F6: Of Love and Laundry

The Department hosted a Christmas Dinner each year. ('Hosted' was a misnomer since you had to pay for your meal yourself, but if you didn't show your face people assumed it was because of a grudge and said you weren't a team player.) The Project had got into the habit of having a special seminar a couple of weeks earlier, to present their latest findings, followed by a drinks party in the Faculty Dining Room.

Jim had encouraged Brian to take the lead in presenting out of some work Les had been doing with him. This would prep him for post-doctoral conference presentations. He had let Helen off lightly, suggesting she just run over the main points of a paper she had already published.

He was looking at his notes for his introductory speech when the phone rang. To his surprise it was Chloe. She never rang him at work, not like Rita who was always having to get Les to cover with their three kids when one of her cases ran late at court.

He glanced at his watch with a frown, seeing that it was four-thirty. He wanted to get to the seminar for four-forty to meet and greet, and make sure Davey had put out water for the speakers.

"... further tests," Chloe said.

"Further tests?" he said. "You've been for a test?"

"I went for a mammogram today," Chloe's voice was unusually high and sharp. Normally she had such a soothing rich deep timbre in her voice that telemarketers tried to keep her on the line chatting to them. "They want me to go back for a biopsy on the fourteenth."

"A ... what?!" his own voice was squeaking to his alarm.

"It's nothing, it's probably just fatty tissue," Chloe's voice dropped to become smoother, sweeter. "Today's test was just like ... a kind of x-ray but the biopsy is more invasive. They say I should take things easy for a couple of days afterwards. I'm just asking if you could leave work early for a couple of days, pick up the kids and get some take-out food for us so I don't have to cook."

"The fourteenth is the Department Christmas Dinner," Jim said.

"Well ... can't you skip it this once?" Chloe asked.

"Are you joking?! With our application for two extra PhD students pending! We put in for Helen Buchan to be relieved of some of her teaching duties so she can help supervise them. It's going to take all I've got to get that through."

There was a pause at the other end of the phone. When Chloe started to talk again, her voice was sharp and accusatory. She sounded like his mother (... ungrateful ... all I've sacrificed for you two ... see you twice a year if I'm lucky ...).

"I've never asked before, Jim," Chloe said angrily. "These are your kids! I'm going for a minor medical procedure ..."

"It's a minor procedure," Jim seized on this point. "Can't you get them to do it on another date?"

"No!" For fuck's sake, he could hear she was going to start crying. He looked at his watch again. It was twenty-five to already. "If I ask, I won't get an appointment till after Christmas. I don't want to do Christmas with this hanging over me! You seriously want me to tell the breast clinic to find me another urgent appointment because my husband wants to go to his work Christmas Dinner and refuses to take our kids for once in fifteen years ...."

"For God's sake!" he shouted. "It's not like that. If I don't show my face at the dinner, you know what they'll say."

"What will they say?!" she cried. "You're a tenured Professor! Head of the project! What are they going to do to you if you don't go to the fucking Christmas Dinner?!"

"Look ... you could pay Frank and Karen's au pair to help out?" Jim was delighted to have come up with such a practical solution.

"We agreed we wouldn't do that this year, that we'd save for a good ho-ho-holiday. The kids and I are sick of going and staying with your sister, we want to get away somewhere by ourselves this year!" Jesus, she was crying. Jim felt frozen.

"I'm sure we can sort this out ...," he started to say. Fuck, fuck, it was twenty to four.

"Like our sex life!" she shouted.

"For Christ's sake don't start that again," he snarled. "You were the one who was too tired on my birthday."

"If you helped me more, I wouldn't be so tired," she sobbed.

"I haven't got time for this," he said.

She hung up on him!

Jim stared in amazement at the phone. What the Hell? Stupid woman. Surely she could get something sorted to cover for a couple of days? Picking up kids from school, throwing some food on the table for them; it wasn't rocket science. And as for going from that onto their sex life .... It wasn't his fault, anyway, it was her. If he wanted it, she said No, then came crawling all over him on nights when he was tired out from work.

He was appalled to see that the phone was shaking in his hand. He had this hideous impulse to pick it up, tear its wire out of the wall and dash the phone to pieces on the floor. Fifteen ... no, ten minutes before the seminar was due to start!

