Chapter 2

Author’s Notes:

As noted in the first part, just because a POV is used does not mean I agree with that character. I know switching POV this much can be confusing to follow and is hard to write well. In part 1, Lauren and Scott’s POVs make up approximately 67% of the work. In this part, we add Tina’s POV, and those three POVs account for 65% of this installment. In both works, Edward accounts for ~25%.

This was originally posted to a different site under the same pen name and title. Only grammatical changes have been made since the original posting.

Pt 1 Trigger Recap

For those who did not read past the trigger warning in part 1. Lauren receives a call from a very distraught Tina. The hospital determined that Tina was roofied but not physically sexually assaulted. To Lauren, this means she broke her promise to protect Tina, and she vows never again. Yes, I condensed 3k words down to this; it feels bad.

Lauren’s POV - Several Months Prior to End of Pt. 1

“Fuck Scott. Yeah, right there, keep it right there. Unnnhhh.” I was on my hands and knees on our bed. Scott was behind me kissing my back, one hand playing with my ass, and alternately rubbing a bullet vibrator on my nipples and pussy. Right now, he was cupping my right breast and circling the vibrator towards my nipple.

Men being obsessed with my boobs was nothing new. I was an e-cup, and that drew attention. More than a few had tried to get in my pants purely because of my big tits. It was usually pretty obvious when someone spent 90% of their time talking to my chest; that was all they cared about. Doggystyle sex was a popular request because it made the girls look even bigger and let whoever was behind me play with them to their heart’s content. I was fine with that if that someone knew how to make it good for me and not just for them. Scott certainly knew how to make it good for me even before we figured out the special things each of us liked.

He switched the vibrator to my left breast and began the process again, circling closer and closer to the nipple. He kissed up my back until he was kissing across my shoulders. Then, as he finally brought the vibrator to my nipple, he began kissing hard at the base of my neck. I was gasping and pushing back against him. Trying to rub my sex against him anywhere that would give me friction.

“I love when you moan so fucking sexy”, Scott purred in my ear. His lips moved up my neck to my ear as his free hand gently clasped my neck from the front. I brought a hand up to my now unattended breast and began squeezing it. Then I turned my head so he could kiss my jawline and up to my mouth.

We began dueling with our tongues and I felt him push in tight against me, forcing his cock between my cheeks and rubbing it back and forth. I flexed my ass around him and felt him moan into my mouth. His hand with the vibrator had stopped as he focused on our kiss and the feel of me around his cock.

I grabbed his hand and began moving the vibrator down my body towards my clit. He clued in quickly and began teasing it back and forth just barely not touching my clit. I tried to move it where I wanted it directly above my clit, but he resisted and I wasn’t trying too hard.

“Fuck. Fuck. Enough teasing.” I pulled away from the kiss and put my face down on the pillow. I moved forward and raised my ass up higher to trap his cock between my thighs. Then settled back down, rocking gently back and forth. “Just fuck me honey.”

He kept up with my rocking for a moment before I felt him push the vibrator fully into my hand, and then he grabbed my hips. I felt him lining me up so that my next rock back pushed him inside me. After nearly 45 minutes of foreplay my pussy was soaked, his cock was ready to burst, and it felt so good to finally be connected.

Long steady strokes all the way to the hilt slowly gave way to faster and harder fucking. “Yes. Yes. Oh yes. Fuck Scott.” I started chanting interspersed with moans and grunts. I moved the vibrator down to my clit. Pushing hard for a moment before easing up. The buzz from the vibrator and the feel of Scott in me was pushing me quickly to climax. My rubbing got frantic and uneven the closer I got. I could feel him pulling me back into each of his thrusts. The sound of skin slapping skin, grunts and moans, and Scott’s heavy breathing each got louder.

“Oh yeah. That’s it. Fuck I love you Lauren! Cum for me. Fuck I’m cumming!”

I felt Scott’s warm cum inside me as he shouted at me to cum. I had already cum just before him, so it wasn’t a mutual climax but damn it was good. Scott kept pushing back and forth inside me, but slower and slower. Finally he laid on my back and just hugged me.

