** Part one: The Bus from Killarney **
It had been a terrible summer: tough work and girlfriend trouble.
After graduating from university, I had taken an internship with a national newspaper in London. I had worked hard at the paper, and was rewarded with a contract at the end of the internship. The work was demanding and relentless. I was churning out copy like there was no tomorrow, and every sub-par piece led to a call into the editor’s office. Working for the paper was my dream job, but my naïve idea that I could change the world through my writing was beaten out of me in a matter of days.
Then there was Rachael. We had met in our second year at university, introduced by mutual friends. A little too much cheap wine and a night of passion led to love. As graduation neared, the constant in our plans was a life together. When I moved to London to start the internship, I persuaded her to live with me in my small London flat. Setting up the flat and enjoying London life was great for a while. Rachael got a job in a café, even though she had a good degree in economics. I was immersed in my work, and she soon grew unhappy with our situation. Our carefree student lifestyle had ended, our sex life fizzled out, and reality was a disappointment. Our relationship turned sour and ended bitterly.
A few weeks after things finished with Rachael, I booked some much needed time off work. I decided I needed to get away from it all, to get some breathing space. It was a bit of a whim to backpack around Ireland. In Dublin, I had tried to get into the nightlife in the tourist-trap of Temple Bar. I had tried to psych myself up to pulling a girl in a bar, but just couldn’t bring myself to it. I left Dublin, and travelled round Cork, Blarney, Cobh and the Ring of Kerry.
Staying in youth hostels and travelling by bus, the closest I had got to a sexual encounter was sitting on a cliff near Portmagee, overlooking the Atlantic, and wanking into the ocean. It sounds rather sad as I write about it, but it was a necessary release, and a fond memory. After walking for a couple of hours, I had sat down on the cliff edge to eat my sandwiches looking out over the ocean. No one was around, and I was relaxed and desperate for some release. I thought about how great sex once was with Rachael, and my cock was hard in seconds. I unzipped, and jerked myself off in long, slow strokes for an age. The ocean lapped below, and the sea breeze breathed over me. It was sweet agony as my balls contracted and I pumped my cum into the void between cliff and ocean. A minute or so later, a German couple came hiking by, and I put my cock away in haste.
It was time to head home. Rather stupidly, I had bought a bus ticket all the way from Killarney to Dublin Airport, a journey of over six hours. Either the train or the plane would have been a far better idea, albeit more expensive. I had been travelling on Bus Éireann coaches everywhere since leaving Dublin, and they were cheap and fairly reliable. It was thus out of habit that I hadn’t thought of any other alternative than making the epic bus journey from Killarney to Dublin.
The number 40 bus sat in Killarney bus station: white and red, emblazoned with the Irish red setter running down the side. There were fewer than a dozen people spread out around the coach, but I moved to the back, ensconcing myself in the back corner seat. The energetic setter motif was repeated on the grey-and-red upholstery of the seats. The emergency exit at the back afforded a little more legroom, so I settled down into my lonely corner spot. As the bus pulled out of the bus station, I prepared myself mentally for the long journey ahead. Suddenly, the coach came a jolting halt, as the driver slammed on the brakes. The driver opened the door, and a young woman with long wavy black hair hauled herself aboard. “You near ran me over, you old fecker!” she exclaimed. The driver didn’t seem too taken aback by her address. She showed him her ticket, and then disappeared from my sight, down out of the door of the bus. The driver reluctantly followed her, with his polyester company tie positioned like the swoosh of a ski slope over his beer belly. I heard the luggage compartment open, then close. The driver huffed back on board and lowered himself in behind the wheel.
There she was again, striding up the aisle as if she owned the bus and everyone on it. As she moved up the bus, I saw she was wearing low-slung skin-tight jeans, under a white vest top, with a cloth bag swinging from her right shoulder. As she came closer, I could see her vest was thin, translucent, revealing her dark bra underneath. I marvelled at the work of engineering: the vest was a snug fit around her breasts, but then hung in loose, shifting folds over her abdomen, falling a little short of the top of her jeans, revealing momentary flashes of flesh as she walked toward me.
The bus began moving again. The beautiful woman reached up to the luggage racks on each side to stabilise herself, pushing her breasts up and out, in a perfect display. The coach turned out onto the street, and the arc made the woman’s hips sway one way and the next. The movement continued up her body, and her breasts were a marvel of pendulum motion, with the material below rippling like a thin curtain, emphasizing the motion. I was transfixed, and I left it a little too late to pull my gaze away. Her eyes — azure pools — met mine, and she grinned in full knowledge that she was in control of the situation. My cock hardened, and I shifted in my seat.
