Work in Progress
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Mortal Turpitude - Chapters 1 to 5
The definition of moral turpitude, from the American Association of
University Professors, 1940: - "that kind of behavior which goes
beyond simply warranting discharge, and is so utterly blameworthy as
to make it inappropriate to require the offering of a year's teaching or
pay. The standard is not that the moral sensibilities of persons in the
particular community have been affronted. The standard is behavior
that would evoke condemnation by the academic community
generally."
“Any faculty member may be immediately terminated for serious
cause, customarily cited as gross incompetence or moral turpitude.
Serious cause consists of …[among other things] exploitation of
students for private advantage..” Faculty handbook of Texas
Wesleyan University, typical of many such handbooks.
University Professors, 1940: - "that kind of behavior which goes
beyond simply warranting discharge, and is so utterly blameworthy as
to make it inappropriate to require the offering of a year's teaching or
pay. The standard is not that the moral sensibilities of persons in the
particular community have been affronted. The standard is behavior
that would evoke condemnation by the academic community
generally."
“Any faculty member may be immediately terminated for serious
cause, customarily cited as gross incompetence or moral turpitude.
Serious cause consists of …[among other things] exploitation of
students for private advantage..” Faculty handbook of Texas
Wesleyan University, typical of many such handbooks.
Chapter 1
(Now incorporated into Chapter 2)
Chapter 2
My first night in the Nottingham Woods Mobile Home Park was the worst night’s
sleep I’d had in years. The road behind the row of trailers seemed to be a shortcut in
or out of the park, and cars roared by all night long, some without mufflers, others
with thudding speakers that made the crystal tinkle on its shelf. I took a sleeping
pill with two shots of whisky, and fell asleep around 4:00 am.
Seagrams VO and flurazepam was the same combination I’d used to find sleep during
the worst times leading to the breakup. How ironic that I might still need it, even
after Shirley’s rages and nagging had passed from my life.
I dragged my aching body out of bed and tried to get clean in the cramped shower
stall. To dry myself, I had to step out into the living room of the trailer, where I’d
inadvertently left some windows uncovered the previous night. Pulling on underwear
and pants, I made my way to the coffee maker and measured an extra scoop of my
strongest French roast into the paper filter.
While waiting for it to brew, I looked down the length of the trailer, and once more
saw how my belongings were at odds with the worn living room. The sofa and
armchair were nearly new, down-stuffed, and covered with beige microsuede, but the
floor they sat on was linoleum, cheap and torn. A couple of my favorite oils hung on
scuffed wallboard. Fine crystal lined up on peeling veneer shelving. My big oak desk
stood at the other end of the room, with a 27-inch flat-screen monitor in the center.
The matching oak bookcase was filled with my most vital professional tools: finely
bound texts and monographs on molecular biology, plus a few novels and reference
books. But behind the desk, a pane of the big end window had been patched with a
square of cardboard and duct tape.
Unpacked boxes formed a shoulder-high stack near the desk. I’d grossly
overestimated the usable space in a singlewide. I’d have to find some other place to
store the share of the household that Shirley hadn’t taken.
The first sips of coffee cleared my sinuses, which may have been a mistake. I was
once again assaulted by the smells of the family that had recently occupied it: taco
spice and pizza, sour milk, foul diapers, stale urine, stale beer, sweat. So far the
odors had resisted my efforts to dispel them. I knew if I didn’t get rid of them, I’d
soon grow accustomed. But the smells would persist to offend visitors, and I’d likely
carry the noxious stink on my clothes wherever I went.
I didn’t like the place much, but all I needed was a place to sleep close to work. For
fifteen years, I’d spent so little time at home that it made no sense to rent a house or
even a spacious apartment, now that I was on my own. Although there was plenty of
rental space in Tucson generally, vacancies were scarce within a mile of the
University. I’d been lucky to find this sorry trailer at $800 a month.
The end of my marriage had been traumatic, but it had removed the last hindrance to
moving ahead with my career. One of the disadvantages of being in academic
research is that the rewards are roughly in proportion to the amount of time
invested. Academic research is a cutthroat competition for grants, tenure,
promotions, and prestige. It’s a game you can play in many ways, but you’re not in
the running at all unless you can put in more hours than the next guy, in my case
100 to 120 hours a week. The merit badges I’d collected were four million dollars in
Government grants, a hand-picked team of sixteen professionals and students, an
unending string of invitations to speak at this or that conference, distinguished
memberships in four professional societies, influence within the University, and
other perks only available to top performers.
