Dee’s hands tightened against her thighs, her breath quickening in the dark and silent room, her eye steady against the telescope. The boy/man she was watching had perfect skin, velvet black enhanced with an intricate pattern of ochre stripes. He was seated in the traditional position with his didgeridoo stretched out before him as he played, and against the backdrop of a colourless, grey dormitory wall he looked startling primitive. Like a time traveler.
The only other occupant of the room was a pale, naked dancer, her arms writhing above her head in a sinuous parody of the corroboree he had danced earlier that evening as his visiting troupe had performed for the graduating arts students. Her feet stamped the soft carpet in a mimicry of his dust-raising movements, her full breasts jiggling provocatively above him.
She was at one moment a striking snake with her head and arms stabbing the air, her long straight hair a swirl of arctic white. Then a hunter stalking, crouched low to the ground with the enticing curve of her buttocks thrust backwards.
The boy's gaze followed her around the room as he played, yet their eyes never met. Her attention seemed always on the intricacies of her dance. She was the hunter returning with a kill, throwing it beside the fire for the women to prepare.
Then in a side-step the hunter was gone, his power melting away to reveal a shy young lubra, touching her unkissed lips, trailing hesitant fingers down the pale column of her throat to rest on new-budding breasts. She cupped them, offering them as she finally met the boy's eyes, and on her face was an expression of such innocence, Dee caught her breath and the musician faltered, his lips falling away from the didgeridoo.
For a moment they were still. Then he scrambled to his feet and stood ready, only to have her draw back, enclosing her breasts and pubis in a chastity belt of splayed fingers. Blonde hair fell forwards as she nodded at the instrument still held in his hand.
He frowned, returning the end-piece experimentally to his mouth and was rewarded by the immediate removal of her hands. More, she raised them and shimmied her shoulders, setting her full breasts into motion. Their rolling progress mesmerised him as he resumed playing, the didgeridoo now angled sharply down to the floor, at an opposing angle to his thick black penis.
Like a gun barrel, it pointed waveringly at the girl as she danced closer, feet shuffling astride the instrument until her blonde pubic hair brushed its solid length. Hers arms wide and undulating, she rode the hard vibrating wood, pressing her pubis against it in an ecstasy of trembling thrusts. Then gradually, her gyrations became slower, more voluptuous, and her head fell back, lips parted. The musician laid his instrument carefully on the floor he knelt before her, and the girl, hips thrust forward invitingly, remained still. A virgin on the altar.
He steadied her, his fingers like black piano keys against the ivory of her hips, then he leant in, his tongue spearing out to invade the nest of blonde curls between her thighs. She trembled, then -
Thump.
Dee and she swivelled her chair to face the door, instinctively tilting the telescope she'd been using to angle it away from the student dormitories towards the night sky.
Light from the hallway flooded her office, making her blink.
"Sorry, Dr Williams."
Simms, one of the cleaners, stood in the doorway, his stooped shoulders and grizzled head haloed in light. His face was completely shadowed.
"Didn't mean to disturb you," he said, lowering his head a little as though he was squinting. "Must have knocked something down."
"I’ll fix it up," Dee answered calmly, her quickened breathing already coming under control. It wasn't the first time she'd been disturbed, although the last had been over two years ago. The book balanced on top of the door had saved her from discovery yet again.
She allowed herself a few seconds to calm the adrenalin rush before she slipped deliberately into what James called her lecturing tone. "I'm working late on some observations." She nodded towards the telescope. "My Third Years have been studying the latest Internet pictures of the Hubble telescope's observations of Europa. I wanted to reacquaint myself with the amateur view."
An escaped strand of hair had fallen across her eyes and she poked it back into her deteriorating ponytail as she waited for Simms reply. It took some time.
Finally, he said, "Right. Astronomer stuff."
"Precisely." In the ten years she'd practiced her hobby, Dee had discovered the best way to conceal something was to distract attention from it. And not only to distract, but to attack if necessary.
She swiveled back to her telescope, frowning. "I'm sure I've bumped this off target." Glancing at the luminous dial of her watch she added, "That moon will be behind Jupiter shortly. I hope it doesn't take me another half an hour to find it."
