This story was not in the original outline. But it needed to be told. And it pushes the boundaries of voyeurism in what I hope is an entertaining and unusual way...
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Sylvan Courtyard -- Four: You Can Watch With Your Ears
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The heat of summer was starting to kick in, even up in the forested foothills where Sylvan Courtyard was located. This was fine by me. I don't mind a little heat under most circumstances, though I did find myself running more on the treadmill in the air-conditioned gym than I did along the forested trails. When I realized that, I managed to cut out that laziness and made myself hit the trails again to enjoy nature...
Another reason not to mind the heat was that the courtyard around the pool was often crowded. With the semester almost finished, lots of us, especially the undergrads, did our studying or other work poolside. It was an excuse to get some sun.
It was also an excuse to check out all the other sunbathers...
I was working on the draft of my dissertation. I had caught up on the only class I was taking, the one with Professor Thames, and I was leerily worrying about all the exams I was about to have to grade, but for now, I had some time, and I was using it to flesh out a few segments of my doctoral 'masterpiece'.
Or at least I was supposed to be doing that. My productivity was not great at the moment.
As I have mentioned, the demographics of Sylvan Courtyard are damned near perfect for a single guy like me. Nearly 60% of the tenants are women, and virtually all of us are single and in our early to mid-twenties. And today, with not a cloud in the high blue sky and temperatures pushing into the sweaty range, the bikini game of my female neighbors was particularly strong.
I had taken my laptop down poolside and grabbed a seat at one of the glass-top tables on the patio, choosing the seat out of four around the table that gave me the best view of my fellow sunbathers. I did not bother with a shirt, just some good sunscreen on my torso. Between my board shorts and the table itself, my lower body was not going to get much sun anyway.
I sighed quietly as Katie Fallows, I think her last name was Fallows, walked by in a sleek one-piece suit. I'd never gotten a chance to know her much beyond her name. Her boobs, honestly, are kind of weird looking, but she had a great ass.
Concentrate on the work, Ken!
Then why are you down here in the sun with half-dressed chicks, Ken?
Fuck off, that's why, Ken.
"Hey, Ken! Do you mind if Henry and I share your table?" I heard Heather Vandross ask beside me.
Starting, and hoping I had not too obviously been checking out Katie's passing ass, I looked up. "Heather! Sure. Be my guest, guys," I said, waving at the empty seats.
Heather immediately started to pay rent for her seat at the table by choosing the chair directly opposite mine. She put down a stack of notebooks and a textbook, bending over as she did so. Those delicious tits of hers dangled awesomely in the less than sturdy bikini top she wore. She settled into her seat, and Henry took the one to my right.
"Ken, have you met my boyfriend, Henry?" she asked politely.
"I think we've said hi once or twice," I said, turning to smile at her guy. He extended his hand and we shook as he sat in turn. A good, firm, friendly handshake. We actually had a good little conversation. Turns out he was a senior undergrad, unlike Heather, who was a grad student like me. He was a business major, but gave off none of the nastily competitive vibe so many of those dudes exude right through their pores.
Overall, turns out he was a nice guy. I found that I actually liked him. It did not keep me from being a little wishful that he was out of the picture. Those were nice tits over there, staring back at me from the less-than-extensive green bikini top my blonde next-door neighbor was wearing. The way she was already chewing on her pen cap off and on was not helping things.
But from everything I had ever seen or heard, and especially from watching the two of them together with me now, all of us doing homework, I got the impression that the two of them had the kind of comfortable-in-their-skin relationship that might well survive graduation, even graduations a year or so apart. Good for them.
I wanted a relationship like that someday. But I was not in a place in life where such would end in anything but disaster. I knew that all too painfully well.
And I had a pretty fun life these days without a love...
"Hey, y'all!" we heard Josie's voice from behind me. "Let me introduce you to some more people," she added to someone with her. I turned in my seat, and found myself momentarily undistracted by Heather.
Josie was wearing a bathing suit, and nothing but! Usually, if you saw her out around the pool, she was just passing through, dressed for work or in shorts, usually with a teeshirt on over a one-piece suit. Her suit this day was admittedly a one-piece, but for once it was the type that lifted and supported her breasts, rather than squashed them. Always a sexy look, and totally unexpected on our tasty landlady. Our very tasty landlady...
But the girl she was with, a new tenant I guessed, since I'd never seen her before, was damn near hotter.