He took some deep breaths and managed to compose himself. Cursing under his breath, he went along the corridor to the seminar room, dragging his mind back from the seething cauldron of emotions Chloe had poured into his brain, to the clear simplicity of his notes on the Project's progress that year.

After the seminar, he felt better. It had gone well. Dawkins had made an appearance and even seemed inclined to come back to the Faculty Dining Room for a drink. They chatted while following Les, Liam and Davey who had run on ahead to set up the drinks and snacks.

Glass of Montepulciano in hand (Les would say Chloe's excellent yet thrifty choices of booze and nibbles was why they always got a good crowd to the seminar), Jim started chatting with Brian about his paper.

Helen Buchan came over to them. She was wearing her figure-hugging red dress, her curves were so spectacularly outlined in it that Jim doubted anyone had taken in what her paper covered, too busy uncovering her body in their minds. In honor of the special occasion, she wore make-up too: her gray-green eyes glistening from under sparkling lids, her sandy lashes mascara-ed black so that her eyes stood out in a pale powdered face. She had of course chosen vivid red lipstick and nail polish to go with her dress. Her red curls of hair bounced clean and shining around her red-clad shoulders.

As usual, she stood slightly too close to Jim. Her perfume drifted in alluring wafts over the warm dry tones of his glass of Montepulciano. She looked over her own glass with her head dipped so that her cunning smile came up at Jim through her black lashes. Jim flashed her a grin.

"I think that section on titania nanotubes would definitely merit expansion," Jim said casually to Brian, his eyes drifting down towards the golden pendant in Helen's cleavage then moving hurriedly up to her face. "In fact ... come and see me tomorrow," he frowned and tried to switch his gaze to Brian. "Maybe we can write something together."

"Oh!" Brian said. "That ... would be great." He slid a look at Helen.

Suddenly Jim remembered that the functionalising of titania nanotubes was Helen's particular field -- the reason she had been recruited to the team. In fact, Brian had been citing her work in the passage Jim had picked out.

Helen's cunning foxy smile seemed to freeze on her white face. Her gray-green eyes narrowed and she shot a chilled icy dagger of a look at Jim. She turned her head with a careless flick that made her red curls bounce as she walked away. She gave an extra sashay with her hips so her buttocks rolled like apples in a bag as she went to the drinks table.

She stood staring over the drinks table at the venetian blinds covering the window. Fiercely she blinked back tears in her eyes. She bit her lip to force them down, scraping the creamy layer of lipstick with her teeth.

Screw him. Screw Prof. Hunter. She took a big gulp at her wine.

She would've been willing to screw him, for the chance to write with him. That was why she'd come here. My God, when she got the interview she was thrilled enough. A chance to meet Prof. J.D. Hunter, to showcase her ideas to him. How many times had she rehearsed her presentation to Gemma, her PhD supervisor, to make sure she got it down pat. ("Don't joke, don't shake your boobs -- let your ideas speak for you, darlin'. We're the same size; I'll lend you my conference suit for the gig.")

When she got the actual job she literally screamed for joy. Now she was spending all her time writing new courses to teach. Prof. J.D. Hunter was making her do tired re-runs of work she had already published and offering some scrubby doctoral student the chance to write off the back of her work. She gulped rapidly at her wine again.

She would've been willing to screw him for his own sake. He was so Alpha: heading up the project, going out there with those brilliantly phrased proposals which won the funding for them all. He was fit with playing squash and golf with other guys. He always wore a freshly laundered, crisply ironed shirt, not like Les who would turn up with some breakfast cereal on his sleeve, a little late from dropping his kids at school.

Prof. Jim Hunter had these darling touches about him. Every day he brought in home-made sandwiches. How could you not love a man who was so important and made himself sandwiches for lunch? He would have a salad and an apple too -- so healthy. Every Friday he had a treat in his lunch-box: some chocolates or a biscuit. He laughed once when he caught her checking out his lunch-box, said: "catch," and threw her a foil-wrapped chocolate.

She sucked on the unwrapped chocolate like it was the contents of the package in his pants. Slowly, taking five, ten minutes to roll the confection round her hot mouth. It melted sweetly over her tongue like she wished his cockhead would melt and spurt juice into her throat.

"H-H-Helen."

