The porn mags weren’t that helpful. Mostly she analyzed the letters and brushed past the photos with a clinical eye. With Hustler open on her pillow and Penthouse spread out on her duvet, Greta flipped a spiral notebook to a clean page. She wrote her observations down in a cramped cursive hand.
More helpful were the videos. Gang-bangs and step-daughters, MILFs and Catholic schoolgirls – these were her teachers. They dropped the laundry and bent down at the waist, short skirts showing off their panties (or lack thereof). They chewed their bottom lips and twirled silky locks of hair around their fingers. Experts in seduction, standouts in the field of suntanned legs and flat trim stomachs. If given the chance, Greta could teach them how to play the open strings or develop an ear for Bach. But they could teach her something far more valuable.
She slipped a hand beneath the waistband of her skirt and queued another video.
Notes:
#1, and most important – PLAY HARD TO GET. Don’t go after your man. Let him come to you.
The invitation came in a cream envelope, grained paper, a pleasure to touch. Most people would just telephone, but not Johannes. She had to use her fingernails to break the wax seal – gently, so she could store it in her keepsake box – and read the note inside.
An hour later she stood outside his house. Cold wind cut through her pantyhose and ruffled her skirt. She tucked her hair behind her ears and rang the bell, and the muffled tones of a custom Rachmaninoff melody seeped through the thick wood of the door. Johannes let her in a moment later, took her coat with all the well-bred etiquette of a gentleman. His fingers brushed her neck beneath the collar, but with his eyes averted, Greta couldn’t tell if he did it on purpose or if it was just a mistake.
He wouldn’t make a mistake. She was sure of it. But if he saw her not as a woman, an equal – but as a student, as a girl – then a brush of fingers against her neck would be innocent. Not a mistake at all.
“Tea?” Johannes said.
Greta inclined her head. In the sitting room, fine antique furniture surrounded her. The charcoal inlay on the coffee table seemed to spiral right up to her fingertips and bleed into her nails. She accepted the teacup Johannes brought to her, and when he sat on the sofa opposite her, she rose from her armchair and sat as close to him as she dared.
Notes:
#2 – BE BOLD.
Greta sipped her tea with studied clumsiness. She allowed a drop to spill down her chin, a pearl of gray against her chin, and smeared it away with her finger. Licking the fingertip clean, she met Johannes’ eyes. “It’s good,” she said in a low voice.
“Mm,” said Johannes distantly.
Was he cross with her? He spooned sugar into his cup, his lips tight. Sometimes he got like this: arched brows, hooded eyes, a faint line at the side of his nostril as if he couldn’t abide her smell. Greta set her cup down and scooted a little closer, drawing up one knee so that her skirt fell sideways across a white thigh – and she was rewarded with a flicker of sharpness in Johannes’ eyes before he boxed it up and sent this, this flare of interest or distaste or cunning, far away.
“You’ll have to show me how to brew it sometime,” Greta said. Did she dare to lay a hand on his arm? She risked it, fingers trembling with tension more than nerves, and Johannes chose that moment to reach for his glasses. He evaded her touch so simply she almost admired it. And she couldn’t bear to try again. She leaned hard against the back of the sofa, her chest rising and falling in one slow, subdued breath.
She couldn’t even grab her tea to distract herself. The rattle of the cup against the saucer would give her away. Smooth, unbothered, Johannes asked her about her applications to the conservatory in Geneva, but Greta barely heard him. She was scanning through her mental notes, discarding all the ‘be bold’ garbage for something more relevant.
Notes:
#14 – TEST TO SEE IF HE LIKES YOU FIRST.
Okay, she could do that. How? The gears spun, and next to her, Johannes had half-turned to face her, waiting for an answer. Silence. She could get his attention with silence, with inattentiveness, and then … Greta sneaked a hand down the length of her body and gripped the hemline of her skirt. She rubbed the material between her thumb and forefinger, Johannes watching, and then with careful casualness she tugged the skirt down until it almost covered her knees. From the corner of her eye, she could see that sharpness on his face again, and this time she thought she knew what it was. Not interest, not distaste.
Amusement.
