Patrick Arthur Chimney had a silly name and had never forgotten the taunts he had endured throughout his school days, which weren’t very originally wrought, but had stung him deep nevertheless. Those old words rang in his ears as he took his customary shortcut from the day’s university lectures, across a patch of wasteland that had become overgrown with wildflower, and adrift in its gentle undulations with dry autumn leaves.

“Sweep,” had been an especially common choice of his tormentors. “Been up a chimney, Chimney?” was often a nonsensical follow up, and though he had had the good fortune to leave behind the small town in which those that made his school days a misery had mostly remained, he couldn’t quite leave behind those words, or the way they had made him feel. This was chiefly why he chose his shortcuts — of which this unworn path through a lonely patch of ground was just one — to avoid the bulk of the students on his journey home. They would gather without him, in fluid groups, and make their way back to the halls-of-residence in a complex turbulence of social interactions, into which Patrick felt he had only the most limited insight.

He could hear them still, their shouts and laughs carried on the autumn breeze. Carried also were a few wildflower petals, and some leaves loosed from the branches of the trees that surrounded this patch of land and separated it from his imagined troubles. For the truth was that Patrick was not a bad-looking boy and that his inabilities were driven only by the same uncertainty that every human being feels, and that he needed only to look a little past it,to know that all other people felt, more or less, as he did.

In the distance, a small bird sang an autumn song, and the breeze shifted, turning to a slight headwind, bringing with it some dust lifted from the dry ground. Patrick had to turn his face a little, which meant he missed the very beginning of what started to happen next.

As the wind moved, the autumn sunshine seemed to change slightly, the shadows turned, and in their occluded centers, where the light was the least, a small spark might have been seen, and seen to grow. If he had been watching at that moment, Patrick would have rubbed the dust from his incautiously opened eyes and would have spotted a single leaf, twisting in the wind, inexplicably halt mid-flight. Caught impossibly against an invisible object.

By the time the second, and the third leaf had come abruptly to rest mid-air, Patrick had lifted his head into the wind, and blinked away the dust, and stopped, and stared. Before him, more leaves gathered against something, driven there by a wind that was now blowing briskly towards a single point. Something with a shape that began to resemble a figure, slowly revealed, standing motionless on the ground, among the slender stems of the wildflowers.

As more and more leaves, in reds and oranges, and some petals along with them, in purples and blues, appeared to hang in the air, the figure moved. It turned, having apparently been facing away from Patrick, and as it did so, the curve of a shapely breast betrayed its owner as a woman. It is an extraordinary thing that even though this shape was imperfectly, and incompletely, picked out from the empty air by the leaves that covered it, it was still a lovely and erotic sight as she turned around further to face him.

Under the cover of the leaves, first a darkness gathered, and then, as each gap between each leaf was finally almost entirely closed by the arrival of another, a light became visible, shining from the few remaining cracks. It grew in intensity, and picked out in each leaf their fine branching veins, until it became so bright that Patrick had to look away again, which meant he missed the very final moment of the figure’s appearance.

The light, in a single instant, vanished, the leaves fell in a rustling drift, blown away gently by the now-calmed breeze, and in their place stood a pale, tall, and very, very naked, young woman. Her long hair black, her eyes hazel, her breasts full and firm, her belly just slightly round, and between her legs, a patch of dark and unruly hair. She stood and stared at the astonished Patrick, who had by the time the light had faded, opened his eyes. He had rather limited experience with the opposite sex, being teased at school, and then too afraid at University, he had failed to move far beyond a few unsatisfactory fumblings on awkward dates. One memorable evening had resulted in his coming, rather too quickly, in a probably relieved girl’s hands.

He had often replayed this scene in his mind, and played out multiple endings, some of which ended with — as he imagined people might call it — going “all the way”.

Patrick’s chest tightened, he had no idea what on earth was going on, and would very likely have said something foolish, or perhaps even run away, which would have been a tragic mistake, had the young woman not taken a half-step towards him, and introduced herself.

“Hello, I’m Sophie.”

This introduction was no explanation at all, of course. Sophie is just a name, a lovely one, and certainly one befitting a beautiful naked young woman who has just materialised in front of the astonished Patrick. But a name by itself left him with no more idea of what was going on than the moment before he knew it.

