nud

A month or so later, I was cruising the local shopping mall, as we kids did in those days. I was browsing the men’s department in the regional department store, looking for a present for my Dad’s birthday.“Can I help you find something sir?” a familiar voice said behind me. I turned to find Carol smiling brightly.

“Yeah, you wish,” she said with a smirk. She pecked me on the cheek. “Just you. But next time I want to be naked.” There she goes again with the “next time” stuff, I thought. “Now get out of here so I can clean up and come back to earth before my next class. I zipped up her dress as we went to the door. She twisted the lock, peeked into the hall to make sure no one was there and pushed me out. “I’ll see you next class.”

After Cain’s fight, the seventh match proceeded without a hitch, and as always, Seraph stepped into the ring for the final battle of the round. Though his earlier wins had been desperate and narrow, the prince’s arrival brought a chorus of cheers from the audience. One might expect this noisy support to bolster his confidence and turn him back to how he was, but he remained humble, or perhaps ‘fearful’ would be a better word. Every win would plague him with doubts, doubts that he was really strong enough to have defeated his opponents. All of his accomplishments were surely due to plain luck, or maybe his enemies had been paid off to let him win.