An Unlikely Encounter Ch. 03

I ground into her as hard as I could, rubbing my pelvis against hers. Her body slithered along mine, rolling like a snake along the wall, humping against me as much as she could. She knocked her head back, stretching her neck taut. I immediately lunged forward and began kissing her there.

Kissing turned to licking along her skin. Her nails dug into me deeply, and her legs trembled against my muscles. I began to suck on her, and she moaned desperately. I eased up and began to return to licking, and she cried out, "Oh god, keep sucking me... ah- ah--... Mark me... ohhh-- I'm yours..."

I indulged her, devouring her neck. She howled out as I did it, trying to pull her body up against me, getting me to fill her just how she wanted it. Abruptly she stiffened, craning her head back down, gripping me as tightly as possible with her entire body, like she was holding on for dear life. Every breath she exhaled was an uneven moan.

I felt the tightness around my cock... Whether from her coming, or from me getting ready to lose it. Who gave a shit. There was nothing that could hold me back right then. I grunted out loudly, my knees shaking as my climax poured into her. My entire body shuddered, and the only reason I could keep us both upright was because I pushed forward and used the wall to balance us both.

Orgasm subsiding, I slowly lowered her body back down, and she brought her legs back to stand on her own. My forehead banged against the wall as I gulped for air, and Autumn just stayed pinned beneath me, fingers trailing down my back. We held ourselves like that for a minute, catching our breath. Finally some of my senses returned to my brain.

"Jesus," I whispered.

The next few minutes were incredibly awkward. I had sort of stumbled back, tripping on my jeans around my ankles, sheepishly pulling them back up. Autumn just stood there, completely naked, still shining from shower water mixed with our sweat. She closed her legs together and crossed her arms over her chest in sudden modesty.

I looked at the clock. It was after six. I had no fucking idea what to say. I went from furious to astonished to exhausted. "Autumn..." I said softly.

She dropped her eyes.

"I'm uh... I'm sorry, but..."

"I know," she responded. "I...um... okay," she just kind of mumbled and shuffled toward the bathroom to get her clothes.

I felt awful. Does she feel like a whore? Getting fucked and then sneaking out? Christ. Does she love me? What the hell does she know about love? I inwardly grimaced. Maybe she just said it in a moment of passion... Or maybe she means it.

I heard the scuffling of her getting dressed. I picked up the towel from the floor and brought it to the bathroom, tentatively stepping in to make sure she didn't mind. She gave me an uncomfortable smile. At this point I resorted to my only defense mechanism for embarrassment: bad jokes.

"So uh- the ironic thing is now we could both actually use a shower."

She exhaled a 'heh', and replied, "Too bad you're outta hot water."

I smiled at her, and she seemed to genuinely smile back. She was fully dressed now except for her socks and shoes. She sat on the toilet and started putting them on, and I noticed my hat was sitting on the sink counter. I picked it up, examining it, and recalled Heather's suspicion. I need this tonight.

I fitted it onto my head and looked at myself in the mirror.

"Hey!" Autumn instigated, but then grew softer. "I guess you're taking it back now, huh?"

As silly as it may seem, that very moment I felt my heart pulled inexorably toward her. I didn't want to do anything to make her unhappy.

"I just didn't get to give it a proper sendoff. A man and his hat have a very strong bond, you know." I looked down at her, and she simply stared back at me. "I'll give it back to you. I promise."

She gave me a ridiculously sweet smile, then stood back up. "Okay. I um... think I should probably go now."

"Yeah, okay."

We walked back out to the living room and I handed her backpack over to her. At the front door, we stood facing one another, another surge of social weirdness.

"Okay, so... bye," she mumbled, and started to open the door.

I put a hand on her shoulder. "I'll talk to you soon, Autumn." And I leaned in and kissed her on her head. It was impulse, and I didn't really think about it until she was outside and I closed the door behind her. Then I realized that it felt oddly romantic. And then I realized I was standing there alone, shirtless, sweaty, and smelling like sex.

It was 6:50. I threw my hat in the bedroom, stripped out of my jeans in the bathroom, and jumped in the shower. I probably was taking a bit of extra time, making sure I got myself looking and smelling like I didn't just fuck a teenager. It didn't really occur to me that I left the front door unlocked. I heard Heather's voice calling through the door, telling me she let herself in.