“Er... Hi, er,” offered Patrick. And then, in an unsure voice; “Are you ok?” Some instinctive chivalrous intention rose up in him. He began to remove his jacket. “Here,” he said, as he moved towards her, “Take this.”

“No, it’s ok,” she replied, waving it away, “I don’t wear clothes.”

He looked at her, incredulously.

“I don’t seem to need them,” she explained. “They don’t really suit me, if I’m honest,” she added, and gave her round breasts each a slight squeeze from underneath as she spoke. “I prefer to be naked.” She smiled at him, a lovely unaffected smile, her lips full and red, her teeth white, and perfect.

Patrick continued to stare at this vision before him. He was a clever young man, capable of clear and lucid thought, with powers of concentration that often caused him to lose hours while working, though it would seem to him that only minutes had passed. He read widely, knew Ovid and The Metamorphosis, was aware that impossible things occurred in fiction almost with every word. He lived on the edge of being real, held to the factual foundations of a world of things by a gravity. Always though, with a feeling in his heart that there was something above him, out of reach, that he could sense, but not touch or see.

He thought to himself, as this young woman gazed at him, so easy and comfortable in her body, its curves and shapes as much a part of her as her thoughts and dreams must be, that perhaps those real things might not be all the things there were, after all.

“What just happened?” he asked, “You seemed to just appear, there was a light… it was bright, I closed my eyes, and then there you were.” He looked around, foolishly, at the tall wildflowers that stood in patches between them and the trees, maybe fifty meters away. “Where did you come from?” he asked, eventually.

Sophie replied, “Oh, I was always here. I’m a nymph. A spirit. I’m a magical creature of the flowers, and the trees...”

Patrick’s instinct, the gravity of real things, for the moment overrode his heart. The sense in him of a possibility of something else, still just feebly felt, quieted beneath it.

“Sophie, that’s just silly,” he began, in the rather tiresome tone he sometimes took with people when he felt that he was best situated to explain the ways in which they were wrong. “You must have been lying down among these flowers, and we should go and find someone who can help.” And then, in what he felt was a reassuring voice, he added, “It’s going to be ok, Sophie.”

She looked at him patiently. ”I’m here for a reason you know.” She clasped her hands behind her back, stood on her tiptoes, and dropped back down again, making her breasts bounce slightly. “So you should put your jacket back on, and sit with me, over there, and I’ll explain.” She indicated, with a wave of a bare arm, some of the leaves from which she had so miraculously, and so nakedly, appeared. “Come along.”

She turned, revealing a perfectly turned bottom, walked the few steps over to the leaves, spun back around, and sat, cross-legged, down on them. The black hair between her legs parted to reveal her sex, pink and beautiful, to the increasingly incredulous Patrick. He knelt opposite her, unable to think of anything more sensible to do.

He told himself, still gravitationally anchored to the real, that his mind must be at fault, and therefore that this was a hallucination of some glorious kind. He began to make up his mind to at least try to enjoy it. The situation didn’t seem dangerous, he was quite alone, other than this beautiful naked woman, and he didn’t have anywhere else that he needed to be. Being in any sort of rush was a state of mind that he preferred to avoid. He relaxed a little.

Sophie lifted a leaf from the pile between her crossed legs and showed it to Patrick. “I’m as real as these leaves are. More so, even.”

If she is real, wondered Patrick, could she read this thought?

“And I’m here to help you,” she continued.

Patrick gaped, stupidly. “With what?” he asked, thinking perhaps of his coursework, or his upcoming exams, about which he wasn’t especially concerned.

“With girls, of course,” she said, and grabbed a handful from the pile of leaves, throwing them to her side, making her breasts bounce again. Patrick stared at her, his eyes involuntarily straying downward. “Patrick, you can stare at my breasts as much as you like, in fact, you can do anything with me, but I’m trying to show you something,” she pointed in the direction in which she’d thrown the leaves. “Look,” she said.

He turned, and saw the leaves still falling to the ground, realising as he did so, that he hadn’t yet told her his name, and yet she somehow, without explanation, seemed to know it.

As the leaves landed, they each immediately rose upward again, carrying with them more of the leaves and wildflower petals that were lying around them. They performed the same trick as Sophie had, outlining a female figure, before brightening to a brief unbearable intensity, and falling back to the untroubled ground.