All these things had turned to ashes during the slow-motion torture of the divorce
proceedings. Those parts of my life that had once been no more than background
hum took on enormous importance, even as they were stripped away. The quiet of
home, my two beautiful daughters, the respect of relatives and friends, financial
security – all evaporated. The very air turned to poison during the yearlong ordeal.
Even my daughters refused to return my calls. I assumed that Shirley had poisoned
their minds against me.
I shook off the fog of sleeplessness, set down my coffee cup, and turned to
unpacking to distract myself. Otherwise I’d begin nursing regrets and raging at
injustices until my day was ruined again.
The boxes still stood like a forbidding mountain in the center of the floor. I had to
find a place to put all this stuff. Originally, I’d planned to buy a garden shed to put
outside the trailer. But I noticed that nearly all the sheds in the park had been
broken into, their thin metal sides smashed or missing. Somewhere I’d have to find
$100 in my monthly budget to rent a storage locker.
I decided to work on organizing the trailer until noon, and get it finished once and
for all. I didn’t have to account to anyone for going in late, but important things
wouldn’t get done and I’d have to catch up on them later. My secretary would
automatically reschedule appointments. She was used to working with the chaotic
schedule of a high-powered research lab.
A sturdy knock startled me and made me jerk my head up. The door swung open and
a female voice called, “Dr. Croft? Are you home?” Without waiting for a reply, the
woman stepped inside. In silhouette against the bright outdoors, she was nearly as
tall as the doorframe.
“Greetings,” I said, not knowing how to deal with this new interruption. She had
entered as though it was her own home, looking around at the disorganized interior.
“Dr. Croft, I’m Rhiannon Lane, your landlady.” She wore a black sheath stretched
snugly over an athletic body, with broad shoulders, firm high breasts, and muscular
legs. Jet black hair rolled in waves to her shoulder blades. But my gaze locked on
her eyes, pale and gray, radiating authority, sexuality, ruthlessness.
“Mike next door mentioned your name,” I said. Mike the Cop was the only neighbor I’
d met so far. He’d cheerfully disabused me of any romantic notions I might have had
about life in a trailer park.
“I’m sure he did.” She smiled slightly. “I just stopped by to see how you’re
adjusting, and if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“Not unless you can stop the cars from racing down the back road all night.” I
pointed to the dark end of the trailer.
She made a face and shook her head. “I get complaints about it all the time. I tried
closing that road off when I bought the place, but the Fire Marshall made me re-open
it. He says it’s a fire access road.”
“Can I get you some coffee?” I said, when I realized she wasn’t here to simply
exchange momentary pleasantries.
She pulled out a chair from the kitchen table. “Yes, you can. Thanks. A little milk,
no sugar.” She didn’t merely sit down, but glided into the seat, folding her long,
decorative legs so that her dress moved up, revealing half of a muscular, nyloned
thigh.
“Mike told me you’re a lawyer,” I said, by way of making conversation.
“I am,” she said, “but not the kind that makes headlines. I’m a corporate lawyer.”
“Oh, you’re one of those?” I instantly wished I could recall that last word. I busied
myself getting the milk from the refrigerator.
“You mean helping huge corporations crush the little guys? Showing them how to
avoid paying taxes? Cheat the Government? Buy politicians?” She added milk to her
coffee. She crossed her legs, and the skirt slid even higher.
“I didn’t mean...” I felt my face flush.
“Oh, but you’re right, Dr. Croft. I do all those things, and more. But I’m getting tired
of it.” She paused a moment as if waiting for me to say something. “That kind of
work wears down the soul. I’ve become wealthy, and I can afford to turn away some
of the more repulsive work. I’ve got time to branch out into other things.”
“You mean like running a trailer park? Surely—”
“Is that any stranger than someone like you moving into a trailer park?”
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
“You’re Professor Barry Croft, MD, PhD, a distinguished member of the worldwide
molecular immunology research community—whatever that means. You’ve been at
this University for eight years, and you’re married with two teenaged girls. You’ve
got a beautiful home in the Foothills, recently appraised at six hundred and fifty
thousand dollars.”
“You do investigate your tenants, don’t you? Except...”