Her implication hit home and Simms started to back out the doorway. "Sorry, Dr Williams. I know I'm supposed to do the offices in the afternoon. But I had this emergency, and when I came back and it was dark in here, I thought — "
"Understandable," Dee cut him off, pretending to be absorbed with adjusting the view-finder. "The darkened room was necessary. If I don't eliminate the light it reflects off the lens, somewhat like driving with the interior lights on in a car." She kept her voice deliberately vague, listening to the shuffle of retreating feet.
"Right. Well, I'll come back tomorrow — "
"Fine." She waved a dismissing hand, continuing her charade with the telescope.
A second later the room was in darkness again, and as the door clicked softly, she allowed herself a quiet sigh. Footsteps echoed along the passageway and down the stairs, fading into silence. Only then did she move to reposition the book.
Feeling her way across the room, she retrieved the sprawled volume and eased the door ajar, balancing it atop the opening. Then she paused, her sensitive nostrils detecting a stale beer odour hanging in the air. Mr Simms' emergency had obviously involved alcohol. A wake? She was probably being generous. She’d heard the other staff talking about him, and while she felt a measure of sympathy for his loneliness, her main sentiment was relief that it had been Simms who’d disturbed her. A drunken old man was unlikely to be taken seriously if he chose to discuss her nocturnal activities with someone more perceptive than himself. Her secret was safe. But a niggle of guilt pursued her back to the telescope, marring her complacency.
You should be working, it said as she sank back into the soft leather of her chair.
Silhouetted mounds of student lab book occupied one corner of her desk, awaiting assessment, and within her dormant computer lay unfinished reports on her research project — reports that were already overdue. She should make a start somewhere. But the telescope was like a lover she couldn’t resist, so she thought instead of the couple she'd been watching. They'd shown such promise.
Unfortunately a quick adjustment of the view-finder revealed a disappointingly darkened room and Dee cursed Simms' timing. Friday night in the dorms was normally a bonanza for the avid voyeur, but a rock concert in Brisbane had all but cleared the building. And now, the only couple who'd been active had either gone out or were continuing their cultural exchange under cover of darkness.
Sighing, she scanned the rooms again, hoping for late arrivals, but the pickings were slim. It was either back to the paperwork or settle for observing of a young man alone in his room. The lab books called to her, but the solitary form lying reading on his bed piqued her curiosity. She knew this boy. He was Billy McKenzie, one of her First Years — a particularly diligent student who wrote brilliant assignments but sadly seemed to have no social life.
Her trawling of the dorms had never revealed any sexual activity in Billy's room, and for that reason she'd paid him scant heed. Tonight, however, she was prepared to make up for the oversight.
Summer had come unseasonably early, and in response to the sultry heat, Billy lay on his bed clad only in a pair of brief underpants. Slowly and with a connoisseur's attention to detail, she mapped the lineament of his body, revelling in the discovery that his campus uniform of jeans and a western shirt had disguised a magnificent physique.
In the quiet of the darkened office her breathing sounded overly loud as she watched him flicking pages, the book propped atop his ample chest. Although the overhead light was on, he had angled his bedside lamp to better illuminate the book, guilelessly casting a golden hue over his statuesque form. His knees were bent, affording her a good view of his muscular thighs, and when he rolled on to his side exposing a broad, beautiful back, she murmured appreciatively.
Adjusting the eyepiece to gain a wider view, she let her gaze drift over the curve of his waist and then down over the tight buttocks barely concealed beneath his plain navy briefs.
As a hardened voyeur, Dee was normally only stirred by physical intimacies, but there was something about the solidity, the bulky musculature of this lone body on the bed that intrigued her.
She tried to focus on the book but his shoulder blocked her view. Was it course literature? A novel? Pornography? She panned back to the taut buttocks, licking her lips as the now familiar sensations overcame her — the quickened breathing, the dry mouth, nipples that tingled and longed to be touched. She could feel the cycle starting, the wakening of a visceral pulse that would hound her relentlessly until she achieved orgasm.
Masturbation — her usual recourse, had become too repetitive to supply anything more than the gratification of releasing tensed muscles. Increasingly she craved intimacy, and tonight she planned to seduce James into providing the necessary physical stimulation. If he was 'tired' again she might need to revisit the idea of making him jealous. It had seemed disloyal, and too much like game-playing to be worthy of her intelligence, but resentment had begun to flourish and she knew that never went to a good place.
