Roman Holiday -- Kristen's Board Contest

[HistBuff]

Teaser: I lose track of what's happening! I'm pushing her striped shirt up as the record dies and keeps running round in the void. She's wearing no bra. Her nipples are a warm brown! Wow! Inviting! Inviting me as she presses my face where I wanted to go since the first time I saw her lithe figure. First time tasting a girl's tits. She smells like heaven; with suave notes of Bologna sauce and pinot grigio as the background for my début in adult life.
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The author of this story has read and accepted the rules for posting stories. They guarantee that the following story depicts none of the themes listed in the Forbidden Content section of the rules.

The following story is a work of fiction meant for entertainment purposes only. All sexual acts depicted in this story take place between consenting adults. Any similarities of the characters in the story to real people are purely coincidental.
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This is an original HistBuff story.

It competes in the Kristen's Board Memorial Contest.
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The son of a diplomat in Rome makes the acquaintance of a mysterious neighbour, a woman in her 20s. (5,008 words)
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Roman Holiday


Being in Rome is being close to eternity.

Being young is having no idea what time truly means.

Today's my birthday. I live alone with my father, a diplomat working in Rome and living a glamorous life with a mistress I have yet to meet. He's with her in Milan. All I know is she's a B-movie actress, Scottish or British I don't remember. Said she has dark hair and pretty. This I remember. I don't think I'll ever date a girl with light hair. Dark is mystery, excitement. Cliché. But so true.

My mother is a dark-haired dream. So is my young sister. Both are gone now. Buried near Mont Royal, in Montreal. Father needed to get away from a city where everything reminded him of them. His escape are Glamour, Champagne, Women.

He knows what a perfect day for me is.

To be alone and enjoy my time with myself. Reading, listening to music and cooking my own birthday dinner.

I'm reading right now. Ovid's Metamorphoses, in its original Latin. I like Greek too, but Latin is my favourite. I want to teach Classics once I graduate from university. I hope to study here in Rome, the very cradle of Latin literature.

Book II. Cycnus, king of Liguria, inconsolable for the death of Phaëton, is transformed into a swan. That's what I'm reading, perhaps for the hundredth time. You learn languages through repetition, tireless repetition. I love plunging in these very same words and verses that monks also enjoyed centuries ago, some of them perhaps just as young as me, just as curious as me about the opposite sex. Girls. I've kept strands of my sister's hair. I did it when she was exposed in her white coffin. Her hair is as black as the night. As black as half the pieces on that chessboard that stands on the coffee table in this Italian living room that makes me feel I'm playing in some opera every time I walk in it; a room with some history and an eleven-foot ceiling dating back to 1870. The golden age of novels. I read Salambô; it's in my native French. Flaubert wrote it like a painter. Oho! footsteps in the hallway. A woman. Young.

The rhythm in these steps can only come from a young woman who doesn't weigh very much. These are the footsteps of a ballerina. She's our new neighbour. Once, I saw her out of our ajar door as she walked past, then unlocked her own door. She's a bit taller than average and has black hair that she wears bobbed. Her figure is just as slender as a dancer and I fancy this is what she does for a living. There's much youth in her, albeit my feeling is she's a few years my senior. I still feel more strongly attracted to her than this common girl downstairs, the owner's daughter at the small grocery store, where I'm presently to go because I want some wine and fresh olives to complete my dinner. She's just about my age. That is, young enough to have lived the Second World War as a child. But she lived it in Italy. This must be why there are such shadows in her eyes. I like Marietta, and I think she likes me. But my strange neighbour offers mystery and excitement, and dresses just as glamorously as my mother did before dying in style at the wheel of a white Bugatti.

***

I'm back from the grocery. Marietta was at the cash register, an old thing of heavy brass that seems to date back from the 1890s. It made her look even younger as she smiled at me and began talking about the weather becoming less cold in Rome now that spring is in the air. Cold! She has no idea what winter is like in Montreal; then she'd know that winters are not really cold in Rome, just chilly. There are no blooming mimosas and cherry blossoms in February where I'm from. Marietta won't leave me alone! She literally forces her chatting on me.

