“I’ve got a doctorate,” she said. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”
“I know,” he said, grinning.
“I’m a professor.”
“Yep.”
“Okay,” she said, and leaned forward to suck him a little more, to make up for the pause.
He pushed her back when he was ready, held her head, aiming, and came on her lip and cheek. She kept her eyes open, watched him, and saw his face get all intense and focused on her. She liked that. She really liked how he reacted to her. He was always tender, even when he was doing shit like this. She was starting to realize that nothing of itself had to be meant badly. Some men were pricks, and did mean things because they were pricks. Ethan wasn’t necessarily being mean. Sometimes he was just having fun.
Ethan was still looking at her, at the semen all over her face. He stroked her hair, gently. She could feel semen starting to drip. Some slid down her chin, went off towards the floor.
“Could you get me a tissue?” she said.
“Wait.”
She sat there a moment and grinned. She really liked how he looked at her sometimes.
He was still hard, still holding himself without realizing. Maybe keeping the end up, so he didn’t drip. She kept forgetting he didn’t necessarily have to go soft when he finished.
She leaned forward and sucked the end of him again. He tasted more, and more salty. She sucked, and he closed his eyes and put his hands back on her head.
After a while she stood up, and pulled him against herself and said, “Lick it off my face.”
He did. She didn’t know why, but that really turned her on.
*
Ethan came on her face more often after that, and while she didn’t mind, she also didn’t quite get why. It seemed like her pushing his mouth away from herself just as she started to come, like a waste of sensation rather than anything else.
“You really like doing that?” she said one afternoon, wiping it off her cheek.
“I really do.”
“Why?”
He shrugged.
“Because I’m me? The lecturer thing?”
He looked at her for a while. “Maybe a little. But not really.”
“I don’t get it.”
He shrugged again, like he didn’t really mind if she did or didn’t. “I just do.”
She nodded, and didn’t ask again, but kept an eye on it. She noticed that after the first time he did more often after sex, rather than oral, and usually after tender, intimate sex. Like he thought it was a deeper bond between them than just coming inside her, or something.
She wondered if she should call him on it, but decided not. He might not even realize, and she didn’t want him realizing he was feeling tender towards her.
That would just complicate everything.
*
Ethan started studying at Beth’s place. The first time, after sex, he’d suddenly pulled out a textbook in her bedroom and asked if she minded, and she’d given him a really long, nasty look, thinking about professor fantasies and doing his homework at her place, until he’d said he had a tute in a couple of hours and needed to do this, but he could go over to the library or something if she’d rather. If she didn’t want to fuck again.
“Okay,” she’d said. “Fine,” and went to have a shower. And shouted, “But you’d better not run out of time before you actually fuck me.”
He didn’t run out of time. And after that, because she didn’t mind, he’d sit on her bed, or her couch, and look at textbooks that looked vaguely familiar, like she’d seen other students in her course carrying them around.
Once, curious, she went and sat beside him, and glanced at the page he was working on.
“Please,” he said, without looking up. “I need help.”
“Not a chance.”
“It’s not your course.”
“Not that. It’s differential equations. I can’t do those.”
He looked at her.
“Seriously. I’m a number theorist. I haven’t got a clue.”
“Could you look?”
“Shit no.”
He looked a bit desperate, so she picked up the book and struggled through it. She remembered half of it, had made herself do this at one point because not knowing was stopping her doing research, but she’d never actually done a calculus course because she hadn’t wanted a failure like this screwing up her GPA.
“I can’t do calculus,” she said.
“What do you mean can’t?”
“My brain doesn’t believe in real numbers. Or complex numbers. Or limits as things you do equations with, rather than use as defining parameters.”
He looked at her.
“No idea why. I can look at a polynomial and see its curve in my head, but I can barely solve those fucking min-max equations. Don’t know where to start. I don’t even know what half of this means, and it’s painful.”
“Like a headache?”
“No, you dick, because I’m not an insane genius with stabbing head pains. Just awkward painful. I sit here like I am now and it’s embarrassing.”
She took his pen, started writing on the back of one of his pages.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to turn it back into a set of fields. Then I can understand it.”
“Don’t worry too much.”
“It’s okay.”
He watched her for a while, and probably knew enough to understand how utterly silly it was to do what she was doing.
“You really can’t do calculus any other way?” he said.
She shook her head. “Failed it in high school. I almost didn’t do this. I can get through ODEs when I have to, but it’s a lot of work. I don’t get integrals and limits at all. Because they’re approximations. I don’t believe in them.”
“You don’t believe in them?”
“Nope. Like how people believe in god or don’t. I don’t believe in approximations. So I can’t do calculus. It isn’t real like algebra is real.”
He was staring at her.
“Hey,” she said. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“I’m not.”
