“Where are we going?” Sarah asked. She was in Martin’s car and he was driving out of the pub car park. They had met two hours earlier and been talking ever since. He was medium height, well-built but not muscular, with wavy brown hair and blue eyes and he was fun. That was the main thing. Her kind of fun.

It’s a word that can mean various things to different people. To her it meant he was intelligent, verging on intellectual, but not too serious. He knew about things – lots of things. He knew about music, about film, about sport – not that she was interested in that, but still – and he knew how to talk to her. Again, that was the main thing.

It was 1983 and sport was still pretty much a man’s interest. She would watch Wimbledon, but only because she liked looking at Pat Cash, alhough you couldn’t admit that in mixed company. Not when you were berating the men for their thoughtless sexism.

There is no such thing as what you should and shouldn’t talk about. It all depends on who you’re talking to. Martin just had the knack of keeping her interested, amused and even informed, which wasn’t something you came across every day. He stimulated her brain and seemed keen to hear what she thought as much as her accepting what he said.

“We’re going to look at the sea,” he said. This was a coastal town in which she was at the university and he was playing guitar in a band that roamed the area. “Okay?”

“Fine,” she said, and sat back to relax. She thought she trusted him, whatever that meant.

They talked some more about the people in the pub and then he turned off the road into a car park, a picnic spot fringed with trees and with a beautiful clear view of the sea in the moonlight.

Martin pulled up at the front, where it was bright. Good sign, Sarah thought. He could have parked in the dark under the trees. She was alone with this guy in a car with no one around, but he hadn’t taken an obvious step towards pressure and dominance. There were times when she fantasised about being steamrollered into sex by a man to whom she couldn’t say no because she didn’t want to say no. But that was largely for fantasies. In real life it had to be reined in a little.

Martin put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her temple.

“Can I trust you?” she found herself saying.

“Of course,” he replied. “Trust me how?”

“You can’t say ‘of course’ before you understand the question,” she said. She slapped his thigh, which on reflection was perhaps not the best idea she had ever had.

“You can trust me not to do anything you won’t like,” Martin said with an unflustered smile.

“Can I trust you not to do anything I don’t want?” she said. “There’s a difference.”

“You mean I shouldn’t think ahead,” he said. “And do something you don’t want but which I know you will like.”

“What are you, a lawyer?” she teased.

“I told you I did a year at uni studying law before I dropped out,” he reminded her. “And you’re doing business and administration, so you’re aware of technicalities too.”

They both sat back for a moment to allow the potential bottleneck to ease. Then Martin sat up and looked right at her.

“I’m going to kiss you,” he said firmly. “That is all right, isn’t it?”

“They did it in Gregory’s Girl,” Sarah jousted.

“Must be okay then,” Martin said. He leaned over and, pulling her towards him in his left elbow, planted his lips on top of hers. Her mouth yielded to his and his tongue entered her space. Funny thing about kissing, he thought. It was a form of penetration and yet was only a distant relation of downstairs sex.

Funny thing about kissing, Sarah thought. It was absolutely permissible if you liked the guy, but it had its limits. It wasn’t a green light for everything else.

Naturally she immediately felt Martin’s hand on her thigh, and that was okay too. Her Levi’s gave a level of privacy and if he wanted to run his fingers around the crossroads of seams between her legs, that was also allowed on this occasion. Different occasions, different players, different rules.

They kissed deeply and urgently and then Martin pulled back.

“Let’s go to my place,” he said, glancing at her for a reaction.

“Okay,” was all she could manage.

The pressure on both of them relented as they drove off again. It was all a question of stages, they both thought. A key stage had been achieved and given them both pleasure. That border would not have to be crossed again, or at least it wouldn’t be a problem. Martin’s passport had been stamped.

“What are we going to do at your place?” Sarah asked, almost swallowing the words at the last moment.

“I’m going to take off your clothes,” Martin dared.

“Just mine?”

“And mine.”

“Then what?”

“The I’m going to lick you all over.”

“Oooh, that sounds nice,” Sarah said nervously. They drove in silence for a minute before she spoke again.

“No one has ever talked to me like that before,” she said, and Martin scrutinized her words and her tone before concluding there was nothing hostile in them.

“I’m only saying what we’re both thinking,’ he said.

“Shit,” Sarah thought. “Wait till I tell Carly about this. She won’t believe it.”

Carly was her best friend, and they shared a little flat. Carly thought Sarah was a bit of a prude, and Sarah was inclined to agree with her. She was struggling to enter the world of adult thinking and leave behind the constraints that had been drummed into her during a sheltered childhood. She wasn’t a virgin. There had been little incidents with three boys. But little incidents they were. Fumbling, trying, rummaging, failing, with minor successes. Gaining experience but slowly, uncomfortably.

This Martin chap made her feel naked but safe – an odd combination.

“And I want you to suck me,” Martin continued.

“Suck what?” she answered stupidly, just saying something for bravado.

“My cock,” said Martin, himself nervous as the conversation seemed to squirm out of their control. Was Sarah as confident as she seemed? Was she going to be the perfect fuck or would she freak out at some point?

He decided to cool it down a little, and in that pursuit he put a hand on her leg. She put her hand on his and there they were, holding hands like they perhaps should have long ago if this had been a gradual developing of a relationship, what his parents would call a courtship, rather than the helter skelter towards sex which he found both exciting and alarming.

He didn’t actually want this girl to throw him the keys to her body and let him help himself. Well, part of him did, but another part wanted to work for it, to earn it, and to have a relationship waiting for them when the frantic banging was done.