“Except that you applied to live in a trailer park, and your family isn’t here with
you. That tells me my information is not up to date.”
“I’d just as soon it stayed that way, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Dr. Croft, once I’m convinced you can pay your rent for the term of the lease, my
interest in the details of your life ends. But you wouldn’t be the first divorced man to
take refuge here. Some of my tenants were cleaned out pretty thoroughly in their
divorces.”
I was growing irritated. Whatever she knew about my life, she wasn’t entitled to
make judgments about me.
She slid her empty cup across the table. “I’d like more coffee, Barry. It is okay to
call you Barry, isn’t it? You should call me Rhiannon.” She tipped her head slightly
and smiled, and a thrill rippled up my spine. Those lustrous gray eyes were doing
something to my head.
Mesmerized by the smile and surprised by the question, I tried to get up from the
table, caught my thigh on the underside, and stumbled back into my chair. My coffee
sloshed onto the oak surface. Her expression never changed; it was still that soft
smile.
“Sure. Barry’s what everyone calls me, even my grad students.” I stood up,
successfully this time, and found some paper toweling to wipe up the spill. The pot
was empty, so I began to set up a fresh pot. All the time I worked on the coffee, I
was looking forward to turning around and looking at those fabulous legs.
I sat back down as the coffee maker started to bump and spit. “So you know all that
about me. Is it okay now to ask how someone like you happens to run a trailer park?”
She cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t know why you’re so curious, but I don’t run the
park. I have Harry Garrand for that; he’s the manager. But when you popped up on
the credit check, I was curious why a famous scientist would move in here.”
“But how do you make money with a place like this?”
“The income pays the operating expenses. Eventually the value of the land will
increase.”
I grinned. “You’re speculating, aren’t you? Nobody would invest in real estate right
now unless they knew something about the plans for this land. Am I right?”
She smiled quietly. “Oh, no, Barry. That would be an unethical use of privileged
information. As a matter of fact, this land and some of the other properties around
here are owned by a consortium based in the Cayman Islands. They hire me to look
after its interests in a number of pieces of property in the city.” She uncrossed her
legs, giving me another unforgettable glance at her thigh.
I decided it was time to shut up. I suspected that she owned the offshore corporation
one way or another, but it was none of my business even if she cared to tell me.
She stood up, towering over me. “I’ve got to be going. But I’d like to have you over
for dinner this Friday, if you have time.”
“Me? For dinner? Why?” Again, I’d been rude, and I quickly said, “I mean, I’d love
to come to dinner, but I’m a little surprised.”
“I like you. You seem like an interesting person. And I don’t make friends in my line
of work. It’s in the nature of the job. And I don’t have time to meet many people
outside my legal associates.”
She turned toward the door. “You’re going already? The coffee’s not done.” I was
impressed all over again by her height, even if two of those six inches were her heels.
“I’ll take a rain check.”
“A rain check means you’ll come visit me again,” I said. “But I’ll be there on Friday.”
Standing by the door, she scribbled on a business card and passed it to me. While I
handed one of my own cards to her, her perfume made me dizzy. Behind the perfume
was the intoxicating scent of a female body.
The note on the card said, ‘7 pm Friday’.
Chapter 3
When the elevator reached the third floor, I wondered if I’d be able to make it to my
office without being noticed. I probably should have come up the back stairs.
But when I stepped out of the elevator, Lisa Grissom was right in front of me,
carrying three racks of autosampler tubes to the instrument room. She was tall, blue-
eyed, and slender, and a blonde ponytail swung behind. The sight of her made my
heart ache with longing.
“Barry, you’re late,” she said. She was the only grad student who spoke to me like
that. She was the only one who dared.
“So?”
“Butthole was looking for you all morning,” she said.
“Dr. Burton knows my cell number. If it was important, he could have called.”
“Well, he looked upset. Maybe he didn’t want to talk over the phone.”
I moved close to her and muttered, “Tonight, right?”
She nodded soberly. “Tonight. Sevenish.” She flicked her ponytail insolently in my
direction, and resumed her long stride down the hall. I watched for a moment as the
slender hips swayed.
I unlocked the main door of my office. Mrs. Brown had straightened my desk, and a
six-inch stack of mail was centered on the blotter. I sat and started sorting. Garbage.
Garbage. Garbage. Open later. Garbage. Open now. I started to tear the envelope
open.