And when there's no one else, she always comes out from behind the counter and seems to purposefully stand at an angle from me, so I can see better how her breasts are elevating her sweater with gentle grace. She stands close enough for the fragrance of her long hair to reach me. She's quite short and adorable. So very much like countless Roman girls must have been like, two thousand years ago when Caesar vanquished Vercingetorix! But she left school so very young and now works at her father's store. She only speaks Italian. She's too common, too predictable. She'll be married within the next two years, to an equally common man I'm sure.

I don't think we'd make a happy couple, me being a scholar and she such a simple girl. But I'm sure I'd go crazy-hard down there if she took her sweater off! I often catch myself wondering what those buttocks of hers would look like without that long skirt that hides her secret world. Marietta is a pleasing girl. Boys often come and ask her for a date, but she doesn't seem to be seeing anyone, at least not anyone seriously. She just keeps smiling at me, her face often blushing whenever we chat. Yes, I suspect she likes being with me. To tell myself the truth, I'm too shy and cowardly to show interest in her and I keep finding reasons not to face my fear of going to a girl of my own years. Marietta has something special that I'm forced to like. She's a true Roman girl. It's in her eyes. Why am I such a coward?

Then, when I bought two bottles of pinot grigio, she made fun of me and said she wasn't going to question me about my age.

"No need for this in Italy, giovane signore! (young sir!) Here, people live happy and drink wine. Anyone can buy some. No laws for this in Italy! You, signore, have a very handsome face! The girl who'll be with you will be a happy girl!"

I blushed when she said these last words and I promptly left. Why didn't I ask her out? She's such a fine girl!

I had my answer when I came back upstairs on the first story. Apartment seven.

After leaving my bag of groceries in our own apartment six, I came back to that door on a whim.

Heart pounding, I knock. No no! What am I going to say? Let's leave when it's still t...

"Chi è?"

Such an adorable voice! Mysterious.

"Chi è?"

Footsteps approaching, a poetry of light steps. Like fine wine for my ears.

The door opens and I find myself face to face with the loveliest young woman I've ever seen, her face thin, like the rest of her; skin of fine porcelain and her eyes full of life. Not a girl of my age, but a woman. A woman wearing no more lipstick than a teenager. She's of course much shorter than myself, but clearly a few years older.

"Yes?" she says in English after quickly checking me out from head to toe—leather shoes, sports jacket and all, right up to my Sienna brown fedora hat, which matches my necktie and my handkerchief against my moss-green jacket.

"I... I think I... I'm Daniel Joffre, the son of your neighbour across the hall and..."

"Oh, yes, the Canadian diplomat! Just looking at you, I was pretty sure you were his son. Your outfit! So American! You're dressed like a young fellow walking down the street in some gangster movie! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! But you wear it well! Would you like to come in? Oh, but I have the advantage of you. I'm Audrey, from Holland."

"Holland? But your English... I thought you were American!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha! American, me? That's a long story. Better come in!"

As I walk in, I clumsily kiss her hand... and notice she's barefoot! She wears black trousers under a striped black-and-white sweater that flatters her slim torso and the perky shapes of her breasts. Her bobbed hair—so dark it seems to almost match the black stripes of her sweater and makes her skin radiantly pale. She smiles at me with eyes to die for. She's so beautiful she seems surreal.

"I was rehearsing my lines," she says as she walks to a low divan and motions me to join her there as she goes into an ice box and fetches two 8-oz bottles of Seven-Up. My eyes can't leave her bare feet, so remarkably dainty with brilliant skin, enhanced against the divan's dark leather. The floor is entirely covered by a carpet and I can appreciate how comfortable it must be to walk barefoot on it. I quickly remove my own shoes out of habit. Nobody keeps their shoes indoors in Canada, except on formal occasions.

"Rehearsing your lines? You mean, like an actress?"

"Don't say it too loud! I moved here recently because two journalists wouldn't leave me alone. I moved by night! Ha! Ha! Ha! And left no address. I would have loved to see their faces next morning when they called! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Here, drink it while it's cold; I don't like Coca-Cola very much so I guess I'm the Seven-Up girl. But yes, I'm..."

