The Panther

THE PANTHER

I had been fortunate. My childhood had, partly through the turmoil of the times, partly through parental 'neglect', not greatly inhibited my natural sexual development. It was followed by a not particularly wild but by fortunate circumstances blessed youth. During it, a number of sweet, sexual encounters with lovable, mature women taught me much. It completed my liberation from prissy inhibition, without rendering me a libertine. I married a woman I loved and that loved me. We were sexually compatible and fulfilled. So, I had my first, extra-marital sexual relationship as late as in the tenth year of my marriage. And I was fortunate again.

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Although my full-time job was in a different field, I had taken on teaching German for the Council of Adult Education at one of Melbourne's Universities. It involved one evening-class of two-and-a-half-hours per week. The pay was poor but I enjoyed being once more involved in language-teaching, especially with self-motivated adults in an open-ended, flexible program. I had done it now for three years.

This year's group was bright and enthusiastic, consisting of young to middle-aged women. Four of them were English speakers with German husbands. All of them were easily motivated to meet the challenge of learning as quickly and as much as possible in one year. I told them, therefore, that many of them could reach a Pass in what was the University-entrance standard for German. It was an ambitious goal but if they decided to aim for it, I would do my best to take them there. After a lot of questions and a lively debate the group decided to go for it.

Our group quickly coalesced into a companionship beyond the limits of our weekly meetings. Some of the women formed close friendships, further strengthened by an exchange of invitations to dinner-parties and shared activities that included their partners and children. Without going into detail, I believe that the course-work contributed much to this bonding by providing not only a shared aim but a genuinely shared interest.

It was fortunate that the German Matriculation examination was not content-specific in either its written or oral component. There were no prescribed prose-texts or poetry. For my mature group I could, therefore, choose material that was different, more challenging and controversial than what schools selected. For prose texts I chose short-stories from post-war German writers. For poetry I avoided the lulling comfort of the Romantics and introduced them to poets like Rilke and Brecht.

Helen was one of the liveliest and most enthusiastic participants in the group. She was in her early forties, intelligent, attractive, English-born, married to a German. She had given for some in our group one of the early dinner parties. Erika, my wife, and I were also invited. Since then we had met socially a few times more. Whilst Helen was friendly, nothing in her behaviour with me suggested more. She was not a flirt.

One evening after class, the group had already left and I had to clear away a few things in the Language Laboratory, I met Helen in the corridor. She had forgotten her scarf and had to come back, she said. So, we left together, talking, walking out to the car park. She followed me to my car. I thought that hers happened to be parked near mine. As I searched for my keys she grabbed my arm and said: -

"Ben, I have to talk to you."

She looked flustered but determined. Suddenly I knew that we had not met by chance; she had waited for me. My heart was beating fast. I unlocked the passenger side door, opened it and looked at her. Without a word Helen slid into the seat. When I got into mine and turned to her she immediately shifted close. With a strangled voice, fronting me, she said: -

"I'm in trouble and it's all your fault. I need your help."

I said nothing. Could not think of anything to say. Somehow, Helen's head came to rest on my shoulder. Her breath played on my neck giving me goose-bumps as she continued, almost whispering: -

"You shouldn't give us women a poem like Rilke's 'Panther'. You should not have talked about it the way you did while you looked at me. How did you know how I felt?"

As she edged even closer, I put my arm around her and felt her shiver. When she turned and moved into what was becoming more than a hug, I realised what she meant and what she intended. I had, of course, not looked at her specifically when I talked to the group about Rilke's caged panther.

On the surface, the poem is a sharply realistic description of a zoo-animal. It is, however, foremost a brilliant metaphor. Through the sensuousness of the poem's rhythm and choice of words, the panther circling around itself behind the bars, becomes in all its vitality and beauty a picture of caged desires. With a teacher's fatherly eye on my, possibly, partly innocent students I had not been too specific on the libido and its frustration. But with Helen, what I said had registered powerfully. It gave her an almost plausible justification for cornering me and making me complicit: She, the Panther, her libido, wanted to escape from her cage.