The adjoining door opened and Mrs. Brown stuck her head in. “Dr. Burton’s been
looking for you. It seems urgent.”
“Someone told me already, Mrs. Brown. Thank you, but he’ll be teaching his
Bioinformatics class right now. I’ll see him after. Would you call Buddy and George
and have them get everyone together in the conference room at three, please?”
I finished opening the letter. It was a list of carping comments from the editor of a
scientific journal. At least this would be the final round of reviews before this paper
went to press. Well, making the corrections would be a job for George Chaudhury. I
put the letter into George’s folder.
Further down the stack was the formal confirmation of an invitation to speak at a
conference at Tubingen University in the south of Germany, six months from now.
Better yet, they offered to pay for my travel. I looked at the calendar. I could free
up the time. In fact, I could connect it with a trip to Turin to visit Benneto Domingo,
whom I hadn’t seen in two years.
My thoughts took me to the ancient streets of Tubingen, wandering the narrow
streets that wind among the sixteenth century buildings. But I wasn’t alone. A tall
woman walked beside me. Shirley? Lisa? No, it was Rhiannon Lane. I saw the long,
strong, nyloned legs walking the cobblestones of the medieval city center. Her hand
was in mine. We were on our way back to our hotel room...
I pulled myself back to the present, finished the stack of mail, and started on the
email. There were 40 of them, mostly copies of correspondence among members of
my group. I was halfway through them when Mrs. Brown stuck her artificially blonde
head through the adjoining door.
“It’s five minutes past three, Dr. Croft.”
I found my coffee cup on the credenza, picked up my group meeting folder, and
walked four doors down the hall to the conference room. I took my seat at the end of
the long table.
Most of the sixteen people were gathered in their accustomed places. Seats at the
group meeting had never been formally assigned, but the staff managed to sort
themselves by rank until a more or less consensus arrangement was reached. On the
right and left of my chair sat Buddy Lester and George Chaudhury, both Assistant
Professors. Beside Lester was an empty chair. The six post-doctoral fellows filled up
most of the remaining seats at the table. The graduate students, at the bottom of the
pecking order, mostly leaned against the wall or sat on chairs dragged from other
rooms.
Just as I cleared my throat to silence the room, Lisa Grissom hurried in, carrying a
cup of coffee, pushing through the crowd of chairs and people. People had to move
their chairs so she could make her way to the one that remained empty. That had
been ‘Lisa’s chair’ since shortly after she’d joined the lab as a new grad student, four
years before.
I started off. “Everyone’s here now? Sorry about moving the meeting to the
afternoon. I’m moving house, and there were things that had to be dealt with.”
I started out by introducing a new member, a tiny girl, Chinese, as so many new
students were these days. She giggled shyly and smiled behind her hand. Once the
attention of the room had shifted away, she shrank back against the wall like a
wilting flower. I would assign her to Dr. Chaudhury for a few months. I didn’t think
she’d stand up well under the overbearing Buddy Lester. George, on the other hand,
was a patient man, especially with the Chinese and Korean students whose spoken
English was usually awful.
The agenda of the weekly meeting was predictable. Each week, in rotation, one of
the group would speak for thirty minutes about their work, and endure another
fifteen minutes of questioning that was detailed and sometimes brutal. Today was
Lisa’s turn. Her talk had been preloaded into the Powerpoint projector, and I pushed
my chair to one side to give her room at the screen.
She summarized her talk in the first sentence: “Since I last talked about this in
August, the adenovirus carrying the inserted B-1B gene complex has still failed to
induce an immune reaction in rabbits or mice. Every animal so far has died.” Her
gaze swept the table, and she said, ominously, “They died, people, of the common
cold, a disease that rabbits and mice don’t even normally catch.” She went on to
detail the work she’d done in the last week, showing slides of polyacrylamide gels
and tables of figures to support her statement.
Just as she was winding up, writing on the chalkboard in the light of the projector,
she suddenly whipped her arm back and flung the chalk at one of the post-docs, who
had nodded off. The chalk struck him just in front of the ear, and he looked around,
befuddled.
“Pay attention!” she demanded. “This is important stuff. Do you understand what
this means?”
I interrupted. “Steady, Lisa. This is one experiment done in two rodent species far
different from humans. The implications aren’t all that alarming. Not yet. We don’t
even know how the B-1B complex works.”