She turned her head to find Davey beside her. He was holding out a bowl of potato chips. He looked up at her and gave a sudden appealing grin.

Liam was over with his girlfriend and some of the other PhD students, chatting and laughing. Brian was still talking to Prof. J.D. fucking Hunter.

She had never really looked at Davey before other than to ask him to sort out some technical issue in the lab. Of course he ogled her, but then what man didn't? Over her glass of wine, she noticed for the first time what a soft wet mouth he had. Suddenly he ran a red flexible tongue over his wet mouth and gave her that appealing grin again.

Screw Prof. Hunter. She would fucking show him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jim could see Helen was laughing and chatting with Davey. Clearly she wasn't too bothered about his offering to write the paper with Brian. A wave of relief washed through him, so intense after the emotional maelstrom of the last couple of hours that his muscles seemed to unwind like limp washing on the line.

He extricated himself from the conversation with Brian by pretending he had to schmoozle Dawkins. He would figure out how to get out of writing the paper with Brian somehow. Chloe would think of something.

At the thought of Chloe, his stomach churned. He noticed that Helen was putting her hand on Davey's shoulder, in fact her arm around him. He scowled. She must be drunk to encourage that young lech Davey that way. Dawkins had come bumbling over so he couldn't go to break up this potentially problematic scenario.

Jesus! -- women. Nothing but fucking trouble. Maybe he should've listened to Dawkins and appointed his snot-nosed protégé!

The night air was so cold that their laughter drifted in warm vapor up from their mouths to the dark star-spangled skies. Snuggled into her winter coat, with her hand tucked in Davey's arm, Helen felt gleefully content. She knew Jim Hunter had seen them leaving the party early. His face was like thunder as he looked over at her, from the corner of the room where he was trapped with Prof. Dawkins and the Dean of Research.

Screw Hunter. Helen focused on the here and now. She looked down at Davey -- who was half a head shorter than her. He looked shyly up at her through his lashes, a kind of look that evoked a wave of tenderness in her. He licked his lips with that promisingly wet red tongue and grinned. She felt a surge in her cunt.

The wine was starting to wear off, though. She felt tired after the effort of presenting her paper. As they came up to the entryway for the student block, she suddenly decided she didn't want Davey in her cozy little apartment.

The building was quiet. All but one or two of the students were gone for the holidays. Helen had a long-standing fantasy and realized she had a golden opportunity to play it out for real. "Hey, sugar," she bent to breathe into his ear and turn him on even more, making him giggle. "You wanna help me with my chores?" Davey could hardly believe his luck. He watched the gorgeous Dr. Buchan shoving some clothes in the washing machine drum. She had bent over to do this and the vigorous motion of her arms made her ass wiggle right in front of him. He felt like a kid on Halloween by a tub of bobbing apples -- longing to bend his head and try to sink his teeth into one of those bouncing round red globes.

She had straightened up and turned now with a toss of her red curls. She was wearing that figure-hugging red dress with the low neckline which would make them all restless if she wore it in the lab. All day he had been itching to get home and jerk himself off, imagining lifting her dress up to play with the body underneath the clinging cloth. He had cursed the seminar and drinks party, never in his wildest dreams imagining it might lead to this.

Helen Buchan was impatiently dragging the red dress over her head and chucking it into the washing machine with the rest of the clothes. Davey had read online erotic stories in which women had skin like alabaster. He knew that whenever he read that phrase afterwards he would picture Helen Buchan's pale luminescent body -- with a dusting of freckles accentuating the pallor of her skin.

She was wearing a black bra. Black lace and narrow black ribbons made a display such as he had previously only seen when cruising women's lingerie online. Her cream breasts surged out of the cups of the bra like pale muffins.

To his regret, she dragged off her black tights and the black lace panties matching her bra herself. He would have liked to slowly take those down, fingering her naked butt and her legs as they emerged from their delicious encasings.

Although he was not sure he could have handled slowly taking down Dr. Buchan's black lace panties. He started trembling with lust at the sight of the neatly trimmed strip of red hair lining her pussy lips. Dr. Buchan had such a large clit that it was poking out of the folded hair-lined lips of her pussy. His cock was up, hard and throbbing.

