She was still tired and a bit hungry, but she could feel it again. Sex had cleared her head, got her concentration back.
She liked her life. Sometimes she forgot, and sometimes she needed to do things her way to remind herself of it, but she really liked her life. She was pleased to be her.
Chapter Two
Beth came out the lift without looking, hurrying, reading as she walked, carrying a pile of assignments. There was someone waiting beside the door, but she didn’t notice. She bumped them with her elbow, and dropped everything she was holding. Her students’ assignments spilled all over the floor.
It wasn’t the best way to end the morning.
She knelt down and swore and started grabbing at the assignments, and only then looked at the person she’d bumped into.
She glanced up, then stopped, and just knelt there, looking long enough to make sure.
It was the guy. It had been a week, and it had been dark, but she wasn’t going to forget that easily. She was certain it was the guy.
He was looking at her like he recognized her too. Was smiling, like he’d blown his load into her mouth at a party a week ago and that was his big fucking secret. And also like he thought he’d done pretty well when it had been his turn to try, could get her again any time he wanted.
He probably could, Beth decided. She was wet. Suddenly, instantly wet, kneeling there looking at him. There were times when she hated how slutty her body was.
“Oh fuck,” she said. “Oh fuck no, not you.”
She didn’t know what to do so she went back to collecting her assignments. She thought about it and decided he was probably a student. He looked like a student, and was the right age to be one, and all the college people went to the same bars, so it wasn’t surprising she’d run into someone. Unsurprising, and a bit awkward. She didn’t want to meet people afterwards, when she’d had a night like that.
The university had a lot of rules, too. So many Beth just ignored them all and got in trouble for unintentionally breaking them. She didn’t know most of the rules, and she didn’t try to find them out, but she was pretty sure there had to be something about performing oral sex on students. The grey little busybodies who ran the place were bound to have an opinion about that.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she said.
“Looking for you,” he said. Just like that. Like that was a perfectly normal thing to be doing.
“Yeah,” she said. “Fuck. Of course you are.”
He reached out for some of her assignments.
“Leave them,” she said, but he helped her anyway.
Of course he helped her anyway. Like he didn’t care she was being a bitch, and like he didn’t mind her getting off and then walking away the other night. He got a bundle of assignments, straightened them, and held them out to her.
She knelt there for a moment, glaring at him, then held out her hand. Their fingers brushed and a spark jumped between them.
She jumped.
“You okay?” he said.
She nodded.
It was just static. The weather was dry. There was static in the air, a storm had been building all day. Storms had been happening all summer, so much that even people who never talked about the weather had started noticing. Everyone except Beth who just said yeah, she didn’t know, she’d only been here a year, but they usually told her anyway.
The spark was just the weather and the carpet and the building being all charged up. It meant nothing, and by the look of his face, he knew it meant nothing too, but they were both kneeling there looking at each other and getting sparks between them.
Their hands were still touching, both holding the same bundle of assignments.
He reached over and pushed some of her hair off her face.
“Don’t,” she said, almost ready to make herself angry.
He left his hand on her neck, leaned towards her.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she said.
He kissed her.
And she kissed him back. Like she had last time, her mouth open, breathing the air out his lungs. She kissed him for all same reasons she had last time he’d done that, but this time she was kneeling on the floor in the middle of the fifth floor lobby of the math building.
And he was sliding his hand up her skirt.
He kissed well, really well. Much better than a week ago. He must have been off his game last time because of drinking. He kissed like someone who knew he could have anyone, once he’d got his lips on her, and from the way his hand was pulling at Beth’s underwear, he was going to make the most of it.
“Fuck,” she said. “Stop. Not fucking here.”
He did. She was actually a bit surprised, and liked him a little more because he knew when to do his player shit and when to let it go. She glanced around. There was no-one in sight, no-one coming she could hear, but someone else might turn up at any second.
She should tell him to fuck off and never come back. She should, but he kissed like a god.
“Shit,” she said. “Shit fuck shit. Come to my office.”
He stood up, then looked around. She stood up too, and pushed him, got him going the right way.
There were doors open all the way along the hall. The older people seemed to like to work that way, to be collegial. She hated it, had things she needed to do, wanted to think, not to get distracted by noise and casual visitors. She always closed her door.
As they walked, she tried to look calm and bored. Like she was meeting a student. Like her heart wasn’t racing, her breath wasn’t shallow, her knees weren’t trembling with how intensely she needed a fuck.
She held the door for the guy, gave him an angry look as he went through. Warning him, she hoped. She closed her door and put the pile of assignments down. Then leaned on her desk and looked at the guy. It was summer and warm and she’d been a professor for most of a year, so she’d mostly given up on looking professional and gone back to a singlet and skirt. A short skirt and a strappy singlet, so she probably looked more fuckable and less like a professor than she really wanted right now.
