Author's note:
All the characters in this story are eighteen years or older. The events described here are all subsequent to one particular eighteenth birthday.
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Afternoon
There are some things in life you can never prepare for. Afterwards Daffyd mused that all the warning in the world would still have left him startled and amazed. It was just one of those things.
Late afternoon. T-shirt warm, with enough breeze to bend the she-oaks and set them sighing. The track wound across the dunes, each rise and dip working upwards towards the head of the Bay and the views which were balm for his weary soul at the end of another day. Here amongst the shifting sand and the nodding grasses he could set aside the frustrations of trying to teach physics to high school students. Here he could let his mind blank with the exertion of the walk and the expectation of nothing more confronting than a cockatoo disturbed from feeding in the scrubby trees.
The route Daffyd took each day was rarely used by others: its ducking and weaving kept the sea hidden until the final climb to the headland, but he liked the sense of isolation and the chance to be himself by himself.
He pushed on, humming quietly, and unprepared.
Jo was lost. So deep in the sensation of the moment she was already past the point of no return. She guessed physics somehow governed the movements of her hand but this was more significantly an experiment in psychology. All she needed to do now was let it happen.
As Daffyd crested the dune he almost lost his footing in the soft sand. He stuck out a hand, steadied himself, straightened and looked up. Blue jeans caught his attention -- amidst the gold and greens of the hollow the contrast drew his eye. The jeans were crumpled around a girl's legs; she lay against the slope facing him, pale skin and copper-gold hair hunched over her hands at the junction of her thighs. Her left hand was hooked in cornflower blue panties while her right blurred out of sight beneath them.
Her head was down, focussed exclusively on the release her hand promised. Daffyd knew two things in that instant: she hadn't seen him, and he should make his retreat as quickly and silently as possible. But she was gorgeous -- her open blouse revealed small, creamy breasts crowned with puffed pink nipples. Her hair was a natural rich red, uncommon enough that Daffyd immediately knew who it was before him: Joanne Cooper! Branxholm High's resident geek, always hidden behind glasses and a layer of reserve keeping the world at bay.
The realisation rooted him to the spot, even as she began to utter intense little cries. "Ungh... ungh.. oh fuck, oh, fuck!" Her belly rippled as she curled further over her rapid fingers. Daffyd stood transfixed. The girl's face was flushed, her head tossed and her heels dug into the sand. "Oh fuck, oh yes, oh fuck, fuck!" and she was coming, jerking and trembling, crying out in the ecstasy of release, her face now an utter revelation. Inhibitions lost and her passion transparent in the intensity of the moment.
Daffyd struggled to take it all in. The sight of Jo Cooper shuddering her way to satiation was too unexpected, too surreal, too hypnotic for him to do anything other than watch.
Until she looked up.
Even as the last wave of sensation washed through her, she knew he was there. Still panting she raised her eyes, deep hazel green shining in the knowledge she was the focus of his shocked attention. And she smiled.
Evening
"Are you okay?" Daffyd glanced up, startled.
"Sorry?"
Karen asked again, "Are you okay? You've been really distracted all evening. I've hardly got two words out of you even when I asked about your favourite topic, the joys of convincing Branxholm's youth that physics is a noble subject." His wife's tone was gently bantering but he couldn't help notice the underlying concern in her voice. She was right: he was totally out of it, his mind in turmoil trying to deal with the afternoon's surprises. And what was he supposed to make of the smile?
He'd fled, pure and simple. The isolation of the track through the scrub no longer a comfort; instead, as he hurried from the vision in blue jeans, he imagined each turn in the track revealing some familiar small town face, someone who would somehow instantly divine teacher and student had shared much more than physics theorems in a hollow in the dunes.
And he'd panicked about what to say to Karen when she got home from a day bent over her architect's board and who wanted nothing more than to relax with a red wine and quiet meal. Logic told him to tell her immediately and to tell her everything. It had been pure coincidence, surely, that he'd come across one of his students masturbating in the bush? He had done nothing more serious than pause a moment too long before turning away, right? Then why the hell was he so reluctant to breathe a word to Karen?
And why did Joanne Cooper smile?
"It's nothing," he began. "Today was just a little more taxing than usual. Just trying to deal with teenage hormones. Theirs, not mine," he joked.
"Good," replied Karen, "because I'm going to need you fully present a little later tonight. I have an itch and you're the only one who can scratch it."
She smiled at him across the dining table, his wife of fourteen years. When they'd first met, he'd been blown away that she was at all interested in him. He had been a much too serious uni student while she was the centre of attention wherever she was and whatever she was doing. They'd shared one second-year maths subject, worked together on the set group assignment, and finished up -- somehow, improbably - in bed together.
She was tall, curvy and captivating. Where other girls shook long fake-blonde tresses and laughed too much at the posturing of the boys, Karen was all style. As now, she wore her brunette hair cut pixie short to reveal the long curve of her neck. As now, she favoured simple elegance over bling. As now, she exuded an air of confidence which made her at once totally desirable and unattainable.
She'd actually been quite lonely at Uni: the boys lusted after her but were either too lacking in self-confidence to approach her or too ego-driven to be of interest, while the girls disliked her because she revealed their shortcomings. Lonely until Daffyd came along. Yes, he was gobsmacked by her beauty but he'd simply focussed on working with her. That led to getting to know her and discovering her sense of fun and her interest in those around her, Daffyd included.
He remembered their first attempts at love-making -- uncertain kisses transforming into breathless hours of lips and tongues and whispered words of love and lust. The first time Daffyd had cupped her breast he'd been shaken by the strength of Karen's needful moan. Not surprisingly, he'd assumed she was far more experienced than he was. That urgent response to his caress stirred him. His own body ached to touch and be touched, but he refused to rush and the hours and days and weeks of their first explorations drove them deeper and deeper together.
Watching Karen's hips sway as she carried their dishes from the table to the kitchen, he realised he still felt that passion for her, that same desire to caress her and light her fires and meet her needs with his own.
