“Who was that?” Aimee asked casually, swaying in.

I walked over to the door, still slightly dazed from the encounter, and watched as Clayton disappeared down an empty corridor. I stood there trying to figure out why he had lied about being at the party last night. Well, he was shy. Well, he hadn’t been invited. Well, he wanted to come. Whatever.

Aimee spoke again. “Was that a student of yours?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, closing the door. “A very interesting young man whose allotted seven minutes had just expired.”

Aimee was leaning against my desk, facing me, and wearing an alluring summer dress, and she knew exactly what the response to an alluring summer dress at the end of October would be—a carnal promise. I immediately walked up to her and she pushed herself up until she was sitting on the desk and then spread her legs and I walked between them as she wrapped them around my waist, straddling me as I stood looking down at her. This was all extremely encouraging.

“A sycophant?” she asked demurely.

“No—then he would have received an allotted ten minutes.”

We kissed.

“So democratic,” she sighed.

“Hey, it’s part of my teacher’s oath.” Kissing her, I kept tasting lip gloss, which took me back to high school and the girls I’d dated when flavored lip gloss was the rage and I was making out on a chaise longue next to a black-bottomed pool in Encino and I was tan and wearing a puka shell necklace and Foreigner’s “Feels Like the First Time” was playing and her name was Blair and the delicious, slightly fruity odor of bubble gum was drifting into the office now and I was lost until I realized Aimee had pulled back and was staring up at me. My hand was at the nape of her neck.

“I just saw Alvin,” she said.

I sighed. Alvin Mendolsohn was her thesis instructor. I had never met him.

“And what did Alvin say?”

She sighed too. “ ‘Why are you wasting your time on this?’ ”

“Why does your advisor hate me so much?”

“I have my speculations.”

“Would you care to share them with me?” I was gently running a fingertip up and down her forearm. I lightly stroked her wrist.

“He thinks you’re part of the problem.”

“Jesus, what an ass**le.” I kissed her again, my hands’ innate sense of direction leading them to her br**sts.

She nudged the hands away. “How’s the house—not too wrecked, I hope,” she asked, as I pressed my erection against her thigh, which she tensed. I was becoming more insistent and about to push away the laptop and lay her down on the desk when she asked, “Does Jayne know about us?”

I moved away from her slightly, but she grinned and kept me in position with her legs.

“Why do you ask?” I said. “Why are you asking this now?”

“She was looking at me strangely last night.”

I moved in again, kissing her neck and then her inner arm—she now had goose bumps. “It was just the lighting. Forget about it.”

Aimee leaned away from me again. “I got the definite impression that she was studying me.”

I sighed and stood up straight. “Are we ever going to do it, or what?”

“Oh, God—”

“Because I, for one, do not think I’m too young.”

She laughed loudly, throwing her head back. “No, it’s not that.”

“And you’re becoming very quickly the biggest cocktease I’ve ever met in my life and it’s not funny, Aimee.” I grabbed her hand and moved it toward my crotch. “You wanna feel how not funny it is?”

“I shouldn’t be involved with you for any number of reasons,” she said, sitting up. But I wouldn’t budge from my position. She kept sighing. “Look, number one is you’re married—”

“For only three months!” I wailed.

“Bret—”

I moved in again, burying my face in her neck. “Married guys live longer.”

“There’s no research that indicates being married is a good idea.”

I moved down to my knees until I was staring between her parted thighs. I placed a hand beneath her dress, feeling the navel ring in the middle of her soft, tanned stomach. My hand glided across her lower abdomen and down around her hip bones. The little slope at the base of her spine, right above her ass—I rubbed that indentation delicately, massaging it with very gentle, circular motions, and then my hands moved to the spot where her ass cheeks met her thighs. My hands started moving toward her panties and the uncharted territory that lay beneath them. She tried to close her thighs but I gripped them tightly, holding them open. Straining, I managed to say, “I read a study in a magazine somewhere.” She struggled to close her thighs. My teeth were clenched. “Something connecting coital frequency to life span.” I finally let go, panting.