Male colleagues had been giving her interested glances for years, so it wouldn’t be difficult to manufacture an admirer. It was only her status as the Dean's wife that had saved her from more obvious overtures in the past. That, and her own apathy. For the fifteen years of their marriage sex had been a comfortable stress-reliever, a way to satisfy her normal human desire to be touched, and as James had grown older and less attractive, the telescope had been her tool for arousal.
Unfortunately the titillation of her once a week hobby was fast becoming an every-second-night obsession. At thirty-six she appeared to be reaching her sexual peak exactly at a point in James' life where he found it all a bit tiresome, and it struck her suddenly that there might be some perverse connection between the two. Could he be pushing her away deliberately, now, when she needed him the most?
Dee sat back from the telescope, and frowned. That was an unworthy thought. If anyone was to blame for not foreseeing this, it was hers. James was two decades — a whole generation her senior and he'd married for love, not some perceived future. She had, however looked to the future as an escape from her past, and there'd been no rose-coloured glasses to mar her expectations. Although in fairness to herself, fifteen years ago she could never have imagined this merry-go-round of desire and frustration taking hold of her. Not again.
She shivered, quickly suppressing the painful memory. She was in the now. Old ghosts couldn't hurt her anymore. At least that’s what she hoped, but as memories clamored inside her she deliberately leant back in the chair and dropped into the rhythm of the slow breathing the psychiatrist had taught her. Then on impulse, she unbuttoned her silk shirt and opened it, letting the slight breeze that carried the gum blossom scent up to her window caress her chest, cooling her down. It soothed, and helped her focus her mind.
She was a happily married woman, she must remember that. And her current sexual absorption was a mere phase that would, hopefully, soon pass.
But it didn't pass last time, a little voice whispered. It was stopped. And her hand fell unconsciously to cover her abdomen.
Shakily, she drew in another lungful of the fragrant night air. The past is gone.
Happily married. Happily married. She repeated the litany, staring out the window at the chequerboard pattern of lights blurred in the distance, the dorm building.
Inside that was a body on a bed — a tool for arousal.
She straightened and went back to the viewer to Billy was still reading. Blissfully unaware.
He was also tantalizingly passive, and the analytically part of her mind, the place inside her that remained aloof amid the most torrid voyeuristic scenes was critical of that. It questioned whether this form of static stimuli would be enough to keep her aroused through the inevitably slow-foreplay that would be required to coax James into an erection.
There was no denying the symmetrical perfection of Billy's back, and beyond her desire, the sensuality to his pose elicited an artistic appreciation, as though he was a sculpture she was studying. She traced it with imaginary fingertips, finding it smooth, firm to the touch, and warm. Perhaps if he moved…?
Move him with your mind.
She licked her lips, then bit the lower one. She'd made a rule. A sensible rule that said no fantasising about subjects, particularly ones you had to teach. Never create, simply observe. In that way she'd ensure there could be no emotional involvement. But tonight her reckless libido pressed her to do more, try more, insisting Billy was harmless. She might as easily fantasise about the aboriginal dancer or old Simms for all the danger it presented. There was no chance of her becoming emotionally involved with any of them.
There would be an inherent risk in fantasising about a colleague, someone who might tempt her in the real world. But Billy? He was just a boy. A boy in a man's body, admittedly. But still a boy. She stared at him pensively as the internal arguments went on, guilt and justification. Then her litany, only a body, it's only a body, repeated itself inside her mind and the angry voices faded into silence — a warm lethargic silence that whispered with sensual currents. Why fight the inevitable? Nothing short of intercourse would satisfy her tonight and if fantasising about one of her students would keep her aroused long enough to seduce James, then so be it.
Settling deeper into her comfortable leather chair she smiled to herself. Then was unsure why she had. A barrier had been broken, but why would that please her? It was strange, but the reason eluded her so she concentrated on Billy’s back, opening herself to the fantasy, imagining herself inside his room watching him from a darkened corner. He would continue to read and she would caress his bare flesh with her eyes, revelling in its texture and warmth. He might move occasionally, his muscles flexing beneath the tanned skin and she would imagine her lips over those muscles, absorbing their flow. Then after a particularly breathtaking stretch he would tire of the book and roll on to his back…
Then… what? Dee didn't want to touch Billy, even in a fantasy. That would be stretching her rules too far. She thought for a moment, then decided to invent a woman for him and watch them make love.
