Mike & Karen Ch. 12

"See?" Lisa pointed out. "Anything."

Karen shook her head and muttered to herself, returning to twirling her pink goop around her fork while her friends snickered. Seconds later, a phone on a nearby wall rang. The girls all looked over at the ringing phone and then at Mike expectantly. Slowly, he lowered his book and frowned, since they were all staring at him.

The phone kept ringing.

"Oh, don't worry, I'll get it ..." he said sarcastically, closing his book and standing up to answer the phone. He lumbered over to the wall and picked up the receiver.

"Roadkill Café, you kill 'em, we grill 'em!" he declared.

"For God's sake, DeBourne, can't you be normal about anything just once?!" the dean snapped.

"Hey, Groucho," Mike said cheerfully. "Good to hear from you. How's your son, Groucho Junior?"

"His name happens to be Lewis, you oaf," snapped Marks. "And thanks to meeting you, he's now into professional wrestling. He put his little brother through my wife's coffee table the other day, called it a 'power bomb.' Said he'd heard it from you."

"It's not my fault your kid has ears, sir," Mike reasoned, shrugging as he held the phone. "He only overheard it; I never told him specifically about it, or the atomic leg drop, or --"

"Shut ... up!" the dean hissed, barely controlling his temper. Mike was pretty sure he could hear the little man's blood boiling from his end. "We have to check the damned tapes again, and I need you two up here to tell me if you've found out anything useful."

"Concerning what, sir?" Mike asked.

"What do you mean, 'Concerning what?'" the dean almost exploded. "I'm talking about Dudley and the -- you know what? I'm done talking to you. Let me speak with Gordon."

"If that's what you want," Mike said simply. "Oh, and sir?"

"What?!"

"How are your roses?"

"PUT GORDON ON THE PHONE!!" the dean screamed.

Mike turned and walked away from the phone, leaving the receiver dangling slowly by its cord. He returned to his table and sat down, picking up his book again and beginning to read. The women at the table all looked at him for several seconds, over at the dangling phone, and then back at him.

"Soooooo, who was it?" Mona asked.

"I don't wanna talk about it," Mike said simply.

There was another pause. Finally, Janet pressed the issue. "C'mon, tell us! Pretty weird for someone to call the cafeteria."

"It's Groucho," he said, still not looking up from his textbook. "He wants to speak to Gordon."

"Oh, you evil fucker, you!" Karen said in alarm as she leaped out of her seat and raced toward the dangling receiver.

"Careful!" Mike called to her as she sped by. "I think he's pissed at you!"

"I can't believe I let you inside me," Janet sighed, rubbing her face as the three women watched Karen pick up the phone and begin hastily explaining. "You are quite possibly the most infuriating man to ever live."

"I've gotta agree," Mona concurred, nodding. "And I've met Eddie Murphy."

"I don't think I've ever seen Karen back on her heels before," Lisa said, watching her roommate try to calm down the dean. She seemed unusually pale. "If I were you, I'd sleep with one eye open, Mike. For the rest of your life."

"Yeah, but imagine how strong I'll be if she doesn't manage to kill me," Mike pointed out.

"Pass," Mona sighed. "There are just certain things the mortal mind is not meant to contemplate."

"You read Lovecraft?" Mike queried, glancing up from his textbook to look at her.

She shrugged. "Kind of hoping there'll be an animated version of At The Mountains Of Madness one day that I can work on."

He smiled and nodded. "Good on you. I'm impressed."

Mona blushed and looked at her food and the conversation died off. Some minutes later, Karen came marching back, and she stopped next to Mike and glowered at him.

"You are in such trouble, mister!" she hissed before stomping out of the cafeteria. They all stared after her retreating form before Lisa glanced down at the now-empty chair next to her and sighed.

"She forgot her books," she said, shaking her head. "Guess I'll take them back to our room ..."

The slight redhead gathered up the neglected textbooks, looked at Mike, mouthed the words 'one eye open' and then departed for her dorm room. Mona said her goodbyes and departed next, leaving Janet at the table with Mike and a few of his friends, one of whom was Gergo.

"So," she said, looking at the titan blond man. "You need to go after Karen, see what the dean wants? Or do you wanna come back to my room and rearrange my insides?"

