A MAN AND HIS DESIRES
The tides of coincidence move in curious ways. Sometimes he felt as if his whole life had flown by like a river, its zigzagging course all too often dictated by random events or people, and he had never truly in control, had just drifted from childhood, teenagers and early struggles onwards to the quiet waters of thirty, like a drunken embarkation on foreign seas. But then again, wasn't everyone on the same boat? Maybe he had merely proven to be a better navigator, and the storms hadn't been too fierce along the way.
Today's lecture had overrun: too many questions from his students interrupting the flow. Not that that presented him with a problem. The more they enquired, queried, the better. It meant they were attentive, interested in the subject. Which was not always the case. This academic year's was a good intake. Just the right proportion of foreign students and home-based ones to make for a challenging mix, which in turn kept him alert and on his toes. Unlike so many other professors, he varied his courses a lot, if only to sidestep the traps of boredom and repetition. This semester his comparative History seminars were exploring the American Revolution and the Victorian times , as well as the World Wars. As long as it didn't drive too many of them in their direction of the gas cookers in emulation, he smiled inside.
He didn't need the job. He had come into money some two years ago, after his step-father , World renowned Surgeon , Carisle Cullen , had passed away and left him a tidy sum. He had never expected this to happen. Theirs had seldom been a particularly easy relationship, and he had long assumed his stepsiblings, with whom he had neither regular contact nor much in common, would inherit the lot. It had been a pleasant surprise. Another of those unseen crossroads on the road of life.
Following the lecture, he'd met with a couple of students in his office, arranging future tutorials and answering questions, and had found himself short of time. He had originally planned to see a new play on Broadway, a late-afternoon performance, but this was no longer possible. Not to worry - he could catch it at the weekend.
His mobile vibrated and beeped, shuffling crablike over the smooth surface of his desk. He picked it up. A message flashed.
"Care to meet? V. Xxx"
Edward sighed. Should he? Shouldn't he?
His affair with Victoria had been going on for a year, and he wasn't certain how he felt about it, about her, any more. Technically speaking, he was in the clear, as it had begun after she had completed her classes with him. By just a few days, mind. So the ethics were OK, but he was no longer sure if he wanted the relationship to continue.
He decided not to respond right now. Time for reflection. He took his black scuffed leather jacket from the wall hook, gathered his books and lecture files into his canvas tote bag and made his way onto the street. Zipped up against the chilly wind racing up from the river, he made his way towards the Sub. It was already getting dark outside, the dull metal-grey shade of New York autumn. The crowds felt menacing as the rush hour descended swiftly, streams of commuters hurrying in both directions , brushing against him anonymously in their slipstream. Usually by now, he'd be out of the centre of town. It was a bit like seeing another side of the city, an uncommon dimension in which the robotic world of work was in the ascendant , heavy , leaden , out of place. Edward casually picked up the free evening paper he was handed and entered the station.
Victoria was English, a true redhead, and a wonderful fuck. Her body often smelled of cocoa oil because of the fragrant cream she regularly used to condition her skin. After a whole night in bed with her, Edward normally ended up with a faint headache from the prevalent odour. Not the they often spent whole nights together. They made love, chatted perfunctorily and parted until the next time. It was that sort of affair. No strings , no questions, nothing exclusive about it. Fulfilling mutual needs, almost hygienic in virtues. It was a relationship he had somehow drifted into; no doubt she had provided signs, a green light of some sort in the early days, and he was aware he hadn't consciously taken the first steps. The way things sometimes happen. The train came to a halt as he daydreamed on. He hated the Subway , but loyalty to his earlier, less affluent years deterred his most days from taking taxi when travelling to the college and back. He'd bring his car, and damn the congestion charge, were it not for the lack of parking facilities at the institution and in the nearby area, together with the regular infuriating traffic bottlenecks down the city.
The familiar smells of hour - sweat, resignation and depression - casually kept on assaulting his senses as he journeyed towards the escalator, and the faint sound of music reached his ears.
The barista had brought them their coffees outside. Edward's usual double espresso and some more sophistication cappuccino variation with pseudo-Italian add-ons for Victoria. She'd lit a cigarette after he'd offered no objections to it, although he didn't smoke.
"So were you satisfied with the course?" he'd asked her.
"Absolutely," she confirmed.
"So what are you planning to do now?" Staying in New York, more studies?"
"Probably." She had green eyes, and her red hair was piled up in a chignon, if that was what it was still called these days. A thin fringe swept across her forehead. "I'd like to do a doctorate, but I don't think I'm quite ready for it yet. Maybe I'll do some teaching somewhere Italian. Quite a few people have asked me."
