My name is Polly, I am a twenty-five-year-old post-graduate University student at University in Leeds, researching the behaviour of electronic systems under a variety of stresses. Not the sort of subject that gets the boys either entertained or interested, but which should eventually lead to a profitable career in the IT industry.

That is my plan, at least.

I am still officially unmarried but have been engaged to my long-term boyfriend Ian for over a year. Until all this happened, we planned to get married next April. He is four years older than me and also works in IT, in his case for a large corporation in Manchester.

I guess you would probably call us both Geeks. Well, I used to be one.

We have to live apart during the week; me in student accommodation in Leeds, Ian in his modern Manchester flat – the place in which we eventually intend to live once my PhD is finished. It’s not a great way to keep a relationship going, but when it started, we told ourselves that it was only temporary. And anyway, it wasn’t as if we had been living together beforehand.

I have only had three lovers in my life. The first was the drunken one-night stand at University in which I lost my virginity, the second nearly a year later with the man to whom I am now engaged.

And the third? Well’ that’s who this story has been written for.

I have to be up front and say now that although I have quite a nice figure and a fairly pretty face, for most of my life, I haven’t been one of those girls who could stop conversations when they enter a room. I just didn’t seem to have the sex appeal that other girls find so easy to project; I could go in and out of most places without men noticing my presence at all, let alone giving me an appreciative glance.

These days however, things seem to have changed.

I’m average in height, pale and skinny with very dark hair that falls midway down my back when I don’t keep it tied tightly back as, until last year, I invariably did.

I have very small breasts too, but my nipples are large and dark; so dark that without a bra, they used to show through my school blouse. This earned me the horrible nickname, ‘Polly Pimples’ at school and made me even more self-conscious than I already was.

As you would guess from my current study, I was bookish throughout school and University. Not possessing the self-confidence of other girls my age, I used to dress in darker, less revealing, less noticeable clothes to match my less noticeable personality. I wore little if any make-up and often let my straggly hair fall however it wanted.

It didn’t help that I’m an only child. My school was an All-Girls Grammar too, so for years I had absolutely no regular contact with boys and the few I did come into contact with, simply did not seem to notice, let alone fancy me. To be fair, I wasn’t really into them either; noisy, dirty, smelly creatures who told each other rude jokes, leered over girls and had only one thought on their minds.

If I had listened more carefully to my friends, I would have seen that girls had much the same wicked thoughts too, but in those days, I was too naive and too focussed on schoolwork to see this.

Thrown into University life after seven years in an all-girls school, I was unnerved by the overwhelming majority of boys on my nerdy course, and had little idea how to behave in their presence. So, while my course mates and friends were enjoying the sexual freedom that being away from home brought, I remained steadfastly unattached and with my hymen very much intact.

I was so underconfident that even masturbation seemed a daunting and dirty prospect.

Fortunately, I did make a good many female friends; enough to have enough innocent fun in my first year, and to have a group of close friends to share a house with in my second and third. We got on well in an undemanding way, me often being a friendly ear into which their various trials and tribulations could be emptied.

Most of those tribulations involved boys. I was poorly placed to advise in such matters but listening seemed more important than advising, and I could do that well.

Boys however do not appreciate this quality in a girl, so while my housemates were all having their boyfriends (or on occasion, other girls’ boyfriends) to stay overnight, I either studied in my room, or watched TV or went out with the other single girls for a drink or to the cinema.

I have to say that seeing my bleary-eyed, tousled friends and their scruffy, unshaven lovers the morning after a night of noisy copulation did nothing to encourage me to join them in this messy pastime. Neither did the pervasive smell of stale sweat and sex that clung to their rooms afterwards.

Eventually my housemates became so fed up with my attitude that in my final year, they decided that my virginity had overstayed its welcome and needed to be shed. I must not be allowed to leave both University and my teenage years in the same unsullied, inexperienced condition in which I had arrived.

They began to secretly plot my defloration.

I of course knew nothing of this, going along with their various plans for visits to pubs, parties, gigs and other events, not noticing that I was being deliberately placed alongside one boy or other who they thought I might fancy, or who they thought might make a move on me.

