"Jesus, Sybil. These kids are so dumb." Stanley Wojnak said, slumping into a bar seat. The bartender waved to him, and began to pour him a bourbon.

"Slow learners?" Sybil asked, nursing her gimlet. He'd been a little late for their accustomed Friday after-work drink, and she'd started without him.

"Naw, naw. Hell, they're brighter than I am. I think Sesame Street's covering SQL these days. They knew more about Oracle outa college than I knew after ten years of database wrangling. I dunno why the company ever thought they needed a mentor. Good God, are they morons around chicks, though."

"But they're so cute!" she objected. She brushed a lock of curly brown hair, streaked with gray, back over her shoulder. "A couple of earnest, handsome young men like your boys shouldn't have any trouble getting dates."

"Oh, they get plenty of dates," Stanley conceded, "it's making their dates happy where they're blockheads."

Sybil grinned. "Ah, your real area of expertise."

Stanley had the good taste to blush. Barely. "I'm not the only expert tease in the room" he said, and winked. The wink brought a flood of very pleasant memories, and Sybil felt a rush of heat blossom in her chest. She wondered, not for the first time, how the hell he did it. It wasn't like Stanley was a particularly handsome man, or exceptionally well dressed, or well spoken. But when he looked at her like that...

"They come into the office with this week's sob story of breakups and strikeouts," he continued, "and I just want to shake the both of them. They're cocky where they should be humble, and then meek just when they need to be bold. I try to explain to them how they're getting it all wrong."

"Do you tell them that?"

"I've tried to give 'em a couple tips, but it's so hard to explain..."

"Maybe you need to give them a hands-on lesson," she teased.

He met her eye, grinned back. "Maybe I do. Busy next Friday?"

After a moment, she realized his meaning and broke eye contact, her face hot. She took a drink of her gimlet, trying to regain her composure. She could feel a throbbing between her legs.

"You son of a bitch," she said quietly.

He sipped his bourbon and said nothing.

"You want to gang bang me." she accused.

"You haven't said no yet."

She opened her mouth, pressed the tip of her tongue to her upper teeth, held it there. "Maybe," she said.

He smiled, delighted. "That's my Sybil!" He leaned over and kissed her, and she gasped into his mouth, startled at the force of her arousal.

The weekend passed, the week began. She was laying out a brochure on Tuesday when email arrived from Stanley. Its full text:

My place Friday night?

She replied:

Head count?

The next message, a minute later was possibly the shortest email she'd ever received:

4

She went back to the brochure. Very little got done. A half-hour later, another very short email:

Sybil?

She replied,

Yeah, fine.

Five minutes later, Stanley was knocking on her office door. "Come in," she called.

He entered and sat down on a corner of her desk. "Close the door," she told him coolly.

He got up, shut the door of her office.

"Now lock it," she said.

He did so, and walked back to her desk. She was fiddling with her mouse. "Sybil, hon, this is totally optional," he said.

She glared at him. She could feel her face burning.

"I thought it would be fun," he said. "It was a mistake. Please, forget about it.

She stood. "Come with me," she said, and led him over to a corner away from the door. She grabbed him by his necktie and shoved. Her force wasn't enough to budge him, but he cooperated, stepping back against the wall.

"Get on your knees," she demanded

He hesitated. They'd never so much as kissed at the office in all their years of various sorts of intimacy.

"Get on your fucking knees!" she whispered between clenched teeth.

He complied, somewhat awkwardly.

She hiked her skirt up, tugged her pantyhose and panties down her thighs, inverting them in the process, revealing thick brown curls, a little matted from the day's compression in her underwear. She pointed to the gusset, which was glistening wet in the fluorescent light of her office. "You see that?" she demanded.

He nodded.

"That's what your little 'mistake' has been doing to me, you distracting bastard. Now lick!" and she pulled his head hard against her groin, her fingers gripping his thinning hair. The pressure of his chin against her swollen lips made her clench her teeth, and as his tongue found her clit she took a great shuddering breath.

Finding the angle at which he could actually get her off with his mouth took a couple minutes of adjustment and negotiation. A couple minutes after that, she was gnawing on the knuckles of one hand, gasping for breath, while the other hand propped her up against a wall and she rode out a shuddering orgasm against his face.