“Don’t let your nerves get the better of you, my dear,” said Johannes smoothly. “I take it by your silence that you haven’t applied?”
True, she hadn’t mailed the applications yet, but Greta wanted to see where he was going with this. He shifted on the sofa, his trousers brushing against her knee. One long-fingered hand came up and brushed a loose lock of Greta’s hair away.
Flirting, her nervous system sang.
Soothing, said her brain. Like one would soothe a child.
Greta balled her hands into fists. Johannes tutted, straightened her fingers, massaged the knuckles and phalanges. “You’ll be accepted,” he said almost coldly. “Thousands of talentless hacks pass through the doors of the likes of Juilliard and Guildhall each year. Not so in Geneva. The instructors there have more … discerning taste.”
Notes:
#17 – BE HONEST (about your kinks, about your commitment level, about whether you have three kids at home with three different dads–)
“I’m nervous,” Greta blurted.
“You have no reason to be,” Johannes assured her, his thumb digging into her hand with clinical precision. “And frankly, it isn’t like you to be.” He tilted his head, trying to catch her eyes, and Greta looked away. “Is there something on my face?” he asked.
She couldn’t help but look at him then. An undignified noise, something like an, “Eh?” popped from her throat. She scanned his cheeks, his jaw, his inscrutable expression, and finally Johannes smiled.
“I don’t mean it literally,” he said. “It’s just that you’ve been avoiding my eyes since you came in. Is there something you’d like to say?”
Greta squeezed her eyes shut. She sucked in a steadying breath. The storm clouds in her mind broke and for an instant there was light – and trumpets – and the sage words of an advisor on Reddit named u/thiccestbananaboi.
“Will you close your eyes?” Greta asked.
Johannes blinked at her, one eyebrow raised. He seemed to brace himself against the sofa before he nodded. Long pale eyelashes kissed the top of his cheekbones. Rose lips met in a bow, delicate as petals. There were crow’s feet at the corners of each eye, thin lines stamped against the skin, and a smell of aftershave, of tea. She’d never seen him so close, so pretty, with all the time she wanted just to study him, to read the notes hidden in his skin.
Before she could reconsider, she straddled him. He twitched; her skirt hitched up her thighs, wrinkling around the waist. Slowly, Johannes’ hands crept to her hips, touching her in a gentle hold that could have been appreciating her warmth or preparing to push her away. It took five seconds for her lungs to start working again. She leaned close – close enough to feel his breath beneath her palms, and the swell of her own chest against her knuckles. Her ribs and his ribs, not quite touching. He was holding so still, refusing to open his eyes even when she pressed her lips against his ear and whispered,
“Your hands. That’s what I love the most about you. Your hands.”
Johannes gave a vaguely disapproving frown. His grip tightened on Greta’s waist, almost a pinch.
“And your eyes,” Greta murmured, tilting his face to the side. The light caught his cheekbones, turned the pale skin golden. “The way they tilt at the ends. It makes you look as if you’re always…”
“Smiling,” Johannes said, his lips barely moving.
“Thinking,” Greta corrected.
He stilled her hand. His eyes opened, hooded, boring into her. “I’m always thinking,” he said softly. She twisted her wrist, broke his hold, and laid her palm over his eyes until she felt the tickle of his lashes and knew he’d closed them.
“Well, stop,” she said. “Just for now.”
Her thumb traced over the curve of his mouth. She pulled his bottom lip down, exposed the teeth, small and white like a child’s. A pretty flush suffused his cheeks, and when she slid her hand away, his mouth stayed open – obedient and waiting.
All the porn videos she’d watched and all the mags she’d read flew out the window. Nothing she’d seen in all her research amounted to this: a pretty, slender-fingered pianist pinned beneath a slim young girl on an antique couch, the lightbulbs in his hand-carved Biedermeier lamps lending a soft glow to everything: to his hair, to the pleats of her skirt, to the gliding velvet of her stockings and the pale shell of her fingernails.
To his open lips.
To his wet tongue and shining teeth.
Greta couldn’t breathe. Her chest stuttered, lungs hitching in an attempt to expand, but she barely felt the lack of air. She slid her index finger over Johannes’ bottom lip, into the warmth and wetness of his mouth, and he let it in. His tongue curved to give her room, every inch of him open and inviting.