"I have pinot grigio at home!" I blurted out, heart racing. "Pinot grigio and I'm cooking a true Bolognese sauce for spaghetti, complete with chicken livers. We... we can share it if you, I mean if it's if it's if it's all right w-with you, I mean, uh..."

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! So you're asking me for dinner? So funny and innocent! Do you know what it's like to date an actress?"

"I don't care whether you're an actress or Canada's Prime Minister. All I want for tonight is a girl to spend time with."

"A girl? Dear, you flatter me! I'm already turning twenty-four this year!" she says while lighting herself a cigarette.

As I hear her make this confession a woman rarely makes, my heart sinks. She isn't taking me seriously! And yet I feel something between us. Something primal that doesn't care about me being just a tall lad. She's magnified in my soul! She fascinates me! So very much! I'm shy with flushed apple cheeks and at the same time I'm just about to rush at her and...

She takes a sip from her Seven-up. An actress drinking straight out of a bottle? Strange! She gracefully lands the bottle back on her coffee table, a wooden, natural surface just as hard as I am down there. She then looks down at some papers, pressed under her ash tray. Her lines. Then she looks up at me, into me, with eyes that seem brown, but the natural daylight in the room reveals definite notes of green.

"All right, Daniel. You dress well and neat. You seem like a honest fellow, and I feel safe being alone with you." Audrey makes a faint smile, her eyes filled with mirth and fun. "I must rehearse my lines for tomorrow, but I'll come knocking on your door at seven! And since you keep looking at my feet, I'll be wearing just what I'm wearing now! No less, no more."

***

I took my leave from Audrey like one wakes up from a wonderful dream. Back to the life of a virgin lad. I must have dreamed all of this. Me, having dinner with an actress? I caught sight of yesterday's newspaper that Father had left there when he departed in a hurry, but not without shaking my hand with such warmth that reminded me how much he loved me. I went to look at the arts and culture section to see whether something was written about her. Audrey? Yes, Audrey. But I decided against it. Let's keep the mystery while it lasts. Anyway, this cannot be true. Just a dream.

Seven o'clock. Not on the nose, but a bit shy. Two minutes. She was just a dream.

The apartment, rich in quiet shades of moss-green wallpaper. It's fragrant with the caressing scent of Bolognese sauce, ready with its final touch of fresh cream. And I almost forgot to put pinot grigio when I cooked the ground veal. There would be quiet rumours of the city outside if the apartment was silent. It isn't. I'm playing a two-year-old record by Doris Day. Shanghai. The notes resonate against the aged woodwork, against the beige plaster walls and ceiling, like America's love against Italian vanilla cookies, which I do have for dessert. The jazzy song is filling the high-ceiling room with the magically glamour voice of Doris.

Why did I holler I was going to Shanghai?
I wanna be with you tonight!
It was just a little misunderstanding,
That a kiss on the cheek could patch...

I need you so badly, I'd gladly
Start all over from scratch!
Oh, why did I tell you it was bye bye for Shanghai
I'm even allergic to rice!
Why don't you stop me when I talk about Shanghai,
It's just a lover's device!

Now who's gonna kiss me
Who's gonna thrill me
Who's gonna hold me tight!
I'm right around the corner in a phone booth
And I wanna be with you tonight!

Two knocks on the door came when the brass band played on and took over, the trumpets, trombones and the sax bringing more jazzy depth to Doris's song.

Audrey stands there in the hallway, not right around the corner, but there, dressed the same as in early afternoon--her black-and-white striped shirt hugging her perky boobs. And barefoot! Delightful! She's smiling with something I've never seen before in the eyes of a woman. She comes to me, walks past the threshold. Softly. Barefoot.

She closes the door herself, while Doris Day's singing the end of her song...

Now why did I tell you it was bye bye for Shanghai
I'm even allergic to rice...

