Mike & Karen Ch. 28

Blackwell Manor, the present, Monday morning...

Jenny strolled into the staff dining room, the 'informal' dining room, smiling at the two people sitting at the table. She was wearing a purple silk robe, and her blonde hair was still down. While it was nowhere near as long as Alexa's, it hung past her shoulder blades. Marie and Glenda both made to stand, but the countess held up a staying hand, indicating they should stay seated.

"Good morning, ladies," Jenny said in her lovely accent as she sat down. Within seconds, Theresa hurried in, giving the guest her coffee, followed by breakfast. Jenny nodded appreciatively and the chef disappeared back in her kitchen. "And such a lovely day it is, what?"

"You're in a good mood, Lady Penrose," Glenda mused, smiling over her own cup of coffee. "Mrs. DeBourne had led us to believe that you had a restraining order against mornings."

"I might still be on a chemical high from last night," Jenny mused, giving them both a wink as she took a sip of coffee. "Can't blame a girl, after all."

"I'm afraid we peasants will just have to take your word for it," Glenda quipped with a smirk. "Well, except for short, dark and oversexed here."

"Did I hear my name?" Valentina chirped, coming into the dining room. She'd seen the countess had exited her room, and concluded she must have gone down to breakfast. She curtsied as she stood beside Jenny. "Lady Greymoor, good morning."

"Good morning, lovey," Jenny almost purred, smiling at the housemaid. "Don't you look wonderful, darling. Give us a twirl, will you?"

Val giggled and did a twirl, allowing the material of her short skirt to flare out, showing off her black panties. Jenny nodded in approval while Marie and Glenda both snickered. Val didn't mind at all; she wore the scandalous French maid outfit almost constantly when she was on the clock, unless the manor was entertaining guests who might not understand. She enjoyed it.

"Very nice, Miss Prospero," Jenny said. "Pert and delightful as I have come to expect."

"Thank you, my lady," Val said, trying not to blush. If the little lace kitty ears she was wearing could have twitched, they would have. "Any idea how you wanna dispose of your day? Your hosts have all gone down to the uni, of course. Will you just refamiliarize yourself with the Manor? Perhaps go shopping?"

Jenny made a show of thinking for several seconds, and the other women waited patiently. "Actually, I have an assignment from Michael and Kat, if you will. I am supposed to go and get registered as a guest patient at some clinic or care facility called 'Kerkyon', which I assume is where the family GP is. Glenda, darling, can you possibly put yourself at my disposal?"

"Of course, Lady Greymoor," the chauffeuse said with a polite nod. "Whenever and wherever."

"Well, after breakfast and a shower, I think I'll go and have a quick visit with Jordan, maybe some tea," Jenny mused. "After that, out I go. Miss Prospero, do you think Trilby can possibly spare you?"

"I'll ask her to make sure, but we run a tight ship, countess, so it shouldn't be a problem. We're both on duty Mondays, so we get stuff done early. How long do you need?"

"Give me two hours, then be ready to leave," Jenny said. "And as much as I love your current look, I am thinking you might want some other attire once we leave the driveway and head to this Kerkyon place."

"Of course, my lady," Val giggled, giving her another curtsy and then turning and heading off in a ripple of skirt and a flash of sheer underwear. Jenny resumed drinking her coffee and then addressed Glenda. "Is the Bentley available, Miss Richards?"

"Please, my lady, just call me Glenda," the chauffeuse said with a nod. "Even Mrs. DeBourne calls me Glenda most of the time. And yes, I'll have her ready five minutes before we're due to leave."

With that, Glenda finished her coffee, nodded politely to Jenny, patted Marie on the shoulder, and took her leave. The countess and the Frenchwoman discussed gardening and horticulture for several minutes while Jenny had breakfast, but in due course, Marie excused herself, heading to the greenhouses.

Bless you two for thinking of everything, Jenny mused as she headed back to her suite, getting naked and heading into the en suite bathroom and shower, smiling to herself. What else could one ask for?

