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‘And you honestly tried to argue that duty is more important than passion?’
‘In hindsight that was completely ridiculous of me.’
‘No more ridiculous than thinking I cannot handle a penis,’ he says, and then I have to stop for a second. Aside from the fact that I’m sweating and sort of breathless in a way people only usually get after being swept into someone’s arms, he just said that.
And he said it pointedly, too, in a way that makes me wonder if…
‘Oh. Oh. I had no idea, Professor, I thought –’
‘Lord, I was not admitting my homosexuality, Miss Hayridge. Please refrain from sharing that theory around the canteen – people do that enough as it is.’
‘People share things about you around the canteen?’
‘The latest, I believe, is that I have an insane ex-wife locked in my attic, despite having neither an ex-wife nor indeed an attic.’
‘So you have never been married then.’
Now it’s his turn to look startled.
Only slightly, of course. One side of his mouth twitches, and his eyelashes sort of flicker in a way that could be read as a tiny widening. But the thing is, slight twitches and tiny eyelash flickers are enough, for someone with a granite face.
‘I am not sure what relevance that has.’
‘No relevance at all. I was just curious.’
‘And you think being curious about my dull life will serve you well.’
‘Considering this is the first time I ever dared ask anyone so terrifying such a direct question about anything I’m going to say yes.’
‘You find me terrifying, Miss Hayridge?’ he asks, and I honestly can’t tell.
Is he sincerely wondering, or just messing with me?
His slightly raised right eyebrow suggests the former.
But the strange new glint in his eye suggests something else.
‘You’re seventeen feet tall with a chest that could probably deflect bullets and a voice that might be capable of commanding the winds. You know everything about everything – including things about me that I barely even realised myself. And when you get angry, your anger lies in wait like a cobra, then strikes someone dead before they even know there is any danger. Yes, you are terrifying, Professor. But I should probably also say that no one has ever made me feel more like I’m worth something than you did yesterday, so whether I’m still afraid is certainly up for debate,’ I say, completely breathless by the end and half sure I shouldn’t have said it. It skirts way too close to I find you attractive.
Though the fact that it does only makes his next words more unexpected.
‘Perhaps it would not be if you knew why I have never been married.’
He speaks so calmly, as though referring to the weather.
Instead of the secret mysteries of him that no one can ever know.
‘Is it because you’re secretly a werewolf?’
‘What on earth would make you think such a thing?’
The scars and the bursting fleshiness, I think.
But refrain from saying, to my eternal relief.
‘It was just the first silly guess I could come up with.’
‘So you would rather discuss silly things than reality.’
‘I would rather live in silly things than reality. I bet you would too, if it meant you could admit to me that you were a fantastical creature rather than whatever the actual thing is,’ I say, though don’t expect it to hit. No, Miss Hayridge, I am the very model of practical thought, I imagine, and instead get this long silence. This long silence, coupled with a ton of intense staring. Almost like he’s searching me for something.
Some lie or sense of how I came to such a conclusion.
Because I’m right. I’m so right his voice drops to a husky whisper when he responds.
‘Unfortunately, the only world we have is this one.’
‘Why do you think I like writing stories so much?’
‘Writing stories will not change that fact.’
‘No, but it feels like it does, for just a little while.’
‘Perhaps you are merely avoiding the truth.’
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’
‘It is if you forget to live in the meantime.’
‘I would willingly sacrifice being friends with people who don’t seem to like me anyway and parties at places I don’t really want to go to for worlds I create myself.’
‘And when you wake up at forty and realise that’s all you have?’
‘Is that what you did, Professor?’
He draws back then. Glances away.
Changes the subject.
Oh, God, he changes the subject.
As though the subject sets him on fire.
‘We are both reasonable adults, are we not?’
‘I think I just about qualify as reasonable.’
‘But you are most definitely an adult, and an intelligent and insightful one.’
‘I don’t feel intelligent and insightful when you say things like that to me.’
‘You think I condescend to you. You think this is mockery.’
‘No. I think flattery of any sort turns my insides to jelly.’
‘I assure you flattery was not my intention. I tell you the truth, nothing more.’
‘That only makes it worse, quite honestly. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say a kind word to anyone, and certainly not when you really meant it.’
‘My regard is hard won and easily lost, I freely admit.’
‘Am I losing it as we speak, Professor?’
‘I wish you were.’
Something happens after those four words escape out of him. He seems to jerk, as though struck, and for a moment the strangest expression dominates his face. It reminds me of the look people get when they wander into the wrong room by mistake, even though neither of us has moved an inch. And when I go to say something more to him, he turns away. He picks up the pages beside him and begins riffling through them, so briskly and professionally I can honestly believe there was nothing more to it.
