Chapter 11 - An evening with Dr. Jim Halsey
Ruth Burnside quietly finished putting away Cecilia's papers and locked her file cabinets. She pondered the strange events that had transpired over the last 24 hours. It was about 9:00 p.m., exactly 24 hours since she had received that ominous e-mail from the director of the department concerning her computer. The e-mail had brought about a day of crisis in the life of the scholarship student, but fortunately that crisis now was over. Tomorrow Cecilia would be safely back in class, and Burnside would have to sign an acknowledgement of the written reprimand. No big deal. She had been reprimanded before and always got past it.
Burnside knew the three professors on the ethics panel. She had nominated one of them and had voted for the other two. She knew them well enough to have been able to predict how they would vote. Brenda always voted to expel, Bob usually voted in favor of the student, so the committee's director always cast the tie-breaking vote. Normally he simply deferred to whatever the professor in question wanted, which in this case, was to leave Cecilia Sanchez enrolled.
Still, the committee's vote was a serious matter. Cecilia's life literally hung in the balance, because Burnside correctly suspected her student would attempt suicide if she were expelled from the university. Going into the meeting Burnside had no guarantee that Cecilia would be allowed to stay enrolled, so she had to take the hearing very seriously. Burnside was a pessimist by nature, so she always prepared for the worst outcome. She was hugely relieved to have managed to keep Cecilia enrolled, but at the same time remained very angry at her. More than anything else was the hassle of having to re-write the midterm. There were other unpleasant concerns facing her, including the reprimand and invariable department gossip and discussions behind her back about her choice of a scholarship student.
Burnside somewhat sympathized with Cecilia, because the girl had no way of knowing that a few mouse clicks would set off such a crisis. She had found out the hard way something that she really wasn't supposed to know, because the university examination tracking system was a strictly kept secret. Burnside expected Cecilia not to say anything to other students about the examination tracking system...which she had forgotten to mention before the chastised student left her office. She typed out a quick e-mail to Cecilia with that detail; under no circumstances was she to discuss the tracking system with other students.
Burnside heard a knock on her outer office door. She was expecting her visitor, so she grabbed her purse and locked up. The visitor was Dr. Jim Halsey, her co-worker, her friend, her mentor, and her lover.
Halsey was 15 years older than Burnside, which made him 62. However, he still was full of vigor, in excellent physical shape (Burnside could attest to that), and a long way from retiring. He was dressed, as always, in a very expensive dark suit. His steel-gray hair and sharp features gave him a very severe appearance to his students, but his blue eyes always glinted mischeviously at Ruth. Jim Halsey was the only person in Ruth Burnside's life who dared address her as "Ruth". Everyone else, everyone else, including her other lovers, always addressed her as "Dr. Burnside"
Jim Halsey kissed Burnside's hand, and then took her hands and lightly kissed her mouth. Burnside's heart pounded, however. She knew she was in trouble and facing punishment from her lover, in spite of his courteous manner of greeting her.
He asked her how the ethics committee meeting went. Burnside responded in detail, because every professor wanted to know what the ethics committee reasoning was whenever it rendered a decision about a student's continued enrollment. Burnside recounted Cecilia's actions in detail, partly in hopes of getting her lover's perspective on how trustworthy he thought she really was. After listening to Burnside for a while, Halsey finally countered:
"You know Ruth, my girl, this incident is your fault. You understand that, correct?"
"Yes sir. I understand that I was irresponsible and my student suffered as a result."
Burnside's next words indicated the unusual nature of the relationship she had with her old lover. "Sir, am I to be punished for my carelessness?"
Halsey caressed Burnside's cheek with the back of his hand and looked her in the eye.
"Ruth, my girl, what do you think? Were you irresponsible enough to warrant a severe punishment?"
Burnside's heart pounded from that familiar mixture of fear and arousal she always felt before she faced a whipping from her lover. She was terrified, but, as always, also felt warm tingling all over her body and an anxious, comfortable warmth between her legs. She was about to be punished by the only man she loved, and that knowledge drove her wild with sexual pleasure.
"Sir, I've been irresponsible. I violated my contract. So I'm letting you decide what's best for me."
"Well, my girl, we both know what's best for you is a punishment on you bare body. You've earned it."
"Yes sir. I've earned a punishment on my bare body. I'll submit to you, sir."
With that Ruth Burnside, one of the most feared professors in the economics department and dressed in one of her best teaching outfits, got on her knees and kissed her lover's hand. That same hand soon enough would be inflicting both intense pain and intense pleasure on her unprotected body.
The two professors, Dr. Ruth Burnside and Dr. Jim Halsey, walked arm-in-arm to his car. Burnside's house was relatively close to the university, so normally she walked any day the weather permitted. Halsey lived somewhat further away, so normally he drove. On any evening Ruth had to stay late, he always gave her a ride home. Tonight he would come into her house, the two would have a glass of wine, and then there would be a night of discipline and lovemaking.
