1. The Elements

It's quite extraordinary, the places you fall in lust. I was quite happily juggling some chemicals in the first lab in the second year of my degree course, when I noticed this woman. Why, I don't know. She sort of simply came to my attention. There was nothing spectacular about her - pretty rather than beautiful, maybe a bit taller than average, and not looking particularly good in those awful plastic glasses you have to wear to keep stuff out of your eyes.

She didn't even notice me, directly opposite her at the lab bench. She was concentrating on what she was doing. I, on the other hand, found these sorts of practicals far too easy, so my attention frequently wandered. Basically, all you had to do was get stuff mixed in the right proportions, carry out procedures, and produce the right, purified compound at the end. I'd studied hard before I joined my course, and I could have done the experiments with my eyes shut.

Hannah (that was her name) carried on oblivious. Now I'd started to look at her, I started to notice her body. She wasn't slim, but she was the right side of voluptuous. Her breasts made a nice rounded shape under the lab coat and, when she turned round, I could see how her rear neatly pushed out the white cotton. As always, when seeing someone attractive, my thoughts turned to lust and my body reacted. I looked away as I felt the heat rise between my thighs, and blushed. I hoped no one else was looking.

For the next couple of weeks, I'd watch her intently whilst pretending to get on with my work. I even stopped finishing early and deliberately extended the time I needed to complete the experiments. I noticed that she'd made friends with some of the other women. I was naturally shy and hadn't really made any friends yet, but I started chatting to one of the women I often saw with her. She was actually quite beautiful, though somehow, didn't attract me the same way Hannah did.

I started hanging around with the group and began chatting to Hannah. She was very pleasant, if a little serious, and spent most of the time asking me, inside and outside the lab, questions about chemistry. She was really a mathematician and I don't know why she'd picked chemistry as her second subject for her double degree - at least biochemistry and chemistry made sense for me. In the end, I didn't care - I was really glad that she had.

My next problem, I was to find out, was getting close to her and relating to her emotionally. So many things about us were different. She came from a very conservative background and was pretty straight-laced. She thought pot was what you cooked in. She was a member of a Christian society. She hardly drank at all and didn't go to the pub much, whereas I drank, smoked both legal and illegal substances, was an atheist and much more liberal. The killer, of course, was that she only considered going out with men, whereas I only considered going out with women. I don't think the word lesbian was even in her vocabulary.

I don't think she realised that I was one either. It wasn't till I'd got to University that I'd had the recognized that I was a lesbian. I'd never really dated boys, and the only experiences I had were bad. When I got to university I met another woman and my life changed - much for the better. Then I went a bit crazy - it felt like so many women and so little time. I realised how much of my previous life, as I thought of it, had been wasted, just because the society I lived in didn't approve. So I determined to make up for lost time. Now, I was back to my usual self. A bit shy, but comfortable in situations where I knew I was among people who didn't think I was odd or bad. Up till now, I'd never been in the situation where the person I lusted after didn't even understand lesbianism existed.

2. Heating the Reactants

One day, I heard her tell someone it was her birthday tomorrow, so I rushed off to the campus shop to buy a card. Not too intimate in the wording, but guaranteed to make her think. I was hoping that she'd merely think that I was a really good friend. Women are usually more overtly friendly than men, and I thought she wouldn't be suspicious of my motives, though I really had no reason to think that she would. It seemed she still didn't realise my preference for women.

We had been chatting more and more, and several times had gone to the pub together, though I was drinking beer and she usually had a soft drink. So I asked her if I could buy her a drink for her birthday, and took her to the Student Bar. She had a rum and coke, and I stuck with beer. We sat down and I passed over the card. She opened it, read it, and said what a really nice card it was. Then, to my surprise, she leaned over and gave me a fleeting kiss on the cheek.

I was walking on air afterwards. I'd had affairs before, but I'd never felt quite like this. I was hoping that it would be the start of something.

During the next couple of weeks, we saw even more of each other. I was constantly helping her in the lab, and we'd often go for a drink afterwards. I found myself getting really frustrated. This wasn't *only* lust. I knew her quite well by then, and I absolutely had to do something. As luck would have it, one day after a lab she invited me back to her room for coffee so we could just chat, listen to some music, and relax. I had a couple of hours before I was due to meet her, so I hurried back to my flat to get ready. This was not a time for my usual jeans and sweatshirt!

