Sanaya Shah
This story concerns Luke, a university student, who meets a much older and successful professional lady and begins an erotic sexual relationship with her.
The story is a slow burner but I hope you think the wait is worth it. It does contain descriptions of anal sex, so if that's not your thing, please pass on by.
I hope you enjoy the story and I look forward to readers' comments.
Oh, and if you want to know the story of Tom and Faye, please read "The Air Hostess".
Sylviafan
It's great to win a place at a good university, doing the course that you wanted to do, reading for a degree in a subject that interests you and will form the basis of your career. The downside is that life at such institutions is expensive, especially nowadays, and nothing is more so than the student lodgings that you are obliged to move into at the beginning of your second year.
And of course in this brave new world there is little or nothing in the way of state financial support, it's all about student loans. I'd finished my first degree with a debt just shy of thirty-five thousand pounds, and that had included a fair bit of help from my parents. My master's degree would effectively double that. Add to that the fact that careers in the sciences don't generally pay very lavishly and the future looked pretty bleak. It felt like I'd be starting out with a mortgage but no house.
One solution was to get a part-time job. It wouldn't do that much to reduce the vast debt I was building up, but it would allow me to eat properly and to attend university social functions without feeling the need to steal all the complementary sandwiches and sausage rolls.
After a lot of deliberation and a lot of foot-slogging around Bristol city centre, I managed to land a job serving in a wine bar, five afternoons a week and all day on every other Saturday. Of course, it wasn't ideal. My lectures were mainly in the mornings but afternoons were when I did my serious reading. Well, now it would be evenings. And that wasn't such a bad thing as I wouldn't be so inclined to go to the campus bar with my fellow students or out into the pubs and clubs of Bristol.
The wine bar was called
Angela's
, after the owner's wife. It was in the Old Granary Building on Little Kings Street, in a nicely refurbished area of the city, close to the docks. Inside it was done out to resemble the inside of a nineteenth-century sailing vessel, all wood panels and brass fittings. It was divided into a main bar area and several smaller rooms which opened off the main room or were accessed by a little maze of passages. It took me a day just to get used to the layout.
My duties weren't particularly onerous: I served behind the bar, delivered drinks and snacks to tables, helped out in the kitchen and did anything else my supervisor told me to. My supervisor was the assistant manager, Chloe. She was a full-time employee and I suspected that she'd been given the title of assistant manager so that she could be expected to work overtime for free. Although Tam, who worked in the kitchen, and I made up the full complement of her staff on weekday afternoons, she took her responsibilities seriously and gave us lists of tasks and compiled work timetables and generally behaved like a little manager.
I didn't mind. For one thing she was very attractive: long, blonde hair, a pretty face and a model's figure. She was only a couple of years older than me and I fancied my chances with her, given time. The fly in the ointment was Rob, her boyfriend. He'd been in the wine bar a couple of times and he was a big unit, a semi-professional rugby player. And he'd given me a couple of speculative looks which made me wonder if Chloe had mentioned that I was coming on to her.
I suppose before I go any further I should introduce myself. I'm Luke, short for Lucas. Lucas Bradshaw, to give you my full name. Just turned twenty-three, five-foot ten and a half inches and about a hundred and fifty pounds. I'm reading for a master's degree, in hydroponics, which is really all about growing plants without the need for soil and might just be one of the answers to mankind's survival problems.
Away from the academic side of things I play a lot of sport: football, rugby, cricket in the summer and squash all year round. I also run long distance, not marathons but 10ks and even half-marathons. So I'm pretty lean and well-muscled and although I'm no movie star, I look ok, with dark, curly hair and regular features. I've never had a problem attracting my female contemporaries, both at school and at university. The idea of attracting, or being attracted to, a much older lady had never crossed my mind.
This story really begins on a Monday afternoon in October, about a month after I'd started working at
Angela's
. The wine bar was very busy in the evenings and at weekends but on weekday afternoons, except maybe Friday, it was usually very quiet and I could devote my attentions to Chloe. She was ok with that; it never went beyond mild flirting.
On this particular afternoon it was almost empty. A few middle-aged ladies were in the main bar area chatting over glasses of the house "special of the day", in this case a rather vinegary Pinot Grigio. Chloe was in the kitchen, stocktaking, and I was behind the bar, pretending to be busy and thinking about the assignment that I'd got to hand in by the end of the week, when Tam, the chef, appeared through the kitchen door, carrying a plate.
'Tuna sandwich for table thirty-five,' he rasped at me in his harsh Glaswegian accent. Table thirty-five was in one of the back rooms.
'I didn't see anyone come in,' I said.
'Her ladyship said you were taking a crap,' he replied. 'So she took the order.' Tam habitually referred to Chloe as "her ladyship" or "her nibs" although not to her face. He had a bit of a problem with authority. And with social etiquette, I thought, taking the plate from him.
'There's a medium glass of Merlot to go with that, too,' he added as he retreated through the kitchen doorway.
I poured the glass of wine and picked up the plate took them into the little room at the end of the corridor, next to the fire escape. It was the quietest room we had, being the most distant from the main bar, and during the week patrons often spent a couple of hours in here on their tablets or notepads. I thought it was a bit cheeky, using the wine bar as their office, but the establishment provided free Wi-Fi and I suppose as long as they were eating and drinking and we weren't very busy it didn't matter much.
The room was empty apart from a lady typing rapidly on a notepad.
'Just put them on the table,' she said, still typing. I put the plate and the glass down beside her device.
'Open tuna sandwich with salad and a medium glass of Merlot,' I said, wondering if she was going to acknowledge my presence any further.
She stopped typing and looked up at me and I felt a little jolt of something, like the static kick you sometimes feel getting out of a car, and my stomach did a little flip.
She's beautiful, was my first thought. And remote, unreachable, inscrutable.
The lady sitting at the table was almost certainly of central Asian or Middle-Eastern origin. Her thick, black hair fell in waves over her shoulders and framed a face that was both finely sculpted and characterful. She had heavy-lidded, deep-set dark eyes, high cheekbones and a straight, narrow nose above a full-lipped mouth and firm chin. She reminded me of a picture I'd seen recently of Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani premier who was assassinated in 2007. I had no idea of her age, it could have been thirty or fifty. Her skin was a delicious dark honey tone and seemed not to be wrinkled, although it was always a bit gloomy in this nook and it was hard to tell.
One thing was for sure, I couldn't stand there and gawp at her, not with those piercing dark eyes on me.
'Thank you,' she said, briefly and I smiled a bit stupidly and told her she was welcome and then I turned and scurried out in confusion, feeling the heat of her eyes on my back as I departed.
I should have gone back after half an hour or so to collect her plate and ask her if she wanted another glass of wine or a dessert, but I didn't. I felt slightly awkward about the prospect of seeing her again. A shyness before her looks and poise perhaps, and those searching eyes. I don't know, it was a new feeling for me; I was normally very confident when dealing with customers.
About forty-five minutes after I'd delivered her lunch she appeared at the bar, where Chloe dealt with her payment. Then she walked out, nodding briefly to Chloe and barely glancing at me.
'And thank you, too, Madam.' I muttered to Chloe.
She laughed. 'You won't get much from her, she's a right snooty bitch. Barely says "please" and "thank you".'
'Does she come in often?' I asked, curious.