I was, flattered, excited, disturbed but, ultimately, immediately willing to follow her lead. I reached across with my free hand to stroke over Helen's hair. I did not need to press to bring her face close to mine. Our lips almost touched when I asked: -

"Are you a panther that wants to break free? If I and Rilke helped, is that so bad?"

Helen's arm locked around my neck. She pressed her forehead against mine, and hoarsely whispered her answer: -

"Tonight, the panther has escaped and you alone are to blame. And she has hunted you down. Are you shocked?"

We did not move into a tentative first kiss. Her half-open mouth took greedily possession of mine, with our tongues immediately joined in a suggestively copulating dance. This was not an introductory, questioning kissing: Helen left nothing to doubt. To confirm, without break to our talking in tongues, Helen unbuttoned her coat, blindly found my hand and put it on her breast. Not satisfied, while she moaned her frustration into my mouth, she moved it under her top and bra onto a bare, heaving breast. When, eventually, we broke out of our kiss she laughed: -

"Wow, that is a good start to my escaping the cage. You see now what you have done! And you? Are you free to join me?"

I decided to show her how free I was by testing her mettle. I drew her closer, withdrew my hand from her breast and gripped firmly the inside of her thigh as far up as her rather tight skirt allowed. She responded with a loudly moaned "Yes". Her lips opened, closed over mine and her tongue again lasciviously invaded of my mouth. Her bottom lifted of the seat and her hand pushed up her skirt. Her thighs spread, inviting me to do as I pleased and dared. My hand closed over her pussy and her body arched in response. It was time to demand from Helen a shamelessly direct answer to a shamelessly direct question: -

"Are you going to do more with your freedom than waylay me to pet and kiss with me in the car? Like teenagers? Or do you fuck as hotly as you kiss? Do you? Do you want me to find out?"

Helen arched against my body and met my challenging questions with a half-swallowed, excited cry of - "Yes Ben! Yes!", followed by a flurry of feverish little kisses all over my face. Her hand was on my crotch and had found my constricted, hurting erection. Close to my ear she murmured: -

"God, I wish we could do it now! Fuck ... really fuck, forget all! We will, won't we? I'll ring you, arrange it. But now, touch me! You'll see how ready I am to be fucked. I want you! And you want me, don't you?"

Helen's pelvis had lifted and her crotch writhed and pressed and searched for my fingers. The panty's cloth covering her sex was soaked. When my finger pushed it aside, they found her pussy's lips open and, as she had promised, my fingers were welcomed into its lubricious heat. I looked at her face; eyes closed, lips sensuously half-open in lust, her mind had found a foreplay all its own.

Even though this time it could only be my fingers deep in her pussy, Helen rushed herself surprisingly quickly into a quite spectacular orgasm that she wanted to share with me. Twisting in my arms she screamed her extasy in my face. As her convulsions subsided, laughter overcame her as she muttered a confession in my ear: -

"God, Ben, I needed that. But now I want more. Much, much more from you. Do I shock you?"

And her lips closed over mine and her tongue rolled with mine in a demented dance. It told me how much more she wanted and the all she wanted to give me.

Before we went our separate ways, Helen asked me for my phone number at work. I have always wondered about how quickly women recover their normal self after sex, even after tempestuously climaxing. She had ordered her disarray, and now all lady-like, fare-well-kissed me on the cheek.

Her car was close by. I accompanied her. Sitting behind the steering-wheel she turned to me. Looking-up at me she told me that Jurgen, her husband, was next week for five days in Bangkok. Helen made it sound as if it had occurred to her just now. Half-embarrassed she grinned, knowing she was naughty: Both, by planning her seductive move for such a convenient time and now, by letting me know she had done so. We would fuck but now she would make me wait for her offering.

The above happened on Thursday night. On Friday, I barely left my office fearing I would miss her call. Then the weekend. She neither could nor would ring me at home. Helen made me wait until Tuesday noon before she rang. Her voice sounded unfamiliar, as if she was fighting for breath. It was sexy, charged with what was left unsaid: -

"Jurgen left for Bangkok this morning. When can you come, come to my house?"

"Can it be Thursday. I have no classes on Thursday until our group at night."

Helen fell silent, made me wait. I could hear her breathing: -

"Can you come early. We can have all day to ...... really get to know each other."

