Helen’s voice was calm, and under her tousled hair, there was a shy, almost inward-looking smile on her face. We had a shower, shampooed our hair. Then Helen just waited to be washed by me. As we caressed each other again, all the urgency of the day flowed away. Helen brought my clothing in from the living room for us to get dressed together. We had not yet found words save enough to talk about what we had done.

Helen, however, managed to banish any after-the-fall feeling. Every one of her moves and gestures helped to maintain between us a warm afterglow of intimacy. As she put on her bra and slipped into her panties, jeans, and tops, she, at times, glimpsed and smiled at me. I was getting dressed too. She finished first.

Assuming the mannequin posture from her earlier, tantalising striptease, she declared, “Well, what do you say? Transformation completed. Do I look like your innocent student again, Herr Professor? Should we get something to eat before we go to class?”

Not waiting for an answer, she grinned down on me sitting on the seriously messed-up bed, turned, and went to the kitchen.

When I followed and took my seat at the table, Helen had bacon, eggs, toast, and a pot of tea on the go. It demonstrated that she was still an English girl at heart, that we were familiars, and that there was no need to ask or explain. Both of us were hungry, and we tucked into our meal in companionable silence. Then, however, Helen leant back in her chair, hugging her tea-cup in her hands, looked at me and asked, “Why you? You know now why it was me that wanted this but - why you, Ben?”

Helen took it for granted that I understood. I could not be flippant. So, I answered, choosing to tell the unembellished truth: -

“I was willing, no eager to follow because you, Helen, are a beautiful, intelligent, desirable, and sexually tempting woman. You showed that you wanted me. For me, that was a gift I could not refuse. In your honesty and directness, you were irresistible. I wanted you immediately, there and then in the car. I wanted you as much as I’ve ever wanted a woman. And I still do.”

Looking at Helen, I sensed that my answer pleased her. There was the beginning of a smile, but it vanished as she mulled over what she should ask next. I thought she blushed when, her voice low, she asked, “Have you known other women like me? I mean, as lovers?”

I could have responded by playing with the ambivalence in Helen’s question and ignore her desire to know more about the man she had, almost blindly given herself to in the hope that he would satisfy a long repressed longing.

Today she had unreservedly embraced what we could be for each other: Partners in Sin! Helen knew that it had to be kept separate from her orderly, married life which she did not want to endanger. I needed, therefore, to put her mind at ease. I had to tell her honestly how I saw myself as a married man, a human being, and her illicit lover.

So, I started by confessing that I was not an Alpha male. I had remained a virgin until the end of my teens. I was too shy and well-behaved to pressure girls, as inexperienced as I, into sex. After migrating to Australia when I was twenty, I had a succession of sexual relationships. They were all with exceptional women who were as attracted to me as I was drawn to them. I owe them much.

With them, I learned to avoid nasty, ungratifying sex by never forcing myself uninvited onto a woman, never to fuck in anger, and never allowing myself to be humiliated by a grudgingly given charity-fuck with a disinterested partner. Such sex was not only not worth having, it was an evil that destroys joy, together with one's self-worth and all loving respect and lasting desire for one’s partner.

The women I met taught me that for good sex, the desire had to be mutual and strong. It was as much about the joy and ecstasy of giving pleasure as it was about being pleasured. Good sex was a dance beyond what a dance could be. It was the ultimate, shared, life-affirming celebration of ourselves through our now desired and desirable bodies. These women and I made love, explored, adventured, crossed boundaries. We laughed at and ignored the prissy folks that disapproved. Some things stopped us from considering a permanent relationship. As far as our sexual one was concerned, our difference in age and material considerations seemed not to matter.

I stopped, sought to catch Helen’s eyes. I wanted to apologise for what I feared sounded like boasting. Helen was deep in thought. So, I told her that although each one of these wonderful women was different, all of them were like her in being so fully, sexually alive. With her, totally by chance, I had found once again another ideal lover. It was a miracle that we found each other, beyond anything I expected or would have hoped to have again in my life.

I concluded by telling Helen that for me, she was not only stunningly beautiful and sexy. In every minute of our love-making today, she had been a sensual, generous, withholding nothing revelation. I was swept away and along by her brave, shame-free openness to sexual pleasure.

To ease the too severe mood without disregarding truth, I concluded: -

“If I have managed to half-satisfy you today as a lover, it is not because I am a sophisticated philanderer. I have not slept with – wanted - another woman than my wife for close to eleven years. In our marriage, good and frequent sex still binds us together. What you and I have found and do will not change that. I want you as you want me. I believe we can have beautiful sex with each other as often as possible without hurting others. We both know we must not threaten our other life.”

Helen had listened. When I started to stumble in my nerdy, school-masterly search for the right words, she stretched her arms across the table, offering her hands. I took them. We were linked and our hands playing into each other helped to ease the awkwardness of her need to know and my wish to explain. She looked up at me now and softly said,

“Thank you, Ben, for telling me about yourself. And especially for being so open about what I am to you and what you want us to have. I wanted you, propositioned you. I was both shameless and frightened, and now I am just so glad I did because I know that we are good for each other. But there is something I need to confess. What made it easier for me to throw myself at you like a streetwalker was that I knew I was leaving Melbourne in a few months. If you had decided to reject me, I was not going to be around to be ashamed. I would have dropped out of your class. But now, you knowing this almost makes me ashamed about my cunning.”

Helen had stepped behind me to cradle my head against her breast. I heard her heartbeat. Then she started to clear the table. With her back turned, standing over the sink, she began to tell me what the future held for her and, thereby, us.

Jurgen had been informed three weeks ago of his promotion and recall to head office in Germany. He was to continue in his job in Melbourne until the end of the year. Knowing that he had successfully concluded his rounds of overseas postings, they had immediately sent their daughter back to Germany to Jurgen’s parents. Andrea was ten and could begin her secondary education in Germany in September. She would, therefore, not lose a year in her schooling.

Helen paused. Then she said, “I only hope Jurgen’s mother won’t do to Andrea what she did to Jurgen.”

I did not ask what she meant by this cryptic remark. Helen shrugged her shoulder, stopped worrying the dishes on the sink, lowered her head, and said: -

“You see, Ben, everything came together for me to have an affair. Andrea in Germany, us leaving for good in December, Rilke’s poem, you! I was a scheming bitch. I thought four months be ideal, safe, time enough for me to let for once my hair down, leave the cage, have a sexual romp with a man I fancied. But now?”

She turned, looked down at me while she dried her hand on a towel. Suddenly she grinned, “Oh shit! We’ll just have to make the most of the little we can have. I hope you agree.”

We packed up. It was already dark outside, and time for us to leave for our adult education class in our respective cars. It was, had been for both of us, already a day full of learning.