“You’d better not be.” She worked a little longer. “I failed first-year statistics,” she said. “The same year I got a prize for maths. A lot of people thought that was pretty funny.”
He looked at her.
“Yeah, I know. And it was the stats for dummies course too, not the advancing one.”
“How did you fail?”
“Because it’s all vague bullshit. Other than that, no reason.” She stared for a while at the page. “No, sorry. I really don’t know how this works.”
“Thanks for trying.”
She shrugged. “I could tell you why you can’t trisect an angle?”
He looked at her. “You did.”
She grinned. “Do my rings and fields course next year and I’ll tell you properly. With this, I could ask someone?”
“That might look a bit obvious.”
“Yeah.” She flipped to the back of the book. “I can get you the professor’s answer book, if you want.”
“Isn’t that a really bad thing to do?”
“Yep.”
He looked at her like he couldn’t decide.
“It’s only calculus,” she said. “It doesn’t really matter if you don’t understand it.”
“Ah, what?”
“If you ever need this, you use a computer. No-one actually does this shit by hand.” She turned over the page she’d been writing on. It had his notes on the back. “Lose that too. Your tutor might recognize my writing.”
He nodded, and sat there looking at her. After a minute he said, “So that made me horny. Want to fuck?”
She hadn’t bothered getting dressed, had come downstairs just wearing his tee shirt. She took it off and grinned.
She put it back on later, so she could take it off and give it back at the door, like she’d planned.
*
He ate her out with one of her vibrators inside her. He’d been licking her, and she was distracted, and it took her a moment to realize what he was doing.
She said, “Oh fuck no,” when she realized what the buzzing was, then just, “Oh fuck,” when he slid it inside her and it worked pretty well.
“Never done this before?” he said.
“Shut up,” she said, groping around for his head. “Lick.”
He asked again when she was done, and she shrugged, said, “No, why the fuck would I?”
He nodded, but seemed a bit surprised.
“You have?” she said, and he looked like he didn’t seem to want to answer, but he said yes in the end.
“Often? I mean, not just some weirdo kinky slut you banged?”
“Often,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. It was obvious, when you thought about it. Everyone had vibrators, and most people got oral now and then, and sometimes it even happened in the same room. She wondered what else she was missing out on that all the kids knew to try these days.
*
Ethan turned up for a quickie on the way to a lecture, then decided to skip the lecture and stay with Beth.
She told him to go, but was secretly pleased when he didn’t.
He lay on her bed afterwards, kissing her hands while he looked at her tits, and she ignored his stare.
“I want to see you skate,” he said suddenly.
“Fuck off.”
“Please.”
“Not a chance.”
He was quiet for a while. She sat up, let go of his hands. “Okay,” she said. “Why do you want to see me skate?”
“It’s part of you.”
She thought about that for a while. “Are you getting a crush on me or something?”
He lay there. “Skate and I’ll tell you.”
“Are you?”
He grinned, didn’t answer.
She hit his chest. “Tell me.”
“Nope.”
She hit him again. “Tell me.”
“Stop hitting me,” he said. “Skate and I’ll tell you.”
She sat there for a moment, then slid off the bed. “You’re a fuck,” she said. “But I’m curious, so okay.” She pulled on a shirt and shorts, and went and found her old skate shoes.
“Come on,” she shouted as she went down the stairs.
Her board was in the hall cupboard, near the front door. She got it, and went outside, waited for Ethan to follow her.
“I’m not that good,” she said. “It was more a friends thing. Everyone else was skating so I did too. But I just followed along. I didn’t do tricks.”
“Sure.”
She looked around in case anyone she knew was watching, then got on the board. Went down the road a little, and came back. She hadn’t been sure how comfortable she’d feel, after more than a year, but she felt okay. Felt confident enough to speed up. As she went back past Ethan she said, “I can ride a bike too.”
He grinned.
She turned around again and came back faster, popped the board and did an ollie as she passed him. Then she realized her arms were all over the place and he knew she didn’t have a bra on and he was grinning.
“Dickhead,” she called and did another pass.
It was actually fun. If she wasn’t embarrassingly old for a skatepark, she might actually go one day.
She heard a car, got off the road, and realized it was one of her neighbors. She kept her face the other way and went off down the street for a bit. Made sure the neighbors had driven into their garage before she came back.
She sped up a little, went faster, remembering why she’d used to love this. She was racing along, proud of herself, until she clipped a pebble and felt her balance go, felt speed wobbles start. She jumped off quickly, let the board tumble, and ran until she could stop.
Ran with no bra on.
“Are you okay?” Ethan called, and he seemed to actually be worried, not leering at her for once.
