1

"Well, I've hired an assistant,"  I announced while finishing up lunch with my wife.

"I’m glad to hear that. You’ve been working much too hard. How did you find them?" she asked. I knew she was curious if I’d taken her advice to post the want ad online or if I had signed up for a temp service.

"Actually, neither," I replied as casually as I could. "It's Jeanne Briand from my senior class at Lyon State."

I’d expected a reaction from Allison. This was not dissimilar to how our relationship had started just over ten years ago.  I, a respected chemistry professor at Lyon State, and she an eager pupil. I’d been drawn to her the moment I saw her step into class. 

Allison had arrived dressed rather conservatively, in a blouse and slacks not meant to put her physical attributes on display. But such a nubile form - soft round breasts and a lovely curved rear that reminded me of my own womanly wiles at her age - could not be hidden by any surplus material.

She’d never asked why I’d made her an assistant ten years ago.

"But why Jeanne Briand? What qualifications does she have? What does she know of biochemistry?" Allison further inquired. She was pushing for answers a bit too hard for my taste, in that high-pitched, staccato voice of hers, which lately had grated on me. The hiring of an assistant was my business and mine alone.

"She's taken her master's degree," I pressed, "...and besides, she had a course in biology under Calhoun." 

Allison eyed me, trying to read beyond my given reasons. One could, perhaps, forgive her for being suspicious of a vivacious, copper-haired, laughing-eyed girl who’d dabbled in a few text-books and chased butterflies with a net being given an important post in a biochemical lab. 

On the other hand, it is not as if there wasn’t living precedent for it sitting right across from me. But I dared not push that too hard, for fear of drawing attention to other connections Allison could make.

"I’d think, were you to choose from graduates, you’d have taken young Mitchel or some other postgraduate more focused in your department." As this was a statement from Allison and not a question I simply shrugged, my shoulders pulling my bra straps and bouncing my breasts slightly. I tried to exaggerate this to try and distract my suspicious wife but she acted uncharacteristically icey to it. 

And so that was all we said. I wondered if she suspected something, or if my casual attitude had been enough to dissuade her concerns.

Regardless, Jeanne soon joined me in the laboratory I’d had constructed in the backyard when Allison and I first became romantically involved. It sat squarely in the back portion of our property, and although small it had served my private research satisfactorily.  

I made it very clear to Jeanne that she must keep regular hours, and that she must conduct herself as my assistant and not as the woman whom I loved and whom I hoped to wed. It had not been hard to convince her to join me in the lab, although I was not totally forward even with her for my reasons for wanting Jeanne there.

Truth be told, when Allison and I first met I was in my mid-thirties and she in her mid-twenties. But while my physique had continued to age well - my breasts still perky, my ass full, my skin taught and unblemished - every day I could not help but notice a new shortcoming of age clinging to Allison.

A tiny wrinkle around the eyes no make-up could hide. The slightest show of droop to her breasts. A darker and fuller sprouting of hair on the legs and under the arms after a shave. Allison’s transition to her thirties had not been kind to her, and there were honestly days I had to hold back gagging when looking upon her.

I needed the Venus-like visage of someone like Jeanne to counter Allison’s countenance. 

Jeanne was, as anyone could have expected, as out of place among my instruments and reagent bottles as would have been a wood nymph. To place her seated on a pedestal to read or browse her phone while I gazed upon her beauty - while I recorded chemical reactions - would have made me infinitely pleased. But it was necessary that I keep up the appearance of a professional need for her.

And Jeanne, the poor lovely thing, was under the misunderstanding that I truly thought she could be useful. And I did not have the heart to tell her otherwise. Truth be told, shortly after I made my interest in Jeanne known to her it was her idea to join me in the lab.

"Please let me help you in your work," she pleaded over and over again. It was during one particularly passionate moment, whilst we were in my campus office and I had my mouth wrapped around her stiff little nipple, her elf-like hands slipped under my bra, that she made the argument I finally relented to; 

"I want to be near you always. Let me do anything - anything. I can keep the instruments clean. I can write down your notes. It is unbearable to see you only between classes, once in a long while. Let me work with you in the laboratory." 

I had considered making a clean break from my wife and free myself from my marital ties. But a divorce process  would likely reveal how inappropriate it was when Allison and I began our relationship. That in turn would bring a sharp eye to my current activities - particularly those office hours with Jeanne. It would certainly be the end of my university career. 