I froze. Was there any evidence I neglected to clean up? Anything that Autumn might have left out in the open? I shut off the water, dried myself off to a decent state, wrapped myself in a towel, and stepped into the living room.

I could see her fixing some things and grabbing dishes in the kitchen. Didn't look like she had a knife in hand and an urge to stab me. So far, so good.

"Showering just for me, huh?" she eyed me.

"Yeah, well... I didn't think you'd want me to be all sweaty after moving refrigerators. Real manly stuff makes for really manly smells."

She laughed. "Ah, well I thank you for that. What's with the shirt?"

I looked down at myself. "I don't think I'm wearing one."

She pointed a wooden spoon at a chair, upon which the shirt Autumn tore off me was hanging. "It was on the floor, and when I picked it up to fold it for you," she rolled her eyes sarcastically, "I noticed a few of the buttons got ripped out."

"Oh. Yeah." Oh *fuck*!

"So what happened?"

"Uh- you know. My secret lover was here before you and she, uh, tore it off me in a fit of passion." That's it. It's too ridiculous to believe.

"Ha ha," she faked.

I carefully walked through the living room and looked around, making sure there was nothing else to incriminate me. "Actually..." I tentatively bullshitted, "when we were moving the new fridge through his kitchen, we had the thing tilted, part of it leaning against my chest. Well we flipped it up too fast, and it caught on my shirt and blam!" Not bad!

She bought it well enough. I went into the bedroom and put on some clothes. I debated whether or not to put on the hat, but decided against it. No need to rile anything up. Turns out that was going to happen anyway, though. Shortly after I rejoined her in the kitchen, she brought up that afternoon.

"So it was kinda weird in your classroom today."

"Why's that?"

"I don't know... Just that she was your student... What's her name?"

"Uh- Autumn."

"Well, the fact that she was in my place alone with you, and you were half naked..."

My heart started to sink. "It's no big deal."

"It's just... you know, sort of inappropriate."

"It was nothing; you're thinking about it too much," I tried to brush it off.

"Does she come to you for extra help a lot?"

"No."

"Do you ever wear that hat to class?"

God, just drop it! "Huh?"

"Your baseball cap that you always wear."

"No... why would I?"

"Well I was thinking, maybe she saw you in it and was trying to imitate it or something."

I continued to play dumb. "What are you talking about?"

"Come on, the hat looked exactly the same. I've seen you in it a hundred times."

"What exactly are you trying to say?"

"I don't know," she mumbled, returning her attention to the meal she was preparing.

I narrowed my eyes, trying my hardest to take the moral high ground. "It's just a coincidence, I guess."

"Yeah, I guess."

A weird uneasiness settled in for the rest of the evening. We talked about other things, but there was this bad sense in the room. I kept wondering what she knew, what she thought was actually going on. I pushed it too far. I blew her off too many times, and now she thinks I'm up to something. I was irritated with myself, and with her for bringing it to my attention. The thought that someone might actually know what I was involved in...

After dinner, we watched a little TV and relaxed, letting it do the talking for awhile. That lightened the mood a little bit, but my chi was too fucked at that point. I had a nervous pit in my stomach that wouldn't budge. She tried to be affectionate with me, putting her hand on my leg, resting her head on my shoulder. Everything just felt off.

She suggested we go to the bedroom. Between the guilt, the suspicion, and having already put my best energy forward in fucking Autumn... Well, I wasn't really in the mood. But I obliged, assuming I could manage to get over it and perform. Once in the room, Heather noticed my hat on the bedside table. I saw her expression sort of lighten when she noticed it. Glad I snatched that back.

Soon enough we were each sitting on the bed, and she was doing her best to be affectionate. She whispered some things about it being too long since we'd been close, and her hand found its way to my lap. I had nothing. After a couple minutes, she knew something was up.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know... I'm sorry, I guess I'm just really tired. And, uh- sorta sore from earlier too."

There was no pity or understanding. She'd had enough. Her body moved away from mine and slouched in irritation. "Sleepiness never stopped you before."

I felt awful. "I... I dunno how to respond to that."

"God, what do I have to do to get you attention anymore? Pretend like I'm one of your students?"