No. She was hotter than Josie. Maybe. Sort of. Short and curvy, she sported a red string bikini with a high, french-cut bottom that was damned near a thong. If those tits weren't fake, I'd eat my hat, but her surgeon had done a great job and hadn't gone overboard. And she had a tattoo of a green Chinese dragon winding its way down her left flank from above her hip, under her suit, and down the outside of her thigh halfway to her knee.
Self-conscious about her body, this girl was not.
"New tenant," Josie said to us merrily, introducing Mimi Queen as a first-year nursing student who had just taken the 'dungeon' apartment down at the end, the one that I had rejected when I first looked here. I knew Josie and Jesse would both be happy to finally get that unit rented.
We made polite conversation for a minute or so, then Josie led Mimi off to introduce her to more people. Both Henry and I watched them go. Form behind, it was abundantly evident that Mimi's bikini bottom was, in fact, a full-on thong.
Heather whacked Henry's arm with her notebook and grinned at him tartly. "Having naughty nurse fantasies all of a sudden?" she asked with a friendly grin.
"Well, I sure am," I chirped, finding myself coming to Henry's defense.
They both smiled at me. Heather's was just a trace naughty, and Henry's was openly thankful.
*
Most of the doctoral classes that I had ever taken had ended the term with papers or projects, but Professor Thames's was going to have an actual exam, and I could not decide if I hated that or loved it.
As I sat in her class, with less than a week to go before that exam, I decided it was probably for the better, making it the one aspect about her class that had ended up as the easy route for us students. I'd have to drop everything to review for a day or so before the exam, but I was confident I would do well.
In fact, the way that she loaded us up with all that work a month ago, when she had good reason to believe our other responsibilities were less immediate, had actually been a considerate act that I had not recognized at the time. I did recognize it now, and I occasionally felt regret for how mad I'd been with her back then.
Unfortunately, I had to deal with fallout from that period. That fucking crack by my buddy and fellow researcher Petey about sleeping with my professor to get her to cut me some slack had never quite left my head.
Like my own mentor, Professor Thames was young for her tenured position, maybe forty years old. Petey had triggered a change in my mind about her, as I involuntarily reclassified her from attractive furniture to moderately hot woman. And while I had been a looker all my life, my recent circumstances and activities had me looking more intently at everyone than ever before.
Fortunately, I can both check out a woman and still take notes. I'm a multitasker. So, with only three more classes before the exam, I was locked onto the professor, in all ways.
She always dressed pretty conservatively... almost school marm-y.
But in an anime sort of way, however. She always wore black pencil skirts that varied in length from her usual knee length to a few inches higher. She had one that was a good four or five inches above her shapely knees, but she didn't wear that one often. Up top, she wore simple, fitted white dress shirts. Fitted, but not tight, and with never more than the collar unbuttoned.
Still, they were the kind of shirts that, in animes of teachers with her build, get yanked open suddenly to reveal some crazy black lace bra that barely contains some sizeable tits.
This was not an anime, alas, but she did have a nice set.
To complete the occasionally frustrating look, she wore her black hair back in a bun most days, and she needed thick-framed black glasses. Some professors secretly only wore glasses to impart a more intellectual look. I have considered doing it myself. But Professor Thames clearly needed these glasses. The lenses were not quite Coke-bottle-bottom thick, but the prescription's effects were visible at a distance.
Unfortunately, the effect of those lenses was to make her eyes look twice as big as they were.
You know... like anime eyes.
What did she just say? Shit. My mental multitasking had taken a hit.
Thank goodness I only had a week until the exam, then I could be done with the dangers and distractions of my mentor's chief antagonist in the department. Maybe
he
should fuck her and let the rest of us have some peace...
*
It was fully dark by the time I got out of my car in the parking lot at home. I had had office hours, and, with a week to go before my own students had their exams, the number of ways someone could ask for inappropriate information about some or all of the questions on an upcoming test had been on full display.
All the ways except sex. Thankfully, none of my female students made that offer, so I had not had to slap anyone down about it. There was no way I'd accept that deal. I have a bright future ahead of me, and I intend to keep it fully intact.
Taylor Swift could have stripped naked and offered to blow me daily in return for test answers, and I'd have told her a hard no.
Seriously.
I would have wept for the rest of my life, but I would have said no.
But leaving class behind that evening had at least banished obstructive thoughts about Professor Thames from my head.