Chapter 6.
Love Affair
And so their affair began. Barbara wasn't interested in doing the dating thing, the club scene; the usual nightlife hangouts where the younger student crowd gathered to take hallucinogens and shake their sweating bodies beneath loudspeakers blaring deafening techno-pop noise. She was intrigued, rather, by Ludlow's quiet persona. He was urbane, sophisticated, much more mature than the student circles in which she usually moved. She was interested in his lifestyle; so different from the frenzied lives of the younger students, much more exciting in a simpler way. She wanted to get to know him better, to see his place, to possibly become a part of his life. Like everything about him even his car was simple, yet it reflected good taste and class; the Jaguar XJ12, in British racing green with an interior of soft, beige coloured calfskin. She felt an overwhelming urge to offer herself up to him, to spread open and lay bare the innermost recesses of her heart and soul. She wished to let him have his way with her.
She arrived at his place the afternoon following their first evening together. Ludlow dwelled in a well-appointed apartment befitting a graduate student of means. Barbara liked his place, she liked his décor; simple modern in the Scandinavian style, lots of finished wood surfaces with furniture that featured chrome plated steel and leather upholstery. Walking in one entered a small vestibule, which opened to a large greatroom. The wall on the right was done in granite stones, a fireplace with a large hearth was set into it. A single framed piece of art decorated the large wall opposite; Barbara assumed it was a print. Later on she was astonished to discover that the piece was an original, done in the impressionist style by a contemporary artist of some renown. The wall at the far end of the room consisted large sliding glass doors that led to a balcony. A collection of houseplants made it resemble a small tropical rainforest. Barbara like the houseplants, she liked his well-equipped kitchen, and she especially liked the enormous master bathroom. The walk-in tiled shower stall, as big as a walk-in closet, with wide, stepped sides where one could sit at two different levels. When Barbara saw it she turned to him with a wide smile on her face and exclaimed, "Why, it's big enough to
fuck
in!"
He smiled back. "Well, I suppose we should take a shower, then." Barbara smiled and silently started unbuttoning the front of her simple cotton dress without a moment's hesitation; it dropped to the floor, followed by her brassiere and white cotton panties. Then she was quite shamelessly nude. Ludlow glanced over Barbara's superb body with an approving eye; in the darkness of her room the previous evening he had not been able to fully appreciate the beauty of her naked body. Her incredibly firm breasts were not necessarily large, but with her slim young body they seemed to point straight out like the nose cones of a pair of fighter jets. Her belly was flat and as tight as a snare drum, developing to a slight bulge beneath her navel where a little bunny trail of short, golden hair led naturally down to the yellow fur of her nether hair. Barbara's ass was nice and round, her hips wide and well rounded, leading down to a pair of shapely thighs, a pair of nice-looking legs.
A magnificent bird like this is wasted on the pigs of the footy team,
Ludlow thought.
Ludlow's clothing joined hers on the floor and he, too, stood nude before her. Now Barbara's eyes roamed over his naked body. Considering the conservative style of Ludlow's wardrobe, his age, his relative shortness of stature and the nondescript manner in which he carried and conducted himself, Barbara was pleasantly surprised to observe the hard muscular compactness of his body. His was a muscular upper torso, the result of years of punishing daily regimen. Thick, ropy sinews rolled like steel cables beneath the skin of his chest, shoulders and arms. He had only the briefest middle-aged gut; a slight, pleasant roundness about the middle that did not seem unnatural or the least bit unsightly.
