Monica watched me excitedly wander around the kitchen, making breakfast and coffee for the both of us. She sat at the table, reading the paper, relaxed as was always the case these days, simply enjoying the good life.

“Excited about today?” she asked.

“You know it!”, I exclaimed, “It has been great for the past three months doing pretty much nothing, but I really do enjoy working. It’s why I became an engineer. The job is simply fun.”

“Well go for it. I am glad for you,” she said.

Our house was in a nice location in London not far from the Tube. We had moved here from California two months ago, looking for a life change. We had made our fortune and this was our opportunity to try something different. We had struck it big - or at least my wife had. We were the classic Silicon Valley couple - she was from New York, I was from Nebraska, but we both converged on high tech central looking for the start up excitement that imbues all life in the area. We had met while rock climbing and found that we had a shared interest in outdoors activities. One thing led to another and we moved in together. Strictly speaking, we were partners because we had never actually married, but ten years of living together and supporting each other made us as close a couple as you could imagine.

I was the software engineer type, always looking for interesting challenges with a mild hope that somehow this would lead to an Uber-esque exponential ramp to success. It had never happened, but I was always well paid and was considered a pretty hot property in terms of getting software projects developed. I generally supported my wife as she moved from company to company, looking for the next big thing. And, astonishingly, it happened. At some, seemingly random Meetup, she met up with a biotech specialist and over a few days put together a plan with a software engineering friend on the back of a proverbial napkin. It was a back end system that analysed drug interactions and needed only one round of venture capital before they had some successes - enough to be purchased in a back room deal by a major pharmaceutical. She ended up with a cool eighty million dollars out of it - all cash. Her partners did quite well too. But after the buyout, their expertise was still needed and hers wasn’t, so we ended up with lots of cash and nothing much to do.

And that is how we ended up in London. I must admit that the stress of the previous five years was tough for our marriage, mostly with respect to sex (or lack of more precisely), so when the opportunity presented itself, we decided for a complete change. Monica suggested London - a place where we could base ourselves for travel to the continent, get jobs that we simply enjoyed doing, and live a low stress lifestyle. We purchased a row house - one of those pretty houses that you see in the movies - millions of pounds - but when you have the money, why not spend it? We toured around for a month or so before I began to get bored and started looking for an exciting job at a start up. I had stumbled on an interesting startup company involving genomic mapping, but most of the work was software, and they desperately needed a cash input into the company and someone to manage the software team. As a consequence, I ended up with thirty percent of the company, a small ramen noodle salary (not that I needed it), and, most importantly, someplace to go every day to keep my mind engaged.

The best part about the job was that it was only three Tube stops away and then a ten minute walk. How good is that? After years of being stuck on the Highway 101 parking lot, it was liberating to neither own nor need a car. When I jumped off the Tube, I realized that I was quite early - too early really - so I was wandering up the road to check out the cafes near work, when I was bumped, rather strongly in the back. I felt that flash of annoyance one feels at an unexpected physical hit and turned around to look down, at which all of my annoyance fled immediately.

“Ow! Ow!” moaned a woman on the ground, clutching her ankle. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bump into you. Ow!”

The first thing that struck me as I looked down was that she was very good looking: long dark hair and quite slim. The second thing that occurred to me was that I was a bit of an ass pondering on her looks while she was lying there in pain. I knelt down to see how she was.

“Are you OK? Do you need help?”

She straightened out her leg a couple of times and then grimaced when she put it on the ground.

“I’m not sure.” She looked around a bit and said, “do you mind helping me to the cafe? I think that I will be fine once I sit down a bit.”

I feel a nice gentlemanly thrill associated with being asked for help by a very good looking woman, and immediately responded, “No problem. Let’s help you up.”