She's kissing me. First time me kissing a girl! Ravenously. She's kissing me! Both of us. Ravenously kissing. I gently push her against the unlocked door, a massive oak door as old as the building itself. Her fragrance is my dark prison; it's her hair. It's her woman's hair brushing my lad's cheek. Her tongue is silently singing along with mine as she puts my hand on one of her boobs. First time feeling a girl like this! A woman! Doris Day singing... Young woman's voice, a blonde singer while I kiss the brunette. Lucky boy!

I'm right around the corner in a phone booth
And I wanna, yes I wanna
I wanna be with you tonight!

I lose track of what's happening! I'm pushing her striped shirt up as the record dies and keeps running round in the void. She's wearing no bra. Her nipples are a warm brown! Wow! Inviting! Inviting me as she presses my face where I wanted to go since the first time I saw her lithe figure. First time tasting a girl's tits. She smells like heaven; with suave notes of Bologna sauce and pinot grigio as the background for my début in adult life.

Her fingers go crazy through my hair as she moans, "Yes! Yes! Take me, oooh! He's just a lad! Just a lad! I want this! So much! He's just a young siree! Mhhh oooooh!"

Her boobs have a small fullness that fascinates me. My tongue goes in circles round her brown nipple as I feel her warm flesh that yields under my pushing mouth!

"A lad! Just a lad! Oooh, my young Lancelot, hhhmmmm! Just for me! Do all you please with me! Young sir!"

The pasta will wait. I start undoing her thin belt, feeling the urgency under my own belt. She helps me. Her feverish fingers meet mine. No underwear. First time beholding a girl's secret hair! Audrey has a pure triangle of darkness! Her intimate signature. It comes with a coral slit that's getting delightfully pungent with her desire. No more words. She wants to make love. Am I ready for this? I'm just a lad! Just a lad, like she says.

As soon as she's naked, she wraps her legs around me and kisses me with voracious fire as I pin her against the wall. "Yes! Tall and strong! Six feet tall!" she purrs as I discover the joy of kissing her neck, my face plunged in her bobbed hair and its heaven of fragrance. I suddenly think of Marietta and wonder what it would feel like to be doing this with her, a girl of my own age, and with much longer hair. Equally dark. My hands are suddenly on her buttocks. Naked girly fat. Firm and plump in this mysterious combination that I feel for the first time as she keeps kissing me and begs me to please do her good. Marietta? What about Marietta? My first time should be for her, but this woman speaks English like an American, softly, her voice from another place. Where? Who is she? She keeps calling me her lad and her own Lancelot.

What's this? My trousers are open! She's sitting on a sideboard after books flew down and landed on the old carpet with dark hues of raisin blue. Her legs are wrapped around me, leaving me no chance to remove my shirt, no chance to escape. My necktie and its brass pin are in paradise against her chest and between her pressed boobs where she's pressing herself against me as if her life depended on it! Everything's going too fast! Marietta! I should be having this first time with a girl my own age...

I'm inside her! Inside a girl for the first time. I love how tight she feels around me. All encompassing. Better than when I practice this alone. So ungodly better! We're pressed together, her butt tapping on the piece of wooden furniture, where I hold her. Where she's at her vastest. Dark wood with banging buns on it. Her hair like dark honey with almond, and notes of mimosas. Bobbed, with sweat. I'm kissing her neck, close to her ear. Her eyes are closed, she's biting her lower lip and singing a nearly silent song of purring in rhythm with our strokes. She's so beautiful with her eyes closed! Naked! A full-blown woman. Fucked by a tall school-boy. The pressure builds up where I'm one with her. She's crossing ankles behind me! Her feet! I see her in my mind's eye! Marietta must be so beautiful barefoot! Marietta and her lovely little feet!

The surge! A wild rush of conquest! First time! First time! Inside a woman. I'd rather have Marietta. I know it now, but I'm. Committed. I bend my arms so I can cup her breasts as she moves her lap to receive me better. My low grunts are fucking her high moans. I scream... "AAAAAAAAAaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaayyaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRHHHH!!!"

All my sperm! For Marietta.