“I love you, Lauren”, he said again.

We both rolled over and cuddled up against each other in the bed. It had become a ritual before he left town for work. Hard fast fuck after lots of foreplay, cuddling and pillow talk, then slow and sensual love. Anyone who said married life was boring didn’t put enough effort into it.

We lay together, just enjoying each other’s closeness for several minutes. Then I felt Scott tense up and sigh.

“What’s up?” I asked while tracing patterns on his chest.

“Just thinking about this trip.”

“What about it? That didn’t feel like a nothing sigh.”

“It’s just that this is the first time Dan is going back out since he found out his girlfriend is cheating on him everytime he leaves. So he’s going to be super fun to be around and Katrina is being an ass about the whole thing.”

“That sucks. What is Katrina doing that’s so bad? Is she blaming him or something stupid like that?”

Scott looked down at me for a moment before answering. Then he slowly said, “She’s giving Dan shit about not being man enough to keep his girl happy. She’s also been saying that it’s normal when people travel if they haven’t locked down their boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse that they will cheat. She seems to bring it up every time I’m in the room with her.”

I sat upright and stared at Scott. “What a fucking asshole! First, it is not Dan’s fault if his partner cheated on him. All of that blame is on the shit stain who cheated. Second, Katrina sounds like a nasty, self-centered, entitled, piece of shit. What does that even mean to lock someone down? You don’t force someone you care about to do something. You do things for them because you care about them and vice versa.”

“I know. Honestly, if she keeps it up this whole trip I’m going to bring her up to HR. No one wants to work with that toxicity and it’s not even close to professional.”

This conversation was anything except sexy, but I straddled Scott and pushed my sex against his cock. I started gently moving up and down, caressing him with my lower lips. I wanted some intimacy for what I said next. Also, I was still horny. “Scott”, I said as I gently put my hand on his cheek and turned him to look straight into my eyes.

“Don’t listen to anything that selfish monstrosity is saying. I have not and will not ever cheat on you. Ask me anything you want, and I’ll answer here and now. Want to see my phone? It’s all yours.” I started pushing down a little harder as I felt Scott starting to stiffen against me. “I love you and only you. I meant every word of our vows.”

Scott was staring at me with a small grin. “Katrina would say you’re just offering things you know can’t prove you’re cheating. That I should show you how much of a man I am and the consequences if you stray. Then it’s no longer about having to trust, because I’ve locked you down for me and you don’t even have the choice anymore.”

“Fuck that bitch”, I whispered as I was getting myself worked up as well. I didn’t normally call people bitches, but sometimes it’s deserved. “Put cameras in the house, track my phone, cancel all my credit cards, give me a lie detector test. Just know I love you.” I was taking long, slow strokes at this point. My excitement was plenty to keep everything sliding and feeling oh so good. I started running my hands across my stomach and thighs, trying to put on a bit of a show for Scott. Fuck this was weird to try and be sexy while talking about this awful subject.

“Isn’t that the point, though. You love someone so you trust them and then they use that trust to do whatever they want without you suspecting.” Scott was keeping his voice too calm for how excited and hard I could feel he was. He was playing devil’s advocate just to see what I would do.

I moved my hand down and grabbed Scott’s now fully hard length. I positioned him between my legs and sat down. I finally got a small breathless gasp, and it made me grin somewhat maliciously. I appreciated breaking his self-control, even just a little. Then I started squeezing rhythmically on his cock while staying fully still. I loved feeling him inside and knowing I was doing all the work to make him crazy with lust.

“Yes, I love you and trust you, and I know you love and trust me. Honestly, I would hate you if you felt you needed to do all those things to check on me.” I paused the squeezing until he met my gaze again. “Yes, it would feel awful that you didn’t trust me like I trust you, but we could work through that. It wouldn’t be easy or quick, and it would change things forever, but at the end of the day, I still love you and want you.”

I started squeezing again. Scott finally got involved, bringing his hands to my ass he began rubbing and squeezing it. Then, every so often, pulling me forward and back. Just small movements and not constant. We were both just enjoying being together even while having this stupid conversation.

