There was never any confusion about their relationship.
They would most often meet at his house, the two of them: Dillon, his protege, finishing his masters course, and Dillon's young protege, Aubrey, still in her undergraduate but with a fine head for figures. Aubrey was very beautiful and very talkative and she would argue with Dillon endlessly about the finer points of practical implementation over theory. She would never, however, argue with him. Dillon and Aubrey were seeing each other, and had since she had started taking Dillon's course in applied mechanics early that September. It had been over a year, Aubrey was a senior now, and Dillon was close to completing his graduate program.
Aubrey had taken two of his courses before, one in the second trimester of last year and then another in the spring. This year she sat in the front row of the auditorium while he lectured about the differences between theory and implementation. He nodded to her politely when he discussed examples drawn from Aubrey and Dillon's own arguments.
Aubrey sat attentive in the front row, flanked by twenty students on either side, and around one hundred in the stadium seats behind her. He saw her so often in Dillon's presence that to see her quiet, eyes wide, listening, was notable. Also notable was the fact that she was not wearing panties.
It was not the first time. Last year during his spring class she had taken a seat in the front row, near the end, and worn short skirts to his lectures. It was hot and humid on the midwestern campus and she was far from the only young woman to dress for the weather. She was a tall girl, with long tan legs and firm ripe breasts that sat high on her chest when she wore a bra. When she didn't, which seemed to be every other week in the spring, her endowments sloped low in her light clothing. With the bra her cleavage was deep. Without it, her breasts were freer, loose, and her nipples raised two prominent nibs in the material. They pointed upward, he had noticed, towards the whiteboard. Last year she would slide her hands over her knees before she crossed her legs, a gestured forewarning. She laid her pen in the crease of her notebook where she kept meticulous notes (she paid fierce attention to his speeches, in the auditorium and in his home), and slid her palms over her toned thighs.
When he was looking in that direction (and it would not be wrong to assume she did it only when he was looking in that direction), she would slowly open and then cross her legs, flashing him the pale and obvious view of her vagina. She shaved, and the skin of her inner thighs as well as her pubic mound was as smooth as silk. Then she took her time rolling the skirt back down and returned to her notes. She did this every so often.
In the fall, sitting in the center of his front row, she did it once. She did not, however, cross her legs. She opened them, and below the soft dip of her white, linen skirt, he saw the unmistakable glisten of her wet pussy. As before, he did not stop his lecture. It entered his vision the same way the faces of his students did, temporarily and without concern.
He finished his major notes on the whiteboard and returned to a semi-open discussion about the finer points of the free market and where their studies would take them, depending on their chosen sector. At the end of the class he let them take their midterms from the stack on his desk. Most of them had done average to poorly. Aubrey had done much better. He knew her notes were meticulous because he had asked once while she and Dillon were in the midst of a conversation to look through them. Aubrey was better than Dillon in almost every way, his superior, and he had no doubt that she would go far if Dillon did not persuade her to keep house instead of going to Washington once they were married.
The dean of the school stepped in just as class was ending and he spoke with the man about the upcoming seminar on international trade while the students nervously swarmed his desk for their papers. When Aubrey took hers there would be a "See Me" note on her exam. His office hours were after class on Tuesdays.
After he'd spoken with the dean he packed his briefcase and turned off the projector, then collected the exams from those that had been sick or not taken them, and left the building for his office.
* * *
He was in the midst of a sea of papers on macroeconomics spanning dozens of decades when she knocked on his open door. He told her to come in and shut the door behind her.
She didn't smile. She hardly ever smiled at him. She smiled at Dillon, and kidded him, and rolled her eyes and grit her teeth at his joking asides. When she looked at him her eyes were bright, attentive, anxious. It was disconcerting to see a look of such intensity on her beautiful face. He sat in his chair for a moment in silence, regarding it, regarding her lithe body. She carried only her portfolio with her, and two thin books, and her purse. These were tucked into her hands and held in front of her, in front of the skirt. She wore sneakers, not flats, and athletic socks.
She pulled a stray strand of hair behind her ear. As long as she had worked with Dillon, and him, she had never been in his office before. She waited for him to speak.
"Dillon will be heading up the department's presentation on Central American trafficking abuses," he said. "You will be assisting him. The committee wants to see a thorough white paper before either of you go ahead, so that will need to be finished by the end of next month. Can you do that?"
"Yes," she said. "Thank you."
He waved his hand. "I would like to not recommend you," he said. "Your closeness to Dillon isn't against the rules but it's difficult for the committee to see that it isn't favoritism but merit. In fact I grade you harder than the others."
"Yes," she said. "I know. You marked me down for the same answer as Jacob. We compared tests."
"Jacob is as good as he will ever be," he said. "You shouldn't be casual with the sections you don't have as much interest in."
"The time was running out," she said. "I am better than him."
"Yes," he said. She remained rigid as a fencepost. "But I don't grade on potential."
"You lowered my GPA last year," she said. "I should have had an A-."
"Work harder," he said.
"I work harder than anyone. I work harder than Dillon."
"Yes," he said. The sounds of the hall outside, the school, seemed to fade, muffled by the pregnancy of their mutual silence. "You and Dillon are still together."
"Yes," she said. His eyes stayed on her eyes. They did not move down to watch the effect the steady increase of her breath was having on her chest. Her breasts rose in her sheer blouse with every pounded pulse beat.
"Put your things on that cabinet," he said. He pointed to the filing cabinet beside the door.
She looked at it as if it were a stranger just come into the room. She chanced a look at him, just briefly, and softly slid her books and portfolio on the cabinet top. She set her purse on top of it.
He stood up and strode to the office wall beside her and nodded at his desk. "Put your hands on it."
She licked her dry lips. Never had they been alone together, nor spoken quite so formally, but she obeyed as if this command was as familiar as her own breath. She walked past him to the desk, her skirt swaying, and leaned down, and slid her palms over the wood and the papers.
He locked the door.
He stepped behind her. And without a tremor, without pause, he took the hem of her skirt and lifted it over her bare ass. Its naked cheeks were pale. Between her legs he could see the clear trail of wetness on her inner thigh.