“Yep,” she said, and went back for the board. She went up and down again, got her confidence back at speed, and decided to get ambitious. She aimed at the gutter in front of her house. Hers, because it would be rude to use the neighbors. She was going to do a trick, grind along it or something and show off to Ethan, but she made a complete mess of it. She hit the loose tar at the edge of the road and lost her nerve and ended up falling over.
She still knew how to fall. She landed on her shoulder, grazed her forearm, but didn’t do any more damage.
She lay there for a moment, breathing hard. Ethan ran over, looking really worried. “Fuck, Beth,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“Yep.”
“Stay still, you might be hurt.”
“I’m not hurt.” She looked up at him for a moment, worrying for her, then started to laugh. “This is your fault.”
“Okay.”
She looked at her arm. A shallow graze, weeping a bit. Nowhere near her wrist tattoo, which was the main thing.
“Fuck,” she said. “Ow.”
Ethan was looking at her again.
“What?” she said.
“You’re fucking wonderful.”
She looked up at him. Felt grass under her back, crinkly on her skin. “That was cool,” she said. “I haven’t done that in fucking ages.”
“Dude,” he said.
“Fuck you.”
He went and got her board and brought it back. Then sat down beside her, looking at her.
“So,” she said. “Dude. Are you getting a crush?”
He didn’t answer, just looked up and down the street.
“You are?” she said.
“I told you at the very beginning. I’ve had one since the middle of last semester.”
“Not the same.”
“It is.”
“Nope. Having a boner for your professor, that’s just blah. Having a crush on the woman you’re fucking, that’s completely different.”
“Woman?”
She looked at him. “Girl?”
“Dude.”
“Shut the fuck up and answer.”
He didn’t.
She hit his arm. “Answer.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a boner for you.”
“I noticed.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve got a crush.”
“You so fucking do.”
“I so fucking do.”
She sat up, put her arm around him, kissed him. Squashed her tit into his arm just to give them both a cheap thrill.
“I’m getting one too,” Beth said.
“I noticed.”
“Don’t tell anyone. It’s kind of embarrassing.”
“I won’t.”
She sat a bit longer. “Cool, isn’t it,” she said, and he grinned at her.
After a while, they got up and went inside and she winced while Ethan put disinfectant on her graze. She said not to worry, that it would be fine, but he’d come over all motherly and wanted to, so she let him to save finding out if he was a nag.
She was getting a crush. It was a weird thought.
Weird enough she chased him out, just because she didn’t like the idea, and once he was gone she actually managed to do an evening’s work and felt a little better with herself.
*
Amanda came and sat in Beth’s office and wouldn’t leave until Beth logged into the student system and showed her Ethan’s record.
“Cute,” she said, when Beth finally did. “Well done.”
Beth grinned.
After a moment, reading, Amanda said, “Young.”
“Yep.”
“Smart.”
“Ish.”
Amanda grinned at her. “That’s kind of harsh.”
“I know.”
“You like him?”
“I do.”
“You going to keep going?”
Beth nodded. “I think I am.”
“I’m glad you’re happy. You need a bit of fun.”
Beth didn’t k
now quite what to make of that, since she wasn’t unhappy. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay. Fuck off now, I’m busy.”
“I mean it,” Amanda said
“So do I.”
“Okay,” Amanda said, and left, but she was acting like Beth was going all soppy or something.
*
Beth was seeing Ethan most days, and actually talking to him most days too, and she was a bit surprised she wasn’t getting sick of him yet. Surprised he wasn’t getting sick of her, too.
She was still managing to ignore him in lectures, but couldn’t in tutorials, and had to tell him not to go. She caught him up in the evenings instead. She helped him through worked examples in bed, naked, and although he watched her tits as much as listened, he seemed to get there in the end. He made the same mistakes everyone did, transposed variables or bad arithmetic, and got confused and gave up. Students did it all the time, and Beth didn’t understand. When she was an undergraduate, she’d just gone through the problem again until she found the error. And then understood it better. She didn’t say anything to Ethan though, since he still seemed a little insecure about not being smart enough. She helped him as much as she could, once gave him answers to another course’s assignment, which would irritate her if one of her colleagues did it, but she did anyway.
The second weekend they spent together, Beth didn’t get dressed at all. She stayed naked all weekend. Ethan turned up early on Saturday, stayed all day, left and came back and stayed all day Sunday too. They were in bed most of Saturday, so she’d wandered around naked like he wanted her to, and by Sunday lunchtime they’d both realized how long she’d not had clothes on and were making an effort to keep her that way. Before he left he made her promise not to put on clothes until midnight, then texted and checked at five minutes past twelve.
She told him fuck off and yes, then held the phone and just looked at it for several minutes before she put it down and went to bed.
She was getting a crush, and she had no idea what to do about it.
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