I helped her up on one leg, and reached around her waist to help her hop over to the cafe. As I glanced down a her, I realised that she wasn’t just good looking, she was flat out beautiful, and very curvy. I couldn’t but notice that I was holding onto a narrow waist, with somewhat wide hips beneath, but most noticeable of all, I could see very large breasts bouncing up and down as I helped her hop over to the cafe. It was only a few hops over and I helped her over to a table to sit down.

She looked up, “Thank you so much. And, please, let me buy you a coffee. And join me at the table.” I looked at her for moment, seeing that her long black hair framed a lovely face. Since I was only walking around to scout out the cafes in the area anyway, I was more than happy to start this activity with the company of a beautiful woman.

“Sure” I said, “but the coffee is on me”.

I sat down and we looked at each other for that awkward moment when two people try to figure out how to begin. I broke the ice and introduced myself. We exchanged basic information about each other, looking for areas of commonality, as one does with strangers. It turns out that she was American and had been in the country for the same amount of time as myself.

Stephanie, her name as I learned shortly, provided me with her story, “I graduated a few years ago from a small liberate arts college in Connecticut and have been working for the past few years for a museum in Ohio. I know, I know, not exactly considered a prime source of culture, but it was pretty much the only job in the area that I could get. I specialized in Ancient History, the thousand years or so before the Romans appeared. I had a great time for about four or five years, but the museum had budget cuts and I was out of a job a few months ago. I received an interesting offer, albeit not full time, for a job here, and I jumped at the chance to see the world. Mostly, I have started work and have been exploring London for he past couple of months. By the way, it’s good to hear an American voice - I know that Americans are all over the place, but that’s mainly tourists, and I get the impression that you actually work around here?” she looked at me with the question in her eyes.

I gave her my story, though holding back on any mention of financial success, rather focusing on my intent to start anew in another country as a bit of adventure. I dropped “my wife” in the conversation a couple of times to head off any embarrassing misunderstandings, just on the off chance that she was interested in me for more than just a chat. I am not bad looking, but with my sandy brown hair, mild complexion, and ordinary build, I didn’t stick out. More importantly, I think that I exude a bit of geekiness, having been a software programmer for so many years and always being interested in technology. People like me just can’t hide this.

In spite of this, she gave the impression that she was interested in me and, if I didn’t pick up the wrong signals, attracted to me. Naturally, this appealed to my ego. Surprisingly we found common ground in technology - it turns out that museums are actually pretty high tech. She described how they scanned objects using multi-spectral scanners in order to avoid the metameric issues one gets with an RGB scan. I was actually quite impressed at her knowledge of color science and it wasn’t long before we were batting around our preferences of digital cameras and wide screen televisions. She was a woman after my own heart.

While physically stunning, she honestly wasn’t really my preferred type. I tended to prefer the athletic, thin, blonde look, like my wife, and Stephanie did not hit the mark on any of these other than perhaps thin. However, I don’t think that there was a man alive who wouldn’t appreciate her looks, and it was certainly nice to be seen with her.

We wound up the coffee and she insisted on exchange phone numbers, asking if I would be OK to “Do Lunch”. She explained that she knew hardly anyone, since she had spent most of the time traveling for the museum job she had taken in London. However, she was going to be based here for the next year, and needed to make contacts. Having precisely zero plans as yet, I was more than happy to agree to this situation. I left, forgetting about her ankle, something that I felt mildly guilty about when I recalled this later in the day.

My first day at the office was truly wonderful as I began to scope out my domain. It wasn’t long before I realized why they needed my technical background as much as my investment. There were six software engineers, being managed by the researcher who started the company and acted as both CEO and Head Researcher. While the programmers were quite skilled, they knew absolutely nothing about scoping out project plans, resource management, and did not even have an issue tracking system! I sat them down at the end of the day and laid out my plans for them.

“Guys, we need to get our plans in order and our tools in order. There is no revision control system in place, bug tracking, regression testing, or even code reviews! We do need to deal with this reasonably quickly because I won’t be able to trust anything we produce otherwise”.

