Office Hours

The penultimate chapter! One more to go. Let me know what you think, and there just might be more to come.

*****

There was a shift in the relationship with Jason after the Saturday when she had let him linger about doing chores. Dr. Michaels knew it, and hated it, but couldn't help herself from going along.

Overnight, it seemed that Jason practically lived in her apartment. She let the sad little child hang around more and more after their games, doing her laundry and cooking her meals. Michaels knew she shouldn't tolerate it, and wasn't supposed to be even bare it, solitary creature that she was.

And yet...

Yet Michaels soon found that she liked having the boy around, in a general way. He truly was becoming a pet, a reliable fixture of her home that was always scurrying around trying to please his master. It didn't take Michaels long to become addicted to the kid's puppy-dog eyes, gazing up at her with adoration and pleading for some new way to make her happy. He was an annoying, clingy little brat. But he was also adorable, and Michaels just couldn't resist. And so for well over a week she let the pet hang around almost every single evening, cleaning, doing laundry, and cooking her meals.

Naturally, it was the cooking that served as the core of her addiction. Jason wasn't fancy in the kitchen, but he sure knew how the hit the spot. One night was spaghetti and meatballs, the next a shepherd's pie with homemade mashed potatoes. Even though she still had trouble sleeping at night, Dr. Michaels began going to bed pleasantly stuffed every night. And it wasn't only dinner—the kid soon started packing her lunches in little brown bags that he would deliver to her in passing on campus. Big, fat sandwiches, a piece of fruit, and a can of coffee...the boy knew her tastes, and Dr. Michaels would occasionally thank him for it with a tongue in the ear after class.

Yet the changes went even deeper than that, as Dr. Michaels realized with a twinge of dismay one afternoon after having spent most the day with Jason without having sex with him at all. The pet had answered her summons as normal, stripped, kissed her feet, and was eating her out while Michaels idly flicked his face when he suddenly started blubbering about failing his Math 2 class. After a few hard smacks, Michaels had sent Jason to get his books, and spent several hours with the naked boy sitting on her lap, helping him with his homework, her chin perched atop his taut shoulder, her hand guiding his, her lips murmuring encouragements against his ear.

It was all down hill from there. Oh, the games and the sex still took precedence, but suddenly Michaels found Jason loitering around for hours on end for no good reason. Aside from the chores (and the massages, and hair brushing, and foot rubs), Dr. Michaels suddenly found herself doing nothing more with the boy sometimes than talking with him while she petted his head, resting on her lap. They spent an entire evening this way one lazy Friday, watching The Thing on TV together, before it occurred to Michaels to give the pet a belting and fuck him speechless.

She even brought the boy with her on errands a couple of times, under the guise of taking him to the store to buy groceries for her meals. And he was a very good boy on their outings, managing to keep his desperate little paws off her (though Michaels herself couldn't help the occasional pinch to the boy's ass as he bent to fetch something off the bottom row). Back at home, the kid seemed determined to teach her to cook, coaxing her into the kitchen more and more to explain the basics—salt and oil the water when boiling pasta, layer vegetables in an even, shallow row to ensure they roast up crispy, blah blah blah.

The kid was cute, but he could be exhausting.

It wasn't until shortly before the end of the semester that Michaels' coziness with Jason truly sank a barb into into her spirit. After a long morning of helping the boy polish an article he intended to submit to the campus newspaper, Michaels dozed for awhile on the couch while the pet got a jump on lunch. She awoke, drowsy and excited by the savory smells coming from the kitchen. Michaels wandered the living room a bit, marveling at how spotless it had become. She thought she didn't care about cleanliness, yet all this fresh, open space felt right.

And then Dr. Michaels noticed the window.

The window above her shoddy desk, that she always kept draped.

The window was wide open, and despite the tight knot of fury that blazed hotter and hotter with every step, Michaels couldn't help but approach the open window and gaze out, and scrunched her eyes closed with a choked snarl.

The old table was still there. Of course it was.