Buddy spoke up. “If a human virus can be made invincible in any animal, it’s for
sure something to worry about. After all, B-1B is expressed in every virus she’s
looked at, even RNA viruses. What if someone put it into poliovirus? All the Salk
and Sabin vaccines in the world wouldn’t help.”
I decided to end this line of discussion right here. “Let’s limit ourselves to questions
about the lab work, not more wild speculation about biological weapons and
terrorists. I’ll remind everyone of our policy about talking about our work outside the
lab. Lisa’s work is dynamite, and you heard it here first. But the rest of the world
won’t hear a whisper about it until it’s published.
“Is that clear?” I swept the table with my eyes, getting a few nods and blank stares
in return.
Buddy glared at me. Our secrecy policy had been concocted to deal with competition
from other laboratories. In the working atmosphere of brutal competition for grants,
clumsy but often successful espionage was common. I’d never considered that
someone might use our discoveries to build a deadly virus. It was impossible anyway,
since no one outside of our laboratory had the B-1B gene complex itself. The time
would come later, much later, to make decisions about sharing our results. Or about
threats from spies and terrorists, for that matter.
People didn’t like to ask questions of Lisa. Her replies were aggressive and often
intimidating if the question was a good one, and witheringly sarcastic if it was stupid
or obvious. There were only a couple of polite questions of clarification. She replied
curtly and resumed her chair, cutting off further discussion. The meeting continued
as we went around the table, giving everyone a few minutes to summarize their work
in the past week, and their plans for the next. My role was to arbitrate conflicts and
to lead brainstorm sessions to tease out the problems in those experiments that had
gone awry.
Around 5:30, the meeting began to come apart. People were ducking out to use the
washroom or tend an instrument. Someone noisily set up the coffee maker to brew up
the evening’s supply of wakefulness. The sleepy post-doc had passed out beyond
revival.
The group meeting was usually followed by a senior staff meeting with Buddy,
George, one or two of the senior post-docs – and Lisa, who usually invited herself,
and wouldn’t respond to hints.
To those who waited around the table, still on their feet, I said, “Let’s put off the
senior staff meeting until Saturday. Let’s say, ten o’clock?” I caught Lisa’s unsmiling
eyes. She nodded almost imperceptibly, confirming our appointment for this
evening.
Chapter 4
After the steaks and wine at Sullivan’s, Lisa was surprised when we pulled into
Nottingham Woods, and not in a good way.
“This is your new home?” she said. “Really?”
“This is it,” I said. “I told you the divorce cleaned me out.”
“Yes, but when men say they’re bankrupted by divorce, they usually mean they got
less than everything.”
“I thought I could keep things together.” I parked in the metal canyon between the
trailers.
“So you let your wife and her lawyer take everything while you stood there with your
thumb up your ass? That’s not very smart, Barry. I told you at the time, get a lawyer
before you think you need one.”
“Don’t harp on it, please.” I opened the door of the trailer for her. I wasn’t about to
tell her the reason my wife had managed to ransack the family assets.
She froze while stepping inside. “Jesus! What a funk!” She retreated onto the porch,
screwing up her face.
“I’m sorry. I forgot to warn you. The place still needs a little airing out after the last
family.”
“What’s wrong with a hotel room?”
“I thought it’d be more comfortable here. We’ve got food, and a kitchen, and...”
“This place is a pigsty, the wrong side of the tracks, the end of the fucking earth!
Don’t expect me to sleep here.”
In the end, she waited out in the early dark of the November evening, her arms
crossed against the chill, while I called the Marriott outside of town. I couldn’t afford
to be seen at any of the hotels near the University, and driving to a sufficiently
distant hotel would take at least thirty minutes. Having a private place close to the
University to bring Lisa had been foremost in my thinking while renting the place.
After two sexless months, my fantasies had been running wild; I wanted to be able to
bring her back here every day after work and even during lunch hours.
I held my impatience in check and gathered up some wine and my overnight bag. It
was nearly 11 o’clock before we closed the door of our room in the Marana Marriott
Hotel. Besides the king-size bed, it had a large easy chair, Lisa’s favorite sexual
appliance. I forgot my annoyance when she smiled. The turquoise necklace and
earrings I’d bought her looked wonderful against her pale skin and blonde hair.
She casually tossed her jacket to me to hang up, and began unbuttoning her blouse. I
watched until she demanded, “What are you waiting for? Get stripped.”
