A Modern Damsel In Distress

Curiously, I don’t think I’d have seen her if the night had been brighter. The streetlights gave out an orange glow that seemed to flicker and glimmer on the pavement in the light rain. There were strange, hazy reflections. It was about ten o’clock and I was walking home quickly, trying to escape the chilling rain. After a difficult shift at the nursing home, where I work to pay off my tuition fees, I was exhausted, and daydreaming about owning a car. In the rich area of town I was walking through now, the streets seemed deserted. There is something about Sunday evening that keeps everybody inside. To my left were the homes of university professors and the like. To my right was the university history building, where I study. That was where I saw her.

Looking back, it was a surprise that I noticed her. I’m not normally that astute. I saw the streetlight reflected in her glasses, and I suppose I realised that reflections shouldn’t shine out of bushes. Before I understood why I was doing so, however, I had jumped over the low stone wall that separated the history garden from the street, and was kneeling beside her. My first reaction was amazement; not only had I come across someone hiding in the bushes, at night in November, but I recognised her. The pitiful figure was my history tutor. My second reaction was concern; she was evidently freezing and petrified. Clearly, I had to help her before I could stop to wonder about why she was in this state. I plucked my mobile from my pocket, and phoned my housemate. Imploring him not to ask any questions, or waste any time, I asked him to drive to the history department and give me a lift home with my friend. To his everlasting credit, he did as I asked.

Kneeling beside her again, on the wet dirt, I took off my raincoat and placed it over her thin fleece. She looked up, and recognised me. I’m not sure she knew precisely who I was, but she knew she knew me, if you follow. I hastened to reassure her,

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to harm you. I’m going to take you home and give you warm clothes and a cup of tea.”

Hearing my own voice, I was amazed. Coming out with this soap-opera schmaltz, and acting as though I had a coherent plan. I didn’t have a clue, but being English, I knew that a cup of tea would be part of the solution.

“Are you hurt?” I asked, casting about for a clue. She shook her head. So far, she hadn’t said a word. I decided not to ask any more questions. I wasn’t sure if I would get an answer I wanted, or could cope with. I mean, I had my own life.

I stood up as I heard a car approach. Already I was frozen, my thin cotton uniform already useless against the wet. Inwardly, I cursed my selfishness. My housemate got out of his car, looked around, evidently confused. I bent over my stricken teacher.

“Can you walk?” She nodded, and stood up, unsteadily. After taking a forward step, she toppled, and would have fallen, but I grabbed her arm. I assumed it was the cold, and the sudden movement. Then I realised she was wearing high, thin heels that were useless on this ground. She was also in a light skirt that finished just above the knee, and showed her calves to be blue with cold. I lifted her arm, placed it across my shoulders, and walked towards the car. Placing her gently in the back of it, I climbed in beside her, and told my housemate to turn the heat up, and get home fast. It didn’t take long. After getting her into the house, I realised that we had reached the end of my plans. My housemate, diplomatically, had muttered something about the pub, and headed for the door. I looked at my bed. She had half collapsed onto the side of it, still shivering violently. I decided on a course of action. I pulled my sleeping bag down from the top of my wardrobe, and spread it out below my duvet, then grabbed my second pair of pyjamas, which were, fortunately, clean, and placed them beside her.

“We have to get you warm,” I said, lacking anything truly insightful. “Take those clothes off and dry yourself on my towel. Stick those on and get into bed. I’m going to go and make you some cocoa.”

While I was downstairs, I thought through what I knew about my tutor. There wasn’t much, really. She was new to the department. Young, too, for a lecturer. I thought of her as an intensely private person. Some lecturers tell you a great deal about their private lives, but I had gleaned relatively little about her. There was no ring on her finger, and she hadn’t mentioned a man, or children, or anything of that sort. Her classes were ordinary; she was clearly very bright and knowledgeable, but not pushy. She gave the impression of being quite shy, with very little to say. This impression was strengthened by her physical appearance. She was short, very fine-boned and with mousy coloured hair. The sort of bookish woman, in other words, that most people would lose in a crowd. Yet there was something about her that attracted me intensely, something to do with the unknown, and the sense of the wild lurking beneath the demure. That, I decided as I carried the cocoa upstairs, with a mars bar I had stolen from another absent housemate, constituted no useful information at all under the current circumstances.

When I returned to my room, she was curled up inside my sleeping bag. I was struck again by how frail she appeared, and I wondered whether a desire to protect her was a reason she attracted me so much. She smiled again, and spoke for the first time.

“I was hopeless before you arrived, and getting desperate. I needed someone to help me, and you did.”

I half-shrugged, and smiled myself, embarrassed. I handed her the mug, and the plate with the chopped mars bar on it. She ate and drank hungrily, and I watched in silence as the colour returned to her cheeks. She must have seen my concern, because she spoke suddenly, startling me slightly.

“You don’t have to worry. You’ve saved me, and I’m sure I’ll be fine now. I feel much better already.”

“Don’t rush things,” I replied “you were blue with cold. I think you should have a hot shower and then sleep here tonight.” She agreed, and after finishing her drink, I showed her the shower. Returning to bed, she was asleep very quickly. I slept on the floor, covered by a rug, waking often to check on her.

By nine, I had given up on getting proper sleep, and after showering and dressing, I took a tray of breakfast to her. Opening the door woke her, and she sat up as I opened the curtains. The bright, sunny morning made last night’s events seem like a dream. Looking at my teacher, eyes bright, alert, it was harder still to believe what had happened. She was sipping her orange juice, and looking at me quizzically.