“Do you mind if I join you back here? I just like sitting at the back, so I do.” She was well spoken, but her voice was musical — not the music of a symphony, but a fiddle band. It made me smile.
I was flustered and let out a vague “OK, sure”.
She beamed me a smile, and my cock twitched, hidden under my stone-coloured chinos. She turned to put her cloth bag up in the luggage rack. The bag had a logo and ‘School of Medicine, UCC’ printed on it. As she turned from me and reached up, I got my first look at her bubble-shaped backside, straining denim, and my cock twitched again. She turned back, and as the bus turned another corner, she put her arms out to grab the seat headrests on either side, and her breasts shimmied again right in front of me. Braced against the swaying bus, she leant forward and swung herself around onto the back seat. I got a perfect view of her cleavage, framed by the two rising mounds of her breasts. I didn’t know where to look, and she knew it. It was almost as if she was putting on a show, toying with my inability to resist her control.
The young Irish woman’s raven hair framed the pale skin of her face and vibrant blue eyes. High, round cheeks hoisted the ends of her winning smile — thin, but expressive pink lips that smirked, beamed and surprised as they spoke their own language. She wore no makeup — unsullied and natural was her beauty. She bounced into the seat beside me. The waves of her dark tresses brushed back and forth over the pale skin of her sculpted shoulders, covered only by the spaghetti straps of her vest top and the dark-green satin straps of her bra. Her hand jutted out towards me. “How yuh doin’? I’m Aoife”, she introduced herself.
I raised my clammy hand and took hold of her long, thin fingers in a rather imperfect handshake: “Uh…’Ee-fuh’?” I tried to pronounce her Irish name right, and she nodded. “Hi! I’m Mark”, I returned.
“So, Mark, me young fella, were you getting an eyeful of me tits just then, or just watching out in case I fell over like?” She opened our conversation with a cheeky smirk.
Her directness flustered me, but it was too late to deny it. “Killing two birds with one stone”, I replied, and rather pleased at myself with the witty response.
Her lips curved once more into that smile, and she let out a low, throaty laugh. “Hah! So, you’re English, are you? Always having your cake and eating it, bloody imperialist bastards!”
It was now my turn to laugh at the banter. “Yeah, I’ve come over here and colonised a fair few Irish pints and sea views!”
“Maybe you’ve seen and viewed a little too much now!” she shot back, steering the conversation back to her breasts.
It was almost as if she had made me take another look — my gaze lingered — magnificent — and she smiled as she watched me ogle her.
She licked her lips, moistening them. “I could bloody murder a pint right now!” It was a warm summer afternoon, and the air on the bus was a little clammy.
“I’ve got a couple of cans of Guinness in my bag”, I blurted out. I stopped at a small supermarket on the way to the bus and bought some sandwiches and two tin cans of stout to keep me going on the journey.
“‘Tis all Guinness and leprechauns for ye’r lot, so it is!” Her voice contorted into mock ‘Hollywood’ Irish.
“You don’t have to have one; I was saving them for the journey.”
“Are you going to Cork?”
“Not really, I’m just changing in Cork for the bus to Dublin. I’m flying home from the airport.”
“You eejit — taking the bus from Killarney to Dublin! Do you know how long that’ll take you?”
“I think it’ll take me just over six hours to get to Dublin”, I sighed as I admitted the foolishness of my travel plans.
“Sure, you bloody eejit. I hate riding these damn buses, but I’m a damn culchie eejit too now!”
“So we’re both ‘eejits’ together: how about that beer?”
Aoife pressed her long fingers together over her lap, slid the prayer pose between her knees so that her upper arms squeezed her breasts together, and leant forward to display an obscene amount of her chest. I admit that I then let out an audible sigh that made her curl another smile.
“How about it then?” she pleaded.
I almost had to ask her what she meant, before I remembered the beer. I stood up to fetch my bag from the luggage rack, and wondered whether she could see my erection through my trousers, just a few inches from her face. It was a game of words and bodies, and it was getting hotter.