But who, and how?
With her fantasy stalled, Dee struggled to recall what she knew of Billy. Unlike most of her undergraduates, she did know something about him. A colleague, determined to rub Dee's nose in her hick background had told her he was from Dulacca, not far from her own home town of Taroom in Western Queensland.
At the time Dee had shown only cursory interest, taking the slur on the chin, but Billy's wheat blond hair and open, honest face had stuck in her mind, reminding her of the life she'd left behind. No doubt he'd have the slow, drawling speech pattern that identified people from the West — the same pattern she'd worked so diligently to eliminate from her own. He was a country boy then. He'd want a country girl. Perhaps a girl that rode horses.
Or… a girl that would ride him?
Yes. Dee visualised a diminutive redhead with creamy skin and ginger freckles. Dressed only in a cowboy hat and boots, she'd push him down on the bed and mount him like a jockey, her breasts swaying over him as she slid his stallion size penis into her moist depths.
Oh yes, that was good. Dee smiled to herself, warming to the fantasy, feeling her own flesh respond to the fantasy woman's actions. He'd buck but she'd grip tightly with her knees as she rode him, her long soft hair brushing his chest as he reached up to…
Suddenly Billy rolled on to his back and dropped the book to his side. Dee’s fantasy halted in its track.. An erection was straining the front of his briefs and for a disorientating moment she believed her thoughts had aroused him. She blinked a couple of times, trying to clear the fantasy haze from her mind and reconnect with reality. Billy lay rigidly straight on the narrow bed and his arms, stiff at his sides, ended in balled fists. She could see his eyes were clenched tightly shut.
She stared at the evidence of his arousal — her arousal — for the two seemed mentally intertwined. His chest rose and fell heavily, and she unconsciously matched her breathing to his. Then he dived off the bed to pace around the room, his hands gripped tightly behind his head.
"Oh, my," she whispered. He was a magnificent specimen. Michelangelo material.
He stopped at the huge picture window, his hands splaying on the glass as he stared out into the darkness, not realising that a mile away Dee could see him as clearly as though he was in the next room.
His body demanded all her attention but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the tortured expression on his face. Was there some reason he couldn't masturbate? A medical problem? A moral one? She'd been witness to the act a hundred times before and was eager for Billy to give himself the release his body craved. But for an interminable time he simply stared out at her. Unconsciously, her breathing grew heavier as she waited, hoping.
Then finally, as though in obedience to her wishes, one of his hands slid off the glass and came to rest on the top of his chest. His forehead dropped to the glass, his hair falling forward to obscure his face so she couldn't tell whether he was staring down at his erection or if his eyes had closed. He would feel completely safe standing there in the window. The bush land around the building precluded anyone from seeing him from the ground. He would be staring out into the darkness, seeing only the tops of trees, never suspecting he was her plaything.
Then slowly, so slowly that Dee felt faint from anticipation, the hand on his chest eased down to his waist. His shoulders rose and fell with his obviously laboured breaths, then as his hand paused, Dee saw the heaviness inside his underpants twitch.
Gradually the large hand slid lower until it was just above the band of his briefs, resting on the tensed muscles of his abdomen. Dee held her breath and for a timeless moment she felt connected, as though his breath was her breath, his hand was hers resting on skin that trembled with sensual expectation. Inside her mind they were one creature reaching for a pleasure they could share. And then he moved, pulling his hand away and raising it to slam his closed fist against the window.
Dee flinched, expecting the glass to shatter with the force but it held. Then he raised his head, his teeth gritted in frustration and Dee felt an alien emotion grip her. It was a total simpatico of spirits, hers and Billy's. Lust, fear and compassion churned inside her and in that instant she felt the barriers of her voyeurism collapse. She had fallen over the line, and though she tried to pull back the analytical part of her mind had shut down.
She wanted to be there with him. Really there, not just in her mind. She wanted to slip into his room and take that throbbing penis he was so loath to touch, inside of her. She wanted to feel the heaviness of his body pressed against hers, smell the warm clean scent of his arousal and taste the strength of his flesh against her lips. And above all, she wanted him to stop torturing himself.