“You’re getting old, Marty,” he thought. “25 and over the hill.”

Home was an old stone cottage in the grounds of a working farm. The dairyman’s home in the days when there was a dairy industry to speak of. The place was cool now, in the summer, but icy in winter and it had that sweet, unidentifiable smell of old stone, old plaster, peeling paint, cow shit outside and unthinkable stuff under the carpet.

“It’s a tip,” Sarah thought. “Why are guys’ places always a mess?”

While he was pouring some beers she looked around the tiny house, peeking into the bedroom, which was dark and untidy but smelled of cologne. He had probably sprayed it on the carpet to disguise the stench. Next time they would go to hers, one night when Carly was out. But for tonight, this was it. She was 21 and old enough to look after herself. She was going to have sex. For the first time she was going to spend the night with a man, because Martin wasn’t a boy, he was a man. He was a musician, so he must have had dozens of girls. He probably knew what he was doing.

Sarah sat on the small settee, the only upholstery available. Martin sat next to her.

“Take your top off,” he said.

“I thought you were going to undress me,” she said.

“With your cooperation,” he said with a flicker of a smile. “It’s easier if you…”

Sarah pulled the long-sleeved t-shirt over her head and sat uneasily with her bra-clad breasts on display. Martin leaned over and kissed her, unhooking the bra with one hand. Shoving it down the side of the cushion, he kissed her nipples and gave each one a little suck.

He unbuttoned her Levi’s and knelt to pull them off. They were quite loose, as was the fashion, so they came with no resistance, from the garment or the girl.

The knickers were like his mother wore, pale pink and cut neither high nor low. Knickers for the practical purpose of covering the genitals. Neither for display nor for modesty. A pair of knickers, please. Medium. Ordinary. Not black, not white.

Sarah was waiting to have her knickers removed. She had had a shower before going out, so she was confident enough. Martin knelt in front of her and pulled her knickers down. What an exciting phrase that had been when she was young. “He pulled her knickers down.” As a girl she hadn’t known what came next, but having your underwear removed must be thrilling enough.

Now she lifted herself a little to enable the removal and she became aware of Martin looking at her pubic hair. Nobody shaved or waxed in those days. She had a normal amount of black hair down there, in her opinion. He didn’t seem repulsed, anyway. She kept her legs together, because there was a limit to what she was going to expose while sitting on a settee.

Martin pulled her towards him and kissed her on the mouth, his hands caressing her breasts but not for long, before sliding down her sides and the right one slipping between her thighs.

She allowed herself to be felt up. There was a sort of freedom in this. Privacy. Nakedness. Primitive emotions. But she wanted to be in bed. She wanted her first proper time to be on a mattress, between the sheets. She stood up and led Martin into his bedroom, then undressed him, amazed at her own impulsiveness.

She unbuttoned his shirt, kissed his lightly hairy chest, then grappled with his jeans until they hit the floor with a thud of the belt buckle. He helped her with his underpants and she stood there, waiting for him to come good on his promise to lick her all over.

Martin made her sit on the bed. He kissed her all over her face, then her neck, her chest, breasts, nipples. Her armpits – oh my god. Nobody had ever shown any inclination to go there before.

He slid down her like a man with a plan and planted his face between her thighs. He kissed her vaginal lips. His nose nuzzled her clitoris. Did he know he was doing that? Probably, yes. He probably had a degree in licking women. It was obviously his thing. She decided to stop analyzing it and enjoy it.

Martin’s tongue was all over her, up and down the sides of her crotch, tickling her piss hole, wrapping itself around her clitoris in a way she couldn’t imagine but which felt tremendous.

That was it, then, he had licked her all over. Now he expected her to do her bit.

By now her previous boys would have been on top of her like dogs, with that sad, desperate urgency that put her right off. Martin, though, was savouring her.

Then her turned her over and alarm bells rang.

“Kneel up,” he said encouragingly.

“Not up my bum,” she protested quietly, as I she thought someone was listening.

“I’m licking you all over,” Martin said soothingly as his face descended to her crack and he began to lick her arse. Was this on the list of things she didn’t want him to do or the things she didn’t like? It was on neither. It was on no list she would ever have had because she had never thought people did this.

“Martin is licking my bottom,” she thought. “And it’s weird but I think I like it. I don’t want him to stop. Ever. This dirty bastard, this thoroughly decent, respectable dirty bastard has taken sex to a whole new level, albeit a subterranean one.”

How could she tell Carly this? Even with their pact of complete disclosure, she would have to be on her third bottle of Liebfraumilch aided by sodium pentathol.

And then all thoughts rushed out of her mind as an orgasm swept in and she found herself squirming, writhing, moaning and crying – not tears but a dry release of confused ecstasy.

She rolled onto her back and smiled up at Martin, who was gazing at her, concerned.

“You okay?” he whispered.

“Ohhhh,” she said, the power of speech only gradually returning. “You want me to suck you now?”

“If you do I’ll cum in your mouth,” he said. “Shall I get inside you?”

“Yes, yes. Rubber johnny,” she gabbled, this being a time when condom may have been the technical term but they were called either rubbers or johnnies.

Martin produced a packet of three from somewhere and she watched in awe as he opened one and unrolled it onto his beautiful erection. She stared at the powerful, fleshy, gristly rod that he was about to insert in her grateful cunt.

He lasted no more than a minute but that didn’t matter. His wicked, expert tongue had already give her an orgasm and she got pure delight from seeing him losing his masculine control to her feminine wiles. She watched tenderly as his face contorted and he sighed heavily as he unleashed his semen into the condom that would otherwise be her insides.