“Don’t you want some wine first?” I said, turning out all the lights but one.
“Later. Right now, what I want, I want you to lick me. All this extra farting around
has made me impatient.” She was naked by now except for her panties, which she
pushed to the floor while I was still unbuttoning my shirt. Her breasts were small
above her prominent ribs, but the nipples were large and hard as thimbles, and she
loved to have them sucked and caressed. She threw two pillows onto the easy chair
and sat erect on its edge, her hands folded on her crossed knees, watching in silence
while I shed the rest of my clothing. I stood before her, my erection pointing
obscenely in her direction.
“You can suck my tits and get me wet,” she said. From long habit, I kneeled in front
of her, which brought my lips even with her nipples. I leaned toward her, and with
the tip of my tongue flicked at a nipple. She gasped, and I continued to tease as it
stiffened and swelled. She touched the back of my head, and I sucked her breast into
my mouth until she arched her back and moaned. I switched to the other nipple.
For several minutes, she urged me from one to the other, murmuring and breathing
hoarsely. Finally, she whispered, “Lick me now, Barry.” She leaned back on the
cushions and raised her legs, hooking her knees on the arms of the chair.
For an instant, I gazed at her luscious pussy. A haze of red-blonde hair failed to
conceal the magenta lips. Honey glistened wetly between them, inviting me to
capture it before it trickled out of reach. Impatient, she hooked her hand behind my
head and drew me toward her. Her sexual aroma infiltrated my brain and made me
desperate. I knew she didn’t like too direct an assault, so I kissed the translucent
white skin of her thighs and lower belly first. I reached delicately through the hair
with the tip of my tongue, just brushing the silky labia, bringing a trace of her
sweetness into my mouth.
Her hand rested on my head, without pressure. I licked her again, and again, and
soon the pressure of her hand increased. At the same time, the thin labia softened
until I could slip my tongue inside. Her breathing was hoarse, but I knew she didn’t
like to rush to climax too quickly, so I moved down and penetrated her vagina,
licking up the rich honey. She moaned quietly. I looked up, and met her fierce blue
eyes. They drove me to probe deeper, where the addictive fluid was sweetest, while
she purred like a cat.
“Now!” she croaked. “Do it!” She pulled my head up until I found her swollen
clitoris. I lapped at it with the flat of my tongue, and almost immediately her hips
rose from the chair and her back arched. She cried out, a guttural, animal sound, and
her hips churned and writhed against me. The bucking of her body slowed until she
sagged back into the chair and my mouth rested quietly in her soaking hair.
“That was nice,” she whispered. “You may be a moron in some ways, and an asshole
in other ways, but you’re a real artist with your tongue. Think how different your life
would have been if your wife had let you do it to her.”
By now, I knew better than to reply to her taunting. There was more sex to come this
evening, and I didn’t want to spoil it with useless argument.
“Of course, this way, I get all the benefits. So who am I to complain?” She smirked
at me with her beautiful pale eyes as I gazed back from my place between her thighs.
“Okay, Barry, now it’s your turn,” she said, sitting up so that I had to fall back on
my heels.
I stood up on creaking knees and stood shakily before her.
“Hmm. You’re looking pretty aroused. You must love licking me. Are you sure I can
do this safely?” She took my cock in her delicate fingers and blew warm breath on it.
“I can take it for a little while,” I breathed.
“Just remember, if you come again while I’m doing this, there’ll be no more of it.
One nasty mouthful was enough for a lifetime.”
“I’ll be careful, but it’s been weeks.”
She laughed, and her breath warmed my cock. “It’s been more than two months, and
that was your own fault, remember? It was your lawyer’s idea that we shouldn’t meet
until everything was signed. And you haven’t come since then, right? Not even
playing with yourself?”
“No,” I said quickly. “I swear I didn’t. I wouldn’t break my promise to you.”
“And how would I know for sure?” She smiled triumphantly up at me.
“Because I can’t keep secrets from you.”
“That’s right. You can’t. You will tell me anything I ask, and I’ll know right away if
you’re lying.” With that, she pressed her lips to the end of my cock, pushing her
tongue through so she was licking just the tip. She sighed, and leaned forward,
taking most of it deep into her mouth until it brushed the back of her throat.
“Oh my God, Lisa, that feels so wonderful.” I tried to find ways to distract myself as
she pumped her lips slowly up and down my shaft, and her tongue worked its magic.
