the attraction of her temporary vulnerability

She was a delicate person who appreciated the better things, cheeses, cooked meats, dips and antipasti, occasional good glasses of reasonable wine, and she had recently suffered a bad breakup from a long term partner that was still raw and brought sadness upon her when she discussed her weekend, her evenings, her future plans. He desired her all the more when he overheard her discussing the breakup with colleagues, and soon saw each little gesture that occurred between them as declarations of lust and invitations to intimacy. He trailed her around the corridors and attempted conversation, cornered her in the kitchenette and listened with a discomfiting attentiveness that made her eyes dart nervously, toward the tea-stained sink, toward the paper towel dispenser, toward potential escape routes. He stood very close by her at the filing cabinets and waited for her to bend to the lower drawers, and observed her doing so hungrily. If they slightly touched by way of error or accident he almost screamed with delight and gnawed down on his arm so as not to and felt himself stirring in the very front of his chinos. She bore some noted resemblance in both facial and vocal construct to an older or even old lady despite being several years his junior, and she sort of lisped her way through short sentences with particular care, turning each word over her tongue and through her little lips like worked candy until it they withered in parts, and something about the shape of the constituent parts of her face were in his mind synonymous with the elderly, the face itself strangely segmented like an insect’s body, and he found this combination of elderly mannerism and handsome and fuckable figure to be a profoundly attractive one, some fetishists amalgam of a weird duality.

During one lunch hour he passed her near the lake and they spoke, and he listened attentively, and in the sunshine, euphoric, he leaned in to kiss her mouth and did so, which with some reluctance she permitted, for the comfort of even mostly unwanted contact was great, and she knew she should move on in whatever ways were proffered and that it was fundamental to her recovery; her mouth tasted of old tea and crisps and was a feverish combination. Their teeth clashed like brawling beasts, as he urged himself onwards like a falling rock and she half-heartedly submitted and couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes. Her neck was incredibly thin and bore such beauty and she wore black suede desert boots as they did in the dreams he had. Emboldened by all he vocalised his desire to fuck her and provided an eloquent and numerically structured defence of his position and she laughed despite herself at the absurdity of it and was flattered a little and imagined her now ex-boyfriend and how out of character all of this was – or was thought to be – for her, for the old her, and how disgusted he would be, the prig, and he led her into the trees around the lake just feet away from the pathway but isolated anyway, and she consented and even felt a slight excitement at the possibility and at the seeing of a new body both along and inside of hers. He pulled her black jeans down and her underwear with them in a practised movement and they peeled away from her like skin and he left them in a ruffle at her ankles and ran his hands up her legs and between them and over her buttocks and between them and felt nauseous with anticipation. She leant forward slightly and rested the hands of her extended arms against a tree trunk as though in self-defence and he parted her legs and slipped it in and fucked her very hard in measured strokes that he counted in his head. They could hear the conversation of a fisherman at one of the jetties around the lake’s circumference, as noise rather than distinct words, and his heels sank into the sandy earth. When he came, which he did quickly, he pulled himself out and she was still doubled over and though she hadn’t come her thighs felt unsteady regardless and he knelt down and with one or two hard flicks ran his tongue around the site of her anus as appetizing as chocolate cake; she recoiled when she felt it and turned and fixed her clothes and felt very grim, the sun lost behind clouds, the chill of early spring unpleasant on her thighs, the smell of dogshit from the many local walkers who made use of the extensive grounds festering at the back of her throat like a deployed bioweapon, the brutalist concrete structures of the university so sheer and grey and suddenly stark that she felt entirely devoured and consciously so.

They walked back to the office separately, and although she didn’t cry she wanted to, and although he did he didn’t. He heard her throwing up well into the afternoon, and waited dutifully outside the ladies toilet to be there for her, to listen attentively while she got things off her chest whatever they may be or however they might relate to his performance or whatever which she had of course encouraged, to help; after a few minutes his manager asked him what he was doing and he returned apologetically to his work, although turned round regularly to try to catch sight of the opening door. The vomiting stopped but he didn’t hear the girl emerge, only large groups of female colleagues entering the toilet to see if she was okay, though they couldn’t possibly care as he did, or listen as attentively as he would to the problems or challenges she might face, of that he was certain. He could feel her secretions entangling his pubic hair, could smell the meaty tang of coitus through the fabric of his trousers. She really was very beautiful.