GETTING-IT-UP DOWN-UNDER
I must apologise to my readers that have already read this story under its previous title of Travelling North 03. As indicate by the score of 4.67, most of you enjoyed it. It made me confident that, perhaps, more readers than just 437 would be attracted if I changed the title: Travelling North 03 suggested wrongly that it was a continuing chapter in a threateningly unending tale, and not a totally new and independent story. It would still please me if you sampled TN 01 and TN 02 in spite of their geographical connotations. As I seem to have a thing about geography, I must point-out that 'Down-Under' (while naughtily suggestive in the story's context) does refer to beautiful Australia and not ..... Am I forgiven?
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On this Sunday morning it had taken Mark only forty minutes, instead of the usual hour, to leave Melbourne behind and truly begin his journey north. It was sunny and promised to become a warm December day. With the window open and the breeze in his hair, it would be a pleasant, relaxed drive up the Hume Highway to Sydney.
In planning his trip to the Hunter Valley, he had decided not to rush, and make an over-night, half-way stop at Yass.
When Sue surprisingly rang and invited him to spend two days with her in Sydney, he had additional reasons not to change his plans. Driving through, he would have arrived late. After more than twelve hours on the road for the 1,000-kilometre drive, he would be too tired to show Sue how much he appreciated her invitation.
Mark was reasonably certain that Sue expected to be, for her invitation, appreciated in detail and at length. They had known each other, in the most literal sense, too briefly. Not in so many words, her invitation had indicated that she was keen to progress beyond the few opportunistic little fucks they had had in Melbourne.
What pleased him most about this adventure was that he could believe that the motive behind her invitation was a new-found lust and nothing more. The distance separating them aside, he was married with children. For a year she knew him only as one of her teachers at Melbourne University, and nothing beyond a few personal details gathered during their short, intimate acquaintance. It was unlikely that she saw him as a prospect for more than an opportunistic sexual adventure.
Sue had been one of his mature-age students in a diploma-course in which he taught the major component. Mark, on principle, avoided any close personal involvement with any of his students, regardless of age. With Sue, he only got acquainted and involved after she had completed her studies, and then by accident. Meeting her at an end-of-year party, he had offered her a lift back to her hostel. It was on his way home.
On arriving, she had lingered in the car. They had talked and then, eventually, kissed. At that stage Mark would not have pushed for more. Sue, however, revealed herself as a sexually consenting adult with fewer inhibitions then him. On this night she clearly wanted more. So, they progressed into a fittingly uninhibited petting.
After that they had met twice, before Sue returned to Sydney. Her family was there and she had firm plans to find employment and settle in Sydney.
As the kilometres rolled by, he thought about how unusual he had found Sue as a lover. Mark, in spite of his conventional bearing and respectability as a teacher and as an, apparently, solid family-man, had had a somewhat unusual life. During it, he had enjoyed longer, intimate relationships with a number of women, both before and during his marriage. Now, he was in his mid-forties, tall, dark, somewhat serious, without being nerdy. When he looked in the mirror and at photos of himself, he assessed himself as passably good-looking but far from being the sort of Marlboro Man women were supposed to lust after.
Sue, he guessed, was in her mid-thirties. She had lived and travelled for more than twelve years overseas. She was an interestingly attractive woman who was, Mark presumed, sexually experienced. While this was, as he had learned, not always the case with mature women, judging from what Sue had told him about her life he was certain that she had had quite a few, perhaps, more than him, interestingly varied sexual experiences.
When they had started petting in the car, there was no coyness in the way she showed her interest in him. In fact, the way her thighs spread as soon as his hand furtively touched, had surprised him. In the way she kissed him, openly promising and demanding more than just a maybe, and how her hot, slippery pussy welcomed his probing fingers in the car, all pointed to a lively sensuality. Yet, nothing in the way Sue dressed, spoke and moved had suggested it. In appearance and character, she was the opposite of a flirty, come-hither, promiscuous femme fatale.
By midday he had crossed the border into New South Wales. He stopped for a leisurely lunch before continuing along the Hume Highway at reduced speed. Unlike in Victoria, most of it still awaited an upgrade. Mark did not mind. He enjoyed the unhurried, tension-free drive on his own, along the broad, winding, tree-flanked road taking him north.
