This is the sequel to "The Darkroom".
There were no words to do justice to her preoccupation. She would lose herself in the memory of her encounter, the world of academia around her dissolving into a passionate darkness. Her eyes would grow glassy at dinners with her friends, promptings of "Ciara? Houston, we have lost Ciara!" jolting her back to the conversations. Her classes were automatic, routines of writing and studying that she accomplished without the benefit of conscious attention. She was a wreck.
And yet she was so enraptured that she barely noticed. Her mind lingered on the sound of his breathing over her shoulder, her body electrified at the memory of his touch. She trembled as he entered her in memory, his thrusts endlessly repeated in the confines of her imagination. She told no one of her time in the darkroom, how exhilarating it had been to let a strange man fuck her. Surely no one had the context to understand what she felt.
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Slipping on her bathrobe after a long shower, she luxuriated in the sensation of terry cloth against skin. She met her own eyes in the mirror, a tiny smile playing about the corners of her lips. She liked the way she looked, her long black hair tousled and damp, her green eyes intense and aware. She was comfortable with herself in a manner that belied her twenty years.
She very nearly brained a tall, well-built young man with the bathroom door as she exited, lost as ever in her thoughts. He jumped back, chuckling softly.
And then their eyes met, and they both knew what the other also knew... "It's you." Time froze.
She swept her eyes over him, taking him in. He was undeniably handsome, and he held himself with a quiet confidence that mirrored hers, but it was his eyes that were positively enrapturing. They were a brown so dark that it bordered on black, and though they were as wide as saucers there was no fear in them.
Saying not a word, she memorized his features and turned around, her movement smooth but her hands shaking. She walked purposefully back to her room, closing the door behind her and leaning against it for a long time.
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His name was Simon. He lived alone two floors above her. She mulled this over as she placed the student photo directory back on the shelf over her desk. How many minutes had she stared at his image, her hair drying as it fell about her shoulders? How could she have missed meeting this man with the piercing eyes before now?
She felt the reverie of the past weeks slip from her. Taking a sheet of paper, she wrote a note in neat script.
I will be on the top floor of the library at 6:00 tonight. If you need a signal to recognize me, I will be wearing a blue dress. βCiara
She had his room number. Excitement pulsed through her as she folded the note and rose to dress for her day of classes.
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