Chapter 1 - Discovery
“Julian! You’ve got an interest in archaeology,” announced my boss, Rex, in his normal, overly-enthusiastic manner. The older and more curmudgeonly I got, the more I came to hate the excessive enthusiasm of the younger people in the office. As I rapidly approached fifty years of age, I was beginning to feel more and more out of place, as if I no longer fitted in this workplace that had provided my living for the best part of thirty years. Well, ever since I left university, at least.
“Do I?” I asked, looking up from my computer, trying not to sound as weary as I felt. What was he trying to dump on me now?
“Well, you watch ‘Time Team’, don’t you?”
“I don’t think watching a populist television programme makes me keen on archaeology…” I began to protest.
“Sort of does, though, doesn’t it?”
What was the point in arguing? Whatever the flimsy excuse was, there was clearly a new job that had come in and I was the one selected to be saddled with it.
I held out my hand and he passed me a slim folder.
“Get yourself over to the University, there’s a Doctor Isabella Delacourte, needs some help with the financing of a feasibility study into some mounds or something.”
“Mounds?”
“Yes, ancient ones, before you get your hopes up,” he laughed, winking at me lewdly.
It had been a bad move to let news of my divorce slip out in the office, and now five years later and still single, the constant implication that I was single and therefore desperate to find a woman to shag was becoming more than annoying. Never mind the office Codes of Conduct that HR liked to go on about, that had me scared of even trying to be sociable with the younger women in the office for fear of a stray comment being taken as ‘inappropriate’, when I was time to tease the old guy, anything seemed to be fair game. And Rex as particularly annoying with his repeated insinuations about my supposed endless hunt for younger women to satisfy my apparent carnal needs. Carnal needs which had, in fact, all but dried up. My sex life with Debbie had never been regular, or particularly successful, whilst we were married, which was why she’d left me for someone younger and more vigorous. At least that was what I supposed, although she had always denied it to my face. I didn’t consider myself particularly attractive, or well-endowed either, which was why my life had become pretty solitary after Debbie left. A few times after she’d left, and her affair had ended, she’d come around to see me and we’d ended up in bed.
“Why couldn’t you do that when we were married?” she’d declared as I’d rolled off her the last time she’d visited and after a couple of bottles of wine we’d ended up in bed for a kind of mutual sympathy shag.
‘Because I didn’t read erotica when we were married and neither of us had any idea what we were doing.’ was the answer, although I kept the thought to myself.
“Perhaps I should move back?” Debbie suggested, snuggling up to me.
“Oh, I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I’d replied. Which had led to a row and ten minutes later, she’d stormed out, full of high dudgeon and my spunk. The trouble was, although I’d discovered how much fun sex could be, and apparently, how to please a woman, I didn’t fancy Debbie any more. She was older and much heavier than when we’d married, and I could never get over the knowledge that she had left me for someone else, someone who did satisfy her in bed, with an imagined image of someone else’s cock sinking into her hairy fanny being extremely off-putting. Even if I could face her naked now, it didn’t assuage that knowledge, so I stuck to reading erotica and getting on with my life solitary.
“So? Today?”
I looked up and Rex was still standing there.
“The University?” It was across town and by the time I’d driven there it would be late afternoon.
“Yes, now, if you please. They made it sound pretty urgent on the phone.”
I had no idea how a financial review could be that urgent, but it was at least a chance to get out of the office, so I smiled at him resignedly, got up and picked up my jacket.
“Doctor Delacourte?” I asked, pushing open the half-open office door and peering around the office that looked to be more library and junk room than office space.
“Isabella.”
I turned to my right to see a woman, whom I had missed at first glance, bending over a map spread across a crowded table. The wide but firm arse in the tight blue skirt caught my eye, and then she turned around.
I don’t think of myself as the sort of person that even believes in love at first sight, or even lust at first sight. Not really, but as she turned around and stood up, I was instantly captivated by her visceral beauty. Nearly as tall as me, shapely, extremely shapely, she was young, gorgeous and absolutely stacked. I nearly choked.