She said it completely sarcastically. I don't think she meant anything by it. I mean, not like that. I'm sure she was trying to say that all I care about is work. But the situation was just so ludicrous, and the image that just popped in my head—of Heather trying to imitate Autumn...

If I had been in a slightly different frame of mind, the mere mention would have put me even more on edge. I would have been nervous, or upset, or anything, and I would have responded appropriately. But for whatever reason, and this was the kiss of death, I made a sheepish grin in response.

That set her off.

She was off the bed in a second, waving her arms emphatically. "That's not funny! What the hell is going on!?"

I tried to calm her down, told her I thought she was making a joke. It didn't matter. I'm not gonna try to explain what she was feeling. How could I know? She's a woman. It was a flurry of pissed off ranting and I barely got a word in edgewise. Who knows who I was trying to convince of what. I wasn't even sure what I wanted anymore.

The last thing she said before she stormed out was, "I can't deal with you right now."

I sat alone, wondering what had happened. In retrospect, it was obviously just a fight. But at the time, I kept thinking she had all but broken up with me. Obviously it was all my own fucking baggage that was coloring my thought process. I was so numb from the sudden nature of everything that I didn't know how to react. Did I feel free? Did I just lose something?

I called her. She didn't answer, of course. I left a message asking her to just let me know that she made it home safely, and that I was sorry, and blah blah. She did call me back later telling me she was home, but she didn't want to talk, that she needed some space and time to think. That's never good.

The more it sank in what I had done, the worse I felt. I resolved to leave it alone. I fucked it up, I was only going to make it worse if I meddled with it. I needed to get my head straight. But fuck, I had been needing to get my head straight ever since I started thinking of Autumn as an attraction and not just a pupil. I wasn't so far gone to think I was going to figure it out now.

After some time of lying on my bed, cycling thoughts, I decided to check for Autumn online. I needed to talk to her. I wasn't sure what I was going to say... but I felt like I needed to connect somehow.

She wasn't on instant messenger. I played some solitaire and poked around the web for awhile, hoping she'd just come online by chance. After a half hour or so, I grew impatient. I grabbed my cell phone and pulled up her number, see-sawing between calling her and texting her. I ended up just sending a message, 'I'm online right now'

A minute later, a buzz told me she responded. 'for how long?'

I wasn't quite sure how to answer that, so I responded with the information she probably cared about. 'I'm home alone'

'ill call you in a bit'

I felt my pulse skip ahead. The idea of talking directly to her, especially tonight, seemed exceptionally... I don't know. I was anxious about it. A nervous energy riddled through me. Do I tell her about what happened? How will she react? Do I just ignore it? Do I talk about the sex? Do I bring up what she said to me before? Did she even mean it? You'd think *I* was the teenager here with thoughts racing this fast.

After waiting expectantly for five or so minutes, it started to occur to me that 'a bit' might be a different measurement of time to Autumn. Turns out it was more in the neighborhood of a half an hour. I paced myself and let the phone ring three times before I answered it. You know, as if it wasn't sitting on the table in front of me, being stared at, willed to ring.

"Hello?" I answered.

"What do you mean, hello?" she asked sarcastically.

"Huh?"

"It's weird. You knew I was going to call. You have Caller ID. Why wouldn't you know it was me?"

"Um- I guess I come from an older time. Back when you just never knew who was on the line."

"Oh."

This is a weird start to the conversation... "Ye-ep."

"So you're home alone, huh?"

"That I am."

"Seems kinda early still."

"That it does."

"So what's the deal?"

"Uh..." It occurred to me that I still didn't have any idea how to broach this.

"Did she just want a quickie or something?" She didn't say it very cutely.

"Not quite."

"Oh," she said flatly.

After a few more moments of awkward silence, I finally admitted, "We got in a fight."

Another bout of wordlessness, presumably while she processed the situation. "About what?"

"I don't know. Me not spending enough time with her, I guess."

"But you were just spending time with her."

"Yeah... I guess my head wasn't in it."

"Aww, and where was your head?" her voice was suddenly much more amenable.

"Gee, I don't know," I responded wryly.

"Oh. That's too bad."

"Huh. I thought you'd be happier."

"How come?"

"Err... Because... Uh..."

"Wait a minute. Did you two like, break up?"

