If you really want me - Part 1

Hey, I'm Ted. I had a really good childhood, you know? My parents, Bob and Alice Smith, were awesome. And Cara, my sister, she was four years older and just like a goddess to me (she was super into Disney back then). Plus, we had Ria, our dog. We lived in a nice house, always had plenty of food, a warm bed, friends, school – I even had a motocross bike!

We were just a solid middle-class family, living in this suburb called Pleasantville. We were super close. Honestly, no matter what happened after high school and heading off to university, I knew I'd always have those great memories to fall back on when things got tough.

So, off to Miskatonic University in Arkham I went, aiming for an engineering degree. I was staying in North Hall residence, specifically. I moved in, met my roommate Bill (another engineering student, of course), and just jumped right into Miskatonic's "Week of Welcome."

We started doing all these friendship-building things, like a scavenger hunt. Bill, some new folks I'd just met, and I got stuck with the not-so-fun job of finding as many different colored bras as we could in an hour. We put our engineering brains to work and went straight to the second floor of my dorm – that wing was only for women. We quickly knocked on a bunch of doors, asking the girls if they'd lend us one, promising to bring it right back. After a lot of sweet-talking and begging, a lot of them actually did!

I knocked on one door. And wow, this absolutely stunning woman with dark hair and incredible blue eyes answered.

"You just want one?" "Yep!" "And you'll bring it back?" "Yep!" "You're not gonna wear it, are you?" "Nope!" "Hmm. Too bad. I think you'd look good in one," she said with a smirk.

She turned to her dresser and handed me a deep purple bra and panties. She looked me up and down and gave me this shy grin.

"If you don't bring 'em back, then I'll just assume you kept 'em for yourself!" "Thanks! I'm Ted, by the way. I'll totally bring them back soon!" I really meant it, too, because she was gorgeous, and I totally wanted an excuse to see her again. I offered her a handshake and my warmest smile.

"I'm Kate," she replied, leaning in to give me a little peck on the cheek. "Bye-bye, Teddy Bear. Good luck." And then she closed the door on me.

Well, that's how I met Kate. Anyway, I rushed back to my friends, and we hurried to the scavenger hunt finish line to beat the clock. Bill turned in our amazing collection of seventeen bras (and that one pair of deep royal purple panties). The older students announced the winner:

We won! Our little celebration quickly turned to horror when we watched the older students dump all the bras into a fire pit! Oh, man!

In the weeks that followed, two things happened. First, whenever Kate walked past me, she'd give me this sly wink, often joking, "Feeling sexy lately?" or something like that. She just brushed off all my attempts to explain why I hadn't returned her lingerie.

Second, I quietly started asking around about this captivating Kate. I found out she was a junior in an anthropology/archeology program. Her name was Kate Tanbury (and her roommate's name was totally forgettable). She was two years older than me, born and raised in upstate New York. She had a reputation for being a brilliant student (always on the Dean's Honors List) and a bit of a tease; not many guys had dated her. I even saw her on the dance floor at the pub; she danced and pranced like a fairy.

One day, before the spring semester wrapped up, I finally got up the nerve to ask her to lunch with me in the cafeteria. She said yes, and we just chatted about this and that. I'd been smitten by her looks for ages, and now I was just completely captivated by her confident, easygoing personality. She politely turned down my request for a date but agreed to share another lunch "sometime."

This went on through my sophomore year and her senior year. My friends told me she had an occasional date here and there, but no guy seemed to really grab her interest. Her friends were definitely closer to her: quiet Karen, chatty Dez, motherly Jenny, shy Jamala, man-hating Anne, and a few others.

During our infrequent lunches, she slowly, ever so slightly, opened up to me. She'd describe her short field digs at Native American burial grounds as dull and boring. Meso-American ruins and jungle-covered cities were way more interesting to her. She dreamed of one day heading south to the Yucatan to dig up Mayan pyramids and find lost treasures.

Then one day, she totally stunned me by asking if I'd be her "guest" at a friend's wedding. The friend was unexpectedly pregnant, and her dad owned a shotgun manufacturing company; I'm sure the groom was totally on board. Anyway, this was the first of several weddings, including my sister's, and other events we went to together during my sophomore year and the summer after.

Unfortunately, I just stayed her convenient "guest." Sex? Nope. Petting? Nah. Kissing? Zero. Hugging? Just polite ones in public, for appearances. Holding hands? Same deal. For any of that fun stuff, I'd just go to the university pub or a dance and find volunteers. Some I liked, some I didn't. But my mind and heart weren't totally monopolized by Kate.