***

Disclaimer: All characters are 18 years of age or older while portrayed engaging in sexual activity. This story is a prequel/sequel (sprequel?) to my other work, Alex & Alexa. As always, many thanks and gratuitous panty shots from Freja and Jeanie to my long-suffering editor and beta-reader for their assistance in polishing up and improving this work. Reviews are welcome; flames will be snickered at and deleted with extreme prejudice. Enjoy!

Please Note: There are incest themes with a secondary couple in this story. Just a forewarning.

***

Mike & Karen, Chapter XXVIII- 'And The Pain In The Ass Award Goes To...'

St. George Campus, Sciences Faculty Building, top floor, faculty offices, the present, Monday morning...

Karen exited the elevator, humming a pleasant tune before stopping dead and staring- in the open space of the foyer was now situated a desk, along with a computer monitor and a student sitting behind it. Said student noticed her gaping at him and smiled nervously.

"Oh, no," Karen said, walking forward now, a look of exasperation crossing her lovely face. "No no no no, not this again. Anson, I thought we'd established that if I ever caught you in this building, I was legally within my rights to kill you."

"D-Dr. Gordon," the student stammered, half-rising from his seat. "I-"

"No, don't say a thing, Anson," she announced firmly as she strode over to him, her face a thundercloud. "Why are you sitting here in my lobby? I thought we'd stopped this stupid participation trophy program! What went off the rails?"

"I... I..." he stammered, clearly intimidated. "It'll count as practicum for my courses, acting as receptionist for the department."

"Couldn't they find a different discipline for you to plague if this is such an all-fired good idea?" Karen demanded, flinging her arm out in the general direction of the campus. "Clearly it doesn't matter what courses you took, so why punish Sciences with you? You were terrible at it! Voluntarily!"

"I need to meet my credits," he answered, starting to hyperventilate. "And this job might bump my grades up enough to-"

"You meet credits by completing courses, Anson," she growled, her golden eyes flashing. "And you made it abundantly clear that you didn't believe this fact by doing nothing in my classes."

He was still half-rising out of his seat when she pointed at him.

"Sit!" she ordered.

The student plunked back down in his chair immediately, not daring to move and going paler still.

"I swear, Anson, if you try to help one person that walks past this desk, I'll have you fed to the zombies that Bio keeps locked up in their cellars," she warned, holding up a finger. "You sit behind this desk, do nothing, and say nothing. Understand?"

"But... I'm the receptionist now," he protested meekly.

"Do nothing and say nothing," Karen said forcefully. "It will be as if you're back in one of my classes; it should be a breeze for you."

He swallowed and nodded.

"Meanwhile, I am about to go and have words with the board of governors about this idiocy," she huffed, turning around and stomping back into the elevator, which would take her to the main floor and out of the building.

Anson was sitting very still at the desk when a professor walked by. The man paused, sniffing the air and looking confused.

"Don't mind the smell," Anson said rather miserably. "I just crapped myself."

The meeting room of the board of governors, some minutes later...

It was Monday and the board members were having their first weekly meeting, hoping to get things done early. They were seated around the long table, discussing some upgrades to the campus parking lot, when the door to the room swung open and in marched Dr. Gordon-DeBourne, her eyes flashing. The hapless secretary from the office in front of the boardroom rushed in after her.

"I'm so sorry!" the secretary gasped, looking frantic. "She walked right by me and I couldn't-"

Karen turned and looked directly at the woman, pointing toward the office on the other side of the door they'd just come through.

"Out," she said in a dangerous tone. "Make sure they're not disturbed until I'm done with them."

The secretary hurried out the door and closed it, never once thinking of disobeying the order from the scary lady who wasn't her boss. Karen locked the door after her, indicating that there was no escape. She now turned around and almost glowered at the silent board of governors, almost twenty of them here on this particular day. They all looked at her in dread, knowing what was coming. Her hands were on her hips, and they had no way out except plummeting from a window.

"I suppose you all think you're pretty clever, don't you?" she asked in an accusatory tone. "Did you genuinely believe this was a good idea, or are you lot on some private crusade to render this hallowed institution completely ridiculous?"

One of the men cleared his throat and dared to speak. "I assume you're referring to the student secretary now sitting in the Science faculty foyer?"