“So I can love you but not trust you, and you would be fine with that.” Scott’s voice was definitely wavering more than a little in his attempt to keep his tone bland and level. Good.

I leaned down and began rubbing my breasts across his chest while still squeezing him. I brought my head close to his. “No, I wouldn’t be fine with it. I said we would still be married and could work through it. I’d just have to fuck some sense into you until you finally got with the program bastard.”

I gently bit his lip. “I’m always yours, Scott. Now stop talking about another woman while you’re inside your sexy wife and fuck me.” I grinned as he wrapped his arms around my back and pulled me into a kiss. Fuck Katrina, fuck Dan’s cheating girlfriend, and fuck everyone else who cheats was my last thought before I settled into Scott’s embrace.

Edward’s POV

Even I couldn’t criticize Lawrence’s office choice, assuming it had been his. Walking through the front doors, I was met with dark mahogany flooring, an attendant ready to take a coat or bag, and an elegant reception desk with a marble counter. A tasteful sign proclaiming “Durand Associates” backlit a very fuckable receptionist.

Long blonde hair falling straight down her back, sexy librarian glasses, and a standard white shirt and suit, but with enough buttons undone to hint at a very nice rack. Infatuated secretaries were always useful in learning office gossip and creating it. I put her on my list of useful fucks, though certainly not a high priority. She was attractive for sure and probably useful, but that only got her up to about the middle of the pack, if I was being honest.

I will give her credit; I was greeted by name and informed that Lydia, the current and soon former legal director, was on her way to meet me. Apparently, someone around here could at least do their job well enough to tell a secretary when someone important was coming. I was also given a temporary visitor badge, which I promptly stuffed out of sight. I was certainly not going to demean myself by wearing a badge, especially one which screamed, “I’m new; please kick me”.

“Mr. Rogle”, I heard from my left. Ah, finally, someone hopefully worthy of my time.

Lydia walked briskly and seemed to assume I would keep up. Funny, with that pace I would have thought her ass would be toned rather than a bulgy monstrosity. She stopped first at HR for a round of stupid papers to sign. I gathered them up and explained I would be reviewing these at home, certainly, they could not expect a lawyer to sign a document the first time it was presented without proper time to review and submit changes.

After that it was security and more papers. These, I was told, would not leave the building, so I spent the next two hours carefully reading and marking up the necessary changes. The spindly, balding, incompetent behind the desk looked completely lost when I handed back the changes to the documents. He was saved by Lydia taking them and saying she would figure it out with Lauren.

Even though I had arrived promptly at 8:00am, it was now almost 11:00am, and nothing useful had happened yet. I understood the need for contracts and paperwork, but I assumed I would at least be going over those with Lawrence. The disrespect never did end whenever that asshole was involved.

Finally, though, we sat down in Lydia’s office to actually talk about my new role. That was when the other shoe dropped. Loudly and humiliatingly.

Durand Associates considered itself a specialty service. The government may award a contract to an organization but there are a huge number of rules that go with that. Employees may have to pass background checks, firms may need to meet certain requirements for liquidity, ownership, past projects, etc. The list is endless. It’s spelled out in the contracts when bidding, but even after you won the bid, you had to prove that you met all the ongoing requirements. In stepped Lawrence, especially for Department of Defense (DOD) contracts.

Durand began by simply helping companies know what the requirements were, compiling the documentation, and catching potential issues before the government could become aware. Then they began playing the other side as well, helping the government audit compliance. This evolved into moving beyond compliance with set legal requirements and instead helping to determine what the legal requirements might be.

They no longer worked solely with DOD contracts and instead worked with a variety of governments and corporations around the world. Though, being the DOD, there were certainly countries and companies they were not allowed to work with. All this to say that Durand International was a firm of mostly lawyers, with smaller subsets of accountants, engineers, and other specialists that mostly were there to help determine when specialized firms were needed for matters that encompassed more than just interpreting statutes.

Lydia, as Director of Legal, oversaw almost everything the company did. Despite the title of director, she was effectively second only to Lawrence as the CEO. Lawrence apparently felt that should change. Lydia had been promoted to Chief Operating Officer. Her position was being split into two positions to reflect the overall reorganization within the company of domestic and international.