I brought down the two cans, handed her one, and sat back down. The cans felt a little warm and perhaps had been rolling around in my backpack. Aoife pulled the ring open on hers and the stout frothed up on the top of the can. I opened mine to similar effect. She tilted her can towards me, and said “Clink!”
Trying to be clever, I touched my can to hers and said “Sláinte!” in my best tourist’s Irish.
“Sláinte yer bollocks!” Aoife retorted dismissively. She tipped her can back towards her, and it began to surge more froth from the agitation. To stop the can top overflowing, she raised it to her lips and slurped the foam noisily. Disaster averted, she lowered the can from her mouth, revealing a little trickle of beer foam clinging to the side of her cheek.
“Err… you’ve got some on your face”, I gestured.
She raised a hand and wiped up the foam from her cheek, licking it from her long fingers, and giving one of them a momentary suck. She caught me watching, and smirked, “What do you expect when you suck head, but jism on you face!” and her accent bubbled and hissed ‘fehss’.
I almost choked on my warm stout. I had to respond to that provocation, and told her, “You’re quite the tease, aren’t you, Aoife?”
“You’re giving as good as you get, young fella!” she shot back at me.
In unison, we sipped on our warm beers. We sat looking down the coach as it stopped at Glenflesk to let on another passenger, an elderly priest, who moved up the bus and sat six rows in front of us, the closest of our fellow passengers. Silence passed between us; not an uncomfortable silence, but a satisfied one, warmed by the beer.
As the bus pulled on and passed through villages and small towns, we chatted, and shared with each other about who we are and what we do. Aoife was two years younger than me. Her family lived in Killarney, and she was a medical student in Cork. That’s about all I learnt, for I was sharing more than she was.
The edginess of her banter had eased off, and that made me open up to her, just like a general who feigns a retreat to draw the enemy in. I hadn’t properly talked to anyone about my breakup with Rachael, and I trawled it all up for her to hear. “Eventually, she had had enough of London, my work, getting stressed out, and she had had enough of me”, I spun the story for her.
“Erm…so, did she dump your sad English arse then?”
Reminiscing, I chuckled, “Yeah, I got brutally dumped”.
“Sure ’tis good to see you starting to laugh about it though”, Aoife continued with some compassion.
I was almost oblivious; like someone vomiting, I had to get it all up. The final bit of sick came as I told her, “You know, she kept saying to me, ‘You tiny limp-pricked bastard!’ She kept repeating it, screaming it at me, each time getting louder, and at higher pitches. It’s etched on my mind.”
“So, is that true now?” Aoife commented.
“Is what true?” I shot back.
“Do you have tiny, limp prick?” She seem gratified that she had found an opportunity to steer the conversation away from my depressing reminiscences and back to the salacious banter she enjoyed.
I laughed nervously, shrugged, and tried to wrest control of the conversation. “I think she was just upset that I hadn’t invested in the relationship.”
“But talking about a fella’s prick like that could do untold psychological damage”, she continued, trying to sound like one of her medical textbooks, but betrayed by her smirk.
Her words sunk into void left by my sad reminiscences. I felt angry for the first time, and wondered why I had let Rachael pin all the blame on me. She had made me the kind of guy who was too timid to pull in Temple Bar, and had to sit wanking on a cliff top. I turned to my confidante, feeling weightless, looked her in the eye and said, “You know, I think I’ve been feeling pretty rough about it all”.
Aoife held my eye line, and seemed genuine in her concern. Without looking away, she asked, “So, how do we start putting you back together now?” There was a brief silence between us. Then she put a hand on my shoulder, saying, “You know, I’m a doctor. You know you can trust me”. Her look of compassion developed that smirk again as she added her punchline, “So let’s see your cock!”
I gave a short nervous laugh and retorted, “Hah! You’re not a doctor yet, Aoife”.
“I have my anatomy class done, so I can tell you a thing or two about the marvels of the human body now.” She paused, not wanting to be distracted from her mission. “After all, your eyes were all over me tits when I got on, and fair’s fair!”
“But I didn’t ask you to actually get your tits out, did I?”
“To be sure, I noticed a stirring in your pants when I sat myself down next to you.”
I had thought that she hadn’t noticed my reaction to her display. “Isn’t there something in the Hippocratic Oath about not using your medical qualifications to perv at guys’ cocks?” I shot back at her.