So intense was the feeling that for a moment she pulled away from the telescope, closing her eyes against the anguish that seemed to fill her body. Somewhere inside her mind a litany was repeating, only a body, it's only a body, but it was too late, they were connected somehow. And she had to get that out of her head. He was a boy. Little more than half her age, just eighteen. She flung the hurtful words at herself, trying to punish the pain away — to sever the link between them, but in the next minute she was back at the telescope, hungry to see him, knowing her denials were a lie. He was a man. She was a woman. She wanted more of him than just to look..
For a second she couldn’t find him in the room and had to pan around until she found him by the dresser pulling on shorts and sneakers, his movements jerky and uncoordinated, and she swallowed back the lump that was forming in her throat. Stupid, school-girl longings filled her chest, the shards of desire cutting into her heart. She full of pathos, as if she was drunk.
Billy slammed out the door and she angled the sight down but the native forest between their buildings obscured the dormitory entrance, frustrating her. Seconds ticked by, then a minute. He had to be out. She panned around the building, her hands starting to tremble.
Then she found him on one of the side paths, jogging steadily towards the ring-road that encircled the Campus. She watched until he was out of sight, then stood restlessly and paced around her office, wishing she smoked. A tense feeling of anti-climax sat in the pit of her stomach but she didn't want to go back to the telescope. Watching someone else make love would be unbearable now. And neither did she want to rush home to James as she'd planned.
She wanted…
She wanted Billy. And all she had to do was go out there.
Thrusting her hands into the pockets of her trousers, she stood at her floor length window, much as Billy had in his room moments earlier. Through her opened side window a eucalypt scented breeze fluttered the edges of her unbuttoned blouse, chilling her breasts but she welcomed the sensation. She needed to cool down, to put things in perspective.
Her hormones were getting the better of her, she already knew that. And Billy's heroic self-restraint had been no more stirring than any number of sexual acts she'd witnessed over the years. It had nothing to do with her, and she wasn't involved. She had to make herself believe that.
Ignoring the dorms, she stared down into the quiet forest below and slowly, very slowly, a sense of calm did come. She let herself gaze down the path he'd taken, feeling not desire now, but sympathy. Punishing his body for the sins of his mind wasn't the answer. Experience had shown her that. It was akin to her strategy with the cleaner, it merely distracted. Her own schedule of three aerobic workouts a week, maintained over the years to keep her sedentary academic body toned, had mushroomed to an almost daily attendance. Yet even with a tired body her imagination worked overtime and her blood pumped hot, craving sexual excitement, and she had no idea how to make that stop. In fact, she was concerned that her voyeurism was just making it worse.
There was too much to lose if she stepped past the telescope, so she would simply have to maintain her self control, and routine helped that, so she glanced at her watch. It was getting late, she should leave. But the aftermath of that emotional out-flowing had left her with a post-coital kind of sadness, and a need to see the place, if not the catalyst himself, before she left.
To close the episode, she told herself. And so resuming her seat, she panned the scope back to Billy's room where, in his hurry, he'd left the light on.
It was Spartan and tidy, unlike most of the dorm rooms, with no clothes lying around and even his desk in the corner neat. There were framed photos on the chest of drawers but they were side-on. Perhaps one of them was a girlfriend? He was probably lonely for someone he'd left out West, although that didn’t explain his problem with masturbation.
Her gaze lingered on the bed for a moment, a knot forming in her stomach as she remembered him lying there. The warmth from it spread down to her thighs, tingling and undoubtedly moistening the inner flesh as though preparing her for sex. But this last review was about closure, not arousal so she forced herself on, discovering the book he'd been reading on the floor against the quilt where it had fallen. The cover faced towards her, and by heightening the magnification she could make out its title.
The Bible.
Dee frowned, wondering how the Bible could have aroused such desperate adolescent passion. The Song of Solomon, perhaps? To the side of the Bible was a picture that looked as though it had been used as a bookmark.
Half in shadow, it was difficult to make out but she could tell it was a photo of someone. The mythical girlfriend? Dark hair, pale background. Dee strained the magnification, trying to distinguish some detail. Then, quite suddenly, she recognised the border around the photo and the shadowed shape within.
" No," she whispered aloud, feeling suddenly as if life was spiraling out of her control. The picture Billy had used to elicit such a powerful arousal wasn't of his girlfriend or the latest silicone enhanced Penthouse Pet. It was an enlarged copy of a University staff biography photo.
What Billy had been lusting over was the cool academic face of Dr Wendee Williams, PhD.