I crave him, need him the way a heroin addict needs opiates. This isn't an addiction though. This is something more primal. Visceral. A need born of nature. Of the evolutionary imperative. Of survival.

    I finger my tee, drawing out his anticipation, exciting my own. I know he'll be watching, anticipating the moment when I slowly bend and dig the tee into the ground. Those ragged heartbeats when my skirt tightens across my arse and provides a tantalising suggestion of the bare flesh beneath.

    The tee slides in easily. The grass is damp against my fingers, the soil soft. A cool breeze swirls around my calves and sneaks under my skirt to skim the backs of my knees. My dark brunette plait flops across my shoulder, exposing the winter-pale skin of my neck and the rolled leather strap of my precious necklace.

    The Pro-his name is Robbie but I can never think of him as anything other than the Pro-stays behind me. He'll observe, watch me take my stance, perhaps comment on my grip or alignment, monitor my swing. I'll hit the ball as I always do on the first hole, straight down the middle of the lush green fairway. Only on the eighth will I hook into the trees. When my craving for Daniel becomes too much.

    Faces impassive, we'll hop into the golf cart and roll down the fairway. Golf professional and lady student, focussed only on the game, on what can be taught and learned.

    And then the lesson would really begin. Except it would be a lesson like no other.

    And I'd see Daniel again.

    Perhaps.

    The lessons didn't start out this way. At first they were conducted professionally, but then I noticed the Pro looking at me in a manner that had nothing to do with the way I swung my five iron or the way I studied my putts.

    We were playing the fifth. A short par three with an elevated tee surrounded by swaying, rustling gums, and a drive across an algae-infested dam. It was summer. Humidity rose from the grass in waves, turning the air thick, our bodies sweaty. We were alone on the course. Even the diehard locals had enough sense to stay home and wait for the approaching southerly change.

    I was wearing an old-fashioned tennis skirt, the sort designed to be paired with sports knickers, and a slightly cropped white-and-pastel-yellow-striped polo shirt that exposed my stomach when I swung. Strictly speaking, such attire was inappropriate, and had I been caught by the Lady Captain-a humourless, pucker-mouthed old bat blessed with the wonderfully apt name Prudence Longbottom-I'd have been subjected to a monologue on decorum and dress rules.

    Skirts were allowed, of course. Encouraged even, but these days female golfers wore skorts, not flimsy, semi-transparent tennis skirts. But in the past seven days I'd endured three deaths at the nursing home where I worked Tuesday to Saturday, and washing my proper golf clothes hadn't been a priority.

    The skirt was white, pleated and of a sheer, almost gauzy fabric. In my hazy-mindedness I'd paired it with a flimsy lace G-string instead of sports briefs. It proved a wise choice in the end. That G-string and skirt was what started it all, and granted me the release for which I hadn't realised I'd hankered.

    He stood behind me as I bent and placed the tee in the ground and my ball on top. The sluggish atmosphere had caused my mind to wander, and I was thinking of one of my old ladies who had died the week before, unaware I was exposing my nether regions to the Pro.

    Mrs. Debenham had taught me much about life as she lay withering away to nothing on her miserable cot. There were things she wanted me to know, and she hung on, refusing to die until she saw that I understood, that I memorised the lesson she'd learned so hard. It was her parting gift, although, given where her teachings have led me, perhaps not one for which I should be grateful.

    Life, I discovered as I held her hand and waited for her last rattling breath, was easy to waste, easy to fill with regrets.

    "Make the most of it," Mrs. Debenham exhorted, clutching me with bony fingers, her rheumy eyes fierce. "Live, lass. Live! Because I'll tell you, girl, you're a bloody long time dead."

    Mrs. Debenham died knowing only one man-her husband, and a man unworthy of his sex. She regretted it to the bitter end, hated the way society forced its constraints on her life, loathed herself for letting it. She died shedding acrid tears and leaving nothing behind but a soiled mattress and frames filled with photographs of children and grandchildren who'd forgotten her existence.

    Two days after Mrs. Debenham's miserable passing, jovial Mr. Papadopoulos passed away. A short time later, the nursing home's favourite raconteur and bon vivant, Mr. Trent-Hill, slipped in the shower, hit his head and died in a pool of blood.

    By the time my Monday lesson arrived, my emotions were shredded, scourged by my suppressed grief and the horrifying realisation that my life was slipping away, the way Mr. Trent-Hill's blood had slowly leaked from his head and trickled down the bathroom drain.

    I hadn't had sex for three years. I hadn't loved for four. The great ideal of a simple and affordable country life had been soured by my inability to find someone to share my adopted world, to join my incomplete circle of waning contentment. I was rising twenty-nine and soon I'd be eighty-nine and lying in a miserable bed in a nursing home smelling of urine and antiseptic and dying like Mrs. Debenham. Filled with self-loathing and reproach. A choleric and regret-filled sack of bones and bile.

