I got into a great college--on full scholarship--that was like a million miles away from home. My mission, from the start, was to focus on my studies and wind up with a prestigious degree. Unlike most of the student body, I didn't have the family money in my wallet for extra frills. That didn't bother me, even if it did put me at a certain disadvantage. Like most kids going off to college, I was hoping for some wild sexual adventures. Maybe an occasional night of fucking some hot drunk Daddy's girl that would lead to nothing after the next morning when I didn't have the cash to treat her to breakfast at the local Denny's. And that's pretty much the way it went for over two years. I didn't care. I was there to get an education, to prove my brilliance among this crowd of legacy kids. If I got a few nights of pussy instead of my own hand, well, that was just icing on the cake.

And that is pretty much the way it went. A party here, a party there. A girl here and there tipsy enough to not care I didn't have a car because I certainly did have a cock, and that was what mattered at that horny moment. But beginning my junior year things changed. I guess the girls in my class were starting to get serious about things--if not their potential careers then at least their potential mates. I thought about fishing in the pool of underclass poontang, but I was never really the type of guy to use terms like poontang. I was busy enough with my coursework, and my work-study job at the library.

I loved working at the library, and was starting to think of maybe finding a way to finance my way into an MLS program. What I wanted to do with my life was continue writing the poetry that'd obsessed me basically ever since I learned how to hold a pencil. Even as a kid, I knew that would never pay the bills. Working in a library seemed like a better idea than my original slow-suicide notion of becoming an English teacher.

As a student worker I spent most of my time shelving books: a peaceful enough occupation. I could finish my truck quickly, and then spend some extra time sitting on the floor in the stacks scribbling in my notebook! On Monday evenings I got to work the check-out at the Circulation Desk. I'd always gently chat up the coeds, but to no real effect. I'll never forget the night a pair of girls walked away with their books, and I overheard their conversation. I'd had the one a year before.

"Dayum, he's cute!"

"Yea ... and he's great in bed. But that's the No-Car Guy."

"Oh? Too bad. Oh well, never mind!"

The sort of thing that makes you want to go home and just give up. That or stay put and be strong and try all the harder.

It was a few Mondays later that I met Ellen DeSoto, or rather, actually talked to her. She'd been in an Economics class with me the year before, one I'd struggled through because such things made no sense to my brain. She was a beauty with wild crenulated hair and a caramel skin tone reflecting her Mediterranean extraction. The type of girl I gave up on from the get-go.

We didn't actually have much of a conversation. She just said, as she waited for me to process her books, "Hey, I remember you from last year."

Suave library clerk that I was, I answered, "And how could I forget you and your beautiful hair?"

She flashed me a big smile, gathered her books, and with a little wave was gone.

Every evening I hoped to see her again, as I trundled the returned books through the stacks, but that didn't happen.

The best thing about working the Circulation Desk on Mondays was that I was mostly left alone. The weekends took their toll, and most the student body didn't bother with the library until later in the week. I generally sat at the counter for hours writing in my notebook completely uninterrupted.

Except the following Monday. I'd embarked on this imagining of Plath and Sexton meeting in the afterlife. It started pretty strong, I felt, but then I kept scratching out lines. I was pretending I'd solved the problem when somebody was dinging the call bell on the counter beside me. It was Ellen, with a stack of books.

"What are you writing?"

"Oh, nothing," I shunted the notebook away to process her books.

"Bullshit," she declared, grabbing my notebook.

Hair a lovely kelp bed

Waving in the breeze of the sea

Eyes anemones

Calling swim down to me

Winning over a woman with verse--what a 19th-Century conceit.

Ellen sort of shook her hair and smiled. "That's really sweet." But then she gathered up her books and left. An hour or so later the library was closing for the evening. I did my little bit to shut things down, and then my shift was over. I left through the main doors, and was shocked to see Ellen waiting patiently on a bench out front. She stood up to greet me. She took me home that night, and you better believe I carried her books!

