One Plus Two Minus One by Tess Mackenzie Page A

her away from the
lab.
    They went towards one of the cafes, but Beth
only waited long enough they were outside, on a path, and away from
other people.
    “ The guy I’m
fucking,” she said. “I’m still fucking
him.”
    “Yay.”
    “It’s good.”
    “I’d hope.”
    “I don’t want to stop.”
    “So don’t.”
    Beth looked
at her. “Can I? Just keep doing
it?”
    “Why not?”
    “It seems wrong.”
    “You’re just messing your own head up.”
    “Am I?”
    Amanda nodded.
    “He’s my student.”
    “ So don’t
give him any special treatment. Then who
cares?”
    Beth looked at her.
    “I checked the rules,” Amanda said.
    “Okay.”
    “You know there’s rules, right?”
    “I know there’s rules, I just didn’t want to
look at them.”
    “ As long as
you didn’t pressure him into it, it’s okay. I think that’s what it’s saying. And don’t be stupid
during.”
    “ I didn’t
pressure him. He hit on me. Several
times.”
    “Then I think you’re okay.”
    Beth nodded.
    “I mean, you’ve got a whole other bunch of
issues being young and a girl and banging one of the guys in your
class.”
    “I know,” Beth said.
    “ Like them
queuing up outside your office door, and how you blush
easily. But not an official
one.”
    “ Yeah,” Beth
said, glaring at her. “Thanks.”
    “So fuck him as much as you want to.”
    “I will.”
    Amanda opened her mouth.
    “Could we stop, please?” Beth said.
    Amanda grinned.
     
    *
     
    Ethan texted
while Beth was in a lecture. Her other
course, not his. She told him to go to her place in an hour, sent
it from the front of the lecture theatre, in front of a room of
other students, while she kept talking and they ignored the phone
in her hand. It was kind of hot.
    She went home and Ethan turned up ten minutes
later.
    She opened
the door, horny and wet, pulled him inside and started kissing him
and then realized she still had her glasses on. She snatched them off. She didn’t need glasses all the
time, only to read whiteboards and so she didn’t squint at books.
She hadn’t had them on around Ethan until now, didn’t really want
her younger fucktoy seeing her with them on.
    “ Yeah,” he
said into her mouth. “I saw you wearing
them all last year.”
    “So?”
    “I like you with them on.”
    “You would.”
    He shrugged because it was probably true.
    “ Put them
on,” he said. “Please.”
    “ No,” she
said. “My eyes look better
without.”
    “Okay.”
    “Are you looking?” she said.
    “Nope,” he said, and pulled her shirt
off.
    He kept
kissing her, opened her jeans and fingered her leaning against the
door, and she kept saying she wasn’t going to come just from that
right up until she did. He pulled her
over to the couch and started again there, in some confused mix of
sex and oral and bending her over the furniture until they were
both done.
    She went and put her contacts in, while he
laughed at her, then came back down and lay on him and slowly
kissed his chest.
    “Apparently we aren’t breaking any rules if I
didn’t pressure you into this,” she said.
    “You didn’t.”
    “I know.”
    “Almost the other way.”
    She grinned and pulled his hair.
    “ Those shoes
you had on,” he said. “You should put
them back on.”
    “Just the shoes?”
    “Anything else you like, but the shoes,
yeah.”
    “Why?”
    “I had an idea.”
    She pulled
his hair again, harder. “Why?”
    “Put them on.”
    She looked at
him for a moment, then pushed him off her. She went upstairs and looked in her wardrobe and found
them. Sat on the bed and put them on, and then went back down to
him.
    “ Okay,” she
said. “There.”
    He stood up,
and looked at her. She sat down on the
couch, where he’d been.
    “Stand up.”
    “Why?”
    “Just stand up.”
    She did,
stood there with her arms folded over her chest, a bit
uncomfortable. He stood beside her,
looked at their hips. Like he was measuring.
    “Turn around,” he said.
    She