Standing next to them was a woman that Patrick recognised instantly as the person with whom he’d shared that single awkward, awful date, towards the end of his high school years. Her name was Catherine, and, like Sophie, she was quite naked. Although some leaves remained clinging to her body, covering here and there some fraction of her modesty. She seemed to be talking, silently, to an invisible companion, and paid no attention to either Patrick, Sophie, or her nakedness. Her small pale breasts, her flat, almost concave stomach, and her blonde pubic hair, where things that Patrick had only, thus far, seen in his imagination.

“She’s not really here,” explained Sophie. “You can’t touch her, or talk to her. And she can’t see us either; She’s from your past.”

“She’s naked too?” questioned Patrick.

Sophie laughed, “Sorry, I always forget the clothes. Too late now.” She shrugged her bare shoulders, her breasts rising and falling with the movement.

Patrick looked back at her. “...What?” was the only word he managed.

“Patrick, I’m here to help you, like I already said, with girls. This woman, Catherine, is where we’re going to start.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened with her?” she asked.

Next to them, the naked Catherine stood and continued to talk. Patrick stared up at her, enjoying, despite his better judgement, and his instinctive sense that there is definitely something wrong with seeing a woman naked without her knowledge or permission, the sight of her body. Her small breasts were decorated with a few light freckles, and her nipples were pink and delicately shaped.

“Patrick?” Sophie asked again.

“Sorry,” he turned back to her. “What happened with her?” He repeated Sophie’s question, unsure how he should explain to this lovely impossible woman in front of him, how those fumblings a couple of years ago had ended. Sophie tilted her head to one side.

“Well?” She prompted.

“Well…” be began, “We went on a date...”

Sophie nodded.

“And... I guess it didn’t go very well.”

“But she enjoyed it, didn’t she?” Sophie looked up at Catherine too, and then she smiled, turning back to Patrick, “I think she probably did,” she added.

“I think so,” Patrick replied. “She seemed happy. We were kissing, and I was playing with her a little bit,” he looked away, embarrassed.

“Don’t be shy,” Sophie said, “you can tell me anything.” Her voice carried with it a soft assurance.

“Well,” Patrick continued, finding that sitting opposite this beautiful naked woman, and about to talk as frankly as he was able, about coming, too soon, in his ex-girlfriend’s hands, while she stood nearby, naked also, was almost starting to feel normal. A measure of how adaptable to new situations the human mind can be.

“We were kissing,” he said finally, “in the car, after a date. Kissing and touching each other. And then she undid my jeans, and took out my cock.” He was unsure about the word, and looked at Sophie.

“Cock,” she repeated. “Cock is a good word for it, Patrick. I like it. Tell me more.” She leant forwards from her spot on the leaves, uncrossing her legs behind her and kneeling up. Her breasts bounced with the movement. She knelt back down, more comfortable in her new position, and even more exposed to Patrick than before, her legs wider apart, her body more upright.

She was also, although Patrick hadn’t yet noticed, slightly closer.

“Well,” Patrick said again, looking down, “she started playing with me, stroking me. And then she leant down towards my cock,” he looked back up at Sophie. “And then I just came right there, in her hands”.

“Oh dear.”

“It was awful,” sighed Patrick. “I drove her home in silence.”

“Awful,” smiled Sophie. She knelt up again, leant forwards onto her hands, and lifted her bottom from her kneeling position. Her face was now level with Patrick’s. A little too far away for a kiss, but close enough for Patrick to marvel at the perfect smoothness of her skin. “Would you like to try it again?” she said.

“With Catherine?” asked Patrick, looking over at Catherine’s naked form. A leaf or two remained clung to the slight rise of one of her small breasts. She was still standing near to them, and continued to obliviously talk to someone that neither of them could see. He looked back at Sophie.

“No,” said Sophie, shaking her head, looking directly into Patrick’s eyes. “With me.”

Sophie didn’t wait for a reply. She was a nymph, a spirit of the natural world, and was therefore blessed with a life as long as that of a tree, or a river. Such spirits are blessed also with a body that remains joyfully in the summer of youth. As years pass, they find, as anyone who found that summer never-ending would, that sheer, pure, physical and sexual pleasure, is the ultimate goal of anyone in possession of such a beautiful object as an ever-young body. Sophie, though, liked to appear to those that she felt genuinely in need of her advice and her guidance. If she also found cause during these selfless acts of charity to enjoy long afternoons of physical pleasure, it was, she reasoned, not her fault.