They looked at me sheepishly - they were too young and inexperienced to have ever seen the downside of the type of bug ridden chaos that results without at least some kind of rigor in tools and process, but they did understand the concepts and did know they were supposed to do this. It was just that no one had ever asked them to do it. Certainly, the Researcher cum CEO didn’t know anything about this.

I laid down the law, “Start looking over the tools and come to me with a proposal in two days. Don’t stick with freeware if you don’t want to. For example, I am happy to pay for Jira if you prefer it to Bugzilla. Just make a choice. And if you can’t make a choice, I will flip a coin to choose between options. I have used them all, and have my own preferences, but you are the ones that will have to live with the decision.” They seemed to accept this and went off to do their investigations.

I spent the next couple of days with the CEO, learning more about the fundamental technology. It was very very cool stuff, we would be able to revolutionize personalized medicine if we got this right. It was exciting, probably the most exciting thing I had ever been involved in.

I was on the way to work a couple of days later when I received a text from Stephanie to do lunch. I immediately accepted and ending up having a very pleasant lunch with a beautiful woman who seemed to like me. Conversation ranged from technology in pre Roman times, mainly military machines, to art, to technology. She was very engaging and animated when she spoke, clearly getting quite excited about the various topics we engaged in. I was impressed enough that I continued to do lunch a number of times over the next few weeks. In some ways, it was awkward because I couldn’t imagine inviting Stephanie to my house for dinner - I could only imagine what my wife would think - on the other hand, I developed a very real friendship in a short period of time with someone who was intelligent and attractive.

It was on one of these days that instead of lunch, Stephanie has asked me if I could come over to her house and sort out her Wifi router for her. She often had to work from home and broadband was essential for her work. She thought that she had her firewall operating correctly, but when she pinged external penetration sites, they said that she had a number of ports open. She offered to make lunch so as to make it worth my while. I naturally accepted the offer - being a natural “fix it” person for home networks. So I arrived at her apartment at the designated time.

It was a nice but very small studio apartment, the type where everything is one room, and in the worst position in the block. I completely understood, having been in financially impaired situations for many years in my life. We had a short lunch that she had whipped up - a green Thai curry. I think I had a bit of a food coma come over me as I sat down at the computer because it was only a few minutes staring at the Wifi router configuration page when I felt a wave of tiredness and I think that I phased out for a moment.

Harold Harold had received a text from Stephanie that Wayne was ready and she let him into the apartment.

“Why don’t you go outside to the park for an hour or so and let me work. It’s just a simple interrogation for information, nothing important, but it is best if I work alone.” Harold said.

“Nothing bad will happen to him, will it?” She said. “I really like him you know. I connect with him. And, and, I think that he is very attractive. When you hired me and I agreed to do this, I was really worried that you were going to stick me with a loser, but he’s not. In fact, he’s probably the nicest guy I have ever met. The problem is that I don’t think that he is very attracted to me. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Stephanie, my dear, you underrate yourself so much. You have a scintillating intellect, a charming personality, and, let’s face it, you are beautiful and sexy. Given time I can’t imagine that any man can resist you. I bet that he will come around soon. How could he not? Please keep at it. It’s for your country.”

As she walked out, Harold thought about a session from three months ago.

Ohio - three months ago “How are you feeling Stephanie?”, Harold asked.

“Fine. I feel fine”, she said in the flat voice of someone under the influence of Persuader, a designer drug developed by a now defunct corporation that plays free with memories.

“OK. So let me ask you a few questions. First, what do you think of sex? Do you enjoy it?”

“It’s OK. Nothing particularly special”.

“Stephanie, sex isn’t just OK. It’s wonderful as you recall. In fact, let’s go over your history. Do you remember the first time you had sex? What was it like?”

“It was in high school with my boyfriend. He was an asshole in the end. It was kind of clumsy and hurt a bit and I don’t think that I enjoyed it much.”