When I said 'Yes' she laughed and with a relieved sounding "See you then, I'll be waiting.", she hung up.

On Thursday morning, having left home for work as usual, I rang Helen's door-bell shortly after nine. She came quickly to the door, opening it wide. She smiled at me shyly, with her lower lip drawn in. No Hello offered. She just stepped aside and with a wave of her hand she invited me to enter. Then she quickly closed the door; leaning against it the latch clicked shut. She stood there, head lifted, eyes lowered, her back and open hands pressed against the door. When she eventually looked at me, she took a deep breath. With a tremor in her voice she said: -

"Oh Ben! I'm glad the wait is over. For the whole week I've been scared about how we would meet and begin again after what I did and said last time. I was out of control, not myself. I want it to be right with us. I am so glad you have come."

I stood there and found no words. Helen pushed herself off the door, took my hand and led me in the living room. We move towards the sofa but then she stopped. Releasing my hand, she turned towards the adjoining kitchen. Over her shoulder she said: -

"Take a seat, Ben. I think I need a coffee. A strong one. How about you?"

My eyes took all of her in, in a new way, as she walked away. I had known Helen now for about five months. She was an attractive woman, tall, well groomed, in her early forties. She was English, had a well-modulated voice free of any of the class indicators I was familiar with. She was a good mixer and had bonded well with other women in the group. Whilst Helen was, as she had shown last Thursday not reserved, in class she was not loud or bubbly or one that sought the centre-stage.

She wore today a golden-brown pant-suit. Its cut and the softness of the cloth spoke of her taste but also of her sensual awareness. She knew it would cover yet display her figure to perfection. When young, Helen would have been, I was certain, a willowy beauty. Now she had turned into a beautifully proportioned woman with more generously rounded hips and bottom and fuller breasts.

I followed her into the kitchen. She busied herself with the coffee-making and pretended not to notice that I had followed. I embraced her from behind and as our bodies pressed together there was neither shock nor hesitating resistance in hers. I kissed her on the neck and my hands moved up from her midriff to cup her breasts. They discovered under the softness of the cloth no bra as Helen arched back with a sigh. It made me grip her harder than I had intended. My mouth was close to her ear. I told her she was irresistibly tempting in her pant-suit. She, it became clear, liked and agreed with my assessment; she tested my sincerity by grinding teasingly her ass against my growing hardness.

But then she collected herself; gripped my wrists and removed my hands from her breasts. She reached for the coffee things and told me: - "I still need my coffee. First. Don't you. It will concentrate our imagination on after." She grinned: - "How is your imagination? Similar to mine?"

She guffawed and butted my erection with her bum. In revenge I bit her ear and told her that I loved women with imagination, even if others called it a 'dirty mind'.

Helen gathered all the coffee things together and took them to the living-room. We were now at ease with each other. There was neither the need to nor did we have the urge to rush. I was certain that Helen wanted to erect no barriers. Although I knew yet nothing about her past and her sexual experience and expectations, I was peculiarly confident that we would have great sex and would be good for each other.

Sitting thigh to thigh we had our coffee and chatted. On sitting down, we had given each other a lengthy, companionable kiss to make-up for our strained first meeting at the door. Now we were sure we were lovers. I told her how much I admired her suit and she told me she had bought it especially for today. At first, she said, she was not certain: Trying it on in the shop over her under-garments it seemed not quite right. But this morning, "when I slipped into it naked, I knew it was perfect." She giggled: - "I looked in the mirror and imagined you looking at me. It made me tingle and took my breath away."

I drew her close and told her that it does that for me and that I am almost sorry that eventually I would have to ask her to take it off. She drew me close and gave me a quick kiss, after which she muttered something about 'enjoying it until then' and took my hand to guide it under her enticing garment's top. Her lips again found mine. We sunk into a long, lingering kiss, not wild and hungry but sensuously tasting each other because we knew it to be a first course of the feast to come. I felt her nipple stiffen against the caressing palm of my hand. Breaking away she said: -

"As I am so sexily dressed, I'll let you enjoy it a bit longer. You should undress first? I'd love to help if you let me."

