Work Husband

My amazing editors thought I had written my last story, so this special project both caught them by surprise and gave them little time to work their wonders. I was accustomed to their talents, but they surprised and touched me by their loyalty, and I can't thank them enough.

SueDanym suggested surgery, but I hesitated until a second opinion proved the good doctor of editing was right as usual. Follow the link to this author's story page, and you'll find no one makes consensual sadism/masochism as tender, affectionate and orgasmic as this writer.

Red_sky_reader and oVerallxaVerage each labored in the trenches to fix embarrassing errors and polish the narrative. Prolific author/editor 2soon2no came along later and helped me see and correct some mistakes I introduced in correcting previous mistakes.

And of course, thanks to legendary author/editor/organizer blackrandi1958 for making all this possible.

The German version of this story is posted in German Literotica as Dienstgemahl by Egon Hoppe.

******************

It wasn't her fault, but Emma was to blame for the whole thing.

Before Emma moved away, Minerva was a shining star. Her looks and figure attracted attention from everyone seeing her the first time, and that was before they found out she was engaging, interesting, witty and just plain fun to be around.

She had a secret that only a few of us knew. Because she never showed off, most people didn't realize she was always the smartest one in the room. Her conversation was always about you, not her. Her dazzling teeth seemed to shine as bright as the sun because she never stopped smiling.

That's the way it used to be. Now she had to work hard at pretending to be the Minerva everyone knew. I wondered if any of her colleagues saw through her act. By the time she came home to me, she was exhausted from the strain of her performance and didn't try to hide the sadness she felt.

She and Emma had met in first grade. Though they didn't look alike, I sometimes thought of them as twins separated at birth. They were always the two top kids in their class, and sometimes their competition caused fights. But everyone knew that if you picked on Emma, you'd have to answer to Minerva and vice versa.

The friendship grew stronger through the years. When I fell in love with Minerva, she wisely chose to shrug off my stupid manifestations of jealousy. I made a painful decision that I've never regretted because it made it possible for me to marry the most amazing woman in the world. I decided to accept that Minerva would never love me as much as she loved Emma.

It helped that Minerva gave me things she never gave her best friend, or anyone else. Except maybe for some former boyfriends, I was the only person in the world who knew that the physical pleasures she bestowed were as dazzling as the pleasure of her company.

A few months after the wedding, I opened up about how much I used to hate her maid of honor. That's when Minerva told me that while I was worrying about Emma's hold on her, Emma was advising her to hold onto me because everything Minerva told her -- and Minerva told her everything, no matter how intimate -- confirmed I was perfect for her.

I got used to Emma being a part of our marriage. Minerva was too busy to see her for lunch more than once a week, but they communicated all day by voice and text. It was as if their conversation was nonstop. At first, she would talk to Emma on the phone at least an hour every night, like they did before we were married. It was Emma who told Minerva that those sessions had to end, because she needed to focus on me when she was home.

Emma was smart in everything except matters of the heart. Her marriage to Jesse was troubled. I didn't get all the details, but I heard enough to know that Emma should have dumped him years ago. But she didn't give up on him, and when his company offered him a promotion that meant moving halfway across the country, she told Minerva it was a chance for them to make a new start.

Minerva tried to stay in the same close contact as always, but the change in time zones interfered, and finally, the wise Emma said they needed to forgo the daily interaction and make time on the weekends. Minerva had to agree, but it hit her hard. She even neglected her chrysanthemums.

Emma and Minerva both became interested in mums in high school, and when Minerva showed me her senior prom photos, she didn't talk about their dates or even their dresses, only the mum corsages.

Early on, Jack and Louise picked up on their mother's conversations with Emma and began calling Minerva "Mum." When they call or write from college, that's how they still address her. The parents of their friends think Minerva's British.

Mum nuts, as I refer to them, aren't content to just plant and cultivate. They have to talk about their techniques, their mistakes, their hybrids and their triumphs ad infinitum. They attend and usually compete in every flower show, and whenever an expert is in town, they flock to lectures or demonstrations like cultists swarm around a guru.

Besides being mum nuts, Emma and Minerva also had another preoccupation. Both of them had always been big readers, but a literature professor in college changed their lives. At one of her lectures, the professor showed the class a spreadsheet that broke an average person's life down into hours sleeping, eating, working and so on.

When I asked if she included screwing, Minerva told me the professor had lumped it under recreation, along with going to movies and concerts, partying and reading.

The point of the teacher's lecture was that though her students thought they had all the time in the world, they actually didn't have very much time at all. Were they going to spend their time watching bad movies, being in bad relationships and reading junk, or were they going to use their time to enjoy the best of everything?

She particularly emphasized reading. She said a lot of college graduates she talked to admitted they loved their literature classes and remembered the great books they read, but once they left school, they never read another classic.

Emma and Minerva talked about the lecture and made a pact that they were never going to read any garbage for the rest of their lives. They've stuck to it. They'll sometimes read junk online like everyone, but when it comes to books, they're selective to an extreme.