"Aaooooohh yes! Ooohh, lad, it was wonderful! So wonderful!" Audrey says. Her name. I remember now. What am I doing with this grown woman? She stole this first time. Stole it from Marietta! Stole it from both of us. I'm a bit sore and angry amid my bliss as I finally pull out of her. Why did I commit myself so quick?

Next thing I know, Audrey is down on her knees and licking my manhood. She looks at it as if it were the most precious gem in the world! I never expected things would go so quick! I expected just seeing her, perhaps kissing her, perhaps a bit more. Never like this! I almost feel she raped me, but no, deep down, I wanted this. Audrey is beautiful, mature and mysterious. Glamorous, even as she licks me down there and keeps licking all my semen and her own juices off it. Now it's glowing under the room's warm lights, while the vinyl record's still spinning amid the silence. We hear Rome gently beyond the ajar window, where the evening air caresses the curtain.

I go stop the record. She follows me on all fours, like a bitch in heat! Near the record player, she renews her Dutch-girl mouth job. Until my quick youth returns to a full mast.

She remains on all fours and begs, eyes crazy mad, "Make me yours again! Like a centurion ravishing a noble woman in a fallen town! Take your reward!"

I don't like the way she surprised me and stole my innocence, but the wide paleness of her butt and its heart shape are way too strong for my young eyes. I turn into a minotaur and sink to my knees. My hands land on her ballerina's waist, then they feel the firm expanse of her curves, Audrey's bottom! A fascinating view that I would call vast and yet, firm and slender too! There's a ravine of sensuality where her sweeping curves merge where life begins. I know what to do next. Same as a bird that learns to fly by itself.

I take the crease of her light-filled hips, I enter inside her, forcefully, like the madness of a fallen town where the streets are haunted with burning houses and shrill-screaming girls. So many Mariettas ready to be stripped out of their tunics! Audrey's moans sound like screams.

I fuck Audrey with my mouth wide open, like some baboon-faced soldier from Africa, grunting the whole time, as her unreal butt keeps getting flattened against me with a rage that has something to do with the fact I'm probably not fucking the right girl. I'm punishing Audrey while thinking about Marietta in the plural of my fantasy of a sacked town! What I'd give for her!

This thing ends with weird-sounding moans from Audrey, whose knees and hands keep pressing the old carpet as I yell my bliss, same as a Barbarian filling up a Patrician girl. We remain there, lying in sweat on the carpet. Kissing. I truly see Audrey's eyes for the first time. In this golden light, they are forest green. She's quietly smiling at me, looking younger as she keeps kissing me. I try not to wish she were Marietta. I feel satisfied of this unveiling of Audrey's mystery.

"I love it so much to be in the arms of a lad! You have no idea!" she says as she undoes my striped necktie and helps me out of my shirt, then out of my camisole and my trousers. I keep my black suspended socks and my legs look like milk. Then I get an idea.

"Audrey, how about me carrying you over there in the dining room and on the table?"

Her eyes light up like a bonfire as she nods, giggling like a girl whose breasts will soon be jiggling on a tabletop.

One broken plate later, I've made room for her to lie on that table turned into a bed for Venus. With her legs propped up, I gently fuck her while hugging her thighs. She spends the next few minutes with her face gently bobbing between empty wine cups near the candles, which I have yet to light, all this against the backdrop of the Bologna sauce that fills the air. Dinner is more than ready. The table's creaking as I keep taking my pleasure while hugging her thighs with her feet hoovering near my face. It's sensual and primal. She takes it with her eyes closed.

"This... F-first time... Fucked on t-table... Ooohh... Like that... So tall and strong! Aaahh! A lad! A lad! My y-young Lancelot..."

Audrey's voice and moans and her buttocks heat up the dining table, and my insane surge! The eruption makes me feel weightless as I take one of her feet and cover it with kisses, feeling the relative cold of her toes as I explode! inside Audrey with a bliss that cuts me in half! My legs are wobbly jell-O under me. A collapsing finish. It's so brutally good! I fall down on my knees and her feet come resting on my head as she bursts out in laughter.