"I'm not sure. Kinda. Maybe."

"What fucking timing," she sighed.

Perhaps you can understand my astonishment at her response. But she clarified fairly quickly. She was going to be unavailable all weekend; checking out the local state universities that accepted her. She was coming into school on Monday, but just to get her assignments for the week. Her parents had arranged for her and her father to fly out of state to visit the rest of the schools interested in her. Apparently she was gearing up to make a decision, and little expense would be spared to determine where she'd spend the next four years or so.

"So I finally get a chance to have you all to myself, and now I'm going to be gone until like, next Monday!" she pouted.

"Well, it's not quite like that."

"What do you mean? We can totally see each other more now!"

"You're still my student. We can't risk being seen together... inappropriately."

"We haven't gotten caught yet, you know."

"Yeah, well, we've been pretty damn lucky."

"Mmm hmm... We do get lucky," I could hear her grin.

"Just... now you can rest easy knowing for the last few weeks of school, you scared off the competition."

"I want to be there to seal the deal," she murmured enticingly.

"I think you already managed that... several times."

"I do know where you live now. I could just come over any time. I seem to always get what I want..."

Considering I couldn't get it up for Heather, it was a testament that I started to feel the stir just hearing Autumn over the phone.

"There's a fine line between seduction and stalking, you know."

"Oh, you like it."

I closed my eyes and smiled wide. I was glad she couldn't see it. "It's just a few more weeks."

"But what if I can't wait that long?"

The bantering went on for awhile, which had become sort of a flirtatious ritual for us. At some point I really did want her to be serious though, and I brought up that Heather had mentioned her in the fight. No, I didn't think she really knew anything, but we couldn't leave anything to chance.

She eventually acquiesced, or at least pretended to in order to drop the conversation. Oddly enough, although she alluded to the sex, we didn't overtly talk about it. And certainly nothing about the L word. Maybe I was making too big a deal out of it. Or maybe she was embarrassed. Why do I care so much? Don't get carried away, man.

At any rate, we eventually went to bed. And imagine that, we didn't even get off at any point during the conversation! The rest of the weekend passed rather uneventfully. I talked to Autumn in the evenings, mostly harmless conversation about the schools she visited. She complained, rather embarrassed, that her parents weren't happy that she let some boy give her a hickey... And I convinced her not to try and go over her paper with me at lunch on Monday. No, I wasn't expecting any company, but just play it safe anyway.

She pouted. "But it's the last time we're going to see each other for a week!"

"I think we can survive."

"Hmm, what should I wear... Something to make sure you don't forget about me."

"Trust me, you have plenty of outfits seared into my memory."

"Ooh, do tell!"

By Sunday night, by the way she was talking, I'd have thought she'd show up to class in lingerie. It was one of the few things I hadn't seen her in. Still asking myself, 'Do teenagers actually buy that kind of thing?'

In reality, she came in a school sweatshirt. No big deal. Oh, and denim shorts. The kind that recently came into style that are short, but have the pockets coming down past the cut of the fabric. I swear, just to further emphasize that they're tiny. When I first started seeing them, I thought they were ridiculous. Of course on Autumn, it made me salivate.

When the lunch bell rang, she came straight up to my desk; no pretense of waiting for everyone else to leave. But, true to her word, she merely asked matter-of-factly for the rest of the week's assignments. She was, after all, going to miss several days of school. I leaned back in my chair and told her I'd email her some material we were going to read in class, and acted completely proper as everyone filed out.

I tried really hard to keep eye contact with her. Even when we were alone, it was like a battle of will to not let my gaze drop and stare at her exposed thighs. She lingered just for a minute, and softly told me she'd miss me. I smiled and opened my desk drawer.

"Oh, I almost forgot," I replied coolly. "I believe this is yours? I found it left by mistake."

I pulled out my baseball hat and waved it in front of her. She bubbled with glee and took it, putting it on immediately. "Thanks!" she chirped.

It was pretty smooth, right?

***

Okay, so time to fast-forward a bit. She flew out to her first destination that night, and for the next week, our communications were stripped down to an occasional text message. She was without internet and without much privacy. It was the most uneventful week I'd had since all this started. I did manage to catch up on all my work and clean my place though. I'm sure you care, and I appreciate your concern.