He was standing close to her.
“Hey,” she said, and leaned back to make some space.
“I want you,” he said in his normal voice.
“Shut the fuck up,” she said, angry. Then, “Talk a bit quieter.”
The walls were soundproof, but not that soundproof. You could hear music, voices raised for phone calls.
“I really fucking want you,” he said softly. “I’ve been thinking about you all week.”
“Stop it,” she said.
“I remember how you felt,” he said.
She looked at him.
“How you tasted.”
She bit her lip. Clenched her hands on the edge of her desk. Leaned back, and looked at him, and wanted him, all at once.
She’d planned to warn him off, to say it was once, sorry, and wouldn’t happen again. Go away and leave her alone. She’d meant to say that as nicely as she could manage, and never see him again, but she wasn’t saying it. She was just looking at him, remembering the feel of his mouth on her, the taste of his cock in hers. She was turned on by the wrongness of him being here, and by how much he wanted her. She knew she should stop this, should get him out of here, but she didn’t seem to be going to.
“Fuck,” she said. “You fucking asshole.”
She still wasn’t sure what to do. She was probably just turned on by the situation they’d been in a week ago. Turned on by the crowd, and the chance of getting caught. He wouldn’t be nearly as good this time, she told herself, so maybe it was better just to make out for a while and convince herself of that then tell him to fuck off.
He kissed her. Again. Kissed her mouth and her neck and made her breath get all shallow and her legs a bit weak. She grabbed his hair and his shirt and kissed him back. She tried not to make any sound, but wasn’t sure she managed. Like last time, but more and stronger and better. He reached up under her skirt, hitched her
forward on her desk and reached up under her skirt and tugged her underwear down. She had a short skirt, so they were pretty sensible, but he didn’t seem to notice.
She was wet. She was so wet his fingers were straight into her, and his mouth was hot on her neck.
She couldn’t believe he had his fingers inside her again, but she wasn’t going to stop him. She’d been thinking about him constantly for the last week, going a bit crazy wanting to do it again. Not necessarily with him particularly, but not someone else.
She hadn’t been keeping up with her grooming. She could feel a week’s worth of little stubbly hairs rasping under his fingers.
He knelt down.
She couldn’t quite believe it.
He knelt down on her office floor and pushed her knees apart and started going down on her. And he was as good as last time. It hadn’t just been the party. He was so good she couldn’t bring herself to stop him. She grabbed his head and held him there and spread her knees and just hugged him against herself until she came.
She came in his mouth in a minute and a half flat and had to bite the side of her hand to make herself not moan out loud.
She sat there, and he didn’t stop. She sat a little longer, as her breathing went back to normal, and he kept licking her. Gently now, his tongue almost not there. She looked down at him for a moment. The back of someone else’s head, between your own legs, that was kind of a hot sight.
“Hey,” she said, and he looked up. “I did already.”
“I know,” he said.
“So stop.”
He stood up and kissed her some more. She kissed back, not sure what to make of this. Tasted herself, and tasted his mouth, and felt all warm towards the universe from her orgasm.
She should do him. She should do him, or let him fuck her, or something. But now she’d come, she needed to think for a moment before this went anywhere else.
She pushed him backwards with one foot. Pushed him back and put her knees together and just sat on the edge of her desk and looked at him.
The computer beeped. An email arriving.
She slid off the desk, locked her door and put on some music and went and closed the blinds. Picked up her underwear on the way back and put them in a drawer.
Then leaned on her desk, where she’d just been, and said, “Sit down.” And he did.
It was a power thing. She wanted it to be a power thing. She’d just come on his face, and it was her office, so she was going to tell him what to do.
“What’s going on?” she said. “Is this some prank? A bet?”
He looked surprised. A bit hurt. “No.”
“How’d you find me?”
He looked a bit puzzled. Like maybe she’d forgotten which one he was. Like there were so many guys giving her head in her office that she couldn’t keep track of which was which.
“I knew who you were the other night,” he said. “When I saw you at the party.”
She thought about that for a while. “You knew who I was?”
“I was pretty sure.”
She wanted to be angry. Part of her did. “You didn’t tell me.”
He looked surprised. “Yeah I did.”
She realized he might have. He’d said a lot she hadn’t been able to hear.
“The first thing I said was you were my professor and I wanted you anyway. Something like that.”
“Oh.” After a moment. “Yeah, I couldn’t hear.”
She liked that. She really liked that he knew she was her and groped her like a bimbo anyway. She shouldn’t, but she did. On half the days of her life it would really piss her off, and on the other half she’d be pleased. Today, he was lucky.
He pointed to her wrist. “Euler.”