"Well, I'm hungry! I'll cook the pasta for you, lad. Al-dente! This is a date in reverse order. How practical! Now we had each other, let's have dinner! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

***

This is how we began to see each other. She was very busy with the filming of some peplum movie about Rome conquering Corinth. She was lively and funny. Never without the touch of glamorous mystery that fascinated me so much! She never ever wanted me on the movie set. She said she wanted to keep her work and her personal life separate. She wanted to keep me all for herself, her mystery lover boy. She wanted to keep me out of the public eye, but I felt this wasn't her only reason.

Once, when we had dinner for her own birthday two weeks after mine, she spoke about her childhood in Holland and her time as a teenage girl during the war. She felt the war had robbed her true youth from her. She was too busy surviving and helping the resistance to think about love. Too scared. This was how she explained her feelings for me. She wanted to reclaim what the war had taken from her. But here again, I sensed she wasn't telling me everything. She never truly opened herself to me, while I spoke to her candidly about everything. About my love for Latin, my dead mother and sister. Everything except my feelings for Marietta.

Needless to say, there was a lot of sex between us. Outdoors. At her place. At one point, I noticed she always avoided meeting my father. It was only me and her in a special world of her own. Whenever I was in that small grocery store with the antiquated cash register, I was shy, perhaps even ashamed, in front of Marietta, whose eyes were now haunted with some sadness as I felt a wall between us. She must have felt it too. I knew she really liked me. Deep down, I craved the discovery of love with Marietta. I knew what I should do before she'd find another boy, and it was a miracle she hadn't done so yet. I knew what to do, but I lacked the courage.

***

It was mid-summer now. I was now used to see Audrey in the nude; just as much as I was used to see people out on the street. I guess I was becoming a full-blown man. I was no longer putting her on a pedestal as the actress I was dating. I was now noticing her deep insecurities, her chain-smoking habit, her taste for scotch, her anxiety during sex. Always fearing not to be enough. Always making remarks on my youth and how wonderful it was to be in my arms.

The break-up happened unexpectedly, yet in a way I should have known.

I was downstairs in the little grocery store. Out to buy some fresh cream to make a tiramisu cake for a movie Audrey had shot last year. It was to premiere here in three weeks. Roman Holiday. The same cake I had made for her on the 4th of May when she turned twenty-four and I gave her two dozen pale roses.

Marietta stood behind the antiquated cash register. Her hair as radiantly dark as ever, her eyes filled with joy as soon as I walked in. I could see it now as clear as day. She was in love. Hopelessly so.

"My sister is getting married in two weeks. Would you like to come along? I mean, with me," Marietta suddenly said.

"Your sister? You never told me you..."

"Daniel, my parents are good Catholics. I have two little brothers, three little sisters and two elder sisters. So would you like to come? Your Italian has improved a lot, you know. You're practically one of us!"

"But, uh, I'm already with someone."

"Yes, I know, the American actress, but she's not right for you."

"Not right? But we love each other!"

"I saw you together, twice. You love the glamour and mystery in her. She loves your youth. Not you, your youth."

I was about to reply and tell her she was wrong, but something made me pause. I put down my bottle of cream on the counter. Marietta had struck something. I remembered how often Audrey had made remarks about me being so young, "just a lad" she said, many times over, often during sex. Especially during sex. Marietta spoke again as she walked around the counter and stood near me, her hand close to mine on the wooden counter.

"You were here together twice. On each occasion she made a remark about you being delightfully young. Daniel, she's only with you because you're just as young as me."

"Marietta, you're jealous!"

"Am I? Maybe I'm a little jealous, but..."

My lips got in the way of her words. I kissed her, she kissed me back. Her hand was on mine on the counter. We stood there for the longest time, kissing near that massive brass cash register, like another young couple probably did when this old thing was brand new. Kissing a girl you love is eternal. The softest diamond of all.

Audrey cried like a girl when I told her I was breaking up. Her cries and her begging were the girliest thing I ever saw her do. She went on with her acting career. She belonged there. I belonged with Marietta.