“Stephanie, you remember that your sexual encounters with this boyfriend were wonderful. You were very wet and excited and you had orgasm after orgasm. Your boyfriend still turned out to be an asshole, but the sex was great, wasn’t it?”

“Mhmm mhmm. I remember now how good it was”.

“OK, let’s move on. How about your next sexual encounter. What was it like?”

“This was in college, I was dating a senior, and we had sex in his room a number of times. It was a quite a bit better. I remember that he liked to play with my nipples and I liked that. But he wasn’t so good at the other bits.”

“Stephanie, what you remember about your college boyfriend is that you loved to have your nipples touched and sucked and handled. And your breasts. This turned you on and you got very wet and very excited. In fact, it felt so good that sometimes you had an orgasm from this. And then when you made love, the feel of his penis inside you made you feel incredible and you experienced orgasm after orgasm. It was wonderful.”

“Yeah. I remember now. I remember enjoying it a lot. That was lovely.”

“Stephanie, did you ever have oral sex? Did you ever give a boy a blow job? And did you ever get cunnilingus?”

“I gave my boyfriend in college a blow job a couple of times, but I didn’t really like it because I didn’t get anything from it. He was very good with his tongue. That was very nice. I actually had an orgasm when he did this.”

“Stephanie, you remember that you quite enjoyed giving blow jobs - they gave you an enjoyable buzz that you were satisfying your partner. And when you received oral sex, you remember that you came so hard that you squirted. Do you remember that?”

“Oh yeah. I do remember. I loved that.”

“Stephanie, what kind of man attracts you? What does your ideal man look like?”

“I like a man with muscles and who is very confident in himself. Very assured. I prefer black hair and olive skin”

“Stephanie, you remember that your ideal man is somewhat slim - you don’t like big muscles very much. And you prefer sandy brown hair and brown eyes. Someone about six feet tall. And you like guys who are a bit humble. And mostly you like guys you are very technical, geeks, because the fact that they know complex technology kind of turns you on. You feel very comfortable and sexy with engineers - you know that they make the best boyfriends and the best husbands. And they are terrific at sex. You remember that when you have sex with a guy like this you have orgasm and orgasm. And most of all, you are turned on by someone who looks like this,” I held up a picture of a rather ordinarily looking man.

“Oh, yes, I remember now. I don’t like arrogant guys with big muscles. I love engineers - they are so sexy. Sex is best with them.”

“What do you think of working for the government, almost like a spy?”

“I don’t think that I would like that. The government tortures spies don’t they?”

“Stephanie, you have always loved the idea of working in a job where it is like being a spy. It gives you a thrill and you feel very patriotic. You know that your are helping the government and this is good. You still don’t like the idea of torture and you recall that you would never do this.”

“Oh yes. I always kind of wanted to work in the CIA. That must be why I majored in Ancient History so that I could travel and help my country.”

“Stephanie, it’s time to go home and have a good night sleep. You will remember everything that we discussed here. And when you come back tomorrow for your final interview, you will be very excited about taking the job that we are offering.”

Harold watched her get up and walk out. He thought that she really was a very lovely woman. Harold had sorted through over two hundred candidates to find someone who would work out. Stephanie was perfect - no close family, beautiful, in financial straights trying to pay off her students loans having just recently lost her job. Perfect. This would work out well.

“So let me get this right,” she said to Harold. “You are offering me a job to seduce a married guy and get him to break up with his long term partner and then enter into a long term relationship? This doesn’t seem like it is something that I would want to do.”

“Well Stephanie, there are a number of considerations going on here. First, financial: We will pay off all your student loans, you will get a small apartment to live in with all rent prepaid for a year so you can stay for an entire year, and you will get a healthy salary for this. Now you need to work part time for the university of London museum and get paid for it, but your real job is as I described. If you successfully manage to seduce this person and have him move in with you, you get a bonus of fifty thousand pounds. And if you manage to keep him in the relationship for over a year, you get a bonus of two hundred thousand.”

