Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88235 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88235 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“I hate almost everybody,” Professor Lornah acknowledged with a contented sigh. “Well, except my students—I’m very good with them. They always give me the problem cases, you know,” she told Vicky dreamily. “The ones with low self-esteem or some kind of physical difficulty. The ones who need building up and extra care and attention.”
“You are good with your students,” Torella agreed. “It’s one of the things that makes me like you and keep trying to be your friend.”
“You’re good with your students too,” Lornah acknowledged grudgingly. “That’s why the Student Placement Council gives you two at once. Once, she even had three,” she told Vicky.
“That was rather a lot to handle but I managed.” Torella laughed. “They’re all such bright young men—they just need to be trained properly.”
“You know,” Vicky heard herself saying. “Your way of, er, teaching students is different from what we do on my world.”
“It is?” Torella cracked one eye and looked at her with sleepy interest. “How so, my dear?”
“Well, we don’t have sex with our students for one thing,” Vicky told them. Somewhere, far back in her head, she seemed to hear a little voice screaming that she ought to be quiet and not let them know this but she felt so calm and dreamy she ignored it.
“Oh, we don’t have sex with ours either—not until the final exam,” Torella told her.
“A male must learn many other ways to please a female before he can be allowed to please himself at the same time,” Lornah lectured.
“So true! He must have excellent manual and oral technique as well as patience enough to bring a woman to orgasm again and again before I’ll even consider allowing vaginal penetration,” Torella agreed.
“No, I don’t think you understand,” Vicky told them. “I mean, we don’t have any sexual contact with our students at all. It’s considered extremely improper.” She still had the feeling she ought to stop talking but the pale purple vexba oil seemed to act like a drug—it made the words keep flowing from her mouth even when she knew she ought to stop them.
Lornah and Torella both opened their eyes and frowned at her.
“But my dear, how do you teach them then?” Torella asked, sounding completely mystified.
“Well, with study guides and guided listening. Sometimes I use gamification and chunking works well for students who have learning disabilities,” Vicky said dreamily, listing some of her favorite teaching techniques. Then she realized that both women were looking at her blankly.
“My dear, I have no idea what any of those methods are but how can you teach good lovemaking skills without any hands-on lessons?” Torella asked her.
“Oh, I’m not teaching them lovemaking skills!” Vicky exclaimed. “Mostly I teach Spanish and French and I coach the Drama Club,” she told them. “No…” She shook her head sadly. “On my planet, I’m afraid nobody teaches men what a woman likes or how to please her.” She sighed. “We’d probably be a lot happier if our society would adopt your methods, but I don’t think it would ever happen in my patriarchal world.”
“But then…you’re not a proper professor at all!” Lornah exclaimed, frowning at her. “You’re here under false pretenses. Why—I bet your student isn’t even really a student!”
Finally the little voice in the back of her brain that had been shouting at her to shut up began to make sense to Vicky. Oh God, had she screwed up this entire mission with her big mouth? She should have just stayed quiet and gone along with everything the other two women were doing and pretended things worked the same on Earth as they did here on Priima Belle. Now Torella would never agree to sell them the other half of the T’lix-Kruthe and it was all her fault!
But she wasn’t ready to give up yet. Quickly, she began to dissemble.
“Actually, Chain is my student,” she said. “In the sense that I’m teaching how to please me sexually. I know he seems old to you to be, er, learning from me, but on my planet, it’s more usual for the man to be the older one in a relationship.”
“It is?” Lornah looked as though she couldn’t believe such a thing. “You mean it’s common for older men to date younger women on your world?”
“Oh, yes.” Vicky nodded. “Back on Earth, people wouldn’t bat an eye if they saw a sixteen year age gap in a couple where the man was the older one. But for me to be that much older than my lover—than Chain—is considered really revolutionary for us.”
“What a strange world,” Torella remarked. “And how sad for you that no one is training your men to be good lovers before they’re set loose in society at large.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Vicky said firmly. “Which is one reason I agreed to take Chain on as my student—so I could teach him how to be a good lover. Of course, it’s not my full-time job, like it is yours,” she added, nodding at the other two women. “I teach languages and drama to earn my living. But by the time a woman gets to be my age, she knows what she wants. So I thought the least I could do was pass that knowledge on to a younger man—so he can please some other woman down the line, you know?”