“I’m Julian. They sent me over to look at a finance proposal or something?”
Time seemed to stop still. There was complete silence except for the hum of a computer and rustle of old documents that stirred in the faint breeze that came, along with streams of summer sunlight, through the open windows. I could feel my eyes looking up and down her body, taking in her wide, child-bearing hips, her massive beasts that seemed to be straining against the white cotton of her blouse, and the masses of raven black hair that tumbled over her shoulders. She was instantly the most beautiful and the sexiest woman I had ever seen. Finally, we made eye contact and I felt myself sinking into those deep blue pools.
“Julian, so kind of you to come.”
She stepped forward and stretched out a hand and robotically, I reached out and shook it. In the second of first physical contact, I felt her skin, smooth, cool, but with an inner warmth. She smiled, and I knew I was going to blush at the knowledge that I was staring at her. I lifted my briefcase, trying to hold it in front of my rapidly rising erection.
“I don’t quite know why I’m here,” I started. “Surely archaeologists are used to putting together proposals to fund research projects such as digs?”
“Yes, I’m sure they are but I’m not an archaeologist, well, I am, but my job here is as archivist. And there are a collection of co-ordinated digs planned, over a range of connected sites. The problem is dividing the cost of the archiving between the different digs, and I think that is going to take some creative accounting, remembering that each dig team wants to spend their grant money on digging, not archiving.”
“Oh,” I replied, starting to get a vague understanding. “Why is this project so different?”
“Perhaps I can show you on a map,” Isabella said, turning back to a series of Ordnance Survey maps that were spread out across a table. She gestured to the maps and I moved to stand beside her.
Instantly I felt myself drawn into her orbit. There seemed to an aura around her, that once I moved to within the sphere of its influence, I was captivated by her presence. It wasn’t just the subtle perfume that she wore, the soft, melodious way her voice seemed to sing a siren’s song into my heart, or even the way that her beauty instantly stole my heart and awoke feelings I thought were long dead and buried. My erection throbbed painfully in my trousers. As I stood beside her and she leant over the maps, pointing to a line of ancient monument symbols, I turned to her, my gaze falling to the way her blouse gaped open, revealing huge soft pillows of ice-pale skin. She reached forward, lifting an errant lock of raven black hair back over her shoulder and revealing even more of her delightful flesh. I groaned inwardly, tried to stifle any outward sounds, and tried to focus on the map. I glanced at her face, hoping that she hadn’t noticed me looking and was already writing me off as an old letch and probably worth reporting for inappropriate behaviour. Instead, she looked into my eyes, smiled, glanced down at her chest and then back to me.
“If you want, I’ll pour us a coffee and we can sit at my desk and I’ll work you though my spreadsheets.”
“I’d like that very much,” I said, surprising quietly.
“So would I,” she replied, and I knew she actually meant it.
Two hours and three mugs of coffee later, we’d pretty much pulled her figures to pieces and put them all back together.
“I still don’t quite get why this is such a big deal, why it needs so many teams and so many different disciplines,” I ventured.
“No, it all looks ridiculous on paper, even when you look at the map. You need to be there, in the landscape, to feel the connection to those ancient peoples to really get a grip of what we are trying to do, trying to understand here.” Her hand rested on my upper leg and I felt a jolt of electricity surge through me. “If you’d like, we could go and walk the site?”
“Now?”
“No, it’s too late. We’d not even get there before dark. But if you can spare a day, we could drive up and I’ll show you the sights.”
“Tomorrow?” I asked hastily, not knowing or caring if she meant sites, or sights. All I wanted was a chance to see her again.
“I’d like that,” she said softly, and knew she actually meant it. “Why don’t you come here tomorrow and I’ll drive us up there? Get here for eight and we’ll make a full day of it. Put on some good hiking boots.”
I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to spend a day alone in her presence, in the middle of nowhere. I went home and had a wank for the first time in months.
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