“Stop!” I said, and she instantly withdrew. My poor swollen cock bobbed up and
down with my heartbeat. The head had turned nearly purple.
She gazed at it. “It makes me so hot to tease you. Imagine that – I came just
minutes ago, and this is already exciting me so I want more.” With that, she pulled
me into her mouth again, licking the underside with her rough tongue. After just a
few seconds, I shouted again for her to stop.
We went on like this for a few minutes, or an hour – it was hard to tell – before she
said, “I can’t wait any more. Get on your back on the carpet.” She threw down a
pillow from the chair for my head.
My balls ached and my cock felt so swollen, I was sure it was going to split like an
overheated sausage. Facing me, she straddled my chest and knee-walked until her
pussy was centered over my mouth. I reached under her thighs to tease her nipples,
the way she liked.
Once again, my head was filled with her female aroma. As she lowered her hips, the
thick tendons inside her thighs clamped my head in place. The spread of her legs
held her pussy lips wide open, and her clitoris swelled to the size of an olive as I
caressed it with my tongue.
She moaned aloud at the intense sensation. As her hips began to rock, my own hips
moved of their own accord, thrusting my starved and aching cock into empty air. Her
juices filled my mouth and forced me to swallow once, twice. Occasionally, my
breath was cut off, but I couldn’t bear to make her pause so I could breathe.
Fortunately, after a moment she would move in a different way, and I would have a
chance to catch some air.
A low howl began in the back of her throat, rising in pitch as her hips shifted to a
steady, strong rhythm. Her clitoris pulsed against my tongue. She cried and swore
and bounced until I thought my jaw might break. I felt a spontaneous orgasm rising
in myself, and fought it back. I wouldn’t shame myself before her.
When she stopped, she eased the pressure just enough to let me breathe. My tongue
rested quietly against her clit as she said, “That was amazing. I think I’m going to
want another couple of those.” She reached back and touched a fingertip to my
turgid cock. “By the way, I’ve decided not to let you come tonight. I love your
enthusiasm, but you know it’ll all go away if I let you come. That wouldn’t be fair to
me, would it?”
Chapter 5
Next day was Friday. I didn’t arrive at the office until 10:00 o’clock, having slept
late and taken aspirin for my sore jaw. Lisa glanced up as I passed her lab, barely
acknowledging my presence. She’d just finished running a gel, which meant she’d
been at work for at least two hours.
I’d awakened in the hotel room to find her gone. I checked my wallet so see if she’d
left, or was elsewhere in the hotel. Sure enough, thirty dollars was missing, roughly
the cost of taxi fare to her apartment in mid-town. The coffee machine had been run,
but a cup of coffee standing on the dresser had already gone stone cold. Well, she
was younger and could get along on a couple of hours’ sleep. It was just as well. To
have both of us come in late would only have fed the rumors that I’d worked hard to
suppress.
As I passed Amos Burton’s door, he spotted me and called out, “A moment, Barry.”
Trapped, I spun on my heel and followed the chairman into his office. When he
snagged me like that, outside of routine meetings, it was never good news. He never
simply shared gossip over a cup of coffee. There was always some administrative
chore or committee duty he wanted to fob off on me, or perhaps he wanted me to
kick in some of my grant money to one of our struggling assistant professors, or to a
foreign student stuck without supporting funds.
He closed his door. “The Dean shared this news with me yesterday, Barry. I’m not
supposed to show you, but I didn’t want you blindsided.”
From his top desk drawer, he took a sheet of paper and passed it to me. It was a
Xerox of a letter. It was one line, 12-point Times Roman in the center of the page,
without signature. It read simply, ‘Professor Croft is fucking his tall blonde student.’
I could feel my face turning beet red. To cover myself, I had to act angry, not guilty.
I lowered my voice, and growled, “Who would have sent that, Amos? It’s a fucking
lie!”
“We don’t know where it came from. It came to the Dean’s office by campus mail.
There’s no accuser, and no other evidence, so he’s not going to open an
investigation. But I need you to be aware of this. You know how valuable you are to
this department.”
“’Tall and blonde,’” I quoted. “That could only mean Lisa. This might be some
student with a grudge, or a pissed-off ex-boyfriend stalking her, anyone could have
done that. It’s false, and you know it.”