Several moves were apparently made, but I missed most of them completely. The few I did recognise as attempted pick-ups came as such a surprise that I had no idea how to respond and made a mess of the opportunities provided.

After a couple of months of this, one of my friends – I never did find out which – thought of David, or Dave as he was universally known.

Dave was what I would now call a predatory male. Impossibly good looking and completely unscrupulous, he studied medicine, played rugby for the University First Fifteen and had a physique to match. Tall, dark and muscular, he was rumoured to have a remarkably large cock and was the cause of much giggling among my friends after a few drinks.

He also had an attitude towards women that made James Bond look like a serious matrimonial prospect. For Dave, sex was like rugby; every encounter was a tough physical battle, getting himself over the line was the most important thing and at the end of the day, numbers counted.

And if there had to be a few casualties on the way, so be it.

More than one of my friends had experienced his technique during the time were at University. Fortunately for him, the University provided a steady stream of potential female victims who either did not know about his caveman attitude or knew all about it and simply didn’t care.

I fell firmly into the first category. I had literally no idea that boys as predatory as Dave existed, still less that they would be attracted to a girl purely by the idea of taking her virginity, however plain, dull or unprepossessing she might be.

The setup was simple; a party in the shared house in which Dave and four of his friends lived. Invite half a dozen more good-looking boys and if possible, more than the same number of girls to allow for a few dropouts on the way.

The boys were to be in jeans or shorts and tight T shirts – anything that showed off their physiques. This was easily managed – that was how this group of sport-crazy boys liked to dress anyway.

The girls were to be dressed sexily in short skirts, dresses or short-shorts and equally tight tops to show off their boobs – if they had any, of course. This was harder to arrange, but with considerable pressure from our more forward housemates, I and the other shy girls were eventually persuaded to wear clothes much brighter, much shorter and much more revealing that we would ever have dreamt of choosing ourselves.

To this sexually charged mix, add liberal doses of alcohol, a little weed, too little food to offset it, a constant stream of loud music and you had the ideal terrain in which predators like Dave could hunt, especially if they were in the market for naive, inexperienced prey like me.

No doubt briefed by my housemates beforehand, Dave got me in his sights early on, flattering me, paying me far more attention than any boy had done before, making sure my drink was always topped up and dancing with me whenever the crush of bodies in the house parted enough to allow it.

Unused both to flirting and to all the alcohol, I must have been one of the easiest conquests in his rather thick black book. By midnight we were kissing in the corner of the lounge. By half past, we were in the furthest corner of the garden, our mouths pressed together while the improbable number of hands he apparently possessed roamed freely all over my body, under my skirt and for a short time, inside my panties.

Drunk, dazed and in awe of this drop-dead gorgeous boy, still tingling and highly aroused by his expert fingers, I accepted his offer to walk me home, accompanied by a bottle of red wine. On the way, we held hands and stopped several times for long, deep kisses in the shadows.

The house was empty and in near darkness when we arrived, my housemates all still at the party. I unlocked the front door and turned on the hall light, expecting to go unsteadily to bed after perhaps a goodbye kiss and cuddle in the doorway.

I was simply not prepared for the speed and determination of Dave’s assault on my virginity.

Not pausing in the doorway as I had expected, he went straight into the house and to the kitchen to open the wine. I followed him, accepted the large glass of red that he immediately poured then after barely two sips, found his arms around me once again.

We kissed long and deep in the kitchen, me finally getting the hang of how to breathe with my mouth pressed hard against someone else’s while Dave explored my skinny, bony body.

If I had suspected he had extra pairs of hands when we were in the garden, I became certain of it now.

From my thighs to my ears, my fingertips to my nose, I don’t think there was a single part of me that he didn’t stroke, tweak, pinch or fondle as we made out in that kitchen, paying extra special attention to my tiny boobs with their large nipples before turning his attention to my already-highly stimulated vulva.

His fingers inside my knickers, Dave showed me a masterclass in fingering, within seconds producing the first orgasm of my life induced by another human being. It was only a small one, but it was completely unexpected and the effect on me was profound, making me tremble in his arms.