From that evening on, we had an obsession that lasted the spring term. Suddenly I had a social as well as sexual life. I of course got to meet her roommates--they were all clearly curious why Ellen had chosen me. And then she was always dragging me around to parties, to present me--or show me off--to her friends. I managed to fake being able to talk to people I didn't know; after awhile, I began to know some of them, so things got easier.

Then it was summer break, and Ellen went home to Virginia. I kind of wanted to go home, too, but when we started talking airfare, my parents were broke. What little they had to pay for my education was bankrupting them. I got the message.

I wormed my way into this summer job on campus that let me stay in my dorm room for free.

I didn't have a laptop, and the library barely had any hours. I made the time to use the media center to send Ellen three emails. The first was longish, filled with the proper tang of longing, but mostly upbeat about what I was doing. A week later I sent her a much shorter email. She finally replied: great to here from you! we're going to the beach! Later!!

There was no later. Thinking of you. Missing you. And hope you're having a great summer! A week after clicking send on that and hearing nothing back, well, I quit making time to hit the library.

Instead I was so pathetic that I wound up spending my evenings sitting in my crappy dorm room, pen in hand, filling notebook pages with letters to Ellen. I copied her my latest poems, which tended to refer to her. The shameful thing was that I bought stamps and envelopes and actually mailed her the pages.

I got real mail, once, toward the end of July. God how I cherished the opening of the envelope. I turned it into a ritual. But it was just the one time, and inside was a scrap of paper scribbled great--good job! I wrote her back, asking what she meant, but she wasted not another stamp on me.

As August collapsed toward the Fall semester, the death inherent in autumn really worked at me. It sucked that Spring had been so fucking blooming. I was already thinking about readjusting classes, just so I wouldn't have to deal with even seeing Ellen. I didn't want to have to hear her apologetic summation.

It was insane, the human explosion the week before classes started up. I went about my business. My summer job ended with a big beer and pizza appreciation party for us students who'd kept campus working over the summer.

I stayed out too late, and slept too late. There was a big lunch thing I missed. I straightened up, having my own mission in mind. I ate a stale roll I'd snagged a day or two before. Then I steeled up, and marched my ass up the walkways to the library. I went to check in, appearing eager to resume my same duties from last year.

Just checking in, I was, but then I was in the librarian's office. Ms. Harver was a really nice woman, especially once she realized you were a cut above the usual warm bodies the Financial Aid office tossed at her every semester. She was total no-nonsense, and a bit icy at first. I'd seen her make a senior girl cry for her incompetence. But Ms. Harver definitely warmed up if you did a good job.

My very first semester, I changed a procedure on my shift. Instead of filling up a truck with returned books from all over the library, since there were spare trucks kicking around, I lined them up, putting fiction on one, history on another, sciences the third ... you'd have to shelve three or four trucks of returns a shift anyway, so it made sense that it'd take a lot less time if with each truck you could stay in one area, instead of going all over the entire library with each truck. My smarter coworkers soon picked up on the trick.

A few days later, Ms. Harver had come through during shift change, and for the first time noticed all the filling trucks. "What is going on? Why are there all these trucks cluttering up the place?"

All fingers pointed at me. Ms. Harver gave me the look, and I about pissed my pants. Stutteringly, I explained my reasoning. She cocked her head, thinking. Then she gave a quick nod. "Listen, buster, changes go through me. Nevertheless, I think that's an excellent idea. That's the new way to do things around here. I'll draw up a memo for the rest of the staff. I do greatly value having a worker who actually thinks about the job."

That said, she took the steps over to give me a hug. It was a very brief hug--a good-job hug--but one which would linger in infamy with my coworkers. It lingered in my mind as well. However briefly, I had that nice full bosom pressed against me. And I got teased about it for the longest time. Librarian's Pet became my nickname. Soon shortened to Pet, which I actually sort of liked. Having homely bookish girls call me Pet made me feel so British!

I felt pretty British too, the afternoon with Ethan. I really didn't like the guy, but I kept that to myself. We worked together about once a week. I was sitting at the high chair at the checkout counter when he sidled up to me with a smarmy smile.

