We met by the bus stop downhill from campus. She was already shaking a little bit, maybe from actual surprise, maybe from excitement, maybe from dread, who knows. But I couldn't feel comfortable touching her until we were well out of sight. There are student-teacher ethics, after all.

Then, when we'd gotten on and the bus was several blocks away, I finally placed my arms across her shoulders. I must have brushed my lips against her ear as I turned, because she shuddered a bit, but then I whispered to her:

"Thank you, Lucia. Thank you so much. You don't know what this means to me. You're beautiful, you know? I have to tell you this. I can't put it any other way. It's almost embarrassing how I don't know what more to say about it. Even 'you're beautiful,' doesn't quite do the feeling any justice. You know what I mean?"

She just stayed quiet. She didn't say a word. But I could feel the shaking disappear. She looked flushed for a moment, but then she turned calm again. She just kept her hands folded in her lap. But she turned to me and smiled -- that innocent, surprised smile, which I knew must have meant more, always more, I could never tell what.

When we got to my place, I offered her some tea, or maybe coffee, but she refused. As opposed to the shaking of earlier, now she was stiff. She was cool and collected, just like in class, just like in that silence of hers in class, when she's just about to raise her hand and answer a question or make a comment in her perplexing way.

"What will you do in heaven, without a cock?" she asked. Me, I felt the instant erection, then the oozing clear liquid spreading as we stared silently at one another's face.

***

Standing on the barstool, I tool a last look around. I was completely naked, but oddly, I didn't feel cold. I had even turned the central AC up all the way, as a final gesture to who knows what. I could feel my nipples hard as little beads, and the hairs on my body standing up at attention, but no cold, not really.

And I could feel the rope around my neck. And I could feel her eyes stuck like needles in the visions of my cock just hanging there, that helpless, endangered beast.

"You know what to do?" I asked her, and she nodded before I even finished what I had to say. She was still fully dressed.

Then she took off her blouse, and I could see the ugly cream-colored bra strapped around her. Then the bra came off, and I could see the aged breasts. They were small. It was a while since her last child. The little padded things didn't even move when the support had gone. But the nipples hardened. They turned from a dilated red to a constricted purple, then slightly blue.

She put her hands on my crotch, started to warm it up. Then she lifted her hands a little and blew warm air from her lungs. Then she started caressing a bit. Caressing and caressing, letting the thing harden of its own, slowly, gently. It was a work of love, I thought to myself.

Then she reached for the bottle of lube and dripped some on the throbbing wand that stood at attention a little over her head. Then she started rubbing. She craned her neck and even put her lips against my balls as she rubbed more and more.

It was torture and it was bliss. The slack rope around my neck, the knowledge of the forbidden lust the finally came into being. You see, I didn't want to know when she would do it. We had arranged everything in advance: What she should do, and how to carry on when it was done. I had told her earlier, "Whatever you do, don't tell me when. Just do it. You already know what to do afterward."

But she went on and on. What would come next? A forbidden orgasm? A forbidden love?

I almost didn't feel it coming. The sudden depth opening up in my stomach. The gravity. I hadn't even noticed her hands come off of my cock for that split second.

Then came the knife, the cold feeling of steel, which sliced it off. Then came the sight of the barstool in the periphery of my vision, tumbling away to my right. Then the falling, the rope straightening, the loop of it tightening around my neck. Then the sound, very brief, like a single deep key on the piano.

Then it was only her innocent, surprised face in front of mine, a bit at an angle. Or maybe it was my face that was at an angle.

She raised the severed object, and turned her hands toward me. I could see the blood on the knife and in her hands. Then she raised my limp head and gave me the first and last kiss that she and I could ever have, the only one that I needed, the kiss that no one would ever know about.