    But that sweltering Monday on the fifth tee, everything changed. That day I fell into a vat of lust and drowned. Only later did I fall in love, and then not with the Pro. But on that Monday, at that time, lust was more than enough to satisfy my resuscitated need.

    Distracted, I'd bent at the hips rather than the knees to position my ball. As I did, my skirt fluttered up and the hot northerly wind tickled my thighs in a ghostly caress. The hairs on the back of my neck formed tiny, excited erections. My skin puckered into goose bumps, which spread over my shoulders and down my spine in a plague of delicious prickles. I shuddered and, for the first time in years, experienced the luscious charge of sexual excitement.

    I glanced at the Pro and smiled. His face carried the age-old expression of hungry desire-eyes dilated, mouth parted, a light flush creeping up his cheeks. I caught my bottom lip in my teeth and tilted my head slightly, lowering my gaze. His groin bulged with the unmistakable outline of a fast-developing erection.

    I'd always considered him attractive, not in a traditional male-model or sexy-actor way, but in a uniquely Australian way. He's sandy-haired with weathered skin and freckles and a sinewy physique that makes him look like a farmer. His eyes are the sort you rarely remember, more grey than blue, like the colour of the sea on a cloudy day, and sleepy-lidded. But when he looked at me as he did then, with lust and want and heat burning his insides, I found them magnetic.

    And stomach-flippingly sexy.

    My libido woke like a bear roused from hibernation. Slowly at first, with slumberous steps until it growled and then roared in my groin, sending my pulse racing and my cunt throbbing.

    We stared at each other until, smiling knowingly, I turned away, lined up my shot and, with casual ease, teed off. The ball flew toward the green, straight, perfect. It landed in the short fringe, took a short hop onto the shaved bentgrass and rolled toward the hole, stopping a metre short of the flag.

    "Nice," he said, and I knew he didn't mean the shot.

    I sauntered back toward the cart with a deliberate swing in my hips and my three iron resting on my shoulder the way a soldier carries a rifle on parade. The Pro followed behind, and in my mind I pictured him panting like a dog as he became mesmerised by the sway of my arse. The urge to bend over and let him take me like one was phenomenal.

    At the cart, I lifted my arm to drop the iron into my golf bag. The movement caused my shirt to ride up and the Pro took immediate advantage. His cool hand slithered over my stomach, his palm bumpy with calluses but not rough. He pressed his groin against me, demonstrating how hard he was, how much he wanted me. I leaned back into him, and his fingers tickled the skin beneath my breasts. For once, I wish I hadn't worn a bra.

    He nuzzled my ear and kissed my neck with soft, moist lips. "You're very sexy, Luce. You know that?"

    I closed my eyes. No one had called me sexy for a very long time. No one who meant it, that is. Randy old Mr. Rogers didn't count. He called all the nursing home staff sexy and his perpetually exposed, wrinkled old penis looked like something a cat had coughed up. We all humoured him, though. It seemed kinder that way.

    Genetics have been relatively generous to me. The clear pale skin, wavy dark brown hair and olive green eyes I inherited from my mother provide me with a degree of attractiveness, but I possess enough self-awareness to know I'm only moderately good-looking. Yet with a carnal look and a few words, the Pro had me feeling like a siren, a creature of untold sexual appeal. A creature of passion, adventure and life.

    His left hand cupped my breast and rubbed at the tumescent nipple poking through the lace of my bra. His breath was hot on my ear and sent exquisite tingles down my spine.

    "You want me, don't you?"

    "Yes."

    And I did. My lust was fully awake, boiling my insides, filling me with slippery warmth.

    My skirt rose and the smooth cotton of his shorts grazed my arse. He hooked a finger under the strap of my G-string and traced its course down the cleft of my backside toward my twitching, dribbling cunt.

    A finger slipped between my lips.

    "Christ, you're wet." He burrowed farther. My muscles clamped around his finger in response. He groaned a little. "And tight. Really tight."

    I realised he was one of those men who like to talk during sex, whisper words like "Do you like it, huh?" and "Do you want my cock in you, do you?" or "Yeah, baby, you like it hard. You love it when I fuck you like this, don't you?" The sort of adolescent, self-inflating babble often heard in porn films.

    As long as it isn't demeaning, I don't mind. Sometimes I find it a turn-on, like I did that day, but mostly I prefer men who show their pleasure in other ways. The strong, quiet ones who know what you feel, who know what you want without asking because their focus is on you rather than themselves.

    Like Daniel. The man who is now an integral part of my Monday golf lesson. The man who fills me with pleasure that exists beyond sex. The man who makes my heart lose its beat. The man I love.

    Yet who spurns all my approaches.