“But, it’s kind of weird what you are asking me to do. Can’t you tell me why?”

“Sorry - it’s government work. Spy stuff and critical to national security so I can’t say much more. But what I can say is that if you succeed, you will be helping your country.” I looked at her and I could tell that this statement made a big difference.

“And this guy. What if he is ugly and obnoxious? What if he is violent or something?”

“Stephanie, we have good information on this guy. He is not violent. He is actually a software engineer - very stable. Here is a picture of him.” I could tell that each statement had made an impact. Her eyes widened at the words ‘software engineer’ and then her pupils dilated as she looked with avid interest at the photo. I think that it was the photo that did it.

“Well, I still think that it’s weird, but I’ll take the job.”

Bingo.

Present day “Wayne, what type of women do you think are attractive?”

“I like women who look like my wife. Blonde. Thin. Ripped.”

“Wayne, you recall, in fact, that your tastes in women changed a while ago. In fact, you like brunettes with straight black hair, preferably long. And you like a woman with curves - narrow waist, wide hips, and really big tits. You really are attracted to women with big tits. You recall that your wife is too thin, too many hard muscles, blonde. You are indifferent to this.”

“Oh yes. I remember that I do like brunettes with big tits. A lot. My wife is a bit thin. I don’t really think that I am attracted to that anymore.”

“Wayne, do you like foreplay when you have sex?”

“Yes, I like to kiss and give a massage.”

“Wayne, recall that what you really like to do is fondle a woman’s tits and fondle her nipples. You particularly like to do this with a woman who has big tits. You love to do this. And you really enjoy cunnilingus because you know that women get off on this. And you like to have sex until your woman has orgasms. This turns you on.”

“Oh yes. I remember that I really like to play with huge tits and fondle with nipples. And oral sex. Orgasms. Yes.”

“Wayne, how do you feel about having sex with someone who is not your wife?”

“I wouldn’t do that. I am committed to my wife.”

“Wayne, there is only one case where it is OK to have sex with someone other than your wife. It is with a woman has dark hair, narrow waist, and big tits. A woman who looks like this,” Harold held up a picture in front of Wayne’s eyes.

“Oh, yes. I recall. It is OK to have sex with a woman who looks like this. I like her tits.”

“Wayne, you will soon wake up, and think that you have finished working on Stephanie’s firewall. You won’t remember this discussion, but when you wake up in the morning, all these memories will be yours.”

This was so easy.

After Wayne left, Harold briefly met up with Stephanie when she arrived back at the apartment.

“OK, Wayne had the information that I needed, so rest assured that everything is fine. Just continue what you are doing. What I would like you to do tomorrow, is have lunch with Wayne. Wear something tight that shows off your curves. In fact, do this the next few times that you see him. I bet that he will come around. Here is a thousand pounds you can use to purchase some interesting dresses.”

Wayne

Next morning, I was on the way to work when I received a text from Stephanie, to see if I as interested in lunch. I felt a thrill run through me - I was really enjoying these lunches with her and was looking forward to seeing her again today. I texted back with a suggestion for a restaurant and a time and she agreed. Setting up a lunch date with her was turning me on for some reason.

I spent most of the morning doing code reviews with the team. They really were good programmers and I was now getting comfortable that we had a stable set of tools and processes to produce reliable software. We had started running everything as bi weekly scrums and were scheduled to finish off the first scrum in a few days. We only found a three minor bugs - and a couple of inefficiently designed algorithms, so it was a good morning.