I put on my Little Black Dress after changing into my sexiest underwear. OK, I know it's a bit obvious, but Hannah wouldn't notice, I was sure. And I really wanted to look my best. My LBD came down to mid thigh and had a scooped neck and showed off the tops of my breasts nicely. And the smell from the perfume I sprayed between them would help, I was certain. Well, as certain as anyone madly in lust, and maybe love, would ever be...

I was a bit older than Hannah as I'd gone to University late. I was 24 and she was only 19. Walking over to her room, I felt like a teen again - nervous with a quickening pulse and heartbeat, and the sort of breathlessness that comes not from walking, but from the jitters. I knocked on the door, feeling that she'd be able to hear my heart pounding through it.

3. An Ideal Temperature

"Hi, Michelle!" said Hannah. "Glad you could make it. Nice dress - you going out somewhere later?"

First mistake.

"Umm, nice perfume, are you meeting someone?"

Second mistake.

Oh well, I hoped there weren't any more as I stood there and stammered a reply.

"N-no, I simply like dressing up when I can."

One of the lamest excuses I'd ever heard *myself*, but I was too nervous to think of anything else.

She just grinned at me, and offered me a coffee. The university rooms were quite small, so we both sat on the bed and chatted for a while. Helen put on some Queen, one of her favourites, and had that as a background as we did the usual thing students do and discussed Life, the Universe and Everything. I started to relax a bit then. She brought up religion and I thought, "Oh, no". As a confirmed atheist, and someone who was leery of "committed" anything's, my heart sank. But she surprised me. She told me she was no longer part of the Christian Society. Apparently it was full of fundamentalists who thought Roman Catholics weren't even Christian. I relaxed again. I'd thought for a minute that she was one of those "conversion" types.

I asked her why she didn't have a boyfriend. Dangerous, I know, but it fitted the conversation we were having. She told me she'd never found the right person. I wasn't sure what to make of that. She didn't say the "right man," but the right person. It certainly got my hopes up. I stared into her eyes, my inhibitions shedding with my need for something to happen. She leaned over to put her cup on her bedside table, and brushed my arm with her breast. I could feel the electricity of her touch surge through me. As she moved back, I gently put my hand to her face, leaned up, and kissed her on the lips.

I pulled back and looked at her. She didn't pull away from me. She simply looked at me. "No woman has ever done that to me before," she said.

"I-I'm sorry. I couldn't resist it. I've been attracted to you for a long time. I-I had to."

And then I made my third mistake. As I leaned back I knocked the remains of my coffee all over the floor. I leapt up and asked her for a cloth. I was almost in tears. I couldn't bear for the moment to have been spoiled like that. She got a cloth and wiped it up herself, put the cloth and the cup in her sink, and went back and sat on the bed. I stood over her.

"I suppose you'd like me to go now," I said with a defeated tone.

She looked up at me for what must have been a few seconds, but felt like hours.

"No," she said, "sit down here again and let's talk."

4. The Reactants Mix

And talk we did. For hours. She asked me all about myself and I told her. After the kiss, I had to be honest. Anyway, I *wanted* to be honest with her. I was quickly realising that anyone who wasn't honest with her wouldn't get very far.

I explained how I'd realised I was a lesbian and that there had been other women before. I told her what my pet hates were and what I enjoyed doing. She told me all about herself, which had been a bit of a mystery to me until now. I listened intently when she told me about the boys she'd been out with. I so wanted her to tell me that she had realised she wasn't into that, but she didn't.

It was almost daylight by the time we ran out of things to say. I knew her far better then, and wanted her even more. She knew me, and more about me, than anyone I'd talked to before. But what did she think? I still didn't know.

We went to the kitchen and cleaned the cups, and then went back into her room. We sat for a short while, on the bed next to each other, just quiet.

Finally, she said, "Well, I think you'd better go. We both need to get *some* sleep before lectures". She smiled and I got up. So did she. She walked the short distance to her door with me. I turned, opened the door and walked through. I turned to say goodbye and she was right behind me. She leaned into me and kissed me on the lips.

I stood there as she backed off, said goodnight, and closed the door. I remained there for a few moments afterwards, remembering what she had done; fixing it in my mind so I wouldn't ever forget.

I walked back to my flat in a daze. She hadn't said she wouldn't be with me, she hadn't said she had. But she *had* kissed me of her own free will. I didn't know what to think. I knew I had to see her again soon, and preferably privately.