"So, how are things with Old Lady Harver's boy-toy. What's that like, anyway, when you're shelving books with her? What's it like up in those stacks? I'd imagine it'd be rather dusty, and stinking of mildew."

He was so close he didn't notice me swing a foot behind his knees. My hands shot at his chest, and backwards he stumbled. His descent was in slow motion, the silly waving of his arms, like an ostrich that thought it could still fly. And seeing clearly his trajectory, how to land on the floor he would first have to go through a full truck of books, I was praying please don't break your neck, please don't break your neck.

Then things speeded back up. The truck squealed on its wheels, then tipped. These train-wreck long loud noises as books flew everywhere and Ethan and the truck crashed to the floor. I thought he was dead, but then his eyes opened. He glared at me. "What the fuck?!!"

He lay there, all a-sprawl. All his extremities were wavering--he looked just like a beetle on its back--so I knew I was safe. So I stood up and stepped over to him. "Here's the new rule, Ethan. You can call me Pet. But if I ever hear, or hear of, any of that other shit, I'm going to fuckin' hurt you. Understood?"

He got this stupid smiley look, like a light bulb in his brain had flickered back on. "So you are doing her!"

Pity Ethan; he hadn't understood.

He was lying there with his legs still wide apart from the spill. I took aim and kicked him as hard as I could on the outside of his left thigh. I gave him a taste of pain. "That's your only warning. A deep bruise. Notice how your legs are spread--I could've turned you into a girl. And for the record, no, I'm not doing her. Except in my dreams. I mean, c'mon on. If you were having wild sex with a hot experienced woman, wouldn't you be bragging about it?"

He pondered about a second. "Hell, yea. I hadn't thought about it that way. You're right. Say ... if you're not, mind if I try and tap it?"

That conversation was curtailed by the woman in question dashing around the corner. "I heard all the noise ... oh, my god! what happened?"

"Ethan came racing in to get a truck so fast he startled me and I swung around in my chair and then he tripped on my leg and crash boom bang." I felt like I was composing a poem.

"Are you okay, Ethan?"

"Yea, yea, just a little dazed." He rubbed where I'd kicked him. "The corner of the truck must've hit me right here. I'm sure I'll get a deep bruise, but otherwise I'm fine. It could've been a lot worse."

Drama over, Ms. Harver turned to the practical. "Looks like you boys have a mess to clean up." She did an about-face, and went back to her office. Ethan got up slowly, wincingly. "I'd like to make a mess on her and make her clean it up."

"Wouldn't we all?" as I guided him over to my chair. "Here, you're wounded; you sit and be the desk jockey. I'll take care of the books."

I was glad I wasn't alone in thinking, sure, it'd be lovely to get her skirt up and bend her over a reading table, and spank her for moaning too loud in a library.

But all that was years ago. This year I was suddenly seated in Ms. Harver's office. She was still quite beautiful enough to star in that Freshman Fantasy. But you don't think about that when you've been working for someone going on four years. Someone you like and respect, who respects you for your intelligence. That's a good soggy old blanket to muffle any little flicker of romance.

She began. "You shelve books much more accurately than any employee I've ever been dealt. But that's kind of a waste of your talents. I know your nickname. But you're the only sterling worker I've ever had. You care about books. You should considering shooting onward to get an MLS."

"I have been seriously thinking about that."

"Good! I will unveil why I think this in a minute. Cutting to the chase, some grant money came in over the summer, and I'll save you the boring details, except that I got a year's funding for a genuine assistant. You were easily my first choice. Would you like the job? You'd have to commit to full-time, though how you work your week would be up to you. With my approval, et cetera. You'll supervise staff, relieve me of scheduling, learn about cataloguing, assist in conservation projects. Other duties as assigned. For the school year, you'll earn thirty grand before taxes. And my understanding is that, through some quirk, since you have work-study money already allotted, you'll just get that as a tax-free check. I thought this might be a great opportunity for you to decide whether to pursue an MLS, while making a nice shitload of money." She gave me a gaze. "Any questions?"

Somehow I recovered. "I do have one question. I mean, seriously."