It was a sad, old Gardenridge reject, rusted and rooted into the soil like an iron shrub. Yet it was still sort of beautiful, a mass-produced cluster of metal petals and thorns completed with a trio of matching chairs. Michaels had no idea who put it there, on the far edge of the apartment complex's lawn, beneath the fringe canopy of a patch of woods, but she had taken advantage of the spot often the first couple of years of her residence at the Jacksonian. Most evenings and weekends, Michaels had camped out at the old table to grade papers and do other assorted work, sometimes with a little cooler full of beers, always with a fat pack of cigarettes.

It had been a deeply calming experience, hours on end of smoking and getting lightly buzzed while getting acquainted with with her students through their writing.

And then came a late summer's afternoon well over a year ago, only a few weeks before the beginning of the Fall semester. While sitting at her rusty table, reading a book of letters by Mary Shelley, Dr. Michaels had noticed a striking man approaching.

He had the light, dirty brown hair of someone who used to be blonde, and the build of a man who was fond of sports. Michaels had found her ability to concentrate on reading increasingly impossible as the man drew close, eventually closing the tome over a finger and declaring, "Can I help you?" as the pretty man stopped near her table.

"Sorry to interrupt," said the man. "It's just, I've seen you reading out here a lot ever since I moved in a couple of weeks ago. I'm a reader myself, and I'm curious about what has you so compelled."

Ha! The guy had probably rehearsed that line all day. He was obviously some kind of tool trying to pick her up, so Michaels had answered, "Shelley," and pretended to go back to reading.

"Oh?" said the man, scooting closer. "Boy Shelley or girl Shelley?"

That had given Micahels some pause. The man knew there was more than one?

"Girl."

"Nice." The man nodded with approval, and took a seat at the rusty table without being asked. "She never really lived to be the kind of feminist her mother was, but her creativity still sets her apart from just about any other woman of the era.."

"Yet Girl Shelley also destroyed Boy Shelley's first marriage, and possibly drove his wife to suicide," Michaels retorted.

"And a century and a half later, a perfectly lovely woman is still spending a beautiful Saturday studying her words."

Dr. Michaels had chuckled. The man was obvious and cheesy. Who talked like that? He was trying too hard, but the man knew literature, and Michaels had liked that he was trying at all. And he was just such a pretty man.

They ended up chatted that afternoon almost until sunset.

The very next day, Michaels had set up camp once again, this time in the shameless hope of luring out the pretty man. And though she felt desperate and foolish before lighting up her first cigarette, the trap paid off within minutes when the beautiful young gentleman cam traipsing from the apartments to join her at the edge of the woods. And once again, they talked books, joked, smoked and flirted until after dark, locking eyes by the light of fireflies and the glowing tip of an American Spirit passed back and forth.

This became a lovely routine for almost two weeks at the end of that summer. Michaels sat at that old table every afternoon, and almost every day the pretty man appeared with a smile, ready to spar with her on literature and make her laugh. He was hilarious and sweet, never missing an opportunity to compliment her while unafraid to tease her when she deserved it. And he was so gentle and innocent, in the best possible way, refusing to hate anything outright, always sussing out the good in any argument battling shamelessly for optimism. Yes, the pretty man wasn't always the smartest guy she had encountered, but he was maybe the wittiest and most charming, and always listened to what she had to say and took her opinions seriously.

Perhaps most importantly, Michaels was almost totally comfortable with the pretty man in a way she hadn't been comfortable in years. He was utterly genuine, and Michaels knew she could actually be herself—her real self—with him, without judgment or rejection.

It wasn't that she fell in love with him. Well...not only that. Yes, she was plenty attracted to him, and had certainly flirted shamelessly enough. But it was something deeper than any of that for her.

He was a friend. A real friend. The best friend that Michaels had found in years.

She had lost touch with any number of people during grad school for the for the most pedestrian reasons. She had lost a handful of others after dumping her undergrad boyfriend. She could barely even remember the names of most of the people she went to high school with. So here she was in her late twenties, alone in a way she had never experienced in her life.

But now...now there was a man, a pretty man who read books and made her laugh. A pretty man who she wanted nothing more than to curl up against and let gush every facet of herself, comfortable in the fact that he was the one true, right vessel to receive and keep her. The friend she had been waiting for, not just in recent years, but always.