Their graduation gifts to each other were complete sets of "Great Books of the Western World." They're the only people I've ever met who've read all fifty odd books in that series. Our shelves are also stuffed with every book in the Modern Library and Everyman's Classics series. Once I accused Minerva of being a snob because she wouldn't read any book less than a hundred years old. She pointed out that I was wrong and, with few exceptions, literature didn't die out until the nineteen sixties.

When Emma left, Minerva continued reading, but she wouldn't go alone to the book club they used to attend. She also planted, but didn't go to any gardening events. My few tries at comforting her were rebuffed, so I walked on eggshells and tried to keep from making things worse while waiting for time to make Emma's absence less painful.

*****************

Minerva moved up fast at Success Solutions. I'm sure some of those competing with her thought it was because she was young and hot in a mostly male environment, but the real reason was because she was smart.

She quickly understood that if you're selling customized integrated systems to Fortune 500 companies, it was advantageous to make friends on the development team. I was the only nerd who didn't hate the sales department, so I became her best buddy at work. She was using me, but she was so charming that I enjoyed being used.

Everyone at the office was amazed when our office relationship led to a personal one, especially since I was probably the only single man there who had never made a pass at her. She had to court me. Once she convinced me she was interested in more than what I could do for her, I leveled with her and admitted I had fallen in love with her the first time we met. I had never said anything because I didn't want to take a chance on her reacting negatively and avoiding me.

She was surprised because she could tell that I worked out, and she read me as a macho egotist type who thought he was so superior to everyone in every department that he didn't need to prove anything to anyone. I told her she had me pegged. I was totally and obnoxiously self-assured about everyone and everything, including women. I was even angry at first that she had pierced my armor.

"Are you still angry?"

"Are you kidding? I don't know what you see in me, but I'm yours in ragged armor until your knight in shining armor shows up."

"He already has. I can see right through you. You're going to give me beautiful children and be a perfect father. Maybe someday you'll also be able to give me an orgasm."

She broke up laughing then. I didn't know if I could live up to her other expectations, but she was so highly sexed that she was easy to please in that department. I thought of myself as a stud, but one night I apologized when I needed a break after making her come a few times.

"Don't worry," she had replied. "You've lasted longer than anyone else."

My boss assured me that he saw no nepotism problem after we got married, but Minerva and I didn't want to take the chance that the people we worked with would resent us, so I quit. Like all coders, I had a bunch of ideas for applications that would make us instant millionaires, so I opened my own company.

I'm still working on the million-dollar application, but in the meantime, I'm consulting and doing almost the same kind of work as I was before. The only difference now is that I stay away from any industry where I might work for a competitor of one of her client companies.

The funny thing is that Success Solutions has hired me a few times when they were in trouble and needed a fast, clean rescue -- and paid me triple what I used to get for the same time. That helped the family get to the million-dollar mark anyway.

I don't remember the first time Minerva mentioned Dylan Trumpery. She tells me about everything that happens at work, but I don't listen closely unless she talks about someone I know, and after nineteen years, there aren't many employees left that I used to work with.

The first time Dylan's name registered with me was the night she told me he was the most amoral man she had ever met and seemed amused by her evaluation.

"Did he try something with you?" I asked.

"No, he's really nice to me. I've never met anyone like him before. He tells me things that could get him in a lot of trouble."

"Like what?"

"Things he does to close a sale."

"So he's in sales, not product development."

"Yes. He's on the team pitching Consolidated, so we're working closely for the first time. I've never met anyone who connives like he does. I'm learning a lot from him."

"I hope you're being careful."

"Don't worry. I would never take the chances he does. I think our boss has me on the team partly to balance Dylan. We can't afford to be unscrupulous, because if the customers ever found out, it would destroy their trust and we'd lose not only this sale but any chance for future business."

"Then what could Dylan possibly be teaching you?"

"Some things he does make sense."

"Like what?"

"He says that both of us are actors playing roles, and the customers are also playing roles. We need to make sure the play has a happy ending for us."

"What about for the customer?"

"That's a given. We have the best product on the market, and the clients who buy it will have a competitive advantage and become more profitable. So the happy ending for us will be a happy ending for them, too. You know I've always believed that. If I didn't, I wouldn't be any good at what I do."

"It sounds like he's describing the same thing you were already doing."

"I wish I could secretly video Dylan in action. Then you'd understand. It's amazing the things he does to get his way.

"He doesn't actually lie to the clients. He listens closely to everything they say and uses the information to maneuver the conversation until they finally say the things that move them toward what he wants. The people on the other side of the table are smart, and they've heard everything. But he improvises in such a subtle way that they have no idea what he's done as they start saying the lines in his play.

"He's started telling me before each meeting with Consolidated exactly what's going to happen at the meeting. Sometimes his expectations are so far ahead of where we are that I tell him he's dreaming, but by the time we're done, he gets everything he wants. He's told me he always gets whatever he goes after."

"It sounds like he thinks a lot of himself."

"You're right. He's totally conceited, but -- I don't know how to say this. For some reason, his ego trips come out charming, not obnoxious. All of us in our department have a lot of self-confidence, and sometimes what we say is, uh, distasteful. I watch myself so I hardly ever act like that, but when Dylan says something that would sound disgusting if I said it, he does it in a way that makes you laugh.