“Yeah.” She rubbed it without thinking. There weren’t so many tattoos like that around. She considered that then lifted up her arm. Had another on the back of her bicep. Three semi-circles, three lines crossing them.
“Yeah,” he said. “Bisecting angles. We all noticed last year when you talked about it.”
She liked old Greek geometry. In her first abstract algebra lecture she’d showed her students bisection and trisection as a gimmick, showed them you couldn’t do trisections with a straightedge and compass, then the algebraic proof, then that you could trisect with origami because it left marks on the paper.
“I think it’s incredibly hot that you’re a professor and have tattoos.”
She looked at him and didn’t really know what to say.
“And go out to get picked up,” he said.
“Not exactly,” she said, but not very firmly.
“I spent all of last year watching you. Wanting to do that to you.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “You sat there wanting to give me head in my office?”
“Yep,” he said, and got all smug.
She looked at him.
“And fuck you. I mean, obviously. But head, definitely.”
She looked at him and wondered what she was getting into. She couldn’t quite decide if he was serious. She tried to remember if she’d ever wanted someone so much she’d have blown them with nothing back, and she thought maybe she had. Perhaps it was different for guys, anyway. They kind of had to give head.
She sat there for a moment thinking. Trying to decide whether this was creepy. Whether he was a stalker, and him following her to her office was incredibly hot, or incredibly dodgy.
After a moment she realized what he’d just said.
“Ah,” she said, belatedly. “You were one of my students last semester?”
That made it worse. She was pretty sure that was actually worse, if she’d taught him rather than just he was here, where she worked. He looked at her, and nodded, and seemed a bit puzzled. Students got that way, forgot there were lots of them looking at one of you. Especially since Beth was bad with names and faces and didn’t really care anyway.
“Your intro crypto course,” he said.
She took that as meaning he wasn’t a student any more, and nodded.
She had two undergrad courses, the second-year intro one, and third-year advanced cryptography that followed from it, but she’d lost a lot of them over the break. The engineers and computer scientists did the intro course to get an idea, disappeared before the theory got too intense.
She was more relieved than she wanted to admit. She wasn’t afraid of the grey little people who ran the university, except a little part of her was. They could get in the way, be obstructive, make her life difficult. Beth stayed out their way as much as she could, but she was a little worried. Fucking a student probably wasn’t that bad, but it definitely wasn’t good either.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Ethan Wilson. But, um…”
“I don’t remember you. How did you do?”
“Does it matter?”
She looked at him really cold, really herself. “It matters.”
He was cute enough. Had a kind of charming grin that probably got panties off. She liked that. But she was smart and pretty and not that hard up for sex, and she’d spent too much of her life getting into this room, getting this office, to fuck it up for nothing. Apparently he wanted to fuck smart and pretty, and good for him. If she was going to be fucked, then she wanted to be fucked by smart and pretty too. Smart like she meant smart, smart in a way she could deal with.
“An A,” he said.
Which was better than she’d expected. She felt a little mean. “Okay,” she said. “That’s an okay mark. There were only two A-pluses, last year.”
They looked at each other.
“I pass?” he said. Said it like he knew he wasn’t joking.
“Maybe,” she said.
He stood up and kissed her again, but she turned her face away, pushed him back again with her foot. “Wait,” she said. “Let me think.”
“I want you,” he said.
“I got that.”
“I want to make you come again.”
“Yeah, I
fucking got it. But just wait.”
He looked around her office. Looked at equations on the whiteboard, but probably wouldn’t understand. She’d been explaining something to someone else’s honors student. He glanced at her books and seemed surprised she had as many non-specialist books as maths ones.
“I’m not going to fuck you in my office in the middle of the afternoon,” she said.
He nodded. “Yeah, fair enough.”
“I know I kind of owe you now.”
He shrugged. Like he wasn’t saying that, but he also wasn’t dumb enough to make a case against it.
“What,” she said. “You’re fine, any time I need it just call, that kind of shit?”
He grinned, and she liked that he didn’t jump, or get nervous, or get annoyed. Even though she’d sounded a bit bitchy. She sounded bitchy half her life and couldn’t stand to be around people who didn’t understand she didn’t really mean it.
“If you like,” he said. Giving her a look. “Sure, any time. But if you wanted to give a little back, that’s good too.”
And she was pretty sure he was serious. Maybe she should be preying on the students more often. That was a lot different to what she was used to. Maybe it was just him.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, sure. If you can’t, you can’t.”
He was getting points for not minding that she’d had her orgasm and then decided to knock him back.
“You really don’t care?”
“I get it. You’re a professor.”
She was suspicious. Just outright suspicious. Couldn’t understand why this guy, unlike all the others, wasn’t running around holding his balls and complaining how frustrated he was.
“Why’s it okay?” she said.
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