A woman of stronger will than mine would have held fast and kept the affair with Jeanne to closed doors on campus, and not brought it to the backyard of my home. 

But the desire to have her beauty and body ever near me, to feel her breath, to palm her pert rear and full bust whenever the urge struck me, to see the winsome smile on her face, to sense her presence in the same room, to feel her delicate hands slipping down my blouse to pinch a nipple or tease up my hose and push her fingers under her skirt…

What can I say, for a woman of science I am susceptible to a well-backed argument coming from my pussy. So I agreed to Jeanne’s suggestion.

As I said, scientifically speaking Jeanne was all but useless in the laboratory - chemistry was a credit, not a passion for her. She had enthusiasm for me, not for my process. On our first day she was so eager to be busy it was as if she was willfully ignorant of my instructions. But she had some talent for drawing, and so I employed her in making diagrams for my treatise on "Experimental Evolution." 

Despite her disruptions Jeanne was an instant improvement to the aura of the lab. She radiated femininity. She had an elfish way of interrupting me in my work. At the most critical stage in dissecting the head of an insect under the glass, she would come up and stroke my long hair all the way down to my ass, or kiss the nape of my neck, or slip a finger up my skirt and trace the elastic of my panties. 

If I waved her away - despite how much I would have welcomed the attention in any other moment -  she wept, which meant spending time kissing away her tears and mollifying her with the endearments that all lovers automatically invent on the spur of the moment.

It was most helpful that I had a small couch in the corner of the lab where I had taken midday naps to clear my head. This quickly became the altar of our passions. It was not unusual for us to only last an hour or two doing actual experimentation before skirts and blouses and bras and panties would be discarded. I was thankful that Jeanne fancied suckling on my breasts as I buried my fingers three-fold in her slit and brought her to her crest. The lab was not soundproof, and anything louder than Jeanne’s cute little yips would have given us away.

Despite her scientific shortcomings I could see how she honestly tried to help me, simply because of her slavish devotion to me. But she needed constant supervision. Thankfully her drawings were excellent. Indeed, they soon justified her presence in my laboratory in the eyes of the most sceptical adjudicator at the university. 

Allison, however, continued her harpy-like hovering and suspicion of Jeanne’s presence, her sharp crow-footed eyes undoubtedly noting my assistant’s arrivals and departures to the backyard lab in order to establish any delayed stay that could prove impropriety. 

2

Eager to continue propping up the professional acceptance of Jeanne’s legitimate presence I assigned her the task of making a series of sketches to demonstrate the effect of baroturpinol on amoeba. Unlike most of the chemicals in my lab, baroturpinol has a pleasant odor only describable as “sweet and fruity agave” that I didn’t think would offend Jeanne’s nose. 

It was well established in papers I had previously published that a diluted solution of baroturpinol would cause a few cells of amoeba to dwindle and dwindle under the microscope until finally the organism, still keeping its own shape, disappeared. I had concluded that the process resulted in dessication, and since none of my peers were interested in drying out amoeba the conclusions had never been challenged, and the process had never before been illustrated.

But I had completely misinterpreted this disappearance of microorganisms under the action of baroturpinol. It was Jeanne who taught me otherwise. One day, while she was engaged in making the drawings which would show the progressive disappearance of the amoeba, Jeanne exclaimed: "They've come back again!" 

"Who has?" I questioned, thinking that she was talking of people whom we knew. Besides, I was engrossed in correcting the proofs of a scientific paper. 

"Why, the amoeba. I can't understand it!" 

A glance convinced me that she was right. In less than a minute I saw a specimen literally grow under my eyes into a full-fledged amoeba. I can liken the proceeding only to the coming of an object towards you, with all the attendant increase in size that the movement implies. 

Perhaps I may make myself clearer if I say that the restoration of amoeba, as I saw it then and many times after, was like a railway train traveling towards one from a distance. At first a far speck is visible; then the outline of a locomotive engine can be distinguished; and at last a huge machine and thundering cars threaten to crush one out of existence. 

But that was not all. The amoeba came back alive! I had presumed that when any microorganism was brought into contact with even a trace of baroturpinol, all activity ceased. Death seemed a necessary byproduct of the desiccation and shrinking. 

I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw my resuscitated amoeba moving about with that characteristic tumbling motion. 