" Not History?" Edward enquired.
"I don't think so," Victoria answered.
"A pity."
"Why?" she queried, flashing him a quizzical smile.
"I think you'd be quite good at it."
"You think so?"
"I do."
"It's kind of you to say so."
Edward took a sip of his coffee. It was hot, strong and sweet. He'd put four sugar cubes in and stirred them into oblivion, erasing the original bitterness.
"Not at all."
"I thought your lectures were great," he added, lowering her eyes and almost fluttering her lashes, but he wasn't sure if she actually had because of the moist penumbra of the café. Maybe he had imagined it.
"You always had great questions to ask, demonstration you had a good understanding of the subject."
"You have a strong passion … for history," she pointed out quickly.
"I'd hope so," Edward said.
She looked up again and he noticed that her neck was flushed all the way down to her rather spectacular cleavage, where a white push-up bra exposed the smooth, shiny upper orbs of her constrained breasts. She always wore tight white shirts, cinched at the waist, emphasising her opulence.
The signal was unmistakable. This was why she had suggested they meet for a drink. It had nothing to do with academic pursuits any longer. This was now obvious.
Edward held his breath for an instant as he considered the situation. Damn, she was attractive, and - a glancing thought- it had been a couple of years since he had bedded an English woman, at which time he had just been in his early twenties and Jessica had been only fifteen , a generational gap then to his ignorant perception. He had since enjoyed so many female nationalities in an unformed quest into the geography of pleasure. Why not?
He moved a hand slowly across the wooden texture of the tabletop and grazed her extended fingers. Long, sharp nails painted scarlet , two heavy rings, and one with a small diamond.
She looked down at her hand, answering his unformulated enquiry.
"Been engaged for a year. He's back home. Visits every few months. I'm no longer sure if it's really serious, though. Just if you were wondering."
Edward was enjoying the way her English accent was modulating her words.
"I see." Her palms were unseasonably warm.
"You wear no rings?" she asked.
"I don't ," Edward said confusedly.
One hour later, they were in her bedroom in Manhattan, the sound of sound Inferno nightclub clients crowding onto the outside pavement in loud conversation percolating through her open window.
"Let me," he said.
They'd kissed. Her breath a cocktail of cigarette, cappuccino, lust and heart rising from her stomach. Her breath halting at his hands wandered across her waist and his chest pressed against hers, the hard tips of her breasts squeezing into him, betraying her arousal. Her breath exhaling across the drawn skin of his neck as he delicately burrowed his tongue in the hollow of her left ear, in turn nibbling her lobe and then licking her dept to immediate effect as she tensed with pleasure and expectation. Victoria closed her eyes.
He began to undo the buttons of her white shirt as she held her breath in. The thin material was stretched so tight he wondered how she could breathe. Button after button released the softness of her skin, and with each successive loosening the shirt flapped aside with liberated abandon. There was something spectacularly joyful about her breasts. Steep hills he could bury himself in, although in normal sexual circumstances he usually went for less expansive examples of opulence. Victoria , was a big girl, from her personality, her natural exuberance, to every single curve of her body.
Her hand lingered across the front of his now strained trousers. He took a step back, in no hurry to be released.
Edward extended a hand towards Victoria , threaded a couple of fingers through her ink-coloured hair, met the soft resistance of dozens of hairpins holding the delicately shaped construction in place. Sighed. Began to extract each hairpin in slow, deliberate motion, freeing whole strands at a time, watching them detach themselves from the mass and flop down to her shoulders, settling calmly across the taut, thin straps of her bra.
These were moments he lived for. The quiet before the storm. The ritual of unveiling. Knowing the point of no return had been reached , breached, and the fuck was now inevitable. Edward wanted to savour every single moment, slow them down to a crawl , imprint every memory on his grey cells, brand-new visions coursing from fingertip and throughout his body, along the hardening shaft of his erection, all the way to his brain, bypassing the visual nerve in the process so that they were encrypted in a most particular manner and rendered unforgettable and immortal. The stuff of memories he could spend his whole life feasting on.
He drew a deep breath, caught the faint, unfamiliar whiff of cocoa oil.
Pushing her down on the bed, Edward unbuttoned her skirt and underwear , and pushed them down to her knees. He extended a finger towards her crotch. Felt the heat radiating outwards. Insolently slipped a finger inside her. She was very wet.
He looked up into her eyes , seeking hunger.
"Fuck me," Magdalene moaned.
"I thought you'd never ask." a playful smile appeared on his face.