A different angle

She grew more and more bold with every encounter, and so did he, as they faced the issue of her inexplicable but tightly held fear of letting go of her virginity. She had learned to suck him, stroke him and rub him from every angle, with every part of her, but she couldn't let him inside of her. Every time he got near, the throbbing stretch and heat of him impossible, she would panic and tell him no. If he would groan and beg and press a little more, she would cry and say,

"But you promised you'd stop if I said…" and so he would.

They both had their own frustrations now, and both were keen with a growing need for resolution. She would sit for her SATs in two weeks, and she still didn't really understand what Pythagoras was theorizing all about. David's panting and increasing dissatisfaction of not being buried inside of her was driving him to distraction, and in fact causing her a great deal of inner turmoil, as she feared another big, beautiful blonde might show up who would be more than willing to ease his ache.

One afternoon she rushed to his place, so eager for him that she hadn't even changed her coveralls from working with Paj in the shop. She didn't knock anymore, just let herself in. She made her way through the house until she found him up in his room, stretched out on the futon that was positioned underneath the loft that served as his bed. He looked up at her, surprised, and suddenly lustful at the sight of her. "Nice boiler suit," was all he said, but he'd left it mostly on her while he thrust himself to completion in her mouth, her face still streaked with oil and engine dirt.

That was the first time he'd really pushed her for an alternate solution, and it coincidentally aligned with the resolution of her problem with Pythagoras. She decided to wash away all the dirt and grime in the little shower off of David's loft bedroom and when she came out, wearing a towel turbaned around her hair and nothing else, she found him standing there, fingering her coveralls thoughtfully.

"Want a pair?" She teased him, knowing he didn't know the difference between a fuel injector and a timing belt. "You could come help me put the finishing touches on Stuie. He's almost street legal now that he's got a new muffler system."

"Catherine, I'm a bleeding idiot!" David stared at her in awe, probably the first time he'd looked at her naked without a hint of lust in his eyes.

"Huh?" She flipped the towel off her head and quickly dried her hair with it.

"You're a kinesthetic learner. Of course you are. How thick can I bet?" He shook his head, laughing to himself. "You can take an engine apart with one hand tied behind your back, but you can't learn Pythagoras' theorem? What's wrong with that picture?"

"Oh, I'm just not a math person, David. I've accepted it." She tossed the towel and reached for her t-shirt.

"Buggar that!" he growled, pulling her to him. "You are absolutely brilliant!

You are the smartest, most amazing woman I've ever met, and I'm going to prove it to you!"

Her breath caught and she stared at him, bemused. "Catherine, you've heard me talk about the universe having like a geometric blueprint, a cycle that repeats over and over…" She nodded, but shrugged. He'd talked and talked about it, but she'd never really understood it.

"It's in everything-the shape of a sunflower, in crystals, in the center of the Milky Way, in our very cells and DNA-we all have this sacred geometrical pattern." He sat on the futon was opened flat from earlier, pulling her into his lap.

"And it all starts with a basic angle, one simple equation."

He flipped her into the futon and she squealed, laughing, as she sprawled out before him. His excitement was catching, and she was admittedly curious.

"You, my little duck, are a hands-on kinda girl, hm?" He smiled down at her, rubbing her ankles with his thumbs. She shrugged, still smiling a little dreamily up at him, her body tingling like it always did when was displayed like this for him.

He opened her legs, and said, "Don't move." She raised her eyebrows, but she didn't.

"Let's start at the beginning… first define an angle," he said. "Tell me."

"When two lines intersect in a point, called a vertex, the circular span between the lines is called an angle," she quoted. She could have probably quoted the whole text, and yet she didn't have any real comprehension of it. The minute the pencil went to the paper, she was lost.

"Yes, such a good girl," he murmured. She saw his gaze fixed between her thighs, his eyes growing darker. "When two lines," he repeated, his hand starting at her ankles and sliding up the impossibly long, smooth length of her legs.