    At that point, Daniel was still in the future. That afternoon on the fifth, with the sky bruised with rain-loaded clouds and humidity hanging in the air like a damp cobweb, with sweat stinging our eyes, and our breaths coming in ragged pants, the Pro and I fucked each other with a ferocity that only comes from long deprivation. It had, I found out later, been a long time between drinks for him as well.

    He turned me around and raised my shirt and bra, then sucked and nibbled on each of my nipples like a ravenous puppy, two fingers fucking my cunt like an undersized cock while his thumb drew circles on my clit. I leaned against my golf bag, whimpering, not caring if we were seen. My body was too focussed on what was being done to it, on the pleasure it was experiencing, on my rapidly building orgasm.

    "Oh my God."

    His mouth came off my breast and he stared at my face with a combination of astonishment and acute excitement. "Oh, fuck. Are you going to come?"

    I tried to hold back, but it had already started and, although by that stage I couldn't answer him, I left him with no doubt as to what was happening. My head fell back against my clubs and I moaned and thrust against his hand, wanting those fingers deeper, wishing it was his fat, hard cock.

    "Oh yeah. Come for me, babe. Come on my hand."

    He returned his mouth to my nipple and worked his thumb harder against my clit. My muscles clenched around his finger so tightly he could no longer draw it in and out. I panted at the sky and cried out as my cunt erupted like a volcano and spilt hot juice onto his palm.

    He raised his head once more. "Christ, you're horny. I'm going to fuck you so hard."

    As my trembles subsided and my muscles relaxed a little, he withdrew his hand and regarded it with amazement. His palm and fingers were drenched with my fluids.

    "Do you always come like that?"

    I swallowed and nodded. I'd never been any different. Given the right conditions, my excitement could literally gush out of me. I never thought it was a bad thing, and neither did any of my past lovers. My capacity for rapid arousal meant I could be ready for sex in seconds and come in a matter of moments.

    He glanced down at his groin. A tiny moist mark near the head of his penis stained his shorts. He looked back at me. "I need to fuck you so bad."

    I smiled and nodded. His words had come out like a plea. "How? I'm up for anything."

    "Anything?"

    I licked my lips. "Anything."

    "Oh, fuck." He quickly scanned the course, heaving a shuddery breath when he saw we were safe. His fervid gaze dropped to mine again. "Bend over."

    I did as I was told, but moved toward the cart's seat so I could grip at the safety rail designed to prevent golfers tipping out. He reached around me and snatched at the battered pencil case he kept under the cart dash for storing pencils, tees and other paraphernalia. A short rummage later he tossed it back and I heard the distinctive tear of a condom wrapper. Though grateful for his consideration, I experienced a burr of impatience as he prepared for penetration. Seconds later, his fly unzipped and he roughly pulled the G-string aside and rubbed the head of his cock against the engorged lips of my cunt.

    The tip slid inside, fat and delicious, and my arousal burned again. I turned my head to look at him, my body already quivering, demanding more. "I need it hard, Robbie." My voice became tremulous with need. "Really hard."

    He didn't require further instruction. He thrust into me like a rutting animal, his cock turgid and thick. It wasn't overly long, but I didn't care. It rubbed perfectly against my slick insides, arousing dormant senses and stimulating my passage in ways I'd forgotten. Ways masturbation could never equal. I clenched at him with my muscles, pressing every inch of his shaft against my flesh, my animal lust rampant and hungry for satisfaction.

    "You like that? You want more?"

    I wanted more. I wanted so much of him, he'd be in so deep he'd never get out. My hand slid to my clit and I rubbed my fingers against the hard nub. The feeling of his pulsing cock driving into me and my fingers massaging all those sensitive nerve endings sent my cunt into overdrive. I rammed myself onto him, forcing him deeper and deeper, my fingers working in synchrony with his thrusts.

    My breath came in wheezes. Escaped tendrils of hair stuck to my sweaty brow. As the first exquisite wave hit my toes and shot upward, I began to shudder uncontrollably. I was going to come again, and this time I was going to come so hard he wouldn't be able to move.

    "Robbie," I panted.

    His thrusts turned manic, pumping rapidly like an engine piston. He pushed against me, fighting the constriction of my orgasm. My muscles clamped around him like a fist but he used his strength to drive past them. His balls slapped against my lips, his hips against my arse. I cried out, grinding onto his thighs and coming on his cock in convulsive waves.

    "Fuck, Luce, you're gonna make me come," he gasped just before the first powerful squirt of his hot ejaculate erupted inside me.

    I milked him, squeezing him dry of come, my groin aching, wanting more, silently willing him hard again. Willing him to fuck me to exhaustion, till the roaring animal inside was once more leashed and quiescent.

    It wasn't to be.

    He draped across my back, his shirt wet with sweat, his breath hoarse. "Thanks. I needed that."

    I smiled at the understatement. "So did I."

    And that's how the lessons began.

    Now I only wish I knew how they would end.