"The very one," she growled, folding her arms under her large bust. "What has the Sciences department done this week to earn your ire and deserve such punishment?"

"Doctor, the times are changing," another woman almost pleaded, hoping nobody could see her sweat. "It is true that grades and merit are part of our hallowed past, but education continues to evolve, and good grades are no longer the only metric for a student's graduation."

"Nobody ever said that it must be the only metric, but surely it's by far the most important one," Karen almost hissed. "You've got one of the worst students I ever had the misfortune of teaching sitting in my foyer, sucking up valuable oxygen and earning a degree for it. I thought he was no longer our problem! Left to his own devices, that boy is to the scientific method what napalm is to shrubbery! Why is he infesting my faculty, earning a degree by being lazy and hapless?"

The woman who had spoken before blushed. "We have to be... more proactive. Students were complaining that the sciences were too hard."

"With... good... reason..." Karen growled, her eyes blazing and giving several of them a headache. Even the students present who were members of the board of governors weren't stupid enough to interrupt her. "Have you forgotten the last time we tried this little experiment? Were you all mind-wiped of those disasters? What makes you think this outing will be any different? If anything, the labradoodles will be even worse."

"We're under considerable pressure to find ways of allowing students to earn credit that don't always involve academic excellence," confessed another, older professor. Karen was beginning to regret refusing to sit on the board all those years ago. "There's even been threats of legal action if we don't adapt, doctor. Students can get very litigious. We need to be seen as progressive and accommodating the needs of pupils who don't learn in the standard, linear manner. These sorts of accommodations will be-"

"Accommodations?" Karen asked loudly, in exasperation. "I've already got students in my classes loudly declaring that assignments out of the class are oppression. Oppression! In science! What foolishness is this? Who cares how science makes you feel? If it gives you anxiety, find another field entirely! Do you people seriously want these dingbats working on the Large Hadron Collider one day because we were stupid enough to give them degrees? Do you want a black hole to open up in Switzerland?"

The board was silent. Even the students who had been pushing for this policy didn't say anything. Now seemed like a bad time to be noticed.

"There is exactly one group of people who will rejoice in this policy of yours," Karen said, her tone low and dire as she glared at them. "You know who that is? Beijing. The Chinese will no doubt be thrilled to hear that we're taking up this idiotic position. While they're driving their students to excel, sending them out to make peerless discoveries in math and physics, we'll be patting our kids on the back and telling them they're real scientists when they don't even know the difference between a liquid and a gas! Hooray for us and our progressive programs. I'm sure our future Beijing overlords will approve."

"Now hold on just a minute!" one of the students who sat on the board said, standing up and looking angry. "You can't just-"

"I recognize you," Karen interrupted, looking at the girl levelly. "You're with the History department, aren't you? Canadian and Indigenous Studies, yes? Third year?"

The girl paused and nodded.

"What years was McDonald Prime Minister for?" Karen asked, still staring at the girl. "What year was the first of the Fenian Raids? What year did Oronhyatekha, aka Red Cloud, famously earn his medical degree?"

The girl swallowed and didn't answer. Karen just pointed and she slumped back down in her chair. The message was clear: she was to sit this one out.

"We are so doomed," Karen muttered, shaking her head. "Let me guess, you've already codified this atrocity in some manner, haven't you?"

Several of the board members nodded.

"And we'll simply have to wait for the inevitable disaster in grades that knocks down our national and global ranking before you lot do anything to correct the issues, yes?"

Nobody said anything.

"Just so we're clear," Karen warned, his unnerving gaze going around the room and scaring everyone. "I intend to continue to hold my classes and my students to the highest and most exacting standards, as I have for over twenty years now. I will not be giving out participation scores, I will simply fail students who think they are too good and too entitled to have to learn the material. And I do not care if that means that my faculty's foyer is crammed to the very ceiling with academic train wrecks earning their degrees by incompetence; you will never drag me into your insanity."

She turned and made to leave before looking over her shoulder and narrowing her eyes at them.

"Just wait until I tell my husband what you lunatics have done..."

She opened the door and was gone. The room was silent for several seconds before the people present felt safe to breathe again. It was bad enough to have Karen DeBourne mad at you, but if she was also tattling on you to her husband, the most terrifying individual on the entire campus...