"As delightful a come-on as that is, I'd better go see Groucho," Mike decided, shaking his head. "Should the opportunity arise, however, I'll take you up on that offer later, though."

She smiled and grazed her fingernails over his powerful forearm as he walked by, and then he too was gone. She sighed and looked at the other students still at the table. Her eyes came to rest on Gergo, who swallowed nervously under her scrutiny.

"So," she said, her chin resting on her hand as she considered him. "Ever done it with a law student before?"

***

"Dammit all!" the dean groused as he stamped around the room, waving his arms uselessly. "How can there be nothing?! It's been days!"

"You've seen the tapes too, sir," Mike pointed out, gesturing to the videotape that was playing while they spoke. "Not a soul in your absence, not even Padget getting her basket weaved."

"Just shut up about that, will you?!" the dean snapped, scowling at him. Karen stood nearby impassively, having recovered her composure, and not at all sure she had the energy or available tactical ordnance to kill DeBourne, no matter how much he deserved it.

She looked at the dean while he continued to rant. "My roses died yet again, and we have no indication of whom it might be sneaking in here to do it!"

"They might just be dying, sir," Karen reasoned, shrugging and keeping her hands folded in front of her lap. It felt unusual to not have her books with her, their reassuring weight pressing against her breasts. She sometimes worried that people would notice her rather constant arousal without them. It's why she had to keep wearing panties, even if she didn't want to. "As DeBourne said, the office might not be very conducive to --"

"I am well aware of what Carolus Clusius here said on the issue," he hissed, trying to restrain himself from given Karen grief. He knew better than to make her mad. "But they shouldn't be dying that quickly, I am certain of it! Did you find out anything about Dudley?"

"Nothing terribly incriminating, sir," she admitted. "Yes, he has been critical of your running of the department on occasion, but the students I have spoken with said that he has not been vitriolic in repudiating you either."

"Students," he spat as he paced. "What do they know?"

"Only what you teach them, sir," she said evenly. "And if not the students, then whom should I be interviewing about this issue? There's the student body, the faculty, or the janitorial staff. I suppose I could ask Padget what --"

"No," the man groaned, flopping down into his chair, resting his elbows on his desk and rubbing his eyes under his wire-rim glasses. "This is a disaster," he murmured, while Mike rolled his eyes and waited patiently. "My review is tomorrow, and I've been so busy with getting ready and trying to track this culprit down that I've dropped everything else. I've shelved the McLuhan Lounge remodelling project indefinitely, I missed the opening of the nuclear medicine lab, and my hemorrhoids are flaring up ..."

Mike squeezed his eyes shut at the mention of the last issue, while Karen coughed and looked away before speaking. "A pity, sir."

"Well, there's nothing for it," he said glumly. "I'll just have to go in there and give it my best. I should be proud to stand by my record. This department is strong and healthy under my watch."

"That's the spirit, sir," Mike said, nodding. "Groucho Junior would be proud to hear his old man talking like that."

The dean shot Mike a look, but then just sighed and shook his head. "Never mind, just ... we're done here. Thank you both for your help, even you, DeBourne. I'm going to go over my interview questions again, so you can come back and gather your audio-video equipment tomorrow. You can see yourselves out."

The two students said goodbye and then exited. As they walked down the hall together, Karen sighed rather wistfully. "He's not a bad man, just excitable. He is a good dean. Not brilliant, but good. And I'll be honest, I still have no idea what any of this was about."

"Can you keep a secret, Gordon?" Mike asked, stopping and looking down at her. She stopped as well and gazed up at him, wondering what he was on about. She nodded.

He looked around, to make sure no one could hear them, and then back down at her. "It was me. I was the one who started all this."

Her eyes widened. "You what?"

"Keep your voice down," he insisted. "I am the one who kept messing with his roses."

"But ... why?" she asked, bewildered.

"Have you seen his plans for the McLuhan Lounge?" Mike said, making a disgusted face. "They're terrible. I wasn't about to let him do that, it's my favourite lounge. And I didn't want to start a fight between him and the students, none of whom liked it, so I took matters into my own hands."

She continued staring at him like he'd grown a second head.

"I know how paranoid Groucho can be, so I decided to get him thinking that someone was trying to psych him out while gunning for his job. The flowers made it easy. I just kept swiping the living ones and replacing them with dead ones. The live ones are all in my room."