The second was much stronger and shook me to the core.

By the time he led me to my bedroom and closed the door, every single part of me had been kissed, touched or otherwise aroused. My mind was in such a spin that I followed him without question, drunk, highly aroused, so far out of my comfort zone that I might as well have been on another planet and had no idea what I wanted to happen next.

I need not have worried; what I wanted was completely irrelevant.

Dave was unstoppable; he simply overwhelmed any thoughts of resistance I might have had and ignored any signs of reluctance I might have shown, though the whole thing happened so quickly I had little chance of expressing either.

Within seconds my dress had been unfastened and my boobs exposed. Dave went to work on them eagerly, cupping what little he could find in the palms of his hands, kneading them, kissing and sucking my nipples.

As well as being very large, my nipples are extremely sensitive. Feeling a boy’s mouth, tongue and teeth on them for the first time brought feelings I had no idea existed. I held his head in my hands instinctively as he suckled and nibbled my teats, the new sensations sending my tipsy mind reeling.

Soon I felt something going on in my groin too, and dimly realised it was my body lubricating of its own accord.

The idea was frightening but turned me on even more.

Meeting little or no resistance, Dave changed up a gear. Before I knew it was happening, my dress was around my ankles leaving me only in my half-dislodged bra and panties, being pushed backwards towards the bed.

A moment later, the edge of the mattress touched the back of my legs. I wobbled, overbalanced and the next thing I knew I was on my back, my legs were apart, and Dave was over me, kissing my bared boobs, lips and skinny tummy.

The sensations were amazing, but paled into insignificance when his mouth reached my groin and he began to tongue my vulva through the gusset of my panties.

Although I had heard of oral sex, in my mind it had always involved the deeply unappealing prospect having a boy’s cock in my mouth. The idea that it could work the other way had barely occurred to me, so when Dave’s expert tongue began to work its magic between my thighs, my brain was sent into a tailspin.

The incredible new sensations that surged out from my vulva and into my belly, spine, chest and inner thighs knocked me sideways. I gasped and tried instinctively to push his head away, but he was too strong and barely noticed my feeble protests.

Instead, he tongued me even more. I began to moan and writhe on the bed, dimly aware that my panties were being eased from my waist and over my buttocks until suddenly they were down my thighs and away leaving my virgin vulva fully exposed.

His target now in sight, Dave resumed his assault.

If his mouth on my vulva had felt astounding through my panties, the touch of his tongue on my bare slit was a revelation. My first orgasm struck within seconds, the next followed so quickly that I barely had time to breathe and I was gasping by the time the third hit me.

Then I simply lost count and the room filled with the sound of moaning and squealing as climax after climax wracked my body, my thighs clamping and unclamping on the sides of Dave’s head, my fingers tangling in his hair.

After God knows how many orgasms, I was stunned and could only watch helplessly as Dave stood back and looked down hungrily on my naked body. I looked up at him with hazy eyes as he frantically lowered his jeans and underpants, releasing the first erect cock I had ever seen.

I stared at what to me looked like a monster; at its ugly colour and curved deformed shape, still somehow not understanding what was about to happen. It wasn’t until he pulled a packet from his back pocket, tore it open and began to roll its rubber contents down his shaft that it finally dawned on me that this boy was getting his cock ready to stick into my vagina.

I was about to lose my virginity.

I cannot in all honesty say that I either resisted or protested in the few seconds it took for Dave to mount me and position the head of his cock at my entrance. I can say I did nothing to make his job any easier; my body went stiff as a board and I bit my lower lip hard as something smooth and soft was rubbed up and down my slit until it found the place it was looking for.

A moment later I felt his body tense, he pulled a face and something unbelievably huge was thrust hard into my virgin vagina.

Now when I say virgin, I mean more than just that I had never had sex before. I mean that apart from one or two medical examinations in my early teens, nothing at all had been stuck into my vagina before that moment.

Masturbation had been rare and confined to the outer extremities of my vulva; no boy had ever fingered me deep inside, I barely knew what a dildo was let alone how to use one and thanks to my mother’s old-fashioned advice, I used pads during my periods.