"Okay?"

"Where do I sign?"

Ms. Harver giggled like a girl. "That's funny!" She began a smile that eventually grew to her eyes. She shoved a packet across her desk. "Fill out all these forms. And don't worry, you'll have plenty of time at the counter to chat up the pretty girls. And I also want to make sure you have lots of time to just sit and at least think about your poems."

I did not literally shit my pants, but I came pretty close. My poems?

I wasn't aware I'd said that last part aloud. "Yes, your goddamn poems," she hastened. "The ones you sent in. I'm faculty; I skim the student lit/art rag. That:

Hair a lovely kelp bed

Waving in the breeze of the sea

Eyes anemones

Calling swim down to me

"I mean, fuck you for being so young and saying something so pretty." Here she shrugged, and then said, "And here I get to my original remark. Want to know why I became a librarian?"

I did, nodding, and then getting confused about the wording of the original question, I started shaking my head no; no, I had no clue why she'd become a librarian.

"It's mostly low-stress, I get to work with objects I adore, and I have plenty of time to do this." With that she shoved an object across her desk at me. It was a slim hardbound book, properly dust-covered.

"My fourth collection just got published. That's your copy, by the way. It's inscribed. Now get out of here. See you on Monday, hopefully with all your paperwork ready to go."

Alone, and still in the light of the lobby, I flipped and read her ink: My Pet--let the words flow, always!

As I left the library, I felt kind of... curious. The bright glory of summer was already starting to fade. The sun sinking made me wish I had a sweatshirt against the chill. It was a new year, and it seemed the season was that of change. The new job was going to be excellent, and the big bump in pay well appreciated. And since the Ellen thing seemed to have evaporated over the summer, I was kind of intrigued by the looks and smiles I'd harvested from Ms. Harver during the interview process. It kind of seemed like it was up to me to make the old rumors and innuendos come true. I was of course weighing how awful it would be if I was absolutely wrong. I was liking if I was right. Maybe an affair with an older woman would be the best thing to happen to me.

I got distracted from my thoughts by some shouts and shrieks from a distance. I watched this figure charging along the path from nearly a block away. I couldn't figure the trajectory. There really wasn't anybody else nearby.

And then it was Ellen, Ellen the Cannonball just shrieking with speed. She hit me and knocked me to the ground and fell on top of me. "Where have you been? I've been searching for you everywhere!"

I was confused, and angry, and confused again, but I couldn't resist her kisses. I contributed to them, in a way that felt so natural. The lips I was meant to kiss.

Eventually we paused for breaths. "I was getting a cool new job at the library. What are you doing?"

"What do you mean?" she smirked. "I believe, right now, that I'm trying to molest you. In public, with our clothes on. Like the crowd says, let's get a room." Ellen got up, then reached an arm down to help pull me to my feet. I knew next was the familiar walk to her place. But how could I not balk?

Ellen felt my tension, and stepped back, a hurt look on her face.

"Don't you dare look hurt," I declared. "I thought I'd met the Ellen of my life. And then two reply emails and one stamp later, the summer is over. And then you jump on me just when I'd learned to live with the certainty that you'd dumped me. Pardon me for being confused."

Ellen hung her head, looking contritely at her toes. "I fucked up." Then she whipped her head up, almost defiantly. "I fucked up, and then I felt so guilty I couldn't fix it and just kept on fucking up. I have a history of fucking up relationships. But ours is the first relationship I really really don't want to fuck up." She held my head in the vise-grip of her hands.

I'd never experienced a girl pleading to still be my girl. I didn't like it. But I wanted Ellen to still be my girl.

"I was wrong. I now see how my response was wrong," she nodded, "and I'm so terribly sorry. I'd receive your long missives, and I didn't feel worthy. I'm not a writer. What words could I answer back that wouldn't sound trite?"

Ellen was staring straight into my eyes. I could see nothing else. "Would you like to hear about how many nights I lay in bed re-reading your letters? How your poems to me would get me so wet I'd just have to touch myself, while whispering your name?"