"It helps that he's funny and has a great smile. On top of that, he's good looking and hunky and dresses to emphasize his physique. Sometimes I look at the women on the Consolidated team, and it seems like they're hypnotized by him and wondering how far he'd go to get the sale."

Minerva laughed.

"I think he'd be willing to negotiate stud services to get the deal. He's married, but like I said, he's totally amoral."

"Wow!"

"Of course, he's not going there as long as my boss has the cops watching him. That's me."

She laughed again.

"How old is he?" I asked.

"I never asked him, but I'd guess at least ten years younger than we are."

***************

After that conversation, I started listening closer whenever his name came up, which was almost every day. They seemed to spend a lot of time together, and she continued to delight in the outrageous things he said and did. When I heard the stories, I had the opposite reaction. The more she liked him, the more I didn't.

Things came to a head the night she referred to him as her work husband.

"What are you talking about?"

"You've heard of a work husband or a work wife."

"No."

"He's like your real husband but at work."

"I hope I misunderstood what you just said."

"Get your mind out of the gutter. I mean, the two of you understand and support each other. You can talk to him about anything without worrying. He always has your back and vice versa. He's someone you can count on when you need emotional support. There's a real intimacy in the relationship in every area except the physical."

"If you're that intimate, what keeps it from getting physical?"

"Are you serious? What's so hard to understand? A work husband isn't a lover. He would talk you out of cheating if you ever told him you were attracted to someone. He wants what's best for you, just like your private husband."

"Who explained all this to you, Dylan?"

"No. Joanne from our team pointed out that Dylan and I were work spouses."

"I don't like it."

"There's no reason you should feel threatened."

"I don't feel threatened," I lied

"You don't have to worry about Dylan. In fact, he likes and respects you. He always stands up for you."

"I've never met the guy, so how does he respect me? How does he stand up for me if I'm not even around?"

"When I tell him about our fights, he always takes your part."

"What?"

"I mean, whatever I say about you, he's always telling me to be grateful that I have such a loving, caring husband. He says other husbands would be threatened by a woman like me, but you appreciate me for what I am and don't try to hold me back. He told me that I should share more about my work with you, including what we're working on together.

"He even told me that I should bring up what Joanne said about him being a work husband. He said you wouldn't be upset. I'll have to tell him he was wrong about that one."

"So he thinks I'm an understanding husband who's not holding you back?"

"He said you show how much you love me by giving me free rein to do what I want with my life and that's why I'm a fulfilled woman."

I was about to explode, but I used all the will power I had to stay in control of myself.

"I understand," I said.

"I knew you would."

"But I don't understand what you understand."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I understand that Dylan is after you. What I don't understand is how you can't see it? You're the smart one in the family, but maybe I'm more streetwise when it comes to something like this.

"He's got you telling him everything about us. He's waiting until he thinks you're vulnerable. The next time we have a fight, he'll go for the kill."

"You are such a Neanderthal. First of all, I don't tell him everything. Yes, I've vented to him a couple of times when you've exasperated me. He told me the same thing each time, that I need to leave my ego at the office, be more understanding and appreciate that you're only trying to do what's best for me. He's never tried to comfort me and sympathize about my big bad husband. You have him all wrong."

"I think you need to divorce your office husband."

"That's not going to happen. We work well together, and our boss sees that our synergy is getting results and making Success Solutions more profitable."

"I don't give a damn about that. I'd rather you make a total break, but I'm willing to give in this much. You can work together, but your intimate conversations have to stop."

"Is that an order, sir?"

"You give me orders all the time. What do I do?"

"You usually follow my orders."

"Because they're usually well thought out and make sense."

"But sometimes you don't."

"That's right. Just like you don't always follow my orders."

"I respectfully decline to follow the order you just gave me, sir. I know you think it makes sense, but you'll soon realize it wasn't well thought out."

I looked down at my hands. My knuckles weren't white, although they felt that way. I hoped my face wasn't red. I wanted to take a deep breath, but I couldn't because Minerva would have seen that I was on the verge of losing it. So I panted a few moments with my mouth barely open. She looked at me and waited for my response. I made sure it was calm and quiet.

"When someone doesn't follow an order, there can be consequences," I said.

"I know, but the consequences are going to be good, and you're going to see that your order was silly."

"Maybe, but I'm withdrawing the order anyway. You can do whatever you want with Dylan. But I want to make certain that you understand the way I feel, so this is my promise to you. I'm not going to interfere with you and your work husband in any way."

"Thank you. You won't regret it."

"I'm not done. I have a tremendous respect for your intelligence, but for some reason, you aren't applying it in this situation. So the rest of the promise is blunt. I need to be sure you understand me. You can do anything you want, but if you fuck him, we're through."

Her jaw dropped and she looked stunned. Then she hauled back and let me have it. My face stung from the force of her slap, but I didn't move as she sputtered, trying to find words, and then gave up and ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

I felt terrible. Had I just made a huge mistake by being honest with her? Had I played right into the hands of Dylan? Should I apologize? A million things ran through my mind.