He nodded soberly, “I know you wouldn’t do anything so stupid, Barry. That’s the
one academic sin that can’t be forgiven, no matter how distinguished or successful
you are. There’s no need to remind you of that.”
“Well, I guess that’s why it’s a perfect accusation to make from hiding,” I said. “If it
gets out, some people will believe it, with or without evidence. Maybe whoever did it
was hoping for some administrative knee-jerk that would get me fired.”
“It hadn’t escaped my notice, or the Dean’s, that you’ve just come through a nasty
divorce, too.”
“Nothing that Shirley, or especially her lawyer, would do surprises me,” I said. “But
she’s counting on my income. She wouldn’t try to get me fired. She’s getting alimony
and support. She’s not through bleeding me yet.”
Another thought occurred to me. “Where’s the original letter?”
Burton shrugged. “I imagine the Dean kept it. You know, in case something more
happens.”
“Well, since I’m not supposed to know about it, why don’t you call him up and tell
him to keep it in a plastic bag for possible forensic analysis? We might need it.
What if it became a criminal case? Harassment or extortion, for instance.”
“Wise man,” he said. “I’ll call him now.”
I was not at my best the rest of the day. I looked at my calendar. I had already
missed the Department staff meeting that morning. Big deal. Next were my ‘open
office’ hours, where students from my classes came by with questions about their
course work. The students didn’t show up often until just before exams, but it gave
me an excuse to stay in my office, working on papers and proposals.
But I couldn’t do that either. The narcotic aftereffect of Lisa’s vaginal secretions
continued to blunt my thinking. My mind compulsively relived the events of last
night. The image of her slim, pale body towering over me, the brush of the soft halo
of pubic hair against my lips and cheeks, and the flooding of my mouth with her
juices – the memories distracted me from my work and kept me erect. I had
sacrificed so much to become this woman’s sex toy, but at times like this, any price
seemed worth paying.
Two students came in with questions, but I couldn’t focus my mind. I pleaded
sickness, and they left after I promised to meet with them on Monday. I looked at
my calendar. I usually kept Friday afternoons clear for deskwork, although
something always happened to disrupt this plan. And there was the dinner with Ms.
Lane – Rhiannon – tonight. I couldn’t afford to be in a fog by then. I signed a stack of
purchase orders without reading them, and escaped to the Faculty Club gymnasium,
where I played two awful games of racketball against someone I didn’t know, and
swam in the pool to try to clear my head.
The note had said, ‘Professor Croft is fucking his tall blonde student’.
Whoever it was called me ‘Professor’, instead of ‘Dr.’ or ‘Barry’ or just ‘Croft’.
Undergraduate students were almost the only ones who used the honorific ‘professor’.
Moreover, an undergrad wouldn’t necessarily have known the name of the ‘tall blonde
student’. This should eliminate everyone in the research group from the list of
suspects. But in the Biomedical Research Building, there were no undergraduate
classes. The only time we met directly with undergrads was in a separate classroom
building, or when they came to seek us out in our offices for help with their
classwork or administrative problems. The physical and organizational separation
was almost complete.
The note said ‘fucking’, which was ironic, because that was the one thing Lisa and I
had not done in our two years together. She allowed only oral sex, and I’d long ago
come to terms with my fascination with demanding and selfish women. So whoever it
was, had not seen us at play, nor had they been a confidant of Lisa’s, if such a
person existed.
After my swim, I did something that is unusual for me. I went for a walk in the cool
afternoon, doing nothing, letting my brain run free and uninterrupted by students
and phone calls.
What did I want from my life? I had striven after professional success, but now that I’
d achieved it, I knew it was empty by itself. I needed more, a woman to share it
with. Shirley, with her detachment, her disinterest in all but occasional missionary
sex, and an equal disinterest in my career, had not been, had never been, the one.
But a life with Lisa, even if it were possible, would always be secondary to her
furious ambition. To her, I was only a moment’s relaxation now and then, and a pawn
in her career climb. More and more, her B-1B complex was looking like a major
discovery, the kind that happens only once in a career, and only to the lucky and
persistent. If it was, her future was assured. She might have also, as Buddy Lester
suggested, invented the unstoppable plague, but no matter. Her name would go down
in the annals of medical research, and might very well eclipse mine. She had the
right stuff to make it in this business.
I had to admit that, whatever I wanted from my life, I hadn’t found it yet.
Go to Ch. 6-10