She moved forwards, and touched her lips to Patrick’s softly, a gentle kiss that sent electricity flowing through his body, in branching paths, moving in a tingling warmth down his chest, and becoming concentrated, as Sophie repeated her kiss more firmly, in his cock.

Her lips on Patrick’s opened, and her tongue moved in his mouth, its heat surprising him. The electric currents rippled through him, as she broke from the kiss, and whispered into his ear, kissing his cheek for punctuation.

“A blowjob is a beautiful thing, Patrick. It would have been a shame for your first experience of the pleasure of it to have been a brief fumble in the back of a car.

“I’m here to show you how good it can be, for both of us. I want you to lose yourself in the sensations of it.”

The kisses at her pauses between each whispered word increased the electric current that now seemed to be flowing through his body in a constant moving web of tingling pleasure.

“Put your hands on my body, Patrick, I’m here for you today. Touch me,” her voice held a promise.

Patrick’s hands moved from his sides, held Sophie’s face briefly as she moved her mouth back to his, and began a lingering, deep kiss. He stroked her cheeks, their breath mixing as their tongues touched in each other’s mouths. The kiss lengthened, each lost in each other’s lips and tongue and hands and face. Sophie’s black hair fell forwards as she pressed herself towards him. Patrick’s hands moved from her face down her body, sending shivers of pleasure over her skin, her afternoon of nothing but physical bliss beginning. His hands reached her full, round breasts, and held them each gently, nervously, even shaking a little.

She knelt back, breaking away from the kiss, raising her breasts from his hands, and looked at him.

“Lie down,” she said.

Patrick obeyed, clumsily moving to a prone position, lying straight onto his back.

“Comfortable?” she asked.

“No,” he admitted. “There’s a thing poking against my back,” he twisted around, pulling a twig from underneath him. He tossed it away.

Sophie winced. The branches of trees, even those dry twigs fallen to the ground, were in a real way, an extension of her body. Her senses continued into them, she experienced the world partly through them. “Ow... careful,” she said, “all this around us is a part of me, Patrick.” She indicated everything that lay on the ground, or grew from it, with an elegant gesture.

“Sorry,” Patrick felt acutely embarrassed; he felt a redness rising up his neck, coloring his cheeks. The erection that had begun to uncomfortably strain against his underwear shrank away. He wondered about the leaves he was lying on.

“It’s ok,” Sophie said. She smiled her lovely smile at him. “You be careful with me, and I’ll be careful with you.” She added, “Don’t worry Patrick, your body lying on the leaves just feels nice.”

Patrick nodded, convinced now that she could read his mind.

From her kneeling position, Sophie leant forwards again, and brought her smooth face down close to Patrick’s. She held her lips millimetres from his, and he felt the excitement return to his body. His heart beat hard in his chest, and his cock rose again in his pants as she whispered to him.

“Do you know what I’m going to do now?” she teased.

Patrick didn’t move. Her breath against his lips was warm, and moved gently. Its scent reminded him of wintersweet, of warm breezes on summer days, of the air moving soft against naked limbs. His mood, lost a moment before, was restored, made more intense by the momentary interruption.

She brushed her nipples against his shirt as he lay on the leaves. She swayed slightly back and forth on her kneeling position, moving her breasts against his body. Her hair fell over his face and then lay across his chest, as she moved downwards. He felt her fingers at the buttons of his jeans, and then at his hips, and she pulled them down, along with his underwear. The fallen leaves, some dry, some still soft and green, tickled him.

He looked down at her. She met his eyes. She held him in the palm of her hand. She gripped him like a branch, and licked him, from the nest of black hair at the bottom, to his foreskin at the top. She dipped the very tip of her tongue, formed to a firm little point, curving out from her mouth, into the hole at the end of his now very hard cock. She moved in tight little circles, right there at the tip, and Patrick’s whole body reacted, a jolt had flowed through it at the moment that her tongue made contact with his skin, and the circles felt exquisite. He gasped, and squirmed. She held him and continued to draw on him with her tongue, and then looked up.

“Is that nice?”

“Yes, ahhh, amazing…” was all Patrick could manage.

“A cock is a lovely thing, you know,” Sophie told him, “so delicate and sensitive right at its tip.” She dipped her tongue down again. “But so thick and hard too,” she moved her grip down his length, pulling his foreskin slightly downward too, and made another circle with her tongue, a little bigger this time.