While he and Maria, his wife, still spend the family-holidays with the children together, they had agreed to have an occasional holiday on their own. Over the years they had progressively grown apart. They no longer particularly enjoyed each other's company, either romantically or socially, but the children and the life they had built together kept them in bond. Regarding holiday-choices, Maria enjoyed the beach and the social life and sundry adventures among the holiday crowds. He, Mark, did not.
For this holiday he had planned to explore the Hunter Valley, a region interesting for its quality wines as well as for its significance in Australia's history. For him, it ideally combined his intellectual interests with his hedonistic tastes. Regarding the latter, Sue's surprising invitation to stop-over in Sydney for a renewed dalliance had added a further boon to this holiday. She was an intelligent, beautiful and, he felt, sexually challenging woman.
Late in the afternoon he reached Yass, booked into a motel, then strolled around town to, finally, settle down over a rather bland, country-town Chinese meal. Back at the motel, with nothing of interest on the TV, he went to bed and quickly fell asleep. The walls were thin. He was woken-up two hours later by late arrivals in the unit next to his
If their noise would have just been the murmuring of TV and voices, he would have quickly gone back to sleep again. But the developing scenario of sounds indicated that his unseen neighbours were an uninhibited, raunchy couple.
With only a thin wall between their bed and his, Mark shared for an hour or so in their frolic. There was, of course, the rhythmic thumping of their bed against the wall as they fucked, as well as the low-voiced grunts of the male. It was the woman's full-throated love-song, however, that set Mark's mind and cock astir. It never became monotonous, varied in pitch and tone but sounded always jubilantly appreciative, lowered at times to a whispering which Mark could only guess at. He was certain that with a woman that sang like her, it would be sensuous, suggesting, demanding, .... wonderful!
After their joyous romp his neighbours fell much more quickly asleep than he did. With an almost painful erection, Mark's thoughts turned automatically to Sue and their reunion tomorrow. While he had ideas and hopes about it, he was not at all certain about what was to come.
Their two meetings in Melbourne were, on each occasion, for him, at least, clouded by ambiguity. Sue's response in her initial, getting sexually involved with him in the car had been enticingly sensual and direct. However, her behaviour once they were in bed together was rather contradictory. Or, perhaps, not?
When they got together in the Carlton motel, Sue was neither prissily shy nor coy. But in the way she acted there was no show of occasion, or of any sensual playfulness. It appeared to him, that as far as she was concerned, they were going to fuck, and 'So What?', that was it.
Fuck they did; on this occasion, twice. Her behaviour discouraged any flirtatious build-up or fore-play. She clearly wanted to have sex. Once they got going, she climaxed easily, more readily than most other women he had known. To him her coming seemed mechanical, detached, onanistic. The way she broke away after her solitary orgasm, signalled that she wanted her climaxing to have little to do with him, with them in unison. After she had taken so much the initiative in bringing them together as lovers, this denial of oneness with him was odd. Or, perhaps, it was not for a modern, liberated woman?
On the second occasion, after returning from a nice meal and wine and flirting in a nearby tavern, he tried to break this pattern of hers of just fucking. When he held on to her after her solitary little orgasm, she tried to resist. Eventually her body began to respond. To him it seemed clear, however, that in Sue's mind his not letting her be indifferent, violated her: She was being raped into responding to HIM! She barely spoke to him after. Mark was sad and disappointed. So, he bade her Good Bye without an apology or explanation. He suspected she felt entitled to both.
And now it was her that wanted .... what? Revenge? A restitution? Or was it a new beginning?
On leaving the Yass motel the next morning, Mark's raunchy neighbours left at the same time. They were no longer youngsters. She was, perhaps, in her early forties, a short, chubby woman. From her plain, everyday looks and appearance nobody would suspect that she was the woman whose enticing siren's song had almost robbed him of last night's sleep.
Mark had been intrigued by the address Sue had given him. Although he did not know Sydney well and had learned little so far about Sue's family and background, he had not expected her to live in a North-Shore apartment. When he pulled-up in the visitor's parking-area of the ten-story tower, Mark realised the 812 on the address indicated the eight's floor. When he pressed the button and Sue's cool -- "Yes" -- sounded from the intercom, he could only mumble a stupid -- "Hi Sue, I have arrived." He was intimidated by the setting but the entrance-door did click open.
He had forgotten to ask which floor she was on but had guessed right. When the lift-door opened on the eight floor there she stood, with a beaming, welcoming smile. There was no laboured-over embracing and awkward kissing. She hooked her arm into his, asked him if he had any trouble finding the address and led him into the apartment.