Rather than Director of Legal, I apparently had been hired to be the Director of Legal, International. The much smaller side of the business. The domestic side had its own director.

Lauren’s POV

Lawrence had introduced Ed as the new Director of Legal. Everyone at the party congratulated him on it. Some people assumed that Lawrence was being forgetful or trying to keep things short by not saying Director of Legal International. They were wrong. Others thought that maybe Lawrence was consolidating the position again or that there would be a single director above domestic and international who then reported to Lydia. Yep, they were also wrong.

Lawrence intentionally never said the correct title. It had been in the contract that Ed signed. I knew because I had been the intermediary between Lawrence and Ed as they both sent numerous revisions and counter-revisions to each other. Fucking lawyers arguing over the placement of prepositions.

Lawrence told me that Ed had always been brilliant, even as a child. But he made snap judgments immediately on what was worthy of his time and what wasn’t. If it was deemed unimportant, he never looked back. That the contract said international and clearly spelled out his responsibilities on the newly split side of the company, but Lawrence did not say it verbally; was a test.

Judging from the shouting I heard coming closer, I didn’t think Ed would see it that way.

“Lawrence”, Ed roared as he slammed open the outer office doors.

“Get your fucking useless ass out here or I will walk away right now and sue you for every penny of this piece of shit company”, Ed continued to shout.

Part of me wanted to keep watching the meltdown. It was entertaining to see a 40-year-old man, dressed in a well-tailored charcoal suit, with spittle flying from his mouth, in an absolute rage. Only because it was his fault for not reading his contract. It was also embarrassing, unprofessional, and was giving me a headache. I got headaches a lot lately.

“Sit down and stop shouting”, I said with steel in my voice. He seemed to realize I was there for the first time. I cut him off as he started to open his mouth again.

“Lawrence is at lunch with Marianne”, I continued in the same tone. “He will be back in 15 minutes, but until then, all your shouting is wasted. Everyone in this office heard every threat and profanity in your junior-high-worthy rant. I thought lawyers knew about discretion.”

I had, unfortunately, prepared for this moment, and I threw a folder at him that contained the final contract he had signed. I had highlighted the position title, Director of Legal, International. “Something to pass the time while you wait,” I said, trying to keep my tone bland. Inside I was certainly enjoying payback for him saying my husband smelled like shit.

To his credit Ed did catch and look at the folder, then his face got cruel. “You fucking bitch”, Ed spat. “You think because you fucked Lawrence and every other half-witted bastard here with a title that you can speak to me? Does spreading your legs mean you have any useful knowledge or skills? Your only worth is on your back letti-”

I punched him. Sure, ladies are supposed to slap, right? I knew my worth and could back it up physically in a fight. I worked out in a gym three days a week. Ran every morning. Had been taking Jiu-Jitsu classes since I was twelve. But sometimes the best answer to a problem is a solid stance and putting everything you have into the best damn haymaker you can throw.

Ed dropped to the floor right as Lawrence came in.

“Well, Scott is going to kill me I didn’t get that on video”, was all Lawrence said.

Lawrence’s POV

Edward was still screaming. I had known this was coming, of course. After all, I planned it from the start. The kid never changed. It had all been in the damn contract, but he skipped over it because his mind decided it was unimportant. That he got this far as a lawyer was astonishing to me. How the hell is any part of a contract not important?

We live, breathe, and die by contracts. Just because a section may not be interesting doesn’t mean that it isn’t important. At the very least, you have to read and understand it to make sure that it won’t trip you up somewhere else. But Ed never changed.

“Five thousand”, I said.

Ed stopped mid-rant. He had been pacing my office, shouting for the last 30 minutes. I had told Lauren to leave for the day, so with my door and the outer doors closed no one else could hear him. That was my burden.

“Five thousand dollars, you agree not to press charges against Lauren, and I don’t tell Marianne the absolutely disgusting things you said to one of her favorite people.” I finished my thought.