Helen made it easy. She got up and turned away to move the uncleared coffee-table to the centre of the room. Returning to me on the couch she knelt in front of me. I tried to kiss her, but she pulled back: -

"Are you shy? Don't you like your women undressing you?"

I slipped out of my coat and she undid my tie and with steady and determined fingers unbuttoned my shirt, pulled it off and threw it on my coat. I wondered whether her nerve would fail her. She hesitated before she clasped me and pressed her face against my naked belly. I felt a kiss. And then, with great deliberation and swiftly she unbuckled my belt and unzipped my pants. I lifted and she stripped me of my trousers. Leaning back her laughter changed to a wide, mischievous grin as she reached for my boxer shorts. And I was bare. She leant back and looked me over. Then she bent forward and embraced my thighs and rested her head close to my cock. She whispered: -

"I love you naked. You have a beautiful cock. I hoped you would have."

After a wonderful minute where nothing happened, Helen rose. Raising herself on her tip-toes she stretched. The contours of her breast and nipples pressed against the cloth. She looked down on me, grinned suggestively, and quietly asked: -

"Can we make love on the floor? Watching television with Juergen I've been naughty; looking down I've thought of it and you for longer than last week. I want to remember it whenever I sit here: Us, making love, naked on the floor. Do you think I'm crazy?"

Helen did not wait for an answer. She pulled the top of her suit over her head and threw it on top of my clothes. Facing me she undid the clasp on her pants and in one movement slid them down. For a long moment she stood still, inviting me to look at what she offered: The glorious fulness of her breasts, the softness of her belly and the tempting of her blond bush. Helen's beauty had, for me, a sensuous glow that rendered me breathless. Then she stepped out of the pants around her ankles, bent down and threw them to the other discards. She knelt, and her face and body beckoned me to join her on the floor.

I reached for her to draw her into a gentle embrace but she was feverish in the way she clasped me and pressed her body full-length against mine. She must have remembered the pledge she offered last Thursday, that she would fuck as hungrily and wildly as she had kissed. It may have played on her imagination for a week. I possibly disappointed her by being calm. I wanted our first love-making to be a long and sensuous surrender and not as rushed and tempest-tossed as Helen's first kisses were.

She did indeed twist and squirm against me and when my lips found hers her mouth was as rapacious as I remembered. I turned away from her all-demanding mouth and began to kiss her neck, her throat, her eyes, briefly brushing over her lips and, finally, her ear. I whispered into it my wishes; telling her how beautiful she was, how much I wanted her, how long the week's wait has been and how much and how long and how lovingly I wanted to and was going to fuck her. I moved between her invitingly spread thighs and rubbed my painfully hard cock against her crotch. Hoarse with excitement I took her hand and guided it on my cock and pleaded: - "Take my cock. Make him kiss your pussy."

My words made Helen smile, and she stretched-out in pleasure. I thought that she loved to hear me talk 'dirty'. She was eager to follow my lustful wishes.

Her hand gripped my rock-hard cock and she played its tip knowingly up and down over the cleft and inner lips of her pussy before lingering and circling over her clit. We were kissing, and she moaned and laughed and burred, sexily hoarse, half-spoken words into my mouth while her pelvis lifted and her hand tried to urge my cock deeper. I held back, not allowing my cock to slid in for more than a furtive, tongue-like kiss before withdrawing again.

It forced Helen's hand to continue in guiding the cock's teasing up-and-down caress. She drove herself, thereby, close to the brink. She cried out, almost sang in relief when I, eventually, slowly, allowed my cock to slide into her hot, I felt it, quivering cunt. It was while slippery and eager, wonderfully, surprisingly tight. In to the hilt, I stopped. Her vital muscles were making love to and milking my cock. I kissed her, before I cradled her face and almost cried out: -

"God, Helen, you have a glorious, luscious cunt. You want me to fuck your delicious pussy? It's what you want. Tell me how much you want it!"

Helen's shiny, kiss-swollen lips parted. Her eyes, wide open, shone as she sang out: -

"Yes! Yes! God, yes!" .... "I want you Ben! Fuck me!" .... "Show me how much you want me!" .... "Yes! Yes! Go on! Fuck me!"