First Impression

Silvana was no longer certain of the hour, only that midnight had already claimed the sky. Fatigue clung to her like a second skin and her legs felt like soft jelly trembling against the asphalt as she made her way home. Then a sound emerged from the darkness on her right. It resembled heavy breathing. With innocent logic she assumed someone must be wounded for the sound carried the rhythm of pain and resistance.

Until suddenly that noise shifted into a drawn out moan. Shock rushed through her and her cheeks flushed instantly. She was not naïve. She understood enough about the private matters of men and women to recognize such a sound.

Without realizing it, her steps drifted toward the source. To her right sat a bar she had never once cared to look at. Yet the sound came not from the bar itself but from a narrow alley wedged between that place and a row of shuttered storefronts. The moans softened, a woman’s voice breathing them out. Curiosity hooked its claws into her. How skilled must the man be to elicit sounds like that?

Silvana knew this was wrong. She knew creeping toward the alley and peeking inside was a bizarre violation she would never have imagined committing in her life. But then she saw them. Two silhouettes caught in silver moonlight, pressed against the wall and moving with wild abandon.

The woman was pinned to the bricks and the air trembled with their urgent breathing. Her moans intensified until the man covered her mouth with his hand to silence her but neither of them realized they had an audience.

“Fuck…” the man growled in a low baritone. Silvana’s skin prickled and a chill danced along her spine. She recognized that voice.

The woman kept hissing beneath his touch but Silvana no longer cared about her. She needed to confirm what she already feared. She crouched closer, just enough to go unnoticed but close enough to satisfy her suspicion. The man’s skin gleamed bronze beneath the moon and his legs were powerful. A sling bag lay discarded at his feet, one she knew all too well. Sir Leon’s. She could swear it with absolute certainty. She observed him every day in class, studying the handsome professor’s presence with secret hunger.

This could not be real. A man revered for his dignity on campus allowing himself to behave like this in public. If she told Jiyya, her friend would sooner slap her than believe such a thing. This was a private moment; she should have slipped away before they discovered a young woman spying on them. Yet even with that rational voice in her mind, Silvana remained rooted to the earth.

Instead she allowed herself to gaze at her professor’s body while he tangled with the woman pressed against the wall. Every carved muscle revealed itself beneath the moon, no longer hidden by the cursed dress shirts he always wore. Tonight his sleeves were rolled to the elbows and scars traced the length of his forearms, marks that somehow deepened his allure. Silvana’s breath hitched and her curiosity bloomed. The woman’s clothes were in disarray but Leon remained mostly dressed save for trousers hanging lower on his hips.

A strange heat coiled in Silvana’s belly, spreading downward until her body felt unbearably warm. Disgust flickered in her thoughts. She needed to leave now. But as she turned, a sharp chorus of bodies meeting echoed through the alley.

“You’re burning up,” the man murmured.

Silvana’s face flared hot at the sound of his voice from within the narrow gap. And once again she made the foolish choice to look back. It was as though his voice itself commanded her to remain, to witness every forbidden second.

“You’re perfect. I knew it the moment I saw you. Nghh…. Ahhh!” The woman’s cry tangled with his words. Silvana could not see her expression but her posture revealed everything, surrendering utterly to the moment. Their bodies found their summit together and the invisible wave of it left the alley humming.

Silvana’s entire body tingled watching the scene unfold. She did not know who the woman was but envy struck her heart. To have Sir Leon to herself, even for a single night, seemed an impossible stroke of luck.

She had once entertained harmless interest in her professor before burying the notion as absurd. He was older, unreachable. But now she feared she would have to dig up the grave of that desire. Already a cold jealousy washed over her ribs.

“So good,” the woman sighed, voice tinged with theatrical sweetness.

“I only do what I always do,” Leon replied, his tone rougher than usual. Silvana’s stomach twisted again at the sound.

Silvana continued to watch them mostly him. Sir Leon crouched to retrieve something from the sling bag at his feet. He drew out a cigarette and a lighter.

He lit it with practiced ease. The woman beside him remained a blurred shape against the wall, made fuzzier by the weak lighting. Yet Silvana felt certain the woman was not more beautiful than she was. Why had it been this stranger who received the chance Silvana spent months quietly dreaming of?

Her attention shifted back to Leon as he held the cigarette between his lips, then plucked it away with two fingers in a gesture so simple and effortless. Somehow that tiny movement appeared sensual in a way she had never seen before. Why had she never noticed any of it until now?

Her awe lasted only a heartbeat before heat darker than desire rose in her chest. Jealousy flared the moment Leon leaned forward and placed the cigarette, still warm from his mouth, between the woman’s lips. His hand patted her head with such fondness that Silvana almost hissed aloud. That gesture had once been hers he had done the same when she earned a perfect score on an impossibly difficult test.

“Will we meet again?” the woman whispered with a hopeful tremor, clinging to the cigarette as if afraid he might reclaim it.

“No idea,” Leon replied. He slung the bag over his broad shoulder and walked away without looking back. Without waiting. Without care. Silvana exhaled in relief when he headed in the opposite direction rather than toward her hiding place.

Only after he disappeared did Silvana truly look at the woman, slumped against the grimy alley wall still sucking at the cigarette Leon had placed between her lips. A sudden unreasonable anger flooded Silvana at the sight.

She had the absurd urge to snatch the cigarette right out of the woman’s mouth. Of course she did not. She could not. When the scene finally dissolved into silence Silvana forced herself to continue her interrupted walk home.

It was a mad night. Her feet carried her along familiar streets yet her mind still lingered on every image she had witnessed. Even as she reached her house even as she entered her room she could not stop imagining herself in that woman’s place feeling his hands and hearing his voice so close to her skin.

She admitted it to herself. She had lost her senses. Only this afternoon she had jokingly told Jiyya that older men were more experienced. Tonight reality had offered proof. “What kind of spectacle was that? He was unbelievable!”