“Come to mama!”
He grinned at her and reached to remove her knickers.
Elena leaned back on her elbows and opened her legs wide in invitation.
“Oh yes!” murmured Joe, and with a pleasing lack of subtlety, set to work, licking her sensitive flesh.
He looked up at her with his blue eyes as he sucked and nibbled her clit. She groaned and put a hand on the back of his head. She could feel her climax starting to gather and then he slid a finger inside her and stroked that sensitive spot.
Elena came hard, jerking and shuddering, and he continued to work at her. Another climax followed swiftly on the heels of the first and she shrieked, her feet drumming on his back as she crushed his head between her thighs and arched off the bed.
After she relaxed, he sat back on his heels, his face sticky and smug.
“Not bad, Joe,” she murmured, her arm over her face, “I hope you’re as good with your cock as you are with your tongue.”
He was not hugely endowed but he had good staying power, holding out until she brought herself off once again with her fingers, her climax precipitating his own.
Joe collapsed on to the bed beside her and was asleep within moments. She smiled and lay back, staring at the ceiling and full of delicious post-coital emptiness.
***
Later, she went to the communal kitchen to get a drink and found Adonye stirring something in a pan on the cooker.
“Got yourself some action!” he crowed as he saw her. “Mebbe you now not be such an uptight bitch!”
Elena stared at him disbelief as he sauntered over, chuckling, and cuffed her on the shoulder.
“Get your fucking hands off me!” she hissed, and he recoiled, hands raised, from the naked fury in her face.
“Easy! Easy!”
Elena carried on staring at him as he retreated to the cooker and turned away. She grabbed a cold can from the fridge and slammed the door. On the point of leaving, she changed her mind and went to stand behind him, biting the words out.
“Mind. Your. Own. Fucking. Business. Adonye.”
His shoulders hunched a little, but he didn’t respond, except to mutter, “Uptight bitch,” as she left the room.
Trotting up the stairs, she felt off balance. She hadn’t ramped up to her anger, it had been like a switch inside her, unleashing instant white-hot rage. The violence of the moment made her wonder, if she’d had a knife, might she have stuck it in him?
When she got back to her room, Joe was gone. There was a note on the bedside table.
‘That was fun. Maybe we’ll run into each other again sometime.’ It was signed simply ‘J’
She sat on the bed feeling vaguely used. Adonye, Joe, two sides of the same coin. No depth.
***
Jack
December
She and Adonye avoided each other, and Michelle gave her poisonous looks. She found more excuses either to stay in her room or to go out. She ought to look for new accommodation, but rooms were like hen’s teeth in this university town, and that was all she could afford. On top of that they were either nice but expensive or cheap and shabby.
The Joe episode made her depressed. Not that she didn’t enjoy casual sex, nothing wrong with the odd tumble but she was aware she wanted something deeper – and not with someone with an agenda.
André was the last one to match that need but he was now gone to Canada to follow his career. She couldn’t blame him, she’d probably have to move several times, maybe abroad and back, in the next ten years to find a position, and she couldn’t see any potential partner putting up with that.
And then there were the Adonyes of this world. Part of it came from being an only child she noted gloomily. Not used to keeping her feet in the hurly burly of her peers. Now she felt oddly guilty about the kitchen episode. There should have been a better way to manage that.
Sighing she turned back to her paper and tried to bring some thought to bear on “The Spatial Distribution of Galaxies with z>5.”
Curiously, thoughts of Floppy Hat Girl floated to the surface from time to time. Chiefly those eyes. She didn’t even know what colour they were.
***
Shopping for groceries in the supermarket a couple of weeks later, she ran into the only other woman in her field. Meredith Mitchell was the epitome of a female physical sciences student, not much concerned with her appearance other than to be clean. Elena liked her.
“Hi Elena, how’s it going?”
Elena grimaced.
“That good, huh? Want to grab a coffee?”
There was a small cafeteria in the back of the supermarket. Surprisingly the coffee was very good, and Elena gave the girl serving them an appreciative little nod. She flushed and smiled back; compliments are thin on the ground in the service sector.
Meredith selected a cup of drinking chocolate and a pain au chocolat. Elena eyed them warily.
“Chocolate is my one weakness,” Meredith explained. “Now, what’s the problem?”
“I don’t think my supervisor is terribly interested. He thinks my project is a waste of time and that girls don’t belong in the physical sciences.”
“You’ve got Professor Edwards, haven’t you? He’s a terrible fossil, why they haven’t retired him I don’t know.”
“They’re hoping he might get a Nobel for a piece of work he did thirty years ago.”
“Wow! Really?”
Elena sighed, “It’s a long shot for them. Current developments make his work less likely to be proved. Still, he is – or was – pretty important. I’d hoped a little of that lustre might rub off on me. At this rate I’ll be lucky to finish my thesis.”
Meredith changed the subject. “How’s your love life?”
“What’s one of those?” Elena said, wearily.
The other woman blushed deeply, and Elena’s eyes widened. “Meredith Mitchell, are you getting laid?”
“I can report high levels of satisfaction in the research area labelled ‘bedroom’. And the library.” She looked over the rim of her cup, daring Elena to be shocked. Which she was!
“You animal! Who is he?”
“What makes you think it’s a ‘he’?”
Then she added, coyly, “Or that it’s just a ‘he’?”
Elena’s mouth hung open. Meredith giggled. “I’ve been wanting to tell someone for days.”
She took hold of Meredith’s forearm where it lay on the table.
“Tell. Me. Everything!”
And so she learned of Meredith’s meeting with Sanjay Kumar and his girlfriend Alison Waite at a drinks party in one of the colleges. And how, after a glass of wine or three, or four, they’d gone back to Alison’s room and fallen into bed.
Elena stared at her. “How come you get all the good stuff? I’ve only had the one shag since André buggered off to Montreal.”
“No! Elena, you’re gorgeous, why are you not fighting them off with a stick?”
She shrugged and looked out into the store. “I dunno, Merry. I think it’s because I want a connection; I think I want someone to love.”
“We all want that, Elena, but while I’m waiting, I’ll take all the sex I can get!”
***
The seasons turned, summer relaxed into autumn, and winter followed right along. Adonye and Michelle moved out although, technically he hadn’t been living there in the first place. Michelle made way for Elizabeta, a quiet Serbian that kept herself very much to herself.
Elena’s dissertation ground on until she was terminally sick of the sight of it. Professor Edwards gave every impression that he expected her to crash and burn.