With an athletic spring of her long shapely legs, Helen jumped up onto the washing machine. It was already shaking pleasurably under her as the clothes started turning in the water swishing into the drum. She giggled as she felt her buttocks bumping on the cold metal top of the machine casing. Leaning back on her hands, she flung wide her legs.

Davey grasped her thighs in his dexterous capable technician's fingers and dove his tongue straight into her slit. She gave a tittering scream of appreciation. He made a moan as his tongue tasted the fruity warmth of her pussy. He wiggled his tongue between her lips and licked up and down. Helen gasped and bucked her hips up to his face.

He moved his hands from her smooth muscular thighs so he could hold open her pussy lips with his fingers. He began to lick at the nub of her clitoris in earnest. Helen's clit had expanded even larger with the excitement, he suckled it between his lips.

He moved his mouth down and began to lick at her vulva. Helen grunted and moaned. She brought one of her hands round to frig at her clitoris with those beautifully manicured fingers. Davey started to tongue-fuck her, sinking and pushing his tongue into the thrusting muscles of her cunt. He could see a red polished nail moving in the red-haired pale lips to rub at her rosebud of a clitoris. She was using two fingers now, gasping and grunting above him.

He moved his hands back to grip on her alabaster thighs, thrusting his tongue into her cleft, sucking up the fruity cream from her.

She had put the machine on a short rinse and spin cycle. It suddenly juddered and started whining and rocking at top speed -- hard and cold under her buttocks.

"Ah! ah! ah! ahhhhhh!" She flung back her head, her fingers pressed hard and still on her clit. Her legs flung wide then clamped round Davey's head. Davey felt a whirl of pleasure-pain as his head was squeezed and dragged into her cunt. Shaken and stirred in equal measures by the vibration from the washing machine, she dragged his head about with her movements as she hit orgasm.

She gave a long gasp, a laugh. She flung her legs out wide and set him free. Davey pulled his face away from her cunt.

Helen hopped off the machine. She realized she had put her dress in the wash and had nothing to wear now except her panties and tights. She pulled the panties on but left the tights lying on the floor.

She was trembling and laughing. Davey made a movement towards her as if to hug her. She turned away, flicking her bouncing red curls about, then turned back to him.

"Shit, that was fun!" she laughed. "You sure are good at cleaning up, honey." She winked at him.

He giggled, looked away from her, shuffled his feet.

"Do you want me to call you a cab?" she offered.

"Uh ... nah," he said. "I don't live too far away. I'll walk."

She began to shiver standing in the entryway to see him off. The winter air was chill on her hot naked white skin.

"I'll see you on Monday," she said. Then she reached out and pulled him back to her for a kiss. He clutched at her body which stiffened in his embrace. She licked his wet red mouth, tasting her own cream on it, and broke from the kiss in another fit of giggles.

He giggled too and walked off with his pocket full of wet dreams.

Helen ran shivering up the stairs, leaving the wet washing -- she would sort that out in the morning. Laughing, she ran to her flat and to her bed. She leapt in and snuggled down in her covers. Her nerves were still tingling with the excitement of the seminar presentation and the pleasure of Davey's tongue-fuck.

Pushing away thoughts of the demeaning way Hunter was undermining her work, Helen fell asleep to dreams of him fucking her hard on top of the washing machine in the laundry room.

Jim sat pressing his hands to his head at his desk.

In spite of his saying he would pay for the Mendozas' au pair to help Chloe out and try to find the money (and time) for a family holiday, the atmosphere at home was as thick as one of Chloe's nourishing stews. Plus now he had this situation at work to deal with.

There was a knock at his door. He lifted his head and called to Helen Buchan to come in. He tried to make his expression that of a benign uncle rather than an appalled line manager.

Helen came in with an enquiring look on her face. He asked her to shut the door, then -- looking at her open-necked flame orange shirt with the flash of gold in her cleavage -- he regretted this.

"Well ... hahaha, Helen," he said uneasily as she sat in the chair by his.

She seemed to be about to scoot her chair in closer but paused.

"Uh ... I .... Probably some misunderstanding," he said, fiddling with one of the pens on his desk. "Some ... um, rumors have been circulating so Matt ... you know, Prof. Carver, in his capacity as Head of Teaching, asked if I would get to the bottom of it ... find out what .... So ... er, well."