Not even a tampon had been inside me, so it is all but impossible to describe the extraordinary sensations that shot like white hot pokers through my body when Dave’s cock was driven into me for the first time.

The first sensation I felt was pain; unbelievable pain of a kind and in a place I had never felt before. I yelped and my entire body went stiff. But Dave was not someone to be easily deterred; drawing himself back the tiny distance he had managed to penetrate, he flexed his hips and pushed hard into me again.

I yelped again, louder this time.

“Jesus Polly! You really are a virgin, aren’t you?” he hissed.

I could do nothing but bite my lip harder and nod, my face contorted in pain.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

I wanted him to stop. I wanted it never to have happened, but now it had started I was quite incapable of communicating this, and instead just shook my head.

“Good girl’” Dave smiled.

I felt him pull back and thrust again, then again, each thrust producing the same agonising result and bringing his progress to a sudden halt.

But Dave wasn’t going to stop this close to his goal. Four, five times he thrust, each one stronger than the last until eventually, and with a strange yielding sensation that made me feel sick, something within me gave way and he sank a short distance into me.

That’s when the second sensation took over. Fullness!

These days I understand that Dave was indeed very well endowed, both in thickness and in length. Neither of the other lovers in my life possesses anything like the size of that first cock, so it was a huge shock for my virgin vagina to be penetrated by something so large.

Sawing slowly but determinedly back and forth, Dave gradually worked his massive cock into my protesting vagina. My body resisted as well as it could, but eventually even it began to understand what was needed and to lubricate with a vengeance.

“Mmmm! That’s better Polly. Much better!”

By the time Dave’s full length was inside me and his pubic hair was grinding against mine, my juices were in full flow and I felt so full that I thought I would burst.

Not in my wildest imaginations had I imagined my first penetrative sex would feel like this; the pressure of his hips spreading my thighs wide; the heat of his body over mine; the smell of his and my joint arousal in my nostrils; but most of all, the huge invasion of my body by what seemed a massive alien creature; all these made my mind spin and my belly churn.

And that was before he began to thrust.

Although it was wasted on me at the time, I have to say that his technique was first class.

Emboldened by my increasing lubrication, Dave began to fuck me properly, moving himself slowly in and out of my vagina at a steady, even pace. My body tried desperately to adjust to the strange presence within it, but as soon as had I got used to one rhythm, Dave changed it either in speed or depth or both.

Now I am much more experienced, I understand this technique; Dave really was expert in bed and was trying to make my first time a good one. I should have responded; I should have done those things with my hands, hips and pelvic floor that I was to learn later at another man’s hands, but right there and then, all I could do was lie there and let him use me any way he wanted.

Realising that my complete surrender was the most he was going to get, Dave decided to make the most of it, spreading my legs wider, kissing me hard on the lips, biting me on the neck and nibbling my nipples as his cock was thrust harder and faster in and out of my opening, soaking wet vagina.

The wailing sounds coming from my mouth were joined by disgustingly wet slapping noises coming from between my legs as his hips collided over and over again with my skinny inner thighs. The feeling of pain was still there, but other strange, unidentifiable sensations were growing stronger too, masking all but the sharpest of stings at my over-stretched entrance.

Dave’s grunts and gasps joined mine as his pace increased still further. A moment later he had taken my legs in his strong arms and lifted them until my knees were almost on my chest and his weight was pinning me to the bed.

In that undignified position I was helpless, my vulva was completely exposed, the little movement that remained gave me no chance of escape and his cock could reach so deep into my body that I could feel the pressure of its head against my cervix.

Entirely at his mercy, I could do nothing but look up into Dave’s face as the pace and force of his thrusts grew and grew.

The noises coming from the bedsprings were soon joined by new, unfamiliar wailings as wave after wave of a sensation I could not identify as either pleasure or pain, washed over me. Encouraged, he thrust faster, then faster still. The sensations multiplied, pressure building in my lower belly and loins until I was sure I was going to pee myself and desperately wanted it all to stop.