I'd heard enough. I grasped her hand. I whispered her name. "Ellen, please take me home."

I'd banked a good sum of money over the summer. Given my new job, the bonus check, my savings became gravy. So I went and spent most of it. I was over and we were naked and starting to seriously mess around, when Ellen gave a little startled giggle and then hopped out of bed. "Sorry, but I'm a girl, and suddenly I really need to pee." She reached for my nearest hand, then curled my fingers around my cock, jacking me by proxy. "I'll be right back," she promised.

While she was gone I scrambled around, finding my pants, and the particular pocket. I shoved something under the pillow, and then lay back, my cock tall and ready when Ellen returned. She moved over me and then just sat down on it. She worked it, she worked me. When she got distracted by a further, harder, orgasm, I reached under the pillow.

Next Ellen knew she was still gasping as I slipped an expensive-for-me ring on her finger. While asking her to be my wife, of course. Her eyes went wide, and her cunt squeezed my cock. These were involuntary muscle reactions I'd learned about in college.

I did do good. Ellen gazed and marveled at her hand. "It's the most beautiful ring I've ever seen," she whispered. Then she turned to me. "And I choose to keep it, because I want to keep you." She collapsed down on me, murmuring, "I want to be your bride for the rest of our lives."

For the rest of our lives certainly gave my cock a twitch. "Sorry," Ellen giggled, sitting back up in the saddle. "I got, um, distracted. See, I suddenly just got engaged. I kind of forgot we were fucking. Until you reminded me." She began working her hips, riding up and down on me. "Hope you don't have any hang-ups about pre-marital sex. Hmm, definitely doesn't feel like it."

Ellen rode me like a wanton whore, always sensing when to slow down and choke me back. She settled, sunk all the way down on me, but just sitting there, still, with a smirk on her face. I was dying, but never quite yet. Ellen wouldn't let me, yet. Ellen was holding my attention.

Then she began working it. Ellen was fucking me! "I can't wait for when we decide to start trying to have kids. My fertile womb, and your potent seed. Doing it all the time until you give me a baby. And then doing it all the time afterwards."

Well, you get those kind of groaning visions, with fingers tickling your balls, and you just finish. You spurt yourself into another fucking world. One in which the princess now wears your ring.

I still had to officially stay in my paid-for dorm room, where overnight visits were greatly discouraged. So as usual, as many nights, I was in bed with Ellen in her room in the off-campus apartment she shared with a couple of her friends. Fortunately her roommates were usually back on campus partying. Otherwise we would have been digesting their jovial but jealous complaints to keep it down, you slut! as we aimed towards lying there cuddling in our post-coital bliss. The bedding, the room itself, just stank of our juices, new and old. Ellen had confessed that she found it comforting, when she did have to sleep alone, to do it with sheets steeped in the scent of us.

As we slowly regained our senses, Ellen propped herself up on an elbow and looked down at me, running a lazy hand along my chest. "So what are your plans for winter break? Are you going home?"

"Naw," I shrugged. "Staying here I guess. The airfare is too much for me or my parents." I leaned up and kissed her lovingly on her lips. "So you'll go home, and I'll pine for you." I reached a hand up to caress one of her perfect breasts. Despite our satisfying encounter, the nipple rose up immediately, so my fingers played with it. "Think of me in my crummy room, missing you. While I mess around with my thesis and order in crummy pizza." Ellen pushed down, her breast full against my hand as she kissed me deeply. "Think about our reunion," I gasped back.

Ellen pulled back and looked down at me with her adoring eyes, reaching a hand down between us to run a finger along my slackened sticky cock. She gave me the cutest little smile. "How about you join me?"

"Well," I said, and then her finger trailed down, her hand opened up and she grasped the base of my shrunken member and gave it a loving squeeze.

"Well," I said, "I was really hoping to get some work done on my thesis."

Ellen gave me another squeeze. She gave me a wicked grin, "Trust me, there'll be plenty of time for you to get some work done."

She came down off her shoulder and started kissing my neck as she continued to fondle me. "You're my intended, and I want you to meet my family. Please."