“I’m talking about taking your entire company from you and you want to talk about a secretary bitch?”

“Yes, Ed, I want to deal with everything today. I thought that stopping a battery charge was the easiest issue to resolve first. I think five thousand dollars is more than reasonable for any medical concerns as well as restitution.”

Ed got a very evil grin on his face. “How about we resolve how you are going to keep your company?”

His list of demands was not short to begin with, and for every one that I offered a concession he took that as an opportunity to add more or revisit others previously resolved. I wasn’t surprised that he approached negotiations with a zero-sum-game mindset. He approached life the same way.

The first demand was that he be the only legal director, the same position Lydia had held or higher. Probably two hours was spent discussing why that could not happen. Though we kept everything in the same building, technically, everyone on the international side was now an employee of a different company. Durand Associates was the parent company, with Durand Associates International and Durand Associates U.S. as two separate wholly-owned legal entities. The whole thing got complicated because internally, we still pretended everyone was one happy family.

The point of the split, though, was that it gave us a little more leeway in what we could do without violating DOD contracts. Sure, the U.S. side was larger and more established, but that was partially because international had been hamstrung for years. With the split, we expected international would be a huge growth market and Ed would be one of the chief beneficiaries of that. Stupid kid just had to not fuck-up and let his teams do their job. Then, each year, he could take credit and get praise from the board for the massive growth of his division. That should have been obvious, but I still had to spell it out as he was sure there was a trap there for him.

The salary increase, allowance for personal expenses, a car, that was easy stuff. But after he got that I had to increase the payment for him not to press charges against Lauren. I was half-way tempted to let him. Charges meant he couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen, and while I had only heard the tail-end of what he said, any of it would have Marianne on the war path. He listened to her, and she would likely force him to drop it and apologize.

The final sticking point came about because he wanted a written succession plan. Today. Never mind that anything I wrote wasn’t binding because the board could do what it wanted. He wanted a binding agreement that spelled out how and when he would become CEO. No amount of arguing could convince him otherwise. No talk of how I had to get board approval and the board would not approve anything for someone who just joined could dissuade him. I kept to myself that if I strong-armed the board enough, I could probably get a sign-off on a highly conditional letter of intent type nonsense. He was absolutely convinced that if he didn’t get this, he would walk away, sue me, and somehow destroy the company.

I finally cheated. I told the truth. Marianne wanted him here, and for that, I knew I had to offer him the CEO position. He would be CEO, assuming he didn’t fuck it up, but there wasn’t going to be anything in writing yet. I had promised Marianne I would retire and make Ed CEO. He knew as soon as I told him that I had given up any negotiating position I had. Thankfully, he was at least smart enough to also know that arguing was done and it would happen, eventually.

Marianne’s POV

“I hear Lauren punched Eddy at work today”, I said off-handedly. Outwardly, I continued eating as if I had mentioned the color of the sky. Appearances are deceiving. I was watching Lawrence’s every move. Him almost spitting up his iced tea that he was drinking required no such careful scrutiny.

“Ahh, umm”, Lawrence tried to stall after getting himself under control. “I can’t say much. What did you hear?”

“Lauren contacted me right after our lunch”, I said, again affecting nonchalance. “She said that he insulted her, and she was not sorry for punching him, but she wanted to tell me herself that it happened.”

Lawrence had found his lawyer persona and his face was blank in that way you knew was forced. “I can’t say anything about it. I know it happened, but Lauren will not face charges”, he said, speaking slowly. “Ed and I spoke about it.”

Lawyers think that carefully measured words are their best defense. They spend so much time considering what is said or written that they often do not consider how the unspoken words indict them. The cover-up gives away far more than their words do.

So my husband witnessed Lauren assault Eddy, felt Eddy was in the wrong, and paid him off to prevent Lauren from getting in trouble. Based on his attempt to provide little information, there was also likely an agreement not to inform me of the events. It was not hard to deduce this also led to a prolonged discussion regarding Eddy’s place at Durand and his succession as CEO.