I made it to the restaurant a bit early for lunch and settled in to look over email on my iPhone. I heard a murmured comment from a neighboring table, so I looked up to see Stephanie walking over, looking like sex on heels. She had on a tight white dress that showed off every curve, and there were many of them. It was tight around the waist, flowing outward into a loose pleated skirt at the bottom. But it was the top that gave me heart palpitations because it was low cut in the front and she must have been wearing some kind of push-up bra because her tits seemed even larger than normal. I think that my jaw had dropped as she walked over because, when she was close enough to see my face, she giggled delightedly, stopped near the table, and did a twirl. Her skirt expanded nicely before coming to a stop. Her tits didn’t stop, moving back and forth in waves before setting down. I think that my hard on almost burst through my pants.

“Do you like my dress?”

“Uh. It’s stunning. Incredible.” I said.

She looked at me a moment and she blushed because she realized I was serious.

“I bought it this morning - I have some functions to go to for work over the next few days and I decided to treat myself to a new look.”

“Continue to treat yourself,” I replied.

“I will,” she said. I could swear that she blushed again and then she reached over and briefly put her hand on on top of mine. A bolt of electricity went through my body at her touch.

She looked at me intently for a few moments and then said with a smile, “Since I am getting such compliments, I will be sure to wear something special for you next time we do lunch”. I mentally blocked out my lunch period for the next week when she said this - no one was going to book me in for lunch at work if I had a chance of seeing Stephanie wearing something something like today’s dress.

I was riveted by Stephanie throughout the entire lunch and could barely stop looking at her to eat my food. I was acutely aware of every time she touched my hand to make a point or even the time that her foot accidentally touched mine under the table. I had a momentary fantasy that she had reached out to play footsie. I couldn’t have been more disappointed when our hour was up and it was time to leave. As we walked out of the restaurant to say goodbye, I stepped over to give her a hug and kiss goodbye. As I gave her a light kiss, I could feel her breasts pressed against my chest and I couldn’t help running my hands over her waist. Hopefully, I wasn’t too obvious about it.

The rest of the day was a bit of a blur for me, but I am sure that it went fine. Probably the only odd thing that happened was that evening. After a pleasant dinner with my wife, we went to bed and she was uncharacteristically interested in sex. For some reason, I wasn’t interested and couldn’t even get an erection. I feigned sleepiness and that was the end of that.

Two days later, I couldn’t wait any more and texted Stephanie to see if she wanted to do lunch again. She quickly texted back in the affirmative and we arranged to meet up at a different restaurant, this time a very upmarket one. She was at the restaurant already when I showed up. She stood as I walked up and my first sight of her dress was like another bold of lightening. This time she was wearing a green dress. The dress was tight fitting at the waist and there was a surprisingly small amount of fabric coming over her breasts, because both the front and sides of her breasts were visible as she walked over. When she walked over to give me a kiss, I discovered that her dress was backless and, based on the movement of her chest as she walked, it seemed unlikely that she was wearing a bra. This time, I couldn’t help giving her a kiss on the lips instead of cheek. My hands reached around her and I felt a thrill as I touched her bare back. A quick glance downward showed me that her nipples were tenting out of the fabric so I was pretty sure that there was nothing underneath her dress. When I looked up, I saw that she had a flush around her neck so it looked like the kiss affected her as much as it did me. This affected me deeply, because it seemed to confirm that she was just as affected by me as I was by her.

As usual, Stephanie was quite animated as we chatted. This had the lovely affect that her dress moved back and forth in shock waves due to her unconstrained breasts. I must have caught myself staring for or five times during lunch when this happened. I would look backup quickly, and I caught her smiling each time I did this. She was obviously delighted at the affect her dress was having on me. As usual, she would reach over and touch my hand to make a point, and, each time I was acutely aware of her touch. This went for a wonderful hour, and we stood up to leave.

As we left the restaurant, Stephanie suggested that we talk a walk down to a park she had discovered that was only a few hundred meters down the road. Having no commitments for the next hour, I was more than willing to agree to this request. Stephanie walked closely by my side - so close that I could feel the movement of her arms as we walked. I wanted to put my arm around her waist, hold her hand, anything to touch her, but, telling myself that I was married, I used willpower that I didn’t know I had to avoid doing so.