The Professor

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.’