“Ooohhhhahhhh…” replied Patrick.

She smiled a beautiful smile at him. “And the taste,” she added, “it’s salty. It makes you thirsty…  Or hungry for more maybe.” She laughed. “The skin here is so smooth, it hardly feels like skin at all.” She moved her tongue around again, another lap. “I just love the way it feels in my mouth, against my tongue, it’s just gorgeous.” Between sentences, at commas, in pauses, she drew more circles. “And you’re just helpless,” she added.

Patrick nodded, watching, hardly able to believe what was happening to him. Her breasts swung under her as she knelt over him, brushing occasionally against his thighs. When her hair fell forwards over her face, she swept it to the side, so he could watch her tongue move against him, so she could look at him as she spoke.

“This is the best part of a blowjob, the intensity of pleasure you’re able to give. I’m going to love the feeling of you in my mouth. You’ll be hard and soft at the same time, and you’re going to sigh, and wail, and moan, and then you’re going to come, and I’m going to taste it, and then you are too”

With those words in Patrick’s ears, she lowered her head, and took his entire length into her mouth. Patrick wondered what she’d meant by telling him that he’d taste it too, but he didn’t care. Her head moved up and down, her hand held him tight, her lips stroked him, her mouth contained him. Patrick’s pleasure expanded into his body, it radiated from his cock, as though it were an antenna.

Sophie’s technique was expert. Each stroke was perfect. Sometimes, as he came close, she paused to look up at him, licking circles again, until his climax receded. Sometimes, she moved up his body again, for a long kiss, stroking him still while their lips met. Is this what she meant by his tasting it, thought Patrick? Sometimes, when he thought he surely would come, she paused to spend long moments kissing and licking his belly, lifting his shirt, her breasts lying on his thighs. Sometimes, when he could not imagine more pleasure existing in this world, she dipped her head forwards, and held him deep in her mouth, holding her breath, the tip of his cock pressed against the back of her throat.

Eventually, it was too much. He came with a long, loud cry. She took every drop, holding him in her mouth as the spasms shook his body. Once he relaxed underneath her, she climbed back up, playfully keeping just her nipples in contact with his shirt. Her mouth, still full, reached his lips. She bent down, and kissed him. The salty, thick liquid flowed into his, her tongue followed, and she sank her body down onto him, pressing her breasts to his chest. Her kiss continued, warm and firm. So this is what she meant, thought Patrick, as the taste of his own come filled his mouth, a trace of sweetness in the salt. He swallowed.

“Well done,” she said, lifting her head from the kiss. “Very nice. Most girls won’t do that.”

He nodded.

“Some girls will swallow your come, and some won’t. Some will ask you to come in their face, or on their breasts, or their stomach. Others will look away, won’t want even to see, let alone taste. But I’d be very surprised if any girl you meet will kiss you with her mouth full of your come. Still, you should know what it tastes like, don’t you think?”

He nodded again. “I suppose so,” he admitted.

“Did you enjoy it?” asked Sophie.

“It was amazing,” said Patrick, immediately wishing that he had used a more imaginative word to describe the intense sensation of coming in Sophie’s mouth, and the eroticism of the unexpected kiss afterwards.

“Good, I’m glad. So did I. You tasted good,” she smiled, and then looked across at the naked figure of Catherine. Patrick followed her gaze.

Catherine was still standing nearby, but she seemed in some strange way to be growing indistinct. She was facing away from them now, and as he tried to examine her slender back, and her small round bottom, he found that he could not persuade his eyes to focus properly. He rubbed them with the heels of each of his hands, creating colored patches in the darkness, and opened them again, but his vision was not improved.

“I can’t focus on her, or something. My eyes go weird.” Patrick again searched for, and failed to find, better words to express the peculiar and frustrating impossibility of looking at Catherine’s naked body properly.

“I know,” said Sophie. “Listen.” She rolled off Patrick, and lay next to him. She kissed his cheek — an electric current seemed to be generated again by that small touch of her lips — and then draped an arm and a bent leg across his body. She moved her knee upwards, reached for his hand, brought it down, and placed it on her thigh. “I’ll explain everything, but this afternoon is for my pleasure as well as yours, and while I’m talking, I want your touch on my skin.