“Aren’t you going to ask what happened?” she asked “Why I was hiding in a bush, blue with cold.”

“I assumed you would tell me if you wanted me to know.” She gave me a look, half amused, half analytical. I waited.

“It isn’t much of a story. I was going on a date. A second date. Stupidly, I said he should meet me in my office. He turned up drunk, and when I asked him to leave, he wouldn’t. I panicked, and started to run away. He came after me, shouting. No-one else was in the department, so I kept running, and after I got outside I slipped and fell on those damn shoes, and crawled into the bush where you found me. He walked around, shouting threats. I didn’t dare leave, and I suppose I had been there for over an hour when you came along. I hadn’t known that you really could be paralysed by fear before then.” I said nothing, analysing this information. I hadn’t expected it to be this easy. She really did seem to be happier this morning. For the first time, I let myself look at her. She was sitting up in bed, her hair curled slightly after drying overnight. Something about the sight of her in my pyjamas aroused me wildly. I was beginning to see why medieval knights bothered with damsels in distress; it was mutually beneficial. We talked as she ate, discussing my course, her arrival at the university, anything except the night before. As we talked, we flirted. I think the fact that I knew it was wrong, that I was taking advantage of her gratitude and our enforced intimacy made this even more arousing. Suddenly, she leant forward, over her tray, placed a hand on each of my cheeks, and kissed me passionately.

I honestly didn’t know how to react. Before I had moved, she had put the tray on the floor and reached for me again, pulling my head down to hers as she lay back on the bed. She spoke softly, but urgently.

“I know this is wrong. If you need a reason, think of this as restoring my faith in good men, and as a thank you. I don’t have a reason. I don’t want a reason. I want this to be wrong, but I want it to be now, and I want you.” It wasn’t the most original dialogue, but it had the desired effect. My attempts to subdue my arousal were defeated, I was no longer in any doubt as to how to react. I lay down beside her on my bed, and wrapped my arms around her tiny waist, pulling her close to me, almost in a bear hug. She threaded her hand between two of my buttons and let it rest on my chest, and we kissed for a second time, long and deeply. I was amazed by this sudden change in her, her confidence. It was an enormous turn on, but I was determined be in charge, to dominate her.

Pulling away from her kiss, I turned her onto her back, and began to kiss her stomach, running my fingers through the soft dark fuzz below her navel. She almost purred with gentle pleasure, and began to moan more audibly as my kisses moved up her body towards her breasts. I stopped lifting the pyjama t-shirt just below her breasts, and moved my hand outside the fabric before I ran my fingers across her chest, watching her nipples grow hard through the t-shirt. I began to kiss around and over her nipple as I slipped a hand under the cloth and began to stroke her breasts. She gasped at this combination of sensations, and I quickly pulled the shirt over her breasts before continuing to suckle. She pulled the shirt off and reached for my chest, slowly unbuttoning my shirt. Her long fingernails scratched my chest, a sensation that I felt throughout my body, covering me with goose-bumps. I began to suck her nipples more rapidly, and as she removed my shirt, I ran a hand over her abdomen and slipped a single finger under the drawstring of my shorts, loose around her petite figure.

I ran my finger along the line of the top of the shorts, and she arched her back slightly, trying to move my finger down her body. My lips left her chest, and I began to kiss her collar bone, the line of her jaw, her neck, before I started to gently nibble her ear-lobe. It was clear that she was aroused too. She ground her body underneath mine, and pulled my belt off, before rapidly unbuttoning my trousers. Lifting a leg, she gently pulled my trousers down to my ankles, and began stroking my inner thigh, teasingly, moving closer to my throbbing cock with each upward stroke, but never quite reaching. The anticipation was driving me wild, and I ran my hand along the line inside her hip, before squeezing her lips together and pulling them gently apart. I watched her face as her eyes widened with this sudden contact. Her mouth was pulled into a small “o” as she breathed raggedly, quickly. I placed a finger between her lips, rubbing the top of her vagina, before I slipped a finger inside her.

She rocked forward slightly, moving sensuously, driven almost unconsciously to increase her pleasure. There was a passion in that bed that I had never experienced before, a raw urgency, a need for mutual physical release. I began circling her clitoris with my wet finger, and as she pressed her body into my hand, I pressed harder. Her breathing became more rapid, her face darkened, and she shut her eyes tightly. Suddenly her breathing stopped, and her entire body tensed, I felt her lift from the mattress as she forced herself onto my finger. She remained tense for several seconds before she let out a shuddering sigh, and relaxed back onto the bed. She lay breathing heavily, and I moved my hand back across her stomach, and once more gently stroked her breasts.

She was not entirely still, however. Her right hand remained clamped tightly around my rod, forgotten by both of us through her immense orgasm. Now she began to move her hand, slowly at first but rapidly becoming more rapid. As I knelt above her, she reached up and licked my chest, her tongue seeking my nipple. I love to have my nipples sucked, and this, coupled with the fast and expert hand-job I was receiving, meant that I was rapidly reaching the peak of my arousal. I looked down, and saw her tiny, perfect body, her face close to my chest, my balls brushing her breasts. Almost involuntarily, I began bucking at the hip, and I my orgasm brewing. I came explosively, and with a power I had rarely experienced. We knew that there would be no further meetings. We had known from the start it was wrong. The urgency, electricity and intensity of our lone sexual encounter reflected this desperation. We lay back together, a final few moments together before the university reabsorbed us, and life continued as before.