At the wedding, Marietta caught her sister's bouquet and smiled at me, radiant with happiness under the sun of August. A bouquet of pale-rose amaryllises. We kissed and everybody cheered. Violins were playing. Marietta and I, we kept kissing. I never left Italy. We saw Roman Holiday together. Kissing forever.

Fine della storia

[RapeU]

A Canadian diplomat's son who travels the world and this moment is the very first time he's kissed a girl? I don't think the virgin trope worked in this story. It seems like the characters were following a plot instead of allowing the characters to create the plot.

[Shocker]

I do remember the story, having read it either on TBV or RU. Naturally it’s not hard of imagining a sweet young face for your Audrey. The story has all of your usual flair for the historical setting.

[HistBuff]

A Canadian diplomat's son who travels the world and this moment is the very first time he's kissed a girl? I don't think the virgin trope worked in this story. It seems like the characters were following a plot instead of allowing the characters to create the plot.

This character is very similar to my own life. I'm a highly functioning autistic whose teenage life was filled with long readings, lifting weights and being awkward in social situations, and missed opportunities with girls. You'll notice this guy has no social network and his father knows that his idea of a perfect night is being alone enjoying a quiet evening. Only autistic people function like this.

[RapeU]

A Canadian diplomat's son who travels the world and this moment is the very first time he's kissed a girl? I don't think the virgin trope worked in this story. It seems like the characters were following a plot instead of allowing the characters to create the plot.

This character is very similar to my own life. I'm a highly functioning autistic whose teenage life was filled with long readings, lifting weights and being awkward in social situations, and missed opportunities with girls. You'll notice this guy has no social network and his father knows that his idea of a perfect night is being alone enjoying a quiet evening. Only autistic people function like this.

Oh! That makes this story make a lot more sense! I have family members who are high functioning as well, so I completely missed that aspect here. I too have made a character that is high functioning autistic, but I never specifically mention it in any story. I think it's better that way to show it instead of say it.

[HistBuff]

I do remember the story, having read it either on TBV or RU. Naturally it’s not hard of imagining a sweet young face for your Audrey. The story has all of your usual flair for the historical setting.

Thanks for the kind words, @Shocker!

Just like you said consensual isn't really your thing, short stories are just not my cup of espresso. I need to fully commit myself to a story and its characters, and this is very hard for me to do in a 5 k story. I rewrote this story while being impatient to return to the writing of Red Sunset, so it is what it is. Originally he had an incestuous relationship with his now-dead sister, but I didn't want to dance around underage stuff, so I just let him keep strands of her hair. Being able to self-critique one's own work and feeling one could do better is something I learned from Hoffmann in Ritter Glück.

[SoftGameHunter]

It looks like the question of the working or failure for the male virginity trope is resolved. Otherwise I'd have to defend it here too. Family and family lifestyle aren't going to do squat for a young man (or woman either) who is just shy, awkward, clumsy, etc take your pick. Jetting me around the world wouldn't have likely gotten me laid much sooner than I managed, not that I had that option. I swear, I didn't go more than three hundred miles from home for about eleven straight years of childhood (excepting one class trip to DC). Anyway, I totally buy this guy's background and congratulate his good fortune that a Dutch actress hurled herself at him. He handled it well.

[Lucius]

Lovely, lovely, lovely! I'm fond of historical starfucking and feet, what else can I say? Oh yeah, Salammbô is a great novel.

... She was very busy with the filming of some peplum movie about Rome conquering Corinth. ...

What was that?

[AdmiralPiet]

The title had me convinced this was to play in ancient rome.
And I was confusedwhen the text didn't match the expectations

Not entirely sure what to make of this one.
Like many stories on here it is well written but not entirely my style I guess.

I found it a little odd that the young lad that was too "cowardly" to even really speak to the other girl would take the actresses move in stride and perform like a sex god.
As he was thinking back to Marietta I even suspected a dream.
Would have expected him to end it with Audrey immediately and go to Marietta.
In the end the breakup and switch to Marietta came a bit abrupt.

Stil overall enjoyed it though.

PS: Audreys speak of "Just a lad" seems a bit unnatural to me