“How else does a good Irish girl from County Kerry get an education about these things? ‘Tis the whole reason I’m studying medicine now.” She giggled, winked, and continued, “And we need to prove that ex of yours wrong, so you can put it all behind you. So come on, just unzip a little for me and show us how big you are in your underwear… You are wearing underwear, aren’t you?”
I swallowed hard, and felt adrenaline shoot into my bloodstream. I pushed up my black t-shirt, unbuckled my belt, unzipped my trousers, and revealed my light-blue boxer briefs.
“Nice colour!” she responded, and leant in to peer at my crotch. I got an eyeful of her cleavage again, and my underwear fabric twitched. “Ooh! I see movement!”
Seeing as I had this beautiful stranger staring at my underwear, I decided that there was little need for subterfuge, and told her, “I think it’s because I can see right down your top at this angle”.
Aoife looked down at her own décolletage and gave a tiny side-to-side jiggle, just looking up in time to observe another fabric twitch between the open teeth of my zip. “So you’re a breast man, are you?”
“Obviously.”
“The data is inconclusive: ’tis hard to see through all that fabric.” Her hand rose to her shoulder, sliding the spaghetti strap of her vest top and her dark-green bra strap off so they swung just above her elbow. She curled two fingers around the deep neckline of her vest and just inside the cup of her bra. Slowly, she eased both fabrics down together, as her right breast undulated and slowly rolled out of its confinement. The flesh of her breast was luxuriously pale, almost shimmering, translucent. Her rose-pink nipple popped out into place, and swelled hard. I stared, no longer concerned to hide my enjoyment of her body, drinking in the glorious sight.
Aoife looked up, arched her back, and presented her breast at attention. Her breast wasn’t huge, perhaps a C-cup, but it was high and pert, and she certainly knew how to dress her breasts for maximum effect.
“Now, fair’s fair”, she repeated, as her hand smoothed down my lap and unbuttoned my boxers with a casual flick of her fingers.
I offered no resistance, focused entirely on her beautiful breast. Without touching me, she tugged either side of my underwear slightly so my naked cock popped through the opening. It hung there semi-erect, but still bent over.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” she exclaimed, “I don’t think we’ll be needing the microscope, but the only proper way to evaluate a cock is to see it fully erect”.
She took my hand and placed on her naked breast. I eagerly gave it a fondle, and her flesh responded and moved unpredictably under my touch. She straightened up more, throwing her head back a little, sighing, and pushing herself into my hand. I gazed at her, and then felt the cuticles of her fingers brushing gently against the length of my cock. I drew in a breath, and my cock twinged. “Is this fair now?” she asked teasingly.
“Very!” I sighed, and gently squeezed at her hard pink nipple.
She shuddered at the attention, pursed her fingers together like a bud and brought them up to the head of my cock. Slowly, she pushed her pursed fingers onto my cock, sliding back my foreskin and squeezing the rim of the glans. Now it was my turn to shudder, and my cock instantly hardened to perfection in her hand.
“That’s more like it, Mark!” she exclaimed, and I watched her staring at my fully hard cock. “My diagnosis — as a future medical professional — is that you have a lovely prick, and the two of you have many happy years to look forward to!”
“Thank you, doctor. I’m no professional, but I must say that your tits are sensational.”
“I’m glad you like them, but the other’s getting no attention now.” She winked at me again.
At that invitation, I slipped my hand into the cup of her left breast and gave it a squeeze. I slid my hand up Aoife’s collarbone to her shoulder, and slid the straps off. My hand continued its motion downward until her other breast was fully exposed. She straightened up, and arched her back, tilting her head back, and presenting a perfect canvas across her neck, shoulders, the cleft between her collarbone, the rise of her breasts, the cleavage delved between them, the rosy, fortified summits, and the gentle slopes down to her ribs. I raised both hands, and surveyed this new territory in tactile fashion from the outer side of each breasts. I squeezed once, twice, and swept my hands up, so that my palms rubbed her hard nipples in a circular motion. She responded with a series of short sighs, pushing herself into my hands, so as not to loose any contact.
Aoife’s hand was still pursed over the head of my cock. She swung her hand around to the side, and made a fist around my cock, just under the glans. She gradually moved her hand down, drawing my foreskin fully back, exposing the head and making it pull forward a little. She pulled my cock’s skin down a fraction more, and made a little bud of dew appear from its eye. I shuddered, tilted my head back and let out a low consonant that flowed from a nasal ‘ng’ to throaty ‘gh’.