Yet Michaels heart was soon bruised when her pretty man vanished for the week preceding the start of the semester. Day after day, Dr. Michaels pretended it didn't matter, sucking down the extra cigarettes and beer she had hoped to share with her friend while reviewing her lesson plans for the year, glancing up every few seconds in the hopes of seeing him loping towards her with his silly, trademark grin.

Yet Dr. Michaels did see her lovely, clever, charming friend again all too soon when his grinning face appeared behind a desk during the first day of school in her Freshman Studies English class.

His name was Jason McGinnis, and he was eighteen years old.

Michaels could hardly function during that first week of classes out of shock and outrage.

Eighteen? Eighteen!

And barely, at that! A look at this Jason boy's file showed that Michaels had been very lucky not to take their flirting to the next level. The little boy's birthday was in August, and he had actually been seventeen goddamn years old during most of the time Dr. Michaels had talked with him at the table. Flirted. Held herself back with a thread of restraint on a dozen occasions from taking his hand and kissing him.

It was the sickest, cruelest joke the world had ever played on her.

And here, over a year later, the world was still laughing at her. Jason McGinnis was still a student, and would be right up through his final semester. Every day of her professional life, Dr. Michaels had to be reminded of just what an idiot she had been to think she had actually made a friend.

And lately work life beyond Jason wasn't offering much relief.

Ted apologized profusely, and invited her to a half dozen functions. He was an okay guy, and even chuckled after Dr. Michaels said 'No' a half dozen times in a row. Yet something about his very presence in her life still nagged at her and left Michaels anxious and vaguely depressed.

Then, of course, there was Lindsay Gregs. She was becoming almost as much of a nuisance as Jason himself, lingering after class to chat her up, shadowing her around campus, and, of course, always turning up first in line for office hours. The little girl had even sunk into the habit of wrapping herself affectionately around Dr. Michaels' arm while they worked on her papers and discussed readings. And, naturally, she never ceased asking Michaels to come do things with her outside of office hours, everything from ice cream to thrift shopping to something about an upcoming birthday.

Dr. Michaels liked Lindsay. In fact, she liked her a lot. But it wasn't hard for her to say 'No' to all these requests. In fact, Michaels was getting sick of all this familiarity. It just wasn't right for a grown-ass woman to be getting tied to a bunch of children. A child.

Jason.

It was a Friday night, and several beers had given Michaels the clarity to see the root of her problems. The kid had started to forget the nature of his relationship with Michaels. He was a pet, dammit! A slave!

Enough was enough. Michaels had let Jason get far too comfortable. It was time to remind him who he was. What he was.

Dr. Michaels found her shoulder bag atop the desk beneath the curtained window. She unceremoniously dumped the many papers and files over the desk before stumbling about the apartment and refilling the bag with anything and everything her slushy, horny mind thought might offer some fun. She slung the bag over her shoulder and had her hand on the doorknob before realizing she was dressed only in a pair of gym shorts and a bra. Michaels rolled her eyes at herself and growled as she forced herself into jeans and a huge, ratty t-shirt she usually only slept in

A quick, barefoot trip down the stairs later, Dr. Michaels found herself slamming her knuckles hard enough on Jason's door to fray the skin on her fingers.

The obedient pet answered in seconds, his eyes going wide with shock and fear before the door had finished opening. "Ma'am!" he squeaked before quickly looking past Michaels to scan for eavesdroppers. "Um, Dr. Michaels. What can I do for you?"

"I know it's late," Michaels said, letting herself into Jason's apartment, dragging him along behind her by his belt. "But this is important."

Michaels kicked the door closed and locked it without looking before grabbing Jason by the back of the head and forcing her tongue into his mouth. The pathetic boy moaned with ecstasy and melted against her. Soon she was doubled over, kissing him as he knelt on his knees before her, bracing himself with strong hands on her hips.

Michaels broke away with a nibble to Jason's tongue and two hard backhands to his face, one from each hand. She took in the boy's apartment, chuckling with amusement as she found exactly what she had always imagined. It was a tiny space, the whole unit barely larger than her own bedroom. Most of the floor was taken up by a small, tattered couch, a tacky blue recliner with duct tape around one foot, and a glass-topped coffee table. One corner hosted a dwarf kitchen, while another was a scooped out alcove where not one, but two futons were piled atop a low metal bed frame. The only luxury was the huge, flat TV somehow mounted to the wall opposite the couch and trailing two hundred wires and cables, most of them hooked into an armada of video game machines littering the floor. Some game was paused on that big screen, a slight woman with bare feet and a tiny, blood-spattered white dress frozen as she reloaded an enormous handgun.