"What have you been doing?" I asked. 

"Just what you told me to do." There was a waiver of shock and uncertainty in Jeanne’s voice I hadn’t noted before.

"Well, Jeanne," I said, placing my hands upon her shoulders. "Do you know that you have made what may prove to be a very important discovery in biology? Do you know that you may have upset the whole theory of life?" 

She paused, clearly needing a moment to process what I had explained. Then she clapped her hands. I saw a joy and consideration in her eyes that I had not seen quite like this before. But I knew that the wonderful scientific significance of what she had achieved was lost to her. All she must have understood was that I approved of her, and she was happy. 

But what did this astonishing revival of amoeba mean? Over and over again I took my own samples and applied the baroturpinol and watched for the return of specimens under my microscope. But after long tense fruitless lengths the amoeba would not return. 

I was approaching the oft misquoted definition of insanity - but I had seen with my own eyes how something different had resulted! I questioned Jeanne closely; and after pushing herself introspectively far deeper than I had seen before, at last she remembered. She had cleaned a glass rod with her pocket handkerchief so she could use the rod to better position the slide on the microscope’s stage. 

A painstaking and conscientious laboratory worker would have used a piece of sterile cotton. Even I felt, for a moment, that Jeanne using her pocket handkerchief was spectacularly outside of lab practices even for her. Her action was practically purposeful in its disregard, but I could not look at that lovely visage and doubt her confusion over why doing so - under any other circumstance - would have been a grave mistake.

It was clear enough that that little piece of linen was strangely linked with the accidental revivification of amoeba. My deduction was confirmed when I, too, experimented with the handkerchief. I deposited a single drop of stagnant water on a clean glass slide. Under the powerful lens I saw amoeba tumbling about. Then I added a drop of baroturpinol, and at once all activity ceased. 

Apparently killed, the specimens of amoeba began to shrink in that curious manner upon which I had already dilated. I took a glass rod and wiped it on Jeanne's handkerchief. First making sure that the amoeba had quite disappeared, I touched the little drop of moisture on the slide. 

My guess was right. It was Jeanne's handkerchief. The amoeba came rushing back to life as startlingly as at first. The handkerchief was definitely linked with the phenomenon, but I was in the dark as much as ever. What mysterious properties had this little piece of fabric that it should thus divert the whole course of modern biochemistry? 

"Tell me, Jeanne," I said, "did your handkerchief touch anything here - some solution?" 

"No, I'm sure,” she replied with pure perplexity in her voice.

"But you must have done something with it. Feel. It's a little damp." 

"I wiped my eyes with it," she admitted reluctantly. "I had been crying at something that you said." 

I did not stop to inquire what it was that I had said. A light dawned on me. Her tears had so uncannily brought back amoeba to life! And tears - what are they, when stripped of all sentiment, but salt water? 

A spectroscopic analysis of Jeanne's handkerchief convinced me that common salt had the property of bringing back amoeba to life. Salt - given my hypothesis of dessication such a substance was the last thing I, or any of my peers, would have applied in these circumstances!

Dozens of experiments showed that almost any solution of salt would ultimately bring the same result. But the stronger the salinity the more quickly did life triumph over disappearance. 

And now began an investigation which was a strange mixture of scientific research and love-making. To Jeanne it was like a play. She was very much bored when I would repeat tests perhaps twenty-five or fifty times simply to be sure of my results. But when we experimented with a new organism, she was all eagerness, all dancing eyes and clapping hands. 

I was so mad at myself for overlooking this miracle of baroturpinol I needed to understand the scope of my shortsightedness. Perhaps I skipped a few steps here and there, jumped to some questionably ethical uses of baroturpinol. Even Jeanne had tried to ask me about the more unscientific, haphazard, blind process I was taking plunging into a new and unexplored field.

But I was not about to allow such moral quandaries stop me from learning how far behind I was in potential discoveries. I explained to Jeanne that we could always perform the more scientific process after we’d seen some results.

So Jeanne returned to her sketches while I plowed forward with every baroturpinol test I could think of. I enjoyed surprising Jeanne. At one point I came to Jeanne holding a bowl, at the bottom of which were two or three tiny golden flakes. They were so small that she had to hold the bowl up towards the lights to make them clearly visible. 

"What are they?" she asked, wondering what new thought had seized me. 