“Like I said before, Catherine’s from your past, but the time you’d thought you were about to feel her mouth on you,” she looked up at him and smiled. “That time went so awfully, that there was a…” Sophie searched for the words, “...blockage, I suppose you could call it.”

Patrick’s hands moved over her thighs, reaching for her bottom.

“Oooh that’s nice, that’s right...” she inched herself up Patrick’s body a little. “So, a blockage,” she said, recovering her subject. “And the next time you found yourself in that position, that memory, of Catherine in the car, would have just come right back.

“But now, you see, it won’t. Now you’ll think of this place, here, with me.”

Patrick looked around, the autumn afternoon’s shadows were beginning to lengthen, drawing thin dark lines across the curving ground, cast by the tall slender wildflower stems. A gentle breeze still moved the leaves, sometimes lifting them from where they lay, and brushing their skin like a soft caress.

When he looked back, he found that Catherine had vanished entirely, leaving only scattered leaves lying where she had stood a few moments before. He felt a small pang of loss, he had enjoyed her naked body, even if the sight of its curves and shapes hadn’t been his to see.

Sophie kissed Patrick on the cheek again. “Patrick,” she said, “there’s something else I’d like for us to do together.” She looked intently at him, and he turned his head to face her. “I’m going to show you how to make a woman come. Specifically me, of course.” She kissed him on the lips. “And then, the next time you get to come in a girl’s mouth, you can make her come afterwards. Or before. Or maybe even during, if you’re clever.”

She smiled inwardly, knowing knew what the remaining afternoon would bring, and felt a flutter of anticipation rise in her heart. Between her legs, a heat rose, and some of the leaves nearby moved in sympathy with these twin sensations. Patrick felt them shift under his body. He watched as Sophie climbed off him, and rose to her exposed kneeling position again, her thighs wide apart, her breasts proud and firm. She ran her hands over her belly, then upwards, cupping each breast for him, lifting them, and pinching her nipples between her finger and thumb.

“This is my body, Patrick,” she said. “Every inch of my skin is an erotic possibility, every corner, everywhere.” She lowered one hand between her legs and reached behind her with the other, running the fingers, spread apart, over her bottom. “There are no boundaries, there’s just the pleasure that you can give me, with your fingers, with your tongue, and with your cock.”

With her words, Patrick’s whole world suddenly tipped, the gravity that had until then kept the universe of real things under his feet, failed. The sky was a blue floor, the leaves a rustling ceiling. His mind came adrift, his body moved seemingly unbidden by his thoughts. He rolled, then knelt, then took her naked shoulders in his hands. He tipped her sideways onto the leaves, at the same time covering her lips with his. She gasped in delight.

“Yes, that’s what I want. Remember, everywhere,” she spoke through the kiss, and pulled him down onto her.

He took moving paths down her body, beginning at her mouth. He traced the shape of her lips, ran his tongue over her perfect even teeth. He kissed her cheek, her ear. He turned her to the side, reached kisses onto the back of her neck, kneeling over her. He kissed her shoulder blade, then licked a line between it and the smooth skin of her back, continuing around the curve under her arm. She lay back on the ground and held his head in her hands as he moved his mouth onto her breast.

“Mmmmmm,” she moaned.

He sucked her nipple into his mouth, feeling it harden under his tongue, holding the firm flesh of her breast in both hands. She arched upward towards him, gripping handfuls of leaves at her side, tingling pleasure moving through her. His mouth moved down the curve of one breast, over the skin between and rose over the other, gentler this time, kisses like warm air. She relaxed, lowering her body back to the ground, and he began to take his time. Her nipples hardened under his attentions as her body shivered in pleasure and anticipation.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” she sighed. “Keep going.”

He moved a new kiss, beginning it on her hard nipple, and taking it down the slope of her body, counting her ribs with his tongue. Below her ribcage, he found another curve, and licked a slow, firm line along it. And then another mirror image curve, from where the first ended. And then more lines, joining those two, a web moving outward from her bellybutton.

He moved over her body, his knees and hands shifting the carpet of leaves on which she lay, the sound of them moving like a whisper.

“Yes,” her voice as quiet as the leaves, “yes,” as his tongue drew on her, “oh...”

He kissed her where her stomach gave way to the flat taut skin at the very top of her thighs, and then between them, first on the right, and then on the left. His nose tickled her pubic hair. She lifted her knees, and separated her thighs wider for him.