Michaels turned back to her pet, and found that he had somehow stripped himself naked and now knelt with his forehead against the top of her toes.

"Ohh, good, good boy!" she crooned, leaning over to scratched her nails over Jason's scalp. She dropped her bag onto the coffee table and paused while unbuckling it when she noticed a small, zebra-striped glass pipe and an orange lighter on one corner of the table. "Or maybe not so good..."

Jason merely shrugged and grinned. Michaels grinned back and rolled her eyes. Kids these days! Don't even have the decency to hide it in a shoebox!

Michaels opened her bag and removed an enormous, triple-wicked candle that had come in a gift basket her sister had given her years ago (which at least beat Cindy's usual gift of nothing). She lit the wicks with Jason's orange lighter—it was supposed to was smell like fresh linen but, like most candles, actually smelled like chemicals. Oh well, she hadn't lit it for the scent.

Michaels yanked Jason by the hair over to the couch. She cleared aside a game controller and a couple of books, snapped, and pointed towards the cushions. "Up! Up and on your knees." Jason obeyed, scrambling onto the couch. Michaels slapped the back of his neck. "Head down, ass up! Like you're getting fucked from behind."

And wouldn't he just love that, Dr. Michaels mused to herself. As if I'd waste the energy when he's the only one getting off!

With the pet in position, Michaels wriggled out of her jeans and fetched something from her bag. She climbed atop the couch and straddled Jason at the shoulders, carefully settling her ass down to sit on the back of the boy's head. His hair felt ticklish and exciting against her cheeks and through the fabric of her panties.

Slowly, slowly, Michaels dragged the object in her hand along Jason's spine, down from his tailbone to where her crotch was pressed against the nape of his neck. Jason shivered all over, his back twitching and his ass tensing as the hundred sharp bristles of Michaels' hairbrush scraped his skin..

Michaels snapped the brush against Jason's left ass cheek without warning, eliciting a deep moan from the boy's mouth, buried deep within the couch cushions beneath the weight of his owner's ass. She struck the same place twice more in quick succession, holding the brush against his taut, young flesh after the second strike and raking the bristles hard down his back. Jason's ass shot up into the air even further as rose on stiff, straining toes. The poor boy twisted his head to side beneath Michaels to suck fresh air and issue a rattling hiss between his teeth.

After several long, tense, giddy moments Dr. Michaels gently rapped Jason's stinging ass with the blunt, flat side of the brush before immediately punishing the opposite cheek with a brutal rapid fire of blows the wrenched a series of chocking, high pitched yelps from the boy. That was the game from then on, randomly brutalizing one cheek or the other, leaving long pauses in between to let the pet tremble with fear and anticipation. Sometimes Michaels would slam the bristles down with all her might, relishing the spasms of pain that shook through the boy up into her own body. Sometimes she would pat him light and fast, increasing speed and force before digging the brush into his flesh, swirling it in slow circles as she nearly came from the kid's screams.

The boy managed to control himself admirably, despite his shouts and the occasional tear. His knees gave out several times, only to scurry back up into position as quick as could be. He only raised his hands once to try to defend himself, lightly pawing Michaels' arm after she had spread him open with one hand and stung his vulnerable asshole hard with the brush. Michaels had smacked away his hands, slapped his wet, whimpering face, and attacked his asshole three more times in retaliation, leaving the boy biting the couch's upholstery through a long shriek.

As fun as this game was, Dr. Michaels grew bored before long. She capped it off by reaching down between her pet's legs and giving his balls an extra hard double slap of the brush before digging the bristles hard against his anus and scraping from his prostate to the tip of his ravenous erection.

Dr. Michaels slipped off the boy's head, tossing the brush at corner of his bed. He fell onto his side, gasping and sweating from both agony and, doubtless the related sensation of very nearly having come. But Michaels gave her pet no chance to rest. She slapped his face several times while pulling him to his feet and shoved him hard atop his own neatly made futon bed.