"Goldfish."

Jeanne nearly choked, flinching and sending the water sloshing about the bowl. I took it from the clumsy girl, who looked at me as if now she suddenly cared for the creatures I’d experiment on. I kept a little aquarium in one corner of the laboratory - a spawning glass jungle of fresh-water life. She’d barely paid it any mind.

"You didn’t," she responded. “We have no idea how baroturpinol works on a multi-cellular level!”

Such big words from my little assistant.

"Indeed, they are," I insisted. "I took some goldfish and dropped them into baroturpinol, and they all shrank up like this." 

If the original discovery of amoeba's disappearance and return had startled me, how shall I describe the stupefaction that this experiment with the fish had worked? I explained to her at once what I had only guessed at before. The amoeba had shrunk beyond the limits of visibility under the microscope, giving the appearance of eradication. But the goldfish, being much larger, had shrunk until each became perhaps the size of a dot on the letter "i." 

I gazed at the bowl with increasing wonder, ignoring the scowl on Jeanne’s face. To every physician and every biologist in the world, baroturpinol was simply a germicide - mostly thanks to my own error! And now Jeanne, my capricious, dancing, playful Jeanne, a mere trifler in science, and at once uncovers the hidden possibilities of a completely misunderstood compound.

She was correct that I should not have so quickly subjected the goldfish to the baroturpinol, but I was not going to allow my timidity to hold me back again! 

Obviously it was my business to find out whether the baroturpinoled goldfish would be revivified by a solution of common salt. I decanted the liquid in the bowl, washed the inanimate, shimmering flakes in distilled water, and then filled the bowl with a solution of salt. 

The drama of the amoebas’ return to life was repeated on a more striking scale. 

Very slowly the still creatures began to expand. Soon they assumed their normal shapes - not, I repeat, that they had lost them by shrinking, but simply that the curves of their bodies were more discernible. It was not until they had regained their full size that motion returned. 

I repeated the experiment with a particularly large goldfish - although, to Jeane’s objection, I did not fill the bowl with enough water to cover this fish. Instead I was careful to pour the baroturpinol over only a portion of my new test subject. I needed to know if the applied area alone would shrink, if nothing would occur, or - as I indeed observed - the entirety of the large goldfish shrank away at a consistent rate! 

Partial application to the subject’s surface appeared to be - for reasons that would require further experimentation - sufficient to instigate reduction of the entire mass. I was giddy over the many discoveries we were making - Jeanne as well each time a creature turned to live. This research would assure me years of funding.

The possession of a common secret strengthened the tie between Jeanne and myself. It was as if we had found some beautiful, priceless gem which we had decided to keep for ourselves and never show to the world. We lost all self-control. 

In the beginning she had kept regular laboratory hours, coming in the morning at nine and leaving at about five in the afternoon. It was always "Professor Hollister" and "Miss Briand" when we spoke to each other before others. 

But in truth the hours that we spent together in the laboratory were becoming more and more disparate between the passion of our research and the passion of our bodies. Each discovery was like an aphrodisiac for me, nipples hard and loins hot. Jeanne was pushing me more and more for more pleasure and less science.

It became so difficult for us to keep on our clothes mere minutes after Jeane’s arrival. I was thankful the lab had only vents near the ceiling, for our lovemaking would have been easily observed otherwise.

Without doubt it would start with Jeane closing the door and running to me. I would push her jacket over her lovely shoulders, and as it slipped past her hands she’d push her lips to mine. Once her arms were free she’d begin unbuttoning my blouse, moving her mouth to the upper portions of my breasts - the only available surface until she could unhook my bra.

Simultaneously I would unzip her skirt and push it over her sexy little hips. I’d run my hands over her silky panties and then slip my fingers beneath them and give her tight little peach a squeeze. This would get the most wonderful giggle from her and get her bouncing in her strappy little heels - and hopping even higher as I slid my finger further down the split of her ass and began to toy upwards.

Inevitably we would stumble back to the couch in the corner, blouses and bras like breadcrumbs across the tile. Her tits and nips were so delightful and pert, and I reveled in how they felt sucked into my lips and mouth. Her sweat had a sweet taste to it which I adored. She’d sink her hands into my full ass and find her way between my thighs. So lost in her beauty sometimes it would not be until after she’d brought me to that beautiful crisis that I’d recall her needs, but more and more she’d assure me that my pleasure brought her enough satisfaction.

