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How am I supposed to cope with him saying ‘quim’?
‘I will bear that in mind.’
‘At the very least show an awareness on the page that it exists. Show me how it feels to have her clit swell at the thought of him taking her.’
‘I could try. I will try.’
‘Give me her fingers sliding through her slippery folds, stroking over herself as he fills her and fucks her – let me see her dissatisfaction with his attempt at making her climax, when she knows she needs more, so much more. She strives for more, on the page. She aches for it.’
‘Yes. Yes. OK, yes,’ I say – too impatiently, I know.
But what else can I do?
He keeps saying things.
Christ, the things he says.
‘She is no longer willing to accept so slight an offering.’
‘No, of course not. No, why would she ever?’
‘She wants to come hard – with as much abandonment as he does.’
‘That seems reasonable to me.’
‘And when she does it…’
‘Yes?’
‘Tell me how her back arches.’
‘Yes, yes, I will.’
‘Tell me how she tightens around him, how her clit seems to burst beneath her fingertips, how her belly clenches as though a great fist has taken hold of it. Tell me all these things and then begin again, with all the ones I cannot possibly know, as a man. For you see, there is your advantage, Miss Hayridge. You may fully articulate what it is to be a woman, exploring what pleases her best. Never overlook that, in service of realism that is really only a reflection of male pleasure and male desire. The true reality is whatever a woman actually feels, and not what men have been erasing for the last thousand years.’
He has said many arousing things throughout this conversation. Most of which left me speechless, or at the very least unable to say more than a few breathless words. But none have the impact of that. It hits me hard, somewhere deep and low down. For the first time I fully acknowledge that I’m not just warm between my legs, or flushed through the cheeks and throat and chest. I am aroused, fully and completely. My pussy is as wet as it’s ever been; my nipples are two hard points trying to press through my bra and shirt and jacket. Every part of me is trembling, to the point where it must be visible.
But if it is he gives no sign.
He gives no sign of anything. He still looks completely calm about all of this. There is no flush in his cheeks. No tremble to his hand. I know there isn’t, because when he abruptly hands me a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover I see how firm and steady his grip is. And his tone when he next speaks is almost offhand.
Like it just occurred to him that we should finish up here.
Rather than it being a necessity, as it currently is to me.
‘Now, for next time I should like you to read some of the sex in this and note down all the ways where it goes completely wrong. Both because I want it to be absolutely clear that even great writers can fail on the details, and because I believe you are perfectly aware of what may be missing from your story – you simply have not had occasion to address it. Does that seem acceptable to you?’
It shouldn’t, considering the state I am now in. I should stop here, I know. Tell him that I have other engagements; explain that I feel I have learned enough now. The chance of me embarrassing myself is getting too close. Who knows what I will do during our next meeting, if the word‘clit’ puts me so on edge?
Yet when I open my mouth, all that comes out is this:
‘Of course, Professor.’
Chapter Three (#ua302d615-4fcb-5e50-92a8-226f88b0a3b1)
I am well prepared for the next session with him. The book has been annotated and circled and marked. I have thoughts on it to discuss with him, and questions to ask of him, and serious points to make – almost as though we are a real Professor and student, meeting to further my education. Which we are, we are, we are. There is no almost about it. It is an absolute fact, and I would do well to remember that.
I do remember that. As soon as I sit down opposite him, I open my satchel. I get out the copy of the book he gave me, without thinking once of how I fell asleep – with those pages spread over my face, so I could smell their papery smell and be reminded of certain things. And though I look at him, I avoid any part that might have once struck me as pleasant. His eyes, his mouth, the way he sits. The sheer bulk of him, crowding out every rational instinct and thought.
I even ignore new little details that shouldn’t matter at all.
That don’t matter at all. That never matter at all.
Like the fact that his trousers are checked today. Very faintly, and in big squares of the sort men in the nineteenth century favoured, but still. They seem strange on him – even a little wild. And his cufflinks, his usually plain silver cufflinks…they are gone and have been replaced by ones set with blood-red stones. Rubies, I think, but I could never say for sure.
Because I don’t care.
I only care about the work.
‘So I looked at Chatterley and have to say – I think it’s better than you give it credit for. Here look, this line: “He hated mouth kisses.” It might not explicitly state that he did it between her legs but what else could he possibly mean?’ I tell him, just as bright and breezy as can be. I even manage a little shrug of my shoulders and a finger-point at the passage.
Only to be dragged back to hell by the deep, dark rasp of his voice.
‘Did what between her legs?’
I look at him then, though I know it will be a mistake. And it is: his gaze is as challenging as his words are, nearly flat but with just the finest hint of something else. Amusement, my mind whispers – though I try to shake it off. I answer him with the words ‘kissed her’,in a calm and even tone.
But he just pushes harder.
As though he knows that I’m close to breaking.
‘Kissed her how? Kissed her where?’
‘Kissed her…kissed her clit.’
The word sizzles through me as hotly as it did when he said it.
Hotter, because for one moment I see a flash of something in his eyes. A brightness that dies as soon as it appears. Or at least I think so – he turns away before I can tell for sure.
‘I see. And you are prevented, as he might have been, from saying this?’
‘I just said it to you now!’
‘But not in your writing.’
‘All right, yes, that much is true.’
‘You have every opportunity open to you to say what Lawrence was either too ignorant or prohibited from actually saying. You can give perspective that many cannot, that indeed many would kill for.’
‘Would you kill for it, Professor?’
‘In what way exactly? What do you mean?’
