Chapter 146

Piloting the houseboat was equal parts relaxing and boring - kind of like fishing. I had to pay enough attention that I wasn’t running into anything, veering off course or otherwise being an idiot, but I wasn’t exactly contending with a difficult task. I was about fifty yards behind Becca and the Singles Boat, and she was navigating, so I was just following.

That meant I had plenty of time to start stewing inside my own head. I was worried about Wanda mostly - after the last few days I was starting to get a little used to the emotional responses women could have to the intimate moments we were experiencing, but Wanda had been different that morning. It also made me worry about the App. Not Cassidy, or if she was doing anything, but the App by itself.

I trusted that Cassidy was telling me the truth about it - I had no way to verify that she wasn’t hiding anything from me on that front. So if she was, the App had the ‘Stats’ function and the ‘Perks’ function we’d talked about, but the real thing I hadn’t grappled with yet was right in the name.

Affection Multiplier.

Thinking back on Cassidy’s story from when we’d been graduating high school and in college, which was still a painful brainworm for me that put an uncomfortable tightness in my gut, Cassidy had used the Affection Multiplier effect to get into women’s pants. She’d said something about how easy it had been when she learned how to say the right things. So how powerful was the Multiplying factor?

And what was the impact it was having now?

Cassidy was being careful not to be hitting on the other women on the trip herself but was being truthful and blunt about our situation and her willingness to share me. What was the impact of that?

She and Cattie had been online friends before they had ever met at a Con, but their fast escalation over the past two years despite only seeing each other a few times a year seemed more suspect now. Obviously, each time we’d seen her, the App had been passively working on Cattie’s friendship stats. But that friendship had already been started before the App, so was that even a bad or manipulative thing? It just sped things up and made them feel closer on a faster timeline.

Except Cattie had mentioned that, if she hadn’t been with Heather and she knew Cass was open to it, she would have been interested in a threesome with us before this week. Was that the App, or just Cattie?

And what about Becca? Cass hadn’t met her in person before this week so the App had (hopefully) not been working on her. And yet Becca and I fit so well together, and had progressed so fast ... was it just the lust, and Cassidy being open and honest, that had allowed that to spark? Becca was clearly more interested in me than Cassidy, so was the Multiplier effect just making her feel more comfortable working around the weirdness of the Cassidy and me situation?

And then there was Terra and her frustration with JC and the escalating events of touching and kissing. Almost none of it actually had to do with my fiancee, but it felt out of the norm anyways. Add Leia and Ami, and even Zenya, to that list as well. Ginnie seemed to be the only exception since she came across as carefree and horny no matter what was going on.

But Wanda ... All of the others I could come up with a barrier of some sort between the App and them. Each of them were becoming friendly with Cass while also escalating things with me, without pushing on Cass as much in the sex department. Wanda, though, I really couldn’t say. She was clearly into me as much as I was into her. Neither of us had known Wanda before this week for there to be an underlying thing. This was all fresh and new, and after openly saying I Love You’s last night and this morning...

It couldn’t be anything other than the App. And that concerned me.