She graduated and just disappeared from my life.

My junior and senior years were spent in class, in the library, at the occasional party, tons of times at the pub, and a few times overnight at some girlfriend's place. A lot of engineering students are pretty socially awkward. Like all male engineering students, I was scared of becoming one. So, I made it a point to get out and enjoy life as best any engineering student could.

Bill and I stayed close friends, and we'd banter back and forth about careers as graduation got closer. Neither of us went back to our hometowns; we both rented small apartments in Arkham. Knowing that business is business and friendship is friendship, we came up with a detailed plan to run a small structural engineering firm, focusing on renovations instead of new builds. The Arkham area had tons of old homes with market potential.

We excitedly opened "Jones & Smith—Structural Engineers Ltd." right after graduation. Looking back, our excitement probably outweighed our common sense. For example, I hated marketing because it had little to do with actual engineering, but it was super important for getting our firm's name out there. I loved onsite inspections because of all the different building techniques I got to see.

Our start was pretty rough. My parents, who had come down to see me, Bill, and our new office, were killed in a car accident on their way home. A super tired truck driver, making a cross-country banana delivery, fell asleep at the wheel and swerved into their lane. They died instantly.

My sister and I handled the funeral. She managed the estate because my parents hadn't updated their wills since I was 16. The wills were straightforward, and she was totally honest. Besides what they left us, she and I divided their belongings how we wanted. The money got split right down the middle. I poured most of it into Jones & Smith.

There's this Chinese proverb about good luck that goes something like this: "May your father die, may you die, may your son die." It took me a while, but I eventually realized a man's good fortune was that those deaths happened only in that order. My parents' early deaths threw me into a dark place for a while.

But life had to keep going. I had to keep going. And I did.

One fine day, Bill called me from the office, saying he couldn't make an appointment and asked if I could swing by the place to cover for him. I said yes and headed to 1234 Pleasant Lane to see someone named Tanbury. He snickered when he said that name. My thoughts immediately jumped back to university and Kate. I fantasized about how incredibly nice it would be if it were her.

I pulled up to this striking 19th-century home. Its outside was really fancy, with a cool mix of Gothic windows, diamond-shaped panes, and arches set against dark gray brick. On a cold, dreary, windy, rainy day, it would be the perfect spot for a horror movie.

The door opened, and there she was: Kate Tanbury, just as stunning as ever. She even remembered me! "Teddy bear!"

She totally skipped the inspection, and we sat together in her kitchen over coffee. I won't bore you with all the details. I updated her on my last two years of university and my new business with Bill. She told me about how she successfully landed a great job at the Miskatonic Museum and her current role as the curator of ancient artifacts.

I asked her how she got this amazing home. She explained: "The previous owner went crazy and started acting like a dog. He ran across the road chasing a car and died. He had no known relatives. I outbid everyone at a municipal sale. It was literally a steal." She smirked and took a sip of her coffee.

Time is money, right? I glanced at my watch, told her I was heading out, scheduled an appointment for Friday, asked her to call Bill to let him know she'd prefer to work with me "for old times' sake," told her how great it was to see her again, and looked at her fondly as I paused before stepping out the door.

"Teddy bear, did you ever wear the bra and panty set you borrowed from me?" she teased.

I laughed and told her for the thousandth time, "No."

"I wish you had," she said, kissing my cheek and pushing me out the door.

Early Friday afternoon, she led me down the oak staircase to the basement.

"So, what I want to do here," she waved her hand toward one end of the spacious, stone-walled, dirt-floored, cavernous basement, "is to build a private display room. I've been all over Central America and collected dozens of beautiful Mayan works for the museum.

I asked if I could study some at home. Otherwise, they'd just sit on a dusty shelf in the museum's storage. The director told me straight up that I wouldn't be allowed any until I created a secure space to show them. Look at the windows: super easy for a thief to get in. And that's why you're here. Before any contractor even hits the first nail, I want to make sure this old house isn't going to fall down. I'll be upstairs waiting for you."

I started my inspection. The joists were massive 2'x2' oak beams, two feet apart, with no signs of rot or disease. They were priceless. They mostly rested on similar oak pillars and on pedestals and walls made of granite slabs, with a few random fieldstone repairs thrown in.

Decades-old water stains marked all the stonework. I grabbed some instruments from my car, struggled a bit, but eventually got a core sample of the floor. Then I went upstairs.