“Have you ever…?” Greta blushed. “Have you ever … used your mouth on other men before?”
Johannes went still around her. He stared up at the ceiling through his lashes, not exactly avoiding her eyes, just thinking. Finally he nodded.
“How do you do it?” Greta asked.
His gaze flicked to her face. He studied her, then closed his eyes again. His hand came up, gentle, to cup her wrist, the heels of their palms kissing as he guided her finger deeper inside. Now his lips sheathed his teeth and his tongue moved, a slow warm roll of muscle on the underside of her finger, lighting up all the sensitive skin and tender nerve endings of an expert violinist. She tried to imagine who he did this with, where he learned it. To picture Johannes on his knees in a public bathroom was just wrong. Degrading. But to picture him at her age, slim and prettier even than he’d been for all the years she’d known him, opening himself up to someone taller, someone stronger–
She pushed another finger inside. Johannes pulled back, pushed down, taking her to the base of her knuckles – until both fingers were wet and warm. She couldn’t get used to it; as soon as she’d processed the attention he was lavishing on the tip of her finger, he moved lower. Before she could grow numb to it, he pulled away. His tongue slid between her index and middle fingers, sliding down the insides of each one, and Greta couldn’t help it – she shivered, hard, her thighs clamping over his hips, and jerked her fingers out of his mouth. He followed almost automatically, his hair in disarray now, and Greta let him take her back inside.
“Deeper,” she whispered, and Johannes obeyed. He let her push him back against the couch, his jaw stretched wide, throat open as she curled her fingers down. The back of his throat, where most men would gag – but Johannes gasped out a breath, squirmed against the couch just for a moment, and let her explore. She turned her hand over, palm up, and grazed her fingertips against the roof of his mouth to watch him shudder, felt the curve of his erection against her panties, the wet rush of pre-cum when she stroked his palate and scratched the ridges with her nails.
No, this – this wasn’t in the videos she’d watched. This type of service, of obedience, all without removing her panties, without being touched anywhere but along the length of three fingers more accustomed to holding a bow than to this – she gritted her teeth, eyes closed now, all darkness, all sensation. Everything in the world, every snatch of music, boiled down to Johannes’ lips, to his gasping breath, and to that tongue.
She pressed herself against him. Awkward angle: her arm bent and trapped between them, her wrist aching, her face buried in his neck. His knuckles brushing the damp front of her panties as he fumbled for his zipper, his throat closing as he swallowed, wet pressure squeezing her from every side. He should have been a singer; she’d seen him play, and his fingers weren’t as clever as his mouth. Still, she wondered – felt them moving up and down along his cock, every stroke bringing with it a rough brush against her panties, and she leaned in closer, closer, until he couldn’t help but touch her as he touched himself. Like he was holding both of them, stroking up and down one singular united length of flesh and heat, blowing her and wanking her at the same time. His mouth went slack around her fingers, warming but not sucking, and his breath came short.
She could trace the tender membrane of his gums. She could rub the swollen scar tissue where his wisdom teeth used to be. She could hook her fingers in his jaw and pull it open, force him to face her, to breathe into her lungs, to share his moans, his gasps, his shudders, his sharp-line muscle tension, his quivering nerves–
When she felt the splash of warmth beneath her skirt she froze. She reached between them, careful not to touch him, felt the wet, thick fluid drying on the wrong side of her panties where he’d come. Her other hand stayed in Johannes’ mouth, forgotten by both of them, until he caught his breath. She waited for him to lift her off his lap, to fix his trousers up and reach for his cup of tea.
Instead, with shaking hands, he touched her wrist and brought her wet fingers back to his lips for one last kiss. Her lungs unlocked. She could breathe again, and as she stood up, she remembered–
Notes:
#23 - ALWAYS THANK YOUR DATE
“Thank you,” Greta said, a little stiffly. She smoothed her skirt down to hide the way the dimples in her knees were trembling. “I’d like to do this again sometime. When it’s convenient for you.”
Johannes glanced at her briefly as he tucked himself away.
“Maybe after you get accepted,” he said.