Then to my astonishment, his rhythm broke and he began to hammer into me with short, sharp stabs, each accompanied by a crude animal like grunt.

Never having seen a boy cum before, I was completely unprepared and badly shocked when, only inches above mine, Dave’s face twisted and contorted as his body went into spasm and he began to ejaculate deep within me, his massive cock throbbing endlessly in my vagina.

The process seemed to go on for ages, his hips twisting as he ground the base of his cock hard against my entrance and clitoris in time with the extraordinary pulsing deep within my belly.

Then everything went quiet and still. I looked up through tear-filled eyes into a face which to my relief, was rapidly recovering its previous, handsome looks.

There were tears of pain, shame and regret in my eyes, mixed with an unexpected feeling of elation when he pulled his still-hard shaft from my trembling body and, his chest heaving, slipped off the semen filled condom.

Unable to look him in the eye or even think about the latex sack of sperm that had been inside me, I instinctively curled my legs to my chest and rolled onto my side as if defending my belly and pubic mound from further assault.

But it was too late; the deed was done. Polly was a virgin no longer.

Dave might have been predatory, but to be fair, he did not leave me, freshly deflowered, to cope with the trauma on my own. Instead he undressed fully and slipped naked into bed alongside me, holding me close as my trembling body tried to make sense of what had just happened.

In the silence that followed, I could hear my housemates talking, giggling and moving around outside the bedroom door. There was no way they could have avoided hearing us.

I closed my eyes, suddenly sober, shocked and exhausted.

***

He woke and fucked me again during the night. I still had absolutely no idea how to respond, so just lay there and let him have his way with me once more.

Though it still hurt, it hurt a lot less, and this time the extraordinary mix of sensations contained at least some real pleasure. Or was it still pain?

Whatever it was, it made me wail loudly into the darkness of the room.

***

In the morning I woke alongside Dave, both of us crammed into my single bed. My body ached in every joint and my vulva was on fire. I had the worst hangover I could remember too. After a few minutes desperately trying to pull myself together, I rose unsteadily to my feet in urgent need of a visit to the bathroom, a glass of water and a mug of tea.

Pulling my robe around my naked body, I left Dave asleep, slipped through the door and into the bathroom. There I drank deeply from the tap before tentatively opening my gown and inspecting the damage.

The first thing I noticed were the beginnings of hickeys on my neck, then tooth marks around my nipples and finally how extraordinarily distended my vulva was. Although I knew this happened as a woman’s body prepared itself for sex, the reality still surprised me, as did the angry red colour of my puffy outer lips.

I bent over and touched them tentatively. They stung, and there were smears of blood down the inside of both thighs.

Virgin blood! Oh God! What had he done to me? The question was stupid. Dave had fucked me and fucked me hard.

Tea! I needed tea! And if I brought one for Dave, it might make him leave quicker. I pulled my gown around my body, made my wobbly way to the kitchen, opened the door and slipped inside.

The cheer that greeted me was both a shock and a humiliation. Three of my housemates were already in the room, drinking tea or coffee in their pyjamas. I was immediately surrounded by smiling, congratulatory faces and a hundred shouted questions I did not want to answer.

“How was it?”

“You lucky cow. I’ve always fancied him!”

“Is he as big as they say?”

“Is he as good as they say?”

I blushed as deeply as I had ever blushed before, fumbling for the kettle and filling it at the tap, trying to hold back the tears and feeling sick.

“It must have been good. We could hear you through two closed doors.”

“You look like you had a good time Polly!”

“Is he still here?”

“TWO cups of tea, Polly?”

Now the tears could be held back no longer.

“Polly! Hey! Are you okay…?”

The cheers and taunts turned to genuine concern as the tears began to flow. Friendly arms encircled me, I was made to sit rather painfully on a chair and a mug of hot, sweet, truly disgusting coffee was thrust into my hand.

My friends gathered round as I wept out my pain, shame and humiliation.

The geeky girl’s virginity had gone!

***

Dave was nearly dressed when I returned to the bedroom half an hour later, red-eyed and pink faced. In the cold light of day and with another cherry added to his considerable account, he had clearly decided that the less time spent in the company of his latest and geekiest conquest, the better.