He stood, his hair disheveled, his face shining. "God, baby--you are so hot! Feel how hard I am."

She kissed him gently on the cheek, patted his hair down into a semblance of order (too much would be as suspicious as too little on Stanley, she thought to herself), and twisted out of his arms. "I trust you," she said, bubbling with delicious schadenfraude at his discomfort. "You'd better get back to your department before you're missed."

Friday, they happened to meet in the lobby on their way out, and walked, largely silent, down to their bar. The bartender greeted them merrily as they came in. "Hey, Ted!" Sybil said, "Two teas, please." Ted cocked an eyebrow.

"Earl Grey for me. Stanley?"

"Um... English Breakfast," he said uncertainly.

When the bartender was out of earshot, he turned to Sybil. "Tea!?"

She smiled sweetly at him. "'Marry, sir, drink provokes the desire, but takes away the performance. Drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery. It makes him, and it mars him.'"

"Shakespeare?" he said. "I didn't know you'd been so disappointed with my performance in the past."

"You've been lovely, Stanley, but today you have to set an example. And you're not so young--"

"--As I once was, yeah," he grumbled, ripping open two packets of sugar and pouring them into his tea.

The worst part was between the arrival of the first and the second of Stanley's tutees. Jim Li was a little shorter than Stanley (who was none too tall), fine-featured. He shook Stanley's hand, turned to Sybil, looking for his cue: handshake? Hug? Kiss on the cheek? She put out her hand. His was hot, and a little damp.

They sat in Stanley's living room. Small talk was unbearable, and discussion of what was planned impossible. Any uncertainty Sybil had harbored as to whether the boys had been told about the agenda was dispelled by the way Jim was looking at her, with a stammering mixture of terror and hunger. His obvious nervousness had the odd effect of relaxing her a bit. She found herself watching the way his hands worked against each other, relishing, just a bit, the way his neck flushed when there were gaps in the conversation. Stanley, for his part, seemed infuriatingly relaxed, chuckling merrily at his own anecdotes of company politics.

Peter Snodgrass arrived, tall and a little gangly, his fine skin flushed already from his apparent rush up the stairwell. She felt a certain relief now that everyone was in place. If this was a lesson in how to please a woman, her task now was simply to relax and be pleased. Yeah, right--relax. There was a buzzing in her head, as she looked from boy to boy to man.

Stanley cleared his throat for silence, and got it instantly. "Well, boys," he said, "Ms. Winthrop has generously offered to help me explain a few things to you. "

Sybil cocked an eyebrow.

"Agreed to help me," Stanley calmly corrected himself. "Learning to please a woman is like learning a programming language.

Peter unsuccessfully tried to suppress a snort of laughter. "Well, it's not too similar," Stanley said, "Or I wouldn't have to tell you whiz kids shit."

And from there he launched into an extended comparison of the two learning processes. Stanley wasn't usually prone to pedantry, but the situation seemed to bring out the lecturer in him, and her attention drifted in and out of his soliloquy.

"You'll never get really good just by learning some particular technique. You've gotta learn how to think about it--to get past the details. But the only way to do that is to get good at the details first."

And later: "It's more a state of mind that's open to your own desires and those of your partner..." and more bromides, many true, all uselessly vague.

"Stan," Jim hesitantly interrupted him at last, "you told us this stuff before. Like a dozen times."

"Well, it's important," Stanley said.

"Hon, you've been lecturing the boys for fifteen minutes on how they should learn by doing," Sybil said.

Stanley grinned at her. "So you think maybe we should get started then?

"Um," Sybil said.

"C'mere, sweetheart."

She stood, on slightly shaking legs. He put one arm around her shoulders. "Now, Sybil here, like a lot of women, likes a guy who knows what he wants. That doesn't mean you should act like a jerk or a bully."

He turned to her and took off his wire-rimmed glasses. She felt his pale eyes fixed on her. His hand held the back of her neck, big, hot, strong. "Sybil, I want to kiss you," he said in a lowered tone.