"How did the camera not see you coming in and out every time?"

"Oh, well, that was easy," he said, shrugging. "I just looped footage of the room undisturbed onto a cassette and replaced the current tape with it when I pulled it out of its hiding place. He's been watching looped tape for days now, unless I wasn't going into the room. That's when we found out about Padget. The dean may be a decent scientist, but he's lousy with modern technology. He can't even work a VCR."

"Are you Satan?" she asked incredulously.

"I'm not kidding about how horrible his new lounge is, Gordon," Mike said firmly. "Something had to be done. If you'd seen it, with your refined tastes, you would have expired on the spot."

"Thank you for your faith in my constitution," she said sourly as she began walking again. "You knew he was going to recruit us, didn't you? Why didn't you tell me any of this sooner?"

"I wanted to make sure the plan was too late to be stopped," he confessed. "Once the funding window passed yesterday, I knew I was in the clear."

"You are completely deranged," she said, shaking her head in disbelief as she walked. "You had that poor man so worked up that he was pretty much a forehead vein in a suit for the past two weeks. And what if he blows his review and loses his job now?"

"Nah, he's keeping the position; some girl I know in admin told me that," Mike said dismissively.

"Oh?" she queried, stopping and looking up at him pointedly. "And why are we so sure of that?"

"He's the only one who didn't ask for a raise," Mike replied, smiling to himself.

***

Mike and Alex were standing in the airport terminal, watching the arrivals come through the gates. Predictably, since Mike was the compulsively early type, they'd arrived a full hour ahead of schedule, and simply sat in a small café that allowed them to see the gates. They'd been discussing how to help the girls relax after what had no doubt been a stressful and trying week for them both.

"I don't think I have that quite down the way you do with mom, yet," Alex admitted. "I mean, yeah, whatever I do, she'll love, but I don't know if I have that instant intuition yet."

Mike nodded: "In every new relationship, there's often a euphoria period where the person you love can do no wrong, and even the littlest things mean the universe. I had two whole school years before your mother and I admitted we were in love, and lots of time to figure her out before then. You and Alli just sort of fell right into it immediately, so no casual or critical observation period. You were never associates, rivals, and reluctant allies."

"Like you and mom were about Dean Marks," the younger man mused. "Yeah, I guess I see what you mean. I mean, I wouldn't change anything about how things went down with her, but if I could compress all your experiences into a single moment and just eat it and learn it, I'd be happy with that."

"Lazy millennial," Mike laughed. "I'll be honest: in hindsight, I wouldn't change anything about how we met and got together, not at that time. It would've blasted our worlds apart, just like the revelation about you and Alli almost did in Quebec City this past week."

"Yeah, I'm really pissed off about that," Alex muttered, scowling at his coffee. Like his parents, he tended to take it black, unless they were in some artisanal café. "I could really punch Uncle Rod in the face for that."

"There's no point in holding a grudge, Alex," Mike pointed out. "Roddy got his ass handed to him by your mother in the most humiliating way possible. And she's protected you and Alli from further attacks by your uncle, because Rod's mother knows, and she loves Karen. Just let it go, and be civil and jovial around him, like you always are. He'll hate it."

"Yeah, I guess," Alex sighed. "Still hard, though."

"Of course it, is," Mike agreed, shrugging. "He attacked the woman you're in love with maliciously. But it's handled, brilliantly and completely. Don't squander your mother's incredible victory by staying pissed off."

"Yeah, that's true, isn't it?" Alex realized, grinning. "You have a knack for perfect perspective, pop."

"You sound like your mother," Mike sighed. "And Heather, and Alli, and Jeanie ..."

A voice inside the terminal blared out the arrival of the flight from Quebec City. Both men finished their coffees and went to stand in Arrivals. Mike waited patiently, but he smiled to himself, because he could sense Alex bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet impatiently. He didn't blame his son.

"Why aren't we standing closer?" Alex asked. "We're like a zillion kilometers away."

"Just trust me, Alex," Mike said, nodding confidently. "It'll be a moment to remember your whole life if we do it this way."

Alex considered and then went back to staring at the gate, still subtly bouncing.

Minutes later, Mike spotted the two lovely women approaching through the crowds. He was a head and shoulders taller than just about everyone except his son (whom he was only a head taller than), so they knew exactly where to go.