No doubt in the past, he had found freshly deflowered girls to be too clingy or to have expectations beyond the mere physical shedding of their virginity. Experience had taught him that the best course was to make himself scarce.

In my case I felt no desire to begin a relationship with him or with any other boy. Yes, my hymen had been busted and my body now knew what an erect penis felt like, but there had been little pleasure, even less dignity and I had no desire to repeat the experience.

As I handed him his tea and heard him beginning to make his excuses, I knew that this was the first and last date we would have and was genuinely relieved at the prospect.

We drank our tea making strained conversation. I offered him breakfast hoping he would decline. When he did, he seemed pleased that I did not even try to persuade him to stay.

Once he had left the house, I had another little cry on my own, then tidied the room. There were blood and other earthier stains on the sheet and two used condoms in the waste basket. Staring at their pale, creamy contents made me feel nauseous, a situation not helped by my hangover.

When all visible signs of my fall from grace had been erased, I ran a deep bath and washed all traces of my spilled virgin blood and our combined bodily fluids from my body too. Then I dressed and tried to get on with my day.

That process was made much more difficult by the constant abrasion of my panties against my sore, inflamed vulva.

***

For some weeks after my defloration, I focussed solely on my work, much to the disappointment of my housemates who no doubt had hoped to see a transformation in me, their protégé.

As predicted, having succeeded in busting the geeky girl’s hymen, Dave wanted nothing more to do with me, so I tried to get on with my life as if nothing had happened.

I thought I was being successful, but it’s possible that my demeanour had changed without my noticing, because within a couple of months, to my surprise, I was asked out by Ian, an older, postgraduate student in the same department who used to supervise and help out at maths workshops.

Ian’s advances were so tentative that at first, I didn’t realise he was serious. But I was vulnerable, on the rebound, unused to male attention and agreed without thinking.

We went for a drink together the following evening, to the cinema the weekend after and it carried on from there.

Fortunately for me, Ian was and is a gentleman, bringing romance into my life for the first time. He bought me flowers, took me on dates to restaurants and to the theatre. When we kissed it was with some passion, but without the wanton groping that had accompanied my evening with Dave.

I won’t pretend that Ian is anywhere near as good-looking as Dave. He simply isn’t. He isn’t as tall, as fit, as strong, as popular or as confident either. No girls go to the sports fields to watch him play in his tight-fitting shirt and shorts.

But he also isn’t as unscrupulous, as manipulative, as shallow or as ruthless in his pursuit of a girl’s body. He is at least as interested in my mind and my intellect, which given my body is nothing to write home about, suits me well.

When Ian and I first made love, it was after three full months of what could only be called courtship. We were both nearly sober and it was entirely consensual. It was clumsy too; neither of us really had any idea what to do or how to respond, but we muddled through and eventually his erect, latex-covered cock entered my vagina for the first time.

I was very anxious, expecting the same pain that my defloration had brought.

Perhaps it was because I was no longer a virgin; perhaps it was because Ian’s cock was much smaller than Dave’s; perhaps it was because my hymen had already been comprehensively broken but the pain, though still present, was far less than I had feared and the feeling of fullness was much more pleasant.

By the time we were doing it for a third time, it had become an enjoyable, if unexciting activity and despite there being no hint of an orgasm for me, for the first time, I had something that could be called a sex life.

We became engaged later in the year. Ian was granted his Doctorate; I graduated too and began the PhD study that I am currently pursuing.

The plan was that Ian would continue to study at the University and the two of us would live together. The problem was that Ian immediately got head hunted for a fantastic new job at an IT company in Manchester. It was too good a chance to turn down, but too far away for either of us to commute so we agreed to keep living separately while I finished my research.

It wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t as if we have been living together until then, and we would be together every weekend. So, Ian found a one bedroom flat he could afford, and I moved back into University accommodation.

As any post-graduate student can tell you, the gap between the excitement of beginning study and the reality of long, grinding hours of research is a large one. Many times, it all seemed pointless, and I had three years of it ahead, but the precious title of ‘Doctor’ retained its appeal just enough to keep my nose to the grindstone.