"I met your family, that..."

"That one time they came up for Family Weekend."

She bit me on the neck, then started sucking, marking me as her own. She stopped long enough to breathe into my ear while squeezing my cock. "Baby, I don't think I can go another break without this."

"But, yea," I replied, stiffening in her grip, peppering her lips with kisses, "I just don't think I could stand weeks of lusting after you while having to, like, sleep on some broken down sofa in the basement rec room."

"I've already talked about it with my folks. You'll be sleeping in my old bedroom." God, but my girl had gotten me so fucking hard again.

"Where will you be sleeping?"

"Trust me, better believe not down on some broken down sofa in the basement rec room," Ellen grinned. "The only sofa in the basement is Italian leather. That's Daddy's man-cave. With a full bar. He may drag you down there," she giggled, "and get you drunk to question you about your intentions regarding his daughter. But otherwise, we're welcome to share my bed, all night long."

I looked Ellen in the eyes with my astonished own. "You're part of the family, now," she whispered, "I wear your ring. You are my man."

She grabbed me by the hips and pulled me over on top of her, settling me between her parted thighs. She guided my turgid member back to the slippery gates of her sweet wetness. I sunk in as she urged me, "Come with me, come with me, please come with me!"

I came with her, again that night, the both of us like crazy. And again, better believe I was beside her in the car when she drove home for the winter break. If nothing else, I am no fool.

It was a long drive, but so there we were side-by-side for nearly six hours. It was a relationship strengthening technique. The longer I sat next to Ellen, the more I was so certain of my choice that this was the woman I wanted to sit beside for the rest of my life. We talked, and listened to music while talking, relaxed enough to talk about pulling over for pee breaks. We did the truck-stop off the highway lunch thing, giggling together at our surroundings, creating a common memory, writing an early page in the book of our life.

Next page was several hours into the drive offering to take the wheel myself. Being around Ellen, well, I was half hoping that maybe if I did the driving, she'd get bored enough to giggle and lean over and give me a blow job. Lord knows I was stiff enough already. Sitting, waiting there. On-call, as it were.

Maybe I should have been more explicit about my offer. Instead, Ellen drove the whole way.

Finally after fucking forever we were pulling into a driveway.

Ellen tooted the horn, and then we clambered out. We barely made the stoop before the door was open. Mom was out and hugging Ellen so fast I was left to shake hands with Dad over them. He mumbled something about, "Welcome home, son." Then Mom was on me--"So good to meet my baby's lover again."--hugging me so tight I could tell where Ellen got her tits from. Which were evidenced, no doubt, by her Dad as they hugged just as tightly. This woman I'd met once, versus my fianceé and her father.

After finally managing to get inside, I was suddenly assaulted by Lauren. Though she had to be 17, she attacked like a hormone-crazed 14. She came flying, and leaped into my unoutstretched arms, landing against me arms wrapping my neck, legs locked around my waist. The only way to not topple to the ground was to grab down and hold her by the ass. That scenario lasted about five seconds. Following behind me, Ellen peeled her sister off me. "Sorry, baby, but he's mine. And I've got the ring to prove it."

The interesting thing was how pissed-off their 14 year old brother, Stephen, was. I offered my hand for a man shake, and he just tipped his head in reply. Stupid young jealous fucker, what was his problem?

We got our bags in over the threshold. Though I'd been promised, I was a little shocked when Mrs. DeSoto ordered young surly Stephen to carry all the bags into his sister's room. I could see a really big and long comfortable couch in the livingroom, with an endtable large enough to conceal my luggage. It looked like a great place to spend a visit. Much better than I'd expected. But apparently I would be bunking with Ellen.

The chore completed, Ellen's mom remarked, "You two must be exhausted from the drive. Why don't you all go lay down for a nap before dinner."

Ellen showed me into her bedroom, firmly shutting the door behind her. I was fascinated. It was the bedroom of my fianceé, years before I met her. It was a snapshot, a still-life, of high school Ellen, mostly frozen in time. I felt like I was 16, and maybe about to get lucky for the first time in my life.