It took her a moment to realize that some response was required. "Okay," she squeaked.

He took her by the waist and the back of her head, and kissed her hard; gripped her by the hair and pulled her head back to bite and nuzzle at her throat so she moaned and gasped. Then he propped her back up and took a step back. "Jim, you try."

The boy stepped forward, his hands clenching and unclenching. He smelled good. Hie dark eyes were about level with hers. She smiled warmly at him. Suddenly his arms darted out and he grabbed her waist.

"Firm doesn't mean hasty," Stanley scolded. "Try again."

Jim pulled his arms back, nodded, and took hold of her once more. He kissed her hard, his lips and tongue tight and palpably anxious, his skin hot and a little damp.

She ran the tips of her fingers through the close-cropped hair on the back of his neck and she felt his shoulders relax a bit, felt his kisses soften. She drew back an inch. "Kiss me for yourself, because you want to feel my lips," she whispered into his mouth, and brushed her lips against his, letting him feel the softness, the heat of her breath. He mirrored her motion. Her tongue darted out and flicked against his lower lip, and he made a little noise deep in his throat. "Yes, that's good," she purred into his mouth. A minute later, she knew he was hers. When he released her, she shook herself and grinned.

She turned to Peter. "Now you," she said, and glided up to him, sliding her hands up his chest, around his neck, pulling his face down to nip and suck at his mouth. When she had him whimpering and shuddering against her, she stepped back feeling energized, electric. "They pass," she announced to Stanley. "Next lesson."

"Er, right." he said. "Next. So. There's this cliché in porn, where there's the kissing, then the breast fondli--uh, Sybil?"

She had pressed herself up against his side, and was nuzzling his neck. "Mm hmm?" she said without pausing.

"Right. So there's this cliché. And often some sort of progression like that is appropriate--especially with a partner you don't know well yet. Certainly, moving too fast is usually a sign of--ouch! Sybil, you're biting!"

"Uh-huh," she sighed, squirming slightly against him.

"I'm trying to give a lesson here."

"In how to bore a girl to death?" she cooed.

"I'll ignore that." he said. "So some sort of progression is good, like I was saying before being interrupted, but if you get too rigid in your hab--Hey! Hey!" He swatted her hand away from, where it was running up the inside thigh of his slacks. "Too rigid in your habits, it can feel formulaic--you lose touch with, with..."

She'd untucked his v-neck sweater and ran a hand up inside. He fell silent as she wormed her fingers into an opening in his Oxford shirt. Her fingertips found a nipple and stroked as her teeth closed on his earlobe.

"Curriculum change," Stanley announced. "This hadn't been on the syllabus, but it turns out you guys aren't the only people here who need a little lesson today."

He grabbed Sybil around the waist, lifted her off her feet, and sat heavily on the sofa, pulling her across his lap. She barely had time to shriek in surprise before his arm locked around her waist.

She kicked and squirmed as he held her pinned. "Boys," he said, "Sybil and I have known each other for a long time. For chrissake, make absolutely sure about getting consent, okay? These days, there's enough girls out there who are genuinely hot to trot that there's no excuse for resorting to guesswork."

"Sybil, hon," he said, "I'm gonna spank your sweet ass now."

"About time, you teasing bastard," she spat back.

He swept her skirt up to her waist, exposing the red satin panties she'd selected that morning after much deliberation and hesitation.

"It is always a good time to tell a woman she's beautiful, boys," Stanley said. "And never more than when it's what you're actually thinking."

"Sybil," he said, "your ass knocks me out; I can not resist it. Better be careful now, hon, or you're gonna be showing off your goodies to these nice young boys," and before she could react, he jerked her underwear down to her knees. She whimpered at the humiliation and exposure. His hand caressed one broad, soft cheek, rose, then landed heavily with a loud CRACK.

"Harder?" she pleaded.

His hand fell again, and a red print began to bloom at once.

"Harder!" she demanded now.

Another blow, and she yelped and kicked, her ass rolling around in obscene display. "Yesss," she hissed.

More followed, hard and slow, giving her ample time to shake her hips, sob, whimper. To feel the heat bloom on her skin as the spanks rained down across her cheeks and thighs.