"Is... is she right about the Chinese?" one student asked nervously. He'd pushed hard for this policy, after all, thinking it was the right thing to do.

"She wouldn't have been so mad about it if it wasn't scientific and mathematical fact," an older board member despaired, shaking his head and then putting it in his hands. "By God, what have we done?"

***

St. George Campus, a student gym, Monday morning, 1987...

Mike frowned as he concentrated, hunched over with his elbow on his knee. With a grunt, he did yet another curl with the dumbbell in his left hand, reaching the top of the motion and squeezing his bicep even harder, holding it for two seconds. He exhaled and lowered the weight, keeping control and not letting his muscles rest completely when it reached the bottom of the rep. He always kept some tension in the muscle.

Two more... good... now one more... just one more... one... more...

"DeBourne, could you please try not to kill yourself when I'm around?" Karen asked from nearby on her step machine, moving up and down rhythmically. She was glancing over at him, even if she didn't stop her exercise. "I've heard patients in iron lungs make breathing sound more attractive than you do at the moment."

"My apologies, your majesty, but I'm needing to push myself," he sighed, pausing in his workout and sitting up to look at her. He'd made it through five reps more than he thought he'd be able to. Yes, his biceps would be screaming tomorrow, but it would be worth it. "I've hit something of a plateau with my hypertrophy, and I need to break past it."

"You did six sets of ten reps with each arm, sir, and an extra five on that last set," she pointed out, looking forward again, but watching him in the wall mirror. Not that she'd been counting, of course. "If that doesn't break through your plateau, nothing will. The really miserable sound was emitted when you were squeezing at the top of the rep."

"You noticed that?" he asked, sitting up straighter, and Karen had to force herself to keep moving, since his vast, sculpted, and powerful chest was now on display. It was only the two of them in the gym right now, since it was early in the day and most students were at class. That, and the male students didn't like trying to exercise or work out when Mike was hitting the weights anyway.

"I am familiar with the Schwarzenegger principle of making the effort of squeezing the blood through the muscle at the top of the rep for fractional gains," she said, shrugging. "Fractional gains add up, after all. It applies equally to my exercises, in fact."

"So you're squeezing your butt cheeks at the top of every step you do, is that it?" Mike asked, sounding skeptical, but with a hint of amusement.

Karen hid the blush, but didn't avoid the question. "Exercise done properly is the only exercise worth doing. A well-toned body is its own reward, after all."

"That's fair," he allowed, standing up to tower over everything, wiping at his glistening body with a small towel. Karen swallowed, she hoped silently. DeBourne was wearing only track shorts, socks, and his giant cross-trainers. She'd heard him complain bitterly about the price of the damned things, not at all sure they were worth the investment. After all, the Spartans and Greek Olympic athletes had managed without them, hadn't they? You never saw cross-trainers on Greek statues, did you?

The rest of his huge body was visible, and it never ceased to amaze her when she saw it- his wide, powerful shoulders, with the pronounced trapezius muscles sitting atop them; the massive chest she couldn't even wrap her arms around, with the pectoral muscles that made women everywhere salivate when he went shirtless; the tapering waist with the rippling eight-pack abs, balanced over his powerful hips that looked almost tiny under his enormous torso.

She had seem him naked many times before, and she did not envy those shorts for their assigned job of concealing the unfairly large specimen of manhood within. They were failing, if she was honest.

His thighs, his quadriceps were huge slabs of defined muscle, and she thought of how Lisa would giggle when she took hold of them and moved them back and forth. His mammoth calves were straked and striated when he flexed them, which was not surprising given that they were the hardest-working muscle group in anyone's body. Each calf was required to bear twice a person's weight all day, statistically, so carrying around DeBourne was a herculean undertaking.

All in all, DeBourne was very imposing, and clearly aimed to keep it that way. It certainly kept the student body in line when he was around, and he was only a sophomore.

Karen frowned. "And what, pray tell, are you gawping at, sirrah?"

"Oh, uh..." Mike said suddenly, coming out of his trance and shaking his head for a moment. "Nothing, I..."