His tone is so sharp suddenly that I look up from the spot I chose to focus on – a postcard pinned to the wall of a woman with hair as black and shaggy and thick as my own. And I’m glad I do, too. I get to see his eyes narrow, as though I made an accusation of some sort. I made him feel guilty, despite never intending to do anything of the kind. I didn’t even think about what the question might mean.
Until he reacts like this to it.
Like I said would you kill to know my thoughts, instead of anything more innocent.
‘I mean, would you like to be able to perfectly describe what women desire?’
‘I have no desire to ever write anything at all.’
‘No, not in terms of writing. Just in terms of how you feel.’
‘You honestly believe I have any kind of feeling about anything.’
‘A week ago I would have probably said you were made of granite.’
‘A week ago you were obviously far wiser than you seem to be now.’
‘Because I believe you might be made of flesh and bone?’
‘The granite guess was a great deal closer.’
‘You say that, but you have just spent hours and hours of your time trying to convince me that I should let imaginary women experience pleasurable sex.’
His eyes spark again – more obviously now.
So obviously it makes me shiver.
‘That hardly says anything about my emotional state.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘I rather find it my civic duty.’
‘I see. In what way?’
‘I find it of vital importance that men are not permitted to go away believing a woman can orgasm from the most basic of attentions. Or worse: that it doesn’t matter if she orgasms at all.’
‘That almost sounds like passion. Not really a civic duty.’
‘Not at all. Not in the least.’
‘Are you quite sure, Professor?’
He pauses before answering – though I’m glad he does. My heart is hammering too hard for me to carry on doing this for much longer. I feel as though it might be showing – that it might be juddering visibly through me. In fact, it seems to be going harder than when he spoke to me about sexy things.
Or so I think, until he says the sexy things again.
Quite abruptly, as if he understands what will happen when he does: I will lose focus. I will stop asking him questions he maybe doesn’t want to answer.
And he’s right.
‘On page fourteen you write about him coming in her mouth,’ he says.
Then I forget every single thing we were speaking of before. I forget the delicious idea that he might feel, beneath his cold, calm exterior. I forget how tense he suddenly looks, how bright his eyes suddenly are, how his hand goes to his tie as though checking it’s still there. The only thing I know is that he just said ‘coming’.
And is about to say more.
‘I think it’s lacking. It seems to me that you shy away from the idea at the last moment – as though you cannot quite bear to include such a crude thing in your story. In fact, several times I had that impression. That you wrote, “I taste him on my tongue”when what you really wanted to say was something far more visceral, and explicit.’
‘No, honestly, I –’
‘Something like: “He floods my mouth.”’
‘That…OK, that…seems like…’
‘Or perhaps: “He glosses my lips with his come.”’
‘I suppose I…I mean –’
‘Or what about: “His cock swells, thick ribbons surging from the tip to stripe my face and my throat, each one hot enough to sear and so slick it sets my senses on fire. Everywhere it touches seems suddenly more sensitive, more alive, and especially when it gets to the tip of my tongue. The taste of him is bitter and sweet at the same time; the idea of him filling my mouth enough to set my own sex on edge.” Though of course I would defer to you on how it feels to have a man come all over your face and tongue. What do you think, Miss Hayridge?’
I think I need to escape, now. Before he goes any further. Before I go any further, because oh, I so desperately want to. There are words on the tip of my tongue, filthy, impossible words, just reams and reams of unadulterated smut that I never fully dared express before. Not even to myself, while alone, with no one else around to ever see it. As though to even think it is a source of shame – so God knows what it would be if I expressed it out loud here and now. If I said to Professor Halstrom, of all people, that what I really want to say is:
I want you to do it.
I want you to come all over my face.
I want you to make a mess of me, to ruin me, to fill my mouth with fat, fierce ribbons of jism. I want to use the word ‘jism’ and see your face change, the way mine undoubtedly did when you said ‘quim’. And I want to do it all here, now, in this book-filled room with a door that barely closes, so that when you push me down to my knees and fuck into my mouth with your heavy cock I can thrill at the thought of anyone walking in at any moment. I can imagine us being caught doing the most illicit thing you can possibly dream up, and have you finish in my mouth all the same.
‘Miss Hayridge?’
I stand up too fast. So fast in fact that I knock over a stack of books to my right – though I don’t stoop to set them right. I don’t even gather up the pens that spill from my bag when I launch it on to my shoulder, or make calm and deliberate apologies of the sort I know he expects. Instead I simply blurt out that I need the bathroom, like a total fool, and head for the door before he can protest.
By the time he speaks again I’m out in the hall, breathing air that somehow seems eight hundred times fresher and cooler. It shouldn’t be – the ancient radiator on the wall is kicking out heat high enough to singe hair and the space is even smaller than I remember. But it remains the case, all the same.
Until I hear him.
‘Miss Hayridge, are you quite all right?’
He says it through the door, but through the door is too much. I jolt as if he shouted ‘fuck’ right in my face. Suddenly my heart is in my mouth again and my breaths are coming too short and too fast, and then I’m barrelling down the stairs in a way that seems inadvisable on the staircase to hell. Three steps from the bottom I almost trip over my own feet. My teeth snap together around my tongue and I taste blood.
But even that doesn’t change how I feel.
My body is more primed than it usually is after three hours spent writing the sex stuff that he just read out. I’m seething with it, bursting with it; every inch of me is crammed with a pulsing heat that I can’t seem to stop. I stand in the cool, blue and thankfully empty bathroom for twenty minutes, yet still feel the same at the end of it. Even after I splash my face with water, my hands are still trembling. My cheeks are still flushed – and I know this because I see them in the cracked mirror above the sink.