Ian and I talked every night; I went by train to Manchester every weekend and we established a tolerable routine. Our sex life was regular if uninspiring; I still had no idea what a vaginal orgasm was and had no real prospect of ever finding out, but in those days, I had no idea what I was missing anyway so had no reason to feel I was missing out.

As far as I knew, short-lived, missionary-position-only penetration followed by a dozen thrusts and rapid ejaculation was what all sex was like. It felt good to be united physically with my boyfriend but no more than that.

Life seemed reassuring if not exciting, comfortable if predictable. Ian and I would eventually move in together, marry and pursue our careers before starting a family.

Then I met Harry.

It was only a week into my research when I first knocked tentatively on his office door and entered at his welcoming command.

A good ten years older than me, Harry had achieved the much-desired status of Doctor long ago and was now a Senior Lecturer and Researcher. Part of this exalted role was to supervise junior researchers in his field like me, so he and I had to meet weekly for review sessions.

As well as having one of the best minds I had ever encountered, Harry was tall, athletically built, well spoken, charming… and had the blackest skin I had ever seen up close.

It sounds silly now, but having been to an all-girls school in an upmarket area and then studied a very techy, minority subject as a first degree, this was literally the first time I had encountered a truly black man in any professional academic capacity, still less in the close, almost intimate relationship of a student and her supervisor.

I was simply fascinated by him from the start; his extraordinary intellect, his mildly accented voice, his broad, white-toothed smile, his warm, friendly supportive attitude but most of all, by his extraordinary body and almost glowing, ebony skin.

A little stalking on the University intranet and social media revealed that his parents had been first generation immigrants from Nigeria, but that he had been born in the UK. He was married to a full-figured, white English girl and had two beautiful pre-teenage children.

I was too naïve and too detached from my fellow post-graduates to know that he also had a fearsome reputation for seducing his students. All I knew was that I found him fascinating on an intellectual and sociological level and as time passed, something more.

As the term progressed and we had more and more one-to-one review sessions in his office, this fascination deepened. His professional advice was clear, helpful and unpatronizing, his criticism was fair and detailed. He looked me in the eye when we talked and took a keen interest in his tutee’s life, both academic and pastoral.

Harry had a relaxed, non-judgemental attitude which encouraged frankness and confidentiality. Within a few weeks I found I had told him all about my family and their strict Catholic attitudes, something with his background he understood well. I had told him about my friends during my first degree too and of course, about my engagement to Ian and our unsatisfactory living arrangements.

I became completely fascinated by him. In return, he took a real interest both in my research and in me, but as far as I knew at the time, without any overt sexual content on either side.

As far as I knew at the time.

Consequently, I felt no qualms when he suggested changing our brief weekly review sessions in his office to longer sessions in local coffee bars. There, we discussed not only my research, but life in general; what we enjoyed, what we wanted from our careers and relationships. As I learned more about him, my fascination deepened further. The more we talked, the more I told him about my history and my plans for the future including my forthcoming marriage.

And the more I told him, the more his deep, dark eyes seemed to bore into my soul.

For perhaps the first time in my life, I began to experience the new and for me, completely unfamiliar sensations of strong physical, sexual attraction. I wasn’t sure what they were or what to do about them, but I did know neither my deflowerer nor my fiancé had induced them in me before.

The more we met and talked, the stronger the attraction became. Harry’s broad smile, powerful physique and ebony skin filled first my waking imagination, then my dreams with alarmingly damp patches appearing between my thighs at embarrassing moments.

Soon, our weekly reviews over coffee had morphed seamlessly into twice-weekly lunches, first in national chain restaurants then in more secluded, more intimate locations. It was all very gradual and to me, felt like the natural progression of a strong but still professional relationship. Well, mainly professional.

As Christmas approached, the mathematical aspects of my research intensified. To hit key deadlines, weekend working became a necessity which meant I had to spend more Friday and Saturday nights in Leeds and fewer with Ian in Manchester.