Falling to these impulses multiple times a day meant that there was the rare occasion when we’d each leave the laboratory with more ruffled looks than either of us had upon our arrival. In hindsight we should have been more aware of the results of this, but at the time I was mildly surprised to learn that our post-lab appearance had begat rumors.

It was my wife, of course, who imparted that information to me. 

"You are making yourself ridiculous," she announced. 

"Indeed? How?" 

"Everyone is talking about you." 

I pretended not to understand. An attempt of mine to divert her attention from a topic which made me uneasy to discuss. It failed ignominiously. 

"Even the checkout girl at the gas station has commented on your conduct with Jeanne Briand. Everyone stopped talking when I walked into a briefing yesterday, and looked at me in a pitying sort of way. It’s most awkward! Just admit to me that you’ve failed our marriage vows and we’ll deal with this!" 

I got up and stalked out of the room. Doing so would mean divorce and paperwork - gossip was manageable. But for now I simply did not want this gossip and negative energy to take up space in my brain when I knew there were more discoveries to be made. 

“If you will not do something about this, I will!” her shrill voice followed me. I let my silence be its own challenge to her bluff. “Fine, then know that I gave you an opportunity to handle this together!”

Back in the lab I threw myself into research - and Jeanne. But today there was something off about her. She seemed more...exacting. Contemplative. She kept glancing at the clock. Her responses to my hands and lips were less enthusiastic. I thought that she had, perhaps, overheard Allison’s harping and that had taken its toll on my lovely Jeanne. It was most off putting, but I had not the mental capacity to inquire about it. 

Jeanne’s attitude had me so distracted that - despite her attention to the clock - I did not realize the time. Hour after hour slipped by. At last - amidst one of our trysts on the couch - it struck me that the time was long past when Jeanne should have left. Her presence would be very suspicious. 

"Come," I admonished her for not keeping me abreast of the time as I released her own breast from my mouth, "We must go now. It is very late. Get dressed." 

I helped her to her feet, her shallow heels clacking on the tile. She wore only knee-length nylons and a pink pair of silk panties, one side of the elastic slipped over the ridge of her hip from my delving hand. Her slight breasts wiggled atop her ribs. She showed no concern or confusion on her face. Only a determination I hadn’t seen before.

“Why should I bother?” she grinned. I barely registered it. As she strutted over to the lab table I was following the trail of clothing we’d left. I tossed her outfit behind me towards the couch and slipped mine on as I moved along.

As I did so, bringing me near the door of the lab, I heard outside it the clacking of heels on the slate path in the courtyard. Completely unnerved as I was I was incapable of thinking clearly. It was one in the morning by the laboratory clock. Jeanne never stayed in the laboratory later than six. No one must find her here now. 

I acted automatically and with cowardly absurdity, slamming my hand to the lock and twisting it so roughly it hurt my fingers. I watched, eyes wide and mouth agape as if I was a character in some terrible horror movie, as the door’s knob was rattled and pulled. A second attempt followed. Then silence. For a moment I let out a breath, hoping the visitor had turned and left. 

Then there came a knock. 

If someone had leveled a pistol at me and threatened to shoot me I could not have been more alarmed.

"Let me in," shrilled a voice outside. 

Allison! Of course! From what she had told me earlier in the day I inferred that she must have been watching Jeanne like a cat, and that she did indeed carefully note when the girl came and went. Where to find her now she knew only too well. 

I cursed the only windows being the high vents. Concealment was useless. There was nothing in the lab into which I could hide Jeanne. And even if there were I didn’t doubt Allison’s ability to suss out the threat to our marriage.

"What do you want?" I asked. I was stalling, at a complete loss for a next step.

A flood of impassioned accusations followed, in which Jeanne was referred to as "that woman," with much incoherent repetition of the phrase "you cheating bitch." 

The situation was damning. My heart was pounding, every nerve heightened, every muscle tightened, ready to flee.

“I think you’ve finally-”

Jeanne’s lovely voice startled me. I jumped and turned all at the same time, my right arm flailing. It connected with something - not the soft flesh of my dear nymph, but something metal. As I found my footing I turned and saw that my nearly nude Jeanne had been holding a thermos of baroturpinol - which I had struck and splattered all over her bare chest.

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