arched with a muted sound sideways and free of my provoking cock.

The orgasm had surprised her, but she took no flight. She immediately pressed her violently shivering body again against mine, sorely testing my control. When I tried to kiss her, her hand was over her mouth: she had strangled her screams. I held her close until her shaking subsided, and she lay again relaxed in my arms. I felt her lips moving. Then she kissed me in the crook of my neck and I thought I heard a mumbled, “Sorry”.

I kissed any ‘sorry’ off her lips. Holding her close my hand wandered down her back to make love to her shapely ass. I loved how its muscles twitched under my touch, and how Kate pressed and sinuously rubbed against my erection. All her initial shyness had vanished. She sank her tongue deep, with a low, hungry growl into my mouth as she ground, harder and harder, her pussy against my cock.

But then, she suddenly remembered the before. She laughed into my mouth and reached down and gripped my cock. She needed no reminding. She wanted to repeat a now-familiar game. And for long, tantalising minutes, she made my cock beg as she kissed and teased her pussy into an even more delirious, twisting excitement than last time. This time she did not prematurely come.

And then we fucked; for a long time, silently, with slow deeply probing ins and tantalising withdrawals, while a hand always touched and fondled over our bodies. For me, just touching the softness of her skin, feeling how her beautiful breasts, her ass and her excitement-taut belly responded to my touch, pushed me time and time again to the edge. I had to hold still to recover. Kate not only sensed what was happening; she was still too whilst her body shivered and signalled that she needed to hold back too. As lovers, we were in rare unison.

Eventually, having once more just drawn back from the brink, with our groins pressed together and my cock engorged in the throbbing heat of her cunt, I placed my hand over her pubes. I felt her straining against my probing fingers; I wished I could see her face. When she grabbed my wrist, she was not pushing me away, but guiding me. Whenever my finger just touched or brushed over her aroused little pleasure centre, her whole body tensed and shivered and her nails dug into my wrist.

The storm gathered, and we no longer could or wanted to stop. My fingers began to press harder into the petals of her clit, neither could I stop myself from ramming my cock into her twisting and convulsing groin. I do not know if we did or how we did stop ourselves from screaming out in triumph, because our furtive session of gently and silently loving each other, had finally brought us to such a wildly wonderful release. For long minutes we lay closely entwined until we ceased shaking and stopped laughing, silently of course, into each other’s mouth and neck. We were pleased with each other and ourselves.

With a loving hug and kiss, Kate left me and went to the bathroom. She did not come back to my bed but slipped in with the other girl. I thought I heard them whispering and giggling. It encouraged me to tip-toe to the bathroom, before settling down and falling asleep.

When Kate woke me, it was 6 o’clock. We got dressed and she accompanied me down to the reception. In the lift, as on the way up last night, we kissed again. Her kiss was no longer girl-like clumsy: It had become longingly, sensuously knowing, telling of what we had had, and would never have again.

The receptionist phoned for a taxi. We sat down in the still empty foyer, out of his sight, and hugged. I told Kate how wonderful it had been for me to meet her and what a beautiful and ravishing woman she was. In a joking way, I said that I could not understand that her boyfriend had let her go, or why he would not follow her to the end of the earth.

Kate hesitated before answering with a wistful smile, “We disappointed each other; he never got to know me... He wasn’t like you.” Then she buried her face into my shoulder and pulled me close.

We did not have long to wait like this. When the taxi pulled up outside, Kate hesitated for a second before she raised her face, now unsmiling, to give me a hasty kiss. With a hoarsely mumbled “Good Bye, Fred”, not waiting for my answer, she hurriedly got up, turned, and walked away.

We had exchanged no addresses, not even our full names. Kate and her friend left for London at noon.