“Taste me,” she said.

He slipped his tongue between the folds, and tasted her for the first time. He reached both hands under her bottom, and lifted her hips, bringing her closer for his slow, firm, deliberate licks. She gasped.

“Oh, that’s good, Patrick. And your fingers, too. Put your fingers inside me.”

She was wet, the black hair shone in the autumn light as he brought his hand from under her. He watched as pushed a finger into her, and then another, before resting his chin on the palm of his hand. He licked her and thrust his fingers in and out of her. Her taste was a slight tang, but clean, like bright sunlight on the sea. His fingers inside her moved easily.

“Ahhh... Yes,” she held his head as he licked, “keep going,” she said, “that rhythm… yes…”

His tongue felt the different places between her legs, it flicked over the small button of her clit, sought entry to her as his fingers slid in and out. It moved beside her delicate lips, he sucked them into his mouth, was rewarded with a movement in Sophie’s body, and a sound in the trees in the distance, as though the branches bent in an unfelt breeze. He kept a rhythm, a sequence, and Sophie moved with it, the sensations in her body rising and twisting. She moved her hands from his head up to her breasts, and began to pinch and pull her nipples, sparks and shocks moving fast over her skin. He breathing quickened. He joined his two fingers with a third, and she pushed her hips towards this extra invasion.

“YES… Faster! YES... I’m coming… YES…” her voice a loud cry in the afternoon air.

He fancied that he felt the ground change shape under his chest as he concentrated his efforts on her. His three fingers pushed deep, his tongue flicked up and down, to button clit, past lips, to his fingers, back again. His hand on her bottom squeezed. And then, without words, she came. A silent, long, shuddering spasm shook her. His fingers inside her felt it. He didn’t stop, being unsure whether or not her orgasm had passed, or even whether or not this was an orgasm, or just some new plateau of pleasure. In his ignorance, he kept her body floating in ecstasy, made her come again, and again, until she begged him.

“God, Patrick, stop. I’ve come three times... Come up here and kiss me.“

He did as she asked, stitching a line of kisses beginning from his final lick, up her body. His tongue circled her bellybutton. Then more kisses between her breasts, ending at her mouth. She wrapped her arms around his body, and pressed her lips to his. Their tongues played together for minutes, until she broke away, and with surprising strength, rolled him over onto his back. She knelt over him, and looked into his eyes, her unaffected smile again on her beautiful face.

“Mmm. I taste good.” She licked her lips, still smiling.

“Yes, you do.” He kissed her briefly.

“Mmm,” she returned the kiss. “Did you enjoy that? I certainly did. You seem to have a natural ability.”

“I loved it.”

“Word will get out if you do that to some of those girls you’re too shy to talk to, you know.”

A cloud passed across his face. “I don’t think that’s very likely…”

“Patrick, you silly boy, they all like you, you just haven’t noticed yet.”

“They really don’t.” Patrick felt the familiar heaviness in his heart return. The air seemed cooler. A lifetime of imagined rejections, and a single failed sexual encounter, was not yet undone.

“Listen. What we did here today, we can maybe do again. And more, too. But first, you’ve got homework to do.” She winked at him. “This week, choose the girl you like the best. Who is she?”

Patrick felt foolish. “I don’t know…”

“Of course you do. What’s her name?” Sophie asked again.

He reddened, but replied, “Emma.”

“Emma,” she repeated. “I could show her to you now, of course, but that would be cheating.” Sophie grinned. “Ask Emma for a drink. And when the evening comes to an end, just kiss her on the cheek, like this.” She bent down and bestowed upon Patrick’s cheek a lingering, gentle, warm and soft kiss.

“Um… Ok.”

“And then, come back here, and tell me what happened. I’ve got a good feeling about it...”

Patrick thought to himself, that after all that had happened this afternoon, he might just be able to manage that. “Ok,” he said again.

“I promise not to watch,” she said, before bending down close to his ear. “I don’t always keep my promises though,” she whispered. And with the wind, and into leaves, she was gone.

Changed, half-naked, he lay and looked at the autumn sky for long thoughtful moments. Today was a Tuesday, he remembered, and if he was quick, he didn’t think he’d be too late to catch Emma before she left her last lecture of the day. He knew enough about her to know that, at least.

He stood up, the leaves moving around against his shoes, pulled up his trousers, and went to find her.