Mike's heart soared at the sight of his wife -- beautiful as she had ever been, wearing a long, faux-fur-lined jacket that hung open, and pulling her wheeled carry-on luggage behind her. Her shining bronze hair waved about her stunning patrician face, her amber eyes soft and deep with relief upon seeing him.

Alexa was walking next to her older sister, but she radiated a barely contained excitement upon seeing her husband and nephew. Her steps were crisp, and she wanted to go faster, obviously, to burst into a run and fly into Alex's arms, but she somehow refrained, keeping in step with her sister. Karen was teaching her well.

Mike had to admit, though, he could barely resist the urge to go to her himself.

Alexa was no more than three meters from Alex when she finally succumbed to excitement and threw herself into his arms, squealing with delight. Alex laughed and spun her in circles while she kicked her feet before smothering him in kisses. Karen, meanwhile, continued her regal walk, but her eyes never left her husband's. She released her luggage and allowed herself to be enveloped in his hug, sighing in relief.

She was finally where she belonged.

***

They'd had a lovely dinner at Karen's favourite restaurant, joined naturally by Freja and Jeanie, whom they considered family. Karen and Alexa recounted the events in Quebec (well, most of them) in great detail, and it took considerable effort on the part of those listening to not laugh loudly at the telling. Though Mike knew most of the details already, it was wonderful to hear them told as a story to be enjoyed, rather than a report to be analyzed and adapted.

Nobody blinked an eye when Freja and Jeanie each borrowed Alexa to say 'hello properly' to her in the bathrooms.

Then dinner was over, and Jeanie and Freja said goodbye, heading back to their condo downtown, making Alexa promise to contact them once she was done with her husband. Heading back home in Mike's huge SUV, they were mostly quiet, just enjoying being together once more. Alexa sat in the back with Alex, her head resting on his shoulder, while Karen rode up front with her husband.

Aside from dropping luggage off in the foyer, not much was said between the couples, with Alex and Alexa heading to their den in the basement, while Karen and Mike headed upstairs to the master bedroom. The bronze-haired beauty gasped as Mike picked her up in his powerful arms and carried her over the threshold ...

***

Alex was grunting as he kept his wife's fingers pinned beside her head, thrusting his throbbing cock deep down inside her slippery pussy, his ice-blue eyes locked with her sapphire ones. They glinted with excitement as he fucked her, and she kept her ankles locked behind his waist. She thrust back and squeezed around him eagerly, wanting him even more than she ever had before.

"Cum in me, Alex," she panted, breaking her hands free to wrap around him, her fingernails caressing his neck. "Oh God, please, cum in me now ..."

Alex arched his back and strained, groaning before feeling the pleasure blossom through him, and he began cumming profusely in his wife's greedy pussy. It never seemed to end, as if he hadn't cum all week, instead of spending so much time with Jeanie and Freja. Alexa sighed loudly as she pushed up against him with her hips, taking him as deep inside as she could, her entire body floating on tingling clouds of unreal sensation as she came. Her muscles squeezed and fluttered around him, milking him for everything he had.

They collapsed into the bed, kissing feverishly, unable to get enough of one another. Finally, they both exhaled loudly and relaxed, caressing each other gently, but he remained inside her. They had no intention of losing this closeness. She smiled and kissed his nose.

"God, I've missed your cum inside me. That was such a long week because you weren't there, Alex."

"Yeah, I understand, believe me," he answered, nodded. "But having dad and I there wouldn't have changed what a long week it was. And frankly, given how things went, it was best we weren't, because once the accusations began flying, dad and I might've gotten punchy."

"Good thing you two aren't allowed in the boardroom, then," she said, winking. "But you know what I mean. It would've been nice to have you waiting for us at the hotel."

"Maybe, but you and mom needed this week, to bond as sisters," Alex pointed out. "You needed to face your family together, and rely only on one another."

She was quiet for a few moments, resting her cheek on his shoulder and staring at nothing in the dim light. Finally, she looked at him again. "You're okay with what happened?"

"Like I said, I'm taking a page from the Dad Book Of Wisdom," Alex said, shrugging. "It's no bother to me. Do you ever have a preference to me in bed?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "Not ever. Like, not even twelve Frejas and Jeanies doing me all at once. No, it's you first, no question. Everything else is down the road and can get sorted when I feel like it."