Fortunately, Harry was available to help, giving up parts of his weekends too, working late with me, helping with the more demanding analyses and keeping me company during some of the evenings when I finished late, exhausted.

A week before the end of term, I was invited to lunch at his house to meet his young, pretty, highly pregnant wife Sarah and their two boisterous, coffee coloured children. It was Saturday. We had spent the morning computer modelling a particularly complicated system, and would have to work the following morning too if the deadline was to be met, so I was not planning to visit Ian in Manchester at all that weekend.

“So, you’re Harry’s latest protege. The woman keeping my husband away so much!”

Sarah greeted me with a friendly smile, but I could hear the hint of resentment in her voice.

“I’m sorry…” I began but she cut me off.

“I’m joking… do I call you Polly?” she asked.

“Please,” I smiled back.

As I entered their neat, Victorian terraced house, Harry’s wife, the woman who he had married, who he lived with and who was about to bear him a third child, looked me up and down carefully, as if assessing the competition.

For some reason, I felt a completely unfamiliar surge of jealousy pass through me and began to do the same.

I soon wished I hadn’t.

Sarah led me into the kitchen where Harry was waiting with a large glass of wine into my hand. He handed it to me with a slightly awkward smile, then went off to play with the children leaving his wife and me alone. We chatted for a while as she prepared the lunch, Sarah asking question after question, gradually relaxing as if every reply was reassuring her that the risk I posed to her marriage was small.

I couldn’t blame her; I was simply outclassed. Sarah was taller than me, fuller-figured than me, had a prettier face, larger breasts and longer, shapelier legs than me and overall, was sexier than me in every way.

To my surprise, my heart sank. After a lifetime in the shadows of other girls, why did it upset me so much now?

“I hear you’re engaged,” she eventually asked.

For some reason, being reminded of this made me feel unexpectedly uncomfortable.

“Yes,” was all the reply I could manage.

“It must be hard living apart,” she continued. “I’d hate to be separated from my fiancé.”

I confirmed that it was indeed difficult but hoped it wouldn’t last forever.

“There are so many things I’d miss…” Sarah continued.

The look on her face was suggestive but in my naivete I didn’t get her meaning straight away. It wasn’t until she ran her hands over her large baby bump that the penny dropped.

I blushed. She grinned. Then Harry came back into the kitchen and lunch progressed.

I could feel Sarah’s eyes watching both me and her husband throughout the meal, and tried as hard as I could not to send him any admiring glances, but I’m sure she spotted me at least once.

Far from dampening my budding desires, seeing Harry at home; seeing how handsome he looked, how beautiful, feminine and fertile his wife was, how good a father he was, was making those still not understood feelings in my heart, belly and loins grow even stronger.

As I left the house two hours later, Harry escorted me to the door while his wife finished clearing away the crockery. I could feel the warmth of his fit, strong, black body as we squeezed along the narrow hallway. It made me tingle.

“I’m sorry about Sarah,” he said in a quiet voice. “When she’s pregnant she gets a bit… territorial.”

I smiled.

“It’s okay. She’s nice. And I’ve had a lovely time.”

He ushered me through the hallway, putting his hand on the small of my back – perhaps a bit lower than he had before.

“I’m pleased,” he said. “See you for work tomorrow as usual?”

“I’m looking forward to it,” I told him, truthfully.

As I reached the front door, I turned to thank him before returning to my room and my laptop. As I turned, I instinctively raised my face towards his to wish him goodnight.

I had misjudged the distance; Harry was a lot closer than I had expected. Our mouths were only inches apart.

Then suddenly they weren’t apart at all. Suddenly Harry was kissing me in his own hallway. What’s more, I was kissing him back. It was only one kiss, but it was on the lips and lasted much longer than a mere peck goodbye should have done.

We broke apart just as suddenly as we had started. There was a moment of awkward silence before we both stepped back.

Our eyes met. No words were spoken as we parted but he stood in the doorway until I passed around the corner and out of sight, my heart thumping loudly in my chest.

***

As I walked to the bus stop, I knew something important had just happened. At that moment I did not fully understand what it was.

But I positively floated back to my small, crowded bedroom and worked hard, late into the evening.