Even though his voice when he finally speaks is just a little tight.
‘Before we go any further, I want to make one thing abundantly clear. Nothing I do or say will ever be anything other than the rightful attention a teacher may pay a student, no matter what words we may have occasion to say to one another or discuss. Is that understood?’
‘I never thought otherwise, honestly.’
‘Then from this point on we may proceed with perfect objectivity and professionalism? We may look upon your work as work, and not pay undue attention to the acts therein described?’
‘Yes, of course. I never meant to imply we wouldn’t.’
‘No question of impropriety?’
‘None at all.’
‘And you are capable of conducting yourself in such a manner.’
‘I am,’ I say.
Perhaps in that moment I even believe it. I am calm, as he goes through the rules for this. My heart isn’t hammering. My hands aren’t trembling. Everything he tells me seems to make a lot of sense.
Until he speaks, and then all I can think is:
I was right to not want him to say rude words.
‘Excellent. Now then, perhaps we can begin by examining where you went wrong here: “His cock is a tree root, heavy and thick – too heavy in truth for my tightly closed sex. He has to force his way into me, pushing and twisting until I give, his own slickness the only thing easing the way. Still though, oh, still it sings through me, to have him fill me like this. My body stutters with the pleasure of it before he moves, sweet enough that I could call it a climax. Certainly it undoes me far more expertly than anything I have ever given myself.”’
I take my time responding, in part because I have no real answer for him.
But also because everything he says renders me mute. I go to speak and only air comes out of me. All the words in the world fall down inside my body – though that might be a good thing. The ones that occur do not seem appropriate. They seem to focus a lot on the sound of his voice, rather than the point. I keep replaying the roll of his tongue around the R at the start of‘root’. The almost slick click of his teeth around the C at the start of ‘cock’. It takes me an absolute age to come up with anything.
And when I finally do it’s rubbish.
‘I have no idea.’
‘No clue at all?’
‘Not even a tiny one.’
‘So it is your honest belief that a woman can come through such rudimentary penetration? No attempt at arousing her, no mention of any previous ministrations that might allow her lover to sink in, softly and slowly and smoothly?’
He gestures with his hand, but I don’t see what the gesture is.
I try to avoid looking directly at it.
Or at him.
Or at anything that ever existed since the dawn of time.
‘Well…it…I…that was just…’
‘On page four you describe the following: “I run my tongue over him slow, slow, savouring the taste. It is too bitter to love yet still I am greedy for it. When he bucks into my mouth I welcome it – that sense of him using my mouth to sate himself.” Yet I see no corresponding scenes depicting her being readied for this.’
‘It just seemed more realistic that way.’
‘If realism was your aim then why have her achieving orgasm over so little? You said yourself that you wished for a new world entirely – so take it. Don’t linger in these half-measures, hampered by the tawdry reality of teenage boys who barely care if a woman is enjoying herself or not. Go the whole way. Show me how you believe she might be made to moan. Give me reasons for her cries of pleasure.’
His voice is bold, suddenly. Too loud and big. It swells to fill the room.
My voice when I answer is faint and faded – as if left too long in the sun.
‘What sort of reasons do you think there should be?’
‘To begin with: her clit is her primary sex organ.’
‘I see, so you want me to…’
‘I would like to see him lick it, at the very least.’
‘You would like that. You would like him to lick it.’
‘Indeed, yes. You spend a good three pages lovingly describing a woman sucking cock. I feel some similar attention to her quim might be warranted.’
I have to take a breath, then. A long, deep breath of air that I wish was fresh. As it is I just get a lungful of his book smell, now heavy with an undercurrent of something else. Something that seems suspiciously like deodorant working overtime to mask the scent of a body glossed with sweat – though there are no real signs of anything of the sort, on the surface. On the contrary: he seems completely composed and unmoved. He sits back in his chair with one hand ever so lightly resting on my work. Brow entirely untroubled; eyes as still yet sharp as ever. He could be talking about his elderly grandmother.
No, no, it’s me who is drenched.
Me who is probably filling the room with the sweet-thick smell of something faintly perfumed. Though really, could he blame me if I have? He said ‘clit’, as casually as others would say ‘cauliflower’. He trimmed it down to something you might grunt during a good hard fuck, and followed it with something that sounded like he might personally want it.
He wants to lick, I think.
Then struggle even harder to come up with a response. He’s waiting, now. Tapping his fingers on those papers impatiently, while I imagine his tongue curling around that very thing. Around my clit, around my quim. God, did he really say ‘quim’?
