Oleandra Labrecque had some time to kill before her three o'clock geography class, and, not being a social butterfly by nature, gravitated as usual to the isolated, quiet, cocoon-like atmosphere of one of the back tables on the third floor of the university library.
Though she often studied here, reading assigned articles or books for different classes, on some occasions she would indulge her other hunger, ferreting out from the stacks random books, largely fiction, involving explicit descriptions of sexual things. Many of them were classics of their genres and, like her present selection, De Sade's "Philosophy in the Bedroom", were the kind of books she had only read about before now. The works of the Marquis she had heard of referenced in other books as ones of consummate depravity. She would not have had the courage to check out this kind of book, though it was not the opinion of the students working at the library checkout that truly concerned her. She did not like the idea of being caught reading them by roommates, friends or family members in a more casual setting. So instead she satisfied herself by consuming their controversial content in semi-clandestine fashion.
Depending on the book, some offering more disappointment than others, it was inevitable that she would sometimes become sexually aroused. The anatomy of her arousal varied. In some cases she found the language exciting, at other times the story, though in her hunger she sometimes scarcely could stomach the non-sexual parts and would skim past them questing for wickeder words to satisfy her appetite. Sometimes it would be the particularly quality of a lewd act, which was not always necessarily the most perverse but which was new or different and appealing as a thing she might one day like to try with a real lover.
Usually she would try her best not to touch herself while reading, being a sensible girl and knowing full well that she was in a public place. Sometimes she would slip into the nearby restroom to attempt some relief in a bathroom stall, in which was not very easy for her to make herself comfortable enough to reach orgasm, nor did she find that setting particularly arousing, though she had read enough to understand that some do. Other times, sitting back in a chair at a table while no one was around, she would position a book's spine in her crotch and grind it hard against her aching mound, providing sufficient clitoral friction for a good come. Today she felt lazy, and desperate, and the third floor seemed perfectly miserable and deserted at two o'clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday, so she slouched down uncomfortably in the hard wooden chair and slipped her right hand down the front of her loose grey sweatpants and into her cotton panties and adjusted the book on the table to be able to read while she touched herself. Though desperate, Oleandra was a person who was by nature always aware of her surroundings. She'd surveyed the empty chairs and vacant tables while selecting her seat, and reasoned that she would likely hear footsteps in plenty of time to extract her extremity from her pants prior to any embarrassing encounters with passers-by.
"Voluptuaries of all ages, of every sex, it is to you only that I offer this work; nourish yourselves upon its principles: they favor your passions, and these passions, whereof coldly insipid moralists put you in fear, are naught but the means Nature employs to bring man to the ends she prescribes to him; hearken only to these delicious Promptings, for no voice save that of the passions can conduct you to happiness."
She could not have explained to anyone why exactly she was drawn to investigate such a seemingly unsavory subject, and, having been raised in the methodically nonsensical doctrines of a Catholic household, she had much guilt about her own curiosity. Perhaps in an enlightened an eloquent moment she would have been able to say that she was trying to be wise, like Mithridates, in inuring herself to evil. Or she would quote Yeats about the only two things of interest to a serious and studious mind. These intellectual expressions, however, would only have hinted at her actual aspiration, which she had already been working at for a while, to amass in her brain an encyclopedia of erotica which would both inspire her own imagination, and with which she would be able to effectively combat sexual ennui.
Apart from any lofty scholarly motivations, she understood that some of her curiosity was a product of her unintentional sexual starvation. Unbelievably untouched until the age of nineteen, she'd fallen for a boy she'd met in high school, and had spent the last several years relentlessly soliciting his frustratingly reluctant attentions, only to be rewarded with a few magically passionate kisses and a chaste but carnal panty-clad make-out session on his nineteenth birthday. That boy was gone now, far away and in the army, though she found it decidedly difficult to forget about him, or the delectable fire of his kisses. He had left her a virgin, which in a figurative way made it seem that she was vulnerable to being sacrificed to any dragon that happened to notice her, though it also seemed that no dragon would bother himself to notice an invisible girl. She was unspeakably lonely.
In reading the first paragraph of the book a second time, to solidify her understanding of the words, she did not know if she considered herself to be a voluptuary, though she was fairly certain she did qualify as voluptuous. Her own father, who had a copious collection of colorful turns of phrase, had said, in a paternally affectionate and not at all inappropriate way, that she was "built like a brick shithouse."
Distracted either by her forlorn musings, or the contemplation of the reading maquterial in front of her, she did not notice the figure who came up quietly and quickly behind her, crouching a bit behind her chair on the right side and who put his mouth quite close to her ear and whispered, "Please, don't stop."
Of course she had glanced about the place before delving into her drawers, but her footstep theory was obviously flawed.