Over coffee, I gave her a quick report. Some repairs would be needed on the walls, the floor was fine for a concrete-over-gravel finish, and the beams were solid and probably worth more than her car.

Basically, there were no structural problems for building the secure, robbery-proof box she wanted.

As I finished, her eyes lit up, she stood up, moved closer to me, kissed me on the lips, got on her knees staring at me, and boldly unzipped my pants. She licked her lips, murmured, "I should've done this long ago," and proceeded to give me a really nice blowjob. As her head bobbed up and down, I ran my fingers through her long, dark hair.

Just as I was about to climax, she stopped and stood up. She gave me an amused look.

"Does Teddy Bear want more?" "Yes," I whispered hoarsely. "Follow me." She walked down the hallway and went upstairs.

I quickly zipped up my pants and hurried behind her.

Breathless, I found her standing in the middle of her bedroom. She was unbuttoning her blouse. I stood next to her, bent my head, and started kissing her. She kept undressing and then started to undress me. Our hands explored each other's bodies. Man, I had waited so many years for this moment. Finally, Kate and I...

Theodore had softened a bit as I made my way up the stairs. She tickled him with her fingernails and caressed my testicles. Theodore sprang back to life again in all his glory.

"Do you want me?" she asked in a whisper. I nodded.

She smiled and walked to her dresser and opened the top drawer. She pulled out something pink and came back to stand in front of me. "Put these on," she said.

I looked in her hand. She was offering me a pink bra and pink panties. Seriously?

She started kissing me and, between kisses, moaned, "If you really want me..."

Oh, for crying out loud! I quickly took off the rest of my clothes, stood naked before her, pulled up the panties, and then fumbled around as she giggled, watching me twist myself to put on the bra. Eventually, there I was: wearing a pink bra and panties with big Theodore sticking out above the panties' waistline.

She threw her head back and laughed, grabbed my hand, and led me to the bed.

The panties were off pretty quickly…

But the bra had to stay on.

Over the next few weeks, I made several trips to Kate's place, some for new measurements and stuff, and some just for fun.

I saved Kate some money by designing the private display room myself in my spare time. She paid me back generously with tons of amazing times in bed.

For whatever reason, she wanted it raised one foot off the new concrete floor and one foot away from the surrounding walls and ceiling. It was a pretty unique design, and I had to convince her to make the gap between its sides and the ceiling two feet for maintenance access.

She mentioned a few contractors to me, and based on my recommendation, she picked Josh; he was a reliable guy.

Her requirements were pretty wild. Mounted on 12 one-foot-tall rubberized pads, the framing was super strong at 2"x6" and covered on all sides, top and bottom, with 3/4" plywood covered by 1/8" corrugated metal paneling. The spaces between the studs, joists, and beams were supposed to be stuffed with soundproof insulation.

Normally, you'd just screw in drywall next in construction. But Kate insisted that hard metal rebar, spaced 12" apart, be placed perpendicular to each stud. I got why it was useful against theft, but again, I thought it was overkill. I figured she'd also want a monitored alarm system, but apparently not.

Her custom-made door was just as strict; it was a steel beast finished with oak on the inside and had two top-of-the-line Medeco 4 cylinder locks at the top and bottom, plus an unbeatable Medeco Intelligent Key System in the middle. All in all, the final product would be impossible to break into—and impossible to get out of.

The inside was finally finished not with drywall, but with 3/4" oak raised paneling stained in a Jacobean finish with poly. Josh built custom cabinets and shelving that could hold up to 100 pounds per yard—again, way too much. Our lighting design created lots of focus spots for displayed exhibits and two fake backlit windows. Once the protective sheets on the floor were lifted, the dark gray carpet was rolled in.

The display room's crowning glory was this impressive cabinet running from floor to ceiling on the wall opposite the entrance. In its center was a framed case where bright focus lights shone. Whatever was put there would be the absolute center of attention.

Construction started and was finished to my satisfaction (and so, Kate's) within a month. Whenever Josh ran into a problem, Kate had him contact me. Since my plans were really good, there weren't many issues. Josh made a few suggestions about wiring and air circulation, and we worked together to solve those problems. At my suggestion, Kate had the basement walls spray-foamed, then framed and finished in a basic style.

Kate promised Josh, his crew, and me pizza and beer if we moved a brand-new couch and round coffee table into the room. The job was done. We drank and ate. Josh and his crew left with his $55,000 check: not bad for a month's work! Jones & Smith got a check for $5,000. And good old me, Ted? I got laid, and, yep, I had to wear that damn bra again.