“Thank you, dear”, I said, injecting a hint of warmth into my voice. I knew my boys, husband and child both. Whatever pretenses they pretended to for the benefit of others, I was very much aware of exactly who each of them was at their core.

Lauren’s POV

“Durand Associates, Lawrence Muller’s office”, I said, answering the phone on my desk.

“Hey, honey, it’s Scott. I’ve got my dad here as well before you say something dirty.”

I chuckled. Scott was always trying to convince his family I had just as dirty a mind as he did. To this day, his parents and siblings all believed I was an angel who could do no such thing. It was entertaining to know they thought I was the perfect wife.

“Look, I know after all the hoops you jumped through to stay out of the bidding process I promised I wouldn’t do this, but well ... take it away, Dad.”

Scott’s dad, Robert, ran a security firm. Background checks and stuff, sure, but more in-person work. They did some onsite security, though mostly they would find and vet contractors to sub that work out to. The main thing was executive security. Guess there were a few too many executives who went out into the wide world and quickly found themselves scammed or robbed. Robert joked they were muscley babysitters for rich idiots.

Last year Durand had decided that it would be useful to have a vendor essentially on retainer rather than bidding for each project. With the growth of the international side of the business it was becoming too much hassle and too slow to arrange for each individual trip. Telling lawyers to blend in and not look like they have money was about as useful as putting your hand in a fire and hoping you didn’t get burned. So we put out requests for bids. The only problem was that Scott worked for his dad as both something of a higher up manager and actual bodyguard, and that gave the process the appearance of bias. So the whole thing had been blind proposals, multiple layers of reviews, sooo much shit just to ensure no one could say Lawrence favored me. Robert got the contract so it worked out, but Scott and I had agreed there had to be rules. Apparently, he was breaking one.

“Lauren, I’m sorry to do this to you. But we just got a new contract sent over from Durand, email from some Edward. Says we have to sign before we can do any more business, and I’ve got three separate engagements with you folks in just the next month.” Robert’s voice was rougher than usual and I could tell my father-in-law was pissed.

“Thing is, this would put us out of business. I’m not going to bother with specifics but this is a load of horse shit. It’s a huge amount of work just to meet the new requirements, massive cash outlays for every trip, and that’s not even mentioning the ridiculous damages we would owe Durand if anyone even looked at one of your employees in a way they didn’t like.” Robert was getting worked up now, so I decided to head it off.

“So why call me?” I asked. “You know I can’t change the contract, and Scott promised never to do this.” Inside, I was more mad at Edward, but I felt Scott should have known better than to call.

“We called Ed, he said sign it or they would find someone else and then hung up.” Scott had jumped in for his dad, probably to try and calm things down. “I know you can’t change this, but can we chat with Lawrence? It’s that, or we have to walk.”

“Email him the contract, and I’ll have him call you in 45 minutes when he’s free. But no paper trail that you called me. Ed gives me enough headaches as is.” I hung up the phone before they could respond. Dude had been here two weeks and was already redoing vendor contracts? Fucks sake. I hoped he tried to change the facilities contract next. They were mean when negotiating and perfectly happy to literally play dirty.

Scott’s POV

“ ... andddddd the puck is dropped. Útlaga takes it straight away; Finley never had a chance. She’s driving for the net, wide open, Finley nowhere near her. She takes theeee ... NOOOO! She is down from a well-placed couch cushion thrown by Finley. The crowd is loving it!” I was screaming into a screwdriver doing my best sports announcer voice.

“Útlaga is up, and what is she doing???? The puck is that way, Útlaga! Ohh, they’re in it now. Útlaga tackles Finley hard below the belt.”

Tina was at our house like she had been just about every night for the past three months. Lauren had asked if I wanted to go out tonight as a last date type of thing before I left in the morning for two weeks, as had become a tradition of ours. Anytime we, well I, had to leave for work we would go find something new and often stupid to do. Karaoke (which we both sucked at), slack-line volleyball (everyone at the park thought we were morons but it was a made up game who cares), rock climbing (free excuse to stare at your partner’s ass), and more. The only rule was that it had to be fun for